Jeremiah Allen 12:52
It’s absolutely addictive. And I think that we all have to have to kind of abandon that. The demands, who was there’s a book, I read Essentialism by Greg McKeown or something like that, where it just basically says that if you’re not going to decide what your priorities are, someone else will decide for you. Right. And, and, and you really need, you’ve got to, you’ve got to say every thing that we everything we focus on, you know, we make time for the things that are most important to us, or at least we’re supposed to right. And if we don’t, if we’re not making time for those important things then they’ll ever happen. And I’m as guilty as the next person, I have important things, things that are truly important to me, they just keep getting put off and keep getting put off and keep getting put off. But we’ve got to have the discipline to find those important things, bring them to the forefront of what we’re working on, execute well on them and determine whether or not they contributed and then do more of them.
Joshua Chin 13:54
As a new brand. Um, you know, just just starting out fighting, they found product market fit, and they’re looking to scale now, what would be, you know, a typical, like order of priorities that brands like that should be looking out for? And what are some common mistakes where the order is all mixed up?
Jeremiah Allen 14:18
That’s a great question. So we’re talking about, like, uh, I just want to make sure I’m talking to the right company here. We’re talking about somebody who’s, you know, they’ve identified a product, it’s got fit. They’re, you know, acquiring customers at some level, profitably. They’re ready to grow, but they kind of, you know, they’re there. There’s also a lot of questions. They’ve got answers to how to do that.
Joshua Chin 14:43
Exactly that. Yeah.
Jeremiah Allen 14:44
So in my experience, I’ve only found three ways to actually drive growth. And they come from focusing on new customer acquisition, increasing customer frequency and increasing your profit per order. Anything outside of those three things, it can contribute to growth, but it’s not like it’s a growth contributor. Right. And so, so I think that I think that the way I do at least the approach that I take is when I, for example, when I advise on any project, so if I’m, if I’m advising this hypothetical client, right, that’s at this point, I’m going to look with them. And I’m gonna say, Okay, well, how many new customers are required per month? 100? Okay, great. Let’s figure out what we need to do to double that, we’re not going to double it overnight, it might take us three months, it might take us six months, it might take a year. But what do we need to do to double the number of new customers. And the way I identify that is how to do it. I’m going to look and see what’s working now. If we’re getting good new customer acquisition through Facebook ads, then I’m probably going to invest some time and effort into Facebook ads. A lot of times, for a small business, to go to a medium sized business, you don’t really need to do a lot of new things, you just need to do more of what you’re already doing. Right. And so you can expand a little bit like maybe get into Google AdWords or other things like that. But it’s not like, for a company to go from 100 new customers a month to 1,000 new customers a month, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just got to do some work and some optimization and do kind of more of what you’re already doing. The next area, customer frequency. So I like to look at I see, okay, well, in a given month, we had 500 orders, and that came from 400 customers, right? So I know that each customer is buying 1.25 times in the month? Well, if that’s the number that I’m going to look at them to say, Okay, well, what’s it going to take for us to get from 1.25 to 1.5? Right, and set a goal, I think it’s important to have actual real goals, right, we’re gonna go from 100 customers to 200 customers, we’re going to go from 1.25 orders per customer in, in one month to 1.5. Right? And and then you start looking at, well, what kinds of things can I do to make that happen. And you look for the single most important thing, maybe it’s maybe it’s putting subscriptions in place on your site, or maybe you want to come up with like an Accessory of the Month Club, or a box like a subscription box that you can send to people. Or maybe you can start releasing products more frequently. Or maybe you can, you know, there’s any number of things that you can do to be able to increase that customer frequency. And a lot of it’s going to come down to your email, and what you’re doing email and how you’re communicating with people, because all of your customers are on your email list, right. And that becomes, in my experience, one of the easiest ways to do it. So working with somebody like you to be able to really optimize that customer conversation. If the brand is coming up with with noteworthy things to talk about, then they can come to you, you’ve probably seen this, if a company, if a company releases one new product a quarter, versus if they release one new product a month, the one who’s gonna, who releases one new product a month is going to have a lot more to talk about, right? Those things are going to be able to talk about it, get people excited about it. And then it gets even better if you can get them to start releasing one new product a week, right? Because then you’ve got weekly, something new and exciting to talk about. And as you do those things as you’re releasing, it doesn’t need to be like a totally new thing like outside of your brand and what you do, but you can if you’ve got a red one and a blue one, well go ahead and do a green one, right? Or if you’ve got Yeah, you know, there are all kinds of things that you can do to modify that. And so you just want to do it again, I’m probably going deeper into it than I need to hear your question is how do I drive the growth. And it’s that I look at those three areas, number of new customers, customer frequency, and profit per order. And I identify the most important thing in each of those areas that will drive growth. And then I pick among those things, what really is the most important, maybe the most important has nothing like there’s one one project I started working on recently where their customer or their new customer acquisition is actually doing great. They’ve 5x their number of monthly new customers over the last year, they don’t really need a lot of advice there. I’m sure there are ways that I can help them. But it’s going well. So I’m not going to mess with it. Right. I looked at their profit quarter and it was decent. But what really struggled is that their email was really weak, maybe, like, around 15% of their revenue was coming from email. And I don’t know what you typically see with your clients. But if a client’s not doing at least 30% of their revenue through email, I’m not happy, right?
Joshua Chin 19:41
Yeah.
Jeremiah Allen 19:42
And so I saw that as a huge opportunity. I mean, there’s a lot of money being left on the table, the company was doing about $80,000 a month when I started with them. And so 15% of that coming from email would have been want to say like $12,000 and so by simply working on that for the first 45 days together, we got them after 45 days of hard work, we got it to 28%. So it’s not quite to the 30% that I want, but we nearly doubled it, which resulted in another, you know, a little bit of work, that’s now another 10 to $12,000 a month that they’re bringing in. And it’s now gotten really close to the $100,000 month, you know, so it’s like, you look and you find that important thing that has to do with one of those three categories, and you work on it, and you just work on it, and you work on it till it’s done. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs have a problem finishing things. Because there’s always something new to do. So when you choose one thing, and you work on it till it’s done, then you see results. So that’s what I would tell this, you know, this early startup, somebody who’s kind of moving from infancy into childhood and adolescence with their company, is really finding that thing that you believe is going to be transformational for your company. Start it, finish it, measure it, and you’re gonna have results most of the time. Not everything you touch turns to gold, not every initiative will end in success. But you’ve really got to be able to start something, see it all the way through and finish it. That’s a mistake that I made a lot when I was early on entrepreneur is I start a thing, and it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna start doing it, I’m start doing it, and it’s gonna give me all these great results. Oh, here’s this other thing. Let me start it. Right, and you never finish a thing that ever happened to you.
Joshua Chin 21:26
Guilty. 100% guilty. And that resonates so much of me. I think that’s such a good thing, just a reminder for a lot of people listening and for myself as well. But what you just mentioned, we just shared is so much gold that is so it’s it’s so simple, but I think people kind of just overcomplicate things, a lot of time, especially if new tools and new apps and new channels coming up, it’s very easy to kind of get caught up with you know, first you got to do Facebook, then Google, and then YouTube, and then email in that order. But often, that’s not the case that there’s an underlying reason and rationale for why you should do different things. Trends in eComm, what have you seen and working with so many different companies and driving growth? What is the next next face of eComm in 2021?
Jeremiah Allen 22:25
Good question. I think that everybody always wants to know what this, the next big thing is. And sometimes we get ahead of ourselves in looking for the next big thing and ignore things that already exist, that we should make a big thing. For example, I think if you look at algorithms, the eCommerce world is surrounded by algorithms, Google organic search algorithms, Facebook algorithms, Instagram algorithms, right? All these algorithms. And when you look at what all of the algorithms are doing it clearly I don’t know exactly what they’re trying to do. Because I’m not I’m not the engineer who’s or team of engineers who’s coding them. But it seems to me that most algorithms focus on delivering the best possible user experience. So Google’s algorithms for organic search, focus on getting somebody when somebody searches something on Google, they’re really asking a question. And so Google’s whole goal is to serve up the results that are going to provide the best answer to those questions, right. And so and the same thing with Facebook, when they’re showing ads, they want to show ads that are relevant to people, they want to show people ads that deliver value, and that leads, introduce them to products that are going to make their lives better. And so I think the next big thing is really a thing that we’ve needed to focus on all along, which is providing massive value to people. You know, even if it’s so one of the one of my companies that I own is a baby shoe company, we make leather moccasins, special shoes for, for babies, for early walkers, toddlers, that kind of thing. And one of the things that we’ve learned along the way, is that we charge a lot of money for shoes, like you could go and buy six pairs of shoes at Target for the amount that we charge for one pair of shoes. Right? Right. So if we’re going to charge that amount of money, effectively, we’ve got to be able to communicate that value to people. So my job as a marketer becomes communicating the value, the quality of the leather, how its soft, how you’re going to get a ton of compliments, if you if you know if your baby wears these shoes, how they’re recommended by pediatricians because they’re going to provide for the best possible like foot growth, pediatric foot growth, right? And all these kinds of things. I as a marketer have to be able to communicate those things, and if I am incapable of communicating value through ads, for example, I’m not going to survive. If you look at Facebook ads right now, it seems like the different client projects that I work on. It seems like those clients were able to effectively communicate value. And we’re regularly producing new ads that communicate that value, we’re doing well. But the projects that struggle are those where they were where either I or the client or whoever it is, right is struggling to communicate that value. And they’re just like hitting people over and over and over with salesy messaging, hey, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, right, we’re talking about how great the product is, instead of talking about what value it’s going to deliver to you the customer, right. And so I feel that in a world of eCommerce marketing world, it’s dominated by algorithms, what we have to do is we have to give those algorithms if we want visibility, if we want exposure, we have to give the algorithms what they want. And what the algorithms want, whether they know it or not, is to deliver experiences to people that people are going to engage with. And the best way to do that is by delivering and communicating value. So I really, I think if I had to say the next big thing for 2021, it probably be that figuring out how to appropriately effectively and like with enthusiasm, communicate the value to your prospective customers, because when that’s there, it’s it’s hard to fail, you’re probably going to succeed.
Joshua Chin 26:33
And it’s evergreen, that doesn’t change with algorithms.
Jeremiah Allen 26:36
Yeah, I mean, if you did it 10 years ago, you were gonna have growth, if you did it two years ago, you’re gonna have growth, and unless something like drastically changes, it’s, it’s something that you can always safely work on. Like, it’s never bad to invest in communicating value.
Joshua Chin 26:53
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a guest that I had on Justin Christianson from Conversion Fanatics. Go check out that episode, if you guys haven’t. But uh, it’s what he mentioned on that conversation with me was he’s seen a shift. So he’s, he runs a conversion rate optimization agency. He does amazing work.
Jeremiah Allen 27:15
Yeah, some of my clients use them, they seem to do good work.
Joshua Chin 27:19
He is one of the most passionate conversion rate optimization nerds I’ve ever seen, or spoken to. Very cool, dude. And what he’s seeing is that kind of that shift from CRO alone, from conversion optimization, to experience optimization. And I think that really echoes what you’re saying here?
Jeremiah Allen 27:43
Absolutely.
Joshua Chin 27:44
You’re seeing things from a bigger picture, and then how people are experiencing value from the brand versus just making that conversion happen, is so important.
Jeremiah Allen 27:55
Well, it’s important, you know, talking about conversion rate optimization is it actually begins I believe, and nothing against doing it on the site, because you need to do it on the site, too. But it begins off of the site. It begins by creating the experience, you know, with that first social media ad or whatever it is right influencer post, or, you know, third party endorsement and an email or something like that, where, where an expectation begins to be set. Once from the moment, a customer comes, a prospective customer comes in contact with your brand. I think they’re, they’re asking questions already. What’s in this for me? What is this? Right? Are they just trying to sell me something, we have so much skepticism, that until we find companies where there’s something that really stands out, or where we really like have belief in them, where we don’t care. And so like conversion rate optimization on site is so important. But one of the best ways I found to do that effectively, is to simply align the site with the expectation that people have when they get there, right, they have an expectation before they come to your site. And if they get there and your site, is it congruent with that expectation, they’re gonna hit the back button every single time, well, 80% of the time, right, which means you’ve got a huge bounce rate, which is horrible, which means you need somebody to help with your CRO, and really, the CRO, while it is important to tweak your buttons and change your layout and adjust your testimonials and that sort of thing. Really, what you need to do is you’ve got to work on that experience and creating. If you don’t have a good experience before somebody gets to the site, then you’re already going to have trouble getting people there. But if you’ve got a good experience off site, you want that to continue once people get there, so that they I mean, because you’re trying to you’re trying to persuade them that you’re presenting them with an aspirational identity. You’re saying there’s something that’s missing from your life, right. Here, let me fill this gap in your life, maybe you just maybe your kid just needs some cute shoes, right? That’s still a need that you have. Right? Nobody wants not cute shoes for their baby. You know moms worry about the pictures that they take in post on Instagram they worry about, they compare themselves to influencers, right. Moms all over the world, worry that they’re not good enough. And they compare themselves against what they see on social media. And so one of the things that we do with our baby brand is we tell the mom that they are good enough. We talk about real moms, and how it’s hard to be a real mom. And right we have, we have a whole dialogue with moms about things that have nothing to do with shoes. We have a reel that we posted on our Instagram, I don’t know a month ago, two months ago, where my partner, co-founder. Well, she was the founder. And then I bought the company anyhow, whatever her name is Annie. And Annie does this video where she gives a tip about how she makes chicken nuggets for kids to take to lunch. She hates making sandwiches for her kids for lunch. So what she does is while they’re eating breakfast, she puts a little tray of chicken nuggets in the oven, bakes the chicken nuggets, and then puts them in a little small thermos so they stay warm, and sends them with her kids for lunch, right? The thing – we posted it, the thing got three quarters of a million views like that, right?
Joshua Chin 31:24
Wow.
Jeremiah Allen 31:25
All these moms like I don’t know what it is. But the internet needed this video about chicken nuggets and how much of a drag it is to make sandwiches for your kid that’s going away to school, right? And so because we talk about things that allow us to connect with these moms, because moms are a primary customer, and we’re able to connect with these moms at an emotional level and set an expectation that we’re like them, we’re you know that our products are Annie. And they are sisters, right? So there’s this level of trust. And we choose to like, Oh, those are really cute. Because I mean, we’re expensive. And so when they get to the site, if they’re going to get to the site and be like, Oh my gosh, you’re selling baby shoes for more than pretty much anybody else out there selling baby shoes, there’s got to be something to back that, right, the value has to be communicated. The experience has to be there. And you wouldn’t pay that much money to buy a pair of shoes from Target. Well guess what? You also don’t have the relationship with Target that you have with this brand. And so it really it is experience. You got me off on this huge tangent. I apologize for going so far down –
Joshua Chin 32:29
No. I love it. This is good.
Jeremiah Allen 32:31
Exactly right. It’s the experience. And the experience begins with what you’re communicating far before they ever come to your site.
Joshua Chin 32:38
Beautiful. What other brands have you seen that does a good job in what you just described and creating good experience and communicating that value?
Jeremiah Allen 32:49
Ah, good question. A couple of them. One line I think does a great job is called Live Bearded. They do like beard products. Oh, I’m friends with the guys who run that company. If you’ve never interviewed them for your podcast, I think they’d be great to pull on, let me know. I’ll give you an intro. Yeah, so they do a really good job. There’s a company that does Guatemalan handbags, that I’ve advised off and on over the years. They’re not currently a client, but it’s called Nena & Co. nenaandco.com. They do these beautiful Guatemalan handbags and actually bags from other places too. They’re really known for their Guatemalan stuff. They do an excellent job of forming that relationship with people on social media before they ever get to the site. Let me think I’m just trying to think across some different industries. There’s a company in the mindfulness space, I know you guys know them, but it’s called the Ohm Store, theohmstore.co. They do a really good job of communicating what’s in it for someone it aside from their products, like they have a whole mission to bring light into people’s lives and help people eliminate the mental clutter and distractions and those kinds of things. And and like they really make an effort in everything they post to communicate that to people and and they end up yeah, I mean they’re they’re making really strong promises to people they’re basically promising people that they will change their lives that using their products can absolutely change their lives, they’re bold promises, right. And but the thing is that they do everything they can to help people change their lives through use of their products. And we have a shared Slack channel. Because we you know we work together and on their shared Slack channel they post these testimonials they get several a day of like, read and they don’t put all of their testimonials into the Slack channel. They just put the great ones. And they’re there literally two or three or four every single day of people who are like, Oh my gosh, this absolutely changed my life. Right? Like the people believed that it was possible. They bought the product, they believed that it could bring about change in their life. And it changed their life. And they just celebrated and like, Like, I mean, I get reviews for my baby shoes, but nothing like this. You know, it’s just they were in all these reviews. Have you changed my life? If you’re like, stressed, if you’re watching this and you’re stressed, check out their website, they’ve got big singing bowls that are, excuse me. They’re handmade in Nepal? Can you play them? And it just gives this resonance? Have you ever tried one of them? One of them?
Joshua Chin 35:46
I haven’t. I have got to order by definitely, no, no, I definitely have to get my hands on one of those.
Jeremiah Allen 35:53
You totally do. It can change your life, I have one it hasn’t changed my life. Because I don’t use it every single day. I don’t use it the way they say you should. For me, it’s just this beautiful thing that sits on a shelf in my home. And it’s gorgeous. And every now and then one of my kids takes it down and bangs on it makes a lot of noise. I can’t put it away. And then sometimes once a month or so I’ll pull it off the shelf and play it for a minute. When it’s really nice. I should really use this more. And then I put it away and move on. Right? I’m not one of that. It changed my life testimonials. But it’s absolutely beautiful. The quality is incredible. And I can see how it changed other’s life if they were more disciplined with me in here.
Joshua Chin 36:31
Amazing.
Jeremiah Allen 36:31
Any others, let me think any other brands that really do a good job of it. Well, you can check out my baby shoe brand. It’s Nomies, nomies.com. There are certainly things we can work on and do better. But I think that brand also does a good job. So those are probably some that are lesser known that I have you start looking.
Joshua Chin 36:56
Amazing. I love these examples. Because it’s kind of these. When a brand gets to a certain scale and size, when it has to kind of go for the wide masses, it’s very difficult to have a single unified persona that still resonates with people. And I think that’s one of the struggles that well Allbirds, interestingly, is going through, they’re now facing the decision of going for an IPO. And one of that one of the promises to investors is that they’re going to go mass market. But the only way that they’re going to be able to go to mass market is if they found a strong enough positioning that appeals to beyond that. The sustainability environmentalist crowd in the tech crowd. I find it super interesting. Have you ever seen kind of a shift in customer personas along the journey of a brand’s evolution?
Jeremiah Allen 38:02
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people try and do it. And it’s hard. It really is hard. And it’s a question that brands have to ask is, you know, are we okay building a company, that’s just $10 million a year because it only you know, because we’ve kind of saturated that market of who really is right? And and if so, me personally, as an entrepreneur, I would rather have 5, 10 million dollar a year brands right than one $100 million a year brand, even though it’s twice the revenue, I’d rather have the five that are working, that are really serving the needs and are able to have that really good connection, I find that I find that that connection really is one of the most important things being able to have that authenticity and that good feeling with people. And it is somewhere around the time that you hit 10 or $20 million a year, you’ve got to answer the question of, Okay, now how do I take this thing that I’ve been selling to my people, my tribe, right, and now sell it to everyone? And that’s a hard thing, because not every product has mass appeal. And that’s and so sometimes the very thing that took the company from startup to $20 million a year is now called into question because it’s now viewed as a limiting factor, where really, it’s like the heart and soul of the brand. I always try and resist that change. Not because I’m not thinking big, but it’s just so much work. It’s so hard to get it right. And there have been so many times I’ve seen it tried and failed, where you just get once you try being something you’re not. It often turns into a death spiral for a brand and I’m not saying it’s every single time, but I would I would say that instead of doing that kind of thing where you reinvent the brand, I would simply work on finding the kinds of relationships that will expand the audience. Because there are people, you know, I mean, yeah, we think we can reach everybody on Facebook. But the reality is, there are a lot of other ways to reach people. And so I would rather instead of saying this product that right now only appeals to a small number of people, right? Instead of saying, it’s got to now appeal to everyone. I’d rather say, Well, how can we find twice as many of the small number of people because they’re out there and you can usually find them. And yes, you’ll reach saturation. A perfect example. I’ve got a guy that I’ve mentored for several years now. His name is Bernardo Faria. He’s a five time Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world champion. And he a couple of years ago, started a company once he retired from professional fighting. He started a company that teaches Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, he’s got like, all these info products, right that he sells. And what he does is he goes a shoots videos with the current world champions, and the current top fighters, and kind of teaches people about this. When I first started talking to him years ago, his company was doing about a fifth of the monthly revenue than it is now. And he was worried he was worried that he was already kind of reaching market saturation. Because there’s not that many people that practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I mean, it’s cool and all, but how many people like actually practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? And, and so, you know, fast forward, I don’t know how many years four or five, I don’t have numbers that I should be ashamed for not knowing. But here now, about five years later, he’s like, he, at that point, he was like, I don’t know, what am I going to do when I reached the top, you know, when I when I can’t grow anymore, and he’s been able to consistently do more and more and more and more, and, and then what he did it, he’s still not at saturation, there’s still more room for it to grow. Although he’s bri-, he’s making a pile of cash. He’s doing very, very well with it. So what he’s done next is he started building out other areas. So not just Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But now he’s teaching all kinds of other you know, fighting styles, other sports, different things like that. And so he’s kind of going down the path of, instead of trying to turn his thing into something that will appeal to everyone. He’s now just creating more things for all these other markets, which he is a lot smarter than me like with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Do you do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? Personally?
Joshua Chin 42:44
I don’t, unfortunately.
Jeremiah Allen 42:45
Right? I mean, it’s probably pretty cool. But it would be come to you, and force you and convince you that you need to buy Brazilian Jiu Jitsu video.
Joshua Chin 42:55
That’s a tough claim. Yeah.
Jeremiah Allen 42:56
It would be hard because you don’t do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, like, yeah, you know, you, you might consider it maybe because it’s cool, but it’s gonna be so much harder to find to get you to buy Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is like, saying, Okay, well, now Allbirds has to appeal to everyone. Right?
Joshua Chin 43:15
Yeah.
Jeremiah Allen 43:15
When really there are probably other activities that you are interested in. If you like rock climbing, or whatever it is that you do? Well, that’s great. Let’s find a product that you want. It’s that whole product market fit question. Can you find it identify a market, figure out what their need is, and deliver a product or service that’s going to meet that need? And, yeah, everybody has a need for shoes. But I’m not an Allbirds kind of guy. Right? Like, I think they’re great, but they don’t look like they’d be comfortable. To me. I’m never gonna buy Allbirds, right. And it has nothing to do with how I feel about the company or their policies or the practices, I recognize that they’ve done a lot of, you know what a good and they probably make a good quality product. But I’m not going to buy it right, taking a mass market isn’t going to reach me. So you can be talking like I talk way too much. I should probably listen to you.
Joshua Chin 44:06
No, I love this. This is great. I think that’s a super unique, unique perspective that comes if I would say, you know, I value your perspective, way more than I do mine, because you come with 20 years of over plus years of experience in this space.
Jeremiah Allen 44:25
I appreciate your humility, but really, I’m really just like everybody else.
Joshua Chin 44:28
But it’s true. I mean, that the thing is, lots of brands go through the evolution of kind of a good example is we used to work with a ton of drop shipping clients. During the drop shipping boom. We don’t anymore, but we have seen lots of brands kind of lots of drop shipping businesses attempt to transform into a brand and even though a drop shipping business doesn’t really have a strong brand identity aside from get a cool, trendy fun looking product, right? Um, it still is a transformation in how they position themselves as a company as a brand, and how they sell. And the number of brands that actually made that transition that leap. Were, well, it’s less than, you’re less than less than 10. They’re, they’re still clients of ours today. And the rest of them basically went out of business. But the thing is that of those brands that actually made that leap, they are, well, they’re one of our best, their best clients, right? Today, they run amazing brands that are super high quality, super happy customers. Way, way different from what they used to be. And they’re doing extremely well, once you’ve made that leap. So on one hand, I’m seeing that, you know, there’s, there’s a survivorship bias where when you look at the brands that have succeeded in doing so, it’s incredible. But for those who fail, it’s a complete opposite of just destination. So it’s at risk of do we want to take the risk of complete decimation or something that that seems incredible?
Jeremiah Allen 46:22
Yeah. Well, and it’s, it’s interesting, because like, with drop shippers becoming brands, or I end up working with a lot of people who are on Amazon, that want to build out their own Shopify store, right? And it’s a different game, it really is like, I have no business running an Amazon store. I – it’s not, it’s not where my strength is. But I get these Amazon merchants who come to me and they’re like, Okay, well, what do we want? What do we do? We’re terrified of Amazon, right? And so they weren’t building our brand. And it’s a completely different game. There are a lot of questions that you have to answer along the way. And I assume that that’s what your drop shipping clients had to do is they had to answer questions about who they were going to be, how they were going to relate to people, what’s the appeal, who their market actually is, you know, things that they were already answering at some level when they were drop shipping. But when you’re building your brand, you’re trying to build like a relationship with people, a long term relationship, where you’re like, giving them things and fulfilling their lives and making emotional contributions to them, you know, they got to feel good in order to keep on using your stuff. And there are so many questions that have to be answered along the way. And it’s interesting that you bring up you know, survivorship bias. It’s, that’s true, it’s easy. It’s easy to look at those winners. And that’s what everybody always talks about, on podcasts and everything. It’s like, oh, here’s a success. It should be so easy, right? And so we watch it, we’re like, well, they don’t even seem like they’re that smart. How did they you know, but having that experience that you and I have gained by working kind of in a services capacity, where you see the companies who fail, you’re like, oh, wow, that’s why they failed. Oh, they didn’t have strong financials. Oh, they, you know, they didn’t have a good supply chain. Oh, that right? You see all the reasons. And there are so many questions you have to answer in a quest for eCommerce profits, in that you’ve got to you and it’s so hard. There’s so many things. When I first started my own eCommerce company that I purchased the biggest one, like, I know a ton about driving growth. But there are all the other questions I had to answer along the way. And they nearly killed me. Right. And it was, it’s hard. And man, anyhow. So you’re right to say that survivorship bias is a thing where we’re like, we see things and it just like, it becomes clear what should have been done. But sometimes there’s more lessons to be learned from all the failures. And so as people are going like, I would encourage your listeners that as they go along in their having failures, to let those be learning opportunities, and and really be stepping stones to success. And yeah, there does come a time where you’ve got to, you know, hang it up and say, No, I this isn’t working, I got to support my family, I’m gonna go back to get a job or whatever it is. But the reality is, is failure is a major educator, and can really help people along the way. And that’s how you end up with these stories that it’s like, wow, where did this company come from? They made $100 million overnight, right? When really, they’ve been working their guts out and not taking a paycheck for the last six years. Right? It’s hard.
Joshua Chin 49:33
Now to wrap things up, what is your one best advice? If you only have to choose what if you could only choose one for a younger Jeremiah? Say when you were 21 years old, fresh out of your missionary trip?
Jeremiah Allen 49:51
It I would tell myself, figure out what matters and doesn’t matter. Because most of it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. When financing falls through, it doesn’t matter. When the company implodes, it doesn’t matter when you lose your job, it doesn’t matter. Like none of those things matter. They just don’t matter. The number of things that actually matter in your life are so much, there’s so many, there’s so few compared to all of the things that don’t matter. And so what I would tell what I would tell 21 year old Jeremiah is, man, most of it doesn’t matter. And that doesn’t mean that you like, just check out from all of it. But you’ve got to have the perspective of what matters and what doesn’t matter. Because in the moment, everything seems like it matters. I got sued once, and it like was get consumed me, it was like this crazy, horrible thing, right? And I ended up settling it 18 months later for $2,000. Right. And so like all of this time, and energy and effort and stress, right, that I was subjected to, I didn’t know that it didn’t matter. And so if I had to instead, doubled down on the things that do matter, and yeah, I’m not saying ignore the other things, you’ve got to deal with the other things, right. But um, they don’t matter. And so if you’ll take some time, on a Sunday afternoon, out in nature, or in a place that brings you peace, or with God, or whatever you believe in, and like, figure out what really matters to you. And I’m telling you, like, those number of things fit on one hand, probably right? Figure out what those things are, that actually matter. and pursue those with all of your passion, and let the other things not matter and deal with them. Because you got to deal with, you gotta have a job, you gotta have a company, you gotta have all these things. But they then become secondary, and they don’t drain from you, they don’t suck the life out of you. Because they don’t matter. And so you don’t empower them to only the only things that actually that you acknowledge and allow to matter in your life are the things that can have power over you. And the other things can’t. So that’s what younger me needed to know is that most of it doesn’t matter. So, there you go.
Joshua Chin 52:09
It sounds like what a lot of people need to know. I think that’s a great reminder for me as well. I’m yeah, I’m learning so much. Just just chatting with you. Yeah, it’s a lot of just just wisdom that comes I would guess, experience and this time, and thought. So, one last question. One last one last question. I know, I did say the last one. But this one for sure. I promise. If you had a if you had a billboard and a bit on the biggest busiest highway in America, what would that billboard say?
Jeremiah Allen 52:49
Oh, my goodness.
Joshua Chin 52:51
I got this from a, from a Tim Ferriss podcast? I love this question because it kind of just gives us a glimpse into what most –
Jeremiah Allen 53:02
It would say give thanks. Give thanks. I think in our world today, a lot of what’s wrong comes from a lack of gratitude that we have. And I include myself in that accusation. The times that I get the most caught up in social upheaval in perceived injustices against me. Viruses, plagues, pandemics, right, all of the things around me the things that I want to try and, you know, murder me basically, or at least it feels like. When I remember that, if I’m just that there’s so much goodness that I do have in my life. And I’m not just talking about now that I’ve kind of arrived at, I don’t want to say I’m like at the top or anything like that, but I’m fine. My life is good. But all throughout my life, even in points when I had nothing, um, when I would stop and find the things that I could be grateful for, it was transformational for me. And so I think that if I could pass along a message to everybody on that busiest highway, I think I would put up the words give thanks, because they’re everybody, no matter who they are has something that they can be grateful for. And there’s power in that gratitude. That’s a lesson that I learned in Brazil is I worked with incredibly poor people, many times people who I don’t even want to try and explain it like the poorest people you’ve ever met. Right? And there were some of them who taught me that lesson powerfully. Is that even though they had they had nothing? I’m sorry, I’m trying to not get choked up here. Absolutely. Literally nothing. They found those things that gave them joy of getting a soccer ball and playing out in the road with their kid or things like that. And they just had this, this gratitude about them. That was unlikely for their circumstance. And they were some of the happiest people I’ve ever met. And so that would be the message I’ve tried to internalize that throughout my life is give thanks to whatever it is that you can thanks to right, God the universe or even just like nothing, just be grateful. Right? And, yeah, there you go. So, tell Tim, that’s that’s what I would say on my Billboard.
Joshua Chin 55:37
Thank you, Jeremiah. That was amazing. And if people listening are interested to connect with you, learn more about what would you do? Where should they go to connect with you?
Jeremiah Allen 55:50
They can send me a text at 801-870-0556. My email is Jeremiah, jeremiah@fatbullfrog.com. Those are two basic, best ways to get in touch with me.
Joshua Chin 56:05
Jeremiah, thank you so much for your time, appreciate you coming on the show. And have a good rest of your day.
Jeremiah Allen 56:11
It was good. See you later, man.
Outro 56:17
Thanks for listening to the eCommerce Profits Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get notified of future episodes.
