Lean Commerce: Recent Episodes
Lean Commerce
Join us as we go "in the trenches" with the few brands in e-commerce that are not just surviving, but THRIVING in the world where everyone wants "Prime". There are no quick fixes, but these executives have cracked the code to help their divisions grow at record pace, even in the marketplace that is tougher than ever.
I'm consistently amazed at how competitive the apparel space is.
Sure, it's a business with great potential for margins, but there are ZERO switching costs and a low barrier to entry.
That's why it was so interesting to have Adam Sidney from Myles on this week. He's a heavy hitter in the DTC apparel world. He was a serious mover-and-shaker at a little place called Bonobos, has consulted with brands getting off the ground, and is currently CEO at Myles, a DTC men's clothing brand.
We ran the gamut in terms of what's changing in DTC, useful experience from his time at Bonobos and how "boring" products can actually be fascinating.
But the topic I believe you'll enjoy the most is authenticity in your brand. Myles is doing some great stuff in this regard. Easy to talk about, and easy to do (if you actually believe in what you're building).
Take a listen, and leave a review!
I've been blessed enough to talk to some fascinating folks on this show. In fact, the whole idea behind the podcast is that 90% are only talked about behind closed doors.
Today's episode was even more interesting than normal. Meghan left GoPro to start RedThread - the very first women's apparel brand to ditch standard sizes once and for all and solve the apparel fit issue for all women, of every shape.
The coolest thing about it is definitely the tech. Each woman takes a few selfies and her measurements are autogenerated to create clothing with the perfect fit.
Think about the impact this could have on returns (if your size was right from the beginning you wouldn't need to send it back), not to mention the ease of shopping since you could ditch the sizing charts (which no one understands anyway).
Meghan explains it much better than I can - hope you enjoy this episode.
Distribution channels have been interesting to me for a long time. After all, amazing products DIE without distribution.
A big reason I started this podcast was to figure out how independent product owners can stay free from the clutches of Amazon and their margin-slashing claws.
But the more I look at their platform, the more I realize that it's quite similar to the wholesale or distributor model. I'll eat my own words here: rather than trying to "beat" Amazon, for some brands it makes sense to "join" them.
If you're part of a brand that would benefit from Amazon's distribution channel, this episode for you. Dan Brownsher has been on the side of product development where he and his business partners invest their own capital into launching a brand on Amazon, and the service side, where he and his team help Amazon sellers to scale up.
Enjoy the episode!
GUEST BIO: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify. Dave started his entrepreneurial career by acquiring businesses and making the developmental changes that turned them into profitable companies.
Dave is the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast alongside his co-host Craig Hewitt where they have weekly conversations about entrepreneurship, eCommerce, and marketing.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io and the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast. His provides an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify businesses. Dave initially started his career acquiring small businesses, where he learned where businesses needed the most help to create profitability.
In this episode, we talk about how much Dave acquired his first companies for, where to find those same deals today, and how he acquires new customers for Recapture.io.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: How did you get started in business acquisition? 1:46 I joined a group of micro-entrepreneurs over a decade ago. What we all had was a skill to build something but we didn’t have an understanding of how to sell it and how to sustainably set up a business that can scale. Overtime, the founders of this group created a conference, called Micro Conf, which is now held in Miami. 4:42 I spent time looking around at various marketplaces, such as eBay, and found smaller businesses with potential and bought them at a low costs. Then I started figuring out what parts could be outsourced and how to scale these businesses.
How much did you initially acquire these companies for? 5:46 I had a $2,000 budget. Now a days, you could do it for under $5,000. I bought a small business making $100 a month, tried to grow it and make it legit but it turned out there were a lot of fraudulent users on there. I cleaned up the platform, marketing, and sales page and then sold it for the same price. What I came out of it with was knowledge and experience. The second time I did that I found a bunch of Wordpress plugins and a business that was drowning in support. The women in charge wasn’t systemizing it or funneling it, so I spent time setting up a pricing page, making a free version vs. premium version, and created a support forum and turned it into a $3,000 a month business from a $300 a month business in three years.
Where would you find these smaller deals today? 15:00 I’m on a lot of little lists. Side Projectors is one for example. You’ll find a lot of good businesses and some really bad ones. For example, people will rewrite Slack and want you to pay for it. 16:19 The only thing that truly adds value to a business if it’s make money. If it’s not generating money, it’s not worth anything. In some cases, you might be able to say that it can be monetized. For example, a Shopify app that needs another distribution channel. Now, you can use that to cross promote your other Shopify app and use it to make the other one more money.
How many acquisitions have you made? 29:50 I think I’m somewhere around eight or nine done deals, not including the ones that haven’t worked out.
What does it look like to acquire new customers for Recapture.io? 31:20 I won’t lie, it can definitely be a struggle. We also have a high LTV. You have to find the right channel. You can try cold emails, pitch to agencies or store owners, etc. All of this takes time and money and as an individual founder there is no way I can do all of it by myself. I have to hire out to get it all done. 36:58 The hardest thing to overcome is trust. You need to show people that you know what you’re doing and they can account for your services.
Where are the distribution channels to get in touch with store owners today? 38:19 The problem is that there is no one answer to that. Even if you had an answer, it could change in 6-12 months and then change again. Communities come and go. I compare the l
GUEST BIO: Jordan Gutierrez is the COO of Wishpond, a B2B business that builds complete marketing funnels that get leads and customers for eCommerce businesses. He started his business career by buying a coffee machine and selling coffee and donuts on the streets of Mexico City and has now helped Wishpond grow into a 120 person company.
Jordan now focuses on the operations of Wishpond and most importantly, pivoting to the wants of their customers to continue to provide the products and services they need to grow their own businesses.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Jordan is the COO of Wishpond, a campaign builder for eCommerce businesses. Since joining the COO team during its start up phase, he’s helped the company grow to employ 120 people and work with Fortune 500 companies to create their marketing funnels.
In this episode, we talk about Jordan’s first experience with business, what makes products sell on Facebook, and how chatbots and Facebook Messenger are changing the marketing industry.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: How did you get into eCommerce? 2:15 Moving to Canada from Mexico City gave me my first introduction to Amazon and Best Buy. That summer, I went back to Mexico, bought a coffee machine, and started to sell coffee and donuts on the street. My customers were mostly doctors and I found out they were in Mexico just to buy medical books. I sold my coffee machine and started to sell the books they wanted online. 4:08 I decided that I needed a website and built an eCommerce website in 2007 selling medical books. At the same time, I came back to Canada and was studying in university. This was obviously really chaotic and when I was approached by a dropship partnership company, I agreed. 6:42 I started posting memes related to the medical community on Facebook, I interviewed doctors, and started to get some traction. 8:32 Then, I created a medical case page on Reddit. People could post symptoms and other users would diagnose them. This continued to grow and I started to expand to medical equipment, soaps, and tools. We started some campaigns, sold apparel, anything that medical professionals would want to buy. 11:46 Ninety percent of medical professionals in Mexico know of us and 70% have purchased medical equipment from us at some point. We have over 2,000 Google reviews and a 4.5 rating.
It would make sense that adding to cart on Facebook was a seamless, easy decision—but it’s not. Why? 19:42 Trying to promote a simple medical book on Facebook is really difficult. On Facebook you need to build a dream and then you need your landing page to have absolutely no distractions. The main mistake people make is they send people to a landing page with too many CTA’s. Facebook is extremely distracting and it’s hard to choose where to click when you can click anywhere. 22:40 At the end of the day, if your landing page looks professional, has a nice video, and looks authoritative, it builds people’s confidence. 26:52 Once a week, we have a special product offer and we use it to grow our Facebook audience. We have contests and in order to be entered you have to get ten people to sign up. We started to just follow the market and got into more content marketing strategies.
Do you operate as a SaaS company? 30:56 We are mostly a technology company but we see the need in clients needing a campaign. We have the software to build campaigns and so we offer that to our clients too. We also want to make it super affordable for small businesses. The idea is that you get the same resources as a Fortune 500 company (we work with both types of clients).
How has Wishpond grown since you’ve been added to the team? 32:01 The company now employs 120 people. We’ve grown because we just focus on where the market is and then create products they want. We fix the problems our customers are having.
What are some of the most interesting trends you’ve seen in the past year with conversion rate optimization?
GUEST BIO: Alex Royzen is the Director of Supply Chain Management at Ecentria, OpticsPlanet, and CampSaver. He is an expert at supply chain management and has been part of OpticsPlanet’s growth from $60 million in sales a year to $300 million. He is an experienced leader with brand, product, and project management background, using data to drive the decisions he makes for the companies that he works for.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Alex Royzen is the Director of Supply Chain Management at Ecentria, OpticsPlanet, and CampSaver. His expertise is in optimizing the supply chain of eCommerce companies and he has helped his companies grow by several millions of dollars.
In this episode, we talk about how to compete with Amazon and where the eCommerce giant is failing, giving small business owners a chance to take their customers. We also talk about developing supplier relationships, how to turn your customer service representatives into experts of your products, and how to forecast your inventory.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: What is supply chain management? 0:53 In the eCommerce industry, it’s a very ambiguous term. It can range from warehouse operations to inventory management. In my world, it’s inventory management. We’re not intimately involved in the warehouse side of things, that’s a totally separate operation that we don’t touch.
How did you get into eCommerce? 2:24 I studied economics in college and it was the first subject I ever felt really passionate about. Microeconomics just clicked in my brain. After college, I ended up in the mining industry in Milwaukee. After a year, I decided to leave and come home to Chicago, where I had grown up. I heard about a company called OpticsPlanet, an online retailer, that needed somebody in their merchandising department. I applied, got the job, and now I’ve been here for ten years. I’ve watched OpticsPlanet grow from $60 million in sales to $300 million.
What are some of the main levers that you look at to improve the supply chain of a business? 9:13 The first thing I do is evaluate the inventory they have. A lot of companies lack detailed reporting and access to data. This is crucial information to know. The top three elements to understand and be working on are: inventory quality, inventory strategy, and supplier relationships.
How can you develop a supplier relationship? 10:29 It’s really a personal thing. For example, we have a team of buyers and they manage the relationships with our suppliers. In the long term, we develop personal relationships that go beyond business with our suppliers—we go on vacation together, they come to our holiday parties, and our families spend time together. 13:24 Especially in eCommerce, the most important thing a supplier can give you is priority in terms of allocation of products, shipping, results, issues, and their time. Also, if they can give you data, and do so by going above and beyond, you’ll be in a really good place. 14:50 Each relationship is case by case so I can’t necessarily give a one size fits all template for creating this relationship.
What kind of competitive advantage do you see available to eCommerce companies selling products that other companies are already selling? 18:06 It comes down to, How do you compete with Amazon? There are two ways that people search for eCommerce products, they Google it or they search it on Amazon. 50% of product searches are on Amazon. What makes our companies successful is that they are niche markets and they aren’t everyday products or products that every person needs. For example, CampSaver is specific to the outdoor market, similar to REI. People willing to spend $600 on a jacket are not your typical consumers and that niche market gives you advantage. 20:57 Where Amazon fails is that you can’t ask them a question—trying to talk to somebody on Amazon is a struggle. With us, and other smaller companies, we have a knowledgeable customer service team that can a
GUEST BIO: Kathy Ando is the Head of Direct Consumer at GoPro with a huge focus in digital and eCommerce. After graduating college, she realized she didn’t want to pursue the path of her biotechnology degree. Kathy worked at the GAP Headquarters in San Francisco and found herself in the right place at the right time. With the rise in marketplaces and eCommerce, she learned about the consumer industry and how digital technology was affecting it. Kathy then transitioned to run merchandising at Apple and then began her career at GoPro. Kathy focuses on improving the customer experience with the goal of increasing conversions and customer lifetime value.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Kathy is the Head of Direct Consumer at GoPro. She’s previously worked for GAP and Apple, transitioning to GoPro to focus on their consumer experience. Kathy’s focus on a seamless and frictionless consumer experience, particularly on the GoPro website, is helping the company continue to grow their customer base and keep their current customers loyal to the brand.
In this episode, we talk about what GoPro is testing to improve their conversions, the special offers they are promoting, and how GoPro differentiates their online experience from Amazon. Kathy also explains the 180 degree shift we’ve seen in brick-and-mortar vs. eCommerce stores, who large companies are hiring to work in their stores, and the GoPro’s biggest challenge in the current eCommerce market.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: What is your role at GoPro? 1:14 My role is to drive the direct to consumer experience. I call it an experience because it’s both a commerce experience as it is a marketing experience. I manage shopping at GoPro.com and experiencing GoPro for what it is on our website.
How did you start working with GoPro? 2:12 I graduated with a degree in biotechnology but in my senior year I realized I wasn't passionate about it. I moved into retail and started my career at the GAP Headquarters in San Francisco. Over time, I’ve been in the right place at the right time. At the time that marketplaces and eCommerce were starting, I was in Silicon Valley and I took a smart, but calculated risk to move into retail. I transitioned over to Apple to run merchandising for their online store.
What does your GoPro’s consumer testing look like? 5:35 When I first came on board, I was all for testing EVERYTHING. What I found out was that we were lacking the most fundamental element—how our customers were engaging with our website and what that experience was like for them. We’ve recently onboarded partners that help us see how our customers interact with our website and we’re now able to test smarter.
What have you seen as the most important element of improving the customer experience? 9:38 We look at a couple of metrics. At the end of the day, the most important metric for us is conversion. Yes, we are a marketing experience but we are mostly a commerce experience. We want conversions. So, we have been looking at hesitation rate, scroll rate, conversion rate, and lifetime value. 12:50 We test hesitation rate by watching customers interact with our website. For example, if a consumer hovers over the Add to Cart button for 10 seconds, that’s a hesitation rate. 14:10 That’s when we start to dive in and ask ourselves, “Did we build this part of the website correctly?”. If the consumer can’t find the promo code or shipping price, then they’ll have this hesitation. We then bring consumers in and ask them, “What is making you hesitate at this specific point?”.
How did you test your special offer of two bonus products? 15:30 We had a special offer for a GoPro beanie and SD card with the purchase of any product on the GoPro website. As a brand, we wanted to give you a really great experience. Recently, we’ve decided to give a free SD card with every camera purchase. And then, from time to time we like to give a surprise bonus. In this case, it was the beanie.
GUEST BIO: Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook. CartHook serves eCommerce business owners to maximize average order value and give back control to merchants on Shopify by directing customers to high-converting checkout pages.
Jordan’s career started on Wall Street, where he discovered that he wasn’t happy and decided to pursue a new career. He joined his family’s eCommerce business and was able to scale to $70,000 in revenue per month. Shortly after, he sold the company and created CartHook to solve the pain points of eCommerce that he had experienced as an eCommerce business owner. Jordan is also the host of The Bootstrap Podcast.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook, helping eCommerce business owners increase their order values with high-converting checkout pages. His eCommerce expertise is increasing sales by over 30% for eCommerce businesses around the world.
In this episode, we talk about Jordan’s initial leap into entrepreneurship and how he was able to identify a pain point in the eCommerce industry. Jordan explains checkout upselling strategies, how to capitalize your most popular product, and the future of eCommerce marketing.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
What does CartHook provide customers? 0:55 Our mission is to help eCommerce merchants thrive by providing them with control over the most important pages of their website, aka where the payment happens. Our app gives merchants complete control over their checkout process.
How did you figure out this was a pain point in eCommerce? 3:14 It has been an eight year process. I started off on Wall Street, hated it and left. Then, I joined my family’s business and brought it online. Within a span of six months, we were making $70,000 a month and we sold the company a year later. 5:16 Customers are more likely to convert when an entire store is dedicated to the product they are interested in purchasing. For example, instead of being an entire sports store, we were just a fishing rod store. We remained extremely niched. 6:25 After selling that business, I started CartHook as a cart abandonment app that triggered an ad campaign if a user didn’t purchase the items in their cart. After two years, I realized this wasn’t the only problem on the check out page and I asked myself, “How do we reduce the amount of people abandoning their cart in checkout?”
How do customers experience post purchase upsells? 11:28 The eCommerce businesses that create relationships with their customers are the ones that last the longest. When approaching post purchase upsells, ask, “How do we respect the relationship with the customer?”. Offer products that are genuinely useful to the customer, for example, a second unit of the same product at a discounted price. 14:38 Upselling into subscription is another popular upsell. For example, ordering a product weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. 15;13 Our software lets you identify which upsell funnel should be seen by the shopper based on what product they are buying. 16:35 The only thing that individual merchants can do that Amazon can’t, is build up a relationship with them.
What are the best current practices for post purchase upsells? 17:17 Start off on the checkout page, ad trust symbols, a testimonial, identify the design that is congruent with your website and fan base. Then, create a simple upsell funnel of more of the same product and then an adjacent product. Generally speaking, upsells do better when they are lower priced than the original purchase. 21:14 Set up a stand alone landing page for your winning products and load it up with copy, video, testimonials, images, etc. We have a big feature launching in a few months that is a template for these dedicated landing pages.
How do you approach post purchase upsells? 24:03 We see three main strategies: Video with a buy button, Short-form, above-the-fold Offer, Long-Form (correlating to a higher priced product).
GUEST BIO: Julie Lyle is the non-executive director and digital advisor to Evolus. She is a global executive, board member, advisor, investor and entrepreneur. During her career, she has established brands and organized teams for startups and the world’s largest companies, like Walmart.
She is a leader in integrated marketing, eCommerce, merchandising, operations, digital media, CRM, branding and social engagement programs. Her record for growing sustainable profits for public and private enterprises has placed her as one of the top business leaders in the world.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Julie Lyle is the Non-Executive Director and Digital Advisor to Evolus. She has worked in high management positions for global companies and is a highly sought after business leader.
In this episode, we talk about Julie’s transition from the entrepreneurial world to corporate. She explains what the transition was like and how the corporate world is much easier to navigate than the entrepreneurial. Julie also talks about the importance of learning in an organization and her spot on prediction for the future of AI.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: What is the difference between running your own firm and working in a corporation? 1:14 The largest difference is that you have to learn self sufficiency when you have your own business. You’re required to be so resourceful. The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has floated payroll on their personal Visas’s first. That is leadership.
What made you decide to start helping a larger organization over growing your own business? 5:15 Honestly, I got a great offer from a company. For about a year and a half before the offer, I was working on a huge project with the Smithsonian, nicknamed “Julie’s Baby”. At the time, I talked to an intern who told me that from watching me, she wouldn’t want to be an agency owner. It opened my eyes to see that I wasn't able to practice my craft because I was so busy running the entire project. 8:03 It’s much easier to have a single set of KPI’s, one boss, and a refined focal vision instead of 40-50 clients. The basics were the same, the dynamic was a little trickier but it’s so much easier to work in a corporate environment.
What is your advice for somebody transitioning from entrepreneur to corporate? 9:20 The most important skill to practice is listening. When I joined Walmart, it had a history of a challenging work culture. People only lasted six weeks to six months. I went to meet with my upper management and he sat me down and told me I was doing a great job because of one reason, I was asking more questions than I answered.
What do you think separates individuals that reach high management versus getting stuck in middle management? 15:21 I’m a huge fan of mentorships. I always identify somebody in an organization that can (and will) give me blunt feedback. We always need it.
How do you deal with failure when it affects a lot of people? 21:17 Own it fast, own it publicly, and then fix it.
How can you help your organization, small or large, get better at learning? 29:11 He who learns fastest, wins. While that’s the macro conversation, it’s a culmination of micro, individual employees. If individuals don’t map out their own learning plan, the organization can’t move forward. For me, this means that I understand what the future of blockchain, AI, and deep learning is to implement that into our work today.
How do you build a network and find a mentor outside of your organization? 34:35 Show up. Make a point of attending networking functions and integrating into the community. If there aren’t networking events near you, be the one to start the conversation and have your own event.
What trends in marketing are you most excited about? 39:31 The fact that eCommerce will hit $2 trillion in revenue yet, the industry is slowing down says a lot about the customer experience. We’re not harnessing current technology at
Guest Profile:
Cassie Fossum is a self-confessed shoe addict. Naturally, she loved how designer heels made her look but was less enthusiastic about how they made her feet feel. A particularly painful night on the town set her on the path to find her ideal shoe, a pair that was as comfortable as it was fashionable. Her research revealed that the technology of women's shoes had not changed in decades, so she assembled a team of experts who have developed a patent pending 360° comfort system which is incorporated into every pair of Mavettes.
At Mavette, fashion and comfort are synonymous. They create shoes which not only look fabulous but feel fabulous as well. This meant giving high heels and flats a much-needed makeover based on their patent-pending 360° comfort technology. This wizardry is combined with a custom fit process to ensure customers a terrific buying experience from Mavette. Every pair of shoes are handmade by Italian craftsmen with generations of experience and shipped directly from the factory in Europe.
Presently, Mavette fittings are done in person, however, Cassie and her team are working to develop an online app which will allow custom fitting of each foot from home.
Show Summary:
Today's guest is Cassie Fossum, CEO, and co-founder of Mavette.com, a company which is exploring a new way to sell women's shoes which are as comfortable as they are fashionable.
In this episode, Cassie explains how she discovered Mavette's niche, her journey in launching her start-up, and how she integrates online sales with custom fittings and untraditional retail marketing using Pop-Up Stores.
Topics:
I know you have a whole laundry list of cool experiences from starting Mavette, could you walk us through how you got started on this journey?
00:54 I've always been interested in the intersection between creativity and business. Throughout my career o have always sat at that intersection, working with creative people on the business side. 01:45 In my last job I was just bored and not feeling challenged anymore. I was running a business within a business, which challenged me but there was a promotion which was not coming through as quickly as I wanted, so I started thinking, what do I want to do next?
02:05 I opened myself up to problems in the world that I wished I could solve, and one of them was uncomfortable shoes. When you go out in high heels, after about 20 minutes your feet are stinging and hurting. I love wearing high heels, but it was something that was prohibitive if you are at a long conference and something is hurting your feet.
02:30 I started asking my other girlfriends, and it is something that many women experience, anyone who has worn high heels. As I looked, I realized that the high heel hadn't really been redesigned since the 1900s.
03:10 I took my idea and decided to go look for an accelerator program and found one that took people who just have an idea, most of the accelerators want to see that you have an idea and have already started building traction behind it.
03:30 I found the Founder Institute and they were willing to take on companies that just had an idea. The program is about three months long. You meet every week, they bring in different experts; one week it might be about legal, what do you need to know about legal to start a company, another week it might be about market strategy, what are ways to go to market with your idea. Then, you have homework, you meet with a working group and brick by brick you start building your company. Right after I graduated, I found my designer, headed over to Italy, and have been building Mavette ever since.
How did you go from Silicon Valley to moving over to Italy, or finding a designer in Italy and sourcing the product there?
04:42 When I was working on the idea, I knew I did not want to do a Made in China shoe. There are so many shoes out there that are low quality and I kn
Guest Bio: Jon MacDonald is passionate about ridding the web of bad eCommerce experiences until only the good remain. Beginning as a web designer/developer during the dot-com boom, he has worked with dozens of brands such as Autodesk, Apple, Columbia Sportswear, Comcast, Linksys/Cisco, General Electric, Harley-Davidson, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Nationwide Insurance, Nike, Nokia, Red Bull, UPS, Vodafone and Xerox. Jon's company, The Good, has turned online browsers into buyers for some of the biggest brands in business. The Good has become one of Oregon’s top 20 fastest growing private companies three years in a row, and its founder has been recognized with a Forty Under 40 Award. Based in Portland, Oregon, Jon volunteers for several causes which affect the eCommerce community and the Pacific Northwest as a whole.
Show Summary: Today's guest is Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a Conversion Rate Optimization firm. Beginning a decade ago, they have been collecting, analyzing and evaluating the data which goes into CRO since before CRO became a buzz term. In this episode, Jon explains that while data gathered from site metrics and A/B Testing are vital, sometimes they do not tell the entire story of a company's eCommerce presence. He demonstrates how business practices between the Brick and Mortar world and the eCommerce arena are even closer than they appear and shares how he has helped several traditional Brick and Mortar concerns to not only expand into eCommerce but to use connectivity to enhance the physical shopping experience.
Topics:
How did you get involved in Conversion Optimization? 00:48 We started as a digital marketing firm, building eCommerce sites mainly. Most of our customers were not too concerned with how their site was built, technically, they were mainly concerned with making sure that site would perform after it launched. 01:45 We found we were winning contracts by adding a clause that we would be allowed to optimize the sites for three months after launch, while our competition was using a "launch and forget" model. 02:30 A few years later, we decided to pivot and focus exclusively on Conversion Rate Optimization. We found that there were dozens of firms who could develop sites for cheaper than us, and the clients never looked at the source code and didn’t care as long as it worked. Where we provided the most value was in optimizing the site.
Who are your clients in general? 03:20 We have worked with clients of all sizes but find that a minimum of 10,000 visitors/month is necessary for testing to provide a return on investment for the client. We've worked with Xerox, Adobe, The Economist, Nike, Swiss Gear, as well as some smaller brands that have a retail presence but maybe their online presence is not as big.
When I think of eCommerce I usually only think of pure-play eCommerce that does not have any retail presence, it is just a store that is digital. It seems that the brick and mortar retailers are getting much bigger in the eCommerce space to support retail rather than compete with retail. 04:50 One of the things about CRO that is coming down the line is Personalization and optimizing to have a more personalized site for your visitors. When you combine that with retail data, it's like the perfect gold mine. You are able to track somebody in store in terms of what they purchase and what they like so that when they visit your website you already have a basis and foundation of information to build on. If you know that people in-store often buy a complementary product and they always like that product, you can serve the same on your website.
You can use the gains form online to help offline offers, it's an easy testing environment. 06:20 Testing has become much easier over the years; the tool sets are much easier to work with. We often work with brands that have been doing their own testing for a year, have been trying A/B Testing on their website. Most people who I talk to abou
GUEST BIO: David James is the founder of TotalCarCheck.co.uk, a vehicle background check website. David started this company as successful entrepreneurs do, by solving a problem he encountered. After his parents bought a stolen car and found themselves at a $5,000 loss, he created a website that wouldn’t allow this to happen again. David’s focused and realistic mindset has supported TotalCarCheck.co.uk in running background checks on almost two thirds of all the vehicles in the United Kingdom. The parallel app has become one of the top utility apps in the UK and David continues to use forward thinking, innovation, and his customers to grow his company and create transparency in the car buying process.
SHOW SUMMARY:
David James, founder of TotalCarCheck.co.uk, is an entrepreneur with a laser focus on simplicity and great results. His vehicle background check website has become the most successful website in the UK in his niche. David has built the foundation for his software based of seven lean principles, which he’ll discuss during our conversation.
In this episode, David explains how he runs his company with only two employees, his advice for new software entrepreneurs and the books that have given him the insight for this accolade of success.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you get started with your business? 0:57 I had a more normal career starting off, but I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. My parents accidentally bought a stolen car and I realized there was a problem that needed to be solved, people needed to be able to run a background check on a car. 4:17 Once you get the wheels rolling, you start to get momentum. Very quickly people started to realize what we were doing was different than what other vehicle background check websites were doing and business started to grow from there. 6:33 Even in darker times, there is opportunity. It sounds spiritual, but the experience of my parent’s buying the stolen car was an epiphany for me. When I look back, it all seems kind of unbelievable that something so fortunate was built from such a negative experience. If you have a passion for something and genuinely enjoy doing it, it really helps you to become successful. 13:06 I think if you are consistent in what you want to do, you generally get results in the end. If you stay consistent in those principles and approach, you come out well in the end.
You’re checking two thirds of all of the vehicles in the UK, what does the backend of your business look like? 15:55 Pretty much from day one, we’ve done this with only two staff members (including myself). This works because of two rules. The first is, we automate ruthlessly. People tend to skip over this because the initial effort is difficult, but the cost saving over five years is incredible. The second is, outsource wherever you can. Our accounts, legal, HR, design and development are all outsourced. This gives you much more flexibility.
What are your lean development principles? 20:22 My lean business strategy comes from the seven principles outlined in Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck. First, eliminate all waste. Second, amplify learning by teaching your entire team, not just yourself. Third, make decisions as late as possible. Fourth, deliver as quickly as possible. Fifth, empower the team. Sixth, build integrity. Seventh, see the whole picture.
Marketing techniques that worked before, don’t always work now. How do you work around this problem? 35:56 It’s frustrating because you don’t know if it’s the market changing or if you did something wrong. But, that’s the beauty of what we do. It was formulaic, it would be easy. That’s how the best have their advantage because they are able to discover the variables to focus on and the variables to ignore. 38:40 Whenever I’m pouring over the numbers, I try to ground myself by asking, “What am I doing this for?” and remind myself that I’m doing this so I can
GUEST BIO: David James is the founder of TotalCarCheck.co.uk, a vehicle background check website. David started this company as successful entrepreneurs do, by solving a problem he encountered. After his parents bought a stolen car and found themselves at a $5,000 loss, he created a website that wouldn’t allow this to happen again. David’s focused and realistic mindset has supported TotalCarCheck.co.uk in running background checks on almost two thirds of all the vehicles in the United Kingdom. The parallel app has become one of the top utility apps in the UK and David continues to use forward thinking, innovation, and his customers to grow his company and create transparency in the car buying process.
SHOW SUMMARY:
David James, founder of TotalCarCheck.co.uk, is an entrepreneur with a laser focus on simplicity and great results. His vehicle background check website has become the most successful website in the UK in his niche. David has built the foundation for his software based of seven lean principles, which he’ll discuss during our conversation.
In this episode, David explains how he runs his company with only two employees, his advice for new software entrepreneurs and the books that have given him the insight for this accolade of success.
This is The Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you get started with your business? 0:57 I had a more normal career starting off, but I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. My parents accidentally bought a stolen car and I realized there was a problem that needed to be solved, people needed to be able to run a background check on a car. 4:17 Once you get the wheels rolling, you start to get momentum. Very quickly people started to realize what we were doing was different than what other vehicle background check websites were doing and business started to grow from there. 6:33 Even in darker times, there is opportunity. It sounds spiritual, but the experience of my parent’s buying the stolen car was an epiphany for me. When I look back, it all seems kind of unbelievable that something so fortunate was built from such a negative experience. If you have a passion for something and genuinely enjoy doing it, it really helps you to become successful. 13:06 I think if you are consistent in what you want to do, you generally get results in the end. If you stay consistent in those principles and approach, you come out well in the end.
You’re checking two thirds of all of the vehicles in the UK, what does the backend of your business look like? 15:55 Pretty much from day one, we’ve done this with only two staff members (including myself). This works because of two rules. The first is, we automate ruthlessly. People tend to skip over this because the initial effort is difficult, but the cost saving over five years is incredible. The second is, outsource wherever you can. Our accounts, legal, HR, design and development are all outsourced. This gives you much more flexibility.
What are your lean development principles? 20:22 My lean business strategy comes from the seven principles outlined in Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck. First, eliminate all waste. Second, amplify learning by teaching your entire team, not just yourself. Third, make decisions as late as possible. Fourth, deliver as quickly as possible. Fifth, empower the team. Sixth, build integrity. Seventh, see the whole picture.
Marketing techniques that worked before, don’t always work now. How do you work around this problem? 35:56 It’s frustrating because you don’t know if it’s the market changing or if you did something wrong. But, that’s the beauty of what we do. It was formulaic, it would be easy. That’s how the best have their advantage because they are able to discover the variables to focus on and the variables to ignore. 38:40 Whenever I’m pouring over the numbers, I try to ground myself by asking, “What am I doing this for?” and remind myself that I’m doing this so I can
GUEST BIO: Tyler, “Sully” Sullivan is the CEO of Bomb Tech Golf, a premium golf product ecommerce website. Sully has grown Bomb Tech Golf into a seven-figure ecommerce business and has since opened a marketing agency to help other ecommerce businesses find the same success. Sully’s initial interest in ecommerce was sparked when his very first product sell came while he was on a boat. He immediately realized the ability to capitalize off of ecommerce, while continuing to live the lifestyle he wanted. Sully’s mindset is, “unless there is room for improvement, quality, or innovation I won’t do it.” He continues to use this mentality as he improves golf club designs and elevates ecommerce businesses using his own innovative email marketing techniques.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guest is Sully Sullivan, the CEO of Bomb Tech Golf and founder of Ecom Growers. Sully has grown his ecommerce business, Bomb Tech Golf, into a seven-figure business. His success became the platform for which he has now grown his marketing agency on top of, Ecom Growers. His focus is on helping other ecommerce businesses sell products solely through email marketing.
In this episode, Sully explains how he uses email marketing to drive traffic and sell millions of dollars worth of products. He foreshadows the most important strategy of 2019 and shows us how it is already working to his benefit. Lastly, he walks us through his strategy buying inventory without over purchasing.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: How did you get started in ecommerce businesses? 0:48 It was an accidental business. I wanted to make the best long drive clubs, and the entire business stemmed from that. I started by making niche, long drivers. 2:27 I got my first sail while on my boat and it blew my mind, this idea that I could sell something while I was physically on a boat. It was my ah-ha moment, and I thought, “I need to do more of this.” 5:30 We also have an agency, where we don’t do ads. We drive more revenue without spending more on ads. We run email through Playdio better than anyone else.
What’s your strategy on Playdio? 10:20 There are three main strategies. First, don’t get too fancy with your emails. Second, have a conversation with your email list by placing a question in the subject line (this helps us get 65% open rate). Third, follow the question with a scarcity model (time, quantity, etc.) 17:14 Email is simple, but it’s hard. The hardest part is that everybody as an ecommerce owner thinks they need the latest and greatest strategies. What actually moves the needle? You need traffic. You need email. And you’ll increase your revenue.
Where should you invest talent and money within your business? 20:56 Our customers are everything to us, both in agency and ecommerce. We used to send out handwritten notes, and now we send out thank you voicemails, because they are scalable. Customers freak out about it.
If you had limited resources, how do you suggest store owners find a good agency? 23:49 It’s tough because everybody is selling the dream, but 99% of agencies don’t have the skill. 25:33 I hire agencies for a one hour screenshare where we will create campaigns together. This let’s me learn the process and vet them. If that campaign goes well, then I’ll invite them in for another one hour call. If they do a great job again, then I can hire them.
What are you excited about in the ad and email space for 2019? 29:28 I’m not sure that I’m the guy to ask because I’m so boring about this stuff. I only focus on what drives the lever, not messenger, Snapchat, etc. I believe every business is different and strategies are worth testing if you have the budget, but at the end of the day it’s traffic, email and offer. If you can get those three components to be better, then you’re going to be successful. 33:05 I think there will be a bigger shift in attaching a person to every brand. Faceless brands are already losing, but in 2019, if th
GUEST BIO: Kami York-Feirn, Social Media Specialist. VP of Product Design and Marketing and Rob BonDurant are part of the marketing team behind Osprey Packs. Osprey Packs is one of the largest outdoor backpack brands in the USA, found in REI and other major outdoor brick and mortar stores. Recently, they have launched their e-commerce store and in 2019 they will officially launch their ambassador program. Osprey packs was started in 1974 as a personally customized backpack company. Customers could come in, have their measurements taken and purchase a backpack completely designed for them. Osprey now has 50+ backpack designs for commuters, mountain bikers, snowboarders and more.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guests are Kamie York-Feirn, Social Media Specialist, and Rob BonDurant, VP of Design and Marketing at Osprey Packs. Osprey Packs is a leading backpack brand in the outdoor space, with products ranging from weekend warrior backpacks to 80L backpacks for long term travelers. Cammie and Rob have geared up for 2019 and are going to share with us what to expect from Osprey in the coming year.
In this episode, they explain how to tackle educating the market on how to find the right backpack, the difference in their brick and mortar marketing strategy versus their e-commerce strategy, and the 2019 trends they foresee in e-commerce.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: Who is Osprey? Osprey packs has been around since 1974, originally started as customized backpacks for every customer. Now, we offer bags for hikers, car campers, long term backpackers, etc. As a social media specialist, my job is to target those individuals on social media platforms. Our target audience is anybody who enjoys being outdoors and shares our love of nature. Osprey exists and provides solutions to people living a life close to nature and who want to travel for the adventure.
How do you tackle educating a market on how to wear a backpack? We put a tremendous amount of effort into training, and I think that’s where we start. From REI to a Mom and Pop shop selling Osprey, employees have been fully trained by us to ask the right questions to find the right backpack for the customer. We also have a Pack Finder online that will show you a range of products to choose from depending on what you need your backpack for.
How do you balance brick and mortar marketing versus online marketing? We are fairly new to e-commerce, we just started selling from our website in February. It’s been a learning experience. We market products on the website very differently than they are marketed in store. We try to be localized with all of our marketing efforts, so marketing online in Arizona is much different from marketing in New York. The e-commerce store has been an amazing tool to show us what is working with our customers and what isn’t, there is so much data that we are able to learn from and become granular with. We can find customers, retarget and then get them to convert onsite, which is something we didn’t have access to prior. In two weeks, we are launching our 2019 ambassador program. It’s been a long time coming. Our athletes are influencers and in 2019 we’ll tap more into those influencers to gather more data, photos, blog posts and understand how we can motivate people to buy the products. With ambassadors, we’re utilizing their tremendous talents to improve our sales tactics. We also free up there time so they can push their sport forward. We have a strategic way of going about who we want to work with and why we want to work with them. We want customers to see somebody promoting our product and believe the message that the influencer is relaying.
What is the conversion you are looking for from social media? The beauty of social media is that, if done right, it’s not a conversion tool. It’s high and middle funnel. We utilize our athletes and influencers for brand awareness and engagement. We want to get the product out in
GUEST BIO: Charles Palleschi is the founder and CEO of Spark Shipping, an ecommerce company that acts as a third party between vendor and manufacturer. The idea for Spark Shipping came from Charles’ initial drop shipping business. After finding that there wasn’t a virtual tool to organize orders and vendors, he created one to help his business. Shortly after, he discovered the business opportunity of making this tool public and shifted his focus from dropshipping to Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping works with all vendors and has partnerships with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce, Magento, Big Commerce and more, helping dropshipping companies to increase their volume and margins.
SHOW SUMMARY: Today’s guest is Charles Palleschi, founder and CEO of Spark Shipping. Spark Shipping acts a third party between vendor and manufacturer for ecommerce businesses. Born from a solution Charles created for his dropshipping business, Spark Shipping is now partnered with Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Woocommerce and more.
In this episode, Charles explains how the idea of Spark Shipping was a direct result of a pain point he experienced during the early days of his dropshipping business. He shows us how to create our own solutions and then, how to make them public as a SaaS product. We also talk about how to improve your dropshipping business, how to finagle lower shipping rates, and the vendors you should prioritize.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: What was the inspiration behind Spark Shipping? 0:25 I started as a freelance consultant, using my development background, but I decided totally out of the blue to buy an e-commerce website. I started with FBA, drop shipping, and worked with a lot of vendors and that’s what made me think of creating a tool to organize orders and vendors. We named it Spark Shipping, made it public and about three years ago we started to fully focus on it instead of our e-commerce website. 6:05 Spark Shipping sits between the retail side and the vendor and we automate inventory quantities, take order requests and get tracking data. Essentially we automate the day to day tasks of an e-commerce business.
What is a hybrid drop shipping model? 8:56 Not a lot of people talk about the boring backend of e-commerce, especially when it comes to processing data. Hybrid drop shipping involves one product being fulfilled by multiple vendors (manufacturer, distributor, internal warehouse). This creates layers of inventory and you can use the cheapest vendor for that moment.
What improvement can you make on dropshipping and returns? 14:10 A lot of dropshippers are listing products even though they don’t have live numbers from their vendors. I get that if you have hundreds of thousands of products you can’t do it on your own, but you need to find a tool that helps you keep track of those numbers. 18:30 Once you’re deep within a given niche, you can start giving value based off of that specific product and increase your volume.
Do you have dropshippers on your platform doing significant volume? 22:37 We see people move from drop shipping to manufacturing and manufacturing to drop shipping. It’s not very black and white, it’s more of a holistic approach. If you’re manufacturing a product, it doesn’t make sense to manufacture all of the accessories for it. But it does make sense to stock all of them. 26:06 There’s a ton of large companies doing this and customers don’t realize it. If you order a product and have it delivered in one box and then have the accessory delivered in a different box, on a different day, this is a company that is executing this strategy.
How can you get lower shipping rates on ecommerce products? 29:13 The normal shipping rates from UPS or FedEx aren’t typically paid once you are doing volume, you can easily negotiate a better rate. Once you’ve done that, go to your manufacturer and try to get them to negotiate with their carrier. Then, you’ll have a cheaper rate on b
GUEST BIO: Nathan Hirsch is a 28 year old serial entrepreneur who is an expert in hiring online and building eCommerce businesses. He co-founded his first eCommerce company out of his dorm room in 2009, drop shipping products on Amazon.com and built it to sell over $25 million worth of product over 5 years. While scaling, Nathan discovered the power of outsourcing and ended up building a remote army of freelancers.
In 2015, Nathan co-founded and became the CEO of FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace that allows business owners fast access to a hand-picked network of top talent freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, web development, and much more who have already been vetted for skill, attitude, and communication. FreeeUp interviews hundreds of freelancers each week and only allows the top 1% of applicants into the network. The company has been growing at rapid paces (500%+ YoY) and has quickly become a top destination to hire online for over 3,000 businesses around the world.
Nathan has built his personal brand to be synonymous with online hiring and entrepreneurship through 75+ guest appearances on top podcasts: Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas, Eventual Millionaire, and more. Nathan has also become a regular speaker at industry conferences where he teaches other business owners how to hire freelancers and gain back more time in their growing businesses.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guest is Nathan Hirsch, founder of the freelance platform Freeeup. Freeeup differs from other freelance platforms because they don’t allow every single freelancer to join. They have an intense vetting system and only allow 1% of the freelancers who apply to become a member. The idea for Freeeup came from Nathan’s struggles with having to go through over twenty applications each time he posted a job to a freelance platform.
In this episode, Nathan tells us how he went from selling textbooks, to baby products to building his own freelancer platform. He talks about the current demands of the freelance world, from the perspective of client and freelancer, as well as how he views marketing trends as they pertain to his business. Lastly, Nathan gives us the secret sauce of a great job posting and freelancer first outreach message.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you become an entrepreneur?
1:06 I always imagined I’d work a “regular job” but found that I hated working for other people and didn’t want to make this my entire life. I saw college as a ticking clock and my chance to start a business.
1:52 I bought textbooks at the end of each semester, becoming a competitor for my school’s bookstore. By creating a referral program I was able to get so much business to my “bookstore” that I received a cease and desist order from my college.
2:30 I started to sell on Amazon and was really excited to work with customers and have my own business, but knew that books weren’t the future. So, I experimented with outdoor products, computers, etc. Nothing else would sell until I branched out of my comfort zone and got into the baby product industry.
What is Freeeup?
4:28 Hiring on Fiverr, Upwork and other freelance platforms didn’t help me, as I needed a faster way to go through applicants. I created Freeeup and then made it so clients have immediate access to any freelancer they need.
6:45 The difference between Freeeup and Upwork is that Freeeup only allows one freelancer to enter per one hundred applications. Freeeups onboarding process is faster and gives clients a a no turnover guarantee, paying for the inconvenience of having to hire a new freelancer if an issue arises.
7:59 Freeeup freelancers are 40% USA, 40% Philippines and 20% scattered. Freeeup is very picky about who they allow on the platform because Freeeup is only as good as the freelancers and only as successful as how happy freelancers are when using the p
GUEST BIO: Nathan Hirsch is a 28 year old serial entrepreneur who is an expert in hiring online and building eCommerce businesses. He co-founded his first eCommerce company out of his dorm room in 2009, drop shipping products on Amazon.com and built it to sell over $25 million worth of product over 5 years. While scaling, Nathan discovered the power of outsourcing and ended up building a remote army of freelancers.
In 2015, Nathan co-founded and became the CEO of FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace that allows business owners fast access to a hand-picked network of top talent freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, web development, and much more who have already been vetted for skill, attitude, and communication. FreeeUp interviews hundreds of freelancers each week and only allows the top 1% of applicants into the network. The company has been growing at rapid paces (500%+ YoY) and has quickly become a top destination to hire online for over 3,000 businesses around the world.
Nathan has built his personal brand to be synonymous with online hiring and entrepreneurship through 75+ guest appearances on top podcasts: Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas, Eventual Millionaire, and more. Nathan has also become a regular speaker at industry conferences where he teaches other business owners how to hire freelancers and gain back more time in their growing businesses.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guest is Nathan Hirsch, founder of the freelance platform Freeeup. Freeeup differs from other freelance platforms because they don’t allow every single freelancer to join. They have an intense vetting system and only allow 1% of the freelancers who apply to become a member. The idea for Freeeup came from Nathan’s struggles with having to go through over twenty applications each time he posted a job to a freelance platform.
In this episode, Nathan tells us how he went from selling textbooks, to baby products to building his own freelancer platform. He talks about the current demands of the freelance world, from the perspective of client and freelancer, as well as how he views marketing trends as they pertain to his business. Lastly, Nathan gives us the secret sauce of a great job posting and freelancer first outreach message.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you become an entrepreneur?
1:06 I always imagined I’d work a “regular job” but found that I hated working for other people and didn’t want to make this my entire life. I saw college as a ticking clock and my chance to start a business.
1:52 I bought textbooks at the end of each semester, becoming a competitor for my school’s bookstore. By creating a referral program I was able to get so much business to my “bookstore” that I received a cease and desist order from my college.
2:30 I started to sell on Amazon and was really excited to work with customers and have my own business, but knew that books weren’t the future. So, I experimented with outdoor products, computers, etc. Nothing else would sell until I branched out of my comfort zone and got into the baby product industry.
What is Freeeup?
4:28 Hiring on Fiverr, Upwork and other freelance platforms didn’t help me, as I needed a faster way to go through applicants. I created Freeeup and then made it so clients have immediate access to any freelancer they need.
6:45 The difference between Freeeup and Upwork is that Freeeup only allows one freelancer to enter per one hundred applications. Freeeups onboarding process is faster and gives clients a a no turnover guarantee, paying for the inconvenience of having to hire a new freelancer if an issue arises.
7:59 Freeeup freelancers are 40% USA, 40% Philippines and 20% scattered. Freeeup is very picky about who they allow on the platform because Freeeup is only as good as the freelancers and only as successful as how happy freelancers are when using the p
GUEST BIO: Annie Mosbacher is the Vice President of Customer Engagement at NationBuilder, a software for political candidates, non-profit organizations and brands. Their customers are individuals who are working with organizations, building a community, or advocating for a cause. Annie’s day to day involves the long term health and retention of their customer base.
Annie’s passion for non-profit organizations and the power political candidates have to make change led her to work with and found her own non-profit organization prior to NationBuilder. Her first endeavor was in helping underserved communities. This inspired her to co-found a non-profit connecting high school students with career paths they weren’t aware of. Her mission was to fill the large gap between the fields students were blindly pursuing and careers the workforce actually needed.
Annie continues to pursue change, regardless of it benefiting her own political beliefs, through her VP position at NationBuilder.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guest is Annie Mosbacher, the Vice President of Customer Engagement at NationBuilder. NationBuilder is a SaaS company offering non-profits, political candidates and brands help in building their communities. Annie oversees their client acquisition and retention, which is an incredibly interesting position as her political consumers don’t necessarily need the product, a campaign builder, after election day.
In this episode, Annie explains how NationBuilder acquires customers and retains them after they’ve finished using the product. She walks us through their non-partisan view and explains why it continues to be a fundamental part of their business, despite backlash. Lastly, she explains the future of digital political and fundraising campaigns and how any business can learn from these industries to grow their own dedicated community.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you initially start working with non-profits and political campaigns? 1:44 I have a deep and profound connection with higher education. I served as an executive director at the beginning of my career, helping underserved communities. Afterwards, I co-founded a startup to help young high school students connect with future careers they may not have been aware of. There’s a large gap in what people are pursuing and what the workforce actually needs, and I wanted to close it.
What careers did you find students most often followed? 4:46 Students often followed a liberal arts degree or went to college and used it to initially explore their future career. Yet, plumbing, welding, and more technical fields had the most opportunities. Students weren’t choosing these careers because they weren’t aware of the option. We explained to them that in three years, they would make six figures in these fields and if they were interested we showed them how to follow through.
What does customer acquisition look like when your customers are political candidates? 10:05 We have always provided a free voter file to people interested in running for office but don’t have the experience or connections to show them how to build a campaign. Our campaign courses are certainly there to drive customer acquisition, but they are also designed to help candidates build their first campaign.
How do you advance your mission and financially keep NationBuilder afloat? 13:44 It’s multifaceted, but the grounding principle is that we are extremely non-partisan. We’ll work with any customer regardless of their political beliefs or backgrounds, which is unprecedented in the tech and software political space. We also have a lot of diversification in the scale of customers we support, ranging from large international campaigns to local school board candidates. 15:24 We offer different engagement paths, so whether a customer wins or loses their campaign, there are ways for them to c
GUEST BIO: Travis Kessel is the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Jet, acquired by Walmart ECommerce. His initial job as an accountant motivated him to move from Virginia to Chicago, where he landed his first recruiting job. Shortly after, he confidently opened his own staffing agency only to be shut down two months later by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. After one more short stint as a recruiter at another agency, Travis became the Vice President of recruiting at Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm.At Edelman, Travis learned a new side of recruiting and started to place companies with candidates that paralleled their brand. Craving a tech focused company, Travis left Edelman to work at Jet, which was previously acquired by Wal-Mart E-commerce. As The Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, Travis focuses on the systems of the hiring process and the future of acquisition as it meets advancements in artificial intelligence.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Today’s guest is Travis Kessel, the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Jet, owned by Walmart E-commerce. Travis connects candidates with the right job, spending his days building new companies or extending branches of established corporations. As a talent acquisitions expert, he has used marketing and psychology to become one of the best recruiters in his field.In this episode, Travis explains the do’s and don’ts of applying for a job, how to get noticed amongst hundreds of other applicants and the new technology that is automating the recruiting process.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: What is the process you look at for e-commerce talent acquisition?
1:00 The process is similar to how we move people through to hire, such as collecting resumes, assessing them, phone screens, outside vendor tests and then an offer. 1:58 Artificial intelligence is creating a streamlined process that allows us to bring on new talent and Travis is looking forward to the future of AI in talent acquisition.
What kinds of roles do you usually recruit for? 2:33 My team is broken into three main areas: category management (retail),technology, and business/customer care (supply chain, marketing, customer care, high level positions). 3:36 My favorite part of my job as a talent recruiter is the variation in my responsibility,where one day I am building a company from nothing and the next I am scaling part of the world’s largest company. 5:11 One of the largest challenges in hiring is that a director at one company has a different role than a director at another company which means hiring for each position involve two totally different people.How has your career brought you to this point? 6:20 I started in accounting, and admittedly was terrible at it. I found myself in Chicago where I started as a recruiter and then started my own staffing industry two months prior to the Lehman Brothers collapsed. This forced me to work for another recruiting company where I was later laid off. 9:27 I moved to Vice President of Recruiting at Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, where I first started to understand branding as it is related to talent acquisition. 10:15 I decided to move from Edelman to Jet, where I wanted a company involved intech, scaled quickly and had the opportunity for him to put a mark on the company in a unique way.
What is currently happening in the top of funnel resume attraction space?
17:33 We have a big focus on building our brand in a way that it seems you can only do when you are face to face with somebody. We’ve found that our story resonate best when other people tell it, so I look at interesting acquisitions to bring people into our funnel and have them apply. 18:40 One time we built out an RV with technology on it that was true to Jet, placed
GUEST BIO:
Mike Hoffman is the Head of Operations at popular women and children’s clothing brand, Rainbow. At fourteen years old, Mike convinced his mother to let him get a fake ID so he could start working. His hustle continued through college, where he studied computer science and business. After graduating, Mike became a real estate agent and shortly after started his first company helping real estate agents utilize technology. When the opportunity for Mike to open an online book company came, he took it. He began buying books and selling them online through Amazon and eBay for three times the amount. During this time, Mike became one of Amazon’s first best sellers. Mike fulfilled one of his dreams to travel through England for six months and after moved to New York City. He started to work as a strategist at the GAP, learning the inner workings of a massive public company. Quickly he found that his voice couldn’t be heard unless he was in the C-Suite and chose to leap, leaving his job in hopes of finding a better opportunity. His next endeavor was at Paragon Sports, where Mike created the foundation of his expertise in customer service. After ten years, he moved on and took on the title as Head of Operations at Rainbow.
SHOW SUMMARY: Your business doesn’t revolve around anyone, or anything, but your customer. Today’s guest is Mike Hoffman, the Head of Operations at Rainbow. Mike implemented and currently runs the operations and systems that drive Rainbow’s e-commerce and brick and mortar stores. His job boils down to one of the most important business practices, listening to his customers. In this episode, Mike talks about how he built the Rainbow customer service team and the reason they rarely see a turnover of agents. He walks us through the wins and losses of his time as Head of Operations and showcases the blueprint of a successful product company. This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS:
How did you end up as the Head of Operations for Rainbow? 2:45 Mike graduated college and initially became a real estate agent. This is where he started his first company, helping agents utilize technology to grow their business.
4:34 Mike talks about his second entrepreneurial venture of selling books online, which lead him to become one of Amazon’s first best sellers.
13:53 Individuals who find success are the ones who are willing to take the first step and leap off of the bridge. If you’re not willing to jump, you miss tremendous opportunity.
How important is customer service to e-commerce? 14:24 The voice of the customer is what is driving your e-commerce channel. Make sure all of the segments of your company (such as marketing, HR, engineers, etc.) work together so the customer voice is brought into every part of your company.
16:32 Mike built the Rainbow customer service team, creating a well recognized brand with customers who have become brand ambassadors. He explains how he built a happy and thriving team that has only seen one customer service agent leave in the last thirteen years.
20:30 Mike talks about a technical issue Rainbow encountered with customers adding products to cart on tablets and how it was initially discovered because of their strong focus on customer service.
What other tactical wins have you experienced by talking with customers? 22:07 Working with the various versions of Android, and working through the bugs of each version so customers can access and properly use the website regardless of what device they are using.
Do you use paid acquisition campaigns or use organic traffic to sell product? 26:40 Most product sales are driven from brick and mortar stores, although Rainbow does using paid acquisition campaigns. They also practice SEO and other avenues. As Mike explains, i
GUEST BIO:
Chris Squires is the Co-Founder of Ten55 Brewing Co. Together with his co-founder, JP Vyborny, he brews and sells his own craft beer, called Ten55. In 2018, they expanded their business and opened a house-made sausage and beer food restaurant in downtown Tucson, Arizona.
SHOW SUMMARY:
Myth: New businesses think they need massive distribution to be profitable. Today’s guest is Chris Squire, the Co-Founder of Ten55 Brewing Co. in Arizona. Chris has proven successful in maneuvering a saturated market of craft beers. He attributes Ten55 Brewing Co.’s success to being able to invite customers into their brewery and create long term brand advocates.
In this episode, Chris explains how to exploit marketing gaps in loud markets and why he isn’t fighting for shelf space at franchised grocery stores. He walks us through Ten55 Brewing Co.’s expansion into the restaurant space and gives aspiring entrepreneurs advice they may have never expected.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
TOPICS: 00:00:47 Chris began brewing beer as a hobby prior to his entrepreneurial pursuit with JP.
When you first started, how did you tackle supply chain problems?
00:02:45 Chris couldn’t stress more about the advantages of regulation and distribution of liquor sales in Arizona. Using their regulations, he has been able to deliver beer directly to his consumers, expanding his brand’s reach and advocacy.
00:06:39 A highly competitive market is forcing local brewers to hire sales representatives. The advantage of signing a contract with a distributor, like Hensley, is they already have sales representatives ready to advocate for your brewery.
What percentage does the distributor want if you have your own sale reps? 00:08:17 Chris provides a simplified version of a real case study, showcasing how it can change depending on the situation, state and market.
Where does the biggest sale volume comes from, direct selling or restaurant?
00:11:00 Contrary to most of Arizona packaging breweries, who focus on selling through bars and restaurants, Ten55 generates most of their revenue from on-premise selling. Chris explains how the in person interaction is better in terms of profitability and branding perspective.
How do you compete with big brands?
00:14:36 The real competition for him was with other local breweries as the craft beer trend has drastically risen.
00:17:30 Craft beer has a “local face”, helping consumers to relate to the brewery and the people who work for and created it.
What is the long term goal of a microbrewery? Do you want to scale up?
00:23:25 Chris doesn’t believe in fighting for shelf space. Following the path of Karl Strauss and Gordon Biersch, the business model for Ten55 is to sell directly to consumers by increasing their locations. This model also provides better control and higher margins.
What was your experience opening a new restaurant?
00:29:22 Restaurants are extremely more capital intensive than brewing facilities. Once the foundation is set, restaurants differ from breweries in allowing for juicy investment returns and increased creativity. Chris also adds how Ten55 took advantage of a new state law, creating a lot of media attention and motivated investors, as well.
00:36:43 The first phase is to direct the best customer experience. Then, build a system that allows for easy replications.
What advice do you have for the Lean Commerce audience?
00:38:29 Figure out how distribution systems work and be cautious of placing them as your end goal. Sometimes smaller, is better. In this case, it has been the reason for Ten55’s success.
Resources mentioned in the Podcast:
Ten55 Brewery and Sausage House:
[Karl Strauss Brewing Company:
Irina Rosca is a Senior Director of Global Supply Chain Operations SKLZ. She has been working on supply chain operation for about 15 years, on various products from wine, spirit, food to textile, and now sporting goods at SKLZ, San Diego, California. Irina oversees an end to end global supply chain operations and strategy including inventory procurement and optimization at various locations, global logistics, and transportation, contract negotiations, systems implementation, customer service, reverse logistics and warehouse operations. Irina's website www.sustainscm.com covers high-quality articles on e-planning or e-commerce planning.
Irina best described the whole process of supply chain operation for e-commerce business. How important the analysis was done at the product level, the product strategy; the understanding on customer & marketplace, and, finally, the acceptable price on that market.
From there, your organization would draw up possibilities on products (or components) sourcing, sourcing agents or marketplaces to work with, correct forecasting and having a partnership for last mile customer order delivery.
While presenting basics of supply chain operation, Irina also covered overviews on recent trends such as kick starter, pre-order product launch, new model warehousing systems and key points to thriving on amazon.com. At the end of the show, Irina kindly listed links to e-commerce global supply chain resources for further readings and consultation.
Topics:
· The first thing you consider for supply chain optimization?
03:07 Addressing the first thing to look at on supply chain optimization, Irina shared her recent experience when visiting an e-commerce company. Like most organization, there was a huge gap between back-end and front-end of the supply chain.
· What’s the common mistakes people are making?
04:42 The drawback is not having many schemes of supply chain procedure, but the inability to forecast correctly.
05:45 Understanding who the customer really is and looking at the trends are the main challenge in making correct forecasts because it related to cash tied in the inventory.
· What is the overall process Irina go through to build the supply chain for the company?
08:00 It started with an analysis done on the product level, the possibilities of products manufacturing and its impact on the market.
08:53 Irina shares process for Sunglasses
10:03 Revealed the importance of aggregate production for similar products production.
10:49 Key items to start with are always: do you understand the consumer, the trends, the marketplace and the acceptable price. Irina also draws her opinion upon pre-order product kick starter.
· What are the benefits of sourcing internationally v/s sourcing domestically?
13:20 International sourcing has the advantage of the cost factor
14:26 Why sourcing in the United States become less negotiable, especially in minimum order quantities.
· How do you go about finding competitive vendors?
16:08 Irina mention Alibaba marketplace to be a good starting point and asking referrals to a sourcing agent or local resources
19:30 You as importer have full responsibility for what you bring into this country, to make sure it's a quality product.
· How do you approach the negotiation part, when you are trying to scale up?
21:00 The importance to share forecasts with suppliers and the visibility of each product components.
23:45 Understanding cost components, forecast the and cutting cost across the supply chain
· What’s the best ways to start co-branding?
25:05: Give a visit to your vendor, check the line, get as many details about the product as you can.
26:55 Avoid mistake of promising something you cannot deliver
27:40 How to man
Today, we are talking with Bryan VanDyke, a digital expert who has led digital teams at Morgan Stanley and Prudential. His career journey began in a basement when he started his first dial-up BBS at the age of 13.
He first began advising companies on digital practices while in college. He continues to lead teams involved in digital transformation, more than 20 years later. The biggest challenge that he faces is understanding the psychological matrix and creating a product that is useful for the end user.
In this episode, Bryan explains how to use the psychological matrix to create useful and attractive products. We also talk about how to use probability to increase marketing success, how he increases revenue for multimillion dollar companies and why he advocates for all marketers to become comfortable with failure.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Bryan teaches us:
The digital potential of virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home How to overcome office politics Why marketers are burning out today more than they ever have previously How he guides large corporations into curating multimillion dollar products
“It is harder to accept the risk because the fear of loss is stronger than most other feelings.”
“The biggest challenge to any individual marketer is the crisis of confidence.”
How To Make Five Figures in Revenue Per Day with Andy Mai September 21, 2018
It’s not a myth, you can maintain a five-figure sale per day with drop shipping.
Andy Mai is here to tell us how. He attributes his drop shipping success to patience, angles and social advertisements. Andy has completely automated his income and has now expanded to consulting e-commerce B2B businesses. His advice to new entrepreneurs is to focus on personal branding and quality content.
In this episode, Andy talks about his first few months of drop shipping and the pivotal lessons that shaped his business model. He also explains his strategies for item testing and walks us through his campaign structure.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Andy teaches us:
How to transition from a B2C CEO position to a B2B consulting business The mindset you need to maintain when your business initially fails What lessons his first eBay shop taught him that he is implementing today How to make five figures in revenue per day
“The reason 99% of people don’t succeed in drop shipping is because they give up too early.”
“What yields the best results is working on yourself and creating content, building a brand and focusing on yourself.”
Connect with Andy:
Andy on Youtube
Andy on Facebook
Andy on Instagram
Resources Mentioned:
eBay – The platform Andy started his first business on
Facebook ads – Where Andy tests his advertisements
MapleStory – RPG game
A Platform: Where to buy and sell virtual goods
Aliexpress – A distributor Andy does not use
The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Book Recommended by Andy
Gary Vaynerchuk – Andy’s Virtual Mentor
How To Convince Mark Cuban to Invest in Crickets, or any unconventional product, with Pat Crowley
September 14th, 2018
Would you eat crickets for protein?
Pat Crowley is the founder and owner of Chapul, the first US company to sell insect protein. Chapul’s goal is to reduce the environmental footprint of agricultural protein by replacing meat with crickets. His entrepreneurial story is unique, as he took an extremely unconventional product and grew a profitable business from it.
In this episode, Pat talks about his initial inspiration to switch to insect protein. He explains how Chapul bootstrapped themselves to profitability and then landed investment from Mark Cuban when they were featured on Shark Tank.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Pat teaches us:
Why crickets are the answer to stop the harmful effects of the agricultural protein industry How to run a successful kickstarter project Chapul’s strategy to market an unconventional product to the masses What Pat has learned from having Mark Cuban as his investor
“The food distribution system in the USA is designed for big companies.”
Connect with Pat:
Pat on LinkedIn
Chapul Cricket Protein
Chapul on Instagram
Chapul on Facebook
Chapul on Twitter
Chapul on Youtube
How To Establish a Profitable Company Around Competitive Products with Luke Droulez September 14, 2018
How do you build a brand around competitive products?
Luke Droulez is the CMO of Parachute Home, a modern bedding and bath product company. They have prioritized branding and profitability to stand out among the more well known competition.
In this episode, Luke talks about how Parachute Home has become a profitable bed and bath company. He explains the customer experience and customer relationship strategies they use to continue to grow their brand and social presence. He also walks us through their backend supply chain and technology and how Parachute Home uses it to automate as much of their processes as possible.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Luke teaches us:
How to successfully transition from Head of Operations to Head of Digital to Chief Marketing Officer The strategy Parachute uses to educate their customers on materials in bedding and ingredients in bath products, and how they use it to increase sales How to optimize backend supply chain and technology for physical products The techniques Parachute uses to acquire new customers
“Modern marketer is responsible for the full customer journey.”
“We are in this interesting time where, it’s easier than ever to start a business, but it’s harder than ever to stand out.”
Connect with Luke:
Luke on LinkedIN
How do you disrupt the $2 billion dollar sales industry?
Elyse is the Director of Integrated Marketing at Boxed, a wholesale online vendor for business. Boxed is disrupting the sales industry through the intersection of curated selection and novelty. Elyse’s marketing advice is simple, know your ideal customer.
In this episode, Elyse talks about Boxed’s target avatar and the marketing strategies they are using to retain them. She explains how they are improving their cart experience, the backend of their mass delivery system and why personalization has led to their success. Elyse also shows us how Boxed is communicating and working with their employees to ensure commitment and longevity.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Elyse teaches us:
How to increase customer acquisition through branding and positioning The biggest challenge she is facing right now and how she strategizes around it Boxed’s strategy to retain more customers How Boxed has created a positive environment for employees and motivated them to stay long term in the company “What we are happy to know is most of our customers see that we and Amazon are complimentary.”
Connect with Elyse:
Elyse on Twitter
Elyse on LinkedIn
Boxed.com
Finding and Retaining Millennial Customers with Shani Syphrett August 31, 2018
How do you acquire millennial customers?
Shani is the Head of Marketing and Brand for Beam, a social impact application that allows users to donate part of their everyday purchases to impact social issues they care about. Beam’s target audience is the millennial generation and their marketing strategies revolve around finding and retaining them.
In this episode, Shani explains why Beam chose millennials as their target customer and what it means to grow a business with impact. She walks us through their customer acquisition campaigns and the backend of influencer marketing. She also talks to us about the lack of women of color in marketing and how they are a massive part of the future of innovative brands.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Shani teaches us:
How Beam takes millennials into consideration throughout their product design process What advertisements millennials respond to best Strategies to retain millennial customers long term Why millennials are the best audience to target for an impactful product
“Just like architecture, when you design a product you need to consider the third dimension, called user.”
Connect with Shani:
Shani on LinkedIN Beam: Impact in One Touch
Resources Mentioned:
Jasmine Bina on brand strategy
What would your business look like with thousands of dollars in funding?
Joshua Suh is the Accounts Director of Crowdcreate, the world’s #1 blockchain marketing agency. Crowdcreate has raised over $40 million dollars in crowdfunding campaigns for kickstarters around the world.
In this episode, Joshua explains how to run a successful kickstarter campaign that returns thousands of dollars in investment. He shows us how to create a pre-launch strategy and the formula to estimate how much you will make in sales on launch day. He also talks about the demographics of kickstarters and how to curate campaigns around their interests.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Joshua teaches us:
Why you shouldn’t launch a kickstarter campaign with only prototype images The three steps of a pre-launch strategy for a successful launch What demographic to market to on kickstarter websites How to estimate what launch day sales will be based off of email opens and click throughs
“Our company was interested in building products, helping creators present the product to a crowd, and utilizing a crowd to the highest advantage they can.”
“If you have a set budget, allocate more of the budget to prelaunch over launch. It’s a lot easier to get conversions when you are engaging them through the pre-launch phase, than a cold conversion during the launch phase.”
Connect with Joshua:
Joshua on LinkedIN
Crowdcreate
Resources Mentioned:
Andesign.com
Sparkhouse.com
Indiegogo.com
How familiar are you with the Facebook algorithm?
Eric Brinker is the Partner and Vice President of Experience (Marketing and Communications) of OTG Management, an award winning airport hospitality group. He’s an expert in using Facebook advertising to drive traffic and product sales.
In this episode, Eric shows us how he runs the frontend and backend of Facebook campaigns for OTG Management. He explains how to target your prospective customer and the campaign strategy that avoids overwhelming customers. He also walks us through how he tests landing pages to identify the highest converter.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Eric teaches us:
How to get accurate data from landing page interactions without A/B testing The strategy for a campaign that doesn’t overwhelm your target audience How much to spend on Facebook ads and the ROI to expect The spreadsheet he uses to keep track of his campaigns
“What if you developed more creative ads and then you can monitor, and tweak, and turn up the ads to your heart’s content?”
Connect with Eric:
Eric Brinker on LinkedIN OTG Management
What’s the formula for a profitable Facebook advertisement?
Brian Meert is the CEO of AdvertiseMINT, the #1 advertising agency for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. He has devised a three step framework for running successful social media ads defined by objective, segments and creative.
In this episode Brian walks us through his approach to advertising an e-commerce product. He explains how to choose what platform to advertise on, the importance of dynamic product ads and how to close the bottom of your sales funnel. He also talks about the advantage agencies and startups have in today’s world and how to use online tools to grow your business.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Brian teaches us:
How to bootstrap your first company if you don’t have investors The three step framework Brian uses for testing e-commerce products How to get initial data on an advertisement at the cheapest price Where to advertise depending on the demographic of your target audience
“When I saw the first version of the Facebook advertising platform, I knew there was nowhere else to be.”
“Our parents didn’t have the opportunity that we have now, these online tools didn’t exist.”
Connect with Brian:
Brian on LinkedIN
AdvertiseMINT
What makes for a profitable product?
Ivelin Demirov is the founder of RiverCleaner.com, a keyword research and optimization tool for Amazon sellers. Ivelin’s product experience has taught him, the products that sell are the ones that have been positioned well.
In this episode, Ivelin explains how to position a product to sell by using surveys to get inside of his prospective customer’s mind. He also talks about the mindset all successful entrepreneurs have, why you have to be passionate about your business and how to provide the highest level of customer support to your consumers.
This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.
In this episode, Ivelin teaches us:
How he established himself in the e-commerce world Why passion trumps talent when building your online empire How to use surveys to sell more products The three steps of building a product that sells The most efficient way to provide customer support
“People were willing to give up easy. If you are passionate about something you have a higher chance of success.”
“My idea generation is very simple. I have a calendar on the wall, every time I have something in my mind that could cause a problem, I write that down on the wall.”
Connect with Ivelin:
Ivelin’s Facebook Group Ivelin’s Website