How to Gain Traction for eCommerce Success with Dr. Charles Livingston of Lifeboost Coffee

Dr. Charles Livingston is a Board Certified Chiropractic Physician, a serial entrepreneur, and the Founder and CEO of Lifeboost Coffee. Dr. Livingston’s passion for health and wellness inspired him to take a beverage that 50% of the population drinks every day and create the healthiest, cleanest, and tastiest version on the planet. From that, Lifeboost Coffee was born. In 2020, Lifeboost Coffee reached number 271 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the US, and it only continues to grow.

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

How Dr. Charles Livingston transitioned from practicing chiropractic to running multiple online businesses
The one thing that has given Dr. Livingston the most traction and results with his ecommerce businesses
What Dr. Livingston looks for in an ideal business partner
Why networking is critical for business success—and how to network if you’re an introvert
What inspired Dr. Livingston to create Lifeboost Coffee?
The core values that guide Dr. Livingston’s business decisions and company culture
Dr. Livingston talks about shiny object syndrome and why “a good business is boring”
Dr. Livingston shares his future plans for Lifeboost Coffee
Dr. Livingston’s recommended books, podcasts, and ecommerce brands

In this episode…

Building a business into a successful brand is a tough job that takes perseverance, dedication, and a whole lot of help. Yet despite the ups and downs, many entrepreneurs go on to build, grow, and even sell multiple businesses. What is the secret to their success?

Dr. Charles Livingston is one such entrepreneur who has built multiple online businesses. He first began his ecommerce journey after finishing chiropractic school, and his first brand, Fat Loss Factor, made $12 million in revenue in its first year. Since then, Dr. Livingston has gone on to sell over $100 million with his online businesses and ecommerce brands. So, what has given him the most traction and results with his business ventures?

Listen to this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast as host Joshua Chin interviews Dr. Charles Livingston, the Founder of Lifeboost Coffee, about his successful ecommerce journey. Together, they talk about how Dr. Livingston first got started, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and the core values that guide his business decisions. Dr. Livingston also shares the one thing that has brought him the most traction and results in his career: focus.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Special Mentions:

Books and Podcasts Mentioned:

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

Dr. Charles Livingston 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 in growing ecommerce brands profitably.

Joshua Chin 0:21

Hey guys, Josh Chin, here, I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, where we feature top experts in the e-commerce industry and we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes in growing a brand. This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you are a direct to consumer ecommerce brand that is ready for next level growth and to unlock the optimal customer lifetime value through email marketing Chronos is your company. We have helped hundreds of brands get over $70 million in return from email alone and our clients get an average of 3500 ROI, a 3500% ROI from efforts we’ve worked with brands like truly beauty, ally of skin and many more. For some reason, Charles beauty brands and apparel brands are just attracted to me it has nothing to do with my fashion sense as you can tell. But the next step is to email us at Sales@chronos.agency. You can go to Chronos.agency to learn more. And before introducing today’s guest, I just wanted to give a big thank you to Ezra Firestone and Blue Ribbon Mastermind for making this introduction go check out their website at SmartMarketer.com. Ezra and his team specializes in ecommerce education that helps your brand grow at every stage. And today’s guest is someone really special. Dr. Charles Livingston is a Board Certified Chiropractic Physician, a Certified Nutritionist and a Wellness Practitioner based in Indiana. Dr. Charles Livingston, aka Dr. Charles has a very strong passion for helping others become their best version of themselves and to be as healthy as possible, which has led him on a journey to take a beverage that 50% of the population drinks on a daily basis and make that the healthiest, cleanest, tastiest version on the planet. And from that Lifeboost Coffee was born. Lifeboost hit 271 on the Inc 5000 for the 5000 fastest growing companies in the US and it’s still growing. Aside from that his achievements include selling over $100 million online, we’ll get into into that in a little bit. He’s consulting with multiple seven eight figure companies. He’s had a number one ClickBank digital product called Fat Loss Factor, which had $12 million in revenue the first year. He co-founded a supplement company from scratch, took it to eight figures. And he’s spent the last 10 years doing online marketing, email marketing, and e-commerce creating multiple six, seven and even eight figure businesses. Dr. Charles is also an adoring husband, a loving father, a great friend with one of the brightest smells you’ve ever seen. Charles, welcome to the show.

Dr. Charles Livingston 3:11

Thanks, Josh. Appreciate you, man.

Joshua Chin 3:14

Awesome. Let’s get into it. I’m super interested in your journey to where you are today from being a Chiropractor to running multiple online businesses and ecom brands. How did that transition happen? What was going through your mind in that in that?

Dr. Charles Livingston 3:33

Yeah, you know what? That’s a great question. And it all started with a friend of mine, one of my best buds I’ve known since kindergarten. So we, you know, went to high school together, went to college together, I went off to Chiropractic school, he went he just started doing stuff online after that. And by the time I was out of Chiropractic school, he was already millionaire. And I was 100 grand in debt. And we grew up since kindergarten. So I was like, What did you do? So I’m like, holy crap, you know, I’m 100 grand in debt from school and you’re already millionaire. And so, you know, I followed his journey for another five years while I practice Chiropractic. And finally He’s like, dude, let me show you the ropes. You know, you’ll make more money, you’ll have less stress, you’ll be able to travel, you’ll be able to have a lifestyle instead of being, you know, stuck in a clinic, which is what I ultimately wanted. You know, I love Chiropractic. I loved helping people. But I did not want to be stuck in one place. I wanted to be able to travel and, you know, go to masterminds and things like that. And so he literally started me in customer service of software. At this point, I knew nothing about online. I knew nothing. I barely knew anything about computers. Then I was doing customer support helping people learn SEO and stuff through a software right. So my learning curve went like this. I literally had to just devour as much knowledge as I possibly could in a short time from And then just learn from trial and error. And eventually, you know, I caught on me and him partnered on a product, which was Fat Loss Factor, which was we It took us a, I don’t know, a couple years maybe. And we finally got it tweaked enough to where we hit number one on Clickbank which at that time was dominant digital platform for ebooks right now it’s obviously Kindle. But yeah, we hold that for two years, we drove like eight figures in revenue from that. And, you know, from there, the rest, you know, the rest is history, you know, I fell in love with it and fell in with marketing and, you know, gotten to a bunch of groups like, Ezra’s group and, you know, some other masterminds and just network and just create a bunch of amazing met a bunch of a bunch of amazing people and created some really true, you know, viable friendships through that as well.

Joshua Chin 5:54

That’s incredible. That’s amazing. And this, well, obviously, this isn’t your first rodeo, it’s not Lifeboost Coffee isn’t your first brand. And in your kind of, in your experience, growing multiple multiple businesses, obviously, eventually exiting them or transitioning from one to the other. What has been consistently the number one thing that gave you the most tractions traction and results in business? kind of looking back at what you’ve done.

Dr. Charles Livingston 6:29

The one? You know what, that’s a great question. And I would say the one thing that gave me the best results is focus. You know, the times when I look back, and I see them trying to do like, five or six different things at a time, I can get nothing to work because you’re just like treading water on everything. And then you feel like you never have time you feel stressed. You you it’s constantly on your mind that you got to be working on something, you know, working on this business, you got to be working on this, this business. And when you start online, you think that you can do everything because you can’t you can do a lot of stuff by yourself, you can run super lean online, the problem is that you spread your focus so thin that you don’t really move the needle on anything. So for me, that was like the number one needle mover. So each one of those businesses that like they grew, were the ones that I at that point in my life, I put a ton of focus on

Joshua Chin 7:26

when when you when you talk about focus, are you talking about focusing on one specific project at a time? Or is it kind of one thing in the business at a time? Or does it?

Dr. Charles Livingston 7:40

Yeah, it’s both. So one, one thing I would say is you need to figure out what your strength is my strength. I am a back end marketer. I am a master email marketer, like I poured my heart and soul into email from the beginning. And I’ve always done it and I absolutely love it. So for me, that’s my strength. I’m not you know, I you know, I do funnels and things like that, but I’m not the best copywriter, I can do copywriting I’m not, you know, the best copywriter. I’m not the guy who’s driving ads. I’m the guy that you give me the customer and you know, I will multiply that

Joshua Chin 8:22

that’s that’s beautiful. That’s music to my ears. Yeah, I love that I love I love the fact that you you put a such a heavy emphasis on email. I think a lot of brands just miss out on that, that option if you buy, you know, just just not paying enough attention to it. But I really agree with you that data that resonates a lot with me. I am someone who isn’t too great with numbers. My strength lies in building relationships and just looking at the big picture and thinking about what’s next. And that’s that’s a really define small piece of the business. What do you then do with everything else that that is required of building an eight figure brand? Do you find a partner do you spend a lot of time hiring training was that look like for you?

Dr. Charles Livingston 9:12

Yeah, so the other the other aspect for me is that I I work best partner with somebody, like some people are amazing by themselves. I have always found that whenever I’ve done a project when it was just me. I don’t I’m missing that that iron sharpens iron aspect, right that person who’s like constantly pushing me in that I don’t want to let down right? So I don’t I don’t know why I guess it’s just the way I’m wired that I just work better as you know, with a partner than I do. Like doing it all myself.

Joshua Chin 9:46

Gotcha. This is really interesting when when you when you look at a you know, working with a partner do you look at the strengths and traits that your potential partner might have compliments yours? Or is it more on the opportunity itself of looking at someone amazing that you look at first.

Dr. Charles Livingston 10:09

So I look, I definitely look at the person and what their strength is. And it needs to not be my strength. Like it was another person that was just like me, it would be a terrible port. Because we would both suck at driving traffic right? Or getting things lined up and finding that traffic person to drive the traffic. So I’m what would you call like a back end? Barker? So that’s i when i partner I partner with people who are like executioner’s and people who fast movers that are willing to work on that conversion rate and work on that sales funnel with me. So the weekend, you know, create that perfect situation. And so we can actually buy traffic, right? So that’s I yeah, so for me, I look for a front end person who has those characteristics.

Joshua Chin 11:07

Gotcha.

Dr. Charles Livingston 11:08

And it’s one of those things where I, it’s, you know, I’m kind of attracted to them. So they’re there, it was easy, they just kind of fell in my lap. Both of my partners have very similar personalities when it comes to that part, or a couple of them. Yeah. So

Joshua Chin 11:24

interesting. So do you attribute that success in finding the right partner to just that attraction factor of just being who you are, when you go to events and being online? And? Or is it an intentional search that matters more? For a partner.

Dr. Charles Livingston 11:49

They were not intentional. My first partner was my buddy who got me into online marketing. So I knew his personality. I’ve known him since kindergarten, I knew his how we thought and how he worked. And I’m very good at understanding that and like matching my strengths, you know, to cover the weaknesses and like, being able to take care of the stuff that they they don’t right that they’re, you know, their focus is over here working on this, and my focus is over here. And that so for me, yeah, my other partners I just met at events, honestly. That’s that now, like, I think those are some of the best partnerships is just, that’s why I think it’s super important that you’re always a part of a mastermind, like Ezra’s mastermind. Because there’s so many great people there and you never know if it’s them, or if they know somebody who will be like, Hey, you know, I got somebody you need to meet.

Joshua Chin 12:50

That that’s great advice. That’s great advice

Dr. Charles Livingston 12:53

out there. Right.

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