w/ Erica Rankin (Bro Dough)
Sit down with Erica Rankin, the founder and CEO of Bro Dough, a plant-based, protein-infused, edible cookie dough company based out of Canada. Erica shares her journey from launching Bro Dough in 2019 to growing her following across multiple platforms to over 260K. As a successful ecommerce entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, Erica also offers insights into navigating food manufacturing challenges and the importance of having a good manufacturing partner.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Kurt Elster: Hey. Have you ever eaten raw cookie dough? I mean, I’ve eaten raw cookie dough. I remember I visited a friend in high school in Alabama. It was a hot day, like 90 degrees. We walked to the grocery store. Buy some snacks, and for whatever reason he decided the thing to eat, 90-degree heat, was cookie dough. He then ate the cookie dough with a spoon right out of the thing, just raw cookie dough, and then just threw up violently to the point where I remember it 25 years later. This made an impression on me. And yet, to this day, I will still eat raw cookie dough. I love it.
Today, we’ve got a guest who has made a career out of this, and certainly has done a better job of it. Based out of Canada, we are joined by Erica Rankin, Founder and CEO of Bro Dough. Bro Dough, a plant-based, protein-infused, edible cookie dough, right? Avoid some of those problems my friend experienced. And they have… They’ve got an eCommerce store on Shopify. Started in 2019 and they’ve been able to grow quite the following. Erica has and Bro Dough has 260,000 followers across several platforms. That’s quite the social media success and certainly not easy. I want to hear about it.
I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And this is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: Erica, welcome.
Erica Rankin: Wow. What an intro. Thank you, Kurt. I’m happy to be here.
Kurt Elster: My pleasure. So, Bro Dough, it’s cookie dough but only for bros?
Erica Rankin: I mean, it’s for anyone. Anyone who doesn’t want a tummy ache and wants to have that nostalgic treat, right? We’re normally not supposed to eat it and I can relate to your friend a lot. I have lots of stories like that because I used to eat it all the time.
Kurt Elster: What is the issue there? What has changed between the cookie dough that’s okay to bake but you’re not supposed to eat it in large quantities and what you have created?
Erica Rankin: Yeah, so it’s really interesting. A lot of people think that you can’t eat raw cookie dough because of the eggs. While that is kind of a risk for salmonella and stuff, it’s actually the raw flour that can make you violently ill. It can have E. coli in it. And raw flour can add bacteria that can just make you sick if you don’t bake it, so you have to have a kill step, and so that’s why when you bake cookies the heat kills out all that bacteria and then your cookies are totally fine to eat.
And with Bro Dough, we use a special flour that’s heat treated, it’s plant based so there’s no eggs in there, there’s less sugar, there’s no preservatives, so you don’t get that tummy ache and you can feel fuller too when you’re eating it because there’s actually some protein in there.
Kurt Elster: I had no idea it was the flour. And I do a lot of baking. I also was like, “Well, obviously it’s the eggs. The eggs give you salmonella. Everybody knows that.” Even though I don’t know anyone who’s gotten salmonella. For all I know, salmonella might be a myth. It’s not. But the flour, for sure I know the FDA says I’m going to eat an acceptable amount of weevils in my flour every year, but there’s E. coli in it potentially?
Erica Rankin: Potentially. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Actually, you know, the name Bro Dough stuck out to me. I like it. It’s got a rhyme to it. It’s got a nice sound to it. Is bro a gendered word? This is really… We’re going hard.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. You’ve gotta lean into… Yeah, it’s really interesting, so I used to compete in bodybuilding in 2018, and I was heavily immersed in the fitness industry, and bro is just like a term that… It was like gender neutral. Everyone would throw it around. Do you even lift, bro? Or like gains, bro. When I made the product initially, I used to make it for myself when I was competing. That’s kind of where the product inspiration came from. I ate it. My friends at it. It was like us bodybuilders and people who worked out because of that added protein and then that’s why I came up with the name Bro Dough, because it basically described what the product was, and as the company evolved over the past two years, I found that so many different types of people eat it.
Moms buy it for their kids, you know? There’s elementary school kids and high school kids that go grab it on their lunch break who maybe don’t exercise but just love the brand, and love the product, and want a healthier alternative. And I haven’t really had that much backlash for the name because I think it’s memorable, and fun, and it describes what it is. But yeah, I have had that question asked before.
Kurt Elster: You know, and I think on your site it leads with a photo of you, right?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. That’s right.
Kurt Elster: And I think that probably makes a difference in that. That presentation is so important there. So, five years ago you’re a bodybuilder?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. I dabbled. I dabbled.
Kurt Elster: And is part of that nutrition requirements? I’m guessing you need a lot of caloric intake? Some specialized needs here in terms of nutrients? I don’t know. I’m definitely not a bodybuilder. No one ever looked at me and went like, “That dude’s a bodybuilder.” And so, what was that process there, that you’re like, “You know what? I’m gonna make my own non…” What happens if you bake your cookie dough?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. They bake. They are crunchier. There’s no egg or binding agent so they’re not chewy cookies, but I tell people to microwave it for like 15 or 20 seconds if they want to heat it up, because it gets gooey, almost if you pulled regular cookies from the oven too soon.
Kurt Elster: All right, so I totally… I derailed myself there.
Erica Rankin: You did.
Kurt Elster: I did. I was like, “Wait a second. What happens if you cook it?” My previous question. Okay, so five years ago you’re dabbling in bodybuilding. How do you end up creating Bro Dough?
Erica Rankin: So, I was dieting for like a year and a half, which is crazy. I think I started in like 2017, even maybe 2016, actually. I decided to go all in and prep for a show, which you have to… I think at one point I was eating like 3,500 calories a day, which is a lot of food for someone who normally doesn’t eat that much food, but I guess on that journey I had to break up with a lot of my favorite sweets, like I have the biggest sweet tooth. I had to cut out donuts, and regular sugar, and cookie dough, and cake, and all the things that I really loved to indulge in every now and again I couldn’t eat, so I just put my apron on, and went in my kitchen, and tried a bunch of different things, and I started posting on Instagram and sharing my recipes, and one of the recipes that people seemed to love was these protein cookie dough bites.
And I would get messages of people asking if I would ever sell them, and that… I guess that was just like in my subconscious for a while, and I thought, “No, I’m not gonna do that.” And then a year later I decided to package it and sell it as Bro Dough, and here we are today.
Kurt Elster: It’s such a… You can’t gloss over that, like, “All right, I had the idea. I made it.” People start reaching out to you, and so obviously you’re eating it, you know you like it. It’s good. But you may not necessarily be the best customer avatar. But you have people reaching out asking for it, requesting it, and by being in this fitness community you did have access to a group of people where you were sharing it. Okay, so you’re getting that feedback. You’re making this stuff in your kitchen. But going to, “I should sell this. This should be a business. I should manufacture this,” that’s a huge leap. Did you have any background, any experience in this? What was the thing? What was the moment where you’re like I’m doing this?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. Do you want the full story? It’s a very interesting one. So, I guess long story short I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I started working in my field for about a year and was absolutely miserable. I was making less money than my sister was who worked at a grocery store, and she had prior just dropped out of college, so I looked at that and was… I felt tricked by the system.
Kurt Elster: It’s demoralizing.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. And I was like going in and scanning documents, and photocopying stuff, and answering phones, and I’m like, “Why did I need a piece of paper and four years of experience to do this? I could have done this before.” So, I started listening to podcasts at my desk and every day I would just go in, listen to these entrepreneurial podcasts. MFCEO Project by Andy Frisella. And he would just talk about sleeping on a piss-stained mattress in the back of his supplement store, and now he has a billion-plus dollar company that has just grown, and he has hundreds of employees, and I just listened to that, and listened to the stories that he told, and he had other people come on and share their stories, and then I kind of realized, “Oh, wait. I don’t need a business degree to start a business. I don’t need any of that stuff. I don’t need to have parents who… I didn’t need to be brought up in a family of entrepreneurs. If I want something bad enough I can go out and get it, right?”
So, I hit a wall. I quit my job. I had two other part-time jobs. I booked a one-way trip to Southeast Asia, which was very impulsive, and on that trip-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You really went all-in. Once that… The first part is you have to ask yourself. At some point, you have a moment where you go, “Why not me?” And it’s where you realize like, “Wait a second. I can just give myself the permission.” And it’s interesting you said like, “I don’t need a piece of paper to authorize myself to do this. I don’t need a degree.” I stupidly went and got a business degree and then an MBA because I thought that was like that was how you got authorized to engage in business. And of course, after the fact, it’s like, “Oh, man.” Whoops.
I don’t regret it but I also… My reasoning did not make sense. And so, you said like, “Man, I heard a podcast. I should sell some dough.” And then you went one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. All right, this is intense.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. My parents were not super over the moon about that, and I was gone for Christmas too, and then I decided to stay for over three months, and I went to Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and I met entrepreneurs on that trip, which was really cool. And the one thing that I saw that they all had in common was when they spoke and talked about what they do for a living, their faces lit up. You could feel the energy in the way they spoke and carried themselves. And I thought like, “Wow,” I was so immersed in this office environment, where everyone was so miserable, and I was miserable, and you know, I just dread going into, and then I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum. You see these people that are just… Yeah, it’s hard, and they’re building a thing, but it was really cool to hear their stories and realize that, “Okay, this guy who dropped out of high school has built this successful moving company.”
There was a former lawyer, so he actually studied in Toronto, was practicing law, decided he hated it, moved to Thailand, and was building these huge properties and selling them. And he had no experience in it, didn’t know what he was doing, but got into it and loves it, and that just opened my eyes to all the possibilities that are out there, and I got home and was like, “Okay, cool. What can I do? What can I monetize? What am I passionate about? What do people want?” And then everything kind of clicked.
And then I googled “business workshop near me,” drove 45 minutes, figured out how to write a business plan, and then I guess… Yeah, launched it later that year, so that’s how it all started.
Kurt Elster: So, the manufacturing kind of scares me. Mass producing food, that… I wouldn’t even… I wouldn’t even bother. I’d be like, “Look, I’d rather go figure out how to manufacture something in China than deal with this.” It seems difficult. It seems high stakes. I don’t want to poison someone accidentally, right? You’re making a thing that they’re gonna ingest. Am I wrong to be freaked out by this? Now that you know after the fact what goes into it, what do you think?
Erica Rankin: It is a little scary. Again, I think the naiveness is you need to have… You need to be so naïve when you get into anything, right? And I had no idea. And I have a very dangerous product, you know? It’s like edible cookie dough and even when I started making it myself in a kitchen, and I had to take my food handler’s course, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I was throwing random things in a bowl and there was no specific order, and then I realized, “Oh, now shelf life is a thing.” So, I have to get shelf life testing done, and I have to get the microbiology assessed, or analyzed, or whatever, and it’s just an endless learning curve.
And food is scary, but it’s really cool to see people enjoy something that you created, and I think that outweighs the fear that kind of falls into that. And having a very good partner as a manufacturer is a key and kind of makes you feel safe, right?
Kurt Elster: I love that you brought up the advantage of being naïve. I think about that a lot, where it’s like if I knew what I knew now, would I do the thing? Would I still be able to do the things that made me successful, right? Oftentimes it was just bumbling into it just with inexperienced enthusiasm, failing, figuring out what didn’t work, and then… Okay, now I know what I’m doing, and we figured this out. I don’t know that I could repeat my own success. I think I’d get in my own way if I wasn’t naïve. And it’s a lot of work. Oh my gosh.
Grass is always greener, right? People are like, “Oh, I’d trade places with you.” It’s like, “Well, there’s still…” You know, still gotta do the work. I want to ask you a question I posed to my 11-year-old recently, and you were talking about having that 9:00-to-5:00 job and hating it so much you went on a three-month trip to a different continent. An unusual thing to do. Did you ever experience the Sunday Scaries? When you still had your 9:00-to-5:00 job, did you experience a thing-
Erica Rankin: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I dreaded it. I lived for the weekend. Actually, that’s a lie. You know, I was working like 60 hours a week sometimes because I was working, funnily enough, at the bakery that my sister was working at. We worked together at this grocery store and sometimes I would work on weekends there, and then I did personal training, so I liked those jobs more than my 9:00 to 5:00, so I did look forward to working those jobs over my 9:00 to 5:00, which is so sad because I thought it was my dream job, and I felt misled.
But Sunday Scaries, absolutely.
Kurt Elster: I love that phrase. Sunday Scaries. Where you’re like if you’re experiencing that, you should try to use that stress as a positive motivator for trying other things that you’re naïve about just so you can go fail at them. Just set that bar low but try it and see what happens. Because sometimes a few years later you have a quarter million followers and you’re selling cookie dough online.
You mentioned it’s so important to have a good manufacturing partner. How do you find this manufacturer?
Erica Rankin: Oh gosh. I got so many noes. When you’re a small business and you’re approaching these big manufacturers that produce mass volumes of product, you’re like a drop in the bucket and they’re investing in you, so I remember going to them. I had hired a company to do a co-man search and they basically send you a list of contract manufacturers. You call all of them and then they all hang up on you, or they say no, and funnily enough, the one that I found I actually was racking my brain late at night and was thinking about all the products that I eat, and I thought, “Oh, this company makes cookie dough. I should reach out to them and see if they could make mine.”
And they can, and they do, so that was really cool. And it was like selling the dream, you know? They’re investing in you, and they want to grow with you, and I think having a great… Every person that you do business with, they should be growing with you. They should communicate with you regularly. They should believe in what you’re doing. It should be more of a personable relationship than just a transactional one and that’s what I really love about the people that I work with, is that they’re very personable and they care.
Kurt Elster: So, it really… It was through cold calling. You just went through endless manufacturers until you’re like, “This is the right one.” I mean, this is like dating.
Erica Rankin: Basically. Yeah. And the funny thing is they’re like little hidden gems. They don’t advertise what they do, right? And everyone’s very secretive about who their manufacturer is, so you can’t just DM someone and be like, “Hey, who makes your product?” They’ll be like, “I’m offended. I’m gonna block you.” Some people are more receptive and they’re willing to share, but a lot of people hold their cards very close to their chest, right? So, it is tricky.
Kurt Elster: In this initial process of getting it up to speed, were there other challenges you faced? Maybe it’s like financing, branding, regulation?
Erica Rankin: Oh, yeah. Gosh, I kept running into walls. I’m still running into walls. I’m building ladders right now, but I guess it was just shelf life was an issue, and when you’re working with protein it dries out the product, and we would do like… We would figure out a really great formula and then a month later it would be crumbly in the fridge, and not edible at all, and so that was tough. And then yeah, the funding piece, I had to take out some loans because I bootstrapped the company for so long, and now I have investors who have actually invested in the company, which is really awesome to help me scale it.
But I think I was not prepared with the costs associated with growing a food company. It’s a lot.
Kurt Elster: Well, you know, manufacturing in general is expensive. If you had to do it over again and you have an angel investor… I don’t know, Jeff Bezos is like, “Look, I’m just writing checks,” and he’s gonna write you a blank check. How much would you ask for to get to where you are?
Erica Rankin: Ooh, that’s a really… No one’s ever asked me that. I would say not like a crazy amount, like maybe $400,000 or $500,000. I’ve taken out quite a bit of loans. I have some investors coming on board. I could have grown the company a lot quicker if I had money from the beginning, but I think I also would have robbed myself of a lot of the bootstrap experiences that have kind of built the skills that I’ll really be able to finally use now that I have some money. And hopefully save some money too, and not make mistakes because I have those skills, you know?
Kurt Elster: What’s the one skill that’s top of mind when you say, “I’ve got these skills?” What are those soft skills?
Erica Rankin: I guess just fully knowing all aspects of your company because I was forced to wear all the hats. As a solopreneur, you have no choice. You have to be the manufacturer. You have to do the marketing. You have to manage operations. You have to do customer service. So, I have one full-time team member now and I know how long it takes to do things, I know the things that he needs to do, so it’s very clear what the job description is, whereas if I just hired someone from the beginning, I don’t really know what their role is or what they’re doing, right? I didn’t even really know what I was doing when I first started the business. I just kind of went with it.
And I’m like, “Oh, crap,” I need to manage inventory, and have spreadsheets, and understand numbers, and I think it’s… Yeah, just fully understanding all aspects and being able to hand that off when you’re ready to and understand how to.
Kurt Elster: So, for an item like edible cookie dough, you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. There are other edible cookie dough options out there and the advantage to entering a space where there are other players is A, that it validates it, like, “Okay, other people are doing this and appear to be succeeding from the outside looking in.” And you also… You’re not inventing a new category so you don’t have to explain it to people. There’s a big advantage there, like if I say Bro Dough edible cookie dough, I already… Even if I’ve never seen it or heard of it before, I fundamentally understand what it is.
The downside to that is now I have to differentiate myself. I got people I’m competing against. How do you differentiate Bro Dough from other eCom businesses who may be selling similar things or the same thing?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. I guess it comes down to marketing strategy, right? That’s kind of what I lean into. And instead of building a following, I like to build fans and friends is kind of what I call them, and I think I’ve been so successful with my marketing, and not so much with my operations, that’s still a work in progress, but the marketing piece I’ve just been very open, and honest, and communicative with my customers. And I know a lot of brands struggle with this as to have that personable touch, like I’ve sent videos to my customers, I’ve sent voice notes to them, and again, this does take time, but I think people underestimate the power of word of mouth. And even with every order that went out, they got a handwritten note with their name, and it was very specific to their order and what they purchased. Or if they’re repeat customers, I send Christmas cards to my top customers too.
I think it’s just going above and beyond, and the little touches, and paying attention to detail. That’s what sets you apart from your competitors, whether it be in retail or D2C.
Kurt Elster: So, it sounds like you’ve got a high touch approach to customer acquisition and retention. At least through customer experience. You really want to give them this high touch approach. You mentioned you’re active on social media, you’re responding to people. Tell me about that.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. I guess my team member, so he’s been really great, and we’re trying to get more active on Instagram and stuff, and what we started doing, for example, is we get new followers, we engage with their content, comment on one of their photos. I like to get feedback from customers, as well, so I send them a video and I’m like, “Hey, really appreciate you following along and purchasing. What do you think about us making a change to this product? If you have any feedback or anything, I’d love to hear it.” I think it’s making them feel like they’re a part of something, right? Rather than them just being a number and them giving you money, and you know, I hate transactions. They’re great. It’s great having money and customers, and that’s awesome, but I really want to… It’s cheaper to keep a customer than acquire a new one, right? I think people overlook that and they don’t put in the effort to keep their current customers coming back.
And that’s one thing that I really put a lot of energy and effort into, is just continuing to build out relationships with them, and then, you know, they post on their social media like, “Hey, the founder messaged me or sent me a handwritten note.” And then all of their followers see it, or they tell their friend, and I think that goes so, so far. And we kind of forget that, right?
Kurt Elster: You’re communicating with customers. And you said, “All right, they’re getting handwritten notes from you.” And then they share that on social media, or you’ll DM them. Is this customer support, acquisition, retention strategy… What channels is this happening on?
Erica Rankin: Oh, yeah. So, Instagram and TikTok are really big channels for us. And then specifically, strangely enough, LinkedIn has been a really great platform too. I’ve noticed that a lot of people come from LinkedIn to my website and purchase from there, so…
Kurt Elster: What’s the content that’s on LinkedIn? Because I think of it as like business content, right?
Erica Rankin: Yeah. LinkedIn has been my main channel, surprisingly. It’s been really-
Kurt Elster: What?!
Erica Rankin: Yeah. I love LinkedIn. I post every day.
Kurt Elster: What about?
Erica Rankin: So, everything. I guess long story short, in 2020 I didn’t know how to grow my business. I hit a wall. I literally… I had no friends, or family, or anyone who could help me, or give me guidance, so I went to my pantry, I found all my favorite snacks, I figured out who the founders and CEOs were, I connected with them. I asked them for mentorship. They mentored me and some of them still mentor me to this day, which is really awesome, but at the same time when I went on LinkedIn, a lot of people posted about all the shiny stuff, like the fundraising, and the hiring team members, and growing, and millions in revenue, and you know, I felt like I was doing everything wrong, so I decided, “Hey, why don’t I post with actually being an entrepreneur and how shitty it is?”
I mean, it’s great, but at the same time you have a lot of hardships, and a lot of people don’t talk about them, so I started posting every day about my journey, and picking and packing orders in my driver’s seat, and then in my living room, storing inventory on my balcony, doing in-person deliveries every Friday, and kind of documented my journey. And then in doing so I built this following, which was never really my intention, and I’ve gotten on retailers’ radars, I’ve basically found investors through the platform, customers, future investors, friends, mentors, even advisors who are coming on my board now for my company I met through LinkedIn, so it’s just added value in so many ways just because I constantly posted on there and shared my journey.
And it was like compounding interest, right?
Kurt Elster: That’s quite incredible. So, the traditional advice is work in public or share your journey, and then the buzzword we hear a lot in the last 2 years is authenticity. Be authentic.
Erica Rankin: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, you had that reaction too, where you went like, “Man, I’m looking at everybody else’s highlight reel and no one is sharing the stuff that sucks.” No one is sharing what is difficult or the things that just aren’t sexy, like having a whole bunch of inventory stacked up in your garage kind of thing. And so, you started sharing the reality of it and of those early days, and it sounds like people like to follow along, and empathized with you, and you built relationships that are beneficial out of this.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. I think so. And I was doing… I felt like I was doing everything wrong, you know? I started the company with $10,000 and I would literally go into the kitchen during off peak hours to save 30%, so I’d go in at like midnight till like 3:00 or 4:00 AM making dough, and then I’d put it in my jeep, drive home, put it in my wagon, bring it up to my condo unit, and put it in the fridge, or store it in my car, which I did for the first three months, and I drove around with the heat off. And I posted about this on social media and people were like, “Whoa, this is crazy.”
And then I didn’t really feel like it was crazy at the time, but then I started seeing a lot of other founders talk about the same things that they were doing, like the crazy founder startup stories that we don’t really hear about, right? You just kind of see again the highlight reels, but I want to see the scrappy stuff, and the adversity, and what it took to get there.
Kurt Elster: I like the weird stuff. Show me something weird.
Erica Rankin: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: All right, so you said you would work in your kitchen in off peak hours, so I assume you’re referring to your electricity bill. You’re using hourly billing.
Erica Rankin: I actually, and again, you’re gonna think this is kind of crazy, so I grew up in a very small town about an hour-ish outside of Toronto, and I wanted a fresh start when I started this business after going to those business workshops in 2019. I was like, “Okay, I want to find somewhere new to move.” So, I packed everything up in my jeep and drove six hours to a new city where I found a commercial kitchen and the rent was pretty cheap. I found a roommate online and we lived together. And we got along very well, and I stored a lot of inventory in our living room, and she’d always be like, “Oh, when are you gonna be moving these boxes out?” Or she’d be like, “This is really weird.”
And I was working in a commercial kitchen, so I had to get my food handler certification and get insurance, and then go into this kitchen, and I stored all my ingredients there. I would go and just pay by the hour. And then at night, when it was dead and no one would go in there and work, they had discounted rates for the kitchen, so that’s when I would go in and make a big mess, get flour and sugar everywhere, and then clean up, and then bring it all back home.
Kurt Elster: In your jeep with the heat off.
Erica Rankin: That’s right. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: What happens if summer hit?
Erica Rankin: So, it’s very interesting, so it started to get a little warmer, and I was in Ottawa, and it gets really cold, like negative… I know y’all do Fahrenheit, but negative 35.
Kurt Elster: I can do the conversion here.
Erica Rankin: Okay. It was like… It would get so cold with the wind chill. It would be like negative 35 degrees Celsius, right? It would be so cold.
Kurt Elster: Oh, so that’s negative 31 Fahrenheit, so pretty close.
Erica Rankin: Yeah, so it was just really cold.
Kurt Elster: And also, yeah, outrageously cold. Dangerously cold.
Erica Rankin: Yeah. It was. It was really cold. But it started to become warner, and I panicked, and whenever I would go out driving places, I would always try to drive around and find a space in the shade, which is so horrible, so I’d be like, “I need to avoid the sun hitting my car,” so I would go in the shade, and park my car in the shade, and hide it, and then I saved up enough money and I bought a big freezer, and then I moved all my stuff into the freezer, which was in my living room. So, I graduated from that when the warmer months came, but before I was like, “I don’t have anywhere to put this. I’m sharing a fridge with a roommate. I can’t have all my dough in there. She’s just gonna think where is my food gonna go, you know?”
So, I kind of made it work for the duration and I’m very lucky that I started my business in December, so yeah.
Kurt Elster: Is this a Jeep Wrangler by chance?
Erica Rankin: No. It’s not. I’m not that cool. I have a Jeep Cherokee. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: You know, Jeep Cherokee, super cool as well, but in a different way. The Wrangler was funnier just because it’s like the idea of climate control in a Wrangler is kind of an afterthought.
Well, all right, looking backwards, are there any major pivots, changes in strategy that you had to go through with Bro Dough since you started?
Erica Rankin: Right now I’m going through a huge pivot. I’ve pivoted so much lately. So, basically the issue that I ran into, I built a business selling D2C, right? Selling online a perishable product, like cookie dough, like it’s not shelf stable. It has to stay cold. So, that’s okay in Canada. Seven out of the 12 months it’s cold, you know? It’s fine if it’s outside in transit and whatever. But then to scale that into the U.S. you get places like Texas, and California, and it’s never really cold there. Maybe like once or twice a year.
So, I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how can I launch into the U.S., and just make it easier, and more scalable, so we’re completely eliminating the cookie dough online and we’re not selling it online anymore come probably the end of March, early April, and we’re gonna be launching cookies. So, shelf stable cookies. They’re gonna be very similar to the current product, like similar ingredients, better for you, still Bro Dough, new website, and it’s gonna be made in the U.S. and available to U.S. customers, and the interesting thing is out of 200,000 followers on TikTok, like 57% of them are American and they can’t buy the product, so I’ve had this issue where I’m really good at marketing and I have all the marketing in place, but then the operations just hasn’t been able to support it until now where we’re launching these new products very soon.
So, I’m trying to scramble and get that happening as soon as possible.
Kurt Elster: And so, the current website, it’s BroDough.ca. Canada.
Erica Rankin: That’s right.
Kurt Elster: And so, will you set up a separate site? BroDough.com will be the American version?
Erica Rankin: So, it won’t be BroDough.com, because we have a cybersquatting situation happening with that.
Kurt Elster: Oh, those people are the worst.
Sound Board: Eww!
Erica Rankin: Ew, David. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: I’m glad you recognized Alexis there.
Erica Rankin: Of course. Yeah. We stan Alexis. Yeah, this guy, he’s cybersquatting on it, and I think he tried to sell it to me, and when I went to go look at how much it would cost before when there was a broker selling it, it was like $10,000 or something, so we’re gonna be using eBroDough.com for now. That’ll kind of be the domain that we’re gonna be using. It’s good, though. We have a dot com and .CA will not be a thing anymore. It will just redirect to the dot com.
Kurt Elster: Oh. New domain. Put everything on one website. And then if I’m in the U.S. I can get Bro Dough cookies. In Canada, can I still get the original product? Or is that gone?
Erica Rankin: Yeah, so we’re pivoting with that too, so basically retail is a lot different than online, and we found that the price point of the product in the tub, so right now our cookie dough comes in a little tub, there’s six servings in there, sells for 10 bucks on shelf, and we found that the price point was too high. The packaging was just plastic, and it’s heavy, and expensive, and not really scalable, so we’re switching to single serve, like almost kind of bars of cookie dough. That’s gonna be cheaper, the packaging is gonna be more sustainable, ecofriendly, and people can buy different flavors and mix and match instead of just buying one big tub of one flavor. And that’s gonna be available in retail stores exclusively in Canada.
And then eventually, craw-walk-run, we’re gonna hop across the border and then launch that into retail stores in the U.S.
Kurt Elster: You had mentioned, you said, “Hey, we got 57% of our TikTok followers are in the U.S. and they can’t buy the product.” I want to hear… And so, our business is pivoting around a TikTok audience. Tell me about TikTok as an acquisition channel for this business.
Erica Rankin: TikTok, I got on there in 2021, I believe, because my best friend started posting, and her company blew up overnight, and I saw that happening, and swallowed my pride, put my ego… checked my ego at the door, and just went on it and started posting. And yeah, I had a few videos go viral. I had I think 150 orders within 48 hours or something, which I thought was crazy, and that was only from Canadians, right? I couldn’t even sell in the U.S., which is really mind blowing. And from there, I realized, “Okay, this is a really great, scrappy, organic channel to grow on, and I don’t really need a lot of money invested into it.”
And I think for the first two years I spent less than $1,500 on marketing. I was just doing… And that was through affiliate marketing, I was paying influencers. I did a little bit of paid ads. Not really a whole lot compared to what traditionally you spend on paid ads. So, I built everything pretty much organically, and most of my traffic came from TikTok, and yeah, that’s just been my main channel, and then in doing so I realized, “Okay, I’m really good at TikTok, and all of these other brands…” Through LinkedIn I was getting all these messages every day, like, “Help me. I don’t understand TikTok. I want to get on TikTok. It’s a growing platform and our social media team is so new to it. We don’t get it. We get Instagram. We don’t get TikTok.”
So, because I got all these messages, I launched a course that basically just helps everyone figure out TikTok, and you just go in, you log in, and then they can go at their own pace and figure out how to use the platform. But it’s just such an underutilized platform for a lot of brands. I think everyone should take advantage of it.
Kurt Elster: What do you think the resistance is to TikTok? If I’m not on TikTok, maybe I should be. Why?
Erica Rankin: Oh, gosh. Because everyone’s on there and it’s the only platform that basically the algorithm can calculate what you like specifically, so if you go on and there’s, I don’t know, 10 videos, eight of them are dog videos, and you engage with the dog videos, and you like them, and you comment on them, the algorithm is gonna be like, “Okay, they really like dog videos, so let’s just keep giving them dog videos.” And then that’s why people get sucked into TikTok for hours because they’re in this own little bubble of the content that they like specifically. That’s what the algorithm delivers for them.
So, it’s very interesting too because my manufacturer, he’s a dad, he’s older, right? He’s not a teenager that’s dancing on TikTok. He was on there scrolling and one of my product videos came up on his page and he messaged me and was like, “Oh, you were on my TikTok.” And I was like, “You’re on TikTok?” And I think that’s very interesting because same with the algorithm for say there’s a dad who really likes landscaping. If you were to go on his TikTok page, it’d probably be all landscaping videos, right? It delivers what you like. So, I think everyone should get on there because it’s gonna reach their audience, whatever content they’re putting out.
Kurt Elster: And it’s so automatic. I think that’s really the magic of it. When you think about it, it’s like it really… It’s similarly successful to Reddit in that it’s like near infinite interests, hobbies, and represented as niches. But with Reddit I have to curate it myself. With Facebook groups, I have to curate it myself. Same with who I follow on Instagram. TikTok changes that where we’re just gonna show you what you like and the magic of that algorithm… Well, we’ve seen the success. It’s been quite incredible.
And so, all right, if I wanted to get this course, because you have been there, you’ve done it, you have succeeded, I want you to teach me. Where do I go? What do I do?
Erica Rankin: Yeah, so my website’s GrowWithErica dot com. It’s Erica with a C. And then I have it on there. And then, yeah, I also help people leverage LinkedIn if they are curious about that platform, because I tell everyone. I’m like, “Get on LinkedIn. Post on LinkedIn.” It is such a good platform and so many people just don’t take that opportunity, so that’s what else I do.
Kurt Elster: Does that have its own course?
Erica Rankin: Yeah, so actually I’m kind of like an a la carte. If you come to me and you’re like, “Hey, I really need help with Instagram, or I need help with TikTok, or I need help with content creation and I need ideas and strategy,” or, “How do I story tell on LinkedIn and create engaging content,” or, “How do I set up my profile to get the best engagement,” or for optimal views, so I basically can help you figure out all of those things. You just come to me, and we work one-on-one, and I craft a strategy for you.
Kurt Elster: Is that a distraction from Bro Dough? We got three things going here. We have an info product, we have social media consulting one-on-one, and we have this eCommerce brand, Bro Dough. Which is the priority?
Erica Rankin: Bro Dough is. So, the TikTok course is just passive income. That just is its own thing on the side. They’re all pre-recorded videos, and there’s PowerPoints in there, and I put that together last year, actually, and have just been promoting that. I don’t really do… I would say Bro Dough is like 90% of my time and the marketing stuff is just kind of some extra stuff that I do to help pay the bills because CPG food and beverage is not a very profitable industry to be in in the early days. So, I gotta do other things on the side to help feed me and keep the roof over my head.
Kurt Elster: Well, I can certainly appreciate that bootstrapping and loving passive income. Oh my gosh. The best. Erica Rankin, this has been fantastic and inspiring. Thank you so much for being here. Bro Dough. Check out Bro Dough. BroDough.ca, though that’s changing. I’ll put that in the show notes. GrowWithErica.com, and then it sounds like you’re very busy on social media. I’ll include those links, as well. Tap or swipe up on the show art to get to those.
Erica, thank you so much.
Erica Rankin: Thank you, Kurt.
Kurt Elster: And do you want to go out on… Well, do you want to do an ew? Here we go.
Sound Board: Ew!
Erica Rankin: Ew!