Ecommerce Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales with Ezra Firestone, CEO of Smart Marketer

Welcome to the show. This week I am over the moon excited because honestly, Ezra, you're probably one of my favorite people to follow in this industry. You are like the top of the top when it comes to e commerce experts. So we are so flattered to have you on the show.

Thanks. Super happy to be here. You know, love the opportunity to engage with other entrepreneurs and share what's working for me, share my thoughts, find out what's going on and, you know. So yeah, thanks for having me.

I appreciate it. So, a couple quick, like, behind the scenes questions in case anyone doesn't follow you yet, which they definitely will be after this. Boom. By Cindy Joseph Zipify, smart marketer. Can you give us just like a tiny little snapshot into the wild life that you lead engaging with others?

Those are my production cycles. What I'm actually up to in the world is my relationship with my wife and all the business stuff is in support of that. Like, I'm, I feel like the game of the game of business is often misguided in, in the direction of build the biggest thing possible. And I think that that approach is not the most fulfilling approach. And like, what I want to do is have fun. First and foremost. My business partner died last year. Boom. Out of nowhere. It's like you don't know how long you have. I want to have a good time and really enjoy what I'm doing as my first priority. Second, I want to make good products that truly serve the world. And third, I want to be profitable and in that order. And I feel like if you can do that and at any size, if you're making 100 grand a year and you've done that, you've won the game because you're not working for someone else, you're working for yourself. You're having a good time. You're doing something that's meaningful and good in the world, supporting yourself, your family, your community and the world at large and you're profitable. Like it doesn't matter how big you get. I feel like this idea and fascination with scale is a really, it's a really, actually a bad, A driver of bad decision making because you're making decisions that are related to how much money can I make or how big can I get? You forget about the things that actually brought you to the dance, which is showing up with a positive attitude, having a good time, making good stuff, and then also focusing on profitability. So, yeah, I've been lucky enough to. I've been in the game now 15 years. I got started straight out of high school. Basically, Boom by Cindy Joseph is a skincare and cosmetics company for women over 50. It's a pro age cosmetic company. So you know, short story there is like as a woman you are sold this messaging that your value is declining over time simply as you age, that as you age you just get less than. And I disagree with that sentiment and I think that is a horrible societal conditioning and messaging to sell to half of our population. So Boom does really well. It's an eight figure brand. It's really become like the most prominent direct to consumer digitally driven cosmetics and skin care brand for women over 50. Specifically it's a philosophy first company like we have products but we enroll people in an ideology and a philosophy and we give them a mission and a story that they can a mission they can join and a movement they can join and a story that they can relate to and then they support us by buying our products. And all my businesses do that. Zipify is a software as a service company for shopify business owners. So I kind of take whatever I learn in my e commerce business and I develop software that supports other e commerce business owners and that business is like kind of informed by what I'm doing at Boom. And then Smart Marketer is my version of this. It's a information publishing company where I share my entrepreneurial journey. I do podcasts, videos, courses, events. It's like my version of the Boutique Hub, also sort of informed by what's going on in my e commerce business. And everything's really focused on E commerce because that's like my sort of little side of the business world. So yeah, so Boom is really my main hustle. Zipify and Smart Marketer are kind of like side hustles that I also really enjoy that are definitely not the most. Like if the goal was to only make money, I wouldn't be doing them because E commerce is a much better money making strategy than software as a service or information publishing. But those are fun and fulfilling and enjoyable. And I am not in this just to make money. I'm in this to have a good time and do what I consider do whatever I can do to be of service to the world. And so that's kind of my little story.

I love that you always say serve the world unselfishly in profit. Like to me, I think what you're speaking about and enrolling people into a philosophy like that truly is what this is all about. I think the same way at the Boutique Hub about if we change a business owner, if we change a business we change her life, we change her team, we change her community, we change the world around her. And we, we don't live to work or work to live right. Like this is just a side of what we do.

So I think that's, it's like in support of. And this is so easy to forget this. And you see so many founders and entrepreneurs burn out and work 14 hour days and forget about their bodies and forget about their mental health and forget about their social life and forget about their intimate relationships and forget about all the shit that this is supposedly for in support of. And it's like an easy trap to get caught up in because as the person who's responsible for the whole thing, it's hard not to always be thinking about it. So it's like it takes this eternal diligence of setting container around your work life and then like really being able to set it down so you can have space and time and then come back to it. And it took me like 10 years to learn how to do that. Luckily I got started young, you know, so I'm not like claiming to be the best at this, but I have practiced it and gotten good at it. Now, 15 years into my career, you know.

Yeah. Do you think that one of the most positive things that will come out of this post Corona world is that realization that we all need to slow down and like rethink how we're living our lives every day and really not take these things for granted and not get focused on the hustle and grind and not that bigger is better, but better is better and living a fulfilling life. How do you see the world changing in that direction?

I mean, it is for me personally it has been a. Hey, here's an opportunity to practice gratitude for what I already have. To derive more joy, pleasure and satisfaction out of everything that is in my. Instead of looking out, look here right now, what do I have that I can enjoy that's fun and take more to, to take more gratitude from my. What? Because like there's the saying it's a far, far better skill to have the ability to enjoy what you have than to have the ability to get what you want. Because what you want becomes what you have. So I think for people who are mindful. Yes. Is that going to be a global phenomenon? I don't know. You know, I hope, I hope, I don't know that I can. I don't know that I'm prepared to come out and say that this is going to impact people in a positive direction mentally. I think some of the studies are showing that like, especially if you're quarantined alone, that's tough, you know, then you're just consuming more social media. And so my hope is that yes, it will have that impact. And I don't claim to know enough about, you know, social psychology to be able to answer that.

Well, let's talk about what I know you are so good at and what we can share. And it kind of comes out of this post corona world that we're talking about because I guess in boutique hub land there's kind of two types of businesses. There's these, I would say more brick and mortar retailers that are just now kind of being slammed with this new normal and they're trying to figure out how to build an e commerce side of their business and pivot into this new normal. And then there's those that are already online that honestly there's some that are just crushing it right now and they're like, oh my gosh, Ezra Firestone, I want to hear how to optimize that even further to keep building that direction. So let's start with the beginner side of things. If you were to start all over again as a boutique owner and you were just trying to bring a retail business online, what would be the most important areas for your focus to land on?

So first and foremost is the technology. The lingo term in our industry is the technology stack, which is the pieces of technology that make the business function and to choose the right ones, you know, Shopify customers, Klaviyo. Those are really the two Zipify pages. Zipify one click upsell. Those are my apps. You know, like you need some, you need, you need a shopping cart and an email CRM. And my two preferred for those are Shopify and Klaviyo. And then you want third party applications, a reviews app, you know, stamped IO, that's what I use. So take the time, pick your technology. I'm sure in your group you suggest technology. There's two assets that matter in the sales cycle online. Well, there's a lot of assets, but there's two that are like the most important. The front end video that is generating awareness for your brand that you're amplifying on social media, Facebook and Instagram. That has to be done very well. And then the product offer page that you're sending people to also has to be optimized and done very well. And I teach these kind of these things. But I would learn, number one, how do I create a compelling high quality sales video for my boutique that I can run as an ad on Facebook. Now I actually have two free courses on the Shopify Academy you can go to. You can Google Shopify Academy, Ezra Firestone. And you'll find two courses that are like courses I sold last year for a thousand dollars each that teach Facebook advertising basics and Facebook advertising advance. And they go through the sales videos, the ads that I use, how I set up the ads, how I do my targeting. Like, the first thing I would do as a boutique owner is go, you know, don't take action, but consume knowledge first. So if you take action, you might go the wrong way. Let's say you go a mile in that way, you gotta come a mile back before you can go the right way. So this whole take massive action is actually not good advice. Take informed action. So go watch those courses. Learn the fundamental structure that drives an online business that I teach in there. Then once you kind of have some. Once that's in your head and you're like, all right, I starting to get it. I got some ideas for ads. Then go through and create product pages on your site that are well optimized for mobile, well optimized for tablet. My application, Zip5Pages does this for you. And then go ahead and start implementing. But I would take like two months. Let me not two months, four weeks. Just focus on consumption of knowledge, making an action plan, sitting. It's like learning a new language. The more that you absorb, the more you start to understand and see. And so I would take some time to really immerse myself in understanding the online sales cycle by consuming education, both from the boutique hub, maybe from the Shopify academy. And then I would create my technology stack, build out a sales video, set up a couple ads, send it to an optimized sales process, and just kind of see what happened.

I like it. Do you feel like for beginners especially, are there common mistakes you see right off the bat when someone's getting into E commerce?

Yeah, they make a busted product offer page and they do terrible video ads and they only focus on the product. They're like, oh, my product is made of leather. And it's like, okay, great. You've got to understand what the product is, the benefits of the product. Cool. In order to get someone interested, you need to understand the story. Like, the product is the what and the benefits. Got to have that the story is the who and the why. Who's the person? Why are they interested? Who are you? Why did you make it? Like you have to get story, mission, story purpose. What are you doing? In the world beyond selling products, why are you interesting? Why are your products interesting? Why is the person even interested? Like, what is the. The way I like to frame it is what your business does is communicate with a group of people who are sharing a collective experience and then add value to that group of people's life through content and then make sales offers to them. The boutique hub is communicating with a group of people who all own boutique stores, who want those stores to run better. It puts out content like this to add value to their life so that they build a relationship with the boutique hub. And then you offer courses, events, this and that. And the other boom is women over 50, experience in the aging process. Everybody telling them that is wrong. We've got content about, hey, your life does not get less valuable. Here's five makeup tips for women over 50. Hey, by the way, we've got some cosmetic products that are great for you. Like, you got to start thinking in terms of storytelling, which is not a thing that boutique owners probably think in terms of. Think in terms of what products am I going to put in my store that someone's going to be interested in? When you're coming online, you don't have people coming in ready to shop. You have people hanging out on social media reading about coronavirus and you need to interrupt them with an ad. And when you're doing interruption advertising, it's not like boutique is the equivalent of query based advertising, which is Amazon. Amazon's like someone's on there, they type in dog bowl. You show them a dog bowl and that's that they were there ready to buy. Well, when you're gonna advertise your boutique online, if you go on Amazon, great, they're gonna take half your profit. But maybe you can get some sales there. But if you actually want to scale, you got to get people before they showed query intent, before they showed interest in the product, which means you got to capture them on an emotional level, which means telling them a story that then transitions into. And I teach this in that course I was telling you about communication about your products.

I love that. So let's kind of break that down a little bit further. That like new customer acquisition, sales strategy. And again, I know they can go to the course and catch more of this. But you've got that great video, you've got a branded video that you've done talking about your story. You've made yourself the guide in the story and your customer is the hero. If we're going on like story brand principles and we're running Traffic ads or kind of talk to me about like, where would I put my money in terms of getting people to that video and then retargeting them to get them onto the website and then to retarget them later if they've bounced.

So yeah, so the front end video that you're putting out on social, on Facebook and Instagram that's going out to people who don't know about you yet is going to link to your product page. So there will be a link from that video direct to your product page. And now anybody watches that video and doesn't make it to the product page, you're going to remarket to them with another video. Maybe it's a customer testimonial this time. Hey, I bought from this store. It was so great. You should check them out. Anybody who did make it to the product page and didn't buy, you're going to retarget them saying, hey, you saw these products or you made it to my collection of products but you didn't choose one, come back. So you're going to kind of follow up with people at every step of the sales process. And my best video right now is what I call love Demo love or the testimonial sandwich where it's a front end. Get your cousin to shoot a video being like, I mean, if your cousin actually likes you, hey, I shopped at this store. They got the best selection of purses. It's amazing. And you know, so I do like a few customers talking about why they love me. Enthusiastic, authentic integrity, real transparent, talking about why they love my brand. And then I go into a demo of my products. Hey, here's my products. This is what they do. This is why they're good. This was the benefit of on them. And then I end the video with more customer testimonials. And so that formula of love Demo love is my across, my E commerce mastermind, all my students. I've been running it basically for a year. I've spent like $7 million on that one formula. I just keep repeating it. I got a guy who sells beard oil. He's now doing it. So it's working really, really well. So I would use that formula as a starter.

Okay, perfect. So we're putting our effort into Facebook ads and retargeting. Talk about how do you start to wrap like an email funnel. And again, going back to those that are now working deeper into the process, they've got their site set up. They understand they got to get a video out there, start some basic Facebook ads. Talk about like Funnel Strategy 101, wrapping that now into email.

So if we want to relate back to email marketing, a statistic to understand is that with an online store, about 40% of your revenue will come from email of some variety. There's two kinds of emails. There's automated emails and there's manual emails. Automated emails happen automatically based on what someone does. For example, someone makes it to your shopping cart, they don't buy. You have an automation set up in Klaviyo that says hey, when someone makes it the shopping cart but doesn't buy, email them. It will email them the first time saying hey, four hours later, hey, this was in your cart. We're low on stock. Want to make sure that you get the chance to buy it. Go ahead and get it now. No discount. They don't buy from that. 24 hours later it'll say, hey, 10% off right now. Those two emails will get you 90% of the revenue from your abandoned cart sequence. Then you've got post purchase automated emails. Hey, thank you so much. Here's what to expect. Here's what's going to ship. Hey, wanted to tell you all the reasons why your product is awesome. That's called pre arrival excitement builder emails. Hey, wanted to get a testimonial from you and a review on this product. Hey, we'll give you $10 to our store if you shoot us a video incentivizing them to give you a video telling us why you love the product. That's post purchase automation. So those are going to be the two buckets of automated emails that are going to give you the most value. There's a whole bunch of other ones. Manual emails are once you have people on your list emailing them, hey, these are the trends right now. You know, let's say you sell knives. Here's Emeril Lagasse showing you how to do a bear claw, which is a technical term a bear claw knife and cut. You know, you can use our knives for that like you can use other people's content. But it's manually emailing people with sales, promotions or content.

Okay. So if you want to take that kind of to the next step, let's talk about some more automation. So if I want to really get handy and I want to start segmenting my list by I might have local customers, I might have nationwide customers, I might have customers that shop in smalls and customers that are curvy or some that like this brand as a preference to this brand in terms of fashion. How do you Start like from the basis of some of that segmentation and building funnels around some of those key pieces.

So that is pretty advanced for what most people do, right? Most people aren't doing that level of segmentation. But the way to do it would be to have them like in your automation either tag the product, which is very easy to do. Hey, they bought from this category, communicate with them in this way. Hey, they bought from this category, communicate with them this way. One thing we do is we send out saying, hey, you know, are you more into skin care? You're more into cosmetics. Are you 50, 60, 70 or 80? When's your birthday? Like we get data points on our. We ask them to fill out a checkbox. Hey, go to this page, check these boxes of what applies to you. Are you most interested in sustainability and cruelty free and animal friendly? Are you most interested in makeup tips? Are you most interested in articles about the experience of aging and menopause and under eye circles and some of these things that in hair, you know, your hair graying and your hormones changing and that kind of thing. So we actually incentivize them. We say, hey, fill this out and one person every month who fills this out is going to win $500 to our store. And then we use those data points to determine what we're going to send them. It's better if you have data on someone rather than not. But even if you don't, you can still do really well.

So are you sending them an actual survey is what you're saying? And then every time they click on.

That survey, it goes to a page that has a bunch of preferences they can choose from and they click update and it auto updates their email profile.

Okay, gotcha.

I was wondering how preferences thing that. That. So they click from the email to a page that knows what their email address is. They check a bunch of boxes, they click submit. It updates that email address. In our CRM Klaviyo allows you to do that pretty easily.

Okay, gotcha. So you could do that or do you ever go through and like just based on if someone clicks a certain article, let's say in an email that you send out that it's automatically applying a tag, like an interested tag to someone who clicks that interested.

We email everyone everything unless they specify otherwise. So we email three times a week. And it's either about sustainability, it's either about cosmetics and beauty, it's either about the experience of being a woman over 50, it's either about, you know, things we know our community is interested in. Like overcoming eating disorders or, you know, the experience of dating after being divorced or the experience of menopause or whatever. Or it's about, you know, hey, here's a profile on a woman in our community. Or we got a bunch of different sort of channels of content that we send out. And in each email you can update your preferences. And if you say, I'm not interested in this, we'll stop sending it to you. But otherwise we're sending everything.

Gotcha.

If you stop opening, we stop emailing you. Right. We're doing some email list health maintenance stuff, but like, in general, we're gonna over communicate rather than under communicate.

Would you say that three emails a week is a pretty good number or do you feel like.

I would say that is a very advanced number. Okay. If you could email once a week, you're doing pretty good when you're just starting out. And once every two weeks even, because, you know, it takes a lot. Unless if you're creating the. If you're a solopreneur and you're creating the content yourself, you can get an email out a week. You've done well. Hey, this is our newsletter. Here's the new products we got in the shop. Here's some fun memes we found on social media. Here's an article we think you would enjoy. Here's what we think about whatever's going on in the world. Like, if you could do one newsletter a week, you're doing real good. And then you re email the people who didn't open it.

Perfect.

You're dropping six emails a week. So I'm dropping three new pieces of content. I'm emailing unopened. I might be running promotions like, I'm going hard body out here, but I wouldn't start there.

Perfect. So we're still on this new person. So emails. 40% of your revenue, I believe, is a quote you just shared. We've talked about Facebook ads. If you were going to put your energy somewhere else next, what would it be? Would it be manychat and bots? Would it be Google shopping? Would it be text? Like, where else would you focus your energy?

I would begin to. I wouldn't worry about bots or SMS or messaging. If you already have Facebook ads up and you have an optimized sales sale process and you are running a sale once every three to five weeks, so you're emailing a promotional discount to your audience. I would do one of two things. I would either expand my remarketing to YouTube and Google Technical. You might need an agency for that. But basically that means anyone who visits your site, instead of just seeing your ads on Facebook, they now see your ads on Google Display Network, which is any blog on the Internet, YouTube, Google search, Google shopping. That's going to give you 10 to 20% of revenue overnight. Because Google covers 98% of the Internet. You're driving visibility from Facebook but then you're remarketing to people all over the Internet, not just on Facebook. So it's very effective. The other thing I would do is focus on audience building. I would create videos and amplify them on Facebook with no link back to my site just to get out in front of the same people I'm trying to get to buy from me. I'm getting my content out in front of, I'm building relationships with. I would begin running campaigns to build my email list. Hey, we're doing a five week challenge and here's what we're going to do every week. Or hey, you know, enter your email address to get access to this guide on how to do your makeup in under 10 minutes. That one works really well for us, right? It's just an email address and it lands on an article. But we're building our email list so the same audiences that we're trying to get to buy from us, we're trying to get on our email list because some people need a slower path to purchase. So you want to be building your awareness by doing video view advertising, building your email list by doing email lead gen advertising and trying to get customers. So I would be doing those two things. Once I had customer generation up, the way I teach in that Shopify course, optimized sales process the way I teach at Zipify. I had an email flow for abandoned cart and post purchase. I was doing an email a week to my community. Even if it's only 50 people, I'd get Google going and then I would start doing awareness generation and lead generation Facebook campaigns with about 20% of my budget.

Perfect, about 20% of your budget. And then retargeting those based on anyone who's engaged with your Facebook or your Instagram, bringing them back to your site.

Yeah. Or not. Or just building your audience and then letting those same people who are in you because the same people that you're running ads to to try to get to buy, you're also running these email and video view ads too. So they're gonna see your ads because the same audiences, right. You're just think about it this way. Facebook, you're to Facebook, you're just A number. You're a profile number. Your profile number is going to see, you know, 60% of ads about buying stuff, 20% of ads about watching videos, and 20% of ads about entering emails. So if you only have the buy stuff ads, you're only reaching that person 60% of the time. But if you also are running video view ads and email ads to them, you increase the amount of exposure that your brand gets. So if you're not running these two other objectives to get in front of them, you won't reach them as much as you could. Don't ask me why I got a bunch of $2.

Are you superstitious around $2 bills? Are they lucky?

They are lucky. They're lucky. But that's a long story. It's a. Yeah. It has to do with my address and all kinds of stuff where I grew up.

Perfect.

Put one in your wallet.

I had a lucky $2 bill not that long ago, and my son ruffled through my wallet and took it to school. It was actually over Christmas. Took it to school to donate it to charity to buy an ornament. And I was like, you spent a $2 bill on that? And he was like, well, it was for charity, Mom. And I'm like, okay, I can't even get mad at you right now.

That's hilarious. Well, listen, I can send you one. I got a stockpile.

We're good.

We're good.

All right, so let's talk about. We're past the beginner stage, right? And we've got, like, all these puzzle pieces kind of laid out, and now we want to optimize things. So let's go back and talk about just CRO. Let's talk about optimizing our website. Let's start on the product page, because you talked about that being the most important page. Having that set up. What do you think are the best qualities of a high converting product page?

So the first way is to think about the lens by which you are viewing the product page. I have this sort of theory that I have labeled the conversion assets theory. What it means is that your product page is simply a collection of conversion assets that work in concert with one another to achieve your goal, which is a conversion event, a sale, and your customer's goal, which is a solution to their problem. A conversion asset is a video, an article, a piece of text, an image, a customer testimonial. And your job is to stack those together in a way that is effective. And the interesting thing about a product page in today's world is you need three versions of it. Desktop, tablet, mobile, they need to be different. Mobile needs to load faster, Desktop can have more content. Tablet needs to be structured such that it looks good on tablet. And my page builder on Zipify lets you do this. But I'd say the most important part of the page is the buy box, which consists of the carousel of images and where they're going to click the add to cart button that you need to make sure that add to cart button is above the fold on mobile so they don't have to scroll to click it. You need to make sure that that carousel has images that load fast. You need to make sure that you have like nine images of each individual product. Right. You know, people using it, people not using it, pictures of it, all different angles. You need to make sure that instead of the product name at the top, you have a customer testimonial is the first thing on the page. I could go on for hours. I teach a class on Zipify.com about product page optimization. But the general idea is it's not just images and text. It's not just, here's what this product is. It's a story, it's customer testimonials, it's a whole bunch of images, it's content telling why you made the product. It's your unique selling propositions. Hey, we were made in America. We ship really Fast, we got 100% money back guarantee. We are cruelty free in image format, not just text format, because some people are going to read and are some people going to look and not read. So it's like, it's a bit of a dance of stacking assets together. And when you understand that at a minimum you need one video, multiple images, a little bit of a description about the product, customer testimonial in text, images of your unique selling propositions and a story of why you made the thing or why you think it's great. That's kind of the minimum viable product that's perfect.

And then take that another step further in terms of giving the customer a place to click if they do not buy the product. So having recommended products or talking about one click upsells like how do we get them onto another product page or to add multiple items to their cart.

So you know, the average order across an E commerce store is like 1.1 items. So you don't really have to worry so much about trying to get multiple items added to the cart. That's going to happen naturally. If you have multiple products, they'll go back to the shop. I Wouldn't worry so much about that. What you can do is on the product offer page, have a cross sell, hey, you're buying a wig. Also get a wig cap for your head. Check this box to add it to your order. So you can have a cross sell on the product offer page. Great idea. We have upsells in the shopping cart. Hey, you're in the cart. Add this one item and save 10%. I have an application that does that, you know, allows you to add a product to the cart, allows you to say, hey, you know, you have this stick. You can get these other two sticks as well. You can, you can replace this item with a bundle. So that's another strategy. But the point is upsell to a related product on the product offer page or just buy two and save 10%. Buy three and save 20%. That's another way to do it that works really well that we use. So tiered pricing, 2 ounce, 4 ounce, 8 ounce, 8 ounces, more expensive, right? So some kind of a cross sell on the offer page. Either adding an additional item, tiered pricing, multiple of the one thing cross sells and upsells in the shopping cart. And then post purchase. Instead of sending them to a thank you page, we say, hey, get one more of what you just bought 20% off today only. Click this button. And so rather than exactly what to offer or how to offer it, the point is upsell cross sell on product page. Upsell cross sell on shopping cart. Upsell cross sell post purchase.

Could you do that with fashion items like you were talking about bundles? And I'm just like, wheels are spinning on. If I buy, say this outfit, like an Easter outfit, right? Then my offer, my like thank you page offer could be buy this Easter gift basket bundle or this Mother's day gift basket bundle or like one more.

Of what you just bought for a friend. 25% off today only. That works better than you might think in fashion. Hey, you bought a sweatshirt. Get another one. Or hey, get a lifetime warranty on this sweatshirt for $9. Well, guess what? There's no cost of goods on a lifetime warranty.

True, true.

Probably we're going to offer it anyways. So that's a way that people do it. Or hey, you know, upgrade your order to the front of the line. We'll ship it first. We got a lot of orders in our queue. $3 extra and this will go right? It'll skip the queue and go out right the next day. Now they've paid you three bucks for priority. You're not shipping it Any faster, you're just prioritizing it to the front of your order queue.

I hadn't even thought of that. But that's a great idea.

People do that all the time. You know, I would try one more of what I just bought though, as the first test.

One for you, one for a friend.

Yeah, I would try that. Hey, get one more of these at a discount.

Perfect. Even shoes. Okay, so we talked about product pages. Obviously huge, hugely important that they convert. Well, talk about anatomy of a great homepage. And again, we're talking like fashion, e commerce. It's got to tell a great story. But if you would say there's like certain key elements that your homepage must include.

Yeah. The thing to understand about homepages is like 80% of transactions happen on the top 10 websites in America. Home Depot, Amazon, ebay. Those websites are training consumers how to buy. So when you buy from those websites, you know that on the homepage you can find anything you're looking for. So if you look at your data in E commerce, you'll notice that about half your traffic, no matter where it comes in, goes back to the homepage. Looking for your refund policy, Looking for your About Us page. Looking for what other products you have. So the homepage should have everything that they could ever want to find from your store. The first block could be about what you offer. The second block could be about your story. The third block could be the additional categories of products you have. The fourth block could be about us, contact us, why buy from us, Shipping information, so on and so forth. But think of it as an aggregate story of everything that they could ever look for. That's the way they do it. And you'll notice that all the big brands have super long homepages where literally everything is available there. The whole site is truncated in some way and stuck on the homepage.

That's super helpful. So everything has to be there. Long scroll, doesn't matter. They've got to be able to find it. Do you have thoughts on shipping policy, Shipping and return policies in terms of like fashion, e commerce? I know that's like changing in our landscape. I'm curious your take on it.

Yeah, I mean, look, you know, I, I am not your average business owner. I don't keep people's money when they want it back, period. I don't care when they bought for me. You bought for me four years ago and you email me and this happens every now and again, Hey, I don't want, I don't like my products anymore. I will Give your money back. I think you get in a lot of trouble when you keep people's money when they don't want you to have it. So I fundamentally, I'm opposed to that as a, as a rule in doing business. And you get the occasional person who hustles you, the occasional person. And you know what? We're paying attention. So if you hustle us twice, we blacklist you. Look, I do 25 million a year in sales. I might get three people a year who are hustling me. It's like, not that much of a problem. So I will never keep your money, period. I'm not that guy. And I don't want that energy out there, and I don't want anyone pissed at me. And I don't want negative reviews. And it's like, if you feel like you don't like having how we. If you don't, like. Returns are part of the game, standard 2% of orders are going to be returned, probably fashion, a little bit higher. But, like, factor that into your margins. So I don't keep people's money. And then in terms of shipping, you don't have to pay for shipping when they're shipping the return back, especially in fashion, because a lot of people are buying fashion, hey, it's not the right size, or, hey, I want to swap it out. You got to. You either build that into your margin profile or you make them pay for it.

Helpful.

My business, I don't ask for the product back. I can't reuse a cosmetic stick. You slather it all over your face. Coronavirus. It's not going to work. I'll give it to a friend, which I can't even do now because, you know, because you can't give a stick of cosmetics that you used away to a friend anymore because you're worried about infecting them with the virus, which is the world we're living in is terrifying at this particular moment. But, yeah, so I'm not into keeping people's money and, you know, hey, every business owner. I'm also not into telling you the right way to do it. Right. I'm not an evangelist for my viewpoints. I don't believe that I am right and some other way is wrong. I believe that there's a whole lot of ways to do things, and I have the ways that I do things because I feel that those are good ways to do them. But I don't think that it's the only way, nor do I think you necessarily need to follow what I think I Will tell you what I think happily, and then it is for. It's. This is a description, not a prescription. It's like, you take what you hear and decide what of it you like and go on forth with that and leave any of the shit you don't like at the door. It's like, that's cool by me. So I'm not telling you that's how you should do it. But I'm also telling you I don't keep people's money when they want it back.

It's kind of like the Zappos version. Right? You could deliver a pizza through customer service if you wanted to, and everything is free and easy. But also, on a side note, are you running for office anytime soon? Because I feel like we could use a little bit of that philosophy, like in media and in politics and everywhere else, that this is my opinion. Take it and decide for yourself. It's not the prescription, it's the description. I appreciate that.

Yeah, I feel like, hey, you know, I'm. I have nothing going on. Whether or not you like what I have to say, I mean, I'm like, it does not bring me any joy to convince you to adopt my viewpoints. That's not what I'm going for. I'm not trying to force adoption of my strategies. I will tell you what I think, and hopefully it's helpful. And even if you disagree, it can be helpful because it could be the counterpoint being like, oh, that point of view. No, but this thing, I think in relationship to that, yes. So it's like, it's kind of good to even hear stuff you don't agree with, because then you're like, oh, well, yeah, I'm not going to do that. So I'm into, like, trying to learn from a bunch of different sources and then parse out what feels right to me.

It's kind of like learning from mistakes, learning from. You know, people talk about having such a fear of failure, but really what an opportunity that is to learn from things. Do you. Is there a story or do you feel like you've had situations where you've learned the most from quote, unquote, mistakes in your business so far?

Interesting thing about business is things are going wrong while they're going right. And if you're not prepared for constantly things to go wrong, you chose the wrong profession. Entrepreneurialism is not for you because things are always going to be going wrong, and that is part of the game. And so I'm always learning from things all the time. Every week there's some crazy thing that happened. I'm like, wow, we probably shouldn't have done that, you know? So, yeah, I feel like there's always an opportunity to learn from what is happening and take that into account as you go forward. And you know, my viewpoint is that as the CEO, you're responsible for all of it. For the things that happened good and the things that happened bad. It's never anyone else's fault, it's your fault. And if something happened because someone screwed up, well, you weren't paying enough attention or supporting them enough or noticing them enough, or when the screw up happened, you know, you didn't replace them or get them the support they needed or like, I take responsibility for the whole thing, all of it. It's my fault anything happened that was bad. I'm the person to come to. I'm the person that needs to fix it. I'm the person who's responsible. Maybe I can support my team member and say, hey, this particular decision made in this way, let's not do that next time, because that didn't serve us. But I'm not blame. I mean, like, it's like I'm taking the blame for this thing and I'm taking responsible. I don't know if this is answering your question, but I'm taking responsibility for its success or failure. And there's a lot of agency and freedom in that because now I'm in control, whereas otherwise I'm the victim of this experience that I've signed up for. It's like, okay, you put yourself in this position to be the business owner. Well, with that comes, whether the thing works or not is on you now. You can't now claim to be victimized by this business that you created. You created it. Yeah.

Doesn't it come back to just being a servant leader? Like, to me, what you're demonstrating, that's called humility. Right. And you're, you're leading by serving others. And you're not being the victim, you're not being the hero, you're not being the guy on top, but you're leading from behind and by doing the right thing, whether that's good, bad or indifferent. Right?

Yeah. You're trying to be. You're like, really? The way, the better, even better way to do it if you have a team is take responsibility when things go wrong and give praise when things go right. That works even better if you have a team. Because if you're the one being like, I did it all when things go right, that's not very popular. Amongst your team. So I don't know. You know, I feel like I don't know what the. I can't remember what you asked that even inspired this ramble, but no, we're.

Going down a rabbit hole, but I'm okay with it. Talk to me about your team. What's the greatest lesson you've learned in growing your team?

Listen, I really wish I had learned to delegate sooner. You know, delegation is. Is like, you know, as a owner, founder, you're a driver. You're doing everything. You're taking the turns on the road, but eventually, if you want to scale, you have to become a navigator. You can't see the mountains in the distance when you're on the road driving. So, you know, and the way to become a navigator is to learn the art of delegation, to let go of control of the day to day of xyz part of the company, and give someone autonomy and freedom and agency in a position and let them screw up and let them do well and support them with access to education and, you know, give them the support they need to really take that and run with it and be okay with it being different than how it was when you were running it. And eventually, they will be far better than you ever were at that particular thing because they're putting their full amount of time on it. And so, you know, I have a hundred employees now. That's a lot of employees. It's far more than I ever imagined I would have, you know, and so, yeah, I think being willing to let go of control is tough for entrepreneurs in general, as a general statement, but that is what actually opens up freedom, man.

Yes. I have this sticky note on my desk that says, are you the bottleneck of your business? And I think that's, like, every entrepreneur's Achilles heel, right? Is that we do try to be it all and do it all. What other mindsets do you think have like, shifted the most for you along this journey? Because I feel like there's that beginning hustle where you're just trying to get it going, and then there's the middle where you're trying to figure out how to scale, and then there's the point where you feel like, oh, my gosh, I've already surpassed my wildest dreams. Now where do I go next? Right. There's always varying levels. How's your mindset shifted along the way?

Well, like I was saying, like, I'm. It's been the same for me the whole time, because I'm not trying to get anywhere. It's like, if you have this viewpoint that you're going to be happy, if that's a myth, that's not how it goes. If you can't be happy here and now, you will not be happy there and then. So what I'm trying to do is have a good time, make good stuff and be profitable. And I'm always trying to do that. And that's what I've been trying to do, and that's what I'm still trying to do. And it looks different at different phases, but there is no difference. It's like, okay, what I'm doing is enjoying my life. And when it comes to work, I'm going to show up with a positive attitude. I'm going to have fun with it. I'm going to make the best products I can make. I'm going to support my team and try to make it profitable. And I'm going to keep doing that, whatever the scale is. And, you know, things get more complex as things get bigger. More fires to put out, more things are going wrong, more intense. You know, better when it goes well, worse when it goes bad. You screw up a product launch, you lose 250 grand rather than 2 grand. You know, a product launch goes well, you make a lot more than you did. Like, it's just a different scale. But in terms of, like, my approach to the game has not changed because I'm not really concerned with the size of things. I'm concerned with, are we all having a good time and having fun? Are we making something that's really serving the world and are we profitable? And those are my three concerns at all times. And you know, you got to get better at financial intelligence as you grow, right? Most business owners sink themselves because they screw up the money. They don't pay their taxes. They think they have more than they do. They don't understand, you know, the concept of a cushion. They don't understand the concept of, you know, liquidity and having a year's worth of liquidity at all times. They're just balling out of control on Instagram, wearing ripped jeans and buying Lambos and shit is not what, you know. So you gotta, you gotta up your financial intelligence. That's a thing.

But yeah. Where did you, where did you go to learn that along the way? Who are your mentors?

Well, first of all, I did everything wrong. That's a good way to learn, right? I didn't start with money. I started poor. And when I made money, I spent it all. And that doesn't work because then you Owe taxes that you don't have the money for those taxes. And that's a problem because you can't get out of. The IRS is coming one way or another. So, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes, and that is helpful. And luckily, I made them when the businesses were smaller. You know what I mean? And it would always be like. I'd be like, oh, Carrie, like, we got 50 grand left over this year. And then be like, Damn, we owe 100 grand in taxes. We got nothing. So it was every year I wouldn't have. I would think I had money, but then I'd have to pay all in taxes. So that happened a bunch. Yeah. And then, you know, I was fortunate enough to have friends who were 10 years ahead of me to, you know, connect me with service providers and consultants and that kind of thing. And, you know, then. Then Internet business became popular, and we weren't just a bunch of nerds anymore. Now it was, like a thing that everybody wanted to do.

Yeah.

And so podcasts came out and YouTube videos came out and forums came out and events started. So I started doing all that, meeting people, learning from people. And so that kind of was helpful, too.

We were chatting before we started to record the show today about how when you used to come to events, it was primarily men, 100% dudes.

All dudes.

I mean, what was that like? Because you're selling a product marketed toward women and there's only dudes. And now, like, today, this is.

Well, at these events, I wasn't trying to sell my product. I was raised on a hippie commune by mostly women. So I would, you know, there's a reason why I have a Pro age cosmetic line. There's a reason why I have a better understanding of the experience of being a woman in a male chauvinistic society than the average bear. I was raised by not the average people. So I was able to see the clear disparity between men and women at these entrepreneurial conventions and dudes standing around in groups rating women in numbers and assigning value to them based on how they look and shit like that that probably wouldn't have the forethought to think about if you were conditioned by, you know, traditional. Raised in society and conditioned the way that young men are traditionally conditioned. I have the fortunate benefit of an alternate alternative form of education that took into account some of these things. And so, yeah, it was interesting. And I also, at that time, was not a guy who put on events. I was not an educator. I was not a blogger. I was not an influencer. So I was like, huh, guess there's not a lot of women who are entrepreneurs. That's interesting. That makes sense, you know, given the context of society at that time. And then over the years, it turns out there actually are a lot of women or entrepreneurs, and the doors are opening. And there's now you go to an event and it's 60, 40. You go to your event, and it's 98, too. Turns out the women don't like the guys, so they hang out on their own in their own other events. That makes more sense to me that Ladies Night be happening. Just we're not invited. So I'm always trying to get invited to Ladies Night. I found my way to Ladies Night podcast right here. So in that particular context. But yeah, it was like, mostly guys, you know, and I feel like, you know, this is now we're going back 15 years. So I feel like, really, over the last 15 years, especially with online business, there have been more women getting involved and opportunities for women. And, you know, I mean, there's some crazy statistic, like, there's more CEOs named John than CEOs who are women in tech. Like, that's for real. That's like a real statistic. So how crazy is that? I got a female CEO of both of my companies. But I'm just saying, like, there's not a lot of opportunities for women in tech. And so. Or as much rather. And that's changing, and that's cool. And that's kind of what we were talking about.

Yeah. Well, you'll feel right at home at the Boutique Summit at some point when you're able to join us. All the women will cheer you on because you'll completely understand the game.

Yeah. Otherwise there's mostly women speakers there.

No, we've got men. We've got several men speakers as well. But the majority of women in the audience, a lot of women now bring their husbands. What I think is really cool, I guess, about entrepreneurial families as a whole, I think about, like, my husband joined our company a year and a half ago, and a lot of these women in business, they're kind of doing this, again, reverse of society, where the women, the woman built the business, and now the husband is leaving his role to come and join her. And it's just like, really interesting to hear their stories. And even in our own life, you know, there's people that will say to my husband, what's it like to work for your wife? Which is so unfair because that's not at all like We're a partnership just like any other marriage. Like, we work in this business together, we own this business together. Like, it's very fascinating to me to see them, the male and female or masculine, feminine roles in a business and in a marriage, when they join like that, because society just isn't used to it.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And everything's a. A collaboration and a conspiracy in a relationship. Conspiracy in the form of, like, we are conspiring together to use each of our energies in this way as a team to create X. Right. Like, yeah, but it is a. It's a group effort regardless of if 90% of my energy is on the business and 90% of Carrie's energy is on, you know, navigation and the moral compass behind it all and our social life and, you know, her creation and desire and figuring out what we actually want. Like, you know, it's like, there's these kind of, like, you hear a lot about production, but you don't hear a lot about desire that inspired production. And in traditional gender roles, in traditional. Which is a whole conversation in society right now. But, you know, like, in. Let's just take my marriage, for example, Carrie is the one who has the desire. I then produce in response to that desire. But there is no production without the desire. I'm sitting at home eating a can of beans on a plate before she's like, hey, we need a house before I'm willing to have a kid. Right. So it's like there's. And that's just sort of like a traditional view of it. But my point being that it doesn't so much matter who is doing what. It's not tit for tat. Tit for tat is no way to run a relationship. The way to do it is this is what we want, and here's the best use of our collective energy. You're going to do this, and I'm going to do this and that. And they're both inherently valuable in their own ways. And together we're going to create X.

Yes, 100%. 100%. I think about that in terms of, like, you know, homeschooling our kids at this point, which I wouldn't even call it homeschool, because it certainly isn't. But managing chaos, it doesn't have to be. You do that and you do this like, the man does this, the woman does this. But collectively, what are we trying to accomplish as a family? And how can we spend our time and our energy wisely to create that?

And what makes the most sense, given Each of our skills to get there.

Right. So question about that as it relates to like your time. You've got all these things going on. 100 employees, you put out an immense amount of content and some of the most advanced strategies when it comes to E commerce. How do you manage that? What does your week look like? How are you time blocking? How are you managing all the content, all the campaigns that you guys are laying out?

Well I don't think it's fair to look at me 15 years deep and try to model off of that because as I mentioned I have a hundred employees which means I don't really do that much. Hundred people do stuff. I'm more just like talking to people, giving direction and feedback. I'm not setting up any ads, I'm not, I'm not doing much at this point other than holding the vision, holding the container and talking to the team leads about what they're doing and giving feedback on it and showing up on meetings. I mostly only talk with my team. I'm not. So like my structure is not a fair one but I'll give it to you. So you know, I might wake up around 7am, come downstairs, have a green tea, screw around on the Internet a little bit, check some slack, you know, make sure there's nothing crazy going on in the world. Read a couple newsletters. 8 to 9:30 I'm working out because I was a youth athlete and I'm into working out. I like it, it's fun, pleasurable, daily movement doesn't have to be super intense. I'm not going hard body, I'm just like move my body in a fun way. That feels good. Maybe that's yoga, maybe that's lifting weights, maybe that's meditating, whatever. 9:30 to 11:ish. I'm eating breakfast with Carrie. Maybe we're having espresso, hanging out, talking about what we're going to do in the day. 11 to 2 I'm working 2 to 3 I stopped to eat lunch 3 to 530 to 6. I just had lunch before this. We started this around three 3:30 I'm doing more work and then I'm done by 5:36. So I'm probably putting in six hours sometimes. If it's, I'm done by 5:36 so I'm probably putting in six hours Sometimes. If it's crazy, eight, sometimes even crazier 10. But I'm also 15 years deep and so I wouldn't really gauge your work life against mine. But I will say notice that I'm opening My day with movement, with crazy 8, sometimes even crazier 10. But I'm also 15 years deep. And so I wouldn't really gauge your work life against mine. But I will say, notice that I'm opening my day with movement, with time for myself to screw around and do whatever I want with no pressure. Nobody asking me anything, with space to have a fun meal with my wife. And then I'm starting to work after all that shit, I'm not waking up, grabbing my phone and working. That is not a good idea. I need to create. I need to fill my cup energetically, emotionally, before I confront my work. And then I'm closing my work at 7 and I'm not coming back to it. And I'm hanging out with Carrie, we're making dinner, maybe we're watching something, whatever, we're going for a walk. I'm not coming back to work at night. And that container around the work, whether it be eight hours or six hours, like me, forces me in that time to do meaningful things because I don't have time outside of that. And I'm unwilling to budge on that. And that is a lesson it took me a while to learn.

So good. Something that all of us can aspire to. But really, honestly, like you said, you can take those pieces away from your schedule. You've got to do those things for yourself and fill your cup so you can fill others. Because that's why we're all in business in the first place.

Time for myself to screw around and do whatever I want with no pressure. Nobody.

Ezra, one last technical question, because I know your time's valuable and I'm going to wrap up today. But one last technical question I had on my list. Again, going back to just managing data and back to actual marketing strategy. If you would say, like, for the average boutique owner, average retailer that are going to measure, let's say, five data points every week, what would be the most important marketing data points for these retailers to dive into and fully understand at this point?

Three things you need to understand. Cost per customer acquisition. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? Number one. Number two, asking me anything with space to have a fun meal with my wife. And then I'm starting to work after all that shit, not waking up, grabbing my phone and working. Average order value. How much do you make for every order placed on your site? That is not a good idea. I need to create. I need to fill my cup energetically. Emotion. And number three, lifetime customer value. How much do you make from every customer over 90 days? Of them being on your email list. First one, you want it to be lowest as it possibly can be. You want to acquire customers for as cheap as you can. Optimize that with your ads and your video creative. Second one, you want it to be as high as it can be, average order value. So that's upsell, cross sell, optimize your product offer page. And then the third one, you also want it to be as high as it can be. That's running sales and promotions, doing content marketing, running product launches. And so those are the only three metrics that matter in e commerce. Anyone who's telling you to focus on other metrics, those are the wrong metrics to focus on, click through rate, email, open rate, email, click through rate. Secondary metrics, cost per customer acquisition, average order value, lifetime customer value. That's what matters.

Very, very helpful. Ezra, thanks so much for joining us on the show today and it was such a pleasure to meet you. You know, I joked with you at the beginning that you are my favorite man bun ever.

Before I confront my work and then I'm closing my work at 7 and I'm not coming back to it.

I have to ask you about hair products before we park. I know all the ladies are going to ask.

What do I use?

Yeah, tell us about hair care. What do you use?

Well, okay, first of all, I think that, you know, so I don't shampoo very often. I let my natural oils be the kind of, you know, oil in my hair. Shampooing just doesn't feel that great. So I maybe shampoo like once a month and I use, I'm hanging out with Kerry. We're making dinner, maybe we're watching something, whatever. We're going for a walk. I'm not coming back to work at night. And that container around the work, whether it be eight hour, I'm big into the Alba brand right now. You know Alba? It's in those orange containers. I like them so I use them. My wife, he's got some. My wife's got some special stuff she uses. Like the one where they customize the formula for you. It's very popular right now or six hours. Like me forces me in that time to do meaningful. So like I see it everywhere. They like customize a formula for you and then it has your name on it. I'll tell you and I'll send it to you afterwards. And then for conditioner I'm using right now, which I do condition, basically every time I shower, I condition first in the shower. Condition, condition, condition. Yeah, let it Sit there while I shower. And then I wash it out. So I never shampoo, but I always condition. And I. I'm right now using the Alba coconut coconut cream conditioner. And then once a month, I'll do like a hinoki Japanese hair oil treatment where it feels super good. You put hot oil on your head, you just let it sit for like 20 minutes, and then you wash that out. So I'm big into the conditioning of hair, but not so much into the warnings because I don't have time outside of that, and I'm unwilling to budge on that.

And that washing of hair, it's really interesting. So it doesn't get too greasy. I'm sure after a while your hair conditions to that and it doesn't get too greasy.

Dude, does this look too greasy to you? Come on.

No. You got the. Get the best man curls I've ever seen. No jokes.

I got lucky with hair, you know, and I wanted. I always wanted long hair after I watched John Travolta and Pulp Fiction when I was a kid. Is a lesson it took me a while to learn.

So good. Something that all of us can aspire to. But really, honestly, like you said, you can take those pieces away from your schedule. You've got to do those things for.

Your never had the courage to grow it out. And then I started, and it was like nine months before our wedding. And then Kerry was like, nah, son, you got to cut that because you're not going to be looking like that in our wedding photos. And I was like, dude, I'm nine months in. You can't make me cut this. She did. So I was like, all right, well, listen, I don't want. I don't want for the rest of our lives you to look at these wedding photos and be like, wow, I.

Wish you would have yourself and fill your cup so you can fill others, because that's why we're all in business in the first place.

The shorter hair, that's not gonna work for me. So I will. I will take one for the team here. Even though. And I was in that in between phase where it's kind of Jew fro y. It just didn't. It wasn't really working. So. So she cut it. And then. Then after the wedding, she's like, look, you do whatever you want. It's your hair. I grew it out. And you know, and. And now she loves it. She did. She wasn't sure she was gonna. Because I was. I had a very particular style with the whole pompadour puff Situation when it was short. You know what I mean? Like, the bent. The benefit for me of growing my hair out was I don't have to worry about it anymore. I could put it up or I could leave it down, but I did not have to brush it. And that was also why I stopped.

Ezra, one last technical question. Because I know your time's valuable, and I'm going to wrap up today, but shavings.

I don't want to shave anymore. I'm, like, just not interested in this level of manscaping. Yeah. I just was not, Like, I was over the level of vanity I had in high school. I had gotten over once I had got together. Carrie and I got together very young, you know, And I was like, okay, I'm no longer concerned with what people think of me. I have the. I was looking for a relationship, and I have a relationship. I'm good. As long as you're happy with me, I can stop worrying about all this bullshit.

Love it.

But no, it had to be kept short for the wedding. And now. Yeah, that's the sword. I don't know where I'm going with that.

I'm gonna challenge you to, like, one last technical question I had on my list. Again, going back to just managing data and back to actual marketing strategy. If you would say, like, for the average boutique owner. Average. Reese, post your wedding photo on Instagram, because I really want to see it with short hair.

Yeah, it might even be on there. I'll find it.

No, my husband and his father have very curly hair. They keep it super short. So I always have had this curly hair question for you, so thank you for answering.

You got to tell them.

Let it go, Taylor. That are going to measure, let's say, five data points every week, what would.

Be the most time they're quarantined? They can't get a haircut.

I know, right? It's time. Better now than ever, man. Ezra, seriously, such a pleasure to meet you. Awesome to have you. Thank you for breathing your life into our community and truly for serving the world in the way that you do. You typically like just one in a million. I just really appreciate it. I can't say enough good things. So thank you.

Yeah, let me know when it comes out. I'll share it on Instagram and stuff, on YouTube and whatnot. So appreciate you having me on the show. Oh, follow me on Instagram, too. At Ezra Firestone, that's where it gets, like, more behind the scenes stuff. So.

Absolutely. We'll put all your links into the show. Notes Everyone can give you a follow. Check out those free courses and yeah, keep on rocking man. That's awesome. Thank you.

Bye.

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Three things you need to understand. Cost per customer acquisition. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? Number one. Number two, average order value. How much do you make for every order placed on your site? And number three, lifetime customer value. How much do you make from every customer over 90 days of them being on your email list? First one, you want it to be lowest as it possibly can be. You want to acquire customers for as cheap as you can. Optimize that with your ads and your video creative. Second one, you want it to be as high as it can be average order value. So that's upsell, cross sell, optimize your product offer page. And then the third one, you also want it to be as high as it can be. That's running sales and promotions, doing content marketing, running product launches. And so those are the only three metrics that matter in E commerce. Anyone who's telling you to focus on other metrics, those are the wrong metrics to focus on, click through Rate Email Open Rate Email Click through Rate Secondary metrics Cost per customer acquisition Average order value Lifetime customer value. That's what matters.

Very, very helpful. Ezra, thanks so much for joining us on the show today and it was such a pleasure to meet you. You know, I joked with you at the beginning that you are my favorite man bun ever. So I have to ask you about hair products before we park. I know all the ladies are going to ask.

What do I use?

Yeah, tell us about hair care. What do you use?

Well, okay, first of all, I think that you know, so I don't shampoo very often. I let my natural oils be the kind of, you know, oil in my hair. Shampooing just doesn't feel that great. So I maybe shampoo like once a month and I use, I'm big into the Alba brand right now. You know Alba, it's in those orange containers. I like them so I use Them. My wife, he's got some. My wife's got some special stuff she uses. Like the one where they customize the formula for you. It's very popular right now. The guy. I see it everywhere. They, like, customize a formula for you, and then it has your name on it. I'll tell you, and I'll send it to you afterwards. And then for conditioner I'm using right now, which I do condition, basically every time I shower, I condition first in the shower. Condition, condition, condition.

Yeah.

Let it sit there while I shower, and then I wash it out. So I never shampoo, but I always condition. And I. I'm right now using the alba coconut coconut cream conditioner. And then once a month, I'll do like a hinoki Japanese hair oil treatment where it feels super good. You put hot oil on your head.

Yeah.

Just let it sit for like 20 minutes, and then you wash that out. So I'm big into the conditioning of hair, but not so much into the washing of hair.

It's really interesting. So it doesn't get too greasy. I'm sure after a while your hair conditions to that, and it doesn't get too greasy.

Dude, does this look too greasy to you? Come on now.

No, you get the. Get the best man curls I've ever seen. No jokes.

I got lucky with hair, you know, And I wanted. I always wanted long hair after I watched John Travolta and Pulp Fiction when I was a kid.

Yeah.

Never had the courage to grow it out. And then I started, and it was like nine months before our wedding. And then Carrie was like, nah, son, you got to cut that because you're not going to be looking like that in our wedding photos. And I was like, dude, I'm nine months in. You can't make me cut this. She did. So I was like, all right, well, listen, I don't want. I don't want for the rest of our lives you to look at these wedding photos and be like, wow, I wish you had had shorter hair. That's not going to work for me. So I will. I will take one for the team here. Even though. And I was in that in between phase where it's kind of Jew fro y. It just didn't. It wasn't really working. So. So she cut it. And then. Then after the wedding, she's like, look, you do whatever you want. It's your hair. I grew it out. And you know, and. And now she loves it. She did. She wasn't sure she was gonna. Because I was. I had a very particular style with the whole pompadour puff situation when it was short. You know what I mean? Like, the Ben. The benefit for me of growing my hair out was, I don't have to worry about it anymore. I could put it up or I could leave it down, but I did not have to brush it. And that was also why I stopped shaving. I don't want to shave anymore. I'm, like, just not interested in this level of manscaping. Yeah. I just was not. Like, I was over the level of vanity I had in high school. I had gotten over once I had got together. Carrie and I got together very young, you know, And I was like, okay, I'm no longer concerned with what people think of me. I was looking for a relationship, and I have a relationship. I'm good. As long as you're happy with me. I can stop worrying about all this bullshit and love. But no, it had to be kept short for the wedding. And now, yeah, that's the sword. I don't know where I'm going.

I'm gonna challenge you to, like, please post your wedding photo on Instagram, because I really want to see it with short hair.

Yeah. It might even be on.