Millennials Like Ease and Convenience with Jinx Co-founder, Terri Rockovich

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here with Terry Rakovich, co founder and CEO of Jinx. And they've got off to an explosive start and they're selling premium dog nutrition and they found a niche that people are responding to in a big way. So welcome Terry. I'm excited to get a chance to spend some time with you.

Thank you so much.

I'm excited to talk and tell me about this story. I mean your revenue is rocketing. You, you did, you didn't even launch until last year, the COVID kickoff. You launched and you're already at 10 million in revenue and climbing. You're the co founder, CEO of this company. And you know, it's not like this is something that people have not had dog food out there before, but you've, you know, you're, you've come at it at an angle that people are really excited about and you know, your next three, four, five years are going to be incredible after this kind of start. So tell us a little bit about your story and how you wound up at this point in your life.

Sure. So I, I started my career at a digital agency but I really cut my teeth with hands on growth experience on the brand side within really early stage direct to consumer business environments across a variety of different industries, so ranging from apparel and telehealth to subscription commerce and consumer goods. But really throughout my career I was definitely forced to adopt a work ethic around designing really flexible strategies and implementing those strategies, failing fast, iterating quickly and then pursuing this kind of continuous improvement mentality regardless of my role or responsibility set. And so you know, once you learn how to architect a plan or a strategy only to have it experience ongoing change based on how a business is pivoting, you learn to get very comfortable with a working model that flexes based on company objectives or environmental evolutions. And so I started my career by learning and I'll finish my career still learning because culture changes, technology evolves, projects fail, marketplaces emerge and consumers get smarter. So regardless of maturity or experience or developmental stage, growth and development is critical to forward movement. Which really kind of brought me to where I am today, which was being fully inspired to become an entrepreneur, start my own business, shake up an industry that was very ripe for disruption and create a brand with a much more modern philosophy around our model. That being a subscription commerce model. Dog food is really heavy to transport. I think a lot of people often make the trade off between one heavy item in dog food and so having it show up at your door on frequency or cadence that you choose feels like an optimized experience. And then really our nutritional philosophy is rooted in the idea that our relationships with our dogs have evolved. Our, you know, our lifestyles are certainly impacting their activity levels. And so when you think about the evolution of the dog and its lifestyle, we're taking a more modern approach to a more balanced and complete diet that's just more appropriate from a proportions perspective. And so in addition to, you know, an easy optimized experience, we think that we've got a superior performing food that's really much more appropriate for modern dogs today.

Talk about now growing up. What things did you do, do or thoughts did you have in your mind that kind of led you, you know, like what kind of education did you get, you know, what were you pursuing? What, what was the first things that jumped out at you coming up the ladder?

Yeah, so in school I wasn't really attracted to digital commerce until my senior year and you know, one of my last semesters where I took an E commerce class and mind you, this is 13 years years ago. So E commerce was still relatively new and people were still figuring out how to sell within the digital landscape. But that really piqued my curiosity. And then I would say as I moved through the agency world, which is ruthless really, I saw a lot, I saw big businesses and big budgets and small businesses and shoestring budgets and I saw brands being able to thrive in all types of, of environments and all sizes of environments. And so I think what really struck me was you can do a lot with a little and really kind of having thought partnership in areas where you don't index as strongly from a skillset perspective is pretty critical to having a well rounded team and a successful execution arm. And so I just feel like I saw a lot, I had a lot of hands on experience and then as I started to really carve out.

Let me stop you and let's go back to E commerce because you're really got a digitized vocabulary. Okay. And you are really in tune with what's happening. And I want to make sure everybody you're in, you're marketing, you're motoring along through life and you get your senior year and I guess you're thinking more specifically about where to go, what to do that could be exciting. E commerce is online, more or less. Is it anything other than online?

No, it's really, you know, it's doing business and having your primary storefront through a digital website.

So you basically have a virtual store rather than a real big building, big box or storefront someplace. And so why, you know, how did you evaluate what kind of things were you looking at and where this rose to the top? You know, Cause that the way you sorted through those options, the way that kind of informs how you sort through issues, probably even now, you know, we all have our own style and our own interests. And how did you. Was it. Did you get interested in that because you were starting to think, hey, I'm going to be out of here in a while, I got to get in an industry. Were you trying to choose a direction that would give you the best possible momentum and payoff for continuing to do big things?

Yeah, well, you know what? I've always been fascinated by change and just generally evolution. I think in this instance, evolution of technology was something that sparked my interest and something that I was really willing to bet on. I'm a millennial. While I'm on the older aspect of that age band, I know that my cohort really appreciates ease and convenience. And so when you think about E commerce and the ability to, you know, through a few clicks, get what you want, have it arrive at your door, especially if it's an item that's hard to obtain or an item that's inconvenient to obtain, that really feels like a behavior that's fascinating. And I think as technology continues to evolve and you can order things on your phone or through a text message, I think that ease and convenience offering or value proposition is particularly compelling. And I think, you know, younger generations tend to adopt it. But I mean, even my parents are ordering things through Facebook messages and through these social media platforms. And so, you know, my bet, so to speak, on E commerce was one that felt like change is. Is good. Often uncomfortable, but usually good. And so, you know, creating a business that could thrive within that environment was, you know, the most compelling or interesting thing for me.

And you got into it through advertising agencies, public relations agencies. What was your first training and your entry into this world where you got that perspective and got the opportunity to work with different companies and different campaigns and different projects? Sure.

So at the agency, I was working on Fortune 500 businesses with a handful of smaller businesses that we would really kind of overhaul in terms of growth strategy, I would say, you know, my first four weeks at the agency, I went through a bit of a boot camp, which was really just learn the landscape, learn the digital landscape, and figure out how to use these tactics to really optimize and grow a business and do that within the boundaries of, you know, their business objectives or, you know, the KPIs that they're using to evaluate success. So that boot camp was really where I built a lot of muscle around E commerce and digital strategy. And then once you've got that playbook, you can kind of assemble different tactics for businesses or brands based on what they're trying to do.

Now, were you the only one in this, going through this pro? Did they have a batch of y' all coming through? And. And what did. What were they teaching you? You know, what. What do you recall from that stage to kind of reorient yourself and put yourself in the frame of mind that would allow you to, you know, to go on and be successful like you have?

I was definitely part of a, you know, I would say a class or, you know, a cohort of recruits that had less experience and less exposure to, you know, not. Not just kind of the digital tactics and best practices, but more so how to apply them to businesses and how to actually, you know, operate and execute. And so I really do think having that exposure and having that skill set, it was a really technical skill set. But I think once you know how to do something, it's easy to figure out how to identify talent that can do the same thing to scale with a business. And then also, as I evolved my career, I'm a position to figure out how to manage people who are really close to the technical aspects or tactical aspects of managing kind of digital strategy. And so can you pull back the.

Curtain a little bit there, Terry, on what that would even mean in terms of digital strategies and how to do it? I'm sure they went through good, better, best. What most people you will try, but that doesn't work. And what's working now and what works at any one given time is changing because Google and their analytics and their how they program the robots and all. But in Facebook, you know, how they. How they change. But was it a thing about how things worked at that moment in time or what insights did you pick up there that were difference makers? Because I'm just trying to open the minds of people that they have companies, and maybe they're not aware of things they're missing that could really multiply their outreach. And, you know, we all like to get the biggest bang for the buck in all of our efforts. And so maybe you could give some of the things that they made you aware of and open your eyes to and that early, early stage, hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

Yeah, well, I think one of the most critical aspects of thinking about designing or architecting a growth strategy for a business is understanding the business. And so where we often started was by, you know, going back and understanding a business objectives at a very high level and then really mapping those into a growth plan or growth strategy. At the digital agency, I was most specifically focused on media. So growth through earned, owned and paid. And the technical part of that is understanding the algorithms, most specifically in the Google and Facebook marketplaces, but also just how to build campaigns, test creative fleets within those campaigns that resonate with different customer bases, and then figure out how to grow revenue effectively through these audience acquisition strategies. And so it's media planning, it's marketplace analysis, it's understanding your customer base through insights, and then it's really kind of assembling the whole plan together. So you've got the best chance at growing your business most efficiently. But it ranges in everything from what you own in the form of media. So all of the content on your website, anything produced through editorial or through blog or through a book or through content experiences, through buying in the auction that everybody else is competing in within the digital marketplaces that exist for growth purposes today. And so understanding what I call the marketing funnel and where a lot of those tactics and channels live within the funnel and then budgeting against it was really what we focused on and what frankly I carried with me from agency to startup to startup to startup, and now I use the same application within my own business.

Yeah, because creating basically your marketing funnel is you playing offense on growth. Would you say that's true?

Absolutely.

And if you don't know what your marketing funnel is, how you get the attention of people and bring them through that process of becoming a client, you're going to probably flounder and not flourish. And so these were great keys for you to get early on. Now, when you launched your business, I think I'm going to save that. So what would you say as from just that early entry and early experience, what would you say was your main takeaway that you had in your mind before you even made your first steps of launching your own company? Because I want to get into that in the next episode. But if you had one last thing that you could pass on in this episode to the people that could be helpful to them and in launching a new business or another stage of growth, what would you cause like last night I met this incredible guy at dinner, husband and wife, both of them unbelievably talented and everything, but he's moved out of the administrative world and back into like what should be retirement. But you can't retire. You know, the thing is, if you retire and you don't have to a passion, you're going to die. And it's obvious. All you got to do is look at the statistics, everybody. And so at every stage of life, if you're going to flourish, you've got to have a passion. And so we taught and it turned out he's been an artist. He even studied art. I mean, he's got a master's in art and he went into administration, so he'd have a day job. And then he just, you know, he didn't do a whole lot of the art. And so I tried to wake him up on the, the possibilities of. And it turns out he's, you know, he's, he's got a lot going on on that. But I don't think he took it serious. But you've got to have a program for yourself or your company and you have to have these ideas. It's not a. It's really not optional. You got to move forward with enthusiasm or you're going to die. You don't grow or die, but every stage of life. And so you got to have something you're pushing. And how. What did you have in your mind that we could pass on as a final comment to that really stood you well in your launch, you know, the mindset that you reached and the skill sets that you reached, the understanding you had. And from that, you know, we'll explore that. But off the top of your head when I say those things, what jumps into your mind?

So understanding the marketplace or the competitive landscape is really where we started. And we spent quite a bit of time doing research and analysis to really kind of extrapolate learnings from the category, identify white space and then design into it. Leading up to our launch, we designed what I call a go to market playbook, which includes a variety of different initiatives or strategies or tactics that really assisted with the announcement of the brand coming into market and launching through a subscription commerce experience, but then also growing that through a media plan, which was really kind of designed against that marketing funnel or conversion rate optimization funnel that we talked about. But I would say the assembly of a lot of different tactics, starting small so you can kind of test and learn and fail quickly and iterate, was really the mindset for which we assembled that playbook, that go to market playbook. And so it was almost like we weren't placing all of our bets in any one tactic or strategy because the reality of it failing or being too expensive or being too congested is real. We also didn't anticipate soft launching our business into the height of the pandemic, which threw everything into a tailspin.

But what I'm interested in is what was in your mind that caused that you had learned, that caused you to together that strategy and that thing. What did you learn that was non negotiable? That had to be, you had to have figured out, you had to have information, you had to have facts about certain things. What, what kind of, you know, what kind of insight did you have that caused you to do all of these kind of things? And that is like, if we can't get this stuff done, we're not going to launch because we got to have this done in advance. You know, the will that, you know that thing about, it's not people have the willingness to pay the price for success, but they don't have the willingness to prepare. And so somehow you had an insight about we got to get ready with all of these things in advance. So what kind of, what do you think was the primary thing you had in your mind that caused you to do those things?

So we were 150% confident that our strategic position would resonate with a really large segment within the pet parent population. And so the branding piece was absolutely critical to the way that we thought about creating the cosmetic approach or the consumer facing approach to the website. And then I would say, furthermore, this thing would never have launched if we didn't think about the sales funnels and making sure that once we had traffic on the site, regardless of the volume of traffic, that we were able to provide a seamless sales funnel so that people could understand the product offering points of differentiation and then, you know, easily purchase that product and either do it through an a la carte purchase experience or sign up for a recurring auto ship program. And so that I would really say like the website, the technical aspects of the website, how it was presented, how the features and functionality were assembled, and then how the sales funnel really kind of came together from homepage through product page through cart, absolutely needed to be in place before we launched. And a lot of that, what I would call like website build mentality was stuff that I had been exposed to when I was in prior positions so at the agency and then a bunch of different startups of various sizes.

And so to wrap that up for people, what I would say is that you knew you had to have your brand, which is so, you know, as simple and powerful as possible so people could get it. What is this thing Terry's doing? And so that's your brand and that would stick. And you know, you thought about that and then you thought about how are we going to get sales? You know, from the start through the finish, all behind that was you had, you had a first pretty clear idea of how that sales funnel, those steps of attracting people and continuing to get people interested and checking you out and then turning into clouds. You had a pretty good idea of that in a little bit more detail because you. Or a lot more detail because you had been in that business. But without that, you know, you wouldn't have started. And I can't wait to follow up on this but and see how you got your go to market playbook together and how you launch because it's pretty darn exciting, all the celebrities and all the funding that you got. But we'll save that for next time. Thank you so much, Terry.

Thank you.

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