Ep 189: The Evolution From 6 to 8 Figures as An eCommerce Brand with Brett Curry

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

How would you like to go from six figures to eight figures as an ecommerce business owner? Wow, Brett Curry and I just recorded an absolutely amazing podcast episode. This is so value packed. Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast and today I am speaking with Brett Curry who is the CEO of OMG commerce, which is a digital marketing agency, Google premier partner, Amazon Ad partner as well.

And Brett is the host of two leading ecommerce business podcasts which we talk about Spicy Curry and Ecommerce Evolution which highlights what's new in ecommerce and he and his team he's got an award winning team that they have built. They manage Google Ads, YouTube, and Amazon ad campaigns for growing ecommerce brands usually in the seven to eight figures now they've worked with impressive brands like Native, Boom by Cindy Joseph, Monin, Organifi, Madison Reed and so many more.

He's a frequent speaker on ecommerce in on industry stages like Traffic Conversion Summit, Social Media Marketing World, Seller Con, IRCE and more. There's it's such a valuable episode, Brett and I were excited to speak to each other enthused about the topics and discussions where we talk about how to actually take an Amazon FBA business to selling off Amazon and building a brand of Amazon and what goes into the evolution of building a brand. From around the five six figure range up to the eight figure range. And beyond even to the nine figures, we'll talk about some things that you should have in place before moving your brand off Amazon that can help you set yourself up for success, which is pretty critical, obviously.

Then we talk about which platforms are better off to market on based on your ecommerce business, based on selling products online and user intent as well. And what that even means then we move into talking about how to think about going from selling a product or just an ecommerce business, which can be the five or six figure range to serving your customers that community which is getting you to the seven, eight and even nine figure range and how that you can shape your ecommerce business into an actual brand that sell more products that actually help more people.

Lastly, we sort of talked about some mindset around ecommerce businesses and marketing and why you should flip your thinking and move towards a Race to the Top rather than what everybody is in. Usually in E commerce is a race to the bottom, and how a Race to the Top can actually help everyone, even the customers, the business and the world. So there's so much value in Episode you're absolutely going to love it. Also, this episode is not the only way that I can help you for free. We do have some awesome free resources on buying online businesses.com forward slash free resources that can help you buy businesses and scale him as well. So check that out.

Let's dive in and have a chat with Brett Do you want to build or grow your content website niche website builders have helped hundreds of people to take their content websites from a few $100 per month to over 10s of 1000s of dollars per month with crafted content creation buying age domains and link building strategies. These strategies have helped people increase their Traffic Authority, monthly earnings and their website valuation to head a nichewebsite.builders/BOB/ to get 10% of any link building or 10% more from their content creation services. That's nichewebsite.builders/BOB/. I'll put a link in the description too.

Brett, hello! Welcome to the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And thanks for coming on.

Brett Curry (3:37)

Hey, Jaryd, how you doing, man? Thanks for having me on and really excited to be here.

Jaryd Krause (3:41)

Foremost, I want to give you a public congratulations for all that you've done telling me about the team, the awards that you've won, and just some of the case studies in the people you've worked with really, really cool here on this podcast where we're helping people to buy businesses, and then scale them. There is a portion of people wanting to buy ecommerce businesses and it's ever popular and has been the last two years with the likes of threes, EO and people jumping into the m&a space buying a lot of FBA businesses I have worked and helped some brands, I'd say start a brands I guess more econ in that.

I mean, it depends on how you want to categorize it go from Amazon to of Amazon because they realize they think they have a business but they don't own the business. Amazon really owns them. So that's a tricky period. What are some of the things that you have seen that have worked in help people to transition from Amazon to off Amazon and have a viable sales channel that they have far more control over?

Brett Curry (4:44)

Yeah, it's a great question. So I want to dive into this. I do want to kind of give this caveat or this additional thought first and I know you're thinking this other people are thinking this, once you can diversify off Amazon. So if you're, say 50% of your ecommerce revenue is from Amazon and 50% is from your own.com, you're going to be much more valuable as a company. So and I know that's the goal, right? You're buying a business, you're building it for three to five years, and you’re selling it for a higher multiple.

And so diversifying off Amazon is critical for that. And, but it can be tricky, right? So we've done, we've helped kind of both ways, we've helped brands who are not on Amazon, get on Amazon. And then we've helped brands that are mostly an Amazon brand. First, we've helped them try to diversify off Amazon, it's actually quite a bit easier to build a brand if you're good at building a brand direct to consumer. And then you get this brand equity built up. And then you launch on Amazon, it's like you're off to the races immediate lift and sales. Quick example there. I don't know if you've heard of a boom by Cindy Joseph, Jaryd with their cosmetic brand skincare brand for women over the age of 50, primarily.

And so as a fire some good friend of mine, we've run all his Google and Amazon or Google and YouTube traffic for about six years, seven years, maybe we just helped him launch on Amazon. So they have this great brand built, they're driving traffic on YouTube and on Facebook and stuff. We built out their brand presence on Amazon, and quickly went from like zero to 5 million a year in sales on Amazon, just because it's so much brand equity. And we deployed everything like we ran Amazon ads, we did all the stuff we needed to do on Amazon.

But it was easy to scale. A couple of interesting things there one, they have the margins to do that, right, they have the margins built in, where they can invest in top of funnel Facebook and invest in top of funnel YouTube and go out and drive new customers. We've ran into a few other brands that were kind of built for Amazon, right, there have been some snack companies, we've worked with a few other brands that the margins are pretty thin, right? Like they're there, the amount they can invest in getting a new customer is like 20 bucks or something, which that can work. If the only method you want to use it for your business as like Amazon ads, right? Because you can run Amazon, Pay Per Click ads and get new conversions and new customers for pretty inexpensively.

But if you want to drive Facebook and YouTube traffic to build a brand, you need to spend like 40 5080 bucks to drive a new customer to really do that, predictably and scalable. So that's if you're looking to buy a business, and it's primarily an Amazon business. I want to make sure hey, do you have good margins there? And is it if you maybe don't make a ton on that first purchases are good repeat, purchase, sequence that that type of thing. And so for helping take someone off Amazon, really the math has to work first.

But then we're looking at things like, that the same way people shop on Amazon is the way people shop on Google to for the most part, right? Both of those are Search Driven, right? If you're buying on Amazon, finding a product you're searching, you do the same on Google. So we can often run Google search traffic, Google Shopping ads, and things like that. And probably that's kind of the first place we start. But then also YouTube. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Jaryd Krause (8:11)

And probably even more. So just thinking about the intense like, I'm very big on the intent of the search. People are going to Google for answers and products. When people aren't really on Amazon going for answers. They're just going straight up for products. So the intent is probably higher. And I guess that's why they they've become so good at having these ecommerce businesses. And I'm not really calling them brands yet, because I want to talk about the difference between a brand and an E commerce business and what different stages is I'm really, really interested about that. Because I think it can be super valuable for everybody.

Never Amazon really smart, really good at keeping people in Amazon and on Amazon and making sure their business stays within Amazon even to a point where people will pay for Google ads to send people back to the Amazon store.

Brett Curry (9:00)

Yeah, we do that a lot. Actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, right? Yeah. It's super interesting. And yeah, and it's always it's, I remember, it really surprised me when I first saw it. But then I was like, Well, no, it actually makes sense where there millions of searches a month, even for smaller categories.

So we had a client who sews bedding on Amazon, but there are millions of people a month that search for various bedding terms like sheet, King size sheet, Amazon, but they're searching on Google, right? So for a lot of people that the internet just begins on Google. And so that's where people search. So we do a lot of that we do a lot of running Google Ads back to Amazon, which I guess are interesting.

Jaryd Krause (9:40)

I guess we should touch on that because my thinking is that you could be cannibalizing your business by not having the right or selling your products off Amazon and getting a higher profit margin if people are just to say mattress, posturepedic mattress and Amazon the key A posturepedic magic mattress Amazon, obviously direct them to Amazon with that.

But if you had posturepedic mattress, you'd be crazy to send them to Amazon, right? When you could be having a higher profit margin and building a brand of Amazon to for it to become a viable sales channel. Am I in the right? Am I thinking correctly here?

Brett Curry (10:20)

For the most part? I would say yes, I totally agree with you. I would rather keep if someone has clearly identified that they're an Amazon shopper that go ahead and send them to Amazon, right? Because we know there's a lot of people out there right like my in laws, my dad, like they want to buy on Amazon, because they have their account there. They have free shipping that don't trust other websites or whatnot.

Yeah, but there's a there's a lot of other people, especially this, this really accelerate during the pandemic were like, Hey, we trust some of the brands, we've purchased products from other brands that are not Amazon, and we had a good experience. And so we like it. So I do like that kind of initial bifurcation or separation where if someone identifies Amazon, they use or searching for it in their in their query, yes. Or the Amazon. If it's more of a non-brand category specific or product specific. So posturepedic mattress, yeah, I want to send to the.com. Now, what you couldn't do what you could, and we do have clients to do this as well.

So inside Google ads, you can, if you bid on a keyword like posturepedic mattress as an example, you your ad can only show up one time for that search to the same domain. But you could actually run an ad to Amazon and to your own.com for the same keyword. And so it might be worth testing. Right. So maybe it makes sense that you're pushing most of your budget to your own.com. For queries that don't include Amazon, maybe you're testing Amazon a little bit too, because there again, some sometimes there are people that are like, oh, yeah, I want to buy this on Amazon, but they didn't put Amazon in the query. And so it's not bad to do both. But for the most part, I do like that separation. Yeah.

Jaryd Krause (11:54)

Yeah. Cool. You mentioned the math, right, the math has to work getting off Amazon. And that's definitely the tricky part, when we have not the highest or meet our cost per acquisition is pretty good on Amazon, and then off Amazon would probably do we need to be spending more for testing at the start when we're trying to get off Amazon and just going for Google traffic.

Brett Curry (12:16)

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So a lot of people let people complain about that, man, I'm given Amazon 15% as a commission, and again, FBA fees, and I got advertising fees and stuff. But you're going to have expenses when you drive a new customer off Amazon, too, right? So you're saving that commission.

But the reason Amazon charges that commission, because they got built in traffic, so when you don't have built in traffic, you're going to be paying that to Google or to Facebook or someone else for the most part. So, there's, there's a few things to consider there. I want to I want to make sure that I've got good margins built in, and I'm sorry, Jaryd, I actually lost my train of thought, what was the specific question?

Jaryd Krause (12:59)

It was mostly around? Like, do we need to consider having a higher cost per acquisition when we're going?

Brett Curry (13:07)

Yeah, and testing? Yes, yes. So both in the early stages, we want to have a higher cost per acquisition. So maybe, if you're really comfortable in that 20 to 30 range, be willing to experiment in the 40 to $50 range, right? Because a couple of things are going to happen. Whether you're running Google search, or YouTube or Facebook, you're going to see that conversion that that that cost per conversion, or that that CAC, that customer acquisition cost and platform, but that's not going to be the total picture, right?

That those ads are also going to result in organic traffic and other things. We see this all the time, where somebody's investing in, in fact, I was talking to it was another mattress, can we work, we do work with companies outside of the mattress industry, but actually a very small part of who I work with is just another matches example, where this guy was telling me he's like, hey, we're running Facebook, it's working good. But sometimes we're like, man, it's so expensive. Shut it off for a while I literally let's cut in 50 50% of our spin down or whatever. Or yeah, he said one time we had a mistake. And, and Facebook was shut down. And it's like, well, nobody's buying, right? No, he's buying from organic. Nobody's buying direct, right? So it just shut the whole thing down. So they're their metrics you see in platform of CPA and cactus story, right? Its driving business, a halo effect is driving business elsewhere. So be willing to spend more than what you think you're comfortable with, because there will be a halo effect.

There'll be more sales generating what you can see. But then yeah, you're going to have to test an experiment because the thing that an Amazon business becomes kind of addicted to or used to be ultra-high conversion rates, right? So what happens on Amazon? I've got full trust in Amazon. I got full trust that if I buy this product, and I hate it, I can return it no problem. I'm going to get it really fast. Like they're just full trust. Right? So times the conversion rate on a product detail page on Amazon is like 10%.

We have some clients where it's like 20 or 25%. That's mind bogglingly huge, right? Because the average Yeah, yeah. Because the average for E commerce is like one to 3%. So, if you're going like you're used to 10% conversion rate on Amazon, now you're building a Shopify store and trying to get traffic. Even if you're really good. It's probably like 3% to begin with. So you're getting used to those things, too. You can build a massive brand really successful business off Amazon, and I think you should, but the math is different.

Jaryd Krause (15:35)

Yeah, I think people need this, like, what we were saying before is like the intent of the traffic so high, anytime you're going to Amazon, you're looking for something to buy like you have, you're ready to spend money coming back to like the Facebook ads, like Okay, maybe we'll turn the Facebook ads down a little bit. And then the example of Oh, wow, like we there was a bit of an error, some ads may have got shut down or whatever.

And there's no, no sales from anywhere I think people forget, and I've seen this with marketing campaigns that we've run the global effects of the web where people might see, alright, this is on Facebook. I do I like the idea, but I'm going to go and search them on Google. And they go to Google, and then they get on your email list. And then they see a sale in seven days, or 10 days or whatever, whatever it is, and then they purchase, but they didn't buy from Facebook, but the money was spent there. So there's no cost per acquisition metrics that you can get from Facebook.

Brett Curry (16:34)

And I think people forget about that to 100% agree. And it also happens on Amazon. Right. So I'll give you a quick example we have a haircare brand we work with and that they're a big spender on YouTube. So they spend three or 4000 a month on YouTube, private same on Facebook. And so there was a period of time right after iOS 14 when traffic was just all messed up. And they were like, we’re shutting, we're shutting down top of funnel ads, right. And it wasn't forever, but they shut down as they were kind of making sure that they're tracking in place, they were coming up with solutions and things like that.

Well, we're also managing their Amazon business. And we could track brand searches to a certain degree on Amazon. And over the course of the next several weeks, branded traffic got cut in half. Because they cut off, they cut off YouTube and Facebook and so that they've brought it back or they're just trying to get tracking figured and they're brought back was fine. But yeah, even on YouTube, right, I'm just sorry, even on Amazon, where you're running these top of funnel efforts. And then the next the next activity that someone's going to take is they're going to search for on Google, or they're going to search for on Amazon. And that's how they're going to, find them and ultimately purchase that product.

Jaryd Krause (17:41)

It's funny, I think back to one of my previous marketing, marketing mentors, he used to always have every time we'd have a chat, not every time but quite often when we have a chat, he would, he would mention that, like, just keep spending the money on the marketing, just keep that keep money, they're rolling into the account and spending money on the marketing. Because every two to three weeks, I get somebody call me up and like, hey, like his name's leaves, like, Liam, my, I'm not making much more money anymore.

Like, I don't know what's going on. And first thing you'd ask him is like, ask them is like what, how much are you spending on your ads? Like, ah, sort of decreased that a little bit. Facebook was improved Friday in the results. But like, it's the global thing. I want to segue into thinking about people going off Amazon and searching on Google and likewise and coming full circle on how do we get our brand or ecommerce business off Amazon to another sales channel outside of it for our own brand, when you are setting that up? Like the CPA may cost a little bit more with traffic generation from Google ads to your own store.

But are you having other things set up in place like making sure you're capturing emails, putting him through a marketing campaign upsells down sells through the add to cart to make sure that you can try your best to make up for the higher costs of acquisition before Yeah, totally do that stuff.

Brett Curry (19:09)

Yeah, totally. So we, in kind of the early days of our agency, we were all mainly all Google traffic, right like organic Google paid Google YouTube. We don't do any organic Google anymore. Then we added our Amazon side of the business now we're like full brand management on Amazon, Amazon ads and everything. But one of the and then we added email marketing as well, because we for this very reason we found that, hey, we can drive a ton of traffic from YouTube.

And it's pretty low cost traffic right like dollar a click $2 a click whatever is pretty cheap to get someone there from YouTube, but they're often early in their shopping journey. So if we can provide a pop up that's either fun or funny or cool or just useful, and we can capture that email address. Now we can get someone on a drip, kind of a welcome sequence or indoctrination sequence we've called at times so getting the email flow set up grabbing SMS text as well if we can, and then building out a really robust remarketing program as well right where it's once you get that visitor now to remarket to that visitor on Facebook or on YouTube or even through Google is pretty affordable. So want to get that built out, as well.

Jaryd Krause (20:34)

I love email, a lot of email marketing, and I still believe it's so undervalued by so many, not just brands, but businesses.

Brett Curry (20:42)

It is yeah, and we know some brands that, like 40% of their revenue, email touches, right? And as you can't give, like, necessarily 40% credit to email because without Facebook and YouTube and top funnel efforts, you wouldn't you would have had this week, but YouTube or I mean, emails often what closes the deal, right? And so it's like, super, super valuable, but I agree with you. It's often undervalued just from like an approach standpoint, but also in the in a structure.

And actually, I just saw it with a huge brand. We work with big brand, spending multiple, seven figures a month on ads, they don't send out emails very often at all, but when they do, it's like, sales spike, and we're like, guys, hey, just an idea here. What if we, like emailed every week? What if we emailed a couple times a week? It's we're actually we're actually working on a plan there now, but yeah, it's fine. It's just going to get new people. Yeah, well, okay. We can close more new people with email.

Jaryd Krause (21:37)

Just if you're spending multiple, seven figures, why don't you just put at least $1 million into somebody building your good marketing campaign? I'm sure you get amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So talking about remarketing ad budget wise, obviously, it's going to be far better to have them locked into the ecosystem, I guess, via email, maybe following you on different socials and stuff like that.

So that relationship can get built, what sort of ad budget are you looking at? Like in generating new traffic to the site, percentage wise, and then what percentage? For remarketing, I guess?

Brett Curry (22:13)

Yeah, so this, this does vary. And I can kind of give you some examples. But often we're wanting to spend like 80% of our ad budget driving new people, to the site and then 20%, on remarketing could be 60/40. Could be 70/30. But the most common is about 80/20. I think a few exceptions are, we like to kind of put businesses into two main categories. And there's always overlap, but demand capture and demand generation. So a demand capture product would be like, it's something you only buy when you get a need and used and then you're searching for it, right? Where demand capture is like no, I'm not looking for it didn't even know it existed. But now that I see it, it's awesome.

So a couple examples, I think auto parts are a pretty good example of demand capture, like brakes or mufflers like, nobody's going to see an ad and be like what I do want to upgrade my brake pads, that's a good idea. So I'm going to go search for it and buy it, we’ll probably go to the mechanic. But anyway, if I buy enough, I'm going to do yourself from a search word on limited by it. Or there could be other products like, boom by Cindy Joseph was in this category. It's kind of a cosmetic or makeup brand for women over the age of 50. And so they're all about pro age, like not anti-age, but embrace where you are, look your best, but embrace where you are in your life.

And so nobody's searching for pro age cosmetics, right? So we needed to show someone the message of here's why you're powerful at this stage of your life. And you don't need to look like you're 20 you are now but just like your best toy, that was more of it, that's more of a demand generation. So depending on which of those two categories you fall into, that might shape your budget a little bit more. So like with demand generation, maybe I do have to invest a little bit more in remarketing because that that YouTube ad or whatever, it's like a novel idea.

It's like, oh, that's a new concept. Okay, I'm going to manage to see it a few times. Whereas if it's something like brake pads, and you're leaning into search and shopping, or Amazon ads, it's kind of like, yeah, that's a good price. I'll just buy it, so it does kind of depend there. But that those are some kind of rules of thumb.

Jaryd Krause (24:27)

And it's that sort of brings up another question. And thanks for that. That's cool, a brand customer journey before they're ready to buy. How much emphasis do you put on the journey when you're setting up the campaigns?

Obviously, that like somebody's got the need, they're going to purchase within what I know maybe seven days as an example versus where do you where do you push people to that just wanting say something that's pro age and they might be just wanting to test the waters and then maybe three months down the track they want to put Just from you, how does how do those sorts of campaigns differ?

Brett Curry (25:03) Yeah, so I was always to think about, hey, what stages someone in when they're shopping, if they're if they're aware they have a problem, but they're not aware that any solution exists. And that's going to shape the message if they're aware of their kind of going back to Eugene Schwartz on who ever read his book breakthrough advertising. But if they're aware of a problem, they're aware of a solution to but not aware of our solution that's going to shape the way I say things, if they're aware of like my competitors, but not aware of me, and it's going to shape things a little bit, if they've been to my website, they're aware of all of it, that's going to shape my message a little bit.

But usually, what we like to do is I like to build out that bottom of funnel first meaning I want to get good solid branded search campaigns. So if someone is searching for me by name, then I want to be able to I want to show up for that both as a brand defense to keep competitors at bay. But also you just get a lot of data. If you're running branded ads. If you don't run branded ads, like you don't get all the data you need from Google Analytics from like a keyword perspective or from Search Console anymore. So I like to run those brand campaigns to get search for like category searches and Google Shopping setup.

Because, again, just like we talked about before, if someone sees our ad on Facebook, on YouTube, wherever, and then it'll buy right away one of their next opportunities, one of their next activities are going to be a search for it. Then I'd like to set up remarketing campaigns. So site visitors is kind of the all site visitor that's kind of the first step. But then people that view a product page, people that add to cart, but don't purchase like just kind of segment those and then really focus on those people like the first three days after that action happens, right?

If you're remarketing to someone two weeks, three weeks, a month after they went to your site, you get some but not as much like I really want to focus on those first three days for the most part, because they call that that remarketing? Yeah, what's up?

Jaryd Krause (26:53)

The ass because they get colder, like as long Unilever is back, right?

Brett Curry (26:58)

Yeah, they get colder. So really what we're doing, like I don't mind remarketing to someone if it's been like 30 days since they've been to the site, but I want to bid less, I want to pay less whatever, like it's just, it's not going to convert as highly. And so I want to I want to structure that differently. Maybe have those people in a different ad group or different campaign or whatever, because I want to spend less, I want to bid less because they're not going to convert as well.

So then once I have that built out and you're going to have slightly different messaging, right, if someone's been to the site, and they haven't purchased, my remarketing YouTube ads going to be different, right? Maybe I just lean into just testimonials, right? Where people are just like, hey, I was skeptical before I saw this mattress topper but man, I'm 30 days in, and I'm getting the best sleep of my life. And what we got the we're leaning into testimonials.

So those ads are going to be a little different from if I'm running top of funnel, so I build out the bottom of funnel first and then I start looking at, Okay, now let's run, some mid funnel, upper funnel, upper funnel campaigns for people that are maybe not aware of us at all right? Because I know I'm going to close more once I have that solid bottom of funnel structure. But also think about Yeah, get your email, opt in email campaigns get those built before you really go crazy on top of.

Jaryd Krause (28:16)

Funnel Yeah, cool, cool want to bring up the evolution of an E commerce business into a brand. Because that's very interesting. I think a lot of people that maybe have an E commerce business and they're doing okay, they might be making two to $5,000 a month and they want to go Alright, let's get this thing to, seven figures there's get to 100k a month and, and then go from the seven to the eight figures, which is I know, that's where you play, but I'm sure that you would know a lot about the evolution of this from five to 60 Gerbrand How does somebody go from like, or what is the evolution of a brand or an E commerce business into a brand?

And what does that sort of look like? And what are some of the milestones people should be looking to achieve and some of the things this is going to be like not just one answer but I kind of conversation around how yeah, evolution happens.

Brett Curry (29:05)

Yeah, what does it love this love this question? Yeah, so we and we do play we're more like in the Hey, ticking a seven figure brand turning it into an eight figure even high figure into nine that's the space we play in the most but yeah, I think the real transition is when you go from a product first business to more of a person first business or customer first business meaning you go from Hey, I'm really good at creating this widget. I'm really good at like, like boom by Cindy Joseph was this way for a while.

Really good at creating Broomstick and they got a couple other things then being like people love our brand. And so this is who we serve. These are, women over the age of 50. They're a fluent, they're powerful. They've got community, let's just serve them and so then they started launching like mascara, and boom bright and other things that I'm forgetting now. And so they became more of a customer centric business rather than a product centric Business, a lot of it. So it's more about like, how do I really speak to my ideal prospect, and then delight them with additional products.

Because what we're seeing brands that are really scaling in that seven, eight figure nine figure area, they're probably adding, a couple of new products a year minimum, sometimes it's more than that. But it's not just like random products. Its thinking very specifically around who is our ideal prospect? Who are we really good with connecting with? Who can we build a community with? Who does our current product serve? And then how can we expand on that? And I think this is this a really important journey. In fact, I record a podcast on this on my podcast with Katherine laree, from best self Co. And she's bright, she's so smart, but she's but they had like these productivity journals. And then she was like, well, what else can we do here? We're selling the business people.

Well, let's so mouse pads, and let's like, Yeah, I'm just making stuff up. I think that was one. But so mouse pads, let's so most of mugs will sell pens, and like, none of that worked. Right. But what they realized is they were and I may not be getting this exactly right. But this is the will still be impactful. I think, with like a we're more of a we're a productivity company. That's what we do. Right? That's what these journals that people love so much. Its productivity, like getting their head, their thoughts clear and clear action plan. So what do we create that's going to support that. And so then they launched a whole line of products that supported that, and were really very well, and they didn't sell very many mouse pads, or pens, or some of those other things that they tried.

And so it's really Yep, shifting into that that customer first business. Yeah. And really understanding who can we delight? Who can we serve? And what else do they want and need. And the beauty there is then that that raises LTV, right lifetime value customer, now you can go out and spend more. So now we can go out and spend 80 bucks to acquire a new customer, which just opens up the world to you, whereas if I can spend like 15 bucks to acquire a new customer, okay, cool. Like you can run Google search, probably you can run Amazon ads. And that's probably about it.

Jaryd Krause (32:07)

I really like I have an example of how I help somebody serve better in their business and increase the LTV, which I'll come back to. But I really like the thinking as a business owner, all the thoughts of the business owner can have for an E commerce business to go all right, cool. I need to make the products so damn awesome.

Also, some I feel like some people in that range have more focused on like, they're in the survival range of like, I make money, and I need to sell as many products as I can. It is one product focus on all that sort of stuff. And that's just okay. That's like, I think where most people start out at and that was me for sure. Just focusing on like, how do we, how do we make money so I don't have to go back to a day job or whatever it is, right?

Brett Curry (32:56)

Another we all go through that stage? No doubt. Yeah.

Jaryd Krause (32:59)

And to get to a point where like, people love the products. And I think this is what helps and it could have helped with the productivity journal is that we're understanding people love where we're at, or what our business is doing in our products. But asking them why getting feedback on what yes, yes, feedback on the experience of purchasing, getting feedback on all that sort of stuff. And that is data that you can literally take and go Alright, cool.

They're asking for this. Yeah, give them this product, rather than thinking, oh, let's just sell a mousepad and the carpets and pens and stuff like that. I mean, it can make sense, right? A pen for a journal. But as long as it's got a good brand behind it, and the pen has a mission and a story. But that's what we did with a rug company, one of our clients is selling rugs. And we're like, let's we need to put some upsells down sells order bumps, all that sort of thing and serve them better and help them worked out that they were then some non-slip pads that you can put underneath a rug.

So when people are running around the house, you're chasing their kids or their pets or whatever, that their rugs aren't slipping around and causing injury. And the conversion rate is massive when you add them on, because you're just helping people further. And I think that's really good thought process to have as a business owner of like, how do we serve better? Because once you start to serve better, then you can come out of the survival phase anyway, I believe, yeah.

Brett Curry (34:22)

Totally agree with that. And that's such an important point. And not just guessing because we're all entrepreneurs, we're pretty smart people, right? We wouldn't be here if we weren't smart. And so a lot of times we just think well, no, if I just think about this, I'll figure it out. And that may be true, but why don't just ask just ask your customers like what they want. And then you may be like, maybe you had gone down the path of over a road company. We're a home decor company.

Let's do picture frames next, right? So, but no, people just say I want my rug to not slide when my kids are running around. So, so that so that pad underneath, and now maybe 2030 40% of people buy that that totally changes the economics of your business. And so yeah, just ask. I love that advice. Yeah, I heard that too with a buddy of mine sells like weighted blankets. And so they found like, there's a lot of people that wanted them, but they were too hot. And that so they again, they started to start trying to sell ancillary products.

We were like, no, no, I just want like, I want cool sheets, but also like, I get a cool weighted blanket. I buy that. And so yeah, so just asking, asking customers what is it that you want? And then why? Why did you buy more? Why did you recommend this to someone else? And you'll get some brilliant ideas from that.

Jaryd Krause (35:37)

We had a way to blank it. And as a man normally I'll run hot when I'm sleeping and partner is not so like the Wayne's that the ways of blanket was way too hot for both of us.

Brett Curry (35:51)

I can't handle it. I can't do it. Feel claustrophobic? My wife loves weighted blankets. I'm like, keep that over there. I can't I can't handle that. Yeah, but yeah, it's a super, super popular product these days. Very interesting.

Jaryd Krause (36:04)

Yeah. And to get that feedback to be able to want a way to blanket that is half call and half warm. So you have it for like, like, this is what I would be thinking about. I've even looked at beds like this, there's a mattress company called Eight Sleep, maybe a competitor. Yeah, it's got different cooling systems in the bed, based on interesting feedback that people are saying, hey, like, this is how I want to sleep and track my sleep and all that sort of stuff.

Brett Curry (36:32)

Yeah, and it is so interesting. It turns out a lot of a lot of couples that are compatible. A lot of people that are sleeping together, don't sleep the same way. One person not one person or one person likes a firm matching one person like it's so it's super just super funny, like one of those comical things of life, that this person that I love more than anything, and they're both super close to Yeah, we don't like the same things when we're trying to sleep.

Jaryd Krause (36:53)

Yeah, I could go into a big conversation around sleep, and I'm so into it. I'm sure you could.

Brett Curry (36:59)

Yeah, I meant to it as well. And it's one of those things I used to think about. I was cramming caffeine late in the evenings and on screens, like the vessel develop vacation, but yeah, thinking about sleep and man, just the way you're more productive, smarter, better all that when you sleep. It's huge. Yeah, yeah, overstate it.

Jaryd Krause (37:18)

Yeah, your health, your health is your wealth, right? So totally agree. We've got we've got an evolution of going from, alright, maybe I'm at five to six ish figures in my ecommerce business selling products. And now I need to serve.

And I guess the data and the feedback that they're asking for through email, and after purchasing, reviews and stuff like that, that can help them build their brand based on the words, the exact words that customers are speaking, because then you're speaking their language. And you can make that a part of your brand. Where How do you what's does it look like going from like the six ish to the seven figures, that sort of stage?

And then what does it look like going from the seven to the eight, eight ish figures? In terms of, are there things that you need to change within the brand with your marketing campaigns? What is those two stages look are like?

Brett Curry (38:08)

I guess, yeah, it's super easy. So we're more in the larger stage. That's kind of where we play. So that's where most of my experiences but I think, a few of the things and you pointed these out, if we're looking at what are customers telling us in reviews, or what are they saying about our product, or also this great interview with the founder of tushy Mickey agri wall. So tissues are the day products like the bolt on the day, to you’re to your toilet.

There's also kind of a new trend and super interesting, but they she just surveyed a bunch of customers and said tushy is fill in the blank fillable like, what is it? What is it to you? And so that people gave all kinds of crazy answers. I don't remember a lot of them, but one of them was like, eye candy, but bliss, right, just stuck in my head. It's like, it's eye candy, because it looks good. And my butt's never been happier, whatever. And so like, she just turned those into ADS. Right? So we're like, we're getting cussed comes from customers, we're turning those into ads. So I think, as we as we transition into stages, it's more about what are we investing in? And are we investing in the right things, I think, you've always got to have the core of good product photography, clear communication, like your product needs to represent, or your messaging, these represent your brand and your product really well.

And then we're kind of just laddering up with some of our efforts. And so I think you can grow for a long time, like, go from zero to seven figures by mostly focusing on kind of foundational stuff. So search ads on Google search ads on Amazon, some Facebook and YouTube, things like that. And then I think you keep getting stronger and stronger at the core while you spend more on those on those top of funnel efforts. But typically, I know some brands that have gone from zero to seven figures on just a couple of products, right? As then then as you add them, the game really just becomes adding more products and getting better at different traffic channels. And how do we how do we try to reduce the cost per acquisition. But I think that's actually less the game and more the game is, how can I spend more to acquire a customer?

How can I build my business on the back end, where I'm selling more diversity of products, or I'm selling, raising my AV, raising my frequency of repurchase so that I can spend more, right, because ad costs are going up and going down? Competition is going up? It's not decreasing. Right? So how can I structure the business so that I can spend more? How am I also relentlessly cutting waste from my advertising efforts? But the goal should not be, hey, I want to get my customer acquisition cost down to 30 bucks. That's, that's not sustainable, right? But how can I? How can I make money and make lots of money if I can get my customer acquisition costs up to 50? Or 60? Or 70? Or 80?

Jaryd Krause (41:04)

That's, a brilliant question to be asking yourself and some brilliant thoughts, because you can, how do you make your business more profitable, so you can spend more money and increase your crease what you pay, but why I really like is I'm thinking competition wise is like, the harder you make it for your competition to spend.

Money is like, you're just like, you can't, and you can't like you can't touch us, because we're able to spend this amount of money. And that's where the markets at just because we've just tightened some nuts and bolts around our business made it more profitable. That's a brilliant competitive advantage.

Brett Curry (41:36)

If you can spend more to acquire customer than your competitor cans that you can better can you almost always win in that case.

Jaryd Krause (41:43)

It's a really good thing. I like the ideology of instead of a race to the bottom, it's a race to the top. Like it's really cool thing to think about.

Brett Curry (41:53)

Yeah. Cuz that race to the bottom and like, it ends in nobody being happy. Ultimately, it's not even customers, right? Like not yeah, customers don't want to pay like the cheapest amount possible, necessarily. Customers don't want to waste money either. But really, they just want like a product that makes them feel good and solves their need and want back to the brand building thing.

When you can position and actually a buddy of mine runs raindrop agency out of San Diego, and they helped launch Dr. Squatch. Dr. Squatch it's a soap company for dudes. Yeah, they well, so raindrops help them go from like 3 million a year to 300 million over a course of several years. But the thing they came up with is like hey, we need to go from this is just a soap company to this is more of a lifestyle company. And what people often think about and why people buy things, is what that product says about me, right?

So I want to buy a brand and a product because of what it says about me.Right? I represent a drive a BMW and I don't I'm pretty practical in my automobiles. But I want to drive a BMW because that says I'm successful. Right? It says that I'm significant. It says that I made a lot of money. Right? I actually drive a Toyota truck. I love it. But yeah, so it's like, what is this product say about me? So when they switched Dr. Squatch, from just like, its natural soap to this is so for him to remember what the messaging is now, but it's for guys. And it's like, super fun and funny. And it's like, no, no, I want to be like that guy.

I like that guy. And it's scaled. So what is? What is the product say about you? And how am I? How am I associating that with my identity that that can shift price. And so you could buy a lot cheaper soap and Dr. Squatch. But some people buy it. And there are limitations there. Right? It's not like 100 up 100 bucks and bar soap or anything, but it's a premium. But people love it. Right? Because of the experience of it what they believe it says about them. So yeah, the race to the bottom really doesn't help anybody customers included.

Jaryd Krause (43:50)

Yeah, and it's the loss, lose customers included and businesses go down. But the opposite is true, where it's a win for customers. Because if it's a race to the top, it's a win for customers because they buy better products, they feel better about themselves, the right brands are better, which means for anybody to compete, you have to have a better superior product or service. So it's just making the game in that niche and that product better and better and better and better. And that's what we need in this world. Right?

Brett Curry (14:25)

Yeah, absolutely agree. And that's what I love about e-commerce brands and product businesses because I believe that like sometimes simple products can make your life better, right? Like I can think of several things that I purchased even my coffee grinder. It wasn't cheap, but like I love that thing. I just love it. I mean, it's it makes my life better. Could I live without it? Of course.

But I mean, I could live with that coffee but I could live without the grinder. But I love it right and so like simple, good products make your life better and I never would have that grinder wouldn't exist if every coffee product or coffee equipment company was doing a race to the bottom and just said unsexist.

Jaryd Krause (45:00)

Brett, thanks so much for coming on. Where can we you've got a couple of podcasts. You got a lot going on? Where can we send people to check out your podcast and your main your main business? Primary business?

Brett Curry (45:10)

Yeah, absolutely. So I've got a thank you for that. I got the two podcasts. So, kind of the long standing podcast, it's about weekly, I should probably be more consistent. It's almost weekly. It's called E commerce evolutions. We're talking about what's new and what's next and ecommerce so ecommerce evolution where we like to get podcasts. The other one is kind of newer. It's called spicy curry.

My last name is Curry and so we get kind of spicy, but it's all just like big names and ecommerce. So, Ezra Firestone just broke Molly Pittman, and Miki Agrawal founder of Tushy. And so we're talking about kind of next level ecommerce stuff that's a season based podcast so season one is that announced like eight episodes so check that out again, wherever you get podcasts. And then run a performance marketing company. So if you need help with Google YouTube ads or with running an Amazon brand, we can help with all of that. So happy to chat. Oh, mg commerce.com is the best way to get in touch with us. But yeah, happy to connect with whoever.

Jaryd Krause (46:04)

Awesome thanks so much for coming on guys. Links will be added to those in the show notes. Make sure you do check them out because they are solid. Everybody is listening. Thank you for listening. If you are going to buy an ecommerce business read listen to this again, if you have an ecommerce business read listen to this again, not right away.

Maybe wait a week or two, digest and process, and then come back to it because it's like reading a book. There are some things that you may have missed out on. So come back, listen to this again, and share this with somebody else who has an ecommerce business. Yes, selfishly. It helps Brett and myself and our businesses help more people. That's what we actually want as well. But also it's helping you help your friends and people that you love too.