Breaking down how to grow an eCommerce agency - with Rachel Jacobs

Hello and welcome to E Commerce Growth Stories. This is your hostess with the mostest, Juliana Jackson, aka the CLV lady. And also I am the Chief Evangelist for OmniConvert. And this is Valentin Radu, CEO of OmniConvert. Thank you for tuning in today for a new episode of egamor's Growth Stories. Do you like snooping around?

I know I do. I don't know.

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Ecommerce business a bo. So, guys, thank you so much for being here today. I'm here with Rachel Jacobs. This, this Thursday, Rachel is telling me that I should start wearing lipstick. So I'm gonna start wearing lipstick.

Well, you don't have to, but when people say you look great, I'm like, it's just lipstick. And as women, we have the luxury of being able to put on lipstick. And it looks like we've made an effort. I have washed today, but that's it. Lipstick and having a wash, I need.

To start to start using it. So, guys, I'm here with Rachel. I'm a big fan of Rachel. I've been following her long time. I'm sure most of you that are watching this, wherever you're watching right now, you can hear, of course, that motorcycle. But also you probably seen Rachel on social media because she's the one person that's like the Mother Teresa of agencies, the person that has helped so many agencies build from the ground up, build their strategies and get profitable. So Rachel is the founder of E Commerce Partnerships. Rachel, thank you so much for accepting to come here today. Of course. So I just want to kick right into this and ask you, for anyone, like, for people who don't know what you're doing, what is E commerce partnerships? How did you start, you know, babying agencies in E commerce?

Babying agencies. It does feel like that it does feel like it. A lot of agencies, especially if it's mostly men. So my background is I have been in E commerce space for about five years. I'd say somewhere around five, six years before that I was in the SaaS world, but I'm a marketer, so content and partnerships is what I've done for most of my career. And then about five years ago I found a SaaS. I was in SaaS in the blockchain world on AWS and then went into E commerce. So I did e commerce SaaS side and that was amazing. And then of course I went to the dark side and joined an agency of a coo. So I joined one of the top, one of the leading Shopify plus agencies in London as their COO and came in and put a lot of structure and process and hired and scale and really one of the main things, the biggest wins for me, like when you fix the delivery process is one thing and then you hire a project manager and have some sort of structure in place, then sales, then marketing. So top of the funnel, it doesn't fix. The real fucking problem for agencies, which is the fact that our industry is so cyclical, you'll have like. Like right now, things are kind of dead. For a lot of people. It's the summertime, especially on the back of COVID And for a lot of agencies it's like one of the worst series of months that they've had since COVID happens. I think people, we just got, a lot of agencies got fat and happy for the last 12, 18 months. And then the summertime hit. Vaccines, people can travel and it's like, oh shit, the pipeline just died. So retainers. And that really was the biggest learning lesson for me in the agency that I helped run is building out a retainer model, a scalable retainer model. And building that sort of like 360 doesn't really matter what services that you're offering, but sort of that holistic 360 approach to scaling a brand. So I did that. We scaled that very significantly, increased revenues by just over 500% in about five or six months. And then it was time for me to move on to something else. And I really, I knew that I'd done this with one agency and I thought, well, maybe is this something that I can do with others? To be honest, when I left, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I'm not going to bullshit and be like, oh, I fucking built this business and I did it out of my garage. And then when it was time to, like, scale it. Then I just. No, that did not happen. It was a very quick exit from the agency I worked at. And I was suddenly in a situation where it's like, I don't want to work with another company again because I'm a bad bitch and I just need to work for myself, so I need to figure out what the fuck I'm doing. And I had a lot of agencies contact me, a lot of SaaS companies contact me, but I knew that I had to do my own thing. I'd worked for myself as a contractor and consultant for years before, so it was better to just do it myself. The first agency I worked with was Blend Commerce. I know that you know, the guys know Adam there really well. Yeah, I love those guys. Me too. Very, very, very good friends. We're very, very close now. Very close to them and their family and work very closely with their team. They were the first agency, and they were one of the people that reached out to me and said, look, is there any way that you can join us? And I was just like, no.

But.

What I can do is I can sit down with you and let's figure out a roadmap and figure out how we can help scale your agency. And they came to me and said, we have got three months to turn this ship around, and if we don't, we're done. Like, we don't have any more Runway. They had to take out money to actually work with me. And this was when I first started. So I was just like, okay, cheapest cost that I could possibly afford. Okay, it's going to cost you a thousand euros a month, that's fine. And I'll work with you like an interim or fractional coo. And then I spent a couple of months before we worked together, I spent a few months building out this like four stepped approach to skating agencies from messaging right through to retention. And they were kind of my guinea pig. I mean, I've done it before, so I knew what I was doing. But to do it with another agency that's not yours, you're not working in is different. Within six weeks, we landed over $40,000 worth of recurring revenue. We locked in a lot of money. And that's what you have to do at the start, right? You just cash injection, get shitload of money into the business, take that money, reinvest, build the team, and then scale. And that's the case for most agencies or a lot of agencies that come my way. They just need a cash injection. They just need to get money in to then feed the team and build the team and then build on top of that. And that's what we did. And I was still working with SaaS companies, but I wasn't loving it. Like, I was still doing content for SaaS companies and building partner programs. And I wasn't like, I wasn't super passionate about it. It's not that I couldn't do it. I can do whatever the fuck it is that I want to do, but I wasn't. It didn't get me excited. And then I started working with those guys and got amazing results. And I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna go completely rogue. I'm gonna cut off all of my other work. I'm not gonna work with them anymore, and I'm just going to do this. And that was actually two years this month that I made that decision. Oh, wow. And since then, I have worked with more than 60 agencies as a fractional or interim COO and consulted with over 600.

Wow.

So it's a lot. Covid helped. Obviously, I'm the only person in the industry who does what I do that just solely specializes in E commerce. In E commerce. And I fucking love it. And that's the thing when people say to me, oh, it's so amazing. It's long hours, it's hard work, it's dealing with a lot of problems. I think Covid is highlighted as well, like the softer side of it, where I'm working with agency owners that have mental health issues and team members that are dealing with mental health issues. I have one of the agencies that I work very close with who lost a team member to suicide. So you're having the sort of conversations that you would never like. For me, it's just like, let me just come in and fix this shit. And then you realize that in a lot of cases, the deeper you get into a business and the more business scales, the stuff that's broken are people. So it's navigating those sides. I was a nurse previously, so it allows me to kind of lean into some of those skills that I built previously in my career. But it's been amazing. I can honestly say I get to work with some of the people that I work with are some of the best people I've ever met. Like, really, really amazing, hard working, super fucking smart entrepreneurs. Like, really, really, really smart entrepreneurs. And I fucking love it. And I'm fucking crazy. I mean, I'm Irish, so I am. I am crazy. I'm definitely on acquired taste and Whether people like me or not, I couldn't give a shit.

Listen, I'm not even Irish and I'm an acquired taste. So I fill you with that. Very well. Cool. So I want to. There's a lot of things to unpack there. Thank you for starting like that because now you just gave me like so many angles to this. I like the fact, I like what you're saying about how important it is to define the structure of a company and how important it is to define processes, procedures, and then allocate resources and to have a flow. So operation, operations and operational excellence is not something that you see entrepreneurs talking about. Most of them, when they're getting into it, they just want to sell and they think sales cures everything. And of course sales are important. You got to grow from something. But then you end up hiring shit loads of people. You pay them big salaries and you're getting two, three clients and then you realize you don't have no procedures, nothing works. And you cannot repeat systems. So I want to ask you something because operations is a very, very important part for me. And it's like it's serendipity for me right now because I just had the conversation about this. Tell me, what do you tell an agency founder that comes to you, starts a team, has. An agency, has been trying, struggling for six months, but they want to grow through sales and they don't understand the importance of having operational excellence, at least at an entry level. So you can build from it?

It's a good question because I mean, a lot of agencies that come to me, when I so pre Covid the way I used to work with agencies, I would meet them, they would come to me, I would go to them and we would audit their business and all of the pain points and the problems and the inefficiencies and the over servicing, ultimately it comes down to process and it kind of is that class of debate between revenue and profit. I am on the profit side, of course. Like we said before we started this podcast, injecting money into a business, it's not complicated. And I don't mean that to sound like an asshole, but it's not complicated. Every agency I've ever worked with building out, usually the way I start with agencies is building out retainer models or building out paid discovery models. Cash injection is not something I struggle with at all. Profitability is completely different. And profitability comes down to process because that is efficiency. It's about an agency owner being able to offload and delegate tasks and responsibilities to people in their team that they're paying so those people can go and do the work so you can focus on the money. There's a guy who's pretty well known, Simon Sinek, and he talks about, like, know your why and all this sort of stuff. He breaks people down and he talks about the why person who is a visionary, and the high person who is the implementation or the execution person. And then the high people, they're like the foot soldiers that do the work. And even though I'm an entrepreneur in my own right and I have my own business, and technically I'm a visionary, but I am a million. I read that book and I, a million percent resonated with that person in the middle that connects the rest of the team with the business owner. And that's the role I've played in pretty much every company I've ever had. And it's the role I play even in my own business. Because all of the agencies that I work with, they are the visionaries, and I don't want to make them be anything other than what they are. Because if you don't have a visionary, the captain of the ship has got to be a visionary. If they don't have that skill set, your business is not going to succeed. And unfortunately, the consequence to being that kind of person, where you have all the ideas and, like, you're really good at inspiring people, they're fucking terrible when it comes to, like, details and execution and getting shit done, which is what I do very, very well and always have. So I always say. And with the work that I do with a lot of agencies as they grow, I do a lot of hiring and I hire people in those roles and coach and train up people in those roles to take over general manager, ops manager, director of ops, coo, whatever that looks like. But it's absolutely crucial to making this person at the top be the best they can be. And the other person underneath is basically the buffer between the rest of the team and them, because those visionary people, they're fucking all over the place. And when it comes to implementation, the implementation team are just like, I can't deal with this bullshit because stuff is changing all the time. So it's somebody like me or someone in the company that kind of neutralizes that kind of mad scientist, which I love. I love being on the receiving end of that. I love all the ideas and the innovation. I'm just like, okay, there's like 15 ideas, most of them are horseshit. But there's two or three ideas here which are Amazing. And let's figure out how we can take that to the next step. That's really what process comes to. Because for me in that middle role, the process then is how I like delegate that down and pass that down and get it through the line so it gets done.

Man, like there's nothing I hate more than, you know, having a vision, doing your stuff and then having someone just, you know, like changing stuff every day, like it's, it's very crazy. And this is something that happens. And I do get why it happens because again, that mad scientist has amazing ideas all the time. But it's like sometimes to. The most important part, and I say this a lot, is to allow your team to define their pace, to find their face. Because in order to be able to have performance in a role, you have to understand what's my speed, how much time do I need to invest in the project to deliver into this project. There's so many things that matter and I think these are the biggest learnings that I'm having lately. It's like the more you encourage a team to be autonomous and take responsibility for their time and their deliverables, the better they do. And they don't need that coaching and micromanagement. They just need support to be able to become autonomous. So I really, really believe in that. And because I work in SaaS, but in the agency world is a total different story. And I do relate to the fact that if I was to choose sometimes, you know, like I love SaaS but sometimes it pisses the shit out of me. So I get it. But from an agency perspective. So as a SaaS vendor, as you know, I work with plenty of agencies. The biggest problem that I find sometimes with agencies is the adoption that they have to new services and new technologies. And I do get it. Because they have clients that they need to service is those billable hours, the fact that they need to deliver and they cannot necessarily stop to learn a product or to learn a methodology. But like, why would you say. Because we're talking about E Commerce, like all the changes that happen in E commerce right now with the consent based marketing, with privacy, with ads, with emails. What do you think about how should agencies approach this? Because a lot of them are used to doing things as they're used to doing things, but they're not transitioning to this retention customer life value vision that's happening right now. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I feel pretty strongly about it. For when I first was in the agency world, I built Retainers off tech stack. Because I came from the SaaS world, I came from AWS and technology. So I know it's like it's about efficiency, right. And you can do things the same thing over and over again. But increasingly that's they're going to become less efficient. And for me as an entrepreneur, less efficiency equals losing money. That's how I equate the two things. So I feel really, really strongly about building retainer models off a tech stack and really as an agency defining who you are off the clients you work with and the technologies that bring them together. I work very closely with a number of technologies that I worked with in the agency world and continue to work with and tech stacks that I believe are essential in our industry. So this certain like loyalty line, I've worked closely with them for years. Rewind worked closely with them for Gorgeous. I've worked really closely with them. Klaviyo. Like those kind of key technologies that are mandatory for a wide variety of clients. And especially in light of the pandemic, customer retention is one of the key focal points for, from an agency point of view for our merchants, that's what their number one thing is. It's like I want to retain more customers. I built my business off building retainer models for agencies and building retainer models that are based on retention, the retention of the customer, the attention of their customer. It's like a, you know, a self feeding machine where we're all, we all have the end goal and we're all feeding each other. So I think agencies and I have definitely seen this change significantly in the last 12 to 18 months. I think agencies should be much more aware of the partners that they're working with and not I, some agency. Like yeah, I've got 200 partners. No you don't. That's horseshit. Just because you get like a pair of socks from a couple of like 100 different agencies.

Oh my God.

That is not. Yeah, different T shirts. Like that's, that's not a partnership. Because the agencies that really win, like the agencies that really saw through or were able to get over the initial dip that Covid had were the agencies that had good partnerships because their tech partners helped them get over that.

Yeah, exactly.

So and I see a lot of agencies now increasingly bringing people in to run partnerships and bringing people in to run a channel because I mean it's, you have three, you've got three channels when it comes to agency sales. You've got inbound. They're the leads that are coming to you. You've got outbound. They're the leads that you're going out and getting and you have channel. They're the partnerships. They are your three sales strategies as an agency. And you have to have all three of them working so that when one or two of them drops off, you have something else there as a safety net. And most agencies just rely either on referrals inbound or they try and crack the outbound funnel, which is fucking very difficult. I don't know many agencies that have cracked that consistently. And then some agencies I know do partnerships very, very, very well. I know one agency I work with turns over around 5 million a year and 50% of his business is from partners.

Wow.

Yeah, that's a lot of fucking money.

But honestly, like, there are very good partnership programs that are done by vendors. And I think most vendors in E commerce, most are very respectful of their partners. And I think at this stage, as we are right now in the business, it's easier to do, you know, this type of partnership and go to a client. Like for me, for instance, when I someone is asking me for email marketing, I always, I'm gonna go to Adam for Magnet Monster because I know his agency, if I refer them to a client, they will do that shit, right? So it's like very important for someone that is client facing because vendors are client facing all day. We have to do outreach, we have to have fucking calls, we have to sell, right? So it's so important to have some agencies that you work with very closely so you can refer your customers and know that that agency is going to give value on your product because the product is just a piece of the puzzle. But talking about this, you know, this whole combination of technology and agencies, I want to ask you something, like something that really pisses me off is that when you take a piece of technology, whatever the technology is, and then you take a client, there's a part missing from the agency side. Not all the time, but in most agency the strategy part is missing. So the agency is more tactical versus strategic. So give you an example. Let's say I'm a brand, I sell fashion and whatever. I hire an email marketing agency and that email marketing agency is going to apply some tactics on me that they use for other fashion brands. But they don't have that strategy part that takes the data, breaks it down and builds a strategy. Where do you see the role of the strategies? Like the person that just takes the data and interprets it and tells the agency, okay, this is what you should do. Where do you see that role coming in the future given the whole data movement that's happening right now?

Yeah, I mean, well, data driven recommendations really at the core of good retainers, like that's really what it comes down to. And it's really the difference between an agency that is reactive. So you're just going to react to the demands of your customer like, I want this shit done and I want this shit done. It's like, okay, we're just gonna fucking do the shit that you tell us to do. Or an agency that's proactive, an agency that's gonna go out and look at the data and figure out where the gaps are. I just did actually a masterclass just literally before this with the private group of agencies that I run and I would. I hosted a little masterclass on selling in Black Friday Cyber Monday retainers. And basically I said it's like this is in order for this to work. It's about being proactive as an agency and looking at the data and making recommendations based on what makes sense. But I will say it's a very difficult role to fill for an agency. It's a hard role to fill. Agencies that I see do it well are agencies that either the agency owner makes a good job of it and they know the data. But again, the problem with that is the fact that that agency, agency owner is never able to get out from under the business and the work that they have to do or agencies that have. They're growing. So agencies are 15, 20 people and they can afford to bring in strategists. It is very difficult. It's a difficult role. If I could supply agencies with, you know, data analysts or strategists, e commerce strategists, to actually come in and review the data, we had it in the agency I ran, we had somebody dedicated to that and it was a game changer for agencies that are much smaller. It's hard. It's really, really hard. Me personally, I'm allergic to Google Analytics against my religion. I don't believe in it. I don't even want to open it. I don't like the ux. I think it's so ugly. It's just not my thing. It's too many numbers. So I hate that. But I also appreciate that that's where all of the good stuff comes from.

Yeah. And not only also your Shopify database, like when you're having a brand like everything that's good, it's actually behind that data in Shopify. And I mean right now when everyone is focused so much on customer experience and building customer journey and building retention. It's very important, this data layer. And I see you're right, I see that it's becoming so important and I'm looking on LinkedIn and see different things. We're looking for a head of data, looking for a data analyst. So I'm happy to see this because I've been at that bridge as you are, that bridge to make teams work. I've been that bridge between data and business. And I'm happy because I see this becoming a habit. And I think, you know, even if it's a slow movement, I think all of us in ecommerce, we're moving to a much more smarter phase than we used to be. And I think it's humbling in a way because I mean there's great agencies because I want to move to this spot that you obviously always. Then I get this question. There's the great agencies that you love and you're just respecting, but then there's the shit agencies, right, that you know, like why do. Like if you ask, you know, you can't companies for four out of five, they're gonna have a bad experience with agency like everyone else. They will have a bad experience with the SaaS. Right. Ah, June here in the message she said, rachel, we need to talk about GA June Lee, she owns the company. Yeah. June is working with data with GA L Jun is a badass with data. Like she's amazing. June, thank you so much for being here. I'm so happy that you're. She's become very, you know, loyal listener. Thank you Joe for being here. Yeah, she's not allergic to ga.

I am. Cool.

So I mean always, you know, you're gonna have a bad experience. Well, why do you think some people are like so narrow minded when it comes to agencies? Because yeah, you might have a shit experience, but you might have a shit experience with friendships and people that you meet anyway. Like, you know, like is it necessarily experience with the job or the services or it might be just the people experience. Like what do you think this is happening so often?

I think a lot of people don't.

Really know what they're doing.

But the analogy that I like to use because in the agency game we get a lot of, you know, burned clients that come our way. Anybody that's been in the agency world long enough will know you get people who come their way just like a relationship, they come with baggage. And the analogy I like to use is have you ever been to a restaurant? We've all Been to a restaurant and. Have you ever been to a restaurant and had a shit experience? We've all been to a restaurant and have a shit experience. That doesn't mean that we're never, ever going to go to another restaurant again. It just means that we're going to make sure that we do due diligence the next time and we look at like Google Reviews or whatever it is, or go on recommendation. And that's really the difference. There are a lot of shit agencies out there. A lot of it is amateur. And I think being an entrepreneur, it's hard, right? Running your own business is really hard. There's a lot of unknowns. And for me, I actually posted something on LinkedIn today because I'm the only person in the industry who does what I do and I have a great network and I've got amazing agencies that I've helped deliver millions of dollars worth of revenue on the back of the work that I've done with them. 20, 30, millions of dollars of revenue for the agencies that I work with right now. So I bring results and my agencies are not shy about talking about that on LinkedIn and, you know, thanking me for the work I've done publicly. So I got a lot of agencies that reach out to me a lot. The amount of agencies that reach out to me and are happy to get on calls and have conversations and expect to have more conversations and more conversations and me to help them and help them with their strategies without wanting to fucking invest or respect my time or even be willing to even acknowledge the fact that I've put several hours of my time, I mean, I work 80, 100 hours a week anyway and put time in my evening to get on calls and help them. And it's just like, if you don't want to invest in your business and you want. You expect people to come in and give you a handout, then that is the approach. That's the image that you're going to put out to other people and you will not succeed. Because people can see that. Yeah. So, yeah, there's shit agencies out there sometimes, you know, like the expression, they say you don't know what you don't know. And in some cases I speak to agencies and I'm just like, you're doing it all fucking wrong. All you need to do is just change this. This. I spoke to somebody a couple of weeks, weeks ago when he talked me through his pricing strategy, and I told him that what you're making right now on a monthly basis, you should be making three times the amount. You just need to tweak these three different pricing models and just change them and you will immediately 3x your revenue. He didn't know that. He had no clue. He just was like, I was a freelancer and I was charging, I don't know, let's say €500 and now I'm charging a thousand euro and that's twice as much as I was charging, charging 4. And if I increase it to 1.5 and I'm like, everybody else is charging 5. Like, I know, right? Just skip to the top. Like, the service is good, you know what you're doing, like, and sometimes it's confidence people don't know doing. Some people are just. And they shouldn't be in business anyway and they'll keep losing customers and I've had a fair share of those come across my path and I'm just like, detector, I don't want to work with you. I am not a psychologist. I'm not here to. Here to fix your mummy issues or whatever's wrong with you. And there's some people, they just don't know that they're up. So there are agencies out there. Nine times out of 10, it's through defaults, it's. It's out of default and they just need to be pointed in the right direction. There is one out of 10, maybe two out of 10. They just cannot help themselves. And I just, I just stand back and slept and crash and burn.

Do you think the entry barrier is very, very low right now to become a consultant, open an agency versus how it was maybe like five years ago?

Yeah, I think it is. And it's super saturated. You know, our industry is one of the fastest growing industries, I mean, I think probably behind pharmaceutical, but it's one of the fastest growing industries right now in the world. So, yeah, there is a low barrier to entry and if you just have a small skill set, then you can kind of come in and sort of flex and position yourself much bigger than what you are. But at the end of the day, if you don't walk the walk, the results is going to speak for itself, right? If you can't really follow through, if you can't execute on the promises that you're making, your business is not going to go anywhere. And the bottom line, we all start from zero, we all have to build that up. And not everything is going to be perfect and you're going to make mistakes along the way, but just don't fucking big yourself up to be this like, big dog person that can achieve all this amazing stuff and rip off other people just to kind of get ahead. You don't. I see a lot of people do that in our industry, and it's disgusting. It's really not good.

I do, too.

I see people that actually work with recruitment agencies and specifically go to their recruiter and say, I want that person in that agency that's a friend of mine.

Oh, my God.

30.

I mean, there's a huge. Let's get to this point. Like, there's a huge lack of talent, and talent costs a shitload of money.

I don't know. There's a lack of talents. It's budgets. The budgets have increased so astronomically. I recruited somebody on behalf of one of my agencies. I recruited somebody recently for a, like, Head of Growth, but basically, like AdWords. But yeah, AdWords role. $150,000. There is no. For a year. Yeah, but there's no way. It's just for me. I see that money and I'm like, shit, I'm in the wrong job. Like, I need to.

Like, I know, right?

Well, I'm not going to learn analytics, so it's not going to work for me.

June. You have to get. June, because I know you're here. You have to take Rachel in one of your trainings.

I don't know. I don't know. I think I'd need some sort of lobotomy to get me over my. My fear.

Oh, my God. But you know, you know what's crazy about that? And because, you know, this is. This is what pisses me off. Like, you. You and me both spend a lot of time on social media, and we both have, you know, yours obviously is bigger than mine, but we have a circle and we know people. So it's like driving me insane how much some people go on social media. And it's like, you know, I did this and I brought. I tripled ros. And I did that. And I know personally you didn't do that. But the problem is people are gonna believe it because these people have a lot of clout, right? Because they're just doing things for that cloud. So the cloud bills, and then you end up hiring people. And I've worked with brands that hire someone that's an influencer right now, and I don't want to name names. But then they came to me and they were asking me desperately for a good agency because that guy really fucked them up. So this is a very big problem right now because anyone with a computer can come on social media, build an account, and Be like, you know, I'm the whatever, you know, Brian Belfort of, you know, B Commerce. And it's really, really crazy. And I think it's this talent costs a lot of money. And I think the, the thing with people that are very good and very talented, they're sitting on huge salaries in different companies and it's very hard to get those people. And there's a lot of coaching that happens, which I do agree it's something that's dirty and it's not the, it is not cool. But now let's switch because this is my favorite part. So do you look at, I mean look around this quarter. This Q4 is gonna be a disaster for me at least shipping times, shipping prices. I think you saw it's for brands, it's a very bad period. But also I'm talking about what's gonna happen with these agencies and with iOS 14, 5 and iOS 15 and all, like everything that we knew that was working so far in terms of, you know, tactical, you know, tactically speaking, it's not gonna work anymore. Do you think that agencies are ready to deal with this type of marketing that is, you know, every day growing.

More and more depends on the type of agency. So because I'm in the E commerce space, there's, I'd say at least 50% of my network are dev only. So they're dev agencies and they're doing very much tactical stuff. And then there's other agencies. Then I'd say the. Another two thirds of the rest of the audience is probably full service where they're doing marketing debt. And then there's a portion then of my audience that is just marketing only. I think the marketing only agencies have been hit pretty hard. They've been hit really hard. I've had a catch up with one of my agencies last night who is email. An email only agency?

Yeah, email is bad right now.

He's been really smashed. He's not like he, he's bringing in customers at a good rate but because the customers that are actually leaving or pausing because of the iOS changes is actually declining. So a lot of the agents being hit hard, are they ready to. I feel like it's a bit of an unknown. Some agencies say, oh well, it's going to shake out in the end, it will all be fine and people will get over it. And we've been through these changes before. I don't know, I mean, I'm not a witch, I'm not a clairvoyant. I can't see in the future. So I have no idea what things are changing for sure how it's going to impact this Black Friday. It's anyone's guess. Just like I would was saying earlier, I did a presentation on, you know, Black Friday retainers and setting those in. Good. I can share. I can share it with you, actually. I can share the slides.

Oh, that's awesome. Please go.

So getting ready for Black Friday as an agency, being proactive around that and just looking at the data from 2019 to 2020, there was like a 73 or 74% increase just in that year alone. Are we going to see that for 2021? Probably not. It's probably going to be not that drastic. Because if it is, I mean, that's a hell of a lot to keep up with. Trends changed significantly because of COVID Absolutely. Especially trending more towards retention and how that has impacted agencies. I actually have a little retreat. So every three months I try and get a group of agencies together in person. And I live in Gran Canaria, so it's a Spanish island off the coast of Morocco. It's a perfect place to get people together for Jealous. Yeah. Sun, sea, sand and shenanigans and sangria tequila. But we can have sangria as well. And I have at the end of next month, in September, the group of agencies that I work with privately, they're coming over and we're actually doing what the retreat is dedicated to customer retention. We're going to be focused on building out a retention retainer and what that looks like and how you communicate that with. With clients. Because that's really what it's all about.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

At this time of year, that's what it's about. It's not really about building big websites or doing anything. It's about how do you, if you're not on the acquisition side of E Commerce, if you're on the. On the other side of E Commerce, the bottom end of the funnel. Like, how do you take those customers and understand buyer behavior and look at those new demographics and then turn them into loyal customers? Like, what does that piece look like?

I wish I was a fly on the wall in that conversation because as you know, retention is my favorite topic. But that is what I love most. But you know what? You nailed it in the head. Like, I have agencies that love what I do, but then they have to have the conversation with the client and the client understands fuck all of what I do. And then it's very hard because that message that the agency takes to the client is very important to be defined because the retainers or retention are actually higher than on acquisitions, because you're being. You're making profits, you're making changes in the whole company. But the problem is, how do you sell it to someone that's used to just pumping, you know, money on acquisitions? Every month and every month and every month. And even if you tell them, like, I have the clients, I have brands that I work with, and I'm telling them like, yo, you're losing $30,000 every week. Every week you're throwing this money out because you're acquiring shipping customers. They never come back. And then they're like. And I told them what to do, and they get scared because data is a bitch. This is what happens when you do data. And then they was like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. And then they never respond. And then I hear, you know, I'm working with this acquisition agency, and they just go back to doing that because people are so afraid of what's gonna happen. They're not playing to win, they're playing not to lose. So most people just go back to this old habits because it keeps them thinking that they are making some sort of progress. So I think if you find a way to productize the way you communicate as an agency to your client, solution, I think that's terrific. I told you, I love to be a fly on the wall and hear that. That's amazing. So I have one last question for you, which is from our sponsor from vtex, vtex.com for whoever is listening right now. They are asking me, what are the top three things someone that wants to start an agency in ecommerce should consider before being happy about being an agency in E commerce? What can you tell these ambitious people?

People who are getting started or people that are looking to scale?

People that are getting started.

Good luck. For people that are just getting started. I think in business, just in general, I think one of my biggest tips, know your customer. And I think that if you're just getting started in the agency game, the ones that I have seen that have, I spoke to somebody recently and they went from 0 to 150,000amonth revenue in 18 months. Because he only specializes in one specific thing. When people say to me, oh, my God, you've built this business. And I have other people that I know and friends and entrepreneurs, and they built their business around the same time. They're like, fucking hell, how did you, like, grow so quickly? Because I know my customer. Like, I know exactly my customer. I know exactly my solution. And more Importantly, to the point you made earlier, identifying a pain point, like, to me, that is the biggest win. It's not about sales, it's about consultancy. It's about really identifying a pain point. Because you can be narrative and sell the service, or you can be strategic and sell the solution. And that's really what it comes down to. So the more you understand, like, what is, what is it that you're offering and what problem does that solve for the person that I want to work with? And then you sell that strategy and you sell that solution. I always say, and again, because I'm, you know, trained as a nurse, of course I'm going to use a medical analogy, but you have to diagnose before you can actually get a, like, recommend a remedy, you need to be able to diagnose people. And I think that that's one of the biggest things. Like, okay, I'm a great developer, I can pill great sites. How do you scale that? Like, I mean, how do you really find that customer? Where does your lead generation come? What differentiates you? How does people know that they should be working for you than someone else? Rather than coming in and being like, I know this tech stack really fucking well. I know to integrate this solution with this solution and I do it where it's, you know, do it in half the time. Okay, that's an amazing USP because I know exactly what customer I'm going after and it's much easier to build a marketing strategy or an acquisition strategy around that. So really knowing your customer for sure has to be, number one, really understanding what is their pain point. And invest, like, you have to invest. I see so many agencies. I spoke to one very recently, earlier this week. Amazing team, super nice. There are actually a couple running an agency. Super, super, super nice. And he said, oh, I would really. My biggest problem right now is my time. I don't have time to invest this stuff. And I would really love you to come in and point us in the right direction and guide us. And I don't consider myself a consultant. I hate that word. It's my least favorite C word. I would consider myself a coach, where it's like, okay, I'm going to give you the solutions, I'm going to tell you, and I'm going to make sure that you implement. So he said, I'd love you to come in and like, work with us. And then he went on to tell me that he is working full time in another company because he doesn't want to, like, whatever. Like, for obvious reasons that he Wants to be safe and I'm just like, like, how do you expect me, like, how could, how should I feel comfortable you investing in me? If you don't even have enough faith to invest in yourself, you don't bring somebody else in. So, like, take money out of your business and invest that money back in and build that up and build a team around you. And again, that's like I said earlier, it's a massive pain in my arse where I have so many agencies that, you know, I love what you're doing and I've seen like 10x this company and you've helped this company with this and I saw this testimony, I saw this video that an agency put out about you. I'd love you to come in and help. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not Mother Teresa. This is not a charity. I have bills to pay as well. And if you want expertise, then. Exactly. It's not like super expensive, but you have to invest, you have to invest in yourself and your. Ultimately, that's what it is, right? It's an investment in yourself. Whatever that investment, ultimately the.

Yeah, that's the outcome. Like, you become better, you become smarter. Like, even if sometimes it's not a fit with anyone, at least you cannot become more stupid after a conversation with anyone. But I don't think anyone should give away their time for free like that.

For sure. An investment looks different, right? For some people, investment is money. Some people investment is time. Maybe investment means dedicating time to working out, or maybe it's like dedicating time like going to bed on time or getting, getting more sleep or switching up, whatever that investment, but it is an investment at the end of the day and it's something that you have to do. So I think really knowing your customer, knowing their pain point and being willing to invest. And in most cases, when an agency is getting started out, almost always you have people that are either on the tactical side, so they're like really great developers or they're really great marketers, or they're on the operational side, so they're really good project managers or whatever. Yeah, it doesn't matter what skill you have. Every single person starts an agency, the number one value they bring to the business is sales. So I would always, always recommend that the first hire that you make almost always is going to be a project manager because you can outsource development, you can work with contractors, but that project manager, they need to eat, sleep and breathe your business and your vision and your methodology. So I would always Say like offload that responsibility first dedicate your time to marketing and partnership and sales and then slowly build a team up underneath them. That usually is the smartest way to go about it. And recurring revenue, you need to fucking get recurring revenue in because that's where your hires are going to come from.

I love it. This is great. And this is like Andrada. When you hear this, this is what I want you to quote because she's listening right now. Rachel, where can people find you and pay you for your services?

Well, I mean I would love to make this a sales pitch but I'm booked out to the end of the year.

From next year. Where can people find you?

Yeah, well, I mean I have a different. Few different bits and pieces. I do love to help agencies. So my website is E Commerce Partnerships. I have another website which is launched but I haven't announced it yet, which is E Commerce Agency growth. But E Commerce Partnership was the main place that people can find me. I do actually run once a month a roundtable specifically for E commerce agencies. There's no charge, there's no fee. Basically what I wanted to do when I came into this industry is create a community. We're in an industry which is super dog eat dog. I came from an agency that was in London. Nobody fucking told anybody anything. It was horrible. So you just don't know how to benchmark. So I created a roundtable. It happens once a month office. It's like the second Wednesday of every month and it's a group of. There's a few hundred people in there now, but every month we have 20, 30, 40, 50 people turn up and we pick a specific topic and then we do a bit of knowledge sharing and share some insights. And for me that's probably the best thing that I can offer to people. It's like you don't need to pay anything, but you can join a community of people that are.

You learn a lot of stuff though.

For sure, for sure.

I told you I want to be in one of those too one day.

If you're not a total fucking asshole, then maybe we can.

I try not to be.

No, not you personally. I'm just saying in general, for agencies, it's a great filter, trust me, it's a fantastic filter to have people come in there and to be able to see.

Oh yeah, you can see them in their own. Exactly. In their own.

And it's great for me as well for people to come in and see what kind of personality I am. And some people will just be like.

I like you more after this conversation. I really like you more. Like you're exactly on my heart. But also they can find you on LinkedIn, right? So they can look for you on Rachel Jacobs on LinkedIn. For anyone who's listening this, you will find Rachel's website in the episode footnotes and as well her LinkedIn profile so you can follow her and connect with her because she drops a lot of great content and all the next upcoming roundtables will be posted there. Rachel, thank you so much for coming. I just want to look quickly on LinkedIn because someone said that she completely loves your shirt. It's Elizabeth Morgan. You probably know who she is. She's from icims. She says she loves your shirt. Let me see if there's any question before.

It's a dress. It's a dress that I got from for €10, FYI. And it is. I won't stand up because it is exceptionally short because I'm nearly six foot tall and these dresses are not made for tall people. So half of my arms is probably hanging out for the best, the best of times. But it's an indoor. It's an indoor dress.

Sometimes that's good.

I don't know. Great for my husband, baby. Not for me.

June, thank you so much for being here and everyone watching on YouTube right now. Rachel, this was awesome. I appreciate you being here. I'm watching you and I hope everyone that listens to this will start watching and listening to you more and higher. That fucking project manager.

Hire the project manager.

That's it. Thank you so much, Rachel.

My pleasure.

Bye.

This podcast was brought to you by Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated e commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades ever. So go ahead, check them out. Vtex.com.