Start and Scale Review: Gretta Van Riel Course Legit?

I want to talk about that in this Start and Scale review. By the time you're done reading, you will know if it's a course for you or not.

About Start and Scale

Start and Scale is an online course that has been designed to teach you how to build an eCommerce business from scratch. This includes learning how to do the following:

It doesn't contain all the information you need to run a business (it skimps out a little bit on talking about paid advertising) but, if you follow this course, you will be able to start up an online store that makes a decent sum of cash. You can learn all the other stuff later on.

This is not a course about dropshipping. You will be selling physical products that you need to keep in inventory.

About Gretta Van Riel

She has put together several businesses worth millions of dollars including - The 5th Watches, Drop Bottle, Hey Influencer & more. She has appeared on Forbes rich lists (30 under 30), and her products are loved by Oprah Winfrey, which is the ultimate form of influencer marketing.

Gretta is a lady that has proven her worth, and I do believe that she has the expertise to actually share valuable information with you.

Now, I cannot promise that you will be as successful as Gretta. That would take a decent amount of luck. However, I do believe it's possible to put together a profitable business following her advice.

The Modules

The bulk of Start and Scale is going to be delivered through video content across several different modules. However, Gretta has also been kind enough to put together some workbooks to go through.

If you are following the Start and Scale course, then it is important that you use these workbooks, otherwise, you will not get the most out of the product.

In fact, I reckon the only way you will be successful with Start and Scale is if you do use the workbooks. They are deeply ingrained into the rest of the course material.

Access to the Modules

Before I talk about the actual modules, I do want to point out that you will not be able to access all of the modules the very second that you purchase the course. Instead, these modules are going to be drip-fed to you over the course of several weeks. 

Have I ever told you I hate drip-fed courses?

Now, I can see the merits of drip-feeding course content like this. I know that it is going to stop people from rushing through the content. It means that they are able to slowly take in the content and really work on themselves before building up the next part of their business.

I don't like it, but whatever!

Some people will not be fans of spending a ton of money on content, only for it to take eight weeks to be fully delivered.

Let's take a look at the modules now.

Finding Your Idea

There isn't really any introduction to this course. Instead, you are going to be diving headfirst until building up the idea of your business. This happens over 9 different lessons.

I will say that this module is pretty focused on researching a niche and testing out your ideas. Gretta claims that this is the very framework that she has used to develop the early idea of every business that she has ever run.

I particularly enjoy the fact that there does seem to be a heavy focus on working out who your ideal customer is here. There are very, very few courses that go into that much depth.

Branding and Store Setup

The next module has 6 lessons. The ultimate aim for this module is to start to put together a Shopify store.

You could probably end up using any eCommerce platform you want but, like most products of this type, you are only ever going to be told how to work with Shopify. 

This means that you will need to be shelling out a bit of extra money each month for that. Although, if you follow this course, you will make that money back in profit rather quickly.

This module covers a lot about the actual branding of a company. Although, this isn't surprising. I found out a lot about Gretta in the research of this article, and it seems that she is a branding expert.

In this module, she seems to cover things that other courses do not seem to cover. This means you learn about naming companies, and the colors that you use.

Granted, you are not going to be told everything that you need to know about branding, but it is a tremendous starting point.

Developing and Planning Your Idea

There are eight lessons here.

This is a rather complicated module and, once again, something that many other eCommerce courses do not seem to cover. Mostly, because a lot of them tend to focus on dropshipping, whereas this course doesn't.

Here, you will be focused on learning how to create your minimum viable product (MVP). You will learn about finding manufacturers for your product, and you will learn about product packaging.

To be honest, this is one of the modules where I am glad that the course is drip-fed.

This is because I can envision a lot of people skipping this module because there is a lot to cover but, honestly, it is this module that is going to be the glue that holds everything else together. You need it.

Of course, if you want to do dropshipping, then I suppose that you could skip this module. However, at that point, this is probably not going to be the course for you anyway.

Making Your Product Profitable

There are seven lessons here.

Here, you will be learning about the elements of making a profitable product.

This means extracting the maximum amount of profit from products. This will be based on market research. You will learn about trademarks, as well as how to order the first batch of stock from your selected manufacturer.

There is lots of top business-focused information here. This is the sort of thing you would normally find on a business course.

Building an Audience of Hungry Buyers Before You Launch

11 lessons here.

This mostly focuses on getting people to sign-up to a pre-launch of your product. This means collecting their information for a mailing list.

You will accomplish this through content marketing, social media, and giveaways.

Million Dollar Influencer Marketing Blueprint

These 11 lessons do exactly what they say they do. 

You are going to be learning how to tap into influencer marketing to tap into even hungrier buyers for your products.

This is an in-depth module. Not the greatest information on influencer marketing, but enough to help you make your eCommerce store profitable.

Launch & Operations

These 7 videos talk about everything from a launch checklist to running customer support.

You also have a few bits and pieces on free shipping and more information on marketing your product.

Scaling Your Store

The final module has 12 lessons.

This includes all the information that you need to increase the amount of money your business makes. You will be learning about the 'tricks of the trade' such as dealing with abandoned carts, learning about upselling, email marketing, and when to launch a new product.

To be honest, this final module contains so much information that I believe it would have been better served being broken up into 2-3 modules and have the topics expanded on even further.

Alas, if you are this far into the course, then you will probably already have some ideas about how to take your company forward anyway. This just gives you more information so you can go out there and do your own research.

Refunds

I am pleased to announce that if you want a refund you can apply for one up to 60 days of purchasing the course.

Just so you know - the policy states that you must show that you put in the effort and that it did not work for you. It's not a matter of emailing support and and asking for your money back. So do be prepared to back up your request for refund if you plan on doing so.

Facebook Group

The Facebook Group for Start and Scale is quite active with several thousand members. 

It's a good place to see what others are doing, get inspiration from and to also post any questions or even boast about your success if you have it.

As with any Facebook group, always be weary of advice given, unless it's backed up by training from the course directly.

Conclusion

Alternatives Course to Start and Scale

An easy way to get into eCom is to sell existing products that you don't own or have to create. You do this by dropshipping, where you list products on your store and if someone makes a purchase, you order that product from the supplier who will send out the product to your customer.

However, the traditional dropshipping model from a few years ago is dead. What you should be doing is a mix of that traditional model and then wholesaling with your winning products. 

The eCommerce Accelerator teaches that model. Find out why they say that traditional dropshipping is dead.

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