How NOT to Run an eCommerce Business With Greg Howlett, CEO of Cobblestone Trade

Greg Howlett is the CEO of Caring Sunshine, a natural health and wellness brand. He is also the CEO of Cobblestone Trade, where he actively partners with brand owners to manage their online retail operations and logistics needs.

Greg has 20-plus years in ecommerce and has generated over 100 million in revenue. He is a founder of multiple successful companies with multiple exits. He has a team of experts in online advertising, web development, conversions, branding, and most importantly, order fulfillment and scaling profitable ecommerce brands.

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

[3:30] Why Greg Howlett started Cobblestone Trade
[7:52] How to take an unplugged vacation even if you run a large business
[12:54] Greg talks about his company’s client screening process
[15:21] Staying agile and on top of the changes in ecommerce
[19:26] Common mistakes brands make on marketplaces
[21:45] What music taught Greg about ecommerce
[24:38] Lessons Greg learned running an ecommerce business into the ground

In this episode…

The ecommerce business landscape is dynamic. Staying on top of industry changes and evolving your business to keep up with trends comes at a high cost. Some ecommerce entrepreneurs make the #1 mistake you should avoid: chasing excitement over profit.

Making money is a boring endeavor. And according to today’s guest, Greg Howlett, if you seek excitement, you should do it outside the company. But the problem is many business owners are stuck in their businesses and can’t even get a week of unplugged vacation. If you want your business to run without you — and profitably — then find out how Greg did it.

In this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, Joshua Chin talks with the CEO of Cobblestone Trade, Greg Howlett. They discuss how to take an unplugged vacation even if you run a large business, staying agile and evolving your business, lessons Greg learned running an ecommerce business into the ground, and 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 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 the struggles and successes in growing ecommerce brands profitably.

Joshua Chin 0:21

Right Hey guys, 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 in growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. Now if you run a direct to consumer ecommerce brand is ready to scale and to double your customer lifetime value true retention marketing. Chronos is your company. We’ve helped hundreds of brands scale profits with email, SMS and mobile push marketing, while getting an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts, with water brands like Truly Beauty, Aly, skin, the Oodi, Dr. Livengood and many, many more. Now the next step is email us at Sales@Chronos.Agency. Or you can go to Chronos.Agency to learn more. Today’s guest is Before I introduce today’s guests, actually I just want to give a big thank you to Andrew Youderian at eCommerceFuel and go check out their website at eCommerceFuel.com. They run an incredible podcast and I’m a big fan of called eCommerceFuel Podcast is a exclusive private community of incredible ecommerce entrepreneurs, pre selected pre screened so that you have incredible, incredible crowd of very talented people in the same room. Go check them out at eCommerceFuel.com. Greg Howlett is today’s guest, Greg, thank you for being on the show. And before we were having a chat about your history and your kind of accolades of experience and and achievements, within ecommerce and outside of ecommerce, and you’ve been in the scene for a long time, your 20 Plus year veteran in ecommerce MSA and Greg has generated over 100 million in revenue. He is a founder of multiple successful companies with multiple exits. He knows the industry inside and out. Since I want to say 1999 Is that accurate to say? That’s right, 1999. And Greg is the CEO of CaringSunshine.com and Cobblestone Trade, where he actively partners with brand owners to manage their online retail operations. From Anton, his team are experts in online advertising, web dev Focus on conversions, branding, most importantly, order fulfillment, and scaling profitable ecommerce brands. So Greg, welcome to the show. Super excited to have you on.

Greg Howlett 2:58

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Joshua Chin 3:01

Greg, let’s talk a little bit about your background. How do you end up you know, after over 100 mil in revenue and selling multiple businesses, you’re back in the game with Cobblestone Trade? Why? Why do you start the business? And it’s not it’s not like a typical fulfillment company that that people see OUT out there in the space. Tell us about the business why you started and what makes it different?

Greg Howlett 3:30

It Well, there’s a couple of driving factors, I think the biggest factor is I just love doing this. Retirement for me, it sounds like drudgery isn’t perfect, I keep every every time I go into December, I say I’m gonna take off December, because that’s what normal people are supposed to do. Right? You’re supposed to take out time holidays. And so I get through maybe a few hours on December the first and say the heck with this going back to work. I love work. And that’s both a good thing and a bad thing, obviously, but I love it. I have no interest in hanging up my spurs in regards to that. The other thing that really drives me is my family and I have four children. And business has been really sort of a really big focus in our training of our children. So we’re using business to train our children. And so I sort of look at this as a classroom to some extent my children are very, very involved. They’re from high school on up to their early 20s. And, and so that’s another thing that keeps me in business is that I want to set a good example and teach my kids so hopefully there’ll be entrepreneurs down the road as well.

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