Colleen Taylor 16:46
You know, they, they would ask me to come down for, you know, a week at a time. And it started to become like, almost every month, they were like, Hey, come on down for a week, we’re having this meeting. We want you there. We you know, we’re meeting these people. And, frankly, I love the work. The work was fun. But I was like, Oh, you know, I really I leave my kids home. Every time I you know, my kids were younger. They were, I think they were nine and 11 at the time. And I just, I just felt like, I’m definitely not moving there. And this is not conducive to the home life that I envisioned for myself and my family. So I started to have these feelings of like, it’s not really working out, but I was in it. I was like, I’m gonna tough it out and see how I can make it work. And then they said, Hey, we want you to manage a project with this guy named Ezra Firestone. And I was like, Okay, cool. Ezra Firestone. So Ezra, and DigitalMarketer, back in 2013, created a product together called The Brown Box Formula. It was teaching people how to put a business online, right. I think it was Amazon. Mainly a dropshipping.
Joshua Chin 17:55
DropShipping. Yeah, that’s right.
Colleen Taylor 17:56
Right. So I said, great, you know, that, you know, and then I really got to dig in and got to know Ezra really well, I was like, you know, he was just always, you know, Ezra, he’s just the most fun guy, the kindest, most thoughtful person. And, you know, so I was having fun getting to know Ezra working on this Brown Box Formula. But there was this little voice in side saying, you know, you’re gonna, they’re gonna end up wanting you to come down there, like once a month, all the time. And I think they were sort of having the same feeling. Anyway, long story short, we mutually decided it just a DigitalMarketer and myself decide just wasn’t really going to work out because I couldn’t be there full time. And I feel like they were still in a place in their business where they really needed the someone who’s heading up all the projects, the project manager, they really needed that be in house. So we decided we’re going to part ways. And obviously, Ezra was finishing up his project there, and he was bombed. He’s like, oh, what am I gonna do? Like, what am I gonna do? I’m like, you’re gonna be fine. Like, I’m sure they have a great project manager there. The other person that I met while I was there, at DigitalMarketer, was Molly Pittman. And so those two people, yeah, as I said, pivotal now I’m working with both of them again. But yeah, so I got to meet Molly and she was just she was just coming off being an intern for DigitalMarketer just became a full time employee and I was just like, wow, this girl Molly, like I was her biggest cheerleader there with DigitalMarketer. thing, like, you know, you want to treat this girl right because she is just, she’s a superstar in the making. And this was in her early days, but I just knew it. I knew there was something special about Molly obviously knew there was something special about Ezra but for me, Colleen Taylor, working for DigitalMarketer in that capacity with all the travel at that time in my life just wasn’t right. So part Ways amicably, like, we’re still good, everybody’s, you know, we’re all still friends. And I went and started my own company. And this is in late 2013. And this company didn’t really have a name, it was just me as a sole proprietor, and I thought, I’m going to be a consultant, I’m going to help companies, you know, manage projects and build affiliate programs, you know, whatever they need done, I’m going to come in and do it, I’ll help hire, if you need to hire somebody for that position, if you want an in house person, but I’m going to think I’m better off, you know, having my own company, because it didn’t really work out with DigitalMarketer kind of made me feel like I got to go on my own and do my own thing. And so I did that for a couple years, it was a lot of fun. I met a ton of people again. And at some point, I forget the exact month, but it was in 2016, I think it was, I want to say it was like, February or March 2016. So about three years after I had started my own thing. I get this Facebook message from Ezra. And it said, Hey, remember me? And I was like, of course I remember you, you know, first. And he said, Well, you know, I’ve been building my business. And I could really use a project manager. And like, when I started to think about who would I want to manage projects for my company, he’s like, you’re the only person that came to mind. So would you come and man, you know, help me wrangle my team and, and you know, and make, make some calm down the chaos. He’s like, it’s everything’s running. So you know, Bill growing so fast. So I said, Sure. I said, but the thing is, I have my own company now. So I’ll come in as a consultant. And he was like, Oh, I really would like somebody full time. And I said, I’ll tell you what, that’s my specialty, I will come in, I’ll help wrangle everything and get everything in order. And then I will help you hire the perfect person to do this stuff. And little did I know that I was going to get in there and start wrangling and like, fall in love with everyone, including Ezra and everybody on the team that he already had. I was just like, this is the best team ever. Like everybody cares about everybody else. They’re building this crazy, awesome business. And they look at them, they’re still having fun, everybody is kind to each other. I was like, Where am I like, this is paradise. So again, little did I know that like I was the perfect person for that job. And so I but I would meet with Ezra every couple, you know, of every week or so and say, All right, here’s where we’re at, we got the drive all, you know, the organized, we got, you know, we have, at the time we were using, I think we’re using Basecamp or Asana at the time, but we got our projects all in the, you know, in our project management software. So I think we might be ready to start looking for a person. And he was like, you’re not allowed to leave. You know, you’re don’t like, you’re not allowed to leave, what do I have to do to get you? And I was kind of like, I’ve actually been thinking the same thing. Like I would really just love to because you know, your own business. It’s a it’s a grind, it’s a hustle man, you’re always always always hustling. And, you know, there’s no overtime and there’s no paid sick time. And there’s no you know, there’s no like employee benefits. It’s like you own your business. It is you 24 seven, which is fine. And I enjoyed it very much. And I learned a lot of things. But I also really missed having a team of people around me and he said, I will put you in a leadership position to help me run my team and help me grow my businesses. And so what do you say? And so we, we made it work? And here I am today? And you know, basically will? I mean, I can’t see myself anywhere else working for Ezra and you know, his family of companies? Yeah, I can’t see myself doing anything else.
Joshua Chin 24:02
That’s incredible. I just so much to uncover there in your story. So let’s take take us back to when you first began. What I caught in your story was that sense of curiosity, and I guess ambition in some shape or form that led you to just uncovering, like behind the scenes of what’s happening at the Internet startup where you’re a CSR at. And I don’t think a lot of people would actually do that. So I guess, do you think that that’s what your what what makes you you and what makes you successful? Is that curiosity and that just that drive to, to learn definitely
Colleen Taylor 24:45
like to figure out how stuff works. You know, and I think that I mean, I’m a COO now, but you know, starting out with a project manager and before that a CFO CSA CSR. You know, I think I think, you know, being inquisitive and wanting to kind of ask the questions, and dig a little deeper and look behind things. And, you know, really open it up. I think that, especially since the internet was really so new, certainly to me, I know the internet was around for a little while before that, but it was forums and like, it wasn’t really the World Wide Web until the 90s. And, you know, for me, I really was like, This is super interesting. I don’t know how I can make my art degree fit in here. But it’s like, I was born at a time, when you didn’t go to school, to learn internet marketing, you didn’t go to school to learn web design, it didn’t exist yet. So I was learning, you know, graphics and CAD drawings, and like, ink, pen and ink and learning how to use you know, those, those old tools. But I feel like the principles of design were are universal, they’re kind of embedded in, it doesn’t matter what the medium is, it could be digital, it could be paper, it could be whatever the principles of, you know, color and light and balance and design itself out there. You know, that’s like, that’s the basis of it all. And so I thought, well, I can just apply this design degree, to this internet thing, I get to figure out how I can do that. And the first thing that popped into my head was like, I’m seeing these websites all the time. Let me see, how do you make that? I don’t know, I have no idea how you make that look like that. I know, I can take a picture, you know, with my camera, and I can scan it in now I have a digital file. But how do I get this digital file to be part of this page? And how do I click on that link? Like, how does this all work? All every little piece of it was so intriguing to me that I was like, Well, you know, the first guy I could ask was the guy sitting next to me who was the, you know, he was the, the bootstrapped founder of this company. And clearly he was gonna know more than I did. So I just asked him and he was willing to share and, you know, it didn’t. Like I said, I kind of glazed over it real quick thing, you know, the company shut down. You know, businesses in those days, like the web startups in those days are a dime a dozen they started they, you know, they disappeared, you know, and this particular one, he, you know, they weren’t doing well. And so he was not paying me. But he was teaching me how to do this stuff. And one of the guys who work there with me, he laughed. He was like, Listen, he was he was basically their bookkeeper. And he one day he said, calling, they’re not going to pay you, I know what they have in their bank account. They’re not never going to pay you. So I’m leaving, I’ve suggest you do the same and go get a different job because they have no more money left. Meanwhile, the owner saying like, oh, we’re gonna get a chapter like he was trying to keep me there because I was helping keep his business alive. Yeah, for the few customers that came at least he had a, you know, someone to service them. And anyway, so he, this guy left. And I said, I appreciate the warning. This guy is teaching me something brand new. That I don’t know, I don’t know where else when I go find out how to do this. He’s teaching me every day after work, he’ll stay to three hours and teach me how to make a marquee. You know, remember the marquee tag? Yeah, you could make text scroll around like a mark, my mind was blown every day. And so I said, when I feel like I felt like the value exchange was just not cash for hours. It was like there was a different value exchange going on. I wanted to learn something he was willing to teach me. And I felt like I’m working on my shift. And that, to me was payment for what he was teaching me. That’s how I justified it in my head to stay without getting a paycheck for, I don’t know, five, six weeks, I couldn’t live that long without any money, right? So. So I left and I wanted to get another job. But I had this new tool in my brain. The problem was I did not have a computer. So I was like, you know, going stir crazy, like I have this new, like how do I and I couldn’t afford a computer. So I was like, I knew the universe was going to provide it somehow. And part of the thing was, I kept on you know, going to learn HTML from this guy. And one day, he said, You know, I said, I can’t I have to go get a job. So, you know, he was like, Alright, well, when I get money, I’ll give you a call. And they’ll definitely like, I’m good for it. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, okay, whatever. You know, and I just I didn’t want to drag it out. So I left Yeah, and Maybe like three weeks later, he did call me. He had probably owed me like $3,000, which then was like a million dollars jobs. I was like so much money.
Joshua Chin 30:10
Trust me, I understand that. Yeah. Right.
Colleen Taylor 30:13
So, so I said, he called me one day, he said, Hey, I have like, I forget was 500 bucks or 700 bucks. And he’s like, I know, it’s not all I owe you. But if you come out to the office, I will at least give you that like, just to show of good faith that I am good for it, whatever. So I was like, Alright, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to turn that down. So I went out to the office, and the doors were open. It was in like a strip mall. So I opened the doors went in there, nobody there. I was like, oh, maybe he went to get some coffee or something. So I just sat down and waited, and waited, waited for like two hours, dude, I was like, This is 700 bucks. I’m gonna get this money. I sat there for like, two hours. And finally, I was like, he’s not coming. And how ridiculous is that? That he would call me. And then not be there with my money. So I was I was really annoyed. I don’t get annoyed easily. But like, I was really annoyed. And so I wrote him a note. And I said, you know, I’m really bummed You made me come all the way out here. You know, it’s not about the money. It’s more like you just disrespected me like I have other things to do. I have another job that I stopped, you know. And so I said, I’m telling you what I’m going to do. I’m going to take this computer, this this tower, and this monitor. This is you know, and when you call me with that 700 bucks, I’ll bring it back to you. So I know. I brought that computer home, and I was in business. I and I and then I started, you know, going around town and asking people if they needed a website and explaining what a website was. But now I had the tool to create websites with so yeah, and he never called me. He never called me. So they will call back. Well, that was my and it was a it was a 386 computer. I don’t know if you know what that is either. But if
Joshua Chin 32:12
I have no idea what what is that?
Colleen Taylor 32:14
That’s 386. I mean, they had and I couldn’t tell you, it literally had probably like, I don’t know, like 500 megabytes of storage, but it was like it was old, old school. Look it up like Google at Google
Joshua Chin 32:31
looking for that.
Colleen Taylor 32:32
I don’t know what the and I had a 56k modem. Yeah. 50k modem. So you had to like have to fall in lines or give up your phone while you’re on the internet? Yep. And basically, yeah, that was how I started my, my, my internet journey.
Joshua Chin 32:49
That’s, that’s incredible. And and now I know you’re looking. So before we started the interview, you mentioned that you’re looking for a new project manager right now. And we’re I guess it?
Colleen Taylor 33:02
Yeah, she, we hired her.
Joshua Chin 33:03
Oh, you did? Okay.
Colleen Taylor 33:05
I shouldn’t say that. She was a customer, as a customer service agent from our company. And we believe in, if the person shows interest, and they show, you know, they can learn new things. And like they really what we like to elevate people from within the company. So she’s been the company for a couple years, part time for a while, then she went full time. And, you know, we needed a junior project manager and she was interested and a couple people were and I said, You know, I want to give her the opportunity to be the project manager.
Joshua Chin 33:46
So yeah, what set her apart? What set her apart. And I just want to say that you saw something special in Molly while she was just an intern at DigitalMarketer.com I don’t think a lot of people have that. That that that vision, that foresight. And I think that’s a that’s that’s a gift. That’s your genius. How did you identify this? This CSR? And how do you say you How do you know that she’s going to be a great project manager?
Colleen Taylor 34:15
I would say first and foremost is her and this is not to say anything, you know, negative about the other people who are interested, everyone on our team is amazing and lovely. But for me, it is personality and like how I how I interact with that person, how are they with other people? How do they take a tough day? You know, how do they treat other people when the chips are down when it’s a little you know, and when I say the chips are down, for example, this girl is in customer service. And as the COO or slash project manager, I attend the customer service calls every week. And I’m in the mix like I’m down in the you know, in the mix with these ladies and you know Sometimes it’s like super, super busy, and it’s rough. And, again, not to say anybody was negative, but this girl is like a bright light, so positive just all the time. She’s just like, super positive. And funny. And, you know, I just, she, she cares about people, you know, she has a lot of empathy for people who are, you know, especially customers that call in, you know, they have a particular issue with one of our products, or whatever she is, she just wraps everything in kindness. And you know, that to me, like I said, before we started, you know, this interview is fine, this is everything. And again, not to say that our other ladies aren’t super kind, they’re amazing. But she stood out, I think it’s, it’s a combination of her, her kindness, her, she has a little bit of like self deprecating humor, which I also have, like, I’m such a dummy, I forgot that, you know, like, not, you know, we’re not beating ourselves up. But it’s one thing. It’s, it’s humility, you have to be humble. When you’re doing, you know, when you’re working with projects, and you’re working with outside, you know, people who are outside of your company, you know, you want to stay humble, and there’s going to be people outside the company who might not have the same values as we have inside the company, in terms of how you treat people. And guess what you can’t let that person get to you, you got to like, you know, you got to know, I mean, obviously, if it turns into abuse, if someone on the outside some outside vendor is being abusive, verbally or whatever, we would just sever ties, but it’s really just a little rougher, a little tougher, if, for whatever reason, you got to be able to sort of absorb that and make it work for you and have a good attitude about it, always turn it into, you know, to have good outcome. And this girl just has that. she just has that.
Joshua Chin 36:56
That’s incredible. So what I’m hearing is that you’re prioritizing the softer elements of what makes it project manager successful, more so than the technical skills? Yep. For those gaps, then,
Colleen Taylor 37:12
well, you know, obviously, again, this, the person that you have come in, to be a project manager has to be detail oriented, they have to, you know, care about finishing projects, they have to care about checking off boxes, like if it’s a checklist, yeah, you know, have the SLP do it the right way, you know, no shortcuts, that kind of thing, you have to do that be able to do the job, right. But ultimately, you know, you can be the best project manager and I say that loosely, because I do feel like I’m the project manager, it’s people management, honestly, like it, people are a big part of project management, but you could be good at the technical stuff, you could be the best at the technical stuff. And, and lack in people skills, and you will not be as successful you will, you know, we’ve had in, in our companies we’ve had, you know, we’ve had people who are highly highly talented in project management or whatever their their particular role is, but just are a little, a little less socially intelligent. You know, one of my favorite authors is Daniel Goleman, he wrote a couple books on Social Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence. Those are my two like Bibles on emotional and social intelligence. And, you know, ultimately, if you don’t know how to treat people, you could be the best. And you’re going to be on an island all by yourself, nobody’s going to want to support that nobody’s going to teach that it does, or, you know, help you be successful. If you’re not if that kindness and, you know, isn’t coming back and back out, I had the very first time I ever spoke on the stage was with Eben. And I was so nervous, I didn’t know what to talk about. So he said, just like, just just keep it real, like talk about what matters to you. And it’s like, 10 minutes, it was just sort of like a Hey, let’s get my team up on stage 10 minutes, whatever. So that stuck with me, he said, keep it real. So I took the acronym, REAL, keep it real. And I was like, What can I? How can I because that was my way of like, tying it to a, you know, something short, something that I could just focus on it without, you know, getting all philosophical. So I said, Alright, keep it real. I can, I can do that. And I basically put attached one word to each of the letters in the word real. Recognize. So you want to recognize the talent on your team. You want to recognize you want to pay attention to what people are doing on your team, you want to elevate. That’s the E in real, you want to elevate. When you see somebody who is doing a great job. Don’t take credit for it. You want to elevate that person. Make sure people know like, now we have slack. And we have, we have a special channel in slack. It’s our general channel, where it’s just for, like shout outs, like, so and so did such a great job today, or, you know, our customer service manager will post like, you know, I was just going through the tickets, and I noticed how so and so answered this customer, and I thought it was a really good example of how you should interact when there’s maybe a, you know, not so perfect interaction going on, this is a great way to like turn it around, and show post that it’s about elevating people making them feel like, Hey, I’m doing a good job. So that’s our E. So recognize, elevate, a is bring your A game, like you want to be you you want to show people how it’s done. So you need to lead by that example, bring your A game, and then l the L in real, is be likable. And in our you know, in our company, I say be lovable. Like you want to be the person that everybody likes working with. And that’s sort of like that’s literally my philosophy for running a team keep it real. And that acronym sticks with me. Thank you, Eben Pagan for you know, and all he said was like, just keep it real. They’re all and and I sort of, because I was so nervous had to attach. I was like, Alright, I’m gonna just make it nice and concise. And this is how I can make it not scary. Make the little acronym. So yeah. So that’s kind of just that’s, that’s how I that’s how I tried to lead.
Joshua Chin 41:30
amazing, incredible. And so when when you came in to, to work with Ezra, I remember in one of one of the interviews that you did with with Ezra and promote an, I think it was a promotional webinar. That’s what I mentioned. Yeah, I believe so. And as you mentioned, that you came in and you brought it, well, I’m paraphrasing here, but you drop the company from feeling like we’re never caught up with things to a place where you’re somewhat in control of what’s happening, where organization creates so much space that it allows for companies grow. Now, how, what’s that first step that a company can take? To going from feeling like we’re never caught up to feeling in control?
Colleen Taylor 42:27
I would say, and the and this is literally, you know, I take these words directly from Ezra is take inventory. And what I mean by taking inventory is not like counting how many objects you have, you know, how many things in your store, taking inventory means spreading out on a tick, you know, this is obviously, you know, not in the physical sense, but like spreading out all the projects, you have all the things that are going on all the time, you know, you want to get it all so you can see it and you want to take inventory of it, you want to say, all right, well, we’ve got a product launch over here. And we have, you know, we want to make sure we’re doing, you know, annual reviews with all of our employees. And we also have, you know, and this is I’m talking Smart Marketer, but it also applied to BOOM! as well. You know, for example, how many, you know, how many product launches? Are we going to do this here, we didn’t know, at that time, we were like, however many we can handle without blowing up. And so by taking inventory, it meant like looking, looking historically and saying, alright, well, what did we do last year? And then like, Alright, do we want to do that again this year? Or do we want to do we want to kind of up our game a little bit, just getting it all mapped out. So you could see what you did, where things were part of that was also creating a space in Google Drive, where everybody knew where stuff was. So we created like a, you know, a storage structure inside the drive, where, okay, you’re the design team, all the design stuff goes in this folder, you know, and it got it was more, you know, broken out than that. But all the copy goes in this folder, all the whatever, making some type of organizational structure, even if it’s just like you’re a first pass, just like cleaned it up, so that people know where stuff is. So it’s not like, Oh, that’s on my hard drive that I that, you know, my my external hard drive that I left at my girlfriend’s house, or that’s, you know, whatever. And then that was part of taking inventory just like see what you got, what do you have going on? And then where can we put a process around that? So that we know for example, let’s do a product launch. Okay, what do we need for a product launch? And then it’s like, oh, well, we need all the emails. And so, you know, at the time, again, it’s Smart Marketer, Ruben he was our He is our lead copywriter at Smart Marketer and, you know, hey, Ruben, you write the emails for this thing. And you know, he knew what he was doing but he would still need a lot of you know, consulting with Ezra on, you know, the positioning and all that stuff. And it was like they were working real time for something that’s okay. We want to have this thing next week. So, Ruben write emails right up to the last minute, there was no system around it. And so it was like, Alright, well, let’s, you know, let’s create some documentation, some SLP. How do you do this? What are the steps that you take? How much time do you need to do them so that we could start putting them on a calendar, again, that everybody could see. So now we have a drive, everybody can see it. We have a calendar. Everyone can see it. Everyone in the company knows, oh, that’s that thing we’re trying to do next week, they could visually see it. And I think that was the beginnings of starting to, you know, starting to get people to feel like they weren’t in silos, you’re part of this bigger thing that’s going on. So yeah, that was the that was really the key, I would say. And then of course, we got some project management software going, we started with Asana, then we switched to Trello. But you know, we got a system, it doesn’t matter what you’re using, as long as everybody’s using the same thing. I remember when we were trying to decide what to use. I was like, Alright, well, what’s everyone using now? And at the time, somebody was using Google. Keep moving.
Joshua Chin 46:20
Okay. Yeah,
Colleen Taylor 46:22
using Evernote. We had people writing in notebooks. So we had like, literally pen and paper back of a napkin, we had like, then we had some people using just, you know, Google Calendar. So you see, like, and, and that’s great. Like, everybody was keeping track of their own little thing. But again, in their own silo, like I know what I’m doing. But they had no idea what anyone else was doing or where things were on the plate. There was no, there was, I shouldn’t say no. I mean, obviously, Ezra did pretty well without having a lot of these systems early on. And a lot of that was just her adrenaline, and genius and excitement. And everybody on the team was down for the cause. They were like, yes, like, Ezra, we believe in you, we want to be part of this. And that comes from his kindness. Like, if you’re a jerk, Excuse My French, but like, if you’re not a nice person, you’re not going to get people to come and help you and follow you in this chaos, and like you’re working 12 hour days, because Oh, I forgot to tell you, I need six emails, because we’re going to do this thing tomorrow, and it didn’t matter. Everyone wanted to participate and help be part of that exciting, win. And you’re only going to want to do that, especially in the early days, you’re only gonna want to do that if the leader is cool, if he’s, you know, genuine, and, you know, generous and, and kind, and understanding and all of those things. And that is what Ezra is, he’s all of those things, and then some, you know, so that’s really how he was able to build it to where he was able to build it, without a lot of systems in place. And then he brought me in, and because he and I are in alignment on how to run a company, which is kindness first, his philosophy is, there’s that like, the the three, the top three in his businesses are, it’s got to be fun. That’s number one. If it’s not fun, and fun, you know, Pinus, and all that stuff, if it’s not fun, if you’re not feeling good about it, what are you doing? So it’s, it’s got to be fun. It has to, you have to be putting good things out in the world. So your product can’t be just like some crazy, you know, dumb product or, or bad in any way, you know, it has to be adding value to the world. And the third thing is it has to make money. So of course has to make money. But he says that’s third, and that’s third for a very important reason. First, it’s got to be fun, and then you got to be putting good stuff out. And then you got to be making money in that order. And, you know, he really feels very strongly about that. And I can see, you know, I can see how he got as far as he got without the organization part. And based on that philosophy, he’s like, you know, they were just they were having fun. And yeah, because they knew they were putting out good products, and they were making money. So they it was it was it was working. But to scale. You got to have some foundation, you got to have some organization in there. And that’s what what he called me in to do in 2016.
Joshua Chin 49:28
And scale scale. That’s that’s the interesting part. So when you first came in, in 2016, what, where was the company? Was it 10 mil a year at that point in time?
Colleen Taylor 49:42
Smart Marketer. I didn’t come into BOOM! right away. So I don’t really I can’t really speak to the numbers at that time for BOOM!, but for Smart Marketer, it was, it was definitely not 10 million. It was probably a couple million. I’m not really sure exactly what the revenue was when I first started, but it was more about It was more about being not being sustainable for you know, in that in that current form, it was, it was like everyone was on adrenaline and excitement and, you know, they’re down, but like these are, you know, these are young career minded people who, you know, after a while, it’s like, you need to sleep or you need normal hours, you know, you want to have a raise, we have to be, we have to be growing at a pace that will keep up with, you know, giving people raises and making sure that they’re, you know, they’re coming up in their careers. So it was important to just, you know, to put the, to put things in place that would allow the company to grow bigger, so that those things could happen so that we could bring in more talent. And, you know, like someone like a Molly Pittman, who ended up coming, you know, coming from DigitalMarketer, now, she left DigitalMarketer, you know, a few years after I did, and then she obviously, she became a superstar at DigitalMarketer, and then went on to do a couple of her own things. And then, lo and behold, I found herself with Smart Marketer, because Smart Marketer, I feel like is a magnet for super awesome people. It’s just it.
Joshua Chin 51:19
I love that and going from, you know, a couple mil a year and being super disorganized. And I guess in your, in your words unsustainable to right now, a 40 mil a year, business as a group, what’s that? How do you? How do you feel about that, that growth? Because it’s from looking from outside in that that’s incredible for any business go 2, 3, 4 X in three years is insane. What’s, how do you feel about that? Or was it kind of expected or how?
Colleen Taylor 51:57
I think, I think with Ezra, there’s, he, he really believes in himself, he knows what he’s capable of. And so, um, you know, and I’m definitely not saying I’m just along for the ride, because I really do feel like I add a lot of value, and, you know, I’m able to help the team, you know, stay organized, and really keep the calendar on track and make all those things happen. But ultimately, it’s Ezra, and, you know, it’s really the whole leadership team, but but Ezra really stays, he stays in it, and he’s in the game of the everyday business, in terms of learning, you know, what’s working with marketing, because it’s really all the marketing, the marketing is, you know, the top of the funnel, he, he understands how to get more people in the door, and then we’ve just gotten better and better at the, you know, at the, at the rest of the funnel at the, you know, obviously top of the funnel, we’re able to bring tons of people in, we have an excellent, you know, Chief Marketing Officer who just gets it, he also gets the ethos of the brand, he understands the demographic which is, you know, not necessarily super easy for a man or a young man, to market to women of 50 and older, you know, like he just, but again, that comes from a lot of it comes from who they are as people at their core, they understand relationships, they understand, you know, women, because they care, you know, they really do care about providing the experience that That woman is, and they could do it with any other demographic too. But this you know, in BOOM!, it happens to be a woman over 50 and they understand how and they listen, especially to our customer, but our customer base is very vocal, they tell you what they like and what they don’t like, and, and we you know, move with that. And I think it was inevitable that it was going to get to be this size, because they just they continue to keep their ear to the ground and listen to what people what, what people want. And I say people but this particular group of people, they listen to what they want, they listen to what new products they want, and then we go about giving them what they want, giving them more of what they want, wrapped in this community of authentic and real caring about them. Like they know it’s not a gimmick. It’s not like we’re just saying we care about you but we really just want you to buy stuff from us and everything we do. The entire ethos of the brand is about creating a winning you know, pleasurable experience for the customer. From everything from the product. Obviously the product, very important. You know, the ingredients, the packaging, I mean, looked off. I’m like, right now I’m approving boxes for You know, this is all you know, it’s hemp paper, you know, we are really we’re very environmentally conscious. I’ll show this I think I can get away with showing this because this is product has been launched. This is our, if you can see it’s called Boom Bright. This is our mascara. So you know, we make cosmetics and skincare for women 50. And over, obviously anybody can use them but our we’re marketing to women 50 and older. Yeah, and this they were asking for a mascara, you don’t have any like eye products, I’d love to get that so we send a post purchase survey every time somebody buys something, we send them a survey What else would you like us to make? You know, what other products would you like to see boom, a top one for a long time was mascara. So we made it we find it took us a few years development, you know, it’s it’s very, it’s not only is it you know, made for this woman who’s over 50 of everything from the color we chose, it’s a very soft black versus like a real bold black, although some women like to, you know, go bolder with their eyes, but we thought we’re gonna start with this and everything down to the packaging, this is you can kind of probably see it’s very bendy. This is a sugar cane plastic. So it isn’t. Yeah, so it’s like more environmentally Nice. Yeah, the this little brush the wand and this all goes into our marketing. So like the little one that we you know, that we use is you know, the the materials that it’s made of our as eco conscious as we can possibly get with it. So being a functional brush, we also encourage people right on, we have a couple of content articles, where we talk about, you can actually send this wand into to a wildlife Rescue Center. Because when you know wildlife gets, if there’s an oil spill, or some you know, whatever it might be, they use these they clean these they sanitize these brushes, these little mascara brushes, and they brush the oil out of like a duck’s feathers or little animals for whatever they can recycle them. So it’s pretty good. And and we have a, we have a gal on our team who that’s her jam, like she is passionate and into all things environmental. So she finds the vendors that make the hemp paper and she finds the vegetable inks and she finds the sugar, you know, the sugar cane plastic, and she does your all search so that we can be true to our brand. And we can offer our customers more even more of a feel good experience, it’s like not only are you buying really, really good cosmetics because we make them with, you know, organic ingredients whenever possible natural ingredients. But we also are thinking about the packaging, we’re thinking about the you know, the bubble mailer that we mail them in is biodegradable, you know, all of those things, because it all adds up to sort of the profile or the ethos of your company. So like, like I was saying earlier, when we get we are obsessed with it. So we get into it. And now we are into every detail of it down to the ink that we print our little mailers on vegetable based ink. You know, we’re really think about all that stuff. So,
Joshua Chin 58:22
and this all stems from just customer feedback. And I love that idea. And I’m gonna, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna steal that idea and use it in some some of our brands as well. Right? Yeah, that that’s incredible, using a post purchase survey via email to close the loop on customer feedback and turning that into a product. That’s, that’s amazing. Well
Colleen Taylor 58:44
on that, like it’s a full post purchase flow. It’s, you know, the first email might be, you know, as a thank you email. Thanks so much your product will be shipped in whatever. And then there’s another one that comes a couple days later that said, that has the survey, like, Hey, you know, you purchased X on your last, you know, your last visit, and what other products could we make, and they fill out this survey and it populates into a Slack channel so that we can see it like every day, we can see what people are saying, and then we can, you know, we can parse that data. And obviously, what we did was we determined that mascara number one, the next product that we’re going to, you know, launch in a couple about two months now. That was the next highest thing on the list and down the line. You know, we are really listening to customers saying
Joshua Chin 59:31
that’s incredible. One, one final question. If you had a billboard on in the middle of a busy busy highway in America, what would you tell the world when we put on the Billboard if you had just one sentence he
Colleen Taylor 59:55
probably could boil it down to two words. Kindness Matters. Kindness Matters. Beautiful, be good to people.
Joshua Chin 1:00:06
Awesome. Colleen this has been a masterclass in, in, in people management in building a team in being doing good doing well or doing good. And content marketing. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.
Colleen Taylor 1:00:25
And Josh, it it was so much fun. Thank you for having me.
Joshua Chin 1:00:28
Yeah, yeah. And if people like to connect with you, I’m sure. There’s gonna be a ton of follow up questions. How could they get in touch with you?
Colleen Taylor 1:00:38
Well, I’m on Facebook. I’m Colleen Taylor. I’m on Instagram. I’m probably on LinkedIn. Although I don’t really look at that very often, I’m on Instagram ColleenTaylor760. You know, email me colleen@BOOMbyCindyJoseph. I’m very reachable.
Joshua Chin 1:00:53
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Colleen Taylor 1:00:56
You’re welcome. Thanks, Josh. Have a great day.
Outro 1:01:01
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.
