Episode 341: Building a Brandstores Powerhouse (with Outreach Promo's Nevin Bansal)

Can you hit a 30% growth target year-to-date and still make a major contribution to your community? Apparently you can. On today's show, we talk with Naveen Bansal. Naveen is the founder and CEO of Outreach Promos, Columbus-based company providing online brand stores, merch, and design solutions. Naveen is also the founder and executive director of Small Biz Cares, a nonprofit that engages small businesses for philanthropy and community impact. Naveen has made a major comeback post-pandemic with a special focus on shops through repeatable, scalable processes. We talk today about this and a few leadership lessons along the way. Welcome to the Skucast, the podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the branded merch space. My name is Bobby LeHew. I'm glad you're here. Before our chat with Naveen, we added a brand new AI workshop to Skucamp Scottsdale. The AI Revolution at Work: How Distributors and Suppliers Use AI to Transform Their Business. In this workshop, we'll unpack survey results from attendees on how they are using AI. Come hear how the best in the biz harness AI's potential to drive sales, optimize their operations, and elevate their marketing. It's a hands-on, peer-to-peer discovery share. You'll gain actionable insight, discover new tools, and leave equipped to lead your team into an AI-powered future. To join us, head on over to skucamp.com. There are only a handful of tickets left, so register today. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at Commonsku. Over 800 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on Commonsku's connected workflow. Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn how, visit commonsku.com. Now here's my chat with Naveen.

Naveen, welcome back on the SkewCast. It's so good to have you here again, my friend.

Likewise. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

30% year-to-date growth. That's unheard of in these sort of turbulent, unexpected times. And you've had a real focus on shops and stores. You've had 14 new stores year to date. Tell us more about Brandstores.shop. Why did you create it?

Yeah, we realized that stores are the trend. We wanted to be able to set up a solution instead of just selling product and working with clients in that way. We want to really offer solutions with stores and brandstores.shop. We wanted to actually put a branded platform and solution instead of just offering store programs, just, hey, we do company stores. And so setting up that, that separate solution, creating a separate website and really aligning all of our offerings and our servicing around stores. Has allowed us to develop a nice focus area, niche in the marketplace, especially within our local market.

Yeah. So it lets prospects know you're the experts at this. That's what that separate URL is. I love that separate website and branding. What are some of the different store solution models you offer?

Yeah, so I would say really several ones. Our anchor is always that employee store program. So you think about working with that HR leader and offering employee merchandise programs where we can do the one piece minimum. So we can do on demand or we can do quarterly programs or whatnot. But it's really, that's our anchor and where we typically get the client in is setting up that employee store program first. Then we offer bulk promo shops and apparel shops. And so you think about a company inventorying product with us where they might buy a large amount of products in bulk to be stored in our facility. We set up an online shop for them to access that promo and apparel and request items for different trade shows and events. So we set up that shop as a way to really assist the client whether it's marketing or HR or wherever to access inventory numbers and what's, what's in the inventory. They request items to go to a certain trade show or event. So that's like a second program. A third that's pretty common for us are pop-up programs. And we do everything from holiday shops with customers all the way to setting up a special program, let's say for Pride or for another initiative, or even just doing like apparel. Hey, I need to do some bulk t-shirts and I want to enter my size in.. And so we'll create a popup in that kind of way as well. And so those are probably the 3 main ways, those popups, the bulk promo, as well as employee stores. We also have used shops for like print programs. So we set up like business card templates and print items on there for companies, and they'll be able to go on there and request whatever standard print collateral they have through the shop. And then we just print it and ship. So it allows us to save a lot of time. Managing these programs and processing, especially because we create the online shop experience. They can go in there and request items and we don't have to worry about sending them, going a lot of back and forth. We have their mockups and designs and we can just move forward with projects.

How has Common SKU Shops made that simpler?

Yeah, I think it's been huge for us. Number one, on the setup side, it's for us, it's been really easy to create stores. We've gotten really accustomed to how to do set up a shop and design a shop. And we've been able to leverage a platform for that. We can also replicate those in different clients. We have a standard process now for discovery on a store program, for setting up the mockups and pricing. We've created some pricing templates internally for different projects and different programs and just creating that entire process. And the shops themselves are just so easy to set up for us and they look great. And so for us, we have no worry that Common Ski Shop's gonna continue to be some of the best out there for us.

You have— a lot of folks do shops, but you have really set up a system— systematized way to sell shops, scale, and grow your business. Have you discovered a few keys that not just building a successful shop, but building a repeatable, scalable process through your shop experience? You mentioned it, you alluded to it a little bit there, these templates and these processes and things like that.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. We look at the phases of a shop program, right? So there's that setup phase, but again, we know that for every shop we've got to do the mockups, we've got to do the pricing, we've got to have the right questions with the customer in terms of discovery. So we've got all that at a good spot now. And so it's very easy for us to set up that program and make sure that our pricing is consistent and fair and allows us to achieve the right margin.

On projects.

And so we're not guessing each program to program. We have a consistent setup process. And then we're processing the same concept. We have an order rep for each store, as well as an account person that kind of oversees changes to the shop, interacts with the client, making sure those programs are handled properly. But that order rep has got to know how that store should function. And we do a cheat sheet internally for those store— stores. We also set up like an internal meeting. Before a store launches to make sure that fulfillment operational side, order side, processing side, all— everybody's on one— on the same page in that meeting. And so that when we go forward and process jobs, that everything is in a correct process. And that setup and execution phase, that's huge for us. That's allowed us to really scale these store programs. And that wasn't how we started out. What we learned over time as we get more and more store programs under our belt is we understood like What are the things we have to set up? Because we want to scale. We want to, we want to continue to grow and add more stores. And we know that as you get larger, it's harder to manage them the same way we used to. So we've probably gotten a lot smarter with our setup execution on stores.

Sounds like you've got an external process dialed in for prospecting, for qualifying, for understanding how the customer's going to onboard. And then you have your internal process with your team that really helps you amplify or ignite the process, make it faster. Make it smoother and all that. But you're right, it does take repetitions and then systematizing the process. So pop-up shops fit in your overall strategy. Can you elaborate on one thing that you mentioned on the shift from free store design to $5,000 model or something like that? How are you structuring pricing around stores?

Yeah, so we don't charge a fee for store builds as long as you're spending money with us on product. Okay. And so we have a one-pager we set up for store programs and it just indicates that there is a fee if you want a store, but that's waived as long as you purchase $5,000 a year with us. And it's a small amount. And what it allows us to do is it allows us to make sure that we're not investing our time and effort on a store program and then a couple of weeks later, yeah, there's a change in mind or something happening and whatever. Right. So that hasn't really been an issue for us, but it just allows us to reduce the risk that might happen. But it also, because you want to keep the program free, we don't want that setup to be a burden for folks. We're able to offer it still as a free program. And really most clients that we're targeting are of the size where it's no issue, really very minimal issue. That's not going to be achieved.

Yeah, no roadblocks for the customers, frictionless, all that. I love it. Okay, so I started with shops and I talked about your 30% year-to-date increase. Now, one of the reasons I started with that is because this has been a pretty big turnaround story. You, lost some big accounts around or post-pandemic and you recovered. Not only have you recovered, but now you're— we're talking here about a 30% increase year to date and 14 new stores. What did you learn from that process? Like you went through the pandemic and then post-pandemic things were falling apart. You streamlined your business. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what did you learn from that process?

Yeah. So let's go back to 2019. We had our highest revenue year, 2019. Things were going decent. We had actually launched, I think last time we chatted, we launched digital marketing. Yeah. We also launched a nonprofit at that time. A lot of things happening in 2019, then 2020 hits and you all know what happened, right? And we lost 3 big clients, but all for different reasons. I wouldn't say they were directly related to the pandemic, but 2 of them got acquired and the acquisition company just happened to discontinue the relationship, but they weren't pretty short. The other one was a contract that had some renewal issue or whatnot. Pandemic or not, I don't think it was driven by that entirely, but it happened around that time. So obviously not a great time for anything to happen, but when it happened at that point, when you add in the additional challenges that no events and no things happen, it was a really tough time for us. But what it did allow me to do, we had actually pivoted into PPE very heavily and worked with a lot of hard nonprofits during the pandemic around medical supplies for about 6 months in 2020. And that actually saved my 2020, kept my team employed and actually did a lot of good work there. After that, I actually also took stock of kind of what I was doing. I realized as a business leader, I was in too many things, ultimately nonprofit, doing digital, which I thought was a great idea. I actually stepped back and I said, look, what's actually working, what's not. And so that pivot into we shed the digital marketing. We said, hey, that's a fun area, but not really core to what we're good at. And it's a lot to manage. But hey, stores, this is what's really working and this is where I think the market's going to go. So let's double down on stores. And that's when we started, we developed the buy-in stores and some of that work around that. And it allows us, allowed us to get clients of a size that the revenue per client is higher. And they're more sticky with us. And because of that, this past year, we finally recouped more, more than recouped the lost revenue of those 3 large clients. And we're back up to 2019, which was a long road to be candid with you, but it was tough. It was a lot. It was a big, it was a big loss. So that is really what happened is a refocus to what's working and what's not, shed the what's not. And then we also made some changes into our staffing. In terms of how we operate, in terms of how we handle order processing, who we have on staff. There was a, there's a lot of changes. And now I feel like we're in our best spot that we— Congratulations.

That's huge to recover from. And there was also another thing you mentioned that was integral to you and your growth and scales, scaling your success, and that is implementing EOS. Something we've noticed with distributors is they harness CommonsCue for their technology and that gives them the power and scale to grow from the inside out. And then they also harness awareness, a management system structure like EOS. So it's interesting to see how many people at a certain level of success, once they hit that, embrace something like EOS. You said that it helps you with delegation and focus. How has that helped your business since you implemented that?

Yeah, it's been huge. I don't think I can underestimate how big it's been for us. Again, I have a business background, right? And it helps because when you run a business, it helps to have that. But what you find out is that you end up taking on too many different things. And so the biggest way the EOS in putting the systems in place for us has helped me is in properly delegating different responsibilities to different team members and actually stepping away from day-to-day management of customer servicing and operations and those kind of things. Allows me, allows to free me up for learning to where I think I should be, which is in the sales and strategy of financial sides. And then being able to set up processes Have actually metrics that we're evaluating each week, have an assistant leadership team meeting and going over projects, which we had. We had it actually this morning talking about that, but a lot of different ways in terms of how we interact as a team. The processes are all documented and just having the knowledge that I can step away. And sometimes as a business owner, it's hard to do that. You've had many years since you've been around, like It's sometimes it's hard to let go, but having that, it's been a huge force to be able to step back and allow me to focus more on growth initiatives.

You have a very unique DNA. Most people who are leading a promotional products distributor come to this from the sales and marketing angle, but you have a finance background, which is astounding because you also have this very sales and marketing mindset. So you have the best of both worlds. In regards to EOS and then common SKU, how do these systems And specifically CommonsQ, how does this— as a finance person, how do you see a system like CommonsQ benefiting your business?

CommonsQ, obviously we run everything through CommonsQ, our projects and reporting and those kind of things. I think for EOS, there's a lot of our metrics are driven through CommonsQ reports and things. And you look at top line, you look at margin, we look at invoice, invoices past due and those kind of details we talk about. Try to think of all of our metrics, but yeah, a lot of our metrics are in the 403(b) Commons queue. It allows us to, and obviously interaction in terms of different projects and things that are going on. That's probably where I would see where Commons to really interact with the OS.

Yeah. I want to get to some leadership questions in a minute, but before we do, the nonprofit you launched, you might have gotten rid of the digital business, but you really did double down on, triple down on Small Biz Cares, the nonprofit. Tell us about smallbizcares.org. I think I've got that right. And why you started that nonprofit.

Yeah, no, appreciate that. SmallBizCares.org. So Small Biz Cares was started back in 2019 officially. The idea was born out of running my own small business and interacting on different boards through small business. I've been on different chamber, chambers of commerce boards and things. What I realized over time was that many small businesses don't have the resources or the know-how or the time to make philanthropy happen. When you work at larger companies, and I used to work for a large company before I started my business, large companies have resources internally for volunteering and community service and all these different activities. But a small business, and typically those under 50 employees or under 20 employees, we're on our own. And so that was the idea, was can we create something that's going to help engage a small business community in philanthropy and hopefully make it more sustainable and inspirational for them. So an example might be we're going to hold different events throughout the year, volunteering events, fundraising events, collection drives, other initiatives and programs that educate and inspire businesses to get more engaged in the community. But we're going to do it in ways that not only benefit the community, but also benefit the small business through better branding, better network, better employee engagement, because you know that companies that get employees engaged in the community do better. They engage better, they're able to retain their employees. So it's all about how do we inspire and bring opportunities to small businesses so that they— it becomes part of their DNA. That, yeah, they've got to make— everyone's got to make payroll, they got to grow their business. But now community impact is a part of that DNA. And that's what we're hoping to do with Small Biz Cares.

That's amazing. So in a way, you're taking your scaling mindset from shops to growth to US to leadership, all these things you're applying to Small Biz Cares because these small businesses now have a place to aggregate harness the power of their community and then grow together. I think it's phenomenal. What types of businesses and organizations have you impacted through this?

Yeah, so if you look at both ends, right? So for the small businesses, we have anywhere from a solopreneur, one-person shop to 10, 20, 50-employee shops that are able to come out to our events. They'll bring their teams out and volunteer so they're not having to set up their own things internally and their team gets chances to give back. And then in terms of nonprofits, I mean, we work with a number of nonprofits anywhere from food banks to like a Ronald McDonald House to Meals on Wheels to we make blankets for foster youth every year. We do different things, pass on food and toys to families. So it's pretty diverse in what we do for nonprofits. We do like an Earth Day event every April during Earth Day where we get outside and do some beautification and things. So we, we pretty diverse in like the opportunities that we have. We like to be able to work with every nonprofit. Really our roadblock to being able to get to that point His resources were still a nonprofit that is still, still stable in that kind of growth phase. Had a little bit of a pandemic slowdown on 2020, 2021, but we're doing great with our events. And, you know, our goals now going forward are to develop, really get a sustainable funding model, to have a full-time director run the local chapter we have in our city, but also in the future, take this to other cities. The vision is to take this to other cities and set up a Small Business Cares chapter in other cities as well.

What a great vision.

Wow.

Just amazing to harness the power of small business through that. And you talk about being a small profit. You've raised, if I read it right, over $40,000 in scholarships and fundraising for local initiatives. And the goal to take it national is phenomenal. Congratulations on this, man. It's just fantastic.

Yeah. A long way to go, but we're very happy with what we've done so far.

It's incredible.

It's incredible.

For this last segment, I want to talk with you about leadership because you're really passionate about this. You've done a lot of work on your own mental and physical health. And you think this is incredibly important for leaders of businesses of any size. How has this personal growth influenced your business? When you look at how you said, you know what, I'm running myself ragged, I've got to focus on myself. How have you seen the net gain impact the business?

Yeah, it's a great question. Probably something that now I feel like it's part of me, this kind of focus, but I look back since starting the business, you go through business and you go through ups and downs. And there were some times for sure where I was like, this is hard. Like, this is not going the way I expected. Those are those challenges during the pandemic or losing big clients or whatnot. You have to, you're hiring and retaining people. And sometimes you make great hires, sometimes you don't. But what stays constant for me is what I can control. What stays constant is how I approach myself. Cause you know, what I've really decided is I've gotta self-lead myself and be the best version of myself for me to actually bring that to the business. So if I'm not in the, the best mental state or physical state or whatever it might be, I may not be my best in the business. And how can I ask my team members, one of our core values being strive for greatness, how can I have one of my team members have that focus if I'm not there myself? So I really probably Maybe 2, 2+ years ago, really made a lot of focus on this, really focusing on the content. I did, I'm actually in the middle of a program called Live Hard or 75 Hard. I finished that program, but I'm on this Live Hard program where I'm doing these things every single day that are focused on my mental and physical health. And we go through team development sessions as a team and we, a lot of the content we talk about, we do it monthly, a team development session. And what we talk about every single month, we do 1 hour. It's all around self-leadership, how to approach your daily habits, what are things that make a great— not only just contribute to the team, but how can you be your best self? We focus on a lot of that content as a team. And because I know that not everyone has that proactive mindset to look at that stuff, but I do feel like the more you think that way and the more you hear those kind of concepts and the more you reinforce that to yourself, the more likely you are to exhibit those qualities, which I think if you're gonna perform at your best, having those qualities is helpful.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's phenomenal.

And you also did something I thought was great. It was you defined your own purpose to inspire goodness and greatness in myself and others. I thought setting that intention for yourself was— we think about doing that for businesses, but we don't— if I walked around and ask everybody, what's your defining purpose in, in, in life? I don't know that many of us can codify that, but you can. Why was setting that intention important?

I think what you just asked me is not many of us can do that. And like I said, I mean, as I focus on being my best self, it's something that you just candidly hear people tell you, hey, if you can define your purpose, that's super important. So I will take the lead from other folks that have said that's important. But I will say once I did figure that out, it actually created a situation where I felt really good about the work we're doing. And so whether it's personal development and being the best self in terms of making sure that our team is making a difference in other people's lives, in the community, or our nonprofit, whether it's striving for greatness and being great at our jobs or great in our family or whatever we're doing, I try my best to do those things and it allows me to help influence others to do the same thing. This actually, purpose, it's funny, came to me pretty quick. Once I actually took the effort to help work. I didn't have to write things down. Yeah. I didn't have to like, honestly, I think it came to me very fast. Like I just was, it just came to me like one day I'm like, oh, that totally makes sense. That's my purpose. And I just didn't have to do this whole exercise or anything.

It's almost like you just had to surface it. It was there. You just had to surface it.

Yeah. Yeah. The phrase, the exact wording came to me within 5 minutes of actually the effort of thinking about my purpose. I'm like, oh, phenomenal. I can't even think of any, because it was already how I was living. Yeah. I mentioned I've been doing this, a lot of focus on myself and all these things. It's just how I was already living already. I just never clearly defined it. Yeah.

Strive for greatness is, I believe, a company motto, company value of yours. Can you give us an example of how that actually comes into play and practical ways in the business?

Yeah. I think I mentioned with team development. Right. And so we talk about how we, obviously I think everybody on our team wants to do a great job, right? That is to me table stakes, right? I think, but what it takes to strive for greatness and what we talk about internally, whether it's our team development or whatnot, is doing our job is what's expected, but how do you continue to get better each day? That is a topic. There's no like end goal to like greatness. You know what I mean? There's no—

that's a good point.

You're not gonna get to this ultimate, okay, we're gonna be the greatest we can ever be. But if you continue to learn each day, we're all gonna make mistakes. We talk about it, like we make mistakes, it's gonna happen. How do we continue to learn? And I also tell my team, I want you to be here for a long time. Yeah. But if you are able to learn a lot here, do a great job, be your best self here, and you find another opportunity and it's a great opportunity for you, I'm never gonna hold you back. So do, you know, You're, for you, how are you gonna get to your next level of whatever you wanna do in your career? Best, you gotta be great. And so we just talk about those kind of things and why would anybody wanna be average? I guess it's, we wanna be as great as we can be. So that's the kind of mindset we want to have.

Yeah, I love it. Naveen, last question for you, and everyone loves this question and you're gonna have a great answer to this, but a book, podcast, video resource, what's really impacted the way you think about life and/or business? It doesn't have to be business related, it can be anything. But what resource would you recommend for us?

Yeah, a couple of books that I've read recently. One is called Comfort Crisis, and it's basically a book about this journalist who went on this Arctic expedition. And the concept is around how you gotta get outta your comfort zone to grow. And we're all, we all are very comfortable. Like we all live in comfort, 72 degrees or 70 degrees, whatever it is indoors. Most of us like don't ever take any risk in life or don't ever do anything outside of our comfort zone. And what's happening is as a result is we're not growing as people. And so it's a really— but it's told through a storytelling of the Arctic expedition and a lot of expert studies and people are brought in. Really cool book. And the second book is called Shoe Dog, which is a story of Phil Knight, founder of Nike. And what's cool about that one is that It's obviously a memoir of Phil Knight, but what's cool about it is that it goes through his startup to where Nike came to at the end. And it's crazy when you think about running a business, like how many, like, things he had to go through, how many problems he had. And it's not— so I guess the lesson I learned from that was, you know, success isn't made overnight. And sometimes it's a combination of, like, risk-taking and luck. Being resourceful and all those different things that create success. So I throw challenges you face in business. And then finally, podcast-wise, I'm a big fan of Tony Robbins. So anything around Tony Robbins, I wait to listen to.

That's awesome. I, the Phil Knight book too is also just an entertaining read that is, that just shows you really, because you think that these stratospheric customer companies that have this immense multibillion-dollar success, you don't think of them being people like us., but it's a very people like us story.

Yeah, exactly.

It was fantastic. Naveen, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast real quick and just catching us up where you're at. Congratulations on the 30% growth. Small Biz Cares, all of these things, codifying your business is phenomenal. And I can't wait to see where you're going next, my friend.

I appreciate it so much.

Thank you.