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Guest: Dennis Mistrioty

Release Date: 10/9/2023

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta  : We all know what CBD is. It’s a supplement right? But how has it grown? How is the hemp plant used from soil to sale in order to create the largest grossing supplement year over here? We discuss this mushroom supplements, SEO tactics and other important wellness marketing techniques in this episode.

Steve Washuta  : Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and well I’m your host Steve Washuta, co founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101. On today’s episode I interviewed Dennis Mr. God of batch, we talked about CBD supplements.

Steve Washuta  : We talked about mushroom based supplements. We’ve talked about SEO tactics, a little bit of everything was a fantastic conversation. I do want to reiterate here I had a conversation with Dr. Chris Swart about the endocannabinoid system.

Steve Washuta  :  So if you’re confused about all the things CBD does, you want to go back and listen to that podcast to really get the science behind it. Because today it’s a little bit less sciency and more on the marketing approach and what I call the the soil to sale approach, how do you take this from the soil and get it out onto the shelves to sell? What does that process like? It was a really interesting conversation.

Steve Washuta  : Again, to find more about Dennis and his company go to Hello batch.com. With no further ado, here’s Dennis mystery OD and myself, Dennis, thank you so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast, why don’t you give my listeners and audience a little background on who you are, and what you and your company do in the health and fitness and wellness landscape?

Dennis Mistrioty  : Yeah, sounds good. Appreciate the introduction. My name is Dennis, I’m the co founder of a company called batch. And batch is kind of twofold. One, it is a wellness supplement company that is rooted in hemp and CBD, but has since ventured into other natural wellness products.

Dennis Mistrioty :  And the other side of that business is we are a men a farm to table manufacturer basically. So from the hemp farm in the case of our CBD products, to the extraction to the bottling, to fulfilling your orders to the customer service.

Dennis Mistrioty :  We do all of that in house. And we service all of those things for batch. But we also happen to do that for dozens of other companies. So we actually contract manufacturer for a lot of other wellness brands and make products that even we may not offer under batch.

Dennis Mistrioty : But anyways, the company as a whole kind of has that full supply chain, vertical integration kind of gives us an intimate understanding of where all of our products come from and how they work.

Steve Washuta  : That’s great. And I think because of that, we’re gonna have a lot of questions, basically, from the start of the process to the end of the process, right? What would I call from soil to sale? And how that goes not not only from the CBD based products, but from I guess your mushroom based supplements?

Steve Washuta  : What what’s I’m really intrigued about, I’m also going to ask you a bunch of questions about your marketing and your SEO and things of that nature. But I want to first go backwards. I don’t think you said but you are located in Wisconsin is that for a reason?

Steve Washuta  : Are the laws different there from selling CBD supplements and they are in the rest of the country? Are you just based there? Because that’s where you’re from originally?

Dennis Mistrioty : Short answer is that is where we’re from originally. However, with all that said it has been quite nice being here, because we have a really, really good hemp farm. Wisconsin’s very suitable for hemp production.

Dennis Mistrioty : Funny story is that you know, before the hemp prohibition, Wisconsin was actually the nation’s leading producer of hemp now, the hemp that was being grown at that time, was grown 12 feet tall and used for, you know, paper, textiles, etc.

Dennis Mistrioty : And right now we’re virtually growing marijuana plants that don’t have THC in them. But it’s kind of a fun fact, nonetheless. So it’s served us very well. Our entire team is here, and we’re all under one roof. So from a business perspective, it’s been good, but we have no recreational or medical cannabis, here and marijuana.

Dennis Mistrioty : So actually starting the business here was we were kind of like on an island of information on our own, which was a blessing and a curse. I suppose it allowed us to separate ourselves within Wisconsin, but also we didn’t have a lot of resources of information around us.

Steve Washuta  : But it does sound like you, you were at a you know, an advantage just by pure luck, right? So if you were in, let’s say southern Texas, like probably the soil and the temperature might not be the right for for growing those individual hemp plants. Is that correct?

Dennis Mistrioty : Absolutely. Yeah. It has served us very, very well. And we have almost no environmental hurdles when it comes to the growing.

Steve Washuta : Yeah, that’s a big, big advantage here. So I’m going to actually go to a virtual question here. First a business question and then we’ll get into everything. I went on your website and I noticed you have a prompt box on your website that pops up with your video you talking.

Steve Washuta :  In the bottom right corner? I’ve seen chatbots I’ve seen a million different options. I’ve never seen that before. Is that was this your idea? Is this a company that reached out to you How exactly did you go back that prompt box that had your video on it?

Dennis Mistrioty  : Yeah, I absolutely love that. It’s called Tolstoi. It was our idea, we were not approached by it. And the reason we sought it out, I actually saw it on a different website. And I asked the owner, what is that software, I think this would be perfect for us. And there’s more of that to come.

Dennis Mistrioty : And you know, our brand, what makes us different in the CBD industry, but hopefully also the wellness industry. And you could even say supplement industry is we’re not going to launch a product that we don’t know, well ourselves.

Dennis Mistrioty : And we don’t know the source of that product and how it’s made. And especially as it pertains the hemp products, we are hands on from the planting of those seeds all the way to your doorstep. And we have that unique ability to show that, and especially in this industry, I think there are a lot of things that are hidden behind closed doors when they don’t need to be.

Dennis Mistrioty :  There’s still a lot of mystique, to hemp and cannabis and sometimes natural wellness in general. And so we kind of take it upon ourselves to show customers how it’s all done. This is where we grow the ham, this is how we extract it, we make it right here, we’re the people answering answering your questions.

Dennis Mistrioty :  So reach out, and we will engage with you, you can become part of our focus group etc. And so we really try to create that human connection with our customers, because I feel like a lot of the supplement or natural wellness space is a little bit faceless. And there’s so much to show. So because we have the ability to that’s kind of a unique way for us to do that.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, I think that’s a great you know, marketing technique, especially like you said, there’s, there’s so many of these things that are faceless, or you hop on, you don’t know exactly who you’re talking to, you’re talking to some chatbot, you don’t know where they’re working from and what they’re doing.

Steve Washuta  : And because it’s kind of an unregulated market, in a sense. Trust is so important, if that makes sense, right? So like, we know that exactly, like the FDA isn’t like overviewing this and how do I know that your CBD product is better than the next person, CBD product? How do I even know that the proper chemicals are in this product, and I can’t do anything about it.

Steve Washuta  : If I order it and it doesn’t work, there’s nothing in there and I send it off to a third party lab. I can’t sue you. So it’s the trust factor, the trust the know, like and trust factor is really big in that industry.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Exactly. And that’s, that’s exactly it is, you know, nobody is making us do the things that we do. Nobody’s making us self regulate ourselves for good manufacturing practices, traceability, et cetera. But we do that anyways. And the best thing that we can do is just show you that firsthand.

Steve Washuta  : And I think that’s also what you know, we better be producing a damn good product, we’re gonna have our face on the website talking because we have a problem, you know, who to look at now. And so I think that’s another element to that trust.

Dennis Mistrioty :  You know, if you go we’ve all been to certain websites, where you’re just not sure if you’re going to be scammed. And there’s, there’s no human element to it. And so, because we’re proud of the work that we do, we’re like, well, let’s just put it out there. We know what we’re doing.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, I mean, if there’s some hidden third party LLC that you never find out about, if their company goes to funk, try it and goes to fault and they there they are selling nothing but garbage. You never find out, right? They, they escaped clean, they go start another company in another industry.

Steve Washuta  :They rinse and repeat this process and try to burn people as opposed to if you have your face on this company, literally, then everyone knows that you and now you have to be held accountable, because there’ll be nowhere to run to you’ll be known as the person who screwed people over for the for the rest of eternity.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, it’s, you know, obviously, everybody doesn’t, they need to make some money and provide for themselves, but that just wouldn’t be fun to us. So we’re doing this because we want to be doing it.

Dennis Mistrioty :  We make the products as good as we can because we use them ourselves. And so that’s why it makes this whole thing kind of serendipitous to be able to show off what we do while making products that we enjoy.

Steve Washuta  :  Before we go into more of the soil sale process. I do want to take one small step back we did an entire episode on the Endocannabinoid process and CBD but for our listeners who didn’t listen to that, give me just a little bit of background in science about like the demographic the people who would be using CBD why they would be using it and what like what your customer looks like.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Yeah, it is what our customer look like is extremely diverse. So CBD derived from the hemp plant it is non intoxicating, unlike THC, which is a more common cannabinoid molecule which is produced in abundance by the marijuana plant. CBD is is abundant in the hemp plant nonintoxicating like I said, despite being non intoxicating, it does have a wide range of health potential.

Dennis Mistrioty  : What is mostly purchased for is for sleep, stress, anxiety, relaxation, I put that kind of in a bucket, and then pain and inflammation The way that those products can be delivered are generally either an ingestible product like a gummy, a oil or a capsule, or a topical product, like a cream, a lotion, a bomb, the topicals can be used for either skin, or topical relief, inflammation, that is generally what they’ll purchase for there are a lot of other nuanced things more medically specific things that people take CBD for, that I won’t bother getting into.

Dennis Mistrioty :  But generally that is our customer base. And what’s funny is, you know, as being an online company, our age ranges literally from you know, 2018, all the way up to 65. Plus, and the we don’t have the our customer base isn’t abundantly in that 65 plus category, but the ones that are have the longest purchase history. So it’s more of an access problem, but I think they that group can benefit tremendously from these products.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, I as a personal trainer, who focused specifically on that population for a long period of time, I had a lot of my seniors who would use the transdermal CBD products for joint pain and inflammation, and as opposed to the younger population seem to be more of the gummies for sleep. The older populations seem to be more of the you know, arthritic joint pain, transdermal.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Absolutely. From being in this industry. It’s really crazy. I’ve learned that everybody has trouble sleeping, it seems like I mean, not literally everybody, but I was stunned with how many people have trouble sleeping or at least occasional issues with sleep.

Steve Washuta  :  Yeah, it’s, we’ve had conversations about this on this podcast, a lot of times it’s not even physiological. You know, it’s it’s psychological, it can be anxiety, they’re, they’re going to bed without sort of turning their mind off. So they can actually, they can actually get to sleep. But this the CBD, I’ve taken the gummies before and found that useful.

Steve Washuta  : I don’t have problems sleeping. So I’m not a good like sort of, you know, test candidate here. But I did feel like it was equivalent to almost like a Benadryl type aspect where I just became calmer and eased into sleep at a faster pace than I would absolutely,

Dennis Mistrioty : yeah, that’s kind of how I describe it to you know, some people worry as they should with taking a new supplement. And it’s not sedating in any way. I always say it, you know, it helps you go to sleep voluntarily, better, but like, if you want to take it in the middle of the day.

Dennis Mistrioty : it’s not like, it’s not like you’re going to be you know, holding on to the railing trying to stay awake or anything like that. It’s not like this powerful, sedating drugs, not even like melatonin. But it does help you relax quite a bit.

Steve Washuta  : So what is your I think this is going to help us paint a picture for me and my audience. What is your day like, or someone’s day, from start to finish as far as like analyzing the product? Like, are you going to the fields and being like, okay, everything looks good, the soil looks good, the plants look good. And then like those, those plants get taken out, and then they get moved to like a secondary facility, just walk me through the actual start from picking the plan to it being produced and sold.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Absolutely. So my office, where most of our team is, is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, our farm is about three hours north. And being in this industry five years later, we do not need to micromanage the farm as much we have farmers up there that manage everything, water it day to day and manage all the harvest.

Dennis Mistrioty : So early on, when we were like inventing our process, we were much more hands on to that. And now that the process is created, we can trust and we just kind of do some video, video calls to check in on everything. But what that process looks like is we plant seeds. In the throughout the entire field. We do several about 10 acres, but 1000 plants an acre in the spring, and we harvest in the fall.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Most of that growing period is simply watering the plants and pulling any male plants that pop up. Because we’re only harvesting female plans. Meal Plans run the risk of pollinating the field. And if they pollinate the field, the energy of the plant goes into making more seeds rather than cannabinoids or chemistry.

Dennis Mistrioty : So anyways, that’s basically what happens on the day to day on the field. We harvest we hang all the plants up in a barn to dry. In again this is at the farm. We shuck only the buds from the hemp plant and we because that’s where all the chemistry is held, and then it is delivered to our facility once it’s delivered to our facility now that how bins, basically once a year, because there’s one grow season.

Dennis Mistrioty :  And when it’s delivered to our facility, we then extract all of the oils from that hemp biomass. What that looks like, is we use what’s called a cold ethanol extraction. And we use foodgrade. ethanol, ethanol kinda is like a scary word sometimes, but it’s really not at all it’s a lot of botanical extracts are made using cold ethanol washes.

Dennis Mistrioty :  But all you do is you basically soak the plants in ethanol, and that extracts all of the chemistry from it, and then you distill off the ethanol, and you can use it over and over again. And, you know, we do solvent analysis after every batch to make sure that all of it is removed from the extract.

Dennis Mistrioty : And what you’re left with is this rich, full spectrum oil, it’s extremely thick and extremely potent and concentrated, you would never consumed that directly, that would be way to probably fall, and also just too strong. But that extract is the secret ingredient that basically powers all of our hemp derived products, all of our CBD products.

Dennis Mistrioty : So that gets mixed into gummies, oils, topicals, etc. And that extract is basically the full representation of the hemp plant from which it is derived. So having good genetics and strong growing practices, organic growing practices are what are going to lead to that high quality extract.

Dennis Mistrioty :  A lot of CBD products out there will actually isolate the CBD out of that extract. We do not do that we believe that while CBD is the poster child, all of the nutrients and cannabinoids working together in that extract are really what the magic is in this industry. So anyways, that is what the production process looks like we bottle we bottle everything right there under one roof, and we ship directly to customers doorstep.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Now you asked about my day to day, my day to day isn’t necessarily doing each one of those steps anymore. Now that the process is in place. Most of what I do is on the customer side, the branding side. Lot of SEO side stuff like that.

Steve Washuta : So do you mark it on purpose that you don’t take all of those other cannabinoids out and that you want the synergistic effect that could maybe only happen if you leave them in there is that like a big like marketing push by you guys to say like these other companies are actually doing this, which is going to give you a less effective CBD.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Yeah, definitely. And I. So it’s referred to as the entourage effect. In this industry, the entourage effect is referred to as the term use for this synergistic effect in the hemp industry. And we do market that because our brand is really about the integrity of that plant.

Dennis Mistrioty : And so I don’t want to say that by isolating CBD, or filtering out some of these cannabinoids, that you’re, you know that you’re left with a pile of garbage, because you’re not you’re you still have this powerful molecule working for you. It’s just not as much our brand philosophy. And you know, because we make a lot of these other brands as well.

Dennis Mistrioty : We get to see and try firsthand, the, you will not feel it as much. There’s plain and simple now, it might taste a little bit better, you can maybe make it smell and taste like your favorite candy. It’s going to be in a nice clear oil. There’s 0.0 thc.

Dennis Mistrioty : So maybe if you’re worried about having that trace amount of THC, you do not need to worry about that when you isolate CBD, that’s all fine. But as far as pure effectiveness, the full spectrum product is superior. And I think most people would agree with that. And so that’s just because our brand is kind of effect forward. That’s just how we make all of our products.

Steve Washuta :  I’m a bit naive to this. So feel free to correct me if wherever I’m wrong here, but the terpenes and marijuana isn’t that what makes it smell? Do they have terpenes as well? Is there a specific smell to the CBD that the average person doesn’t know?

Dennis Mistrioty :  Yeah, absolutely. So terpenes are aromatic compounds that actually give cannabis their unique Express effect. So you know, just to make the more relatable comparison to like marijuana. If you ever hear the word indica or sativa.

Dennis Mistrioty : Or, you know, maybe somebody says this strain makes me sleepy and this strain makes me giggly and hungry or whatever it may be the same are present in hemp strains, but because we’re not getting high in this case, the effects are a little bit different. But they are we have chosen a strain that is kind of holistic.

Dennis Mistrioty : It’s not particularly sleepy or uplifting. It’s what we consider somewhat full bodied. But yeah, those are all in there and preserving those I think also gives a more rich experience. And so if You were to isolate cannabinoids, you would also be removing all of the terpenes as well.

Steve Washuta :  Let’s move on to some of your mushroom products here. Those are really interesting. Can you talk about the benefits of mushroom based supplements? And then the types of mushrooms that you use? And maybe the differences in what each mushroom does from a, you know, from from the body perspective?

Dennis Mistrioty : Yeah, totally. So functional mushrooms are really fascinating. I’ll start by saying, you know, we wanted to launch a product that was outside of CBD. And we also wanted to launch a product that could help with focus and concentration.

Dennis Mistrioty : o the one product that you’re referring to, that we have launched right now is our brain boost mushroom gummies, which are essentially a, it’s a focus cognition product. And so when we set off to produce this product, we, again wanted to make a product that was natural of the Earth, but also very effective.

Dennis Mistrioty : And we didn’t know much about functional mushrooms at the time. But when we started developing this and trying it and entering it into our focus groups, to see if it actually worked in something that we could launch, I was stunned at how effective it is, and the results that we have received since launching it, particularly for a little bit for energy, but more so for that focus.

Dennis Mistrioty :  Cognition in a way that’s very different from coffee, coffee energizes you and can, or caffeine. Some people can make them a little jittery or anxious, this is more comparable to a calm energy. But anyways, the the mushrooms that we use in that product, are Lion’s Mane Cordyceps and Reishi. Lion’s Mane is kind of the hero product, or the hero ingredient in that product, and is most known for its cognitive effects.

Dennis Mistrioty : People say it can help with dementia, immunity, etc. Cortisol is most commonly known for its ability to for energy, and even sometimes it’s used for athletic performance. And then Rishi is another kind of immune support product also can help with energy levels, we put those three together, and it has been absolutely tremendous for us so far.

Dennis Mistrioty : I mean, really, we have customers from, you know, older people that are dealing with maybe some brain fog or memory issues to people that just want to lock in at work or maybe even replace their prescribed focus products, focus drugs sometimes. Now obviously, I have no ability to recommend doing that. But that is generally what they’ve been used for.

Steve Washuta  : Are you also growing those mushrooms? How does that process work from again, from soil to sale?

Dennis Mistrioty : Great question. I wish we were but no, that’s, that’s one of those things where the mushroom industry, unlike the hemp industry has been around for literally forever. You know, they’ve been even using ancient medicine. And so there was no point of us to reinvent the wheel. Not to mention, I don’t know that we could even grow these mushrooms in Wisconsin.

Dennis Mistrioty : So ultimately, what we did is we partnered and got close with a foragers that outdoor grow organic, growing, everything that aligns with our brand, looked at their extraction process and basically source the raw extracts from them, and then went back to our normal playbook of implementing them into the products that we offer.

Steve Washuta : Is this a competitive market? I do know a few other like big box brands that sell these. I’ve taken all three of these and I know that the reishi mushroom a lot of times it’s in Chem Bucha certain brands, I’ve taken Lion’s Mane two and quarter steps from other brands like on it and some of these Yeah, but it’s just a very competitive market. Are you guys feel like you’re on the ground floor here?

Dennis Mistrioty  : You know, we seem to love being in competitive markets because we’re in CBD right now, which is as competitive as it can possibly get. So for us, it seems a lot less competitive. I would say by no means is this an untapped wide open industry right now. But I think the I think there’s still a lot of it is still relatively ground floor.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  I think a lot of the buzz is coming from the mushroom coffee industry like mud, water and rise and some of those brands are doing a really good job and kind of like I described it is a it’s not like coffee, it doesn’t feel like coffee, but it is a potential substitute for and so that’s kind of the market that those brands have captured. But us you know, we’re already making gummies and so this fits well into our brand.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  I think there’s still a lot of opportunity and also, you know, those are three You functional mushrooms have several other popular ones. And I feel like several yet to be discovered. So I think mushroom wellness is going to continue to evolve and become very popular. And I don’t know as much as there is to know about it. But I do look forward to future research and future mushroom strains to be discovered

Steve Washuta  : while staying on that topic, and you don’t have to divulge company secrets here. But I would imagine you have to get ahead of these trends sometimes like, do you guys actively try to research to say like, Okay, is there some other sort of plant based medicine that is either trending or that we can get ahead of to see if we could add a, you know, a third product? Is this? Or is there something that you know about that seems to be coming down the pipe?

Dennis Mistrioty  :  Absolutely. And we hold no secrets, I’ll tell you anything you need to know. But the main way that we do that is generally using our SEO tools. So if you want to be specific SEMrush H refs are generally the two in the industry, you know, for SEO research, and really what we’re looking at is search volume, what are people searching in the wellness space?

Dennis Mistrioty  : Seeing if there’s any trending upward trending searches? Like more recently, we’ve, what was the it was chlorophyll drops, we noticed are getting very popular for detoxing internal deodorant, etc. So we can make any sea

Steve Washuta  : seaweed, seaweed as well.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  Yes, exactly. So you know, we see those and in search volume and try to get ahead of them. We also try to consult with people in in the wellness industry, and let them know, hey, is there anything you’re hearing, or have them, let us know if there’s anything that they’re hearing about? That seems to be gaining in popularity, and then we will go do our keyword analysis after the fact.

Dennis Mistrioty  : And then when it comes time to act on it, you know, we try our best not to just jump on a fad or a trend, we try to only launch things that genuinely work. So we will first iterate a product, try it ourselves, do our own research, make sure that it’s not anything that could possibly be harmful.

Dennis Mistrioty  : As long as those boxes are checked, send it out to the focus group with surveys get feedback. And if there is conclusive positive results, we’ll continue to iterate to make that product as good as we can. And if there’s mixed results, or a chance of it being maybe a little gimmicky, then we try to stay away from it, which is why I think most of the products that we launch right now are products that you can feel.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  That’s not to say that, you know, if you were to take vitamin C or something, nothing wrong with that. It’s just not as much our identity. But anyways, that’s how we kind of stay on top of these wellness trends is mostly just see what people are searching for.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, I also rather have a company have do two or three things, right? It’s like, it’s like when you go to like cheesecake factory and they give you 600 items on a menu. It’s like, well, I know you don’t do any of these. Well, and I know most of these have to be in the freezer, if you have 600 things on your menu, right? I’d rather go to a Italian restaurant that doesn’t eat dishes, because I know you do. Well, it’s probably fresh.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Yeah, exactly. And it allows you to really give dedication to iterating. That and developing that product, it is one of the most fun things about our company is really diving deep into like right now we’re making an energy gummy, with a little bit of caffeine in it.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  Unlike the focus gummy, this one’s more energy gummy, we’re trying to make it for fitness purposes and for movement. And you know, we’re using green tea extract for the caffeine and a few other ingredients. And it’s really hard to make, because caffeine is very bitter, and put it in a small gummy and make it taste good is very difficult.

Dennis Mistrioty  : But we also don’t want to compromise on the effects. And we’ve been working on this singular product for a couple of months. And we’re so close to having it ready. But point is it’s it’s fun to really give that attention to the product, make it just right, and be proud of it when you actually release it and be confident that people are going to enjoy it.

Steve Washuta  : Well, I’m sure you’ve done your market analysis. But I will say that fitness people in general are a little bit easier to deal with as far as taste is concerned, because we’ve been eating nasty stuff our entire lives, right?

Steve Washuta  : So we’ve been taking proteins and protein bars and all of these things with our like, and whatever it was, you know, scoops of like, no explode and things that just haven’t taste great for the entirety of our lives. So we’re we are a subset of people who are willing to take on something that doesn’t taste great.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Totally, no, and I get that and we went back and forth on that too. And, you know, we’d be like, well, it’s not that bad, but it’s kind of bad. And I think the philosophy that we ended up coming back to was, well if you’re going to make a gummy, the gummies and tastes kind of good.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  Otherwise you could just keep it in a powder the way it is. And so there’s a Reason. There’s a reason, though, that you can’t really find many of these out there on the market. So we’re like, you know what, just take our time, let’s master it. And then maybe we’ll have that thing that we haven’t seen in a while called differentiation.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, I going back to what you were talking about, talk, let’s hit on some SEO, I know that SEMrush and Ahrefs actually don’t really agree all the time, which I find interesting. So like, if I’m looking at like the domain authority or domain score of a site, it can give a 70 on on a refs, and it can give a 43 on SEMrush.

Steve Washuta : So that I always find that interesting and intriguing. I have to sort of like stick with one if I’m looking up domain authorities of sites, but how do you use it in a day to day perspective? Are you doing? Have you? Are you going into these programs and like looking up competitor sites and saying like, okay, what are my competitors doing? Is that typically how you’re using it?

Dennis Mistrioty  :  Good question. So we do a large number of things, the domain authority, I don’t care what my domain authority is, necessarily, it is what it is. I use it as reference to I use it as a reference point for other sites. What I use it for most often, though, is actually for affiliate marketing. So we have a lot of third party publications that write content about our brand.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  That being, you know, best CBD gummies in 2023, best CBD oil. What’s the difference between hemp and marijuana and a lot of these third party publications like Forbes and Healthline and Discover Magazine, etc, are writing their content about us. And in a lot of cases, they’re proposing a advertising package to us.

Dennis Mistrioty  :  And I use SEMrush as a way to evaluate the potential of that relationship. So I could just see the traffic coming to that site, the domain authority that of that site, allows me to understand what the potential is of that site to post content about us.

Dennis Mistrioty  :   Also, I absolutely use it for a competitor analysis, not only to get an understanding of how large a company is, what does that company’s audience, you know, if you can see the traffic go into their site gives you a good point of reference on their size and influence.

Dennis Mistrioty  : But also you can use it to see well, what are some of the other sites that are directing to this competitor, maybe there’s an opportunity to hop in for an affiliate relationship, if I noticed that there’s a large degree of traffic coming from a certain source to a competitor. Um, but I really do go on that use, we use sem rush mostly.

Dennis Mistrioty  : Like you said, there’s kind of like, two conflicting pieces of information sometimes, but generally add up in the same trend. And yeah, we go on that every day, I also look at our own keywords to see what we’re ranking for. We do a lot of when it comes to SEO, we do a lot of content generation, a lot of blogging, and to see which keywords are driving the most organic traffic from for our site can also be really insightful.

Steve Washuta  : Yeah, and for those who are kind of confused about this whole process, maybe I’ll give a larger, like, kind of macro picture here. You know, people think that you know, blogs are outdated. It’s like, nobody reads blogs anymore.

Steve Washuta :  That was that went out the way with MySpace, it’s like, well, I get that. But the reason why blogs are important is because you can build backlinking, which builds the domain authority of your site and to end to what is domain authority? Well, it’s essentially Google’s ranking of the legitimacy of your site and or business, right.

Steve Washuta  : So if Google says that my site and my business is allowed as a little bit more authority, I’m I’m likely to rank higher for those keywords. So when I type in, let’s say, best CBD, Dennis wants his company to come up, he wants Hello batch to be at the top of this, right? So he’s trying to rank for those keywords.

Steve Washuta  :  But but in a sense, there are certain keywords you’ll never rank for. So if you’re a fitness, if you’re a fitness professional, and you’re trying to rank for, let’s say, six pack apps, you’re not going to rank for that, right? Because the search difficulty is usually right, from one to 100. Right, the difficulty of that word is going to be like an 85. So you’re going to need 500 links to back up. So you go okay, well, let me rank for something more specific and nice.

Steve Washuta  :  I’m gonna look for six pack abs for 50 year old males, right, and then now I can have that keyword difficulty come down to a 25. And maybe the search volume is less, but I’m still more likely to rank for that specific thing. And if that’s exactly what I’m writing about, anyway, that’s what I want people to click on. So

Dennis Mistrioty  : exactly can be very high in intent when you go for those longtail nuanced keywords. And the other thing with blogging it, yes, blogging may seem outdated, but what you’re also doing is you are telling Google that you’re an expert on your topic. So domain authority is kind of like a general measure of authority.

Dennis Mistrioty  : But there’s also what’s referred to as topical authority, which doesn’t isn’t given a numerical score necessarily. But if I’m, you know, espn.com isn’t gonna rank for, you know, best stilettos or something, because they have a topical authority in sports. And so in my case, I am going to write content that answers any question anybody could have on the hemp industry, functional mushrooms, CBD, et cetera.

Dennis Mistrioty  : And then as a result of that, when I release a new piece of content, or if I launch a new product, Google is going to realize, okay, well, batch has covered all of their bases, they seem to know everything there is to know about hemp, they’re informing their customers about hemp, CBD, etc. And we are going to validate them by putting them higher in the search results.

Steve Washuta : Yeah, and just to add to that, that’s a great point. And you’re not gonna really trick the system. Of course, people always try to or it’s like, how do I get around this, but, you know, if if ESPN wants to write this article on whatever CBD or stiletto, something that they have nothing to do with.

Steve Washuta : And then I click on the article, because I see that they ranked high, because, okay, they have a high domain authority. So they showed up, I click on it, but they’re actually talking about the New York Jets, well, then I’m going to click off the article real quick. And then Google notices that I’m not actually staying on the page, right.

Steve Washuta : That gives them sort of a hit for lack of a better term, right? That’s, that’s a red flag. So so there’s no real way to beat the system. That’s why you want to have an expertise in an area where people are actually coming to read, like you’re putting out good content, you’re not just, you’re not just throwing something up there so that people click,

Dennis Mistrioty :  totally. And, you know, there’s, there’s always tips and tricks that you can do. But the longer I’ve been in SEO, the more I realize that you can’t, you can’t really trick it trick Google in the end, or if you do for a short amount of time, it’s gonna catch up, eventually, there’s no real get rich, quick hack to SEO.

Dennis Mistrioty  : And it’s, it is a tough one to implement, because it doesn’t work until it does, you know, it’s a long game, it’s not like, well, well, I’m gonna put a little bit of money into this. And then where are all my sales, it’s something you have to just water over time, and basically just put a small budget aside for.

Steve Washuta : Yeah, that’s a great point, it really is, you know, it’s actually how muffles muscle synthesis works. People don’t understand this, but it’s a light switch. So you know, if you want to be below the amount of protein that you need a day to really build muscle, but you’re right below it, you’re almost might as well have no protein, you need to get above that threshold to turn that light switch on to start building that muscle.

Steve Washuta : And people don’t understand that, right? So and it’s the same thing with SEO, it’s like it until it happens until you start ranking for those key words. And until you know, the both your niche authority and your overall authority goes up. And all these things start coming together in conjunction, then you’re you’re gonna be like, why am I doing this?

Steve Washuta : Like, what is going on here? Like, what it’s not moving the needle? It’s like, well, you don’t know it, but it’s moving the needle in the background. And the second you push past that limit, then then the then the flood comes, so to speak. Right?

Dennis Mistrioty : Right. And then once once you are over that limit, everything feels easier. And then you have you have a moat around you at that point, too. Because if anybody wants to catch up, they have to go through that same process that you just did.

Steve Washuta : That’s, that’s a great way to put it. And then also, the work you did is not unique to like one individual site, everything helps out. So if you have a blog, and you’re writing about everything to do with CBD, and mushroom and wellness products, but like the, you know, the one article you wrote on Cordyceps mushroom is your highest ranking article.

Steve Washuta :  Well, that helps everything right, that helps the entire site that helps all of your other sites. So obviously, you’re going to link you’re going to intra site blog link from that quadriceps mushroom article to the lion’s mane article. So that helps that so you know, sort of all boats rise with the rising tide, so to speak.

Dennis Mistrioty : Absolutely. Yeah, just gotta stay diligent.

Steve Washuta : Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate both of your explanation from soil, the sale and the SEO tactics when you give my listeners some insight into where they can find your products. And then

Dennis Mistrioty : absolutely, so our website is Hello, batch.com. All of our products are there all of our information about our process and video content about what I was describing earlier on seed to sale. If you want to learn more, we have a lot of cool things to check out there. Our Instagram is batch underscore by underscore WHS.

Dennis Mistrioty :  We post a lot of cool stuff there. And if you ever want to get in touch with me, I’m happy to talk to anybody. If you reach out via Instagram, DMS or just the contact page on our website, just tell them that you heard me on a podcast and you just want to get in touch or send me an email and they’ll pass you right along with me. So happy to talk and Yeah, appreciate any any inquiry.

Steve Washuta  : My guest today has been Dennis Mr. God, thank you so much for joining us Trulyfit podcast. Thank you very much

Steve Washuta :

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