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Ryan Romero | RHINO

@reallytherhino

2K

followers

2011

following

Meta ads for ecom brands + local businesses that sell online
$18k in ads → $62k in sales in 4 months (one DTC brand)
Work with me ↓

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You built the store. You ran the ads. Still no sales.

It’s not your business. The demand is already there. You’re just aiming at the wrong thing.

One client turned $2,000 into $9,000 in 30 days. No 6-month build. 3 ads, one simple page, one clear offer pointed at people already looking.

DM me GROW and I’ll map it out on a free 1:1 call. Only taking 2 new clients this month. by @reallytherhino

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4 months ago

Got kicked out of school at 15. Hung out with the wrong crowd and did things I wasn’t proud of.

I transferred to another school. still hung out with the wrong crowd. I still hated being told what to do.

November 3rd, 2022, I dropped out and started the actual journey.

Worked 2 jobs, got a business degree, trained boxing 5 days a week, and built a business simultaneously.

Then I met my business partner on Discord, and moved to New Zealand to go all in.

Came back and moved in with my parents.

Regrouped, locked in, and flew to Bangkok on a one-way ticket.

Then everything started to line up. The season of winning started. Client results started coming in like crazy.

Now I run the agency from Southeast Asia.

Follow to see the journey continue. by @reallytherhino

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6 months ago

This is Brandon, the owner of Shine Coat Auto Detailing, located in the Bay Area CA.

He was doing $18k/month.

But some weeks were slammed, some weeks were less so. He’d tried ads before. Nothing really stuck.

So we built something DIFFERENT.

Before we touched a SINGLE ad, we broke down his ICP, studied his competitors, and built a library of headlines and copy from real buyer data.

Then we ran a $600 test campaign to figure out what ACTUALLY worked.

Split the campaigns by service. Analyzed the data every 7 days. Duplicated what worked.
That’s it.

62 booked inquiries from Google in the first 60 days.

$36k in the first two weeks of December alone.

Up from $18k the entire month before.
(In the so-called ‘slow season.’)

If you’re doing $15k-$25k/month and most of it’s referrals and low-ticket work you can’t get rid of, this is what the next step looks like.

DM me “ADS” and I’ll show you exactly how this applies to your shop and your market. by @reallytherhino

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7 months ago

Your ad isn't bad.

It just answers the question too early.

Here's a prompt I made to add open loops to your ads.

Paste it into Claude:

You're a direct-response copywriter for ecommerce brands. Rewrite my ad using open loops so viewers feel they need to click to get the answer.

Product: [what you sell]
Customer: [who buys it and what they want]
Current ad copy: [paste it]

Give me:
1. 5 headlines that open a curiosity loop without giving the answer away
2. A hook for the first 3 seconds of a video ad
3. Body copy that closes the first loop and opens a second one that leads to the click

Rules: no clickbait. Every loop must be something the product or landing page actually pays off. Write the way a real person talks, not like an ad.

[end prompt]

Want a second set of eyes on your ads? Book a 1:1 consult. Link in bio. by @reallytherhino

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20 days ago

Ryan Popoff started Popov Leather at a kitchen table and now runs a workshop with a team. On TrepTalks he said the best business advice he ever got was to always be profitable. It came from a mentor who asked him point blank, "Are you profitable?" and he couldn't answer. That became the rule.

It's my rule for ads too. If the fee plus the spend is going to lose money on your margin, I tell you to stop. In writing, in the agreement, before you spend.

Think about why that's rare. An agency paid a percentage of spend makes more when you spend more. A retainer agency needs the dashboard to look good enough that you renew. Both get paid the same whether you made money or lost it. So the person telling you to stop has to be someone paid for the work, and only the work. I'd rather lose a month of fee than have you find out in 6 months that the ROAS was real and the profit wasn't.

Profitable first. Then bigger.

Comment AUDIT and I'll run the math on your numbers before either of us talks about spend. Free. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago

"My advice coming from a very stressed out business owner that would come on here daily looking for any sign of light during this time is to do as much research as you can, and do not overpay an agency."

He's right. And two more from the same threads that every owner should tape to the monitor. "If they can't put you in touch with at least two or three recent clients, that's definitely a significant warning sign." And: "good luck finding actual case studies with specific figures!"

You've been asking for proof before fees. Fair. So here's how I work, so you can research me the same way.

It starts with a call about your margins, what you can ship this month, and what you actually want. Then I build the thing that fits that. The order is always the same: tracking fixed, page rebuilt around how you sell in person, email capture live, first ad set. Then spend.

You get a before and after you can read. Ads Manager matched to Shopify and the register. The spend and margin math on your numbers.

Who does it: me. Named on every piece. Weekly call. Your accounts stay yours, in writing. If the math says stop, you hear it from me first.

And the specific figures: Coppercraft Distillery, 146 orders at $21.01 from 1 ad, 812 orders on $18,629 across the account in 90 days. Recent clients on request.

Comment AUDIT. View access to your Ads Manager and Shopify is all I need. Free, and the findings are yours either way. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago

This is the note I'd want on my phone if I were the one hiring.

Handled means no open loops. It still means you're involved. You have an hour a day for this and it isn't for chasing a vendor for an update, so here's how the week actually goes.

One intake call about your margins, what you can ship, and what you want. One shared doc with every piece of the work on it, who owns it, and when it's done. A 20 minute call a week where I show you what changed and what's next, and you say yes or no. Then the report, pulled from Shopify and the register, because my clients give me access to both and that's where your money actually shows up. Ads Manager gets reconciled to that, and the store's number wins every time.

That's it. Anything else is me trying to look busy. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago

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a month ago

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a month ago

"What happens to the pixel and the data if we leave?"

Ask that on every agency call. It's the question that tells you how the relationship is built. A lot of owners find out the answer too late: the campaigns lived in the agency's ad account, the pixel was theirs, and leaving meant starting from zero. One owner on r/smallbusiness got charged a 90 day termination fee for work that never got done.

Here's the section from my client agreement.

Your ad account, pixel, email list, and domain stay in your name from day one. If we stop working together, you keep all of it, including the history. Nothing gets handed back because it was never mine.

Month to month. Either of us can end it with 30 days notice.

And if the fee plus the ad spend can't pay back on your margin, I tell you to stop before you spend. In writing.

The reason is simple. If the only thing keeping a client is that leaving is painful, the work is the problem. I'd rather the work be the reason you stay.

Comment AUDIT. Free look at your tracking, your page, and the spend math, and the findings are yours either way. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago

I'm the owner. I'm also the maker. And the media buyer.

That's the list on most owners' phones if they're honest. Photos, me. Ads, me. Website, me. Emails, me. Tracking, question mark. Follow up, question mark.

Constant Contact's small business survey found 56% of owners get 1 hour a day or less for marketing, and most push it behind operations. That hour goes to the jobs that feel like marketing: a post, a boost, an email blast. The two jobs that decide whether any of it made money, tracking and follow-up, are the ones with the question mark, because nobody has time to learn Events Manager at 10pm.

Here's the trap. You can't delegate what you can't measure. So the owner keeps all 6 jobs, does them in the gaps, and quietly concludes that marketing is a moving target.

With me all 6 sit under one name. You get a 20 minute call a week and a shared doc where every piece has a name and a date. You approve, I do the work, and it's reported from Shopify and the register, because that's where your money actually shows up.

Comment AUDIT and I'll start with the two question marks. Free. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago

Three makers, same story. A candle maker on r/candlemaking: Facebook and Instagram ads produced followers and likes but no candle sales. An Etsy seller: "It drove way more traffic to my shop than Etsy Ads for the same amount of money (like 3X as much) BUT it didn't translate to more purchases." A third said the messages that came in were questions, and zero of them were orders.

So the traffic showed up and left. And every one of them concluded the ads were the problem.

Here's what I think actually happened. Online is 6 jobs: the creative, the media buying, the page, the tracking, the email, and the follow-up. Each one was probably fine on its own. The ad was decent. The page existed. There was an email list. The pixel was installed.

The handoffs between them were missing. The ad pointed at a generic page with one button. The page let people leave with their email still in their pocket. The list sat there untouched. The pixel stopped at the homepage, so the ad platform had no idea who bought and kept showing the ad to people who like candles instead of people who buy them.

The handoffs have one owner by default: you, at 10pm after production. Or you hire someone who owns 1 piece and blames the other 5 when it fails.

With me, one person owns all 6. The ad, the page, the data, and the follow-up. That's the job.

Comment AUDIT and I'll find which handoff is broken. Free. by @reallytherhino

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a month ago