How Ross McDaniel’s Local Vision Is Revolutionizing the Coffee Scene

[00:00:02] Hector: and welcome to another episode of how to scale a business. My name is Hector Santiago Esteban and I am your host for today.

[00:00:09] Hector: Our special guest is a repeat guest, Mr. Ross McDaniel. And if you haven't heard our first episode, go back and listen to that where we talk about growing marketing and scaling a local service businesses. But today we are going to talk about something a little more fun, a little more near and dear to my heart.

[00:00:23] Hector: And that is trellis coffee bar, his coffee shop, that he started. So Ross, welcome to the show.

[00:00:28] Ross: Thanks Hector. It's a joy to be here for round two. I'm excited to get into, we were talking earlier about nuts and bolts, and how, I don't know, trellis is actually the nuts and bolts, the fruition, the fruit, of what we were talking about in the last episode, which is how to grow a local company. So we're doing it in real life.

[00:00:46] Hector: Yeah, I mean, it's so cool to see people putting their money where their mouth is. Maybe, I know that there's so many people in the internet marketing space and the agency space. Well, they'll, tell you how to do something and they'll give you all the, bullets and they've taken all the courses, but then actually going out and doing it is one thing and doing it for another person is one thing, but then actually doing it for your own business seems to be an entirely different, and I mean, an entirely different, but it seems to be a different battle.

[00:01:14] Hector: So I'm excited to kind of dig into that because I think that you really get to prove your tactics if you will. Yeah, yeah. So you talked a little about in the last episode, but give us for those who haven't listened, give us the quick rundown on how the coffee shop got started.

[00:01:28] Hector: why coffee as the thing that you ended up landing on.

[00:01:31] Ross: yeah. Well, to be clear, I've got three other awesome partners in this. it's a manifestation of a bunch of separate visions of four friends and their families all coming together, united under one, one umbrella. And that one umbrella is really to see like our local community here in Augusta, Georgia flourish, and specifically area that has not seen, the glory days in quite some time, seeing that area come together through new life, in the form of a coffee shop. And, when we're talking, it's called trellis coffee bar, we're talking about a trellis. We're not talking about, something that goes in and creates growth.

[00:02:12] Ross: It takes growth that is already there and it helps support it and see it flourish. And that's really what we hope to do with Trellis. everybody had their own specific angles on things, but ultimately that's what we set out to do.

[00:02:26] Hector: Yeah, it's really interesting that you did this because I got into the Internet's marketing space because it removed the barrier of geography. all of a sudden, we're having this this conversation across the country. my clients are across the country. I know a lot of the clients that you serve are not necessarily local to you, but you took opposite approach.

[00:02:44] Hector: And so I'm curious If doing that, if there was any sort of hesitation or anxieties or fears or, what that process was like, you know, especially with someone who has a lot of experience in the online space, what did that look like going into the, brick and mortar field?

[00:02:59] Ross: Yeah, you drilled it. I mean, I think anybody, regardless of what niche you serve, anybody in the agency space has always felt that lingering fear in the back of your mind of like, okay, I know the nuts and bolts are like the frameworks of how to grow a business effectively, but do I really know? Have I actually done it outside of my agency or the agency I work for?

[00:03:19] Ross: And I think. there's a challenge arise to the occasion aspect of that with, me and my wife with trellis, beyond that, the actual brick and mortar side, the local side, a fence post serves local, our digital agency focuses on serving local home service businesses, so that that's wheelhouse, but.

[00:03:39] Ross: The reason it's in our wheelhouse and the reason Trellis exists today is because I think that there is a desire for the local communities and especially since COVID, There's a desire for community to be had at a more authentic level and COVID did something bizarre and it broke down geographic barriers.

[00:03:57] Ross: But I think. Out of COVID coming out of that, we actually see a desire for what does our local community have to offer and how can we build authentic, meaningful relationships there? And, Fencepost is our digital agency is looking to do that for home service businesses across the country. And we said, Hey, can we actually do this for ourselves via a local coffee shop here in Augusta?

[00:04:17] Hector: Yeah. I'm curious you look up and it's, been a number of years now where, mentioned last time we talked, there's a little community and it's like, you have regulars, I'm sure. And it's, here and it's going and people go, Oh yeah, no brainer. Yeah. You start a coffee shop.

[00:04:30] Hector: Was there ever a moment where like, actually we thought we might've done this or we actually, we were thinking about going this way or like, I'm curious how you landed on, coffee. And if there were any other, like almost we did this or almost, we went that way. , that, ended up, not being the decision that you went with.

[00:04:46] Ross: man, I think that the entire journey was rife with the, Oh, not quite what we expected, or we're going to take this left at this fork in the road instead of the right that we planned in our performer or whatever. And, you know, back up a little bit. This. Vision started at the end of 2021 into 2022. And we thought I looked at our, our performer in our business plan yesterday actually, and we had our grand opening, our, big shebang scheduled for October, 2023, October, 2023 was when we had our soft launch.

[00:05:17] Ross: So we're coming up on our one year anniversary. And I think that just goes to show. All plans, are going to fail, obviously, like if you don't have the plans to begin with, you're never going to have an opportunity to fail because they won't even get off the ground. But think for us, there were a ton of those, okay, you are now doing the thing.

[00:05:36] Ross: You're not just talking about the thing moments, along the way. If I look back, one of the biggest, biggest hurdles that we had, that's very different from operating a knowledge based business or more of a professional service business is, a couple of my partners are also business owners in the knowledge space.

[00:05:53] Ross: And so we all had some business background, but going and opening up. a goods and services type of business, a brick and mortar, particularly in the F and B space. There were just a ton of different variables that we hadn't really anticipated. One of the big ones, code enforcement and permitting here with your local municipality, who thinks about that?

[00:06:12] Ross: I certainly didn't as a local growth marketer, I know all about it. If you ever want to come commiserate about how long it takes to, get your drive thru permitted, come talk to me. The other side of that is the drive through is a great example. We in our pro forma to get funding and all of this, we talked about how, Hey, we're going to have a drive through.

[00:06:30] Ross: We're going to be open on Sundays. We're going to make some of these huge decisions and, you know, fast forward the clock. we're not doing a lot of those things for, better for worse, but for the sake of our company. And so to your earlier question, yeah. I mean, there's just along the way, a brick and mortar local business is Just a different animal from anything in the knowledge space, or non geographic centric space.

[00:06:52] Hector: I think that your experience with the permits and stuff like that, although maybe not everybody has to deal with, you know, local, permits and regulations and such. When someone is going into a business, it seems like we're bound to run into these things that we. Didn't prepare for that. We didn't have any schooling for that.

[00:07:10] Hector: We had like no, no, no clue on how to do. and we could throw up our hands or we could, just move on or say, it just wasn't meant to be. how did you work through that? Was it a person that helped you kind of navigate that? Was it, book like actually getting through the permitting?

[00:07:26] Hector: Process, what did it take to actually move through that?

[00:07:29] Ross: The number one piece of advice I can give to anybody opening up a business with a local footprint. And when I say local footprint, I mean, a business that relies on geographically, uh, proximate people to buy and sell your goods and services, number one piece of advice I can offer is make sure that you have fantastic.

[00:07:50] Ross: Partnerships. And I don't mean business partners, make sure you have fantastic those too, but actual vendor partnerships, relational partnerships with key stakeholders in the community. One of the best relationships that we had was with our local, SBA. they're outta the University of Georgia.

[00:08:07] Ross: we're here in Augusta. They're outta the University of Georgia. And their whole service, they're a nonprofit organization, is just helping small businesses get off the ground. And for us, it was integral in navigating stuff like the permitting deal. He didn't know anything about permitting itself, but what he did know is the person that would, he connected us with a great commissioner that, in our local city government that gave us the rundown and maybe showed us a few things to.

[00:08:31] Ross: Expedite that process. another one is like having a great local lender. I'm pretty tech savvy and obviously like running knowledge based business online. And I've always just whoever had the best features, the best functionality at the best rates, that's my tech stack, right? Like that's what I use.

[00:08:49] Ross: And. In reality for, especially for these local guys, we need a local lending partner. we need some of these things that have been super systematized and scaled up, uh, to actually be shrunk down. And this was a mind blowing thing, but to realize like, Oh, okay, this is why local home service businesses actually choose some of these things.

[00:09:09] Ross: They're like, Hey, that's not super scaled. Why would you do that? And this is why the relationship actually matters. Dude,

[00:09:15] Hector: so big. And, and I'm, seeing the, classic heroes journey, right? There's this, this call to action. Right. And then there's usually these guides to these people that come out of the woodworks. What happens after that though, is the forest is the battles is the journey, right?

[00:09:30] Hector: Is the actual, like, I don't know if it's the work. but now I'd imagine that the permits and all that sort of stuff, you get through that and then there's got to be a feeling of, okay, we're off to the races now. And maybe that happened, but I'm curious. It's like, okay, what was the next sort of a hurdle that you had to, get over once the shop was able to be set up with people just start flowing in.

[00:09:50] Ross: that's a fantastic question. I would say for us, it actually was, I mean, permitting for us took months and months and months. and you know, it was at a time when specific to our municipality, there were some complications and things like that. there's some other external factors. And so for us, it was just a much elongated process in reality.

[00:10:10] Ross: And certainly like. what our original expectations were. And so when we finally got permitted, it was like, yes, we did it. We're here. We've arrived. There was this Jubilee and the celebration, the way it works for us though, is then construction began or the second half of construction began. So then there was this like long waiting period and, There's a lot that happens in between that and like actually going up to launch.

[00:10:32] Ross: But, one of the big things for us is we immediately started, getting our little coffee cart out at the local markets and some of the other event spaces around town, we started building a customer base. We started, asking for reviews early and often, and then we launched our social media. And all of these things are things that like.

[00:10:50] Ross: You know, from a marketing perspective, I'm 3000 miles away talking to somebody in California. I'm recommending all these things, right? But I'm the digital guy. I just get to tell you what to do. And, you'll go figure it out. We had to figure all of that out in real life. And some of those local growth formula pieces that I talked about at fence post, we were just starting To play around with them and actually battle test them. And think the biggest one is that social proof component that starting to collect reviews, early and often was so massive for us. And so, yeah, to your earlier question, when we opened the doors, we had a line out the door and thank goodness it was incredible.

[00:11:23] Ross: my partner's wife did actually did a, a real of it, and there's just like me opening the door on grand opening and it's truly an incredible feeling. That day

[00:11:32] Hector: Yeah, when we get back from break, I want to dive into a little bit more about these, local growth sort of hacks. If you would love to share some more of those. And then now that you've got, the setup, I'd imagine it's such a big part of it. And perhaps there's some fun, but I'd imagine that it gets a lot more fun now because there's something going.

[00:11:50] Hector: there's more knobs and levers to pull, if you will. And so I'm curious Now that it's set up, how you're thinking about growing and, getting to that scaling point. so we're gonna get into that right after this quick break.

[00:12:01] Hector: Hey y'all, today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media and we are a podcast and content production company. Well, we'd like to think of ourselves as like a fractional media company for your company. 'cause chances are you probably have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, something that you're trying to get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team or the tech skills to do it.

[00:12:17] Hector: Well. If that's the case, we can help Go to amplify media.com. That's A-M-P-L-A-F-Y media.com. You can also check the show notes for the link. And with that, let's so ru, before breaking. We talked about how you actually did have like a line around the corner on grand opening. And we talked about some of the things that you did to do that, getting the card out of local grocery stores, getting reviews, ahead of time.

[00:12:40] Hector: Are there other maybe it's the same thing that you're continuously doing, but are there other or things that you're still doing little tactics like that that you find are helpful for, specifically like a local based company?

[00:12:51] Ross: Yeah. if we're thinking about. Local growth from the perspective of a framework. I always talk about visibility, competency, social proof and referral as being the four ingredients, if you will, to the recipe for predictable and profitable local growth. And I think taking the coffee shop trellis, for example, we have really.

[00:13:11] Ross: Leaned into the competency piece, the social proof piece, and then the visibility piece as well. and I'll talk a little bit about referral at the end, but, starting from the, top, I mean, competency wise, we specifically chose a roaster onyx copy lab out of Arkansas. I don't know. Any coffee lovers out there probably heard of them.

[00:13:30] Ross: They're like an SCA awarded, coffee roaster that has honestly perfected the cafe model too. And when we selected them as our roaster, they offered just a slew of training resources. They've actually flown out to Augusta a number of times to train our staff. They've flown us out there to engage with them.

[00:13:46] Ross: And so we really leaned into, Hey, we want to be the best third wave, especially coffee shop, not only in Augusta, but in a large geographic radius around our town. , We're largely serving our local community within a couple of miles of us, but we want people to know about us and be reputable, have a reputation for like the highest caliber of experience there.

[00:14:08] Ross: So competency wise, boom, I mean, that's, that's where we've gone. I think on the social proof side, that's been our second.

[00:14:14] Hector: Can I, can I pick a little bit at that competency? Sorry. How do you see that? Because I think that that's, I don't want to say easy to say, okay, get your people trained. and then how do you see it playing out?

[00:14:27] Hector: is that coming out in the customer interactions? Is that coming out in the retention, how do you see that? Where does that play out? Play out in the actual, business operations or, how does it play out after the, that sort of focus has been made.

[00:14:42] Ross: yeah, that definitely plays out in a single metric that is, returning customers. We want to see our returning customers. I guess the other way it would be like your review rating, as an aggregate across all the review channels. But those two metrics are the metrics of how confident you are, how effective you are at delivering what you said you would offer.

[00:14:59] Ross: And so we want to see our returning customer rate, you know, like 70, 80%.

[00:15:04] Hector: when you say competency, it's not only just, am I knowledgeable about the product, but then am I knowledgeable enough to create the right sort of experience as well? So both of those things are, are going into that.

[00:15:17] Ross: 100%. If we look at what is a coffee shop's actual product that they're selling somebody? Well, it's space for one, that's a piece of the leg of the product stool, two, it's the actual coffee itself. that's arguably the biggest, but let's put it in an equal third. And then the third piece is the actual like customer interaction that you're having with the staff there.

[00:15:39] Ross: And those three pieces are our, that's our product. And if we are not excellent, exceptional as good or better than the competition at each of those three things, well, then we haven't checked the box of competency and we're not going to grow predictably and profitably.

[00:15:54] Hector: That makes sense.

[00:15:54] Ross: Yeah. that's the foundation.

[00:15:56] Ross: Like, if we don't have that, then we can't really have an opportunity to have those other key ingredients in place. Like we're not as visible. People just don't care about us as much. we've done on the visibility front, we've done an incredible job with our social media. And I would say that's a large portion of how we had a line out the door to launch.

[00:16:13] Ross: The other piece of visibility is like giving people a glimpse and a taste of what it's going to be like in the shop. And every public and outside of the shop interaction that we have, the best way we've been able to do that has been our cold cart. We just have cold carts set up at all these local markets and events.

[00:16:29] Ross: And it's just been a great way for people to like, get a taste of what Charles has to offer when they come and shop

[00:16:34] Hector: Yeah. Visibility. And I don't know if you're being intentional with this, but it, I'm just not good at making things trendy. I don't have that natural, like, some people are just, they get it, there's certain brands, there's certain places where, the line out the door is like.

[00:16:49] Hector: want to be a part of that experience, the culture, the community, the vibe. Is that something at all that you guys are thinking about? Or have you guys tried to do or are successful at all in implementing things to kind of create that feel or vibe, if you will?

[00:17:04] Ross: emphatically. Yes. I, a little self deprecation here. Do not consider myself trendy. my partner's wife says I'm like the grandpa of the partnership. And yet we have just this incredibly trendy, incredibly attractive social presence that has really been like our number one marketing arm and it's organic social content, tick tock style reels.

[00:17:26] Ross: And, just. Trendy stuff that encapsulates what the culture in life at Trellis is actually like, whether that's, product focused or customer focused or employee focused, any of those three categories tied to whatever, like the hottest social trend is right now, it crushes. And I think to your earlier point, That coupled with the like mid sized market that Augusta is, I mean, we've got 250 to 300, 000 people in our metro area, depending on how you're counting.

[00:17:55] Ross: And people are like excited for that. They're like, Oh, these people know what cool is. They're excited about. what this thing is. So I should also be excited and I don't want to be left out because I know all my people are going to go check it out too. We've benefited from a lot of that and I don't know that it was intentional that way it worked that way and we're thankful and it will be intentional the next time.

[00:18:17] Hector: Yeah. I've never, anytime I've tried to be intentional, I was intentionally dorky, you know, that's all it worked out. We talked about, competency. We talked about visibility. I feel like there's two other ones that are still in your, toolkit.

[00:18:30] Ross: Yeah. And I know we're. running tight on time. So I'll focus on it. It's social proof and referral are the last two ingredients. So I'll focus on social proof. This is I talked about competency being like the cornerstone of the local growth formula being good at what you're doing. But social proof is really this is what's going to give you sustainability long term.

[00:18:49] Ross: you have good or service that you sell that you have customers that use and they don't tell other people about it and they don't Shout it from the rooftops publicly, then you're really going to have to rely on rely on the other three ingredients to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

[00:19:04] Ross: And that's just not a sustainable piece. So what we need is we need people leaving five star reviews. We need people leaving five star reviews that aren't just star ratings. They're actual people leaving detailed comments about their lived experience at your establishment. And for us, that's been a lifeblood.

[00:19:19] Ross: I think we're coming up on 600 reviews and just over eight or nine months, and it's been. A radical thing for our business because people get to see, we know when they come in town for the masters or when they come in town for the iron man, or they come in town for peach jam or whatever they're coming into town for.

[00:19:33] Ross: And they're looking for, pour over near me and we show up organically. Well, they're immediately going to the reviews and those reviews. Some of them showcase like, Hey, I really wish this were there. A lot of them showcase, holy cow, you have to try this. And that's what we're trying to do in social proof is we're trying to give somebody a glimpse of what a real life and authentic experience is going to be in our shop before they ever set foot in it.

[00:19:58] Ross: And if you are good at what you do and you have a lot of people come through, well, What they say about your shop is actually going to be biggest, best billboard that you could possibly have. And so that's what we're aiming for with social proof,

[00:20:10] Hector: You talked about competency being a big part of the pie, if you will, and being good at what you do is that all there is to it? Or when I'm doing the math, I'm like 600 reviews, eight or nine months. You're talking like three ish reviews a day, something like that, on average.

[00:20:24] Hector: So, Is there a way that you're driving or like manufacturing it? Or is that and manufacturing sounds like a weird word, but is there a way that you're driving it? Or is that just people? You have that many people having a good experience and they're just on their own going and leaving reviews.

[00:20:38] Ross: man. How awesome would that be if it were the latter? and also we're just going to stay away from manufacture on reviews because the whole point of a review is like the integrity and authenticity that honest reviews actually have. And that's why three star reviews are so valuable, Or four star reviews is because they show like real life lived experiences.

[00:20:57] Ross: To answer your question directly, we are huge at Fencepost on review automation, and so we've got a number of tools. Our strategic partner is a nice job, and they do a fantastic job of giving us resources to be able to go out and say, Hey, we want to collect reviews from this type of person at this time, and until they leave us one, we're going to touch them this many times, via text and email and other methods.

[00:21:20] Ross: so, yeah, we're deploying that. And Trellis as well. We're using some review automation tools with nice job there. fortunately we do have a ton of new customers each and every day, but we have a lot of returning ones and sometimes it does take visit number six before they actually leave us a review.

[00:21:35] Ross: And that's why we're still seeing like some of our very first customers start to leave us reviews here. Eight or nine months later.

[00:21:41] Hector: Well, that's, a great thought that it's not just someone coming in and on their first experience leaving a review that, because I think that's how people in their heads imagine that those things happen, where it's actually a little bit

[00:21:51] Ross: Ideally you have multiple opportunities to capture that. And maybe, you've got somebody who fancies themselves, particularly experienced foodie and they want to give it a good three times before they do. And before they like leave an effective evaluation, we actually have had some of those and you'll see some of our long reviews on, our big platforms, Google, here in the Southeast, like people love Google business.

[00:22:11] Ross: And so you'll see some of these longer views and they are so valuable. Some of them aren't five stars. Some of them are like four stars and you know what? That's fine. We're getting to see a very authentic look at how things are rolling

[00:22:22] Hector: Yeah, we got a few more minutes here. What about, you said the third one is social proof. And then the fourth one was referrals.

[00:22:30] Ross: Referral. Yeah. So referral could also be, construed as loyalty. anything that's going to drive either a repeat visit or, somebody bouching. For the thing directly to get somebody else to come purchase or buy. And for us, our loyalty program plays a huge role in this, where we're getting repeat customers because we've got a loyalty program in place that encourages that, the other side of that is our people are to bring guests, buy one, get a second cup free.

[00:22:59] Ross: Buy one, get one 50 percent off, things like that, where we're actually incentivizing people to come engage with our shop and bring others, you know, bring a friend. I think largely for other businesses, when we're talking about this, at the fence post level that we're talking about.

[00:23:12] Ross: What are ways that we can effectively systematize the handoff of you had a good experience with me, customer, go hand me off to your friend, your relative, whatever else. and for us at Trellis, we are measuring that by the relationship between repeat customers and new customer visits.

[00:23:31] Hector: yeah, I love that. Ross, if people want to find out more about fence posts or trellis and yourself, where's the best place to go for that?

[00:23:39] Ross: Well, talking about trellis first, go check us out, at trellis coffee bar on Instagram. trellis coffee bar is the handle on Instagram. you'll see some of the funky social stuff I talk about. And then for fence post, yeah, go give us a follow on Instagram as well. Fence post dot C O. If you want a free assessment on how local growth formula can work for your local home service business, give us a shout.

[00:24:02] Ross: We'll be glad to do a five minute video walk through. Super cool.

[00:24:06] Hector: Fantastic. We'll link all that up in there. And you might have answered this question in the last one, but I'll give you another shot at it. Maybe it's different. But in your opinion, Ross, what is the secret to scale in a business

[00:24:15] Ross: I think the secret to scaling a business is my local growth formula, but in all reality, it's consistency, even in the local growth formula, right? being consistent across all four of those areas is going to win the day. And that's really not just any local business. It's any business altogether. I think you've seen it in yours and me and mine, and probably our fathers before us, right? showing up and being consistent matters.

[00:24:39] Hector: here? Here? That's for sure. Well, everybody, I want to thank you for sticking around with us today. I know you got some value out of today. I'm sitting here just soaking it all in. So to appreciate you for hanging out. We would be forever grateful for writing a review wherever you get your podcast.

[00:24:54] Hector: And if you know someone who needs to hear this, hit that share button and let's, grow the community together, but, go get connected with Ross. Check out Trellis if you're in and ever around the area and, we'll see on the next one.