If Someone Looked Under The Hood Of Your Business, What Would They Find?

If you hired someone new today, would they be able to easily access the information they need to get the job done? Or would they be sifting through a clutter of files, or, worse yet, is everything they need to know stored only inside your brain?

Our guest today is Tiago Forte, founder of Forte Labs, a company that specializes in productivity. Tiago talks about the importance of building and maintaining a solid knowledge management system for your business, otherwise known as a “second brain.” Having a second brain not only makes it easier to onboard new employees as your business scales, but it can also help increase your overall organization and productivity.

Andrew and I learned a ton from this episode and we hope you enjoy it!

Episode Highlights

• 5:11 The goal of Forte Labs: Finding transformational paradigm shifts in productivity.
• 7:10 The impact of an international upbringing on Tiago's work and mindset.
• 9:17 Tiago's big realization about the best way to help people.
• 10:54 Defining "design thinking" and why it's fundamental to entrepreneurship
• 13:47 The difference between productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• 15:53 Being organized as a state of being and the method Tiago created to help people get organized.
• 19:32 The benefit of micro projects.
• 23:02 How micro projects help you elevate your perspective.
• 26:48 The importance of having a knowledge management system as your business scales.
• 29:37 Building your knowledge management system, i.e., your second brain.
• 35:33 How to increase your productivity without working faster or working more efficiently.
• 37:38 Linking your communication apps and your productivity apps.
• 41:27 One easy thing you can implement right now that will increase your productivity. 

Links and Resources

• Forte Labs
• Building a Second Brain
• Book: Design Your Work
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is also brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

One of the most common questions Andrew gets from his clients is: how do I optimize my Facebook ad account?

Today he talks about RCAB-P, his five-step process for optimizing and improving Facebook ads. We'll cover the number one thing you need to do before you start optimizing, and walk through each of the five steps in detail to help you successfully optimize your ad account.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 3:41 The first thing you need to do before you start optimizing your Facebook ad account. 
• 5:13 How much you should be spending before you start thinking about optimization.
• 6:10 Step one in the optimization process: Reporting Metrics.
• 7:23 The fundamental questions you want to answer with your metrics report.
• 9:01 Understanding secondary metrics, and a common metric that Andrew doesn't recommend tracking.
• 11:01 Step two: Optimizing Creative (your most important lever for optimization).
• 11:33 The new creative ad feature Facebook just rolled out.
• 12:57 Creative optimization: using different creative at different points in your funnel.
• 16:23 Step three: Audience Optimization.
• 17:02 First Time Impression ratio - what it is and why it's important.
• 18:57 Dynamic vs static custom audiences and how to optimize each of them.
• 21:31 Step four: Bidding Optimizations
• 23:50 Using manual bid overrides during Black Friday. 
• 24:53 Step five: Placement - the huge optimization many people are not taking advantage of.
• 27:46 What to do if you get through the five step optimization process and you're still not getting results. 
• 28:18 Another new Facebook feature to try: campaign budget optimizations.

Links and Resources

• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is also brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

What if you could make more money in a single day than your business previously made in its entire lifetime?

That's what happened for Mark Arruda last August, typically his company's slowest month.

Mark, owner and CEO of Constantly Varied Gear, joined us earlier this year to talk about how he uses Facebook Messenger in his business. Today, he's back, and in the eight months since we last had Mark on the show he's continued to ramp up his Messenger marketing and is seeing incredible results.

In this episode, Mark shares the Messenger strategy he used that fateful day in August, and the other tactics he's using to grow his list and drive sales.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 7:13 The Facebook Messenger tactic Mark's using to gain Messenger subscribers and how it connects with his on-site lead capture.
• 9:56 When Mark got started with Messenger bots and how long it's taken him to build his current system.
• 11:09 How allowing customers to vote on products via Messenger has been incredibly successful for Mark.
• 14:39 A good thing to do if you're just starting out with Messenger.
• 17:27 What is a Facebook Messenger sequence?
• 22:04 How Mark maps out his Messenger marketing plan.
• 23:48 The first thing you should do before getting started with Messenger marketing.
• 26:08 The chatbot Mark is using to grow his list and stop potential customers from leaving his site. 
• 28:45 Why Mark is shifting almost all of his prospecting efforts to Click-to-Messenger ads.
• 31:22 Using Messenger across different business verticals.
• 33:35 The best copy for Click-to-Messenger ads.
• 36:18 The Messenger strategy that led Constantly Varied Gear to do more sales in a single day in August than during the entire lifetime of the company.
• 39:25 The importance of reaching your customers through a variety of different platforms, and how Messenger can tie into all of them.

Links and Resources

• Messenger Mastermind Podcast
• Constantly Varied Gear
• ManyChat
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor: Justuno

This episode is brought to you by Justuno. Justuno is a visitor conversion suite that offers pop-ups, push notifications, offers, and more. It's highly personalized and customizable and is awesome for capturing leads, recovering abandoned carts, and increasing sales. They recently launched an integration with Facebook Messenger so you can create a seamless experience from offsite to onsite with unified messaging.

If you haven't used Justuno yet, we absolutely recommend checking it out. Lots of our clients are using it and it integrates well with Shopify, Klaviyo, and more. Head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/justuno and you'll get a 15 day free trial + 15% off.

Sponsor: Klaviyo

This episode is also brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

Earlier this week Andrew shared his story, and now we’re turning the tables.

Today I talk about how I went from pursuing a career in investment banking to realizing I wanted to become an entrepreneur and eventually starting Ecommerce Influence.

Digital marketing has evolved so much over the last decade, especially for ecommerce, and my career has evolved along with it. I’ll share how I built a business I'm excited about while also creating a lifestyle that gives me freedom and flexibility.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 3:54 Why Austin started Ecommerce Influence
• 5:07 Moving away from the typical agency: The birth of Brand Growth Experts
• 7:09 Austin's early career pursuits begin in China
• 8:14 When Austin realized he wanted to become an entrepreneur
• 9:38 Start-up life and learning how to become an entrepreneur
• 12:02 If you can sell a $100,000 product with triggered emails, you can sell anything with triggered emails
• 14:25 How working for a start-up provided the best education for growing a business
• 16:42 Austin starts building his own business
• 21:19 An evolution in personalized, lifecycle marketing
• 24:43 The inception of Ecommerce Influence and why Austin decided he didn't want to run a traditional agency
• 27:31 How Austin's created a business that reflects his core values
• 31:10 Helping business scale with the Brand Growth Experts Membership
• 35:23 The project Austin's most excited about right now

Links and Resources

• Brand Growth Experts
• Brand Growth Experts Membership
• Brand Guild
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

One of the questions we love asking our guests is: how did you get where you are today?

It’s a question our listeners frequently ask Andrew and I too, and in today’s episode, Andrew is going to share his story.

Andrew has been working in digital advertising since before the inception of the Facebook News Feed in 2009 and he’s learned a lot along the way. He shares his first experience working in “new media,” tells the story of how Foxwell Digital was born, and talks about what success means to him.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 3:18 How Andrew got started in digital marketing
• 6:04 A congressional campaign leads Andrew out East and into "New Media"
• 8:11 Andrew's experience working in Congress during the invention of Facebook Ads
• 12:45 When Andrew launched his first newsfeed advertisement
• 14:29 When social proofing meant getting the most Likes
• 15:46 The birth of Foxwell Digital
• 18:15 How Andrew and Gracie went from teaching seniors how to use iPhones to getting their first official clients
• 21:06 How Andrew and Austin connected
• 22:34 When Andrew official joined the Ecommerce Influence Podcast
• 26:39 How documenting and synthesizing makes you more creative and a better teacher
• 28:34 The future of Foxwell Digital
• 31:24 Why you don't have to make $100 Million to be successful

Links and Resources

• Foxwell Digital
• Brand Growth Experts

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.