The pandemic forced many owners to shift from brick and mortar to eCommerce. Some succeeded, and some did not. 

Today’s guest was one of the successful -- she doubled her brick and mortar business revenue in 2020 by implementing Shopify, Klaviyo, and a seamless in-store and online rewards program. 

Mandy Buterra began her journey as an entrepreneur at age 50 when she started Wren and Wild a brick and mortar business featuring clean beauty and aerial yoga, in Bend, Oregon. Her business evolved and she was building a good customer base, then COVID hit.  

Instead of panicking, Mandy taught herself eCommerce and joined our Coalition membership. Listen to this episode to learn how she’s now hitting sales highs and doubled her revenue in the last year by transitioning her brick and mortar to eCommerce. 

If you’re in the transition or considering turning your brick and mortar into an online store this episode is filled with good tips about how to integrate the two business models. If you’re already running an eCommerce business Mandy also has tons of tips around how to build a rewards program and smart email marketing to build customer loyalty. 

This is a well-rounded conversation and I know you’ll walk away with at least one tip to implement in your business.

Episode Highlights:

• 4:54 How Mandy started as an entrepreneur
• 8:30 Taking time for clarity before launching a business 
• 9:14 Restarting, again, after losing a lease 
• 11:11 Mandy’s brick and mortar and how COVID impacted it 
• 13:57 How launching a Shopify site doubled business 
• 15:28 Brick and mortar to eCommerce: the differences and advice for people transitioning
• 17:04 The importance of data and capturing email in store 
• 18:13 Transitioning a rewards program from brick and mortar to eCommerce
• 19:38 Rewards program recommendations
• 20:20 What makes a good rewards program
• 23:04 Things that have moved the needle in Mandy’s business 
• 27:29 SKU management and how to narrow and focus offerings 
• 30:30: Planning for Q4 and holiday 
• 31:41 The importance of a network when you’re growing a business 
• 33:50 What brought Mandy’s site from a 1.9% conversion rate to 3.9%
• 35:54 Advice for people growing and building a business

Resources:

• Wrenandwild.com
• @wrenandwild on Instagram 
• Smile.io Rewards Program 
• Klaviyo.com Email Marketing 
• Conversion Crimes Website Testing 
• The Coalition
• @a_brawn on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Are you building to sell? You should be. Even if selling isn’t your main priority it will make you a better business owner and it will make the value of your business higher. This episode has the details of how to do it. 

Joe Valley is the author of The Exitpreneur’s Playbook and a buyer and seller of many online businesses, both on his own and now as a broker with Quietlight.com. 

Joe’s book is designed to help you get maximum value for your online business and in this episode we go deep into his vast knowledge of building to sell. He answers a ton of questions you should be asking when you’re thinking about selling your business, what multiples to look at for eCommerce, plus he shares mistakes you might be making now and how to prevent those BEFORE you’re getting ready to sell. 

It's an excellent interview and Joe is truly an expert in building to sell. If you’re ever going to want to sell your business or have thought about buying a business in the future you’re going to get a ton of value in this episode. 

Episode Highlights:

• 4:03 Why Joe wrote his book
• 6:14 Who an Exitpreneur is and building to sell
• 7:11 The argument for building and selling a business
• 10:17 How Joe sets tangible goals with real data
• 11:41 Where to start when determining the value of your business 
• 17:09 How to find a good bookkeeper 
• 18:47 The multiple you should be looking for in eCommerce
• 22:13 Why you should separate inventory when looking at the value of a business 
• 24:19 Joe’s take on aggregators and the roll-ups of FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) and Shopify stores
• 29:50 Things to look out for in deal terms and the “stability payment” 
• 32:19 Do roll-ups blow up or end up incredibly successful?
• 34:36 When you should start planning if you’re building to sell your business 
• 36:46 How to “exit without exiting” 
• 39:06 Is there a sweet spot for time to sell a business?
• 42:09 Joe’s first 3 actions to have success with your first acquisition
• 46:31 How deals are financed on Joe’s site
• 50:32 What Joe’s excited about right now

Resources:

• Quietlight.com
• Exitpreneur.io
• Book: The Exitpreneur’s Playbook by Joe Valley
• Book: Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel
• Centurica.com Market Watch 
• Boopos.fund
• The Coalition
• @a_brawn on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Building a business is filled with amazing highs and big lows. Despite some tough blows in the early days, one eCommerce founder kept his commitment to his personal health and family and found success on the other side.

Jay Campbell is the owner of Aseir Custom, and in this episode he shares his wild journey of building a business. We go deep into what he's learned through major manufacturing issues and how he managed customer experience after that. We discuss how he unlocked massive growth working with influencers. We also talk about Jay’s commitments to his family and personal health and how for the last 5 years he has taken a trip with his wife every 8 weeks. 

Aseir Custom went from about $16k / month in sales in February 2021 to hitting $250k in August 2021. The journey has been anything but linear and there’s a lot to learn from this story. Jay has a great mindset and he shares the raw truth of his experience going through incredibly challenging times while seeing rapid growth in the business simultaneously. 

If you are an operator in the weeds, building a business, or experiencing rapid growth you will get a lot out of this discussion.

Episode Highlights

• 5:16 How Jay and his wife plan their “every eight weeks” travel adventures 
• 8:01 Jay’s transition to eCommerce 
• 11:09 The beginning of Jay’s hair regrowth business 
• 17:07 Managing Black Friday with major manufacturing issues 
• 19:54 How Jay and his business partner recovered their business from almost shutting down
• 25:47 The realities of running an eCommerce business and trying to scale 
• 28:30 The benefits of getting help in the early stages of building a business 
• 33:53 Learning from the first year and a half of Jay’s business 
• 39:43 How Jay manages work while he’s traveling 

Links And Resources

• Jay’s Website 
• Aseir Custom
• @jaycampbell333 on Twitter 
• Jay’s Podcast 
• The Coalition
• @a_brawn on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Is TikTok the new frontier for social advertising? How to get reliable Facebook ad performance data post iOS 14? These are some of the questions The Social Savannah is answering for us today.

This episode features Savannah Sanchez a media buyer and owner of The Social Savannah. Savannah started her advertising career at large agencies working on Facebook ad accounts.  In 2019 she left to create her own boutique agency helping eCommerce brands with their paid social advertising.  

She is a prolific creator of ads and creative as well as an optimization expert. She has cracked the code of TikTok ads and continues to be a top creator of winning Facebook creative.  

In this episode Savannah and I discuss how to get started with TikTok ads, the key metrics to be tracking on Facebook post iOS 14, how creative strategies should vary between social channels, and some of the tools Savannah uses to track metrics across channels. Savannah also shares her vast knowledge working with TikTok influencers and what you can do to see success there. 

If you are running a brand or doing digital marketing, you're gonna get a lot out of this episode!

Plus: if you’re a member of the Coalition check out Savannah's recent training: Demystifying TikTok.

Episode Highlights

• 4:40 Savannah’s community of media buyers 
• 7:26 How Savannah got started in advertising 
• 12:05 Takeaways from running media budgets of $100k+
• 15:03 The biggest difference between Facebook and TikTok ad account strategies 
• 18:04 How to start from zero with TikTok advertising 
• 21:05 Finding TikTok content creators 
• 22:26 Going viral on TikTok 
• 23:22 What a good hit rate is for TikTok 
• 24:37 How KPI’s differ by social channel 
• 28:53 The biggest changes on post iOS 14 Facebook 
• 32:31 MER (marketing efficiency ratio): Savannahs favorite KPI 
• 35:35 How long does it take to set up cross channel reporting for a simple channel strategy 
• 38:26 The technical set up for TikTok 
• 39:14 Using TikTok influencers to run ads
• 42:06 What Savannah’s daily life looks like 
• 44:03 Savannahs favorite tools
• 1:01:52 Tips for success when breaking out on your own 

Links And Resources

• Savannah's Website
• Ad Creatives Only Facebook Group
• Supermetrics 
• @social_savannah on Twitter 
• Savannah Sanchez on YouTube
• Superhuman for email 
• Calendly
• Sunsama
• Monday 
• Uber Conference 
• Book: A World Without Email by Cal Newport 
• The Coalition
• @a_brawn on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes