Podcast: Beyond One-Time Buyers with Matt Holman

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have on Matt Holman, founder of Commerce Catalyst and Subscription Prescription. Hey Matt, thanks for being on the pod.

Thanks, Neal. I'm excited to chat.

Likewise. Thanks for joining us and thanks for making Subscription Prescription fun to say out loud.

It really is. We're working on some fun cards to give out. My designer just said, hey, can we make these more fun? I was like, yeah, we should make them pill-shaped because that's part of our graphic and our branding. It's just easy. Here's your dose of subscription knowledge. So yeah.

Yeah, I love it. I feel like you should go with a lot of rhyming in things so that it just like hits people with that right away. Do you want to give us a quick high level, what one sentence maybe of what Commerce Catalyst and Subscription Prescription are?

Yeah, Subscription Prescriptions and agency consultancy focus specifically on CPG brands trying to build and grow subscription programs. So we're hyper-focused on delivering outcomes for that. And Commerce Catalyst is a community here in Utah that I started that's all about connecting operators and founders in the e-commerce space. We do meetups, conferences, everything. It's all about, you know, high tide, you know, rising tide lifts all boats.

Ooh, love it. Thanks for the shout out there. Of course. Well, we had Expo West coming up. So it's top of mind that, uh, the largest gathering of people are coming together. Are you gonna, you gonna be out there? Is it, you made a, a yearly meetup?

I'm not going out. I've, I've gone out quite a few times. It's often a little overwhelming. And to be honest, most people care more about talking about retail than their subscription program out there. So I like to save my feet and I've got a 1-year-old at home, so it's a little bit easier to stick, stick at home. So, okay.

I understand. I understand. Totally get it. Okay. I'm super fascinated on physical and e-commerce where that's, where those two are. We've had, you know, dances of merging and then backspin out. So we'll get there. I want to know what— get— why this vein for you? How did you end up here? Did you come from a company, a family of entrepreneurs, or where did it all start for you?

No, no, honestly, I was— it was, let's see, 6, 7, 7 or 8 years ago. I was working, um, I was a marketing director at a shipping technology company called eHub, um, and I started dating the CEO founder's sister. He hired her to run operations. I had a crush on her right away. And, you know, aside from being from two different religions, I, you know, my— the CEO was not super thrilled with, with that happening. So, um, so to preserve my own, like, you know, livelihood, but also the, the— our relationship— I'm saying livelihood a little tongue-in-cheek. I wasn't necessarily gonna get fired or anything like that. I just— I got an offer from a friend to talk to another founder in the technology space in e-commerce, and we clicked. And it was a subscription app called AutoShipCloud. And the founder was like, hey, if you can write interesting articles about shipping, you should be able to do a lot of content marketing around subscriptions. And so I left eHub to join David Bradley at AutoShipCloud or QPilot and building up that kind of company. And thankfully was able to keep dating my now wife, who we have a baby and a happy story. Me and my brother-in-law get along perfectly fine.

Fine.

Um, but, but yeah, that whole journey just started with an opportunity and a conversation and wanting a little more freedom for myself, maybe not realizing, you know, the, the different set of pressures I was trading for working for somebody else for working for myself.

Got it. Well, being in Salt Lake is being around like a really dense talent hub and, you know, tech and e-commerce hub. Can you take us a little bit about that, of just like building and growing and working in that community over time.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's really interesting. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, a lot— they've branded it called Silicon Slopes, right? We're trying to be like a little bit east of Silicon Valley, and there's a huge concentration of technology and CPG companies, e-commerce companies, and a lot of that does revolve around sales. There's an incredibly— the, like, the Mormon Church is here. There's a lot of people that come back from their missions that get into sales. There's a lot of door-to-door sales companies. There's an ecosystem of sales that has started here and have helped grow and scale massive companies, which brings in, you know, more money, investments. There's a really strong VC space out here, and there's a lot of marketing. And then I do just think there's something in the water when it comes to entrepreneurship. Again, whether that's just, you know, you see your neighbor doing a startup, whether that's— we just have so many people in our community that are, you know, they, they see a problem, they want to go fix it. Whether that's a busy mom figuring out a more convenient bottle for their kid to, you Thread Wallet, a different type of wallet, something fun they started in college. Or Just Ingredients is another brand out here who's just all about like healthy ingredients and they're doing amazing as well. So there's, it's just something fun out here and it's really easy to network and meet people, but it's also like hard to figure out who you should be connecting with and who you should be spending your time with.

Hmm. Interesting. Well, Silicon Slopes is like this epic, um, yearly event where—

just, just passed, just passed—

the world descends on it. I feel like now, right, you— it's been a few years where it's like tipped over into just not just local, but kind of this new South by Southwest, if you will, uh, vibe that I feel like you just, you just hinted at their long-term vision was trying to create a South by out here. So yeah, perfect timing. Uh, I was in Austin last week and people are like, South by is reaching its limit, uh, in a variety of ways. Which is interesting. And so ready to pass the mantle on maybe in that regard. So when you say sales, what I hear from a tech perspective is like go-to-market, right? It's like people who are fascinated about going out and understanding what the customer's areas, problems are worth solving, right? I mean, that's what sales is. That's what go-to-market is. Distribution, which in today's day and age between AI for the tech and honestly all the tools for e-commerce, the tools are there. It's still the people to execute. Right, and go get this thing done. What are you seeing in terms of difference, in terms of how people are getting to market differently these days? Or is it not? Is that the only thing? It's the people.

I mean, I mean, it isn't. It isn't. It isn't, right? Like, no matter how great and amazing AI is, like, people still want relationships. They still want a conversation. They still want to know who the person sitting across from them is like, you know, golfs like they do or has kids in the same school, that kind of thing. So there's certainly like a— I think some of those relationship stuff. I do think AI is just enabling a lot and making it a lot easier to find the right person you want to talk to, to personalize those messages a little like faster without a lot of the legwork so that you can start those conversations. We're also seeing a ton of, you know, work on the analytics side. I mean, there's just really the technology is touching every single touchpoint of, of that go-to-market strategy and everything that's happening. But within e-com, it's, it's really easy to get lost in that. Like the AI is helpful in some areas, but it's still struggles with a lot of content creation with understanding like what you actually should be saying to people and customers. It's getting better, but it's getting close. It's getting certainly getting closer to removing a lot of people. But I think that like most things, we'll see a little bit of a correction and an over lean in and a little bit of correction back to finding the sweet spot. And it's a little bit different for every company.

Yeah. Why don't we dive— tell me a little bit more about what you're seeing trends-wise. Man, e-commerce has had just such a whiplash from COVID days to now, right? What are you seeing, especially I want to hint towards recurring revenue models towards subscription? What's—

I mean, the biggest thing is using, I think, the development of using AI inside like research, right? Like how we're researching our competitors, brands, ideal customers, and how we're creating content or talking points out of those things is really, really powerful. And already like it just blows me away what that's doing. Video is probably closer than people think, but it's still not quite there. Static ads, actually, I've seen some tools very recently that are just absolutely unbelievable. Like literally connect to your Shopify product catalog and they can just start cranking out static ads across a variety of angles and verticals and different end users. CX, it's really interesting too. We did an event out here recently on AI and we're learning more from like really, really large retail retail brands that also sell online and how they are actually using AI to get to a problem faster, a solution faster for a customer problem. Really easy to get out of an AI chat with a real person, but that now the CX team are actually able to focus on relationships. They're able to focus on selling. They're able to focus on process or focus on what's actually working in the program. And AI is doing all just the generic regular stuff that we're seeing in that place. So And then anywhere else there's data, AI is living. So like purchase patterns, when you're sourcing, where you're sourcing from, all that stuff, it's really impactful.

Hmm. Okay. So a lot of that pieces, but at the end of the day, you still got to deliver a physical product, whether it's from using 3PL to the shipping logistics, macro and micro, and then getting the person to just like stay engaged with that product and getting feedback. What's that part like? What is, what are those pieces changing or are they not?

They are. I think what's— what we're interested to on the subscription side is where we can start to offer true personalization at scale. So personalization, as you— I'm sure you know, is like, it's been a buzzword in the space for years, but 90% of brands, personalization is like, hey Matt, in the email, right? So the difference now is starting to understand, okay, based off of where Matt lives, based off of, you know, maybe some data enrichment we know about his lifestyle and his disposable income, what he has purchased. And if we can start collecting a few extra data points around, like, say, when he opts— when somebody opts in on your website, what brought you to our site today? Instead of just trying to get a— just give a discount for an email, we're asking more information related to, like, what— why are you interested in this product? The example I always like using is protein powder because everybody kind of understands what protein powder is, but also protein powder has multiple uses. I could be using that to bulk as I'm trying to add muscle. You know, my wife could have— is taking that after she had a baby to help with, with bone density loss and, and recovering muscle, right? Uh, people use it for meal replacements. There's lots of applications. So when somebody comes to your site to buy protein powder, are you asking them why or what their use case is? And so once we start to understand that touch point and we layer in some of these others, where I'm seeing the real excitement being is like, now when I go to send you an onboarding email or a billing reminder email, it's not just a static thing about our brand or about how it will help you gain more muscle, we can actually add more nuance into, in there. So that's where we're starting to see some signs from the AI side. But realistically, that process is still about understanding use cases, understanding outcomes that people are trying to make happen, being a great marketer and building in that aspirational element. So we're not just talking about features, we're talking about benefits. And then the biggest thing is really about just getting people on the right cadence and frequency that works with their consumption pattern, which I could talk all day long about the subscription piece, but, and creating good feedback loop. Anything I can do to get more information back on what people want and what they're doing, I can use that to improve a program. Okay.

I'm going to give you that, that softball. Tell me more about subscription because, uh, you know, there's certain brands that you resonate. You're like, yeah, like a Manscaped, just dominated on, on subscription, right? Like, what are some hot brands and what are they doing really well, like, in physical, tangible form that we're probably seeing in front of our eyes?

Yeah, I think the, the hottest one in the space that people talk about right now is Groove. They're like a, uh, like an Athletic Greens competitor but in a gummy form. Um, they've, you know, you could take it with a grain of salt, everybody's saying online they're doing $300, $400 million and now in revenue. On retail and online. Regardless, they're growing really, really quickly. And I think when you look at what their formula for success has been, they spend a lot of time on a product formulation. So their gummies actually taste, taste good and they, and then, and they're healthy. So anybody who's looking for, if you've ever tried AG1 or other these green powder companies, you have to mix them into a drink, which for some people, if you make daily smoothies, great. Like, if you're like me and I don't make a daily smoothie, I'm trying to grab something I can take on the way out the door, not so great. So the, the delivery mechanism and the product itself does really, really well. And they're really efficient at testing different offers. So if you look at their product page, they, they're good at offering you, hey, is this for you or for 2 people? Do you want 1 month or 3 months supply? Um, and then they do a process throughout their entire journey of upselling you into a longer commitment. So if you're going to be taking Daily Greens, why do you need a monthly subscription when you could do a quarterly subscription, get 3 months supply at one time? So they're, they're growing really, really well. The best and biggest subscription brands that we've worked with and that I know of are actually incredible at acquisition. They're really, really great at offer testing, how, what, what converts. And not only does an offer convert somebody to a subscriber, but does it convert them into a 2, 3, or 6-month subscriber? Right at the point of purchase. That's how brands really, really grow because then they're able to use that cash. They understand their customer acquisition costs and they're shooting for subscription LTV numbers because they have growth targets in mind. The ones that have the best subscription programs aren't always great at scaling the program because they've invested more in retention and customer experience and stuff. So there's usually trade-offs that you make. It's difficult to do all the things. All the pieces well. Hmm, super interesting.

Uh, this, this makes me put my investor hat on a little bit when I start to hear acquisition and subscription. There was a hot craze of VCs doing, you know, e-commerce, and then the bottom fell out a little bit. Where is capital coming from these days, uh, for these companies?

Uh, some private equity companies, they're buying them up and looking at scaling and doing roll-ups is, is kind of the biggest piece. There are still some small angel investors and other stuff out there, but as you said, it's, it's gone from a flood to a desert. Yeah, essentially. So the multiples just aren't there, even for really good subscription brands that have strong LTV. It can be really, really difficult to sell your business just because it's often still dependent on how many people you can get in the door every month. It's not like, hey, we could turn this off and let it run for 12 months and how much money we'd make. It's, it's, you're still kind of caught in that classic acquisition trap for most e-com brands.

How about the exited e-com founders who start again? Obviously, builders build. Do they become those strategic angels? Do you see that, especially in the Salt Lake market where, you know, someone who's been there, done that is now starting to deploy as like an angel into others?

Some do. Yeah, we— I do know some that do that. A lot of them go and start another company. Like, they go take what they've learned. Like, like one of our our past or most recent clients was he sold a business that was not subscription and then developed a new product that was completely subscription focused because he's like, hey, I had a hard time selling this last business or getting repeat purchases on this last business was a pain. I'm going to go build one and that has subscriptions baked into it. So yeah, they are out there, but it's, it's, I think we're seeing still more people are taking like giving up small bits of equity or they're looking at alternative sources of funding.

Okay, so the other way to get, say, the cheat codes from other people is to meet together and share them, which is Commerce Catalyst, right? Which is getting people together and helping each other out. Like, take me through some of the fundamentals and some of the, the 1 1 3 that have come from gathering people.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, the funnest part is just people selling their businesses and/or hiring people. So like at our conferences, events, I regularly people are hiring their new VP of supply chain or, you know, other people are selling their businesses to somebody, a competitor who's bigger and farther along than they are. But I think the biggest thing is just being able to connect people with other people that are doing the same thing. So if you're, you know, if you're trying to build a, you know, or you're running ads, you're running performance marketing for your brand, who else are you talking to? You're obviously talking to other people you know in the space that are doing that, but do you know that, hey, you've got people that live in the same town that work at a brand of a similar size? Or, you know, we've, you know, Groon's, for example, just hired a paid media marketer here in Utah. So it's like there's national brands that have people that are living here. And then there's founder-led, like founded in here that they're there. So our, our whole ethos from the very beginning was, so I mentioned that story of like, I left that eHub company. I was a solo marketer at a bootstrap startup. And I started a little marketing meetup with a couple of friends in similar positions so that we could just help and support each other. And that has grown into, you know, years later, Commerce Catalyst, which is a massive community with, you know, we've impacted the lives of thousands of people over the last few years. So we do conferences, we have meetups, we have a Slack group, and we're trying to actually diversify our offerings so we're not just talking to marketers. We have a finance workshop tomorrow. We have a panel on CX best practices next week. So it's really, there's just so much happening. There's so much available and you know, there's nobody you'd rather learn from than your peers, than listening to maybe some talk or watching a YouTube video when somebody's happy to jump on a call or meet up for lunch or just Slack or email over what you guys are working on in addition to the in real life conversations.

Yeah. How much is in person? Like, do you see, is it a lot more happen when you're in person or do things naturally happen kind of almost hybrid.

It's, it is a little bit hybrid that I think it helps when you have multiple touch points. But I think what blows people away is like, there's always this weird thing online where somebody maybe feels like they're unapproachable or, you know, you know, the phrase they're too cool for school or something like that. And you meet them in real life and they're incredibly nice and accommodating. I think the other piece is like, we've tried really hard just to facilitate like people that want to learn and connect. And so that's who we get. So when we invite people to speak or to come out, they are kind of blown away. They're like, wow, I, you know, where's this community been? Like they meet 5 people that they would want to hire or want to be on their team kind of thing. So I do think like in person, it just helps to have both. You know, I've done the straight webinar approach. I do a newsletter and podcast on the subscription thing. So it's like I do a lot of stuff virtually. But when you get both, like when I have clients that are in Utah that I get to meet in person and work with virtually, there's just a really, really strong relationship there that's hard to build otherwise.

Yeah. What about the, the opportunity to like merge communities when people are visiting, right? So people are coming to Silicon Slopes or they're coming for a conference. How do you bring your community to that so that you get these like diffuse layers between the two?

Yeah, Silicon Slopes has been great. I've, I've interact— worked with them. I was on, um, like leading or helping to lead their marketing subchapter for a while. They do have like a consumer products chapter, but it doesn't necessarily get as ton of attention. So we've collaborated on a few things. My whole approach to community is there's— I don't really view anybody else as competitive unless they're like literally hosting the exact same event at the same time I am all the time. Otherwise, it's just we try to like our weekly newsletter. I, I, I, I constantly, it's open to anybody hosting events that would be useful for the community. And so that's one thing that helps us is if you're from, you know, Shelfmade or StartupCPG or something else like that, like there's no reason why you can't be involved in more stuff if it makes sense for you. And we just like try to collaborate and partner on events with people too.

Love it. Yeah, there's a lot that I think what you've honed in on is just the curation aspect. Right. And that goes a long way because people only have so much time these days to dedicate to finding their tribe, if you will. So you're helping them find it and self-select in to find just like-minded people, and you're solving the problems around talent and other aspects there too. I mean, it's super smart and kind of this new, new version of community, if you will. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we get asked a lot about expanding, and I think I mean, maybe at some point, like, I think of like from a VC pitching standpoint, it's like, hey, maybe if we finish the business model, we could bring it to more areas. But I honestly think that there's still so much more to be done with training and job boards. And, and I really want us to be the connective tissue of e-commerce in Utah, which is such a great space and, and so much happening here. And there's so much more to be done where I discover brands, new brands all the time that I've never heard of that are doing amazing stuff. And we just want to keep offering more and more content and curating more things for all the people. And honestly, a lot of communities are typically driven by marketers, which I am, and they're for marketers. So we're shooting really hard for more operational stuff. Our spring conference has got a lot of operational focuses, hiring, sourcing, finance, because those are massive pieces of the companies. It's just those people typically get like recruited to go be on a panel or come to an event kind of thing. So we want everybody to feel like there's a place for them to connect and find resources.

That's awesome. Yeah. Give us where you can find some info and give us some upcoming events in case, you know, there's people listening who could join.

Yeah. Our website is c-catalyst.co. You can connect with me or follow me on LinkedIn, Matthew Holman. We have— we're doing a subscription workshop in March. That's going to be great. But our two big things are conferences. So April 15th and 16th, we'll do a conference in Salt Lake. And that's kind of operations, multi-channel, TikTok shop, Amazon focused. And then our August conference is going to be more on like digital marketing, retention, subscriptions, all those things. So it's not exclusive. Our, like, for example, our title sponsors Omnisend, they do email, email stuff. They're at both, but that's the general kind of makeup of each conference is going to be just a little bit different.

Okay, I'm curious. I was curious of like uniquenesses of each community, if you will. Like within this community in Salt Lake, there's certain kinds of e-commerce that does better, like less food, more, you know, clothing, like anything, or apparel, like anything, or is it across the board that you see?

Um, I think what's interesting is there's a lot of like— this is like going to be a little bit stereotypical, but it's like, you know, we have a lot of women that found really great apparel brands like Jessica Kaye and Baltic Born out here. Um, and then there are a lot of different supplement brands, um, like Just Ingredients and Clean Simple Eats and, and, and others. Um, and so I think supplement brands do really, really well, but that's as like a general e-com thing. Apparel is hard to do, but there are some brands here that do it really, really well. Food and beverage, like, yeah, there's one that the woman that won our pitch competition, we do a female founder pitch competition and she won that last year. It's called Tough Pops. And I would not be surprised if you see that in the next 6 months everywhere. It's a protein popsicle that tastes like a Dove bar. It's incredible. And so there are lots of, yeah, I'm sure she, if she's not going to Expo West this year, she'll be there next year. Because it's, it's that good of a product. So we see a lot of innovation kind of across the board. That's what I like is you just see a lot of entrepreneurs who see an opportunity, they want to do something a little different, they start it. We have a lot of tech, tech people doing that too. It's really cool.

I'm sure there's crossover there in that regard, right? People who have mastered acquisition, one thing they're going to go do, and then the innovation— protein's the hot new innovation this last, this year, right? So that's, that's great to see. In that regard. And I asked that question more because density begets density, right? When you see others around you or you see someone's done that a few times, it kind of builds others around that and talent.

It really does.

Yeah, talent who's already worked there goes and starts their own, right? It sounds like especially in the Salt Lake community, it's like its own incubation piece there. Well, the other piece that brings people together, that's for sure, is food. And here in San Diego, we know that's over tacos. One, what's the food that brings people together in Salt Lake? And then what is your favorite taco spot?

Well, the food that people talk about a lot in Salt Lake are dirty sodas. So that's the swigs of the world where you're selling, you know, like Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Coke with different flavors and stuff. They're pretty good. So that's what brings a lot of people together, but also anything sweets related, cinnamon rolls, ice cream, stuff like that. But I would say when you, when, when I first got asked, I didn't realize you were in San Diego because when I first got, first saw the podcast and I was, hey, be careful, they're going to ask you about your favorite taco. I thought of a, just a San Diego street taco. The last time we were there is my first thing. But, and also out on the pier, like in front of the aircraft carrier. But for where I live in Utah and where I can eat them regularly myself, I love Taqueria 27. They do just fun takes on— they have like a taco of the day, a fish taco of the day, a margarita of the day, a guac of the day. But they do this like short rib mashed potato taco that just— it's the best thing I've ever had. I just love it.

Okay, I like it. I think the place you may have mentioned in San Diego, I think, is like— I'm forgetting the name all of a sudden— right in front of the pier. It's like they're very pork forward or— Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, I know exactly what you're talking about, but I want to go compare and contrast out in Salt Lake. So I will hit you up when we're out there and we will, we will break for some tacos sometime. Matt, it was great to have you on. Thank you for what you're doing for building community and for making e-commerce sustainable and have this long-term long tail to it. Because we all know as consumers, there's brands we love that suddenly are gone. And we'd love to have the brands we love there and for more people to build sustainable companies. That's good for everyone, especially for entrepreneurs. So thanks, Matt. Appreciate having you on and look forward to sharing a taco with you soon.

Thanks, man. Cheers.

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