Start and Scale Review (Gretta Van Riel Course)

Well, seeing how everyone signed into this waiting list is bound to it for a good while (high five?), we might as well go into the content and see if it’s worth your money or not.

Right now, the only option is to wait until she releases her course again, but I’ve never understood why people just have to wait for so long before reopening. If a course is good, wouldn’t it be better just to have people signing up all the time?

Anyways, I managed to access the course thanks to a buddy just recently, so let’s dive into it and find out if it’s actually worth its price, let along waiting for it.

While it was priced at $547, you can bet that price will increase after the wait is over.

Waiting isn’t optimal for running a business

Let’s face it: waiting before taking a course is frustrating, and if you’re just anxious to start dropshipping right away, then it’s better to just go for a course that’s readily available.

First off, you’ll get dozens of offers from the Foundr site while you wait unless you give up your position on the queue.

That’s not the worst part. Online businesses are all about hitting trends first and building your venture and brand as quickly as possible. The more you wait, the more your desired niches become saturated, and the more likely you are to having to just settle for a subpar product.

About the author

Gretta is an Australian entrepreneur claiming to be an expert in social media marketing, and she owns the Hey Influencers platform, dedicated solely to networking through fellow influencers.

I’m not sure why someone with such vast experience in marketing and using social media is launching a course about eCommerce instead of going for her strengths.

Right off the bat, you might have seen her statement about starting out with just $20. However, once you get into the actual content, you see how she had to pay for others to design the logos and more, which at least would’ve costed her a few hundreds.

You need money if you want to grow a successful business. Don’t fall for people who just says the things you want to hear.

Reviewing Start And Scale Course

The course splits into 6 modules with 38 videos in total, all featuring Gretta. There are also 16 workbooks you can access, and they summarize the videos.

Students can access expert coaches with the course as well, but the information is a bit limited, and there’s also the standard Facebook group with all the students.

Finally, there are some discount codes, which mostly are affiliate links from Gretta, so look up reviews before taking her word for them.

Unlike most courses, this one is built on ClickFunnels instead of Teachables, so the videos look good regardless of which device you’re using.

Buying the course at its initial launch means you only have access to one module every week, so you’ll have to wait 6 weeks before getting the entire content. With just 38 videos, it’s really annoying to wait so long, especially considering how quick the world moves.

Niche research

The first module offers 5 videos about figuring out the products you want to sell. It’s mostly basic, and it skips tools that make the entire process much easier.

These videos are focused on coming up with a central idea, confirming it works, and figuring out your ideal customer’s profile for it before validating whether or not it’s a good idea.

It’s a fairly basic introduction to niche selection, but it’s a bit interesting if you don’t know anything about the concept.

Branding

The second module goes right into branding, and I strongly disapprove that approach. I understand that social media marketing can be all about building your brand, and Gretta is a social media expert, but you still haven’t put your idea to the test.

Building your brand from the get-go isn’t a good idea. The best approach is to build your brand around good products that you can actually sell.

That’s why so many authors advise you to start off with a general store or even a single-product one. You need to test your market and figure out which products sell the best before you create your brand and scale it.

However, selling a course centered around branding is easier; most beginners fall for it being the best idea, yet that nearly always results in people making nothing but having some of the best-looking brands in the market.

Anyway, the videos here cover how to choose the name of your brand, coming up with your logo, and setting up your domain before going into how to create your store from an over-the-shoulder perspective.

Finding products

This is the part where you find suppliers and turn your idea and brand into listings.

It was nice to see Gretta covering both international and local suppliers, unlike many other courses. Gretta is from Australia, but there’s content here for both the US and China, so you don’t have to be based in Australia for this to work for you.

The videos explain how to reach out and negotiate with buyers, how you can place orders, dealing with the packaging process, and how to deliver your products. There’s also some content about dorpshipping your products, pricing them on your website, and coming up with products of your own.

It’s a good module, but it could’ve used a bit more content.

Audience building

OK, this module made me laugh: my favorite video here recommends you to create a waiting list to create anticipation and buzz around your offer and make a good amount once it goes live. I’m 100% sure I’ve seen this applied somewhere, but I can’t quite remember…

It’s exactly what’s she’s doing with THIS course.

I really haven’t heard about that being a profitable strategy, though –at least not for making a significant amount of money. Most eCommerce stores simply don’t have the reputation when they’re just starting out.

There are some videos about preparing yourself and your store for its release, using influencers, and some basics on social media marketing.

Store launch

This continues where the last module left off. It shows you how to work with payments through credit card and PayPal, how to create a help desk for customers, and it closes with how you can hire virtual assistants for automation so that you can dedicate yourself to scaling your business.

There’s also a launch checklist for you to use,

Scaling

The final module focuses on optimizing your store and building on your success. This also includes the first mention of Facebook Ads, which baffled me seeing how Gretta is an expert on this field and how critical it is for your business.

You’ll also learn about retargeting and last video explains warehousing, but it’s something you don’t need to consider just yet.

Bonuses

This is another course claiming its bonuses are worth thousands but still offering a few things you can find for free on the internet or in less expensive courses.

First, you have a video showing an interview with Alex Tomic and Nik Mirkovic, from HiSmile. You’ve probably seen them advertising their brand through Instagram. The interview shows them explaining how they developed their brand from scratch.

Second, you have a few scripts you can copy and paste to contact influencers. There are some other scripts, like one for your email marketing campaign and others for recovering abandoned carts.

A small observation: don’t copy and paste them. Everyone taking this course is probably doing the same, so it’s best to use them as inspiration for writing your own scripts.

Thirdly, there’s a mini-course on Instagram and Facebook Ads. However, this feels really awkward since Gretta never really mentioned paid traffic sources, and the only Facebook Ads mention was in the very last module.

I don’t know why these weren’t added on the main body of the course, yet they’re still very basic, so it’s definitely a huge disappointment from a seeming social media marketing expert like Gretta.

The last bonus is a voucher you can give to someone else so they can join the private Facebook group and take part in its conversations. Keep in mind that this means she can double the number of members on her Facebook group, growing its popularity.

So she really has some nice tricks under her sleeve. Too bad she didn’t really teach any of them in this course,

Facebook group

The Facebook group is quite active and crowded. There are several thousand members since its release, and it was a bit above the 5,000 mark when I joined.

There are also regular posts every day, so it’s a nice place to see insight and comments from other people or to solve any doubts you might have after taking the course.

Do keep in mind that there are probably people who never took the course thanks to the voucher, so be critical with the answers you receive when posting any inquiry.

Refunds

The refunds policy is fairly straightforward, thankfully. You only need to show that you completed the training but it didn’t work out for your business. You have 60 days to do so, and it’s a full refund.

It’s a simple policy, and it offers a pretty huge time window unlike other courses available today. However, you need to consider that you’re might be receiving this course as 1 module every 6 weeks, so you’re killing a lot of time just waiting.

There’s also no information whether the refund is going to be equal when it relaunches.

Final Verdict

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my Start And Scale Review and I wish you the best of luck.