How to Build Highly Successful eCommerce Brands with Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer

Ezra Firestone is one of the pioneers in the ecommerce industry. He is the Founder of Smart Marketer and the Co-founder and CEO of BOOM by Cindy Joseph and Zipify Apps. As a master strategist, content creator, and legendary advertiser, Ezra makes $40 million per year between all of his businesses. He is simultaneously a practitioner, creator, and educator in the ecommerce industry, serving the world unselfishly while profiting.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Ezra Firestone shares the lessons he learned from poker that helped him build his thriving ecommerce brands
How to determine—and develop—your strengths as a business leader
The three things you need to do well in order to grow your ecommerce business
How does Ezra effectively split his time between his multiple businesses?
Ezra’s successful evergreen marketing strategy
Ezra reveals the launch date of the SMS app he has been developing
The vision and philosophy behind Ezra’s business success
If he had to start his career over again, what is the first thing Ezra would do?
The biggest challenge that ecommerce marketers will face in 2021

In this episode…

Many ecommerce founders share one ultimate goal: to build a brand that supports their dream lifestyle. However, with the various responsibilities and roles that come with running an online business, this may seem nearly impossible. Yet, some founders have unlocked the secret to success and now run seven-figure brands—while still maintaining a work/life balance.

Ezra Firestone is one such business leader. He currently runs multiple highly successful brands while also making time to pursue a meaningful life. His secret: a mindset of mastery. As he says, the willingness to put your attention in one area consistently over time will help you achieve success and, ultimately, freedom. So, what is Ezra’s advice to ecommerce business owners in 2021?

Listen to this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast as host Joshua Chin interviews ecommerce expert and serial entrepreneur, Ezra Firestone. Ezra shares how his ecommerce journey first began, the lessons he learned while building his multiple seven-figure businesses, and his advice to current ecommerce founders. He also reveals the three pillars of ecommerce success. Stay tuned for more.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Special Mentions:

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.

If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!

Our team of passionate email marketing experts have helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.

Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.

If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the e commerce industry and take an in depth look at their struggles and successes in growing e commerce brands profitably.

Joshua Chin 0:21

Alright guys, Josh Chin here. I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts in the ecomm industry and we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes of growing a brand. This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency if you are a direct to consumer econ brand that is ready for next level growth and to unlock the optimal customer lifetime value through email marketing. Chronos is your company. We’ve helped hundreds of brands get over $17 million in return from email alone, and our clients get an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts. We’ve worked with brands like TrulyBeauty, the Udi, Ally Skin and many more so the next step is if you’re interested to learn more, email us at Sales@chronos.agency, you can also go to Chronos.Agency to learn more. And today’s guest that I have with me is someone really special, Ezra Firestone. Ezra is one of the pioneers in the ecomm industry. He is the Founder of Smart Marketer, Boom by Cindy Joseph, BeeFriendly Skincare and Zipify Apps. He is a master strategist, content creator and legendary advertiser who makes $30 million per year between all his businesses. Now Ezra is a rare breed who is simultaneously a practitioner, creator and educator in the ecomm industry, serving the world unselfishly while profiting. Ezra is also a great friend and a mentor to many including myself. Ezra, thank you so much for saying yes. And coming on to the podcast.

Ezra Firestone 2:06

Good to be here, man. Thanks for having me. And we did 40 million last year with Oh, you’re 10 million off but that’s okay. Just

Joshua Chin 2:16

10 mil shy.

Ezra Firestone 2:18

Hey. So we had a good year. And yeah, happy to be here happy to talk ecommerce. I love this stuff. And I’ve been doing it a while. So I feel like I feel like Chuck, I know what I’m talking about. You know, I don’t like to talk about things where I don’t know what I’m talking about. And e commerce marketing, you know, products, supply chain logistics, copywriting advertising, you know, all that. That’s my stuff.

Joshua Chin 2:41

Beautiful. No, Ezra, we’re gonna take you back a little bit, just a little bit into the past. And I know that you started making money in your first job, True Poker in in underground clubs? How did that experience shape as of today?

Ezra Firestone 3:04

Well, you know, the cool thing about poker is, it will at least one of the fun opportunities with poker is the ability to read people and pay attention to, you know, consistent behavioral patterns. And I feel like that skill set of being able to watch somebody and watch their behavior, and then make judgments based off of that is one of the skills that you need in order to be good with dealing with employees and team members. Sounds really fun. Also, you know, poker requires a level of educated risk taking requires a level of willingness to put all your chips on the table when you feel like something is the right move. And also, when you know, it’s the right move from a statistical analysis standpoint, also relates perfectly to e commerce and advertising and that same skill set, you need that same willingness to trust your gut, at times willingness to take big risks at times and ability to analyze data and make decisions based off data. And then also, you know, if you play enough cards, you understand the grind. And you understand trading time for money, ultimately, is never going to serve you. And so it kind of forces you to want. I mean, if you’re paying any attention, and the goal is wealth creation, to build a system that’s more consistent than trading time for money, which is also you know, how you end up in e commerce if you’re me.

Joshua Chin 4:27

That’s beautiful. And you mentioned, taking a big risk and putting a ton of your chips, basically going all in on opportunities that you see, that is more likely than not to succeed. When was the last time you went all in on an opportunity?

Ezra Firestone 4:47

Dude, I’m constantly going on opportunities. Just now I have a big enough bankroll, but if I lose, I’m okay. Right. I’m taking big risks all the time I’m making like I’m betting 150 grand on a particular hire. Or betten, 300 grand on a advertising campaign or I’m betting, you know, right now, for example, I’m building an SMS application for e commerce media buyers, I’ve spent a year of my life, so a year of work, and 300 grand so far, in straight development costs. And I just now have a product that’s in beta. So I don’t have a product I can sell yet. And I’m 300 grand and a year of work into it. I mean, that’s all in man. And I feel like you got to have that kind of commitment. In order to succeed in business, you have to be willing to go all in and really see it through and invest everything you have. People ask themselves the question, what can I take out of my business? And that’s the wrong question. the right question is, what can I invest in? What more can I put into it? How can I get more money to invest in how can I take more money that it’s making and put it back into? How can I get people to help me? The question is, what more can I put in? Not what can I take out?

Joshua Chin 5:51

That’s, that’s a super interesting perspective to take. And I think, from my perspective, outsider’s point of view, that also comes down to knowing what your strengths are and where your playing field is as, as a CEO as a founder. But how do you find out what your strengths are in the first place? And how do you know that this, you taking big risks and being a strategist is what I do best?

Ezra Firestone 6:17

Well, strengths are interesting because they can be grown right? When I started lifting weights two years ago, I couldn’t do a Turkish get up with an 18 pound kettlebell, I couldn’t even lift it. Now I take a 48 pound kettlebell and I can do a Turkish Get up. That’s two years of work. So you can build strengths, right? If you’re curious about what do you what, you know, what are you innately good at? If you don’t have a sense of it? At first, you should look back and see what have I historically done? What have I done? Well, at communicating? Have I done well, what have I done? Well, I’ve in the past, and that’ll give you some sense. And then you should ask your parents and your friends, and your employees and your team members and people that know you well, and say, Hey, what do you think my biggest strengths are? You can get a lot of information that way, too.

Joshua Chin 7:03

That’s amazing. Is this an activity that you do on a regular basis? Or have you come to a point where you know where your zone is, and you tend to stay in your zone? Or is that kind of a constant exploration.

Ezra Firestone 7:16

I know what I’m good at at this point, I’ve been in the game long enough. And my viewpoint is that all you need in life is the skill set of mastery, which is the willingness to put your attention in one area consistently over time, you pick up the instrument every day for 30 minutes, a year later, you’re good at the instrument so so will power, the willingness to move forward in the direction of your goal. When it’s hard, and you’re not good, and you’re bumbling around and things aren’t working, but you still show up, you keep a positive attitude, and you put attention on on taking the next step. And actually goal that’s really what that’s the that’s what you want to be strong in. Who cares where you’re naturally strong. If you can be strong and willpower and determination and consistency, you’ll do fine.

Joshua Chin 8:01

I love that. And it’s it’s been a while on hindsight. It’s something that I I realized that one of the best decisions that I’ve personally made in growing Chronos.Agency, my business is just staying on my lane and just sticking to it. And no matter what kind of better opportunities or better opportunities might come about sticking to what I am working on and just holding the craft over time. That’s paid off multiple times. And but the question back to you is how do you then stay in your lane? When it comes down to building a business? There are like 10 100 different things that demand your attention to work on how do you make sure that you know, you’re able to work on this,

Ezra Firestone 8:50

there’s three things you need to do well, you need to make sure that you continually improve your product. Make sure your product is good people are liking it, you’re taking feedback, you’re iterating it you’re making it better, you’re launching new products you need to market so you need to run ads and create ads and film videos and set up sales funnels and optimize email flows and create content and do retargeting, okay, and you need to provide really good support. So when someone is asking questions in their in the sales cycle, you’ve got live chat, you’ve got a phone number you’re following up, you’re, you know, you’re available when they want you you’re sending them information after they buy like, only focus on those three areas of the business and you’ll be focusing on the right areas. And you’ll know when you need help because you’ll run into a roadblock or you’ll realize you’re in over your head and you don’t know what you’re doing. So you go and ask for help you find a consultant, find someone to help you. Your job is the business owners to figure out what needs to be done and how to do it yourself or find the right person or consultant to come in and do it for you. So I don’t know if it’s so much about like having attention on where you’re inadequate or You’re not good at having attention on, hey, what do I think I need to do? And let me check that against somebody or let me find a mentor, a mastermind, a Facebook group, let me check my strategy against somebody who has done this before. And if they agree it’s a good strategy, okay, I’m going to go implement it because you don’t want to be taken action in the wrong direction. Because then you’ve got to travel all the way back before you start taking action in the right direction. So create the strategy. Check it with somebody who knows whether it’s good or bad, and then fucking start working on it. And don’t worry about the rest of it.

Joshua Chin 10:30

Beautiful, and how do you split your time between all your businesses? That’s something I’m really curious about?

Ezra Firestone 10:38

Well, you don’t, you go deep before you go wide, you don’t start doing three or four things. You do one business until it’s multiple, seven figures. And then Okay, great. You can bring in a leadership team, you can bring in a COO, you can bring in an operator I, like my job is the navigator. I grew up driving on the road, I did everything. I started with no money. So I did advertising, copywriting, technology, coding, customer support, project management and operations, design, development, video editing, like, and then as you make money, you start saying, Oh, well, let me get someone to do my customer support. Let me get someone in to do my design. Let me pay a consultant to do my developing, you start slowly delegating the things that you can hire other people to do once you have a little bit of money. And then eventually, you’ve got a system and a process and an infrastructure. And you’re saying, Okay, great. Now all I need to do is navigate this business, figure out where we need to go figure out what strategies we should be implementing, figuring out what areas need resource and making sure they have resource, you don’t actually do anything anymore. You talk to other people about what they’re doing, give them strategy and advice. You go find consultants and bring them in to look over what you’re doing and tell you maybe where your strategy is lacking. And so once you reach that level with the brand, and you’re the navigator, and you’re no longer driving it, now you have space to go do something else, start driving something else, and then get that to the point where you’re navigating it and go do something else. So I have several brands, but I only move on to another brand. Once I’ve gotten to the navigator role, and the brand is up and successful. I never try to run two concurrent launches of new things at one time. Don’t do that.

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