Mindful Marketing in ecommerce. The Jordan West Story.

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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 E Commerce Growth Stories.

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Yeah, totally. Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's been so nice to connect with you. I had you on my podcast, which is really exciting, and it's just great to connect with you guys, and it's nice to see that there's lots of people here listening. I'm super pumped about that. So, yeah, my name is Jordan West. I actually live in the beautiful province of British Columbia in Canada. So in case you thought I was American, I am not. I am a Canadian. Not that there's anything wrong with Americans. It's just, you know, we're. We're just a little different. So. So I got my. My start in business actually owning a restaurant. So I decided when I was. I think I was 22, I was either 22 or 23, and I was like, I want to get into business. So I looked on Craigslist, which, you know, for. For those of you in North America, we use Craigslist kind of for everything. And I looked for businesses and. And I found a Taco Del Mar restaurant. So Taco Del Mar at the time was. I think it was about 200 stores. It was a chain, and they were going through a bankruptcy at the time, the entire chain. And I was like, well, I mean, I could buy a store and. And what's the worst case that could happen, it was only $35,000 Canadian, which is, like, super cheap. Like, well, the worst case scenario is, like, I'm gonna lose 35 grand. Like, that's not the end of the world. I can recover from that. Well, the worst case was a lot worse than that. I ended up losing probably close to about 150,000. And when you're that young and you haven't built up, you know, any sort of wealth, 150,000 is a lot of money. Like, I didn't have it. I had to get lines of credit from here and there, and, you know, it took up, like, five years of my life. I learned so much during that time. You know, started to use Facebook a little bit. Like, back in. I think it was 2011 that I bought the store. So Facebook was still kind of in its infancy as far as, you know, the kind of influence that it has now. But I was able to get people into the store. The one thing that we did super well was actually increase sales. So I tripled the sales over five years and still could not make money, and so it was just so difficult. So my lease was almost up. I ended up selling the store for, like, $25,000. You know, just. Just was kind of scraping by, and we had our first kid, and so we were trying out cloth diapers. Cloth diapers are the worst. Like, I would never recommend that we didn't do that with our other two kids after, but if we didn't do cloth diapers, we probably. I probably wouldn't be here today talking about this. So we were using cloth diapers, and my wife was trying to put leggings on our daughter, and they just wouldn't fit or they'd, like, slide off because the diaper was so big. And so she's like, well, there's got to be. Like, I could probably just make some leggings. She was a fashion designer. She'd gone to fashion design school. We wasn't really using it. And she's like, well, I can easily make a pattern for that. So she made this pattern to solve this one little problem. And then people were like, oh, I love these. So she brought them to markets and would just sell out all the time. And she was sewing all of these leggings at home. And. And then we had our first call from a stockist about three hours away from us, a store. And they're like, hey, can we carry your product? And so we got our first order, and it was like, $500. And we're like, whoa, this is a business. I think we're going to be able to do this thing. And so we were selling on Etsy at the time. Great place to start selling things on Etsy to just test a product, right? And this is in 20. I think this is 2013, 2014, somewhere in there. And we just started to just sell out all the time on Etsy. And we're like, well, hey, let's create a website. So, so, so glad that in, I believe it was 2015 that I chose Shopify. I. I had no. I mean, Shopify is not what it was then. I should have put $10,000 on into their stock as well. That would have been a very good choice in 2015. But we just kind of were, like, looking between all the platforms. We're like, I guess Shopify is the one that we want to be in. I don't know. So we tried out Shopify. We started our store. And. And from there, I asked my wife. I was like, can I start just testing out Facebook ads? Like, is this something I can try? I literally, I had no clue what I was doing. Absolutely no clue. I started. I started running engagement ads. So all I would do is just like, find a good post that did well on Instagram, and then I just run it as an engagement post. I'm like, oh, hey, so Facebook, go find me engagement. I had no clue. Luckily, somehow I'd put the Facebook pixel onto our website. I don't remember doing it, but luckily I did. And so I look back on those days, and we had return returns on ad spend of like 70. I still have that data where I'm like, oh, my gosh. I wasn't trying. Like, I didn't know what I was doing. But, you know, Facebook in its heyday was just incredible for acquisition. So, you know, from there, our company was growing. You know, we were kind of doubling year over year, and we finally decided to move out of our house. It's interesting. I just had a conversation with somebody, and they were talking about, you know, they have, like, 3,000 items, and they're all just around their living room and they're. They're doing the E Comm thing. And maybe some of you who are listening are kind of in that space too, right? Where it's like, you know, you're just doing everything you can to. To make this thing work. And. And that was. That was us at the time. Our house, like, people would come over and there was nowhere to sit because it was just stock everywhere. And my wife had this, like, idea, like, yeah, we Always want to be an like, you know, an at home business. Like I would never do that again. So, so we ended up getting a space and then we realized as we were growing that my wife and I didn't work super well day to day together. Like it was just, there was always conflicts, you know of like the way and, and it's, it's kind, it's good because we think so differently, right? So we have, we come at the world two totally different ways but it didn't work running the company and I was always good at the marketing side and so so from there I was doing marketing consulting and for people who know me, I do stuff for free all the time. I just never like, I just want to help people. And so I was doing consulting all the time for free, just like helping these businesses and I'm like, yeah, this is kind of how you do it and this is how you grow. And then one of my friends came up to me and he's like hey, you should just start charging just a little bit. So we did and I brought a partner in and we created Mindful Marketing. And so Mindful Marketing is a company that helps e commerce brands scale and from there now we've grown that business into I think we're at 16 or 17 employees now on that side and so, and we've grown our little and lively was our original brand. We've now grown that into three brands which is super, super fun. And then we're acquiring two brands in the outdoor space right now. So we've grown into hopefully next year we'll be at eight figures between the couple companies not including the marketing agenc. But yeah, that's been our, that's my growth story up until now.

Great story Jordan and thanks for, thanks for sharing. I think there are a lot of learnings during your path over here. So what caught me my the attention is when have you made the shift from being responsible for everything to being responsible only for marketing? I think that that is a crucial moment because a lot of entrepreneurs try to do everything and they don't specialize on some things. Can you develop further this aspect how you've made it? And I can bet that suffering brought you there, but it's just an assumption. Let me know more about it.

Yeah, totally. So I mean for anybody who has grown businesses you'll know at first you start doing everything right, you have to do everything. You have to do the shipping, the packing, the marketing, the emails and all of that kind of stuff. Right. As time went on we started to really realize. And what I want to let you know is self awareness is so, so important. So luckily we had somebody come by our. Our business when we were. Our marketing agency and our clothing company were in the same space. And. And somebody came by and they're like, hey, we really think that you should learn about strengths. So we. So we were using CliftonStrengths. So if anybody's read the book Strengths Finders before we got into that, and there was a consultant that we were helping do that, and they're like, hey, we'll trade you consulting for marketing. And I'm like, awesome. Best decision I ever made. Knowing my strengths, I realized that I have. So in CliftonStrengths, I'll give you just a quick overview. There's four different quadrants. So there's executing, there's relationship, there's influence, and then there's strategic. For me, I am all influence and all relationship. And I realized this is why I never get stuff done. But I've got this certain strength that's called maximizer, which is essentially like, I can be like, oh, Juliana, you're really good at this. I need you to do this. Right? And convincing, Essentially finding what other people's strengths are and then maximizing them. So when I realized that, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is a superpower right now. I'm able to, like, hire people and bring them in and then get them. And then I have woo, which is win others over, which really helps get people into a vision. And so. So I couldn't do it at first. It wouldn't have worked at first. But realizing that, it actually is like, it's, you know, knowing your strengths really helps you figure out what you can do versus, you know, what you can hire other people to do. So for me, it's a bit of a long answer to a short question, but strengths, right? Focusing on your strengths, I think is really where you'll find that actual leverage for your business.

Here. Jordan, just to add something from my own experience, I think the maturity in entrepreneurship comes after you realize what your strengths are and also when you are humble enough to realize that you can't do everything. And that means you need to find gifted people and talented people and to activate their mission within your company. But without this humbleness, you can't do pretty much anything about it. And you'll be like a broken record that keeps on trying but is not getting over there. And maybe it's worth adding that a lot of e commerce entrepreneurs don't get to eight figures. Because of that, because they don't build an org chart and they don't, let's say, realize which are their strengths and where they should be looking for other, either partners, other, either, let's say employees that are more gifted than they are.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's exactly it, right? So the, the thing that we've figured out now is like, oh man, if we can build systems and then find people who really, it'll like their life will thrive being in that system and, and doing those things, then we're going to win, right? And that's why we're now switching into making acquisitions, finding great companies where the owners just, they've just kind of hit a wall, right? I think that number is kind of in that sort of two and $3 million range where know, people can get to. And then it's like, where do we go from here? Right? We don't know what to do. And I think that we figured that out and I think it really comes down to like, like you said, like really having a good organizational chart. I actually asked on LinkedIn today, I was like, how many direct reports make sense, right, for somebody to have. For me, I, I think six, I think six is kind of my max. So, you know, at the end of this year I'm going to have five companies, right? So like really I can only have one report from each of those and making sure then that you, you set your companies up properly to be able to continue to thrive. I think that's where, where the real magic is, right? The real magic is, is not in the, in the constant doing right as, as an entrepreneur, it's moving into that CEO role where you're really setting the direction right? Because if you, if you, you know, fly from say like LA to New York and you're off by a degree, right, you're not going to end up in New York, you're going to end up in like Winnipeg, right? So knowing that, that direction, that's actually one of the most important things you can do as a, as a CEO is just continue to point in that strategic direction, point your company and then get incredible people to come in and fill in the gaps and to have.

A control tower, which is maybe, I don't know, your wife or your partner or. I think it's also paying off very well to have someone that you can bounce ideas with and you can recheck where is the direction where you should be going next because you can't have, let's say, long haul lights for all the road ahead.

Totally, totally. Again, having that. So whether that totally, whether that's a wife, whether that's a coach, I'm huge on coaching. I just think that that having that third party person that's kind of out of your life to look in and be like, hey Jordan, I think that you don't need to be doing that. Right. I think that person is, it's an incredible person to have in your life. And then realizing that like hiring experts is a really, really good idea. We, I'll give you an example. On an acquisition that we're doing right now, we were just banging our heads against the wall trying to get this financing. We had great numbers and everything. We just couldn't get the financing. And we're like, this is so strange. So we hired an expert in financing to find us. So we were going to get 10, 10% was going to be how much we were going to pay our interest rate right now in 2021 we're going to be paying 10%. We could get the money but at 10% we're like whoa, this is expensive money. We hired an expert and we got double the amount and it was at 2.88%. Well I'm gonna do that any day, hire that expert to find me that. Right? So think about that in your guys business, right? And like what sort of experts can you bring in? Where's that place that you can start outsourcing that you may not be an expert in? Right. For, for me I think that that first place is either email, SMS or paid ads. Those to me make the most sense for E commerce businesses to start outsourcing that too. And then also finding those SaaS products, right. That can really move the needle. That's the next place.

I'm wondering because it's not often to see a brand owner that's also an agency owner because usually there's a version from owners to agencies. But I'm. Yeah, but I'm curious because see, I mean all of us are dealing with E commerce brand owners in what we do every day. And just to go back to what Valentin was saying earlier is that there is a clear mindset status quo when you are an entrepreneur where you are so obsessed to protect your business that you are not allowing the people around you to have space to help you grow. So you obviously have to sell to other brand owners and you deal with that status quo as well. Right? How do you, how do you deal with it? That's the question. How do you deal with someone that's in your shoes but cannot Explain. Well, we don't need help.

We don't, we don't, we don't try and sell at Mindful Marketing. We do not sell to anybody, right? Like, that is just not what we do. I have a sales team because, because I do not like to convince that. That was one thing we used to do. We used to convince, try to convince people that they needed help on paid ads, right? And SMS and email and all that stuff. And I'm like, it was horrible. I'm like, I can't convince you if you don't think you need help. I'm not. But we used to, right when we first started and we're trying to build up our business and everything now. Like, you know, we, it's, it all comes inbound to us, right? So unless somebody realizes that they have a problem, we just don't work with them. And so it's really great, I think at Mindful Marketing that, you know, for me, owning multiple other E comm brands, I'm actually able to say to our partners and our sales guys and everything like, no, this is not the way that we do things, right? This, this is not going to fly with. We were doing some, some different pricing ideas, right? And I'm like, as an E Commerce owner, this is not going to work. I don't, I know that they would not like this way of doing things. And so it's great to have that on within our team, right? For me, I love helping people and so I love when we bring companies into the fold and we can actually see them grow. That's the reason why I'm still an agency owner, right? It's the reason why I'm still like the CEO because that's what I get out of it, right? You'll get to a point. And I'm sure that there's lots of people on this call where it's just not a money thing anymore, right? Because if it was a money thing, my partners know, they're like, well, you don't need to be here, so why are you here? And for me, it's really about purpose, right? It's about bringing people, seeing their businesses thrive. Because I know what it's like to lose so much money and not know where to go and not have an advisor and not hire experts and really be almost bankrupt. I get it.

But how do you know, how do you help brands know they need help? Because it's honestly, a lot of people think they want help and once you present them with, you know, a situation they don't want to believe it. So I mean, in my opinion, data is the biggest agent provocateur of mindsets, right? So when you, let's say you talk to a brand owner that says clearly some issues while you know, focusing on the wrong things and you present with the data, then you see, you know, that people don't want to believe it, but they want your help. It's just that they want it in a way that doesn't affect the way they're doing things. So I guess how do you help people, you know, accept your help? That's, that's the thing.

Yeah, totally. Because, because as entrepreneurs, you know, probably everybody listening to this right now is, you know, that self made person, right? As an entrepreneur and it's so hard to ask for help when you're probably capable of doing everything right. But yeah, I mean, for, for us, what, what we do when somebody comes to us is we, we just look over the numbers, right? I love data, right? And then, but I data into real life, right, and figuring out what the data actually means. And so that's the first step for us with anybody coming into, into our agency is we first just take a look at everything that they're doing and then we give them a plan of what we, of what I think and the team thinks that they should be doing, right? To, to actually grow. And that's all based on data. It's all like it, it has to be data driven first, but then it has to transfer into like, you know, you know, somebody told me about a year ago that I was still managing the ads for our clothing companies and I couldn't give it up. Even though I had an agency of however many people, I just couldn't give up managing our ads. So I needed that, right? I needed that, that little kick to be like, you know what, Jordan, you've created the systems. You can hand this off now to an account manager at Mindful Marketing. And so doing that for me was a really good exercise because it's so difficult to give up that control as an entrepreneur. Does that answer your question, Juliana?

Yes, it does. And it prompts me to another question. Is there any type of growth if you don't use ads? Because I think a lot of times if brands would have the balls to stop their ads campaigns, they will see that a lot of things don't change, right? It's the same people that come all the time. So were you ever so courageous to stop ads and try to do something organic to grow your brand?

Oh, we stop ads all the time. All the Time. I don't believe in attribution whatsoever on the platforms, right. Everyone's freaking out about iOS 14. I'm like, we've been having attribution problems for years, right? What I do know is that there are so many other growth channels, yet ads is still the best way to get people in. It's the most reliable way to get people into your funnel, right? So at Mindful Marketing, our tagline is that we use ads to get you off using ads, right? Because that's really what it comes down to is customer lifetime value in the end. But you've got to get people into your funnel. So there's, there's incredible ways. I'll rattle off a few different ways to, to get traffic, right? So PR is a great way influencers is a great way for top of funnel. We're talking all top of funnel, right? So PR influencers teaming up with other brands who are in your space. I've already got about five different brands that I'm going to be teaming up with with these acquisitions that immediately, you know, all of them have like a hundred thousand people on their email list. While perfect, there's 500,000 people that are going to hear about us that didn't know about us before. Instagram giveaways are another great one. Running ads for the purpose of getting people onto your email list, right. Is a great way to do things. So running ads to contests, that's, there's, there's another way. There's all of these ways that you can leverage other people's audiences. Another great thing that I absolutely love is getting into retail as a marketing exercise, right? So, so being in store, so you know, our brand, we're in about 150 stores across Canada. It's a great way for people to find out about our brand and then come to our website and purchase from us after, right? It's, it's a great marketing exercise for us. So there's a few different ways that, that I think that people can, can take advantage of that.

Jordan, I want to ask you something regarding the balance between the customer acquisition and the customer lifetime value. When do you think an E commerce company should be focusing on clv and how do you suggest to do this shift?

Yeah, I mean, I think that you need to have been around for at least a year or at least a couple of cycles to figure out what your customer lifetime value is. Calculate that customer lifetime value. It's really easy to know how much you can spend on marketing, right. Sometimes that means that you may not break even on your first sale. But if you know your customer lifetime value, then you know that you can afford to spend whatever it is. Like our customer lifetime value at Little and lively is about $270. Right. So I know that when I'm spending $20 to acquire a client on paid ads, I'll do that all day. I'll spend 40, I'll spend 100. Right. If I know that they're going to be coming back that many times, that's just like average customer lifetime value. And that's not really getting into like the depth of what you guys do. Right? That's just, you know, dividing. That's just the one number divided by the other. What, but, but what, what, what doesn't show in those numbers, right. Is the amount of word of mouth that happens. Right. So that $270 may actually be even more because of word of mouth. So that's a whole other equation.

Yeah, I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs which are hypnotized to break even on the first order. And on the other hand, there are a lot of entrepreneurs which are putting a lot of money into ads without verifying if the payback is affordable. Because if they don't know how long does it take for them to compensate the financial effort and they are always over reliant on the other orders, then they are losing this as well. So in terms of how to improve CLV, from your perspective, which are the best, I don't know, channels, methods, what has worked for you and what do you want to experiment further?

So adding products is a huge way right there, figuring out what your target demographic wants and what your customers actually want and then serving that to them. So for us, we built the three brands that we have right now based on the same customer. Right? We're serving the same customer. So at first it was baby clothes. And then we realized while babies aren't buying the clothes, it's the moms that are buying the clothes. So we created women's clothing. Right? And so our women's clothing has actually now taken over our baby clothing as far as sales are concerned. And then we realized that there was this need in the market for a really high quality pajamas. And so then we decided to sell that. And so our customer lifetime value just keeps going up and up and up with this. Another thing that I firmly believe in is doing launches often, right? So especially for fashion brands, continually bringing out new product that uses the same sku. Right? So that's one of the things that we do. So, you know, repurposing and repackaging different skus together, bundling things together. All of these are going to, you know, help your customer lifetime value. For us as well, we do things on the first purchase that I think really lead to higher customer lifetime value. So one of them is that when somebody orders from us for the first time, we send a personalized video with their name, what they ordered. So it'd be like, hey Juliana, thanks so much for making the purchase at the Kindred Studio. We really, really appreciate it. We hope that you're going to love that blanket cardigan. If you have any questions, we'd love for you to join our Facebook VIP group. And so people will join the VIP group right from there they'll get into the community and then they'll realize how much other people love our product which just then eggs people on to purchase more and more and more. It's that to me is how we've increased customer lifetime value. I mean you guys are really the experts when it comes to that. I've just been stabbing in the dark for years.

Yeah, but it's outstanding. So what you're doing is you are crafting an outstanding onboarding experience and then you are leveraging the other, the other people from the community to transfer know how and to endorse the brand even even further by giving them an arena to communicate with each other around the products that you're selling. And I think that's, that's fantastic. So congrats for that. Let me know a thing Jordan. So a lot of brands miss out the this under promise over delivery because what you're doing is you are, you are let's say the purple cow. So everyone sees the normal cows like Seth Godin's purple cow. But you are among the few e commerce players that invest so heavily because if you can send a personalized video to each first time customer, that means you have all the average e commerce customer companies and those common experiences like the normal boring email with this is your shipment details. Thanks for ordering with us. And then you have you with which is a real human experience. And I think this is generating emotions and in your space even more than that. But any decision, any buying decision I think is affected by the emotions. I want to ask you something regarding the customer journey and the touch points. There are many touch points and now the customers are not getting towards the brand with a straight line. So, so they are always getting into your website. They can see an ad, they can go to Google, they can find the remarketing ad and so on. So there are many, many ways and many touch points. Have you been, let's say, consciously designing this, this customer journey? Have you identified these touch points? Because I think there is really value, really, let's say hidden value into being, let's say, relevant to the customer at any touch point.

Yes, that is such a great question. So, so most people in, in marketing, the marketing world know about the five levels of traffic, right? So there's cold traffic and we use this in Facebook ads all the time and all ad, you know, all the ad platforms we use this on. Yeah. So. So we've got number one, right? Which is they know nothing about you. Right. So this is just your awareness sort of level number two, they've engaged with you in some sort of way. Right. Number three, they've actually viewed a product of yours on the website. So picture that, you know, somebody coming into your store for the first time, looking around. That's. That's level three. Number four, they've showed some sort of intent and actually added to cart. So, you know, in the retail setting, this is somebody walking around with a basket and putting something in. Right. They're going to go try it on. This is that next one. Then there's level five, and that's purchasers. And that's where most people stop. They're like, oh, good, we got you to become a purchaser. Yay, you're at level five. Let's just keep selling to level fives, right? No, there's so many levels after that. So I like to think of there's levels 6, 7 and 8. Level 8 is where they actually become an advocate. And it's incredible to see level eights in our VIP group. So the other day, a great example is somebody said, is the customer service here normally this bad? I had a really bad experience. We, we saw this post come in on the VIP group and we're. We pride ourselves on. On incredible customer service. We saw this post come in and within about a minute, there was 10 comments from people within the VIP group saying, Absolutely not. Best customer service we've ever had. This is not an appropriate post in the VIP group. I was able to quickly screenshot it to give to our customer service team, which is something I normally don't do. Right. That's not my role. But I. But we really care about our customers that much. I screenshotted it, sent it to our customer service team and I said, hey guys, can we respond to this? They went to go respond and the person had deleted the post because there was that many people that were our Advocates. Right. That we've moved down into level eight. That many advocates that were saying, this is not the place to do it. You need to reach out to them. They're going to make it right. We ended up going through all of. Because any bad customer experience, it's that rare that we have them, that our customer service team screenshotted every single email back and forth. And it was just kind of one of those sometimes you're going to have customers where you just can't win. Right. And that was one of those customers for us. But luckily we saw, okay, we had made this right along the entire journey. So for me, that's a really good example of moving people beyond. Right. Beyond that. Just purchaser. And there's. There's some steps in between there as well. But really it's about getting to know you better. I pictured, you know, level eight is really that like marriage sort of space where like, they are going to defend you no matter what. Whatever you do, they're going to be there with you and they just happen to purchase over and over as well.

Yeah. So I think that's. That's a great. That's a great approach and congrats for, for realizing this.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, it's. It's really made a huge difference. It's something that we try, you know, really in a big sort of way at mindful marketing to instill into our clients as well. We're like, guys, this is, this is the way that you build a brand that's going to last. Right. Like when we're looking at acquisition targets, we're not looking at products. I'm not looking like, I don't really like, care what the product is itself. I care. Have you created a brand and a community and this incredible experience? Do you have level eights? Because if you don't have level eights, I'm not really that interested. It's not a brand that's. That's worth acquiring in my mind.

I want to. I want to go back a bit to what you said earlier about the customer support team. So where I am right now, I see that in my opinion, I think is the most underused, you know, human resource in E commerce. Because I think in my opinion the customer support team should be like part of the revenue team. What are your thoughts on that?

We pay our customer support person more than anybody else, our head of customer support, because she is that valuable at solving problems. Right. And not only that, at also, you know, in. In the process, sometimes actually upselling. Right. Those, those Responses. The best kind of thing that can happen to our customer support team is a complaint come in and we solve it so well that that person went from, you know, wanting to, you know, have our head on a stick to being like, these guys are incredible. We, we have a. We don't believe the customer is always right. I don't love that. I don't think that that's a good, a good way to think about things. But we will always make things right, no matter what, whether they're right or wrong. So somebody, you know, we have a great example of. Somebody sent us a shot of, of a shirt and it had a ketchup stain. And they said, yeah, this came with a ketchup stain on it. Like, obviously it didn't come with a ketchup stain, but it was like, we're so sorry that you're not happy right now. We're going to send you out a new shirt right away. Right? Just keep, keep the other shirt and we'll send you out another one right away. Well, hey, that person is going to be a customer for life. Right. Whether they took advantage of us or not. There's so many brands out there. The big brands do this. They know how to do it so well. Right. Why is Costco so big? Why do you spend so much at Costco? Because, you know, you can return stuff anytime you want. Do I ever return anything at Costco? Never. I'd like maybe return something once, but.

You know, you know, you have the possibility to do so.

I, I know I can. Right. So we have a, we have a 30 day, you know, no issues. Return, return it with, with the tags on. That's fine. If somebody tries to return after 30 days, we still accept it, right?

Because.

Because we just know that it's the right thing to do. It's a marketing, It's a marketing maneuver always in our customer service. Will people take advantage of us? Absolutely. They will take advantage of us. But I'm fine with that because I'm playing the long game. I am not playing the 20, 21 game. Right. I'm playing the long game with these brands. And those are the brands that you see grow and grow and grow. Right. When you're playing the long game and not just trying to, you know, squeeze everyone for every dollar that's in them.

I agree.

I agree. But what do, why do you think, you know, it's not the same thing for the, you know, for most of the brands. I mean, I see a lot of people using chatbots that, you know, ask, you dumb questions, and then when you finally end up talking to a customer support rep, they're gonna ask you the same questions again. And it's like this whole vortex of, you know, of craziness. And I, I just don't see, you know, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and I see much, you know, many more voices in the industry. And you are probably amongst the 5% of the industry that really care about customer support, because the 95 rest don't necessarily. So what, what do you think is the reason? Is it. It. Is it, you know, is it because we are like so drunk on the acquisition culture, you know, that we, we just forget about what matters, which is, you know, post purchase.

Yeah. So what I think is that we've kind of forgotten that we're selling to humans, right? We have all of this data at our fingertips and we're like, oh, great, okay, we, we're getting this kind of return on ad spend. We're getting this and this and this and. And let's set up a bot that can do it. Like, I remember I set up a bot right when messenger was, was huge. I set up a bot that would answer all these questions. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And then I remembered that we're selling to humans and then everything changed, right? So when, for, for us, our 2020 mantra is doing, scaling the unscalable, right? So sending out videos to every single person who purchases that is not scalable. And yet we were able to do it, right? We're able to actually put the money in to do that. And I think that just remembering with your ads, that's a huge thing at Mindful marketing, that we're, we tell our account managers and our ads managers all, all the time. Remember that humans are the ones who are scrolling, right? So, so it's so, so important to connect with people. Like, if you were just. However you're going to market, remember that it would be the same as you were having a conversation just like you and me. And that's why conversational copy works so well. And that's why, you know, images that aren't just these gorgeous images that aren't realistic work so well, right? Because there we're talking to real humans. So that, that's, for me, what it comes down to.

Jordan, I want to ask you something from, from a different perspective. I think that our, the, the entrepreneurs are, are such wonderful creatures because they, they always go past their, their limits. However, they are alone in their minds. You've said something that they need a coach or they need someone to, to, to work with. But what do you suggest after? Because you're a winner, right? You used to be losing. You had those five years of struggle and you, yeah, you haven't given up, right? You could have, that could have broke your, you broke your soul and end up going to a 9 to 5 work job to, to pay back that, those loans. But you kept on going. And my, my question for you is how you get past the pain period, how you get over this, this losing streak so that you, you, you end up understanding the game that you're playing.

I think knowing when to quit is a really good thing, right? Knowing. So, so one of, I'll tell you some of the big mistakes I made with my, my restaurants, right? I had no idea when I was going to make money, right. I didn't have projections. I had no clue. I didn't know what my costs were. I just knew I was paying, you know, to get food in and I was hopefully making more coming out. And because it was a franchise, but I had no projections, I couldn't tell you still now like what my break even point was, right? Whereas now I have, for every single business, I have these like massive spreadsheets that I can put in, can be like, oh, can we afford to hire, you know, $150,000 COO? Is that, is that possible? And I'll go in and actually put it into the spreadsheet. And if I can't afford that next year, the year after, if my profit and loss is not going to look good with that, then I know that I can't afford to do it. And so if you're losing, I think actually knowing where you're losing is the, is the next best step. And then maybe having to quit, right? Quitting is not a bad thing. If you're going to continue to go down and you're on a sinking ship, quit. Just quit right now, right? But you have to know, you have to have the data and you have to have the foresight to know whether it's a sinking ship or not. There are tons of businesses that will lose money for years, 1, 2, 3, 4. But they know, they know, know, know that with customer lifetime value in years four or five, six, they're going to be millionaires, right? But unless you actually know those numbers and you have those numbers down, you don't know, right? So, so really get like, like me hiring a CFO is the best thing that I've done, right? Because he was constantly updating those Projections. And I know I'll tell you in 2022 or 2023 in each business how much money we're gonna make. And then I know how much I can hire for, right? Because I don't need to, you know, be taking all of that. I'd rather have more of my time back. I have three kids. I like to mountain bike, I like to ski. I want my time.

That's great. So you've touched a sensitive point here because many ecommerce entrepreneurs and even e commerce managers are not good at the first simple rule and they are not doing the forecast right. They are either over complicate things, either make things way too simple. For instance, they look at the trends like in pre Covid and post Covid, right? So how would the 2020 projection look in January 2020 and how it actually looked in December? So the forecasts are like crazy. However, there are ways to do forecast properly. One way would be to look at the trends, to look at the three months moving average, to look at the year over year, to look at the delta year over year, to look at the customer retention. So there are many models to nail down the mathematical model of your E commerce growth. What do you use and what do you suggest as the first step to do this forecast properly?

I would look at your last year's data, right? I know 2020 was crazy, but still look at your last year's data and then plug that in as your baseline. So what we do is we generally have five different scenarios, right? So we look, you know, scenario 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, we look at flat growth, we look at negative 10 growth, we look at, I mean right now all of our companies are growing exponentially. But I don't want to count on that. I can't count on that. Right? Right now with our clothing company, we're year to date up like 170%. Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna forecast for 170%. I, I don't know if that's gonna continue on. I don't know if we can actually even if we have that amount of stock even for that. But I love to look at the different scenarios. So first start where you are, right? Look at your costs. And then you have to think like here my costs going to go up, Is my supplier going to start charging more? Are Facebook ads costs going to go up? And then, and then start to really get into the nitty gritty of all that. And if you can't do it, hire somebody who can. Right? Most of you Can't, I can't. I like, I can't set up those spreadsheets. I don't know how to work all that data. Right. So either find an incredible software tool that's going to help you with that. Right. Or find somebody who can do it for you. My cfo. I mean, he's just the most incredible person when it comes to this. He's really helped me. I'm sure he's made me an extra, I don't know, a lot.

You're talking about Matt, right?

I'm talking about Matt, yes.

I love Matt. Oh my God, I love Matt. He made the meme about me on LinkedIn with Bernie.

Oh, did he?

Yeah, he put Bernie and was using Sandra Bullock from, you know that movie with, I forgot, with the blind, the bird something. And he put Bernie on a boat. Yeah, yeah. And he was saying Juliana, when someone, when asked someone what's their customer lifetime value? And I was like mad like this. Yeah. He throw me, he throws me with that for a whole week. I love Matt. Yeah. He's an incredible person and very, very smart. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. If you're on LinkedIn search, Matt Putra, just a great guy. I. Yeah.

And a beautiful family and just like cool overall cool dude. Yeah, I like him.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I just got a question from our sponsor vtex from you. So let me read it so I'd make sure I don't bumble it. So they say this, you are, you have said the multiple times that you're here to play the long term game. So if you want to play the long term game, what do you think are three most important things an E commerce brand should focus from this year on based on what happened in 2020.

So number one, building out, this is all long term strategy, right? Building out your SMS list, that would be number one for me. Right. Get those people onto the place where they're 100% going to open that. Right. I don't know anybody besides my wife who leaves texts unread. So she's, she's one of the rare ones and it drives me crazy. I'm like, can you get rid of those dots? Like they're driving me crazy. I'm an inbox zero kind of guy. But so number one, build up that SMS list. Number two is build out your email list as well. Right. Own those customers. Whatever way you can. Just own those customers so you don't have to rely on ads. Right? I love ads. You guys know I love ads. But it's not ads to me. Again, are not the long term strategy. They're a way to continue growth now. But getting people into your list is the way that you're going to grow long term. And then number three, create a community around what you're doing. Right. So that to me is a long term strategy. When we first started our VIP group, it wasn't huge. It didn't get the kind of results that like, you know, one thing we were going to talk about was a Launch where in 24 hours we did $250,000 just to our VIP group. It's just crazy. Like, right? To a VIP group of like 9,000 people or 8,000 people. That to me is the long term. That's the long term game is building real.

Tell us more about that. Tell us more about that. How did it work?

Yeah. So this is a strategy that I've been. That we've been using for a while. It's called the gated launch strategy. So what we do is we actually password protect. We're going to be doing one of these on Tuesday again for one of our brand. So we password protect the website for 12 hours so nobody can get in. And then at. We usually do it at 10, 10am Pacific, we'll give them the password. So we'll only give our VIPs and our SMS list the password. And they know that they get early access if they join those groups. So we hype it up for about two weeks. Then we password protect the site so nobody can get in and then we give them the password. Right. So it's incredible psychology because once they get the password, they make this micro commitment to go inside the site. Right. I picture it as. There's this word, a Rubicon, right? So a Rubicon is a door you can go through but you can't go back out of. And mentally, that's what it is, right? When they enter the password, they're like, oh man, I am in this site. Yeah. So our conversion rate is like 17% when we do these, these gated launches, Right? Just crazy conversion rate. So this particular launch, it was the first time, I think our VIP group was about 7,000 people at the time. And we were watching the sales and the first two hours of this launch, we did $120,000 of sales. We're like, where did this come from? No discounts, no Facebook ads and people had to enter a password to get in. I mean, it's just unreal. We've done this multiple times since. Every single time we'll either sell out or just have massive launches. It's a strategy that I think is very evergreen but it does take a little shift. It takes a shift mentally being like okay, am I okay password protecting the site? Am I okay knowing that there is a certain amount of customer that is going to buy over and over and over and they're going to be psyched about this password.

Right.

And you guys know right from being able to segment customers out. Those are the customers that I want. Right. I want those customers continually. They don't cost me anything and they buy time and time again. So creating those kinds of communities is really important. Sorry, I felt like I was rambling there for a little bit.

But yeah, no, I think people should really bookmark this, this episode because in my opinion you have been dropping Free knowledge.

Yeah.

And I think it's awesome. I mean I never thought about this strategy with the gated launches and I think it's really awesome. So I definitely encourage people listening to try it out.

Yeah. I know about a brand that is doing this habit forming. He's doing this crazy schedule at 6am every Saturday. They are making the website available only for the ones that are in their club. And you can't. They all of them know that if it's early in the, in the weekend, so it's Saturday morning, there are all ladies and they know that they have the time to do it even though they have babies because it's a crazy, crazy morning schedule. But they are doing amazingly well for the six years in a row. So mainly they build this community and over and over again everybody knows that you can't access the website by night, but at 6am you getting there and until 9am the stock is depleted. So you need to be there early on to grab some cool stuff over there.

Totally. And that's a very similar psychology to what we're talking about here. Right. And it works. It just works. Right. It's the same thing on Black Friday when tons of people line up like they used to do. Right. It's the same idea but in a website. But if you don't have a community built around it, you don't really realize how many people are there. So that's why I love having the community aspect with it because then they talk amongst each other. Did you guys get this? And they, you know, post screenshots of their cart and all the things that they bought. Right. Which, which I think, you know, almost mimics that in person sale.

Yeah, that's for, that's for sure. Jordan, I wanted to ask you something regarding the say the, the Progress that the, the customers are doing. So what you're doing with this community, I think it's outstanding. I, I, I've seen that there is a, there is a wave and a, a new wave of let's say fresh approaches towards helping customers in a genuinely mode. So without, without any fluff, without looking at the zeros here and there. You have customers, they have a problem, your product solves parts of the problem. But you need to help them even more than that. And I've seen that there are brands which are looking further than the product that they are selling. Do you think this will be the status quo in the future? Because we're coming from this economy where we're adjusting, throwing let's say boxes one to another and the E commerce, it was pretty, let's say too digital. It was not that human. But with things that you are doing and you are, you are part of this open minded entrepreneurs which truly help their, their customers and genuinely involve in this relationships. Do you think this is going to become a norm in the future? Because I, I personally see this as the only way to be in the niche market and to, to, to thrive on the long term because you can't find Amazon or Costco or whatever, but you can give outstanding services and you can really help your customers to progress. What's your take on this?

Yeah, totally. Like I, I think that if you're going to, you know, if you're thinking about, if you're selling products, right, just selling products, this is not the, this is, this isn't for you, right? But if you're truly trying to serve a niche, right then whatever problem that they have, you can start helping them with, right? And if you can't help them with it then like say it's a product, right? For us we don't do footwear, but I know that, you know, people want good quality footwear. Well, what I'm going to do is, is start networking and finding somebody else who can help serve our customers. Because in the end it just solves everybody's problems, right? To me it's just focus on that niche. Love that niche. For us, we know our niche super well. We're going to continue to bring new businesses and new products in to help serve that niche. With our new acquisitions, we're serving a totally different niche but we're again going to build a community all around that and they've already built communities, which is really cool. But yeah, that's it. Focus on people, right? And then, and then maybe that they, they need a product to, to help them with that. But these products don't just release them just to make a little bit more money. Right. Release them to actually help people. And that's how you'll. You'll grow in the long term.

That's great.

I, I love that. I think it's awesome.

And you are.

I mean, I liked you before, but now I really like you because, I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm just like, I don't hear this often from a lot of brand owners, and it's, it's very. This, for me, this was a very refreshing conversation.

So, Jordan, I will. I will add another question while Juliana is so dazzled.

I am.

So my question to you is, Jordan, we, we all have, let's say, a biography. We, we all have our own stories that we tell to ourselves so that we go further, so that we fulfill our, our greatest vision or not that great. Great vision. What would be an advice that you would give to entrepreneurs which are, which are starting out? Let me give you an example. I have some entrepreneurs go outreach to me on LinkedIn and they say, hey, I'm depressed. I can't do anything. I've invested such a large amount of money in this marketplace or E Commerce or whatever, and I want to get your opinion on this. What would you tell to these E commerce entrepreneurs which are simply stuck and they don't know what to do next?

Know yourself, right? So figure that out. Whether that's using strengths finders, whether that's the enneagram, whether that's some kind of personality test, whether that's you needing to go to counseling, right? Figure out yourself, figure out your strengths, and then bring partners in, right? Every single business that I have, I have a partner, right? And, and I know that those partners are bringing so much to the table. If you're struggling and you don't have a part partner, figure out, like, you're not good at everything. You're just not right? And that's beautiful because you can then bring a partner in to help you out with that. There's a lot of people who don't want to work with partners. They're like, no, no. It just complicates things. Well, if it, if it complicates things, maybe you need to look at yourself and the way that you work with people. But bringing in a partner who really fills in your gaps, I think, is, is that first step and then quitting, right? If it's not working and you're not able to scale, just quit and do something else. I Wish I would have quit Taco Del Mar. I knew after two years that I wasn't going to be able to make it work. I wish somebody had told me, jordan, just quit. Sell it now. Right, yeah.

Perseverance in the wrong direction is not a, is not a virtue.

No, no, no, no. Absolutely not.

This was good. This was really good. Thank you. Good, good for, for coming. This was a really good conversation and again, very refreshing and I'm, I'm happy, you know, I, we're doing this, we're doing this podcast because you get to hear different perspectives on growth and different, you know, and as Valentin said, it's nice to see this generation of open minded founders and entrepreneurs that are really trying to do good rather than just, you know, make a quick buck. So thank you so much, Jordan, for being here with us today. This was awesome. And I dropped your LinkedIn link here in the chat. I think, you know, if people want to reach out to you, they should add you or they should click the action button that we have here because I think you have a little thing for people watching. Growth plan.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

So we did actually talk a little bit about that. So what we're offering is a free E commerce growth plan. So basically we look at what you're doing right, right now and then we give you, you know, all of these steps basically to get to where we think that you should be right or where you could be potentially in the future. So if, you know, if you feel like you're ready for that, this is something that we're offering totally for free. You can click that link that there is not a link on our website to find it. So if you go there, it's just we only give this link out if I'm on podcasts or, you know, there's great communities like this. So yeah, don't forget that link because you won't be able to get back to it.

Thank you so much for joining us today for another episode of the E Commerce Growth Stories. I'm sure we agree that Jordan has dropped some serious growth gems here in this podcast. So don't forget to hit that link in the episode notes and get his growth plan asap. It's free and it's coming from an amazing e commerce professional. So yeah, I'll see you guys next week. And if you like this episode, don't forget to subscribe. 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.