From Hustling to CEO: How to Systemize a Business for Growth With Sam Olawale of DigitalSuperSystems

Sam Olawale is the Founder of DigitalSuperSystems, a transformation-focused consulting agency specializing in scaling systems and helping people reach their full potential. As a keynote speaker, he focuses on talent development, B2B, ecommerce, business consulting, direct sales, branding, and digital marketing. Sam is also a board member of Meetgeek.ai, a meeting transcription software.

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

[3:13] Sam Olawale’s introduction to ecommerce and his move to Romania
[13:12] What are Sam’s guidelines for prosperity?
[17:03] How emerging CEOs can systemize their businesses
[22:55] Sam talks about his brand-building process and work ethic
[34:51] Building and testing products to scale a brand
[40:04] DigitalSuperSystem’s upcoming product developments and growth plans
[44:09] The importance of compelling content and how to advance your content creation

In this episode…

Are you stuck in the cycle of hustle culture? How can you transition from a struggling entrepreneur to a high-performing CEO?

Sam Olawale says that if you want to build an authentic business, you must implement systems for team collaboration and management, product development, and growth. But systems are only one component of business profitability, so it’s essential to create compelling content to promote your products and services. Context is indispensable to content creation and enhances effective storytelling. Sam offers free systems-building courses that he advertises through contextual content to maximize his business value.

Joshua Chin sits down with Sam Olawale, Founder of DigitalSuperSystems, in this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast to discuss building systems and creating content for strategic brand growth. Sam explains his brand-building process, how he builds and tests products to scale, and his criteria for prosperity.

Resources mentioned in this episode

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 has 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 ecommerce Industry and take an in depth look at their struggles and successes and growing ecommerce brands profitably.

Joshua Chin 0:18

What’s good people Josh Chin here I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts and entrepreneurs in the ecommerce Industry and we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes and growing a brand. Today’s episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency if you run a direct to consumer ecommerce brand that is ready to scale and achieve the next level of profits that you deserve and to double your customer customer lifetime value. Through retention email and SMS marketing Chronos is your company, we’ve helped hundreds of brands such as truly beauty Alliance skin, Udi, Dr. Livengood and many more scale profits with email and SMS, and amongst other services while getting an average of 3500% ROI through our efforts, the next step is to email us at sales@chronos.agency or go to chronos.agency to learn more. alright with that out of the way, today’s guests is a dear friend of mine. I know we haven’t spoken a ton, but when we do speak, we hit it off super well. His name is Sam Olawale big Sam, big Sam’s in the house. Now Sam is someone that I truly admire and respect for a number of reasons. Number one, he’s done incredibly well with his business while maintaining a level of humility and respect that not many people can really claim to have. Number two, he’s built his company around values and systems and has truly built incredible world class team that I admire and I hope to be able to build one day, hopefully very soon. Now Sam is originally from the UK is currently based in between Dubai and Romania. And he is a multi eight figure ecommerce entrepreneur. He’ll be doing nine figures in the next three to four years. He’s an untraditional entrepreneur, he’s done a number of things, and building and building his empire. And I believe that we just spoke about this, I believe that Sam will break the billion dollar mark in the next six, eight years or so. along the trajectory. Now we won’t be talking too much about the specific brand that he owns in ecommerce just because of certain trademark protection processes that he’s undergoing at the moment. But it is an incredible furniture brand that will blow your mind. And he is one of the most one of the most the most smartest, talented and hardworking individuals that I’ve come across in ecommerce. Sam, welcome to the show. That was a super long intro didn’t mean that to happen. Thank you. That was it. Um, let’s let’s begin, man, tell us your story. What brought you into ecommerce? And how do you end up in where you are today? And also in Romania?

Sam Olawale 3:13

Great question. Yeah, Romania, it all kind of ties together. Because basically, yeah, like you said, I live now between Romania and Dubai. But when I left Dubai, like, six years ago, everything was different. I was flat broke. I lost all my money in Dubai. It’s a long, long, long story. So I’ll keep you keep it short. So basically, I’d lost all my money in Dubai, and my girlfriend at the time, who is now basically my wife, we got two kids. And I was like, Look, I’m miserable. I’ve got an idea for a business. She was working a great job. She was only like 150 G’s a year and all this stuff. So she had a really good job or tax free. So she was doing really, really well. And I was like, Look, I’ve got this idea for a business, quit your job. Come with me. And I’ll make it work. And oh, thankfully. Yeah. And we said yes. This was like six years ago. This is like six years. Yeah. And she was like she was earning like, she was probably taken about 200 G’s a year after like bonuses and all this stuff. She’s doing really, really well.

Joshua Chin 4:16

And at that point, I know kids, yeah,

Sam Olawale 4:19

yeah. Okay, no kids. And I said, I’ve got this idea. But she believed in me more than I believed me at the time. So we packed up shop, moved to into my parents house and her parents asked between London and Romania, to spend more time with them. While we figured out this business, and for the first year and a half, two years, we launched an online business basically selling information, right, but not like typical how to get rich stuff. It was basically teaching people how to acquire a certain job. So we built that platform. He did well made six figures in those made by the 150 G’s in those two years. Most of it came in the towards the back end of those two years because he for the first year was a shitshow just figuring it out on everything. Then in the second year, we really took off. And that’s when I was okay. Okay, I can I can do this. So after that, then we decided to, to go into the usual stuff into ecommerce heavily drop shipping, Amazon, print on demand, you name it, we did it. And I did all of that for about eight months. Right, right. And you were playing well, it wasn’t like it was going bad, it was going well, but something didn’t sit right with me. I knew this wasn’t going to get me to where I want to be. And so one thing that helped me change my life in that two years from being flat broke, to having some modicum of success, is I listened to a lot of audiobooks a lot, like I at least listened to three books a week, like for the last like, five, six years, I’ve consume it, like incessantly. And there was a great book I read, called, How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, such a great book, and it just really breaks down what being rich and wealthy actually is. And what I did was realized myself, okay, let’s work backwards, rather than trying to work forwards and okay, I need to do this make some money. Let’s work backwards, where do you want to be. And once I realized where I wanted to be, I realized everything I was doing needed to stop dropshipping needed to stop printing on demand needs, got, we were selling stuff and everything needed to stop, right? And then my aim was, okay, if I want to build a company that does billions of dollars in revenue, the number one thing I need to do is own the product. If you don’t own your product, you have absolutely zero chance. Absolutely, obviously, there’s a few out there, but it’s an infinitesimal chance that you’ll ever reach lofty heights of wealth, if you don’t own your own means of production. So once I realize that, I’ve spent the last four years building an elite team of designers, engineers, marketers, that the whole shebang, a whole the whole team. Yep, on innovating products. And obviously, you know, our product, you know, our furniture brand and the innovation, we have the it’s crazy. And, and so yeah, so I really focus there. And now the fruits of the labor are paying off and that we’re really on a brilliant trajectory now, and yeah, everything. It’s a slow burn, though. Like I must admit to people, this isn’t something for the biggest trait you need to achieve. What we’ve done is patience. It takes time to develop products, it takes time to get certification, it takes time to optimize the manufacturing, it takes it takes so much. It’s a completely different mindset of entrepreneur. And it’s the thing that, especially now I advocate a lot for this is one I’ve got the YouTube channel, and I know we’ll talk about this later. Yeah, there’s a big chasm. There’s a big problem in our world, Josh, a huge problem in our world, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s that there’s too much emphasis on hustle culture, and on entrepreneurship, and not enough emphasis on being a top CEO. And building a business, they are two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. They have huge commonalities. But in our industry, bridging the gap from being an entrepreneur, and hustling away there to make money versus being a CEO. Right. And having a brilliant business. That’s where we think we can help many other people as well. And I’ll talk about this later. And I’m not making any money selling courses, not my thing. But we do believe that they can help other people because that’s the thing that that helps me break through realizing that there’s a big difference between these two things.

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