and I remember we had the notificationson our phone for Shopify and you canhear that like touching and it was thebiggest high-five in the world it wasthe probably one I would never forgetthat feeling and then we didn't get asale for in two weeks so I was like wehad one sale I didn't ever thedriver's-side over two weeks because ourwebsite shut down or something like that[Music]she's using a microphone can everyonehear me amazing all right welcome ladiesand gentlemen to our start and scaleevent here in Melbourne my name is LauraI am the customer success and communitymanager here at founder and you guyswill have the pleasure of listening tomy voice on and off throughout the nightas emcee we have an incredible panel offour ecommerce entrepreneurs joining ushere tonight to discuss and provide someinsights and tips into growing yoursales online the topic that got the mostvotes by far in the Facebook group so todiscuss strategies and advice onincreasing e-commerce sales please joinme in welcoming our panel guests we havegreta van Riehl Rory Boyle Rob Ward andJames Hachem[Applause]so I'll give you a quick introductionfor those because I know we have acouple guests here tonight give you aquick introduction to our panel memberstoday so at the far end we have a gretavan real greta is most of you will knowi know it's a lot of whoops in theaudience very popular so as most of youhear when they're greta is i start andscale course instructor and one ofAustralia's top serial entrepreneurs soGreta has been recognized as Forbes 30under 30 class of 2018 the variouscredits instructor and has founded notone not two but five multi-milliondollar companies including skinny meatyhey influencers skin talks drop bottlesand the fifth watches[Applause]all right next to Greta we have RoryBoyle from the land room of EssendonRoryalong with his brother Nick have becomemasters of e-commerce and b2b growthmarking through the gifting companyhampers with bite after years of ahundred percent year-on-year growthselling a hamper every 20 seconds duringpeak periods has become the norm it's nosurprise then that Rory has become anauthority on mastering the art ofcorporate thank yous and stopappreciation it's Rory[Applause]next to Rory we have James Hashem Jamesis the co-founder of alia AlyaI got a rut you know I didn't go towrong a liya skin Australia a Melbournebased ecommerce brand in the beautyindustry since launching 14 months ago alion skin is now sold in 1,500 storesglobally and has already earned sevenmillion dollars we're gonna my numbersout of date James they're correctawesome and last but not least we haveat the very end here Rob Ward Robert isthe director at anacs products TheMelvins start that was created off theback of two very successful Kickstartercampaigns back in 2012 over the yearsRob has amassed a number of awardsincluding the power retail top 100online retailers in 2017 and the Shopifybuilt a business competition back in2011 Robwhat'd I tell you pretty incrediblepanel huh so to start off what I'd loveto hear from each of you about somethinga lot of people here have had butpossibly also something many people arestill working towards your very firste-commerce sale so let's move from leftto right that's rightstarting with Greta tell us about yourvery first sale handed over Rory uhsorry after sale was back in May 2012for anyone that's done the courses maybealready a slightly familiar story so welaunched will we being me at the time Idon't say me only now because I have anincredible team I launched skinny meatyon the 22nd I always get confused aboutthis as well and I have a dispute withmy team constantly whether it was likethe 20th 21st or 22nd somewhere mid toearly Maywell mid to early 20th of May so welaunched skinny means he back in Mayaround the 20th and I put the storeonline overnight and I'd created anInstagram account around the store and Iwas like yep hopefully you know thiswill be an easier way to kind ofconsolidate sales and already beenmaking off friends and family and theywere starting to get a little bitoverwhelming because friends had triedthe tea and then their friends had triedthe tea and then their friends had and Ithe reason I had so it's quite a widelytalked about story especially withinfounder I started with $24 in the bankthe reason I had 24 dollars in the bankwas because I'd been spending everysingle dollar that I had on making allof my friends and then their friends andthen their friends of friends and theirfamily and whoever else had asked methis tea and it was getting reallyreally expensive and I was like God howdo I like start asking people for moneywhen I've already just been doing it asa gift and so I googled how to create ane-commerce store Shopify came up and Icredit a store using Shopify prettyquicklyI think the tool was a little bit moresimple back in 2012 but it took me Ithink around eight hours on a Sundayjust smashed it all out watched a fewtutorials and was like cool stores upstores live posted to Instagram went tobed woke up and we had four sales thenext morning and the cool part was theywere two people I did not know at alland I was like wow like well my firstthought was like cool like I have a tinybit more money in my bank account nowthat's great I'm not just waiting untilpayday again and the second thought waswow this could maybe be something but Ididn't even let myself really think orfeel that at that stage I was like nolike stay calm it's everything is normallike just focus on your job you're verylucky to have a job like all as wellkeep going and yes so that's kind ofwell that was our first for sales exceptit was like I valued them all as thefirst sale so yeah it was a fun timeyeah it's easy to forget that youactually started offline sales I said abusiness oh yeah I don't really everthink I'd be successful so I startedwith my brother and we just threw ittogether he was a truck driver used towork and tell him marketing I come backfrom the UK and he said listen let'sgive this thing a crack it was prettyyoung and I was a bit of a loose younerd and I just sort of thought I willgive it a crack but I honestly deep downdidn't really think it was ever going tocome off I just thought I will try itwe'll give it a crack of is fun to saywe tried a business and remove it afirst sale coming coming through and Iwas like I can't believe someone boughtthis you know and I learned from the soyou get maybe confidence in a second andthird so I come in a four so coming in Irealized we had something a little bitit took longer to we really I realizedwe've really had something but it justgave me that a little bit of self beliefbut to be completely on a spinet when westarted I my expectation I guess maybeI'm a pessimist at heart but was justlike we're not going to sell anythingthis is gonna be a flop and you know itwas just a it was a really reallypleasant surprise when I saw that'sfirst I'll come throughthat was pretty cool thanks Rory I thinkmy story's a little bit different toRory's when we first launched six toeight months ago many many and I mybusiness partner we're a little bitoptimistic probably too optimisticwe found Nick Shackleford I'm not sureif any of you know him who's one of thebest Facebook buyers in the world and Iremember he asked us he was running ourads and he said to us all what do youguys want to do in the first month andManny and I were like 1 million and hereplied and he was honestly shocked tothe point where he didn't want to runour ads anymore because he thought whatwere the most unrealistic delusionalpeople in the world so anyway we welaunched the business on a ham X becausewe couldn't really afford to buy thestock for sure and we we database Idon't know maybe a thousand influencesjust on Instagram and we didn't run anyFacebook ads and I think it was likefour days in and we finally got our ourfirst sale from from an influencer codeand I think the room was probably thesize of this this stage yeah with thisagent or no windows and I remember wehad the notifications on our phone forShopify and you can hear that liketouching and it was the biggesthigh-five in the world it was theprobably why I'll never forget thatfeeling and then we didn't get a salefor in two weeks so I was like we hadone sale and another good I was over twoweeks because our website shut down orsomething like that so was it was stillone of the best experiences but yeahthat's that's our story cool I was goingto say our first sort of sale of a realreal ish ecommerce product was when wecrowdfunded the open air on kik sitewhich is the first Ozzy crowdfundingproduct but then I just remembered thatactually before that I had I had anotherbusiness I found it which was a lasercutting machine business these lasercutting machines that we sort ofredesigned brought them in and startedselling and that that was going quitewell and at the time I remember it wastwenty I think is like 2010 and I seenon Facebook you know the little used tobe like thisa little thumbnail and a little bit ofblue text and a little bit of black textnext to an ad and it was only in theright hand no in feed no anything backthen and I remember seeing that andthinking I I wonder it seems stupidnow I wonder if people would like clickon the ads on Facebook go to ane-commerce site and buy a product whichis ridiculous and so that night Idesigned this little tree was laser-cuttree jewelry tree and cut them on thelasers that we had and and then the nextnight I set up a WooCommerce econwebsite just with the two trees and itwas close to Christmas time set theseads running and just made all thesemassive assumptions about you know womenand their age and all this stuff and putthat in there and yeah went to sleep andwoke up and had like 20 sales of thistree and I was like tiny little ads andby said and and then once we did that Ihad to cuddle the friggin trees whichwas a nightmare so I shut the site downand started thinking man I need to likethink of something that I can make fastthat I can ship easy because they wouldnot matter ship I ship them all they allbroke nightmare I end up driving them topeople's houses and stuff made no moneybut I thought if I can make somethingthat is easy to make got good margineasy to ship it could be something inthis e-commerce thing yeah thanks forsharing guys and I guess it just comesto show you that like even intrapreneurswho are crushing it now all startedsomewhere yeah I'd like to even panelhow would you increase sales if you werea beginner do our course take thestarting scale courseno um I think the main thing when you'rea beginner is just it's a lot of kind oflow-budget activities you have more timeprobably than maybe the people at themid-level and Ohio kind of level andit's just kind of trying differentthings to begin with so everyone knowswith a lot of different channels a lotof different social media channels andthen there's organic and there's paid oneach channel and I think as a founderand as an e-commerce founder early-stagethe best thing and Nate says it's a lotis just throwing things against the walland sting seeing what sticks so and outof the things that do stick it's justfocusing in on one or two of those soit's not necessarily thinking that youneed to you know be doing like a littlebit of everything because that'sextremely overwhelming like it's veryoverwhelming and I'm sure withinstarting scale as well there are so manydifferent tactics there's so manydifferent things you could focus on thisinfluencer marketing you know there'slike there's paid there's social there'slike email marketing like it's a lot tothink about but it's just finding thethings that do kind of move the needlefor you and you can only really findthat out once you've launched like themain thing the only time you can test isonce you're actually really doing thingsbefore you've launched your mainindicator of success or growth is goingto be signups so how many email signupsyou can get so if we're pre-launch andwe're at the beginner stage and wehaven't even launched out anyone in theroompre-launch hands up right heaps that'sawesome so the main thing that youshould be focusing on pre-launch thewhole reason that you're building asocial presence like the whole reasonthat you're trying to get your brand infront of different people and trying toyou know maybe partner there's someinfluences maybe partner with some othergreat brands in the space is so that youcan build your email database I cannotstress enough how important email stillis it is our number one channel if likeif all that Instagram accounts gotdeleted if all of my breach gottomorrow it would affect me so much lessthan if my email databases were deletedtomorrow if I had to start from scratchfrom an email perspective well-liked andat the same time email is still quite avery like it's a very owned channel likeyou guys own your own email data theonly things that can change our buyerbehaviour so people using email less andmaybe moving toward text or whateverelse and like what all those messengerbot companies make you want to thinkthat like everyone's moving to messengerforget about email like everyone'smoving to SMS forget about email SMS isvery invasive and messenger is hit ormiss so email is still like should bethe main thing that you're trying do youguys agree like Oh insane and it's justfor long receiving a text from a brandit puts me off a lot of the time ratherthan being like yes I want to do thislike certain customers it's great tohave that at the same time like the youknow they're I pay sales and things likethat it's fine to do but like mass SMSblast outs if you're collecting phonenumbers as opposed to emails it's it's alot from an early stage company like inthe early stage you have to rememberthat these people are in like the coldstage they don't understand likenecessarily who your brand is and you'relooking to build trust with those peopleso a really really great way to convertcold traffic is to be able to have themon your email database warm them up kindof nurture those leads and you don'thave to pay I mean you know of courseyou pay your email provider a certainamount each month if you're using likeMailChimp or if you're using campaignmonitor if you're using klaviyo X Y Zedplatform you're of course playing toaccess that but at the same time you ownthat database yourself and if ya you arein pre-launch your number one metricshould be how many emails you cangenerate before you're ready to launchso even at the fifth we ran our businessvery much like a pre-sale model eachmonth so because we only sold on the 5thof each month or 5 days the other 25days would basically be spent inJen look I'm happy to jump in okay umit's a different spin on what Grettasaid so if I was to go back in time andan approach what I'm gonna do from zeroto $100,000 what would I do like I wantto learn what my customer wants whattheir demand what the most publicproducts are so the quickest way to dothat I'm not the most profitable way butthe quickest way to do that throughGoogle AdWords I believe now that'swoken up assumption you sell a productthat has an exposed audience so ifyou're selling a product it's completelyforeign to the market it's a completelyinnovative no one knows that a differentsubject will work on a presumption thatyou're selling shoesthen everyone selling shoes if peoplelooking for shoes so what I would do andwhat I would do retrospectively what wedid do is spend those early days lookingat bidding up on Google Adwordstrying to break even didn't matter if wemade any money but if we learned somereally really important stuff duringthat period so we didn't Google AdWordsand we'd find out one what are mostpopular sellers were – what are mostpopular keywords were it's reallyimportant to know that so you want toknow what keywords convert into youbecause at this point it's here at ahundred thousand you want to start yourSEO strategy so you need to startdiscovering what keywords are the onesthat convert best to you and SEO is aslow burned six to 12 to 18 months sothis is the point where we start todiscover okay what are the keywordswe're going to invest in because ifyou're guessing the effect you're notgonna get it right you need to get realevidence before you start putting moneyinto six twelve months worth of GoogleAdWords so SEO so what you want to do isyou want to just feel the cycle you wantto start putting you guys under pressureyou want to start testing withdistribution means you want to startstart really just feeling what it's liketo quickly run a business and work outwhat's working what's not you soon get achance to correct the problems andimprove the pros along with that ifyou're going to spend money on GoogleAdWords there's some really simple waysto try and convert the most out of thosevisits that you're gonna get and that'sjust ensuring when someone visits thesite you do your utmost to keep them soif the exit you got an exit couponyou've got a live chat that's trying toengage people instead of purchase you'vegot a email marketing automation plan ofsomething like klaviyo which is anamazing product youfive emails of someone abandons a cardif someone jobs an email in at somepoint during their journey you know yourhassle and so they buy and we just startsort of building those early structuresto enable you to sort of get theinformation you're gonna need to getfrom a hundred thousand to a million andthat's if your priority is to get tothat point but if it is that I thinkzero to 100 is more about learning thatis about profit and it's more aboutbuilding a strategy that are going toget you to a hundred to a millionbecause there's a hell of a lot ofinformation to learn during that perioddo you guys have anything burning thatyou want to add for this stage at thebeginner stage we do have time if youkeep it short and sweet otherwise and wecan move on to the next one but justjust keeping a short and sweet somethingthat worked really well for us and thatI love to let people like you know ismicro influences something that doesn'tcost so much but you can really get yourproduct out there quick especiallybecause I think people underestimate thepower of micro influences people get toocaught up in spending money on macroinfluences five thousand ten thousandtwenty thousand dollars when you cansend out almost to ten thousand microinfluences for the same price and evenif a female or male is only got twothousand three thousand followers theirfollowers are like real like that theyalmost trust what that person is postingabout so yeah it's it's a cheap way ofdoing it and it's also an efficient wayof doing it so yeah good insights guysso what I took from that was make sureyou focus on growing your email list geton to Google Adwords if it's appropriatefor your business use micro influencersand chat to your customers all rightlet's move on to intermediate so we'retalking about someone who might havebeen operating for a year or so whoprobably have a few members on the teamby then and are doing between a hundredgrand to 1 million a year how'd you growsales at this point I said early stageit's about kind of low-budget activitiesthis is where you actually kind of havea bit of budget behind you and you canbegin to scale soit's a you know it's a really excitingtime for a lot of people it'll be thefirst time that they've seen money likethat like I could not believe like whenwe started making sales that and whenwe're growing so quickly I'd never likeseen money like that in my life I camefrom I don't have like a wealthy kind offamily backgrounds I see some of thelike comments even in the Facebook adsfrom founder that it'll like yeah thatshe's like you know a privileged whitechick that probably came from like moneyalready so I don't really care about thesuccess she had my mom raised me onbasically a single parent income minimalchild support on around $30,000 a yearand never made us feel like we werelacking in anything I've net I justcould not believe it's an incrediblefeeling when you do start to kind ofprovide for yourself and you can dothings like I put money into you know myparents super accounts and I helped youknow it like you can help pay off bitsof your parents mortgage and things likethat it's just like it's the mostincredible experience and rewarding timeso again the beginner time is incredibleand exciting because you're getting tolearn you're getting to chat to everyonethe intermediate stage it's like wallthis is what money looks likelike what do I do now how am I not goingto let all of this kind of go awaytomorrow that was my biggest fear whenwe got to that stage every night I go tobed and be like shit's like it's been agood run great oh you've done well tothis point but tomorrow you start againhow are you gonna do it like I wouldliterally every night be like you'redone like good good go good try butlet's see what happens so at that stagethough to make sure that is kind of notthe case it didn't end up happeningthank God I still you knowoh no I'm less worried about it thesedays but the main thing that you want tobe doing at that stage is starting toreally scale so in the early stages youwere doing kind of low-budget activitieslike organic social and like collectingemailsthe things that you know you don't needto be charged a lot of money bydifferent platforms and different youknow marketing organizations whateverelse the next stage you want to befocusing more sir on your paid ad spendso whether that again like you couldstart earlier stage of course with paidand that's more than fine just yourbudgets they're going to be a lotsmaller but it's going to scale thingsfrom the step one that James is talkingabout like micro influences through tomaybe some mid tier influences and it'sjust starting to put a bit more budgetbehind the things that you were alreadyfocusing on so I think that it's animportant stage in terms of scale likewhen part one was just more so findingout what worked and focusing on a fewchannels part two is kind of focusinglike gnashing down and focusing onputting scale behind what you're doingso whether that's paid ad spend andwhether in part one I remember I made afew notes on this so I was like part 1part 2 part 3 part 1 would moreso bepaid ad like very targeting via Googleand via Facebook that is like the lowesthanging fruit like in the beginner stageyou definitely want to be very targetingthe customers that have visited yourpotential customers that have visitedyour website with paid advertising parttwo is moreso creating a paid ad funnelso a funnel basically is and it's itsounds scary to people is anyone in theroom not sure what a funnel is I wouldnot have raised my hand like but I thinkit took me quite a while to work outexactly what that was like a funnel iscalled a funnel because the mostcustomers come in through the tub themiddle has a second stage of customersand the bottom which is the conversionstage has the least and that's why it'sshaped like a funnel like an upside downtriangle so at the top comes through ourcold traffic and that's the awarenessstage in the middle is warm and trafficand that's the consideration stage andat the bottom is the conversion stage soat the top at the awareness stage youwant to be introducing your brand toyour customer so an incredible thing andsomething that everyone in this roomshouldfocus on if you're in the kind ofintermediate stage should be those kindof Mashable style Facebook cards James Iknow you guys know them very wellthrough Nick shockyou know the they've got a caption thatformula basically goes like there's ahook and there's some social proof andthen it goes through to productprofiling kind of like what the u VP ofyour product is maybe some cattle 3ddrawings of your product back through tosocial proof again and then your offerso that's the basic structure ifanyone's in the Stantons girl group I'vespoken a few times on this in ourfacebook lives but that's the basicstructure of one of those Mashable stylevideos so that's at your awareness stageyou're introducing cold traffic quicklyto your brand as fast as you can andhopefully that little video will getthem across the line to buy if itdoesn't get them across the line to buyyou move into the consideration stageand at the consideration stage rememberI'm moving down the funnel I'm trying soI'll blend this the most people thatsaid there's a hundred people there thenwe move into the consideration stagelet's say fifty people made it throughto the consideration stage and thatwould be a huge conversion rate it'sprobably like ten people made it throughto the conversion I mean theconsideration stage I'm jumping ahead inthe consideration stage what we want tobe doing is building trust so thesepeople are thinking like why would I getmy credit cut out and buy from thisbrand like I understand you know a bitabout them I understand what they'reselling I know what their product is butwhy would I jump in and become acustomer and the main thing that youwant to be using here is social proof sothat could be again if you're a coursestudent very watch the marketingpsychology lesson and that will bethings like website reviews that will bethings like influencer feedback it willbe things like user-generated content itwill be things like positive PR for yourbrand anything you can draw out liketestimonials if your first stage getliterally three friends to review yourproduct for you honestly like they don'tneed to pretend if that's not the casecut out the ones that didn't but honestreview your products for you and you canuse that in your testimonial stage sothat's in the middle of the funnel andthe bottom of the funnel is theconversion stage and that will very muchbe driven by your offer so things likeit might be a money off of us so I thinkit's really refining your funnel at thatstage it's making sure that people atdifferent stages of the funnel areseeing different content so at theawareness stage they need to be aware ofwhat your brand does how your productworks how it all functionsconsiderations stage just to recapsocial proof and conversion stage offerI'll be pretty concise here so welearned some stuff from 0 to 100 wouldwe learn we just that our product outwe've got it out there we found out whatpeople wanted to buy what they didn'twant to buy what keywords confirm whatkeywords don't convert so first up whatwe learned it's 0 no 100,000 I'm gonnastart investing in SEO because SEO is along strategy it's a long game and weneed to know what words to be investingin so we were better to 0 to 100 so wefound out what keywords convert for usso now we're employing somebody toensure that we rank for those keywordssecondly we want to start tighten up theship so we tested them stuff out at zeroto 100 now at 100 to a million we wantto ensure that we're really concentratedon one of the main metrics or bet threeor four the main metrics that basicallydefine your success I mean you can lookat a whole lot of different stuff butfundamentally the lifetime value of thecustomer the average order value of thecustomer the conversion rate and anyreturn on advertising spend now we startreally focusing on those simple numbersand we keep trying to improve them so wework on our conversion rate and we lookat our side of my sock I got a hundredvisitors last month only so manyconverted maybe we get some outside helpmaybe to some rating and we work outwhat we need to do in our site to ensurethat would convert more than 4.1% weturn it to 4.8% or even or devalue $120we're making $30 our lifetime value of acustomerbibble are on average a perch in 1.5times we want to make them purchase 1.8times you know return on advertisingspendingx 3 1 mega x 4 she just broke up eachone of those categories and you find away to ensure that you're improving amall if you move at all or most of themthen you're in italy enviably besuccessful it's about as simple as thatif you can get positive results on allof those factors then you will do betterand I would say at their hundred twomillion dollar mark that's the mainobjective we're going to enter a SEOphase and we're going to concentrate ona fundamentals to ensure that we'recapitalizing every dollar we spend thevisit our website and getting a verymost out of them and to get the most outof it we concentrate on those fourmetrics you need to break it down it'sreally simple just concentrate on eachone individually that's been I think forme trying to pick some different butgoing off what Rory said is it's a goodtime to know your numbers becauseespecially you've got a physical productit's really easy to run out of cash soyou want to know that sort of uniqueeconomics because when you're probablyleading up to $100,000 sales even if youget it wrong you've got enough time toget it right things don't go out ofwhack too quick but when you start toscale that little bit if you run out ofmoney and won't like kill your businessovernight so I think you know reallyknowing your numbers around what itcosts to make something what it costs tosell it and what it costs to get it topeople and at the same time in this inthis period depending where you're atcustomer support and like systemisingsome of this can be really importantbecause if you're trying to grow abusiness you don't I mean you've got tobe you've got to be worried about thecustomer all the time and the customersfirst but you you can't be spending allyour time helping a customer you've gotto make sure that you're there havingpeople doing what you would do whileyou're growing your business so I thinkat around that time is a good time tomake sure that you start to dial in someof those some of those procedures andsome of that you know important stuffthat you need when you scale let's moveon to advanced so thinking they've beenoperating for a couple of years nowthey're doing onemillion plus a year for us was aboutscale through macro influences westarted spending we started budgetingtwenty to thirty thousand a month onmacro influences but not it wasn't somuch about followers it was more aboutinteraction and I think if you're goingto scale influences that's what you haveto look at you can get you can geteasily fooled by how many followerssomebody has but at the end of the dayit's about conversion and about theirinteraction so we started working withAustralian influences to start and thatthat's how we kind of grew as as acompany where we focused on territory sowe would focus on Australia Canada andNew Zealand and they're the they're thethree territories that we focused on ata time rather than rather than trying toexpand too quick we didn't get ahead ofourselves we really narrow down onAustralia New Zealand and Canada and wealso use those influences to be able toscale facebook ads snapchat ads andGoogle ads and retargeting we startedspending a lot of money we would let outwe would let our Facebook guys know onceinfluencer was about to post so theycould get ready to to increase thebudgets of spend and it became once youhit 1 million plus I think it comes getsto a certain point where you startthinking about volume and you startthinking about if you really believe inyour product you want to get yourproduct into as many people's hands asyou can so at the start we were probablyworking on a 3x or 4x ROI but now it'snot as high but our volume is increasedso much and I think to scale that has tohappen and you have to be able to livewith that you have to you have to beable to say I was making 30 percentprofit on a sale now I'm making 20% butnow I'm doing 500 orders a day ratherthan 100 orders a day and I think onceyou come to terms with that and youreally believe in your product and knowthat eventually those people will comeback and buy then you you'll be able toscale and start spending as much moneyas you can on on those differentchannels ok system this goes our incertainly intelligence so I'm going tobe the wet blanket of the group herehaha I wanna talk about the realities ofbeing successful and get to the nextlevel and to be honest a lot of it comesdown to discipline so I'd sayfundamentally we've got to the pointwhere we're turning over a milliondollars we've acquired a quite a numberof customers every time we acquirecustom we pay something to acquire theircustomer it's expensive we might breakeven on a first order make a smallprofit so fundamentally your lowesthanging fruit is getting that firstcustomer that you paid for to come backa second third and fourth time so it'sabout email communications to ensurethem that you you know you get them backwith a compelling message then a goodquality product that'll be your greatestopportunity of profitable growth secondit's about concentrating on thosemetrics I know I said it the first timeand I'll say the second time growth isreally important but growth as aprofitable level is also incrediblyimportant so we continue to concentrateon improving those metrics improving howmany people are appealing to but thenensuring that we we convert those guysat a profitable level you know growinggeographically is obviously a greatopportunity but you know you've got tobe very conscious about the fact thatyou know if you're if you're making goodprofit and you've got a good businessand this is what you want then we're notall going to take over the world that'sa reality of it there'll be some of ushave which is happy to run a reallyprofitable business that's really goodand runs in Australia and it's makingmoney a lot of money can be beenoverseas so again I want to be the wetblanket but it you know it's a game ofinches running a business it's reallypicking out the the granular elements ofrunning a business so I've got awhiteboard at work and at a whiteboardit's ioveiy average order value what wasit this week what was the next week whatwas it the next week the lifetime valuemy customers I go back 18 months Idivide how many customers I serviceddivided by what I turned over I work atmy lifetime value is and I keep tryingto find ways to increase that my returnon advertising spends I'm constantlyrevising copy and shot constant newvariety ways to improve that you know myI'm constantly split testing what I dowith marketing automation itjust constantly looking at thosegranular you know fundamentals that ifyou continue to to improve and youcontinue to be more profitable it willgive you more cash and will give them anopportunity to create opportunity sothere is a million amazing things outthere go into us do another schoolwhich is great but we'll never won't beable to do it what we want is a businessthat's going to pay the bills it's goingto nail us to grow and be successful andstaying at 4 5 10 15 16 20 years andmake profits so to do that that I thinkthe fundamentals are to concentratethose major factors and great thingswill happen once we could days undercontrol and that's just my opinion it'scompletely subjective but um I thinkfocus should be put on the fundamentalsto be my section uh extra points Ihaven't won yet extra fine anything youcan fit into a couple sentence okay acouple of sentences I'd say at thispoint like okay step one we were testingthings we were learning thingsstep two we were scaling and we weregrowing through scaling step three forme at least like I know everyoneachieved a million dog the milliondollar mark at different points I thinkwe made around a million dollars afterabout six months of our business so bysix months we were doing around sixhundred thousand dollars a month and itkept scaling so the previous monthobviously had been a lot slower up tothat point so I'd say by about sixmonths we'd done over a million dollarsin revenue at that point did Iunderstand that that is what I needed tobe optimizing so I know you guys mayhave done that earlier on as well andreally kept a great eye on those metricslike up to that point to us at least itwas like unbridled growth it was justlike I don't even know what's happeningI remember going into a meeting afterseven months with our accountant and hewas like Greta like what are you doingand I was like I don't know all I knowhow to do like the only thing I know howto do is saute like I don't know like Ihonestly felt like I didn't even knowwhat was going on like it tookme quite a while it took me gosh atleast over a year cuz I remember when wewon the Shopify builder businessI was interviewed for the first coupleof times extremely publicly by like TimFerriss and whoever else and I was justlike pretty overwhelmed and they wereasking any questions and I'm like I'mnot really sure like I'm not sure howwe're growing to that point I thinkthose conversations and conversationswith the other winners who maybe ourproduct was extremely trending like wewere very I don't like the word luckyI've worked very very very freaking hardat this so I was not lucky but I wasvery fortunate to find a product thatwas like skinny meaty was at the samestage like at the same time we were thefirst like product in that categorywe were the first detox tea so we had toeducate an entire market and then we'dsee competitors coming in and be like ohGod like they're so lucky they didn'thave to answer like 557 customerrequests every single day because nowthe customer knows and they understandwhat the product is what it's trying todo like we did you coded the market ontheir behalf and they could just step inand kind of sweep up some sales but I'dsay yeah at this point than us at leastlike from a personal perspective of myfirst brand that was the point where westarted to learn how to really optimizehow to like a be test non-stop how to beconstantly being like okay what if theBuy button was here what if it was thiscolor what if it did this like you justwant to start thinking about everysingle point that your customer isinteracting with your brand's you wantto consider and map out their by ajourney from the very very startwherever that might be it might be afacebook ad it might be they followedyou an Instagram through an influencerit might be ten other scenarios it'sprobably like two hundred otherscenarios once you're at that pointunfortunately map out the ten mostcommon buyer journeys and focus onimproving and optimizing at every singlestage of that buy a journey so yeahthat's it all right ladies and gentlementhat wraps up our panel segment whichbrings us back to networking with yourpeersat your leisure I also want to say amassive thank you to our panel membershere tonight GretaRory Rob James we really appreciate yougiving up your time and giving us somereally valuable insights and tips aroundhow we can actually grow ourselvesonline[Music]mission is to help you create anass-kickin business and help you learnstraight from the mouths of world-classfounders get your free printed editionof founder magazine featuring SirRichard Branson just cover shipping andhandling at founder comm Ford / Branson
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