Andy
Yo, yo, yo, guys what is up? Welcome back to another episode and today we are just talking to you about us and what we do in the day and where we at. And yeah, just kind of just give you guys a bit of a reminder and an introduction that we not only just podcast, but we run a fully fledged online grocery store. Hey, Dean. Yeah, so

Dean
the podcast is actually like a small portion, probably one of the smaller portions of what we actually do. So the podcast happens. Once a week, we obviously put out YouTube videos, but a lot of a lot of our efforts go into running and passions going into running online grocery shop, which is relatively well known, I think well known, but we thought maybe some of you thought we would just be on on YouTube. A little bit of education related about related to the day job.

Andy
Yeah, so it’s a bit of a, I suppose because like you kind of a lot of people just come in for like the specific answers to questions and and I mean, that’s, that’s what, that’s what we’ve done since the get go is just put out the put out as much grow information and knowledge as we can. And cannabis, we used to do quite a lot of cannabis related like activism. Related Videos, we have narrowed it down a bit. But it’s hard to, you know, you’re on you’re on YouTube, you don’t really see the shop, and we can’t link to it. And that’s probably why most

Dean
stories linked to it. And then we like had a whole bunch of us. So we removed that, as well. So for people who know anything about SEO, we’ve had to remove all of our backlinks from the YouTube onto our site, I think we lost like 180 links. So that was where the grocery store we kind of separated the two but they are they actually are one thing you know, because what we do on YouTube with putting out knowledge and sharing information and answering questions, a lot of that inspiration actually comes from the frequently asked questions we receiving from clients at the shop, you know, like guys will be asking us how to wire a hide or fan for example. And if you ask us four times, eventually we’ll probably just make a video. And that’s also where originally the YouTube channel came from. There wasn’t a YouTube channel first, there was a chrome shop first. And then after the and then with the growth shop came the channel. And then with the channel came the podcast. So it’s been an evolutionary journey of the two together, kind of working alongside alongside each other to do as a tool to answer questions.

Andy
Yeah, and I mean, we can’t lie to you guys. It is it is good advertising for us. You know, we extremely restricted in in mediums that we can advertise on. I mean, we can’t advertise on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, it’s pretty much like a flat out ban. And, you know, because of some of the Yeah, like the name of the shop and certain other factors. So it’s, it becomes hard to advertise in traditional ways. And I mean, these days, if you’re running a online store, and you’re not advertising online means it’s incredibly difficult. Like we Yeah,

Dean
like if you look at the algorithms on a lot of the platform’s like a lot of pages are only getting traction if they’re doing paid for advertising. So without paid for advertising, you’re immediately at a disadvantage in the, in the space compared to someone who potentially has maybe a more or less direct way of marketing, maybe their name and offering isn’t so blatantly direct towards towards the industry. And you know, so it’s a very tricky space to operate in. And what I also do like about it is it makes you think outside of the box, but it is, it is difficult, you know, it’s not easy to advertise in on this in these mediums. And that’s why it’s you know, maybe a sneaky episode like today is just a nice reminder as to what actually pays the boat.

Andy
These cameras on and the kit, you know, all of all of these podcasts episodes and time has to go into it. But do you what’s your favourite sort of part about running a grocery shop or? Yes, yeah, my favourite part.

Dean
My favourite part of running a grow shop is procurement of new products. I love using I love as everyone knows, I also love growing so to be able to have access to a broad range of products and to look at new products what’s trending and to identify products to bring them in to access them into the machine, you know, to get them onto the website to get them on to take a lot to get pictures done to start advertising it all kind of ties into this first step which is like product selection. And then finally to actually see that product sell and to be enjoyed by people is definitely the highlight for me. You know you select something you think it’s great you do your research on it, you test Since you’ve put it out, and then all of a sudden you’ve got loads of people testing it and giving you feedback. It’s an A very interesting position to, to be in. And also, yeah, I mean, just the the sheer amount of product, we’ve been able to products we’ve been able to look at and test and try and hold. You guys, I underestimated how cool it is just to like, hold a new product and look at it like, wow, that’s cool. So that for me, it’s probably the product, the the main sort of product selection, and then also feedback received from from the broad range of consumers that we that we do have. For you, Andy, what do you think that highlight of running a crow shop?

Andy
And I kind of I asked, I didn’t actually have like, as specific as I didn’t really think about an answer. But probably like, it’s like, because of the sort of offerings that we’ve curated. Okay, firstly, it’s not easy to find everything in one place. And I do feel that we try to get everything in one place for the customer. And, you know, being able to provide that service for the customers sort of, you know, what, what brings you pleasure at the moment, because, I mean, the grocery store essentially started from, like, a lack of, of knowledge and availability and products out there. And like, even though like, geez, we weren’t that educated when, when the grocery grocery store started, you know, it, we’ve learned so much. But there wasn’t like, there wasn’t much info on autoflowers versus PHOTOPERIODIC, there wasn’t much info on what grow lights to use on what pesticides to use, what sort of nutrients to us, like that was all developing in the market. And like, because South Africa so far behind was all either Americanized, it was all imported products, and there wasn’t much of a local scene. So all of that basically culminated into being able to give other people the sense and like, early on, when the grocery store was a store, it was online, but it was still like a very face to face thing, like people would like come to my house pick up stuff. And it was like, very satisfying, to be able to offer, you know, provide those guys with some stuff that they couldn’t get anywhere, anywhere else in the country. I mean, I still think we were doing a pretty good job at that like to think so. So that’s, that’s a highlight, I know, it’s difficult

Dean
as you get more products to, to continue to like curate, you know, we started out with minimal, and now that I think we have 400, or something like that. So it’s, it’s a really complicated task. But I also think we constantly the range does constantly evolve. And as tech changes, you know, I think it will continue to navigate through the space, which is really, really exciting to be able to work on a product and to see it launch successfully into into the market. And then also to support on that. And I think that’s a big thing that we that we like to pride ourselves in, which is the support that we try to give out, you know, we have a, we have our support lines on email, phone and on WhatsApp, and telegram. And, you know, we’re getting, we’re getting hundreds, sometimes a day of correspondence from across the different media. And you know, no question is we no question goes unanswered, we put as much effort as possible into making sure that if you’re not sure what to take that we make sure we help you get the correct products for your needs. Because if you’re going in with the wrong information, you can easily make expensive mistakes. And if you’re expensive mistakes, then all of a sudden, you know, you fall out of the hobby quite quickly. So I rarely, rarely think that the Grow support aspect that we try to do and have done successfully for a lot of clients is a big driving factor for what keeps, you know, for what keeps us unique, and also the ability to do knowledge share, you know, we’re getting a lot of knowledge we’re getting with hundreds of pieces of correspondence a day, all of us usually getting so much more data, you know, you’re not just doing your own growth, but 50 clients also growing or asking you questions every day, and sometimes, you know, they they’re so nervous to make a mistake, they’re not going to go and do something without the okay first, you know, so we’re getting all of that not that diet and then we sort of sharing it back across the whole network of people for free. I mean, even on this platform, that’s sort of where like I said we we get a lot of our ideas, but also through the support, the support platforms that we offer on on the grow shop as well. And I think that’s really a big thing and a big you know, something that people should make use of if they are interested in endgame Getting the tailored products. I mean, obviously we want to sell products and grow the business but at the same time, we want to make sure that once a client has bought a product from us, they utilising it correctly to make sure that they’re maximising maximising yields and minimising

Andy
mistakes. And at the end of the day, it you know, it helps you guys do to grow the best tank that you can. And, you know, as much as we would like to have the channel more related on the end product we do struggle with. I mean, if you guys go back to the early episodes of the cast, it was very much that sitting on the couch, smoking, different strain reviews, things like that. But yeah, we’ve become very afraid of losing our YouTube privileges. Not that we’re even monetized or anything but we Yeah, it’s part of the livelihood and you know, we have a team that helps get these videos out and these podcasts out. So we’ve we’ve had to dial it in and refocus yet we love the growing pot as much as we’d like to but that’s the thing chat to us on the support lines and we can talk about the the end product and the dank and strains and things like that, which is also what we we love to do. And yeah, guys on that note, make sure to like and subscribe we have a new Facebook group in the link below that we’re trying to get a build a bit of community on we have some links to take a lot which is sort of is a sales channel of our main site, our main site, you have to just Google it and yeah as always, till next time. Peace guys. These guys