2. Product over marketing
Though she describes herself as a “marketeer at heart,” Grede believes that no product will succeed if it’s not quality—even if it’s backed by the best creative in the world.
“We do ourselves a little bit of disservice when we think that the whole idea of what it means to be an entrepreneur and founder is about the forward-facing part,” she said. “You will be better off obsessing with distribution and logistics and product excellence than social media and influencer strategy and digital marketing.”
At the end of the day, if you have a product that works and can get it into a customer’s hands quickly, “everything else sorts itself out,” she added.
“You can get obsessed with what it looks like on the outside, and it’s just the wrong focus. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It just isn’t the first thing. It’s the cherry on the icing, not the cake, and you focus on the cake.”
3. Don’t over-rely on the metrics
Grede doesn’t view virality as a signal of long-term success. “From an investor standpoint, I would never look at a brand that is tracking on social and invest off of that basis,” she said.
While social virality is a “signal that something could be interesting,” marketers are also at the whims of platforms and algorithm changes that could flip things on a dime. “That is not something that you can control,” she said.
Instead, when investing, Grede looks for different signs: “product excellence and a founder with a level of insatiable tenacity that can’t be dampened.”
4. The cues are in the comments
The comments can be a scary place, but it’s necessary to engage if you want to really understand and respond to your audience. Grede spends time in the comments sections of her various business accounts every Sunday, “sometimes happily, sometimes very tender-hearted, because you better be ready,” she said.
She views taking cues from the comments as critical, because “there’s no point in taking it back into your organization and making excuses for the things that you found.”
