How I built the fastest growing Ecom agency ever

Over the last 3 and a half years, I've built one of the fastest growing Shopify agencies, having worked with over 200 brands including logos like NeuroGum, Everyman Jack, Gainful, Ministry of Supply. These are all 7, 8, 9 figure brands. In my opinion, it's actually really impressive. What I was trying to figure out is how the hell do we do this? I realized that it was for one main reason, which is increasing our surface area of luck. In this video, what I'm gonna do is break down the 3 different ways that we've been able to do this and hopefully walk away from this video getting a better understanding of how we've been able to grow one of the fastest growing growing agencies in Shopify's ecosystem. The first thing is helping people solve their problems. An example of that would be helping brand founders raise money. Every time a brand is looking to raise money, I love to get connected to them because I've built a roster of investors that I can introduce them to. So it gives me an opportunity to add value to them upfront without asking for anything in return. And naturally they're going to ask me what Platter does. And while they might not need a new website, in that moment, if I can add value to them and leave them in a positive light, they keep me top of mind for when the opportunity comes to potentially work together. I'm going to bring you guys on a call in 4 minutes with a brand founder who I just got introduced to who's raising money. He will only remember me in a positive light because I added value first without asking for anything in return.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How do you know Sam? We're in a large group chat together. It's got like a bunch of founders. And he had mentioned that he had a friend who was looking to raise money for his brand, and I have been in and around the e-com consumer D2C world my entire career, so it pinged in that I would love to meet you and see how I can be helpful. Oh, awesome, awesome. Thank you. Do you do any CPG investing yourself? Yeah, I've invested in, I don't know, at least 10 brands at this point. What are they? Typically, it's across the spectrum. It just depends on where I think I can actually be helpful. Yeah, send that to me. I would love to try product. We'll dig a little bit deeper into it, and then we'll probably talk to a couple of my consumer friends that I've either co-invested with or people who are just way more knowledgeable about the space than I am. And then, uh, we'll also see if they want to have conversations with you. I think, look, at the end of the day, like, I'm interested in trying the product and reading the materials, and if it's not a good fit for me, like, definitely have other people in my network who might be interested. So want to support you one way or the other if I can.

Oh, thank you, Ben. I appreciate that.

Talk to you soon. Have a good one. Have a good one. The other example of this is meeting with investors to understand the types of brands that looking to invest in so I can better understand who to introduce these brand founders to when I meet them. I'm literally looking at her title because it's so long. We are now going to walk to a coffee shop to meet with the VP of Innovation Economy. When people reach out to me with titles like this or in positions like this, I think it's always the right decision to say yes because these are the types of people as your business matures that you want to have in your corner when you start to play big boy business and get around big corporations. These are definitely people who have those connections and relationships to help you out. So I always try to make time to prioritize these because the more they know about Platter, the more they're going to be talking about it. And so if and when our business is ready to move to the next chapter, whether that's fundraising, acquisition, IPO, etc., it's not the first time we're meeting these people. So that nurturing stage is really solved already. So I texted her and said, hey, is it okay with you if my videographer comes? But you probably saw my LinkedIn. I record a lot of content. And she responded to my text and said, sorry, just seeing this, but didn't actually acknowledge if she was okay with it or not. So we're going to show up and she's either going to be like, oh yeah, this is totally cool, or be like, hey, I'd actually appreciate if you didn't film this conversation right now. So we'll find out. Like, I'll give you an example. One of our investors, he works in private equity. They just bought a massive consumer business. He was like, let me finish the deal. And then he just introduced me yesterday to the business. They're looking to overdo their— like overhaul their website. That's like a perfect example. Their website sucks. It's a really big business. They have budget. They're going to do it. It's more a question of who they're doing it with. But if I had like 50 of him, every PE firm keeps me top of mind to be that guy. Like the one hire that I would like to make in Q1 from like a go-to-market perspective is someone on the partnership side because like it's what I'm doing right now. But there are so many pillars of partnerships that is like I have other shit to do also. If I had someone just focus on that thing and that thing only, like you have venture funds, you have private equity funds, you have the SC Johnsons of the world, you have the bankers. There are like so many avenues and pillars. It's very hard for me to just, just do that. That's like the next lever, I think. The second is staying top of mind. This part is broken down into two sections. Part one is the intimate one-to-one relationships. I'm meeting with the Shopify merchant success manager because I want to understand the problems that her brands are dealing with and help her solve her problems. Because if I can do that for her, there's a higher likelihood that when her brands are talking to her about increasing conversion rate or fixing their websites, she's going to think of Platter and she's going to introduce them to me. It's like, boom, this is my girl Molly.

And then what do I say? What do I do with my hands?

That's probably going to be the clip that's on the video. You just doing what you just did. Are there any clients in your book of business that are customers of ours that I can bother for you?

Well, there was a few. I love NeuroGum, by the way.

Yeah, they're the best.

They're so cool. And they're so down for everything. No, I actually owe you a lot of things. I might have another. I sent the platters information via email yesterday.

Last call of day and I'm gonna hit the gym.

Love that.

But look, man, it's been, it's been super interesting connecting. So look, I asked your head of growth just to send a kind of handful of your, I guess, your kind of flagship projects that you've worked on, ones you're most proud of, and I'll get them featured. So when I'm ready to launch, um, and when you guys are ready to send that, ping it over, the ones that you'd want to be up in lights, and I'll make sure that they are, they're visible.

What's up, girl?

What's up, YouTube star? I know, that's such a— like, seriously, how do you have the time in the day to make this content? Do you have like someone following you around all the time?

Yeah, Adam, my apartment.

That is so awesome. Um, yeah, how did you—

you're gonna be in this video, this next video. What are we doing now? We're about to film a podcast with my homie Chris Shambra blindfolded, which is bananas. I still have to hear about this. How does this increase surface area look? Uh, put yourself in rooms with people who know a lot of people and talk about cool things, and more people hear about those things. I love it. So obviously, and then there's also these. So I'm about to film a podcast episode with my homie Chris, and he literally had a box of blindfolds, which I'm not asking about. Yeah, shit. And you want to email me and say Hey Chris. And the second part of this is the content side of things. Posting content allows you to get in touch with more than one person. While I wish I could do these one-to-one relationships with everyone, I know that's not possible because time is finite. So by posting content, I can get in front of hundreds and hopefully thousands of people talking about these experiences and showcasing these conversations that I'm having to be able to get in front of the people that I want to. For example, I posted this on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago saying that I wanted to meet with brand founders, offering to take them out for coffee, to get a workout in, or a sauna cold plunge session. And within hours, I got emails and LinkedIn messages from plenty of brand founders that I had never met. Actually, the end of that day, I had one on my roof, sauna and cold plunging. And when I'm meeting with these people, I'm recording all these conversations and posting them on the internet so all the other people in e-commerce can see these conversations and hear what we're talking about, understanding the problems that they have and how I'm helping them solve them. So the next time that I post looking to meet with more people, it is fresh to them as to what Platter does and why I'm looking to chat with them. Think about it. They're seeing me every single day. How are they not going to think about Platter or hear about it or talk about it with someone else when it gets posted? Because they are subconsciously getting fed my content from multiple different angles, multiple times a day. If you still don't believe me on why you should be posting content to increase your surface area for luck, I closed one of my largest customers inbound from LinkedIn. I hired one of my best employees who also came inbound from LinkedIn, and I also closed one of my largest investors who came inbound and basically told me in the email that he had been following my content for months and was interested in getting involved in the business. Lastly, most importantly, you need to do good work and showcase your results. I'm going to show you a great example of where I'm going to bring Platter customers who are very proud of the work we've done for them, and I'm going to bring them to a dinner with me with someone who's a prospective customer to have them help support me and show them why they liked working with Platter to ultimately help this person potentially become a customer as well. Let's go. And the whole city, it's just crazy right now. And shit ain't gonna stop. No shit gonna get a lot more worse before it gets any better. Look, mama hit my phone and said rap's no good. Better than telling me the absolute best part of the job right there. It's bringing together amazing people, customers, prospects, allowing them to organically meet each other, talk to each other. That's going to do the job for me. I don't have to go sell. I let my customers we've done good work for do the selling for us because at the end of the day, the results and the actions are the only thing that matters. I hope you guys found this video valuable. Look, at the end of the day, you just have to put yourself in the right situations to get opportunity, and it's something that you can engineer by doing the right things and being around the right people. I'd love to hear from you in the comments or DM me if you have any other things you'd love to learn about or video ideas. I would love to hear from you guys. Uh, excited to keep releasing and see you guys soon.