The Ecom Show

#121 Todd: This Brand Makes Millions By Helping People Breathe Better

Running a business is stressful, Todd Steinberg, the guest of this episode of The Ecom Show is in the business of helping people deal with their stress by helping them breathe better. His business, Komuso, kills anxiety one necklace at a time.

Komuso has created a huge splash in the health and wellness industry with their wearable breathing tool that’s designed to help individuals cope with their anxiety. In this episode, our founder and podcast host Daniel Budai interviews the co-founder of Komuso, Todd Steinberg, about his journey to building a million dollar brand in the health and wellness industry.

Tune in to this episode to learn more about:

🧘‍♀️ The Story Behind Komuso

✅ The Wellness Benefits of Using the Shift

💸 How to Create a Million Dollar Business From Scratch

The Story Behind Komuso

Todd has always struggled with anxiety, and his battle against fighting his nerves found him at the doors of a psychotherapist who introduced him to the world of meditation. Todd found it difficult to sit down and meditate in the standard way and almost gave up on it entirely until his therapist offered him with a simple alternative—a straw. He was asked to breathe through the straw for just two minutes, and observe his breathing.

Within these two minutes, Todd noticed that his body had become calmer and at peace. He was surprised to see such an immediate change by such a simple device, and he went back to share this positive revelation with his wife. His wife Vanessa suggested that this could be implemented more frequently if he had something that he could carry with him easily. Together, they got to the drawing board and tested out various lengths, materials, and shapes until they designed “The Shift”.

The Shift is a one of a kind, minimalistic necklace that helps people breathe better. It acts as an anchor in an anxious moment, and gives users the constant reminder to take a moment to breathe better, think better, and feel better.

The Wellness Benefits of Using the Shift

The average human being has 50,000 thoughts per day and there’s a study done that says 80% of those thoughts are negative. Humans usually get caught up within the noise created by these thoughts and end up getting stressed.

Breathing is a very natural and involuntary reaction for humans, we don’t usually put too much thought into it, so when we’re stressed our breathing gets affected. When we don’t think about it, we take shallow breaths, which can agitate our nervous system and leave us in fight-or-flight mode. The Shift helps people slow down their breathing by making them conscious of it.

Slowing down your exhale can help you stop shallow breathing, and lower your anxiety and stress levels. It also helps you sleep and focus better.

The fact that it comes designed as a wearable tool ensures that users are consciously aware that they have something that can help them feel instantly calmer. This creates a positive habit that helps users calm themselves when they’re on the go.

Another major advantage of this tool is that it’s a non-tech device which is super easy to use. It gives individuals the much needed downtime from being on the screens, and makes it a suitable product for all ages.

How to Create a Million Dollar Business From Scratch

Vanessa and Todd Steinberg bootstrapped their business with $30,000 investment, and have managed to grow it to a successful seven-figure business. They have two different products, and only six SKU’s, yet they’ve managed to make millions of dollars in sales without any funding.

Here’s how they did it:

They spent a lot of time researching and developing, “The Switch.” Vanessa Steinberg’s background as a fashion designer helped her in conceptualizing the minimalist and sleek design of the product.

Next, they focused on their messaging. They realized that they have a very unique product, and worked hard to create a resource library that educates individuals about the problem that they’re trying to solve. They even used the negative comments they received, and turned them into FAQs to address common issues people might have with their product. Their focus on creating a narrative that connects with customers on an individual level is what’s helped them create a brand rather than a trend.

Their overall approach has been to go slow and focus on growing their business in a steady and sustainable fashion. They have a very lean team with only one content head, and an agency that helps them run their paid marketing funnels working aside them.

They realized that their main hurdle would be to educate users of their product. Since the product is brand new, they had to be very strategic about the way they introduced it to the market, and that’s why they handle most of their social media commentary themselves.

To put it simply, Vanessa and Todd Steinberg, have managed to create a booming business in the health and wellness industry by finding a simple and straightforward solution to something that every individual faces on some personal level. And this all started by them seeking to solve this problem for themselves.

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of The Ecom Show!

You can check out our previous episodes by clicking on the link below:

https://www.thebudaimedia.com/podcast

Visit Komuso:

https://www.komusodesign.com/

Follow Todd on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-steinberg-7740265/

Follow Daniel Budai

Daniel’s LinkedIN

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Daniel’s Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKtHC2ojO_7mhMHXQ-qZcHQ

Daniel’s Newsletter

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#120 Sarah Vezina: How Octopied Mind Grow Their Sales 3X Each Year

Hey Budai Nation!

Welcome to The Ecom Show, your go-to weekly podcast series for inspiring e-commerce success stories. This week's episode is about Sarah Vezina, the co-founder of the Canadian apparel brand Octopied Mind.

Sarah Vezina got the idea of starting Octopied Mind while working at Shopify. Octopied Mind is a gender-inclusive, ethical apparel brand that creates hand-drawn designs in small batches. In this episode, Sarah shares the story of how this fastly growing apparel brand has managed to grow its sales revenue by 3X each year.

Tune in to this episode to learn more about:

✅ Sarah's Journey From Shopify To Octopied Mind

✅ The Secret Behind Octopied Mind's Steady Growth

✅ Sarah's #1 Advice For Entrepreneurs

Sarah's Journey From Shopify To Octopied Mind

Sarah dived straight into the world of e-commerce by landing a job at Shopify. She worked at Shopify for a little over a year, and during that time, she had the chance to speak with hundreds of business owners daily. This motivated her to research and start her own entrepreneurial journey.

Shopify has an extremely nurturing culture that's perfect for growing entrepreneurs. While Sarah worked at Shopify, she had access to a free website, an extensive resource library to learn, and an allowance of $500 each year to pursue her entrepreneurial journey. She used these resources to start Octopied Mind, and within a year itself, she was able to pursue her vision full time.

Sarah co-founded Octopied Mind with her best friend, Jill Davis. Their apparel brand focuses on creating meaningful conversations around mental health through hand-drawn art on apparel. Their vision has been to create a community built on acceptance and radical self-responsibility, which they've been able to successfully achieve and grow since their inception in 2018.

The Secret Behind Octopied Mind's Steady Growth

Octopied Mind started as a homegrown venture started by two best friends. Sarah and Jill would create hand-drawn art on preloved clothing items for each other and wear them to parties and other events. They noticed a lot of positive comments and decided to test selling these graphic shirts in small batches to friends and family. Their word-of-mouth marketing spread like wildfire, and this motivated them to go all in and launch their e-commerce store through Shopify.

Octopied Mind is now celebrating four years. They've grown their sales revenue by 3x yearly and are now available in multiple countries. Sarah attributes most of this success to their Facebook ad marketing. Facebook marketing has helped them target customers in different parts of the world and helped them discover new markets.

They also have an extremely high returning customer rate of 30%, which they've been able to maintain by creating a community around their brand. Octopied Mind has several automated email marketing flows that they set up using Klaviyo; these flows alone help them generate $30,000 revenue each month. Apart from this, they've also successfully created a community through their general brand ethos.

At its core, Octopied Mind is creating a space for individuals to speak about mental health and positivity through their gender-fluid clothing line. Their commitment to providing fair wages to their workers, ethically producing their shirts in small batches, and attention to detail regarding quality, size, and fit is what's helped them resonate with their customers. In addition, Sarah and Jill actively share their journey with their community through social media.

Sarah's #1 Advice For Entrepreneurs

Sarah's number one advice for entrepreneurs just starting is to focus on building a website and getting it up and running.

"Don't wait for the perfect website to go live. You can always make changes to keep improving your website once you go live, but it takes time to build a mailing list and get subscribers. Even a simple website is a great start because it allows you to start collecting data."

Her #1 advice for existing business owners is to spend more time working on your business rather than in your business.

"If you're spending too many hours in your business, you need to find somebody and delegate that to them. The faster you delegate, the faster you can just get back to working on your business, and that's where you see growth. That's where you see sales."

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Ecom Show.

Follow Daniel Budai:

Daniel's LinkedIn

Daniel's YouTube

Daniel's Newsletter

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#119 Tyler McCourt: Wearable NFTs and eCommerce

Have you hopped onto the NFT bandwagon yet? If not, would the idea of being able to wear your NFT persuade you to purchase one?

Today’s episode is all about what happens when the internet spills over into the real world. We’ve got Tyler McCourt, the founder of Dott, here with us today to uncover the world of wearable NFTs.

Dott is an e-commerce company that enables you to create wearable merchandise using the NFTs and GIFs you own. It was founded by Tyler McCourt, who’s a serial e-commerce entrepreneur and visionary.

This episode is sponsored by Budai Media. Budai Media is a retention marketing agency that helps e-commerce stores increase their customers lifetime value through the power of email and SMS marketing.

This episode of The Ecom Show talks about:

✅ Tyler’s Journey As A Serial Entrepreneur

✅ The Easiest Way To Start A Customized Apparel Store

✅ NFTs And E-commerce

Tyler’s Journey as a Serial Entrepreneur

Tyler double majored in college in marketing information systems and finance—and landed straight into a corporate desk job. Realizing that he wasn’t passionate about a career in corporate, he shifted gears and found himself working with a small apparel company that designed clothes for wrestlers. Working there with a small team of just 5 employees helped him discover his interest in e-commerce and marketing technologies, and he left soon after to start his own venture.

Tyler and a friend of his started a venture called Emblem Athletic, where they helped e-commerce apparel stores automate their systems. They were able to grow this to generate a steady 7-figure revenue in a couple of years, and Tyler then proceeded to sell his shares back to his co-founder to pursue other ventures.

After exiting this space, Tyler pursued his vision of creating wearable NFTs and GIFs and launched his latest venture, Dott. He also launched Teamtime, a fully custom apparel store.

The Easiest Way to Start a Customized Apparel Store

Starting your own online e-commerce brand can be difficult when you don’t have a big team. Between production, design, inventory management, marketing, sales, and accounting, there are a dozen different hats entrepreneurs need to wear to get the show-up and running.

Tyler McCourt’s latest venture, Teamtime, helps individuals get started with zero upfront costs. It gives users access to a free online store and custom designs.

All they need to do is sign-up and fill out a form. Users can even outsource the logistics to Teamtime, as they offer free shipping.

In short, Teamtime lets users build a fully custom, automated storefront with personal team designers and unlimited customization options.

How do they achieve these goals? They use a combination of developers, designers, artificial intelligence, and Shopify to create your store and products. This enables them to quickly provide you with a store with up to 10 products. They’re building a massive library of editable templates and an application that allows users to create their basic templatized custom design; users can then directly speak with the in-house designers to modify their products till they’re satisfied. All of this is connected to Shopify using APIs, making it easy to set up and edit the store as the brand scales.

NFTs and eCommerce

NFTs have been taking the world by storm. It’s already fusing technology, finance, and art together. Could it also find its place in the world of the apparel industry? Well, it already has! Tyler came up with this idea in college after attending several music festivals; he’d always notice people around him wearing cool shirts, which got him wondering as to why you couldn't wear a GIF.

He started looking into products that could do the same, and the closest he came to this were bulky LED tee shirts. He saw an opportunity to create a new product that could reinvent wearable technology, but he just didn’t have the funds to start developing it. However, he noticed the rising popularity of NFTs after he cashed out of Emblem Athletic, and he jumped at the opportunity to bring his old idea to life.

That’s how Dott was born. Dott is an e-commerce apparel store that connects with your wallet and allows you to create a personalized item of clothing with your NFT or GIF on it. Dott gives you the ability to wear your NFT out and then show off your NFT in a way that you couldn't before. It’s also great for artists because they’re able to promote the NFT in a way that they couldn’t before.

Dott is changing the way that customized e-commerce apparel stores work, and it could open a huge opportunity for artists, designers, and other NFT enthusiasts looking to fuse NFTs with a physical wearable product.

Listen to this episode of The Ecom Show to learn more about Dott and the world of wearable NFTs. It also contains information on the best automation tools and systems e-commerce stores can use to streamline their operations.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out episode 96 of The Ecom Show to know more about another extremely innovative company called Ketonia.

See you again next Thursday!

Links for the companies and people mentioned in this podcast:

Follow Tyler McCourt

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-mccourt/

Visit Dott

https://weardott.com/

Visit Teamtime

https://teamtime.shop/

Follow Daniel Budai

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/budaidaney/

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKtHC2ojO_7mhMHXQ-qZcHQ

Newsletter

https://www.thebudaimedia.com/weekly-newsletter-signup

The Ecom Show

https://www.thebudaimedia.com/podcast

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#118 Steve Dennis - Retail vs. eCommerce

Hey Budai Nation!

Welcome to episode 118 of The Ecom Show. This episode is a showdown between the world of retail and e-commerce. We’ve even got a celebrity guest on board to make things more interesting.

We’re beyond thrilled to share that the bestselling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, Steve Dennis, will be joining our founder and podcast host, Daniel Budai, for this incredibly stimulating and insightful conversation about the future of shopping in a rapidly evolving digital world.

So, listen in to learn more about:

✅ Professional Journey of Steve Dennis

✅ #1 Reason Why Retail Businesses Fail

✅ Takeaways From Successful Retail Businesses

✅ Retail vs. eCommerce

Professional Journey of Steve Dennis

Steve Dennis is a consultant, keynote speaker, and author specializing in retail and innovation. He made a name for himself in the retail space after climbing up the corporate ladder and becoming a senior executive at two major Fortune 500 retailers. He’s also the writer of the best-selling book—Remarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. He is also an esteemed consultant whose thoughts on the future of shopping are frequently shared in his role as a Forbes Senior Contributor.

Let’s backtrack to the beginning, though. Steve initially set out to pursue an education in law. However, he changed course after starting a small business with marketing guru Seth Godin during their junior year in college. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, Steve decided to pursue an education in business.

After this, he started working for a big consulting firm where he developed a special interest in food companies, so he got a job working in retail for “Sears, Roebuck and Company” in Chicago. Ever since, he’s continued to stay in the world of retail. Fascinated by consumer psychology, Steve has made a flourishing career for himself in the retail industry with over 30+ years of experience.

He’s currently the president of Sageberry Consulting, a strategic advisory firm that provides consulting services to the retail, fashion, and luxury industries. He’s even got his own podcast called Remarkable Retail.

#1 Reason Why Retail Businesses Fail

We’ve shifted to a more digitally connected world which has greatly affected consumer behavior and the way we shop. In the past, consumers were used to going to a physical store, and you know, having to gather information largely from salespeople, or their friends, or maybe a magazine, but you know, very traditional media, to see what was available. This meant that consumers had to physically run around if they wanted to explore a lot of choices.

But over the last 15 or 20 years, we’ve shifted to this world of abundance where there are almost infinite choices at the tip of our fingers. So, in a world of this abundance of choice, the abundance of information to be merely very good is no longer enough. Retail businesses need to be remarkable to survive.

The number one reason for retail businesses failing is mediocrity. In other words, businesses that don’t have a competitive edge or differentiating factor that makes them stand out often fail to succeed. This edge comes from offering competitive pricing, exceptional customer service, understanding the blend between the retail and digital world, and using it to enhance consumer interactions.

Businesses that fail to actualize this and evolve are often stuck in the boring middle and lead to failure.

Takeaways From Successful Retail Businesses

There are a lot of wildly successful brands that are almost synonymous with the word retail. Here are some quick takeaways and learnings that Steve Dennis shared from observing these real-life retail champions:

Apple: One of the most aspirational and popular technology brands in the market, Apple has succeeded by selling a lifestyle rather than a single product. They’ve built an entire community around their brand ethos, which shows how important community building is; and they provide excellent customer service, which shows the value of cultivating a nurturing customer experience.

Restoration Hardware: They’re not a very digitally driven company, but the lesson from them is to focus on solving problems for a niche. Restoration Hardware is really focused on a fairly narrow set of customers, and they try to meet their needs in a very direct way. This is one of the key ways to be remarkable. When a business can understand their customer and give them what they value, they’re able to retain customers even if they’re charging a premium price.

Target: They’re one of those brands that beautifully blend digital and physical in a much more profound way. Not only have they improved their e-commerce capabilities, but they’ve also recognized that there’s really no such thing as the e-commerce channel and the brick-and-mortar channel. It’s all just shopping. So, their focus has always been on how to best take care of the customer across a spectrum of needs and a spectrum of customer journeys.

One of the main learnings from them is to try and blend both retail and digital as your business grows. This brings us to the last part of our discussion.

Retail vs. eCommerce

A lot of people say that the future of shopping is e-commerce and that retail is dying. This is only half true. While e-commerce and digital are the future, retail is far from dead! People still love the convenience and instant gratification that comes with shopping from physical stores. The customer experience that’s provided through live shopping cannot be entirely replaced through e-commerce which is why both are essential for a business to grow.

So, instead of focusing on e-commerce vs. retail, businesses should be asking how e-commerce and retail can work together to enhance the customer’s shopping experience. Customer acquisition becomes challenging after a digitally native brand grows to a certain extent. Post a certain mark; businesses find it difficult to find new customers, which is where entering into retail and physical stores can help them grow further.

Similarly, purely offline businesses are limited to smaller market sizes. Going online opens up the door to a much wider geographic market and makes it easier for customers to find exactly what they want.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Ecom Show. You can check out some of our previous episodes if you’d like to learn more about e-commerce.

Thanks for tuning in. See you again next Thursday!

Follow Steve Dennis:

Steve’s LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenpdennis/

Steve’s Website:

https://stevenpdennis.com/

Steve’s Twitter:

https://twitter.com/stevenpdennis

The Remarkable Retail Book:

https://stevenpdennis.com/remarkable-retail/

The Remarkable Retail Podcast:

https://stevenpdennis.com/podcast/

Follow Daniel Budai:

Daniel’s LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/budaidaney/

Daniel’s YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKtHC2ojO_7mhMHXQ-qZcHQ

Daniel’s Newsletter:

https://www.thebudaimedia.com/weekly-newsletter-signup

The Ecom Show:

https://www.thebudaimedia.com/podcast

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#117 JB Kellogg: These Tips Have Helped Over 20,000 Small Businesses Grow

Hello Budai Nation!

Today’s episode of The Ecom Show is for all the small business owners out there.

Running a small business is not an easy task; there are always 360 different things you need to do and 360 different directions you’re being pulled in. Which is why, we’ve got the co-founder of Marketing 360 here to give us his expert advice on helping small businesses scale.

JB Kellogg is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Madwire, a tech company that’s helped over 20,000 SMBs grow with this singular tech platform called Marketing 360. He founded Madwire when he was just 28 years old.

In this episode, JB Kellogg and our founder and CEO, Daniel Budai, will share business tips, real-life success stories, and learning experiences.

So, tune in and learn more about:

✅ JB Kellogg’s Entrepreneurial Journey

✅ #1 Advice For Small Business Owners

✅ The Most Unique Thing About Madwire’s Company Culture

✅ One Mistake Every Small Business Should Avoid

Before we jump right in, we’d like to give a quick shout-out to Raj, the CEO of Bloomreach. He also runs a tech platform that helps small businesses grow. Make sure to check out episode 62 of The Ecom Show for some additional tips on scaling a small business.

Let’s dig in.

JB Kellogg’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Like every good success story, JB Kellogg’s journey starts with a humble beginning. As a young college student with some extra time on his hands, JB Kellogg was on the lookout for new learning opportunities. This is what drove him to approach a travel magazine asking for a job opportunity.

The magazine needed a website, so JB Kellogg jumped at the opportunity and taught himself everything he needed to know to build a website. This is where he got his first taste of working in the digital world. He continued learning more about digital marketing and running ads and finally took a gamble by starting Madwire.

In 2009, JB Kellogg teamed up with his father to start Madwire. A tech company that offered businesses help to grow. He founded Madwire when he was 28 years old and helped grow the company to a run-rate of over 100M+ in revenue and 500+ employees in under 10 years.

Madwire is technically really one company, but they have a number of brands. Marketing 360 is their biggest brand, which enables small businesses to set up an account that takes care of all their business needs under one umbrella. They can have everything from managing their leads and customers with the CRM to sending emails to managing social media and beyond, so everything they need to manage and grow their business can be done through one login.

However, a lot of these small businesses don't have time to do their own marketing or the resources to keep hiring experts to help them figure it out. This is why Madwire also offers additional services where businesses can hire expert consultants to help them with executing projects as well.

#1 Advice For Small Business Owners

We asked JB Kellogg what’s the number one advice he would give to small business owners in 2022. Here’s what he had to share:

“I think the most important thing to think about is, what is the world going to look like in the next two to three years for your particular industry. And, you know, put a lot of thought and counsel into that, you know, get feedback from other people and then try to develop, you know, your vision for the next three years.”

Once you’ve figured that out, you need to reverse engineer your way to build a strategy that helps you reach your mission. Basically, businesses need to figure out how their industry will evolve and find ways to adapt to these changes.

This involves researching and adopting new systems and processes to help you achieve your goals. So if you’re in e-commerce, you need to ask yourself, what are the new platforms or processes I can work on to improve my payment process? Or, how can I use AI to provide my customers with a better experience?

This is essential because if you’re not thinking of the future, you will get passed up.

The Most Unique Thing About Madwire’s Company Culture

Building a business with over 500+ employees teaches a man a thing or two about hiring and people management. We asked JB Kellogg to share the most unique thing that’s helped him create an inclusive and positive work culture at Madwire.

Here’s what he said:

“Madwire has always lived by the motto, execution excellence. And what this means is that you don't, you know, try to make the same mistake twice; it doesn't mean that you're perfect. But it means that you're constantly trying to get better. And it also means you step outside of that job description.”

So, if there's a piece of trash in the hallway, when you're walking down the hall, pick it up, if the sink is messy, clean it up, if your neighbor's phone's ringing, answer it, and don't let it go to voicemail just because it’s out of the job description. Execution excellence basically fights the mindset that convinces employees to be married to their job descriptions.

In the early days, Madwire didn't even have job descriptions! Everybody's description was the same, which was execution excellence with whatever is put before you. The idea was to hire people that are able to pivot and help the company scale with the same growth-minded attitude.

One Mistake Every Small Business Should Avoid

Every business owner goes through tough phases that teach them valuable lessons in the journey of entrepreneurship. JB Kellogg shared that the hardest thing that he learned was the realization of when to let people go.

Firing people is never easy, especially when you’re new to building a team. You want to give people enough opportunities, but it’s important to realize the cost of these opportunities. Give your team members an opportunity, coach them, and give them everything you can.

But also look at their attitude, effort, and performance. If a team member's performance is weak, but their attitude and effort are strong, keep them on a long leash and let them learn and improve.

It’s always better to have a team member with the right kind of attitude than a well-performing team member with a poor work attitude. It’s best to let employees go when you notice a poor work attitude that matches a lack of interest in their overall job.

These were some of the most interesting highlights from today’s episode of The Ecom Show.

Thanks for tuning in!

See you again next Thursday.

Click on the links below to follow and learn more about JB Kellogg and his venture Madwire:

Madwire

JB Kellogg’s LinkedIN

JB Kellogg’s Website

JB Kellogg’s Youtube

Click on the links below to follow and learn more about Daniel Budai:

Daniel’s Youtube

Daniel's LinkedIn

Daniel's Facebook

Click on the link below to check out some of our previous episodes:

The Ecom Show

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#106 Adam McDonald: 3 Things Every E-Com Business Needs For Success 

Hello Budai Nation! Your favorite e-commerce podcast is back with a brand new episode on how to create a successful e-com brand.

This week we've got serial entrepreneur/growth strategist/angel investor/e-commerce genius Adam McDonald, with our founder and podcast host, Daniel Budai.

Adam has successfully sold 4 businesses and is now investing in several e-commerce projects. His achievements include building the largest sport surface advertising company in Australia, producing a TV show that he sold to Disney, building Australia's largest outdoor event company, and investing in several e-commerce projects.

In this episode, Adam will reveal the 3 things that every e-com business needs for success! So, tune in to The Ecom Show to find out more about:

✔ Adam's Entrepreneurial Journey

✔ How To Grow Your Business Without Returning Customers

✔ How To Improve Your Customer Experience

✔How To Nail Organic Marketing

Adam's Entrepreneurial Journey

Adam's been a serial entrepreneur throughout his life. He first dabbled into selling products online way back in the early 2000s by reselling American shampoo and conditioners in Australia. He did this for a while before the company expanded and decided to take their selling in-house. You couldn't really call this e-commerce, though—it was more of an online brochure to sell the products to other brick-and-mortar stores in Australia.

Things changed when Adam received a call for help from his dad. Adam's father had run into some taxation issues, which led to him having to sell the business. Adam stepped in and managed to find his father a buyer who owned a big sports advertising agency. As a part of the contract, Adam worked with the buyer to revive the business. However, this contract was short-lived because Adam discovered that the buyer was involved in wrongful business practices and bought back his dad's business and all the equipment.

He then continued growing the venture for the next 3-4 years. He managed to successfully grow it to an 8-figure valuation. He used his wealth from this venture to produce a TV show, which was acquired by ESPN.

Since then, Adam has had a successful and colorful business journey, which ranges from building Australia's largest event company centered around fun to acquiring a physical pet collar business and growing it online. He's currently freelancing as a growth strategist, investing in several e-commerce projects, and building his own picnic rug e-commerce store.

Let's move on to discuss the three things that have helped him find success in all these different ventures.

How To Grow Your Business Without Returning Customers

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and returning customers are pivotal in growing a sustainable marketing plan for your e-commerce brand. It's what ensures that your brand can survive and scale without solely depending on ad spends. But, what do you do if your product's lifecycle is too long to have returning customers?

Adam faced this problem with his pet collar business, where his products often outlived the pets themselves! However, he discovered a great alternative to returning customers: referrals!

If you're selling a product that doesn't have the scope of generating returning customers, focus your energy on converting your existing customers into brand advocates! When you provide an excellent customer experience, your customers are inclined to talk about your brand, which leads to organic word of mouth.

Both returning customers and brand advocates have one thing in common; they need to be happy customers first! Customers will only trust your brand enough to keep purchasing or advocating for you if they are satisfied. So, focus on your customer journey, engagement, and referral programs to create a strong base of brand advocates.

You know your brand is on the right path when your customers are willing to sell your product for you!

How To Improve Your Customer Experience

The one thing that can help every business become a brand is a genuinely strong network of brand advocates, which only comes when a business can provide a good customer experience.

Between new technology, changing customer preferences, emerging trends, and competition, businesses have to constantly work on redefining their customer journey and experience to ensure that their customers are satisfied.

Adam strongly advises every business owner to conduct a self-audit of their brand to help them consistently improve. He diligently orders through his own business to experience everything from the user experience on the website, to entering the flows, to getting the delivery. This activity helps him discover what needs to be tweaked. After one such audit, Adam realized that their shipping partner provided a terrible delivery experience; this pushed him to find a more reliable shipping service and helped him improve his customer journey.

Conducting a self-audit even once every quarter can help business owners understand their customers' pain points better! Only if you go through everything will you realize what can annoy your customers.

How To Nail Organic Marketing

At the start of the podcast, we touched upon building a sustainable marketing plan for your e-commerce brand. This basically refers to finding organic ways to grow a brand. Anyone can generate 10 million in sales revenue when they're pouring in 8 million on ad spends. The skill is in being able to grow your business using a mix of organic and paid marketing efforts.

This brings us to the third thing every business needs to succeed- a community. If you can build a community around your product, your organic side of things gets looked after. Not only because you end up with a big database, but because you have the power to engage with them. Your community can help you create user-generated content, get ideas on product development, and much more.

The key to building a big community lies in giving. You must keep adding value to your customers' lives to earn that trust and build a community. Having customers sign up to your email list isn't enough. You need to leverage your email list to engage with your customers and work towards creating that sense of community.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of The Ecom Show! If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow Adam, and check out his website for more stories to help you grow your e-commerce brand.

Thanks for tuning in; we'll see you again next Thursday!

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#115 Rakefet: Outsource Your Marketing With Mayple

This podcast is about marketing, but it isn’t about marketing techniques, SEO, paid ads, or any of that other technical stuff. Instead, it’s about how you can and should outsource your marketing.

Today, we’ve got Rakefet, the CMO of Mayple, to talk to us about the easiest way to grow your business.

Mayple is a vetted professional marketplace that connects marketing experts with businesses looking to build their brands.

Tune in to this episode to hear our podcast host and CEO, Daniel Budai and Rakefet discuss:

✅ Rakefet’s Journey With Marketing

✅ How To Hire The Right Talent

✅ Mayple Vs. Other Gig Marketplaces

So let’s jump right in!

Rakefet’s Journey With Marketing

Rakefet has always been in the field of marketing. In fact, prior to Mayple, she worked as a marketing consultant for over eight years. She’s assisted over 100+ CEOs, CMOs, and business managers with their business and marketing strategies. In addition, she’s worked with various consulting firms and helped both B2B and B2C businesses grow with her strategies.

However, Rakefet soon realized that building a strategy is only half the job. It’s usually the execution phase that companies struggle with. She came across Mayple and realized that this business could help bridge that gap between planning and executing. Three and a half years ago, Rakefet took a leap and joined Mayple; the rest is simply history.

Mayple began with the mission of solving all the trust issues that come with working in the marketing industry. But, they soon realized that this was a very broad statement to follow. So, they focused on one of the most common pain points: building a brand’s strategy.

Mayple connects businesses with marketing experts that build brand strategies and facilitates the team a business would require to execute this to achieve their desired result. They do all the groundwork so that businesses are able to find the perfect expert with the help of a simple click.

How To Hire The Right Talent

Marketing is a complex field. There are a dozen different platforms, all kinds of data, and a million other things to do, which is why it’s never a one-person job. Businesses that want to grow need to hire a team and get an extra set of hands to help them create and execute strategies flawlessly and, most importantly, to keep up with ever-changing algorithms and trends.

As a business owner, your execution is based entirely on the people you work with, and finding the right kind of people isn’t the easiest of jobs. The industry is fragmented; with everyone claiming to be the best freelancer, the best agency, or the perfect candidate out of the lot, it becomes difficult to find the right fit. Especially because there’s nothing stopping people from calling themselves an expert. And unfortunately, this leads to many businesses seeing bad results and losing trust in the marketing field.

Conversely, the vetting process isn’t easy on candidates either. Around 40% of anyone’s time when you’re a freelancer or run an agency goes into managing the account and maintaining your business rather than doing their professional work. So, there are a lot of pains for the marketer side as well.

Vetting is the most critical process of hiring or finding work. Both professionals and businesses should weigh and assess their opportunities before starting any new project. A robust vetting process can help reduce the number of negative experiences and also streamline work processes. However, vetting can take time and cost businesses a lot of money. Mayple vets the experts so that businesses can get straight to work.

Mayple Vs. Other Gig Marketplaces

There are plenty of websites that connect businesses with freelancers and experts to help get the job done. What’s so special about Mayple, and how is it different from platforms like Upwork or Fiverr?

Platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, and Fiverr connect businesses with freelancers or agencies, but the onus of vetting their work still lies on the business. Mayple isn’t an open platform. They have a network of only 600 expert professionals. This is because they’ve taken the time and energy to interview, assess, and personally handpick the best of the best in marketing.

Mayple not only offers a curated list of highly trusted and qualified professionals, but also guarantees satisfaction by acting as an intermediary between a business and the professional. Their alliance guarantees that businesses benefit from the strategies that professionals create. Mayple also has a vast network of experts from different fields of marketing, providing businesses with an agency-like roster to horizontally expand their marketing efforts in a seamless fashion.

Interested in learning more about Mayple? Click here to check out their website.

You can also follow Rakefet on LinkedIn by clicking here.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Ecom Show!

We come out with new episodes every Thursday.

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#114 Joey Coleman: Build Lifetime Customer Loyalty In 100 Days

We're back, and we're in conversation with Joey Coleman, the famous author of the bestselling novel "Never Lose A Customer Again."

Behind every successful brand, there's an army of loyal customers, and Joey Coleman is an expert when it comes to turning any sale into lifelong loyalty. Joey has been helping businesses build customer loyalty for almost 20 years now. He's a bestselling writer, teacher, advisor, and incredible speaker.

Tune in to this episode of The Ecom Show to hear Daniel Budai and Joey talk about:

✔️ Joey Coleman's Eclectic Career Path

✔️ The 8 Phases of A Customer Journey

✔️How to Analyze Customer Feedback

Joey Coleman's Eclectic Career Path

Joey had a unique career path. He studied international and national security law in college and went on to serve the nation by working in the United States Secret Service. He also worked in the Central Intelligence Agency and eventually made his way up to serving as counsel to the US president himself.

From working as a salesperson to a criminal defense lawyer to teaching in a postgraduate class and eventually starting his own ad agency, Joey's worn several career hats over the years. But what's interesting is that he found a common thread that connected the experiences he gathered from all his jobs over the years. And the thread that connects all of them is, in each of those positions, the way you advanced or were rewarded was by having a keen understanding of the human condition. Why do humans do the things they do? What can we do to convince them or persuade them or encourage them to do the things we'd like them to do? And so as all of those experiences and kind of different career paths meld that together.

Joey found himself really focusing on human psychology as it related in a business context to customers. He applied this to his own ad agency and began researching how he could help his clients retain the customers he worked so hard to acquire for them.

This search led him on a decade-long journey in uncovering why customers leave and what can be done to convince them to stay. This search has formed the foundations for his book, business consulting, and speeches over the years, and he's now a well-renowned customer retention expert.

The 8 Phases of A Customer Journey

In Joey's bestselling book, "Never Lose A Customer Again," he talks about the 8 phases of a customer journey. These phases show businesses how they can convert any customer into a lifetime buyer. Here's a quick run-through of these phases and how they relate back to e-commerce:

1. Assess: This is when a prospect is assessing whether or not they want to become a customer. In common parlance, we think of this as marketing and sales. They're looking at your website and your marketing materials; they're in some sales conversations with you. They're in the decision-making process to figure out if they want to become a customer.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

E-commerce businesses need to ensure that their website checks all the boxes a customer would look for. Have ample reviews, product information, a variety of photos, links to social media, and helpful resources to make your customer feel comfortable with your website.

2. Admit: This is when a prospect admits that they have a problem or a need that they think you can help them solve. They sign on the dotted line, and they hand over their hard-earned cash. This is day one of the first 100 days process.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

This is where customers are on your checkout page. E-commerce businesses need to focus on providing an easy checkout process. This means giving customers a choice to sign up through social media, providing guest checkout, and making sure there are enough payment options available.

3. Affirm: In common parlance, we call this buyer's remorse, where they begin to doubt the decision that they just made to work with you. Now in most businesses, we're celebrating because we got a new client, we're really happy. Meanwhile, at the client's office or at the customer's home, they're saying, Ooh, did I make the right purchase? I was looking at a couple of options. And I chose this one. But what if it's not right? Well, I'd be able to get my money back when I get in trouble. How will I do this? And that difference in our emotional high in the customer's emotional low or uncertainty. If we don't address that, we're in real trouble.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

This phase involves keeping customers in the loop! It involves sending out order confirmations and shipping updates.

4. Activate: This is the first real moment of truth when they receive the product. We want to energize the relationship. We want to let them know that doing business with us is going to be unlike any business experience they've ever had.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

In this phase, e-commerce businesses need to start thinking of ways to engage with customers who have just received their products.

5. Acclimate: This is the phase where most businesses lose their customers. In the acclimate phase, our job is to hold our customers' hands to help them acclimate to our way of doing business to get used to our way of doing business.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

Find ways to make sure that customers are actually using the product they bought. There are a bunch of ways to do this! You could send them an email showing them how to use your product or even personalize it by sending customers a survey asking them about why they made the purchase.

6. Accomplish: This phase is all about helping your customers accomplish the goal that they had in mind when they did business with you.

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

In this phase, e-commerce stores need to check in with their customers and see that their customers are actually making the most out of their purchases. It involves sending out recommendations based on their previous purchase or simply asking for feedback.

7. Adopt: This phase is where the customer becomes loyal to us and only us; they're not looking at the competition; they've adopted the relationship, and they're committed to continuing to do business with us in the future. And if and only if we've gotten through all seven of those phases, do we get to the last phase, the final phase, the holy grail Nirvana, the thing everybody's striving for, which is the advocate phase!

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

E-commerce businesses need to continue the conversation and build a long-lasting relationship with their customers by checking in and providing them with value-based content to keep them engaged.

8. Advocate: When customers are loyal enough to go and refer your brand to people around them. Most businesses want to jump to that phase eight right away. They want to get the customer signed up and then say, Well, who else do you know that might need our product? Or, hey, there are some other things we want to sell you and have you join up and participate in it as well. We need to pace ourselves and take time to work through each of the eight phases to earn the trust and comfort of the customer before asking them to become brand advocates!

What do e-commerce businesses need to look out for in this phase?

This phase comes naturally after a customer passes through the first seven phases! A returning customer is more likely to be a brand advocate as compared to a new customer. They're easier to get referrals from and to upsell. It's important for businesses to value these customers by treating them to discounts and special deals. 

How to Analyze Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is crucial, but it's hard to learn from feedback when your customers aren't being 100% honest. Customers might find it difficult to be critical if they have a personal relationship with your brand. This is why it's important to create honest spaces for customers to freely communicate how they're feeling. Here are Joey's tips for getting customer feedback:

• Provide multiple channels for feedback: Each customer has their own personal preference when it comes to communicating, which is why businesses should have multiple avenues to receive customer feedback. Give your customers the freedom to choose from sending you a message, filling out a feedback form, or directly speaking to you via a scheduled phone call.
• Ask for feedback at various stages: This is super important if you have a product that works on a subscription-based model or you deliver an ongoing service. Ask for feedback when you're halfway through your transaction, and at the end, that way, your customers have the opportunity to see how you improve based on their recommendations.
• Acknowledge their feedback: A lot of companies ask for feedback but don't bother notifying the customers about their next steps. It's important to show your customers that you respect the time that they've taken out to help you improve. Give your customers credit where it's due, and thank them for taking the time to give you feedback.
• Be specific: Asking broad-ended questions can get confusing and vague. Instead, be specific and ask your customers exactly what you want to know. Giving your customers direction makes it easier for them to collect their thoughts.
• Mix it up: Don't go fishing for compliments! Feedback consists of both positive and negative observations that can help you better your business. Keep it balanced and make sure to ask your customers what they'd like you to continue doing, what they'd like you to stop doing, and what they'd like your brand to start doing. 

That's all for today's episode. Make sure to check out Joey Coleman's website if you'd like to learn more about him.

You can also check out his book, "Never Lose A Customer Again," to learn more about the 8 phases of a customer journey.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out episode 109, where Shep Hyken shares some more golden nuggets on creating a memorable customer experience.

You can also click here to check out the rest of our episodes.

Thanks for tuning in! See you back here next Thursday.

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#113 John Burgess: Start Dropshipping With $0

Everyone thinks it takes a LOT to start your own eCommerce business. And it does take a lot, a lot of effort, creativity, patience, and perseverance! But thanks to dropshipping and businesses like Shine On, what it doesn't take is a lot of money to get started!

John Burgess, the head of global accounts at Shine On, joins our podcast host and CEO, Daniel Budai, in an interesting conversation about starting your eCommerce journey through dropshipping.

Shine On is a dropshipping store that specializes in producing personalized viral accessories. They empower new businesses across the globe with their easy-to-sell platform that allows individuals to start selling with zero upfront payments.

Tune in to this episode to learn more about:

✔️ John's Background With Dropshipping.

✔️ How Shine On Empowers Businesses

✔️ Scaling A Dropshipping Business

✔️ Expanding Your E-Commerce Store With Dropshipping.

John's Background With Dropshipping

John Burgess heads the global accounts team at Shine, a leading dropshipping business that enables thousands of sellers across the globe with their personalized viral line of products and easy-to-use platform.

But his journey didn't start there! In fact, his story begins in early 2006. Right out of college, and having learned textile design and merchandising, John decided to take a leap and pursue his interest in the internet to see how he could make a career out of it. John combined his knowledge of merchandising with his self-taught skills of C plus to start his own consulting/print shop business.

John basically helped businesses build their own e-commerce stores using the platform BigCartel, and also doubled up his services by providing them with in-house print-on-demand service to create graphic tee shirts.

Unfortunately, due to the market crash, John was forced to sell his business. He then got into digital marketing and learned the ropes of paid advertising, social media marketing, and building e-commerce stores and apps using platforms like Magento. This experience gave John the exposure to working with brands of different sizes, which helped fine-tune his knowledge of the eCommerce industry.

John eventually got an offer to join Shine On and decided to jump ship after seeing the potential in dropshipping. When John joined Shine On, they were fairly new and operating with a small team of only five employees. They've now grown and have a team of over 130 employees, with factories in both the USA and Europe.

How Shine On Empowers Businesses

Shine On is a dropshipping platform that removes the biggest barrier to entering e-commerce: dealing with products! Sellers can simply create an account, connect it to their own website, or sell using the Shine On the marketplace and start selling in under thirty minutes.

The idea behind Shine On is that there are zero upfront costs. With Shine On, you can start taking orders and pay only once it's time to fulfill them. Basically, Shine On takes care of the manufacturing and supply chain so that you can focus on brand building and selling.

Shine On attracts two kinds of customers. The first are new customers that need help starting from scratch. The second is existing eCommerce businesses that want to expand their product line or sales revenue. Since Shine On offers personalized accessories, brands can customize items based on their niche and still cater to a whole new audience with virtually no upfront costs for testing a new market.

Shine On has over 10,000 active sellers in the US market alone, and they've also expanded with a new factory in Europe. Shine On caters to sellers across the globe and has helped generate over $152,500,914 worth of products to date.

Scaling A Dropshipping Business

There are a lot of people that say that dropshipping is a dead end. However, the truth is far from it! Dropshipping is simply a choice of how you choose to handle your logistics as a business. How well your e-commerce store does still lies in your hand and on how well you treat your customers.

Dropshipping is a very viable and profitable business model for those that focus on brand building. A big part of this involves picking the right kind of suppliers/platforms to help you dropship. You need to move away from Chinese suppliers like Alibaba and find localized platforms that offer reliable and timely fulfillment and quality of products.

Another important thing is to establish your own USP through your service by doing all the things that a brand does to be successful. This involves building lifetime value and brand loyalty.

Advertising platforms like Google, Tik-Tok, and Facebook all have advanced algorithms that see how legitimate your business is, which is why it's crucial for dropshippers to focus on brand building.

Another good way of scaling your dropshipping business is through a horizontal approach. You've got the products and the content ready. Research how local markets in different countries operate and expand your reach to other countries with similar audiences. You might have to modify your strategy in terms of language and pricing, but expanding your store to different regions opens you up to a wider market. Dropshipping makes testing and expanding to a global market easy since there are no upfront inventory or product development costs.

Expanding Your E-Commerce Store With Dropshipping

A lot of eCommerce stores that are doing well and have their own products also often have a giant email list. And just like every store out there, they might have times where they don't have products to offer during specific occasions like Mother's Day, for example.

Here's an example that John shared with us in this episode:

"One of our clients runs a golf shop, and he's got a huge database of emails, but he had nothing to offer them for Mother's Day. So, we spoke to him and convinced him to run an experiment by adding a personalized gift from our dropshipping collection at Shine On. All he had to do was send out one promotional email. He sent out that email and made over $10,000 in revenue. Just like that, he was able to create a bump in his sales on a promotional day that otherwise didn't exist for his store."

The beauty of this is that it requires very little effort for existing eCommerce brands because all they have to do is sign up on an app, add the product to their store, and run ads. Dropshipping allows existing eCommerce stores to tap into the seasonal market and widen their pool with minimal effort. It also makes it easier for existing e-commerce stores to test out new products.

And with platforms like Shine On, e-commerce stores have the freedom and creativity to customize the product to fit their brand's aesthetic. Check out their website to learn more about dropshipping and the services that Shine On offers.

If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe because we release new episodes each Tuesday and Thursday.

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#112 Boyuan Zhao: E-Commerce Agency CEOs Share Their Best Tips

Welcome back to The Ecom Show! Today's discussion is special for anyone with their own e-commerce store because we've got the founder of not one but two e-commerce agencies to talk about everything Ecom!

Our guest for today is Boyuan Zhao. He is the founder of the e-commerce email marketing agency PLTHORA. Apart from this, he also has his own Youtube channel where he shares tutorials on how to master Klaviyo, and he's got professional investments in cryptocurrency as well.

In this episode, Boyuan Zhao and Daniel Budai, podcast host and CEO of Budai Media, will be discussing everything that goes into growing an e-commerce brand.

Tune in to hear more about:

✔️The Key To Designing A Viral Product

✔️Be A Content First E-Commerce Brand.

✔️ Boyuan's Advice For E-Commerce Entrepreneurs.

The Key To Designing A Viral Product

This one's important for anyone that's looking to enter the e-commerce space or to even expand their product line. There are two things that can make any product go viral. 

The first is coming up with something quirky. Take the brand Oodie for instance. Oodie is an apparel brand that creates oversized hoodies that double up as blankets. This Australian apparel brand has built a nine-figure business by creating a unique and quirky product that stands out. In fact, one of our previous guests, Jason Williamson, runs an SMS marketing agency that handles Oodie's SMS flows, and he shed more light on this brand in episode 105.

The second is to create hyper utility. Products that can find a unique solution to a very specific problem have the potential to go viral. The Shark Tank legacy brand, Scrub Daddy, is a perfect example of this. There is a sponge that helps clean out every corner of a dish. Similarly, any product that solves a specific problem has viral potential because those types of products are great for ads. You can create simple direct videos that drive customers to purchase your product.

If you're looking to enter the e-commerce space with a new product, start by finding a problem and find a unique way to create a solution for it. A lot of people do it the other way round. They create their product and look for a USP after. However, the best way to beat market saturation is by creating a product that can easily stand out.

Be A Content First E-Commerce Brand

With the explosion of social media, everyone's a content creator! It's no longer enough to just have a good website. In order to create a successful brand, you need to have a great social media presence. This includes being omnipresent on channels like Tik-Tok, Instagram, Facebook, or even Youtube; based on what you sell. Social media platforms help you build a community that can drive your sales even if your website isn't great!

For example, there's this company called Ancestral Supplements. This company's founder markets himself as the Liver King. Their products sell extremely well despite having a simple website, high prices, and a high shipping fee. This is because they have great marketing in place. Being a content-first brand helps in building social capital in the form of trust. The more your customers trust you, the more they're willing to shop from you, despite your brand's shortcomings.

Boyuan's Advice For E-Commerce Entrepreneurs

E-commerce agencies interact with entrepreneurs from every walk of life and solve problems by coming up with innovative strategies on the regular. We asked Boyuan to share some of his biggest learnings and takeaways from his experience in the industry. Here's what he had to say:

What has been your biggest learning from running a business?

"My biggest learning has been understanding the value of time. People are constantly advertising how they achieved success in very quick timeframes; this can mess with your perception of how well you're doing something. But it's important to understand that things just take some time, especially if you're pursuing more high-leverage activities.

For example, when I first started out, I was doing cold email outreach. So, it'd be about a two-week delay between me putting in the effort and seeing the return. But then, when I started pivoting towards content, it was actually like a three to a six-month time period before I got my first big client. But the thing is, cold outreach is linear in the sense that you just send the email, and that's it. And it's forgotten about, whereas content is more or less evergreen, so it's higher leverage. So, it took me a while to understand that exponential growth can take time to build."

Hiring is extremely crucial for agencies because, in an agency, you're selling a service. And the quality of your service depends on the people in your team. Could you walk us through your hiring process?

"I'm pretty proud of my team at the moment; I'm working with some really great people. I usually hire from within my own community. I get several inquiries about job openings from my YouTube follower base. The second has been through LinkedIn and extensive interviews. I outsource it to professional recruiters and try to find quality leads by filtering them out with good assignments and a detailed interview process.

I also keep finding ways to retain my team by incentivizing team members when they accomplish good targets. This is usually done by rewarding them with a bonus when the project they're working on performs extraordinarily well."

To sum it all up, the key to growing your brand lies in building a viral product, focusing your energy on creating a strong content strategy to market your product, being patient, and most importantly, surrounding yourself with the right kind of team to help your brand grow!

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Ecom Show. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

You can check out our previous episodes here. 

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