September 17, 2025 β’ 23 mins
Looking for Shopify growth tips that actually work? In this 201st episode of The E-Comm Show, host Andrew Maff chats with Jason Murff, U.S. Army veteran and founder of Grill Your Ass Off, about how he scaled his veteran-owned seasoning brand into a seven-figure Shopify business.
From launching with just four blends to managing 65+ SKUs across retail, ecommerce, and BBQ communities, Jason shares what it takes to grow a brand with personality in a crowded market.
We cover Shopify apps that actually drive profit, balancing B2B and D2C, UGC-powered marketing, Q4 planning, and diversifying beyond Shopify. Whether youβre a founder or marketer, this episode is packed with practical growth strategies you can put to work.
What Youβll Learn:
- Why Shopify beats Squarespace for scaling
- How to balance B2B and D2C on one platform
- The Shopify apps actually driving ROI
- Turning loyal customers into UGC creators
- Q4 planning with Shopify segments
- Diversifying beyond Shopify into retail & marketplaces
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Murff (00:03):
And now we're working with someone that we're
not trying to sell on the brand.
They've already bought into thebrand.
Narrator (00:08):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I'm your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof blue tusker, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies, get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry from top leaders in thespace. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:22):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show. As usual. I amyour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I am joined by JasonMurff, who is the founder and
CEO over at Grill Your Ass Off.
Jason, how you doing, buddy? Youready for good show?
Jason Murff (00:34):
I'm wonderful.
Let's kick it off.
Andrew Maff (00:35):
Beautiful. Super excited to talk to you. Very
cool brrand, very fun brand.
Love the overall messaging, theapproach. So definitely know
this is gonna be, this is gonnabe a fun one. Love starting
these off super stereotypicallyand just kind of give you the
floor. Tell us a little bitabout your background, how you
got started with grill, your assoff, and we'll take it from
there.
Jason Murff (00:52):
Yeah. Thank you again for having me on here to
try and condense it down into aquick story. Always wanted to be
in the military my entire life,took the entrepreneurial route
directly while I was in highschool, did that for a while,
(01:13):
and then ended up getting deniedto community college because
they said, basically I wasn'tsmart enough for that, and then
ended up selling and getting ridof one of my businesses, and
then, following a lifelong dreamof going inside the military,
wanted to do a career with it.
Never thought that Grill YourAss Off would ever be on the
(01:34):
career path for me, went in as11 Bravo, so infantry for the
military, and then ended updestroying my left ankle,
getting a botched surgery overat Walter Reed and yeah, just
kind of went downhill fromthere. Had a pretty aggressive
career change and life changefor me, forcing me to be
(01:57):
medically retired out of themilitary. And at that time, I
was super big into fitness,doing fitness competitions,
dieting down super lean, soeating a lot of bland, boring
food. And then on top of that,being from Texas and being
stationed in Washington, DC,there's a severe lack of flavor
(02:18):
up north. Sorry for anyone fromup north.
So I had a roommate at the time,and we were making our own,
like, pre workouts andsupplements and everything like
that. And that kind of occurredto me of like, you know, I could
just make my own seasonings,like it's no big deal. Never
thought of anything for it. Andthen once the medical discharge
(02:40):
happened, I had to reassess.
What did I want to do for acareer and life?
So I'd actually, at the time,one of the guys that I was
serving with that was alsogetting medically discharged. We
found a school in Waco, Texasthat we could actually use our
GI bill for a commercialaviation license. So I had
(03:03):
actually separated from themilitary and started going to
college, a technical college atTSTC in Waco to get my
commercial pilot's license. Andpretty quick into that, I
realized flying a school bus inthe sky is pretty boring.
Whenever from being infantry andhaving a very active lifestyle.
(03:24):
So I finished getting my privatepilot's license, I was actually
expanding my firework businesswhile I was getting my
instrument license, scheduledeverything with the college to
basically allow me to take asummer off to expand my firework
business. At this time, I hadjust started putting together
(03:47):
some seasonings. Didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do with
it, what to call it? The youknow, name girly or ass off
actually came from my dad'ssuggestion. I thought it was a
name at the time, and theneverything kind of just like
spiraled very aggressively afterthat, because right around the
time of getting the first seasonseasonings kind of bottled,
(04:11):
getting the original Grill YourAss Off logo was whenever I was
taking that summer off, and theschool ended up failing me for
having too many absences thatthey approved me for which made
no sense whatsoever. So in thattime, I finished basically
building the website, developingeverything that I wanted to to
(04:33):
be able to kick off thebusiness, put my apartment back
on the market in Waco, movedback to Houston, and then once
we got to the school, back topassing me for the approved days
that they gave me off, I toldthem that they could just fail
me for the course, and I wasdone with them. And then so
dropped out of, you know,college and jumped in grill your
(04:53):
ass off with both feet. Here weare coming up, October will be
nine years.
Andrew Maff (04:59):
Wow. That's awesome. So obviously, like, I
mean, you, you kind of saw theneed, started creating. It
started growing with it, youknow, it's obviously growing to
this seven figure brand that'sdoing really well. Like, what?
What was it that kind of, whatwas it that all of a sudden,
like, sales started picking upand, like, what was kind of that
turning point?
Jason Murff (05:20):
Um, really, it was brand recognition and then
narrowing in on the why, and,you know, our core mission
statement, and that was kind oflike a lost journey for me as I
was starting it, because I wasbuilding the brand for myself
and giving myself a why, and Ijust didn't really know how to
(05:40):
portray that to the generalpublic. And then as well, I
thought, you know, hey, this isan awesome product. These are,
you know, kick ass lookinglabels like we every store
should sell this. And, you know,you you start off with the an
idea, and you walk into a storeand they just look at you and
like, who are you? Why would Icare to use stuff so and kind of
(06:02):
having that rejection rightthere at the very beginning is
what gave me a lot of the fueland the motivation, and then
figuring out, like, okay, like,not only is this my why and
giving myself a mission and apurpose after I lost that for
military service, but I canutilize all of this to where I
can help give other veterans andfirst responders a why, once
(06:22):
they leave service, or whilethey're in service, I can give
them that connection of beingwith someone or brightening
their day through humor. Youlook at our name, you look at
her labels, you know you'regoing to laugh at that kind of
stuff. But not only that, youget the connection through food.
And that's how the missionstatement that we have came
continued camaraderie throughgood food is humor got us
(06:43):
through our dark times ofservice, and then food brought
us all together. So once I kindof honed in on that and started
pushing that message and leadingwith that, things just started
to, you know, kind of amplifyand we started off with just
four bottles of seasonings. Wegot a steak, a chicken, a pork
and a Cajun seasoning. Now wehave over 65 consumable skews.
(07:05):
So it's drastically increasedwhere I mean, we're making
pickles, olives, salsas, ranchdips, beef jerky, like you name
it. We have it.
Andrew Maff (07:14):
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about like the
business aspect. Is it primarilyretail? Are you primarily
online? If so, like, whatchannels like? Tell me a bit
about that.
Jason Murff (07:24):
Yeah. So we're currently, we're on Shopify, as
with most of everyone else, westarted off on Squarespace, and
quickly got away from that.
Andrew Maff (07:33):
Classic!
Jason Murff (07:34):
Yeah. So, yeah, you think that it's good, and then
you start growing and you'relike, Oh, wow. Like, this is
horrible. So we're on Shopify.
We are currently about 50-50,kind of fluctuates throughout
the year, on B to B to B to C onthat so, but yeah, we're on
there. We've been aggressivelygrowing. We're utilizing, you
(07:58):
know, some of the prettystandard stuff for email
marketing. We're not on clay VO,we're actually with omnisend,
because clay vo treated us justlike another number and gave us
a whole bunch of promises wedidn't follow through on.
We're on Amazon, Fair forwholesale. We do a lot of
(08:18):
different direct shows. Youknow, we're, we're currently,
right now, onboarding withOrgill for, you know, a huge
hardware wholesale distribution.
We're inside with Ace, inside oftheir distribution networks, and
then hopefully we're going to beannouncing a couple new ones
here soon.
Andrew Maff (08:34):
Yeah, interesting.
Anywhere, any marketplaces youget into, like Amazon, Walmart,
or anything like that yet.
Jason Murff (08:41):
Yeah, so we're on Amazon, we're on Walmart.
They're fun to work with,because one of the things that
you wouldn't think would be apain is having the word ass in
your name. So we've had to bevery creative whenever it comes
to like, paid advertising onMeta, Google, but as well as on
Amazon and Walmart too. So oneof the things that we've
(09:03):
actually switched to that'shelped us with SEO and keywords
is utilizing really what theproduct is for, versus the name.
Just grill your ass off on itand then putting a stamp that
says bleep over the word ass,because people know what's
behind it, and they also find ithumorous. So we, as soon as we
started transitioning to that,we saw a lot of really good
(09:25):
engagement on it.
Andrew Maff (09:27):
Awesome is that, is that kind of more one of the
primary channels that doesreally well is the advertising
side on Meta?
Jason Murff (09:34):
Yeah, meta still our number one advertising
platform on that, as much as Idon't, I don't like it. That's
still our best one. I knoweverybody else in E commerce
feels the same way.
Andrew Maff (09:46):
Yeah, what? What type of content is working for
you using, like, influencermarketing, UGC, stuff like I
would imagine. Obviously, in thecooking realm, there's hundreds
of thousands of different like,quote, unquote cooking and
influencers. So like, what's thewhat's the process with them?
Anything?
Jason Murff (10:03):
We do ug UGC, we're currently running a campaign
right now, directing a lot oftraffic to Amazon and getting
ugcs with stack influence onthat. We're about a month in on
the project. It's been goingwell so far, not the best ugcs
that we received, because it'skind of open to anyone and
everyone, but what we've foundthat's actually worked very well
(10:24):
for us is we get our corecustomers that are, you know,
placing 15 to 30 orders in ayear, and finding them on social
media, which a lot of times,they just tag us right away, but
seeing these people who arecreating amazing content, and
they're already core customersof ours, and then turning over
to them, setting up, you know,Shopify collabs account, and
(10:46):
then working on paid structuresto where it's like, Hey, if you
guys provide us all of this andwe'll give them the, you know,
definitions of it, then now theybecome basically a contract
employee with us to where we canfeature them in our newsletter
blogs, we can put them on ourrecipes on our website, so
they're getting amazing exposurefrom our customer group. And now
(11:07):
we're working with someone thatwe're not trying to sell on the
brand they've already boughtinto the brand.
Narrator (11:12):
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(11:34):
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Andrew Maff (11:45):
Interesting. Yeah, we, I actually had, think it was
the founder of Stack influenceon the show, I want to say, like
a month or two ago, veryinteresting platform, but I
could see how, so you ended upgetting a lot of there's not as
much control there. I guess?
Jason Murff (12:02):
Yes, there's really no control on who you're going
to get. So I mean, right now,we're getting close to like 200
influencers that have submittedthings back, and we probably
have like five that we wouldproudly put out there.
Andrew Maff (12:17):
Yeah, jeez. Is that. Have you tried creator
connections through Amazon?
Jason Murff (12:22):
We have not yet.
That's on our roadmap to do.
Andrew Maff (12:25):
Yeah, and say that's a, I've heard relatively
similar things of that one, butI think you've got a you've got
a little bit more control, but Ialso think that there's not as
many influencers and stuffsigned up with it.
Jason Murff (12:35):
And that's what we've kind of found like across
the board. We worked withagencies before to try and do
you know, outreach for ugcs,like Tiktok, meta, all that kind
of stuff. And then it alwaysjust comes back down to it. It's
like, our customers already lovethe brand, like, let's just have
them utilize it, and then itbenefits them, because now we
can offer them crazy good dealsfor them.
Andrew Maff (12:58):
Yeah, yeah. You know what? There's, man, there's
a Shopify app that I need toremember the name of, and then I
need to reach out to them,because I plug them all the
time. But there's a Shopify appthat you can actually obviously
connect Shopify it will read allof your customer data, scrape
their social media platforms andtell you what their following
(13:18):
is. So you could literally justgo into this app and see like,
of everyone that's ever boughtfrom you. You know, here's the
ones with, like, the topfollowers and, like, the best
engagement and what they spent.
It's like, a great way to justbe like, oh, I'll just reach out
to so and so, and then be like,they've already shopped with us,
so I know they're going to wantto work with us. It makes us a
lot easier, yeah, as opposed togoing after people completely
(13:43):
cold, which doesn't really haveto
Jason Murff (13:43):
Yeah, usually, like, let me know that out.
Andrew Maff (13:43):
Yeah, no, I gotta look I gotta look that up again.
And one of the brings up all thetime.
Jason Murff (13:48):
While we're on the subject for Shopify apps, one of
the ones that has, like, helpedus tremendously. As you know how
inaccurate Meta and Googletracking is, yeah, on the actual
numbers is, we started workingwith the app called Little data,
and we can actually control whatdata is getting sent to them. So
(14:08):
say, if we have a draft ordercome through that my guys are,
you know, typing into Shopify,it's meta is not going to take
credit for that anymore. Yeah.
So we're able to very, veryclean up a lot of our
information, which is been apain, pain point for us for a
long time.
Andrew Maff (14:26):
Yeah, attribution is a it's going to be a pain for
the foreseeable future. I knowlittle data. I know there's a
couple others out there thatkind of do, like server side
data adjustments and kind of canhelp with that. And then I know
there's like, I won't say them,because I won't say too many
nice things about them. But thenthere's, you have the other ones
(14:47):
that are, like attributiontrackers, and the more like just
glorified UTM
Jason Murff (14:48):
I have the same feeling. So yeah, you're good.
Andrew Maff (14:53):
Yeah, you know, on the influencer thing, like, as
an agency, we do it, and it's toyour point, like, if you can do
it internally. You shoulddefinitely do it internally.
What we've always done from aUGC side, if we don't already
have, like, a bank of certaininfluencers to work with,
there's especially from a UGCperspective, there's so many
different platforms out therebetween like trend IO and billio
(15:13):
and those types of guys. We juststart off with those to kind of
speed up the process, vet theones that we like, and then we
just start talking to a mothplatform and start to build up
the library. From there, itmakes it so much quicker, so
much easier, cool. So, allright, so you, you we got into
the paid ad side. We got intosome of that. Any issues with
(15:33):
the tariff side? Did that end upbecoming a problem on your end?
Jason Murff (15:36):
Some fluctuation.
You know, all of our stuff ismade here, you know, we blend
our seasonings. Here we bottleeverything. Here we do have a
few items that are madeoverseas, like our thermometers,
our heat resistant gloves, but alot of people don't know that,
like all of your garlic andblack pepper primarily come from
China. So thankfully, we try tobuy everything in mass
(15:57):
quantities to lock in prices,and then we're able to blend
into smaller batches, keep goodquality, uh, you know, good
quality stuff. But yeah, um, aswe were preparing for this q4 we
have gotten some hits on tariffsthat we've kind of had to adjust
things and schedule some thingsout for that.
Andrew Maff (16:15):
Yeah, yeah, I had a feeling, although I guess it's
good that you got, you got yougot ahead of it, so you're in a
good spot. There anything thatyou like? Pre prepare for going
into q4 now that you've kind oflocked and loaded on inventory?
Jason Murff (16:28):
Yeah. So we're actually we have a pretty
sophisticated system to wheremost of all of our marketing is
all automated. So we'll actuallybuild out email and SMS flows
based off of a segment and auser's interaction to where we
will schedule those flows to beable to kick off on a certain
(16:48):
date. So it's pretty much handsfree. So currently, right now,
we're finishing out building allof the flow charts for it so our
team can fully understand it andthen finalize all of our offers
and be able to implement thatour goal for this year, and
we've been able to achieve itfor the most part this year, is
we're staying a quarter ahead onall of our marketing.
Andrew Maff (17:09):
You should, you should do a talk on this. It's
ridiculous. How many like So,for those of you that are
listening, it's August. It's midlate, ish, August right now, by
the time this goes out, I thinkwe're into, like, mid September,
like, it blows my mind. How manybrands don't even think or look
at q4 until, like, September,October. So it's awesome that
(17:33):
you're in August and you'realready planned, pretty much
through the end of the year.
Jason Murff (17:37):
I mean, the biggest thing that, like a lot of people
don't realize is, you know, yourwin back and your warm ups are
your main thing to kick off theholiday season, yeah, because
you have all so many potentialcustomers that you've been
paying for for q1 through q3that you have their information
like, get them to convert, andyou don't want to get them to
(17:58):
convert, you know, a week beforeBlack Friday, Cyber Monday, and
then the rest of the holidayseason. So it's like, you know,
we're sending out stuff,September, October, to these
lists, and we're getting someonelike yourself. Like, hey,
Andrew, I know that you checkedout our stuff, but I want to
offer you a free sample pack.
All you have to do is pay forthe shipping and handling.
You're like, All right, yeah,cool. I'll get six flavors for
(18:19):
five bucks, no worries. And thennow we can put product in your
hand. You get to cook with it,see the quality of it. And I've
also looped you into a newsegment that is going to trigger
a flow for a pre Black Friday,then Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
extended. All that fun stuff.
Andrew Maff (18:36):
That's awesome.
That's genius. Yeah, there's awe do something similar. How
would that work? So usually whatwe start telling brands, like,
like, not really July, butpretty much August, September,
we say, from an advertisingperspective, like, now is the
time to really focus, like, topof funnel, like, start to
educate the new, new people,because come q4 it's expensive
(18:57):
as hell, and you're not going toget anything. And it's, it just
doesn't work out, and it's wayless expensive to go middle of
funnel. So you could even takethat do, like a Meta ad through
like a lead form, and just blastit out to new people of like,
completely free try it, youknow, free shipping kind of
thing. And then maybe even leadwith one of the UGC videos you
got that you actually liked andjust retarget people that
(19:19):
watched what, like 50 pluspercent of it kind of thing.
Yeah, I love that you'reactually doing it. It's it never
ceases to amaze me how manybrands don't touch anything for
q4 until they're in q4 and itjust blows my mind. Or they have
the problem where they do nopreparation for q1 until q1 and
by then, because they're like,Oh, we just want to get through
(19:39):
q4 and then it's like, you spentall this money acquiring these
customers in q4 what are youwhat are you doing?
Jason Murff (19:45):
Yeah. And I mean, I'm not gonna like, I didn't
know that right off the bat, soit took me a few years to get
all this kind of, one of thebiggest movers for us last year
and this year, is actuallydirect mail marketing that's
been our highest ROI to datethat we've ever had. I mean,
we've had some postcards thathave gone out that have gotten
(20:07):
us close to, you know, like a 32ROAS which is insane.
Andrew Maff (20:12):
Yeah, I've heard we've done a little bit of it.
It's really hard, from an agencyperspective, to explain to
brands like, just try it, butthere's not as much competition
in the mailbox anymore. There'smore competition in email inbox.
So it's like you've actually canreally stand out, especially if
you get kind of creative withit. So that's pretty cool. How
(20:33):
often are you doing that?
Jason Murff (20:35):
So what we've actually done is we've done a
couple testing to where,basically we match what our
email flows are going to be. Soas soon as someone finishes
going through a flow, if wehadn't gotten that person to
trigger, then we're going tostart post card. And then we do,
typically, one campaign at leastevery six to eight weeks. And
(20:57):
then we will do, like a massive,obviously, campaign towards the
end of the year q4 we also dosite match and mail match to
where we can scrub your IPaddress to be able to get a home
address. And then, if we haveyour email address, we can use
their data to figure out a goodhome address for you on that for
like, new leads. And then, Imean, even we had, we had one
(21:19):
that was getting close to 12ROAS, where we were just sending
out a postcard that had a QRcode for a free meal prep guide
in January for q1 like, hey,let's kick this year off great,
you can eat barbecue and stayhealthy and fit. And so we're
just giving them something free,and it just happens to be on
that landing page for that free,downloadable, you know, PDF, the
(21:43):
box of ass. Now they can get allthe seasonings that are featured
inside of this, you know, mealprep guide, in one box.
Andrew Maff (21:51):
That's great. Who are you using? I imagine,
because they pilot, integratewith post pilot. Okay, yes, I
know there's a few of them outthere, so I didn't know. I knew
they integrated with Klaviyo. Ididn't know they were integrated
with omnisend. Now, that's makesa lot of sense.
Jason Murff (22:05):
Yeah, and they their CSMs that they have on
accounts are amazing and 100%worth it.
Andrew Maff (22:10):
Cool. And this episode's not sponsored by them
now, although maybe it will be.
Reach out!Jason, this was great. I really
appreciate your time. I knowyou're super busy. I don't want
to take up too much more yourtime. I would love to give you
the opportunity here leteveryone know they can find out
more about you, and, of course,more about Grill Your Ass Off.
Jason Murff (22:29):
Yeah, so everything, all social media is
just going to be Grill Your AssOff. You search for it, you'll
be able to find us. It's thedonkey sitting on the grill. If
you want to get a hold of medirect. It's just Jason Muff on
Instagram, Facebook. I jump onLinkedIn every once a while, but
most of it's all spam, so don'texpect your fast response if you
reach out to me on there. So butthank you again for this. I'm
(22:50):
looking forward to hopefullydoing it again and then go in
some deeper dives and some funmarketing stuff.
Andrew Maff (22:55):
Love it. We'll be here. Jason, thank you so much
for being on the show.
Obviously, everyone that tunedin. Thank you as well. Please
make sure you do the usualthing, rate review, subscribe
all that fun stuff on whicheverpodcast platform you prefer, or
head over to the ECommshow.comto check out all of our previous
episodes as usual, we'll see youall next time, have a good one!
Narrator (23:15):
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over
to ecommshow.com to subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform
or on the BlueTusker YouTubechannel. The Ecomm show is
brought to you by BlueTusker, afull service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
(23:37):
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the E comm show!
And now we're working with someone that we're
not trying to sell on the brand.
They've already bought into thebrand.
Narrator (00:08):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I'm your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof blue tusker, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies, get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry from top leaders in thespace. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:22):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show. As usual. I amyour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I am joined by JasonMurff, who is the founder and
CEO over at Grill Your Ass Off.
Jason, how you doing, buddy? Youready for good show?
Jason Murff (00:34):
I'm wonderful.
Let's kick it off.
Andrew Maff (00:35):
Beautiful. Super excited to talk to you. Very
cool brrand, very fun brand.
Love the overall messaging, theapproach. So definitely know
this is gonna be, this is gonnabe a fun one. Love starting
these off super stereotypicallyand just kind of give you the
floor. Tell us a little bitabout your background, how you
got started with grill, your assoff, and we'll take it from
there.
Jason Murff (00:52):
Yeah. Thank you again for having me on here to
try and condense it down into aquick story. Always wanted to be
in the military my entire life,took the entrepreneurial route
directly while I was in highschool, did that for a while,
(01:13):
and then ended up getting deniedto community college because
they said, basically I wasn'tsmart enough for that, and then
ended up selling and getting ridof one of my businesses, and
then, following a lifelong dreamof going inside the military,
wanted to do a career with it.
Never thought that Grill YourAss Off would ever be on the
(01:34):
career path for me, went in as11 Bravo, so infantry for the
military, and then ended updestroying my left ankle,
getting a botched surgery overat Walter Reed and yeah, just
kind of went downhill fromthere. Had a pretty aggressive
career change and life changefor me, forcing me to be
(01:57):
medically retired out of themilitary. And at that time, I
was super big into fitness,doing fitness competitions,
dieting down super lean, soeating a lot of bland, boring
food. And then on top of that,being from Texas and being
stationed in Washington, DC,there's a severe lack of flavor
(02:18):
up north. Sorry for anyone fromup north.
So I had a roommate at the time,and we were making our own,
like, pre workouts andsupplements and everything like
that. And that kind of occurredto me of like, you know, I could
just make my own seasonings,like it's no big deal. Never
thought of anything for it. Andthen once the medical discharge
(02:40):
happened, I had to reassess.
What did I want to do for acareer and life?
So I'd actually, at the time,one of the guys that I was
serving with that was alsogetting medically discharged. We
found a school in Waco, Texasthat we could actually use our
GI bill for a commercialaviation license. So I had
(03:03):
actually separated from themilitary and started going to
college, a technical college atTSTC in Waco to get my
commercial pilot's license. Andpretty quick into that, I
realized flying a school bus inthe sky is pretty boring.
Whenever from being infantry andhaving a very active lifestyle.
(03:24):
So I finished getting my privatepilot's license, I was actually
expanding my firework businesswhile I was getting my
instrument license, scheduledeverything with the college to
basically allow me to take asummer off to expand my firework
business. At this time, I hadjust started putting together
(03:47):
some seasonings. Didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do with
it, what to call it? The youknow, name girly or ass off
actually came from my dad'ssuggestion. I thought it was a
name at the time, and theneverything kind of just like
spiraled very aggressively afterthat, because right around the
time of getting the first seasonseasonings kind of bottled,
(04:11):
getting the original Grill YourAss Off logo was whenever I was
taking that summer off, and theschool ended up failing me for
having too many absences thatthey approved me for which made
no sense whatsoever. So in thattime, I finished basically
building the website, developingeverything that I wanted to to
(04:33):
be able to kick off thebusiness, put my apartment back
on the market in Waco, movedback to Houston, and then once
we got to the school, back topassing me for the approved days
that they gave me off, I toldthem that they could just fail
me for the course, and I wasdone with them. And then so
dropped out of, you know,college and jumped in grill your
(04:53):
ass off with both feet. Here weare coming up, October will be
nine years.
Andrew Maff (04:59):
Wow. That's awesome. So obviously, like, I
mean, you, you kind of saw theneed, started creating. It
started growing with it, youknow, it's obviously growing to
this seven figure brand that'sdoing really well. Like, what?
What was it that kind of, whatwas it that all of a sudden,
like, sales started picking upand, like, what was kind of that
turning point?
Jason Murff (05:20):
Um, really, it was brand recognition and then
narrowing in on the why, and,you know, our core mission
statement, and that was kind oflike a lost journey for me as I
was starting it, because I wasbuilding the brand for myself
and giving myself a why, and Ijust didn't really know how to
(05:40):
portray that to the generalpublic. And then as well, I
thought, you know, hey, this isan awesome product. These are,
you know, kick ass lookinglabels like we every store
should sell this. And, you know,you you start off with the an
idea, and you walk into a storeand they just look at you and
like, who are you? Why would Icare to use stuff so and kind of
(06:02):
having that rejection rightthere at the very beginning is
what gave me a lot of the fueland the motivation, and then
figuring out, like, okay, like,not only is this my why and
giving myself a mission and apurpose after I lost that for
military service, but I canutilize all of this to where I
can help give other veterans andfirst responders a why, once
(06:22):
they leave service, or whilethey're in service, I can give
them that connection of beingwith someone or brightening
their day through humor. Youlook at our name, you look at
her labels, you know you'regoing to laugh at that kind of
stuff. But not only that, youget the connection through food.
And that's how the missionstatement that we have came
continued camaraderie throughgood food is humor got us
(06:43):
through our dark times ofservice, and then food brought
us all together. So once I kindof honed in on that and started
pushing that message and leadingwith that, things just started
to, you know, kind of amplifyand we started off with just
four bottles of seasonings. Wegot a steak, a chicken, a pork
and a Cajun seasoning. Now wehave over 65 consumable skews.
(07:05):
So it's drastically increasedwhere I mean, we're making
pickles, olives, salsas, ranchdips, beef jerky, like you name
it. We have it.
Andrew Maff (07:14):
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about like the
business aspect. Is it primarilyretail? Are you primarily
online? If so, like, whatchannels like? Tell me a bit
about that.
Jason Murff (07:24):
Yeah. So we're currently, we're on Shopify, as
with most of everyone else, westarted off on Squarespace, and
quickly got away from that.
Andrew Maff (07:33):
Classic!
Jason Murff (07:34):
Yeah. So, yeah, you think that it's good, and then
you start growing and you'relike, Oh, wow. Like, this is
horrible. So we're on Shopify.
We are currently about 50-50,kind of fluctuates throughout
the year, on B to B to B to C onthat so, but yeah, we're on
there. We've been aggressivelygrowing. We're utilizing, you
(07:58):
know, some of the prettystandard stuff for email
marketing. We're not on clay VO,we're actually with omnisend,
because clay vo treated us justlike another number and gave us
a whole bunch of promises wedidn't follow through on.
We're on Amazon, Fair forwholesale. We do a lot of
(08:18):
different direct shows. Youknow, we're, we're currently,
right now, onboarding withOrgill for, you know, a huge
hardware wholesale distribution.
We're inside with Ace, inside oftheir distribution networks, and
then hopefully we're going to beannouncing a couple new ones
here soon.
Andrew Maff (08:34):
Yeah, interesting.
Anywhere, any marketplaces youget into, like Amazon, Walmart,
or anything like that yet.
Jason Murff (08:41):
Yeah, so we're on Amazon, we're on Walmart.
They're fun to work with,because one of the things that
you wouldn't think would be apain is having the word ass in
your name. So we've had to bevery creative whenever it comes
to like, paid advertising onMeta, Google, but as well as on
Amazon and Walmart too. So oneof the things that we've
(09:03):
actually switched to that'shelped us with SEO and keywords
is utilizing really what theproduct is for, versus the name.
Just grill your ass off on itand then putting a stamp that
says bleep over the word ass,because people know what's
behind it, and they also find ithumorous. So we, as soon as we
started transitioning to that,we saw a lot of really good
(09:25):
engagement on it.
Andrew Maff (09:27):
Awesome is that, is that kind of more one of the
primary channels that doesreally well is the advertising
side on Meta?
Jason Murff (09:34):
Yeah, meta still our number one advertising
platform on that, as much as Idon't, I don't like it. That's
still our best one. I knoweverybody else in E commerce
feels the same way.
Andrew Maff (09:46):
Yeah, what? What type of content is working for
you using, like, influencermarketing, UGC, stuff like I
would imagine. Obviously, in thecooking realm, there's hundreds
of thousands of different like,quote, unquote cooking and
influencers. So like, what's thewhat's the process with them?
Anything?
Jason Murff (10:03):
We do ug UGC, we're currently running a campaign
right now, directing a lot oftraffic to Amazon and getting
ugcs with stack influence onthat. We're about a month in on
the project. It's been goingwell so far, not the best ugcs
that we received, because it'skind of open to anyone and
everyone, but what we've foundthat's actually worked very well
(10:24):
for us is we get our corecustomers that are, you know,
placing 15 to 30 orders in ayear, and finding them on social
media, which a lot of times,they just tag us right away, but
seeing these people who arecreating amazing content, and
they're already core customersof ours, and then turning over
to them, setting up, you know,Shopify collabs account, and
(10:46):
then working on paid structuresto where it's like, Hey, if you
guys provide us all of this andwe'll give them the, you know,
definitions of it, then now theybecome basically a contract
employee with us to where we canfeature them in our newsletter
blogs, we can put them on ourrecipes on our website, so
they're getting amazing exposurefrom our customer group. And now
(11:07):
we're working with someone thatwe're not trying to sell on the
brand they've already boughtinto the brand.
Narrator (11:12):
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Andrew Maff (11:45):
Interesting. Yeah, we, I actually had, think it was
the founder of Stack influenceon the show, I want to say, like
a month or two ago, veryinteresting platform, but I
could see how, so you ended upgetting a lot of there's not as
much control there. I guess?
Jason Murff (12:02):
Yes, there's really no control on who you're going
to get. So I mean, right now,we're getting close to like 200
influencers that have submittedthings back, and we probably
have like five that we wouldproudly put out there.
Andrew Maff (12:17):
Yeah, jeez. Is that. Have you tried creator
connections through Amazon?
Jason Murff (12:22):
We have not yet.
That's on our roadmap to do.
Andrew Maff (12:25):
Yeah, and say that's a, I've heard relatively
similar things of that one, butI think you've got a you've got
a little bit more control, but Ialso think that there's not as
many influencers and stuffsigned up with it.
Jason Murff (12:35):
And that's what we've kind of found like across
the board. We worked withagencies before to try and do
you know, outreach for ugcs,like Tiktok, meta, all that kind
of stuff. And then it alwaysjust comes back down to it. It's
like, our customers already lovethe brand, like, let's just have
them utilize it, and then itbenefits them, because now we
can offer them crazy good dealsfor them.
Andrew Maff (12:58):
Yeah, yeah. You know what? There's, man, there's
a Shopify app that I need toremember the name of, and then I
need to reach out to them,because I plug them all the
time. But there's a Shopify appthat you can actually obviously
connect Shopify it will read allof your customer data, scrape
their social media platforms andtell you what their following
(13:18):
is. So you could literally justgo into this app and see like,
of everyone that's ever boughtfrom you. You know, here's the
ones with, like, the topfollowers and, like, the best
engagement and what they spent.
It's like, a great way to justbe like, oh, I'll just reach out
to so and so, and then be like,they've already shopped with us,
so I know they're going to wantto work with us. It makes us a
lot easier, yeah, as opposed togoing after people completely
(13:43):
cold, which doesn't really haveto
Jason Murff (13:43):
Yeah, usually, like, let me know that out.
Andrew Maff (13:43):
Yeah, no, I gotta look I gotta look that up again.
And one of the brings up all thetime.
Jason Murff (13:48):
While we're on the subject for Shopify apps, one of
the ones that has, like, helpedus tremendously. As you know how
inaccurate Meta and Googletracking is, yeah, on the actual
numbers is, we started workingwith the app called Little data,
and we can actually control whatdata is getting sent to them. So
(14:08):
say, if we have a draft ordercome through that my guys are,
you know, typing into Shopify,it's meta is not going to take
credit for that anymore. Yeah.
So we're able to very, veryclean up a lot of our
information, which is been apain, pain point for us for a
long time.
Andrew Maff (14:26):
Yeah, attribution is a it's going to be a pain for
the foreseeable future. I knowlittle data. I know there's a
couple others out there thatkind of do, like server side
data adjustments and kind of canhelp with that. And then I know
there's like, I won't say them,because I won't say too many
nice things about them. But thenthere's, you have the other ones
(14:47):
that are, like attributiontrackers, and the more like just
glorified UTM
Jason Murff (14:48):
I have the same feeling. So yeah, you're good.
Andrew Maff (14:53):
Yeah, you know, on the influencer thing, like, as
an agency, we do it, and it's toyour point, like, if you can do
it internally. You shoulddefinitely do it internally.
What we've always done from aUGC side, if we don't already
have, like, a bank of certaininfluencers to work with,
there's especially from a UGCperspective, there's so many
different platforms out therebetween like trend IO and billio
(15:13):
and those types of guys. We juststart off with those to kind of
speed up the process, vet theones that we like, and then we
just start talking to a mothplatform and start to build up
the library. From there, itmakes it so much quicker, so
much easier, cool. So, allright, so you, you we got into
the paid ad side. We got intosome of that. Any issues with
(15:33):
the tariff side? Did that end upbecoming a problem on your end?
Jason Murff (15:36):
Some fluctuation.
You know, all of our stuff ismade here, you know, we blend
our seasonings. Here we bottleeverything. Here we do have a
few items that are madeoverseas, like our thermometers,
our heat resistant gloves, but alot of people don't know that,
like all of your garlic andblack pepper primarily come from
China. So thankfully, we try tobuy everything in mass
(15:57):
quantities to lock in prices,and then we're able to blend
into smaller batches, keep goodquality, uh, you know, good
quality stuff. But yeah, um, aswe were preparing for this q4 we
have gotten some hits on tariffsthat we've kind of had to adjust
things and schedule some thingsout for that.
Andrew Maff (16:15):
Yeah, yeah, I had a feeling, although I guess it's
good that you got, you got yougot ahead of it, so you're in a
good spot. There anything thatyou like? Pre prepare for going
into q4 now that you've kind oflocked and loaded on inventory?
Jason Murff (16:28):
Yeah. So we're actually we have a pretty
sophisticated system to wheremost of all of our marketing is
all automated. So we'll actuallybuild out email and SMS flows
based off of a segment and auser's interaction to where we
will schedule those flows to beable to kick off on a certain
(16:48):
date. So it's pretty much handsfree. So currently, right now,
we're finishing out building allof the flow charts for it so our
team can fully understand it andthen finalize all of our offers
and be able to implement thatour goal for this year, and
we've been able to achieve itfor the most part this year, is
we're staying a quarter ahead onall of our marketing.
Andrew Maff (17:09):
You should, you should do a talk on this. It's
ridiculous. How many like So,for those of you that are
listening, it's August. It's midlate, ish, August right now, by
the time this goes out, I thinkwe're into, like, mid September,
like, it blows my mind. How manybrands don't even think or look
at q4 until, like, September,October. So it's awesome that
(17:33):
you're in August and you'realready planned, pretty much
through the end of the year.
Jason Murff (17:37):
I mean, the biggest thing that, like a lot of people
don't realize is, you know, yourwin back and your warm ups are
your main thing to kick off theholiday season, yeah, because
you have all so many potentialcustomers that you've been
paying for for q1 through q3that you have their information
like, get them to convert, andyou don't want to get them to
(17:58):
convert, you know, a week beforeBlack Friday, Cyber Monday, and
then the rest of the holidayseason. So it's like, you know,
we're sending out stuff,September, October, to these
lists, and we're getting someonelike yourself. Like, hey,
Andrew, I know that you checkedout our stuff, but I want to
offer you a free sample pack.
All you have to do is pay forthe shipping and handling.
You're like, All right, yeah,cool. I'll get six flavors for
(18:19):
five bucks, no worries. And thennow we can put product in your
hand. You get to cook with it,see the quality of it. And I've
also looped you into a newsegment that is going to trigger
a flow for a pre Black Friday,then Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
extended. All that fun stuff.
Andrew Maff (18:36):
That's awesome.
That's genius. Yeah, there's awe do something similar. How
would that work? So usually whatwe start telling brands, like,
like, not really July, butpretty much August, September,
we say, from an advertisingperspective, like, now is the
time to really focus, like, topof funnel, like, start to
educate the new, new people,because come q4 it's expensive
(18:57):
as hell, and you're not going toget anything. And it's, it just
doesn't work out, and it's wayless expensive to go middle of
funnel. So you could even takethat do, like a Meta ad through
like a lead form, and just blastit out to new people of like,
completely free try it, youknow, free shipping kind of
thing. And then maybe even leadwith one of the UGC videos you
got that you actually liked andjust retarget people that
(19:19):
watched what, like 50 pluspercent of it kind of thing.
Yeah, I love that you'reactually doing it. It's it never
ceases to amaze me how manybrands don't touch anything for
q4 until they're in q4 and itjust blows my mind. Or they have
the problem where they do nopreparation for q1 until q1 and
by then, because they're like,Oh, we just want to get through
(19:39):
q4 and then it's like, you spentall this money acquiring these
customers in q4 what are youwhat are you doing?
Jason Murff (19:45):
Yeah. And I mean, I'm not gonna like, I didn't
know that right off the bat, soit took me a few years to get
all this kind of, one of thebiggest movers for us last year
and this year, is actuallydirect mail marketing that's
been our highest ROI to datethat we've ever had. I mean,
we've had some postcards thathave gone out that have gotten
(20:07):
us close to, you know, like a 32ROAS which is insane.
Andrew Maff (20:12):
Yeah, I've heard we've done a little bit of it.
It's really hard, from an agencyperspective, to explain to
brands like, just try it, butthere's not as much competition
in the mailbox anymore. There'smore competition in email inbox.
So it's like you've actually canreally stand out, especially if
you get kind of creative withit. So that's pretty cool. How
(20:33):
often are you doing that?
Jason Murff (20:35):
So what we've actually done is we've done a
couple testing to where,basically we match what our
email flows are going to be. Soas soon as someone finishes
going through a flow, if wehadn't gotten that person to
trigger, then we're going tostart post card. And then we do,
typically, one campaign at leastevery six to eight weeks. And
(20:57):
then we will do, like a massive,obviously, campaign towards the
end of the year q4 we also dosite match and mail match to
where we can scrub your IPaddress to be able to get a home
address. And then, if we haveyour email address, we can use
their data to figure out a goodhome address for you on that for
like, new leads. And then, Imean, even we had, we had one
(21:19):
that was getting close to 12ROAS, where we were just sending
out a postcard that had a QRcode for a free meal prep guide
in January for q1 like, hey,let's kick this year off great,
you can eat barbecue and stayhealthy and fit. And so we're
just giving them something free,and it just happens to be on
that landing page for that free,downloadable, you know, PDF, the
(21:43):
box of ass. Now they can get allthe seasonings that are featured
inside of this, you know, mealprep guide, in one box.
Andrew Maff (21:51):
That's great. Who are you using? I imagine,
because they pilot, integratewith post pilot. Okay, yes, I
know there's a few of them outthere, so I didn't know. I knew
they integrated with Klaviyo. Ididn't know they were integrated
with omnisend. Now, that's makesa lot of sense.
Jason Murff (22:05):
Yeah, and they their CSMs that they have on
accounts are amazing and 100%worth it.
Andrew Maff (22:10):
Cool. And this episode's not sponsored by them
now, although maybe it will be.
Reach out!Jason, this was great. I really
appreciate your time. I knowyou're super busy. I don't want
to take up too much more yourtime. I would love to give you
the opportunity here leteveryone know they can find out
more about you, and, of course,more about Grill Your Ass Off.
Jason Murff (22:29):
Yeah, so everything, all social media is
just going to be Grill Your AssOff. You search for it, you'll
be able to find us. It's thedonkey sitting on the grill. If
you want to get a hold of medirect. It's just Jason Muff on
Instagram, Facebook. I jump onLinkedIn every once a while, but
most of it's all spam, so don'texpect your fast response if you
reach out to me on there. So butthank you again for this. I'm
(22:50):
looking forward to hopefullydoing it again and then go in
some deeper dives and some funmarketing stuff.
Andrew Maff (22:55):
Love it. We'll be here. Jason, thank you so much
for being on the show.
Obviously, everyone that tunedin. Thank you as well. Please
make sure you do the usualthing, rate review, subscribe
all that fun stuff on whicheverpodcast platform you prefer, or
head over to the ECommshow.comto check out all of our previous
episodes as usual, we'll see youall next time, have a good one!
Narrator (23:15):
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over
to ecommshow.com to subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform
or on the BlueTusker YouTubechannel. The Ecomm show is
brought to you by BlueTusker, afull service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
(23:37):
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the E comm show!
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