How Knowing Your Numbers Drives Growth with Kunle Campell

(00:00:00) Kunle: I’ve learned to understand what it is you’re trying to achieve. Because if you’re trying to achieve growth, the things you do daily, the decisions you make will be more divergent from a company that’s looking for profitability.

(00:00:23) Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to how they scaled it. Scaling is done with both sides of the brain. On this show we sit down with growth stage businesses and speak with founders and industry leaders in e-commerce and sourcing actors. We showcase their journey of unpacking the pivotal moments, marketing strategies and key decisions that shaped their success.

(00:00:42) Courtney: Today I’m bringing on Kunle Campbell, Kunle is an e-commerce thought leader and co-founder of octillion, a digital first brand house specializing in health conscious consumer goods. Based in Oxford, UK, he’s also the host of the two x e-commerce podcast. Conley’s experience has taken him to the stages of SAP Commerce and Barclays, and his work has been featured in places like the BBC and New York Times.

(00:01:07) Courtney: He’s also just released a book, E-commerce Growth Strategy, packed with actionable advice and brand for brands looking to grow and build a community. Welcome to how they scaled it.

(00:01:17) Kunle: Thank you very much for having me.

(00:01:20) Courtney: Awesome. Well, I want to start out by talking about kind of where this all started. I know that you recently started octillion, and you guys are a couple of years old now. What inspired you to start octillion and kind of like, what led you to starting octillion?

(00:01:37) Kunle: It’s a very good question. So just so most of my career has been product. So I started out on my journey in time in mid 2005. I was at university at the time and I was I think the very course I remember that was a light bulb moment for me, had to do with digital marketing. I was able to it was, it was by a professor called, what is a doctor called?

(00:02:09) Kunle: Doctor Dave Chaffey. And he came in as a guest, speaker and he started to ask us questions. Very interactive, lesson at the time. And some of the answers required data and others creativity. And prior to that, every other thing I had done was more related to just data. Yeah, but I had this creative spark in me that was never ignited.

(00:02:36) Kunle: So just getting into this world was was that opportunity to say, okay, you know, where’s that spark? And that segue me into very specialist bits of e-commerce, which research at the time, if you wanted to to make anything from the internet. Google was the gateway. So you just needed to have a huge presence on Google. And most people were starting their journeys on the internet with our phones, on their desktops, on Google.

(00:03:04) Kunle: And I became very good at getting companies exposure on Google. Like really, really good. And most of the techniques I used were ethical. I wouldn’t say everything was as ethical at the time. You know, it depends on how you define ethics, right? Based on Google’s rules. But most of the time I sort of lean more to the white, more gray hat, aspects of things.

(00:03:30) Kunle: And that led me to to running a local agency in Oxfordshire eventually. So when I, when I, left that role departed. I also so basically from university, I was able to I got a role in a, in a prop international property company that required clients from all over the world. So it was it was an opportunity for me to to again, essentially show my skills, you know, you know, just just show my skill.

(00:04:01) Kunle: So I built a small team in that company. And when the 2008 financial crisis came crashing, most of their clients were bankers and investors. And so the company had to shrink it. It didn’t go out of business, but I, I, I just fell on my sword. I just said, you know what? Most of my team members will be departing.

(00:04:25) Kunle: Would you guys still like to work with me? You know, on a consultancy basis? And they’re like, yes, for sure. So in 2009, I, I had this agency and I ride on my first clients. And by 2010, 11, I started to get exposed to e-commerce. And I say to get e-commerce clients and they were more national, so rather than local that were more national clients.

(00:04:53) Kunle: And I started to like it because like if you have like a lead gen campaign, on the one hand you generate leads for business or you generate leads for, for like lots of, like financial businesses, the leads are only as good as the salesperson who’s going to close those leads, right? The sale system. So if anything falters in that system, yeah.

(00:05:17) Kunle: Everybody sort of bears a grunt. So off the back of that, I say to like, e-commerce guy, I could see a full funnel. I could create funnels in Google Analytics. At the time, it was just Google, and you could create the funnel. You could see where they had drop off. So I started to learn about conversion rates, optimizations like, landing pages.

(00:05:38) Kunle: In fact, you still needed landing pages for the lead generation anyway. So you’re learning the science. You’re learning about copywriting. And, in 2013, I just decided to double down in e-commerce. I just loved all my e-commerce clients. And then I created an e-commerce agency. At the time, it was called two x commercial, two x media, excuse me.

(00:06:00) Kunle: And again, it was very focused and search and were given clients terrific results. And there’s this one client. The challenge was there were a they were a that was selling more like appliances online. There were more like photography, accessories from anything from batteries to SD cards. And look at we we got them the results they were looking for for large pots.

(00:06:25) Kunle: But we realized that even though we double their revenue on the one hand, sorry, doubled their traffic. On the one hand, revenue didn’t didn’t sort of jump up as much as the traffic. So I started to figure out, okay, the the more aspects to E-Com then than I thought I was, I used to think it was a traffic game and, and then I proceeded, I was like, okay, there’s a a lot more to learn.

(00:06:55) Kunle: And I eventually started to work as a when the podcaster was doing well at the time, I just set up the podcast to learn more about about, about SEO, about, e-commerce, not just in SEO, but e-commerce. And, I got, an e-commerce manager or like an interim e-commerce manager role. And then I started to realize, okay, there are many aspects I started to learn about, like meta advertising.

(00:07:21) Kunle: It was a lot of people. So my scope became a lot broader from a marketing manager, Mark, and marketing director also, I took a couple of roles off the back of that and yeah, things were going well. We used to speak, you know. So, I got hired by Mets, to speak for three years, I think, for it, they had this, at the time they called Facebook, they had this accelerator program for local news, news operators across the world, and they were trying to essentially help them with their digital transformation.

(00:08:01) Kunle: So after moving them from traditional subscriptions to more digital subscriptions, and as you know, one element in, in subscription flow is the checkout process, right? So I became a really, really good checkout expert for like media in media space. In the sense that I had understudied like checkouts at work. We tested worked with a number of, you know, local news operators and essentially bringing them up to speed from here.

(00:08:36) Kunle: From that perspective, you know, from a CRM perspective, I had numerous like, thought leader leadership roles. I was invited to speak across, the world. I think we we was in most continents, you know, facilitating in their, in their workshops. And I just got to a point in time. I was like, look, and then I was also consulting for, like, as an e-commerce, you know, director for, for a number of, like, more like, it’s more fractional, you know, e-commerce director, e-commerce manager, you know, for, for a number of, $10 million, $10 million revenue businesses, you know, that sort of, and I thought, okay, I want a piece

(00:09:20) Kunle: of the cake. I want to get to the other side. I want to understand what it really means. It’s just this thing of curiosity, right? I’ve always been very curious and my mind was just like, okay, what does it take? How do you do this properly? I realized that, okay, I need to get certified in, like, private equity.

(00:09:38) Kunle: I thought, oh, no, that’s not not oh no, I, I did research and I was like, wow, okay, this is a lot. This would be a leap. Am I ready for it? And I recall somebody talking about, you know, moving further with, with partners, you know, with, with business partner. So I was just active, you know, like, just having an active eye and, lo and behold, writing my book.

(00:10:00) Kunle: And I was just trying to give a synopsis of my book, and, there was a chapter in my book, where I was just trying to, give a background as to the university I went and all of that stuff. And then I just did a search, you know, trying to because I applied for three universities and two of the lower tier universities actually reject two of the universities that rejected me.

(00:10:22) Kunle: And then one university accepted me. And then I just was trying to search for the name of the university, and I put the name of the course and everything, and then, like, stumbled on, on, my partner’s dissertation. And his dissertation was around, using the search fund model for, for those who don’t know what to search for and model is, it’s more a buy and build one company.

(00:10:45) Kunle: So you go into the market for, probably a baby boomer business. They’re looking to retire and buy it from them. You modernize it or, you know, you raise capital, you know, based on on the on the valuation. And then, you, you operate this one business and you eventually set it on. So it’s it’s a buy an operate model for a single business is such fun for his his theory or his methodology was was somewhat defensive, was like, look, we could do the same thing in e-commerce.

(00:11:18) Kunle: But he was not an e-commerce guy. He was an outsider. So I, got out of my comfort zone, got this contact details, and reached out to him. And after about three conversations, we were like, let’s test the waters. And we tested the waters for about maybe six months or thereabouts. We worked on a small project together.

(00:11:39) Kunle: We so we, we we could, you know, we’re making a lot of progress. And then I joined octillion, you know, because at the time, he’d set up blockchain and for that purpose. So he had finished his, his, he had finished his course at University of London. And so I then soon joined, joined the boats essentially.

(00:12:00) Kunle: And that is how I that’s that’s the story of how I go into into what I do.

(00:12:06) Courtney: Yeah. Amazing. And it it’s incredible because you really have had, a lot of experience within the e-commerce space, but really in like the marketing space, by starting with lead gen on Google when it was kind of the Wild West, not a lot of regulations. It’s pretty easy to get around things. And then that was probably the same for when you were getting started with meta, where it was.

(00:12:30) Courtney: I mean, you could do a lot of stuff on meta back in the day. But I love that you, continuously were digging in a little bit deeper, specifically around e-commerce. And I one thing that we struggle with as an agency is like control. And so I think that you kind of the way that you got over that is you were like, well, what if I just like buy the company or if I, you know, get into DC and I were private equity and then I have I can guide people a lot more effectively because I have the funding to support them.

(00:13:04) Courtney: And then you found, I mean, it’s amazing that you found, business partner through Google search. Kind of a very full circle moment for you, do you? So now that you’ve been with octillion for a few years, what have been like the biggest challenges, in that space? Because it is a fairly new space for you then.

(00:13:24) Kunle: It it is it’s a if the challenges, you know, you realize that operators carry you know, a lot on obviously with, with the risk there’s rewards right. So but the that it’s it’s not siloed. So even with my understanding of e-commerce, the next layer which I explain in my book is more an operator, you know, an operator.

(00:13:51) Kunle: Is it because with an operator, you it’s a balancing act of operational efficiency, like operation? It’s like the the operations of your business, like your inventory levels, forecasting, customer service, those aspects, if you have a warehouse, just warehouse management, all that goes with it, staff and then marketing. So what we did was like, what are what are our strengths.

(00:14:17) Kunle: So Ireland more into the operations and finance. And I leaned more into the markets. And with that being said, we speak each other’s language. Very important. So I have over the last two years or three years, three years actually, I have my financial literacy has accelerated, you know, so I’m more I can’t make a decision without understanding it’s impact.

(00:14:47) Kunle: Yeah. It’s just not lot back in the days. I’ll just I’ll just, I’ll just speak to the other. How why do we do this? We do that and don’t really understand the impact that there’s an impact, right? There’s a cost reaction. So those are the one of the things I’ve, I’ve learned and and understanding what it is you’re trying to achieve.

(00:15:09) Kunle: Because if you’re trying to, to achieve growth, the things you do daily, the decisions you make will be more divergent from a company that’s looking for for profitability, just maintaining profitability. So understanding those nuances also has been very, very, very important. A challenge another challenge really has been just concentration. Right. So if you acquired brands that are, you know, small in the small side of things, I’ve seen most brands that are below 25, you know, million in revenue, most not all do not have like a, a solid set of management, you know, team in place.

(00:16:01) Kunle: So just professionalizing that, at the same time having to bear with, with the funds to, to, to to, to to to support that is, is a challenge. So. Yeah. What we’re we’re trying to do is just think bigger, you know, think bigger. And, and and that in of itself would, would challenge, how we think about ourselves and, and how we, we also, support the, the teams we, will be working with.

(00:16:33) Courtney: Yeah. You said something really interesting about, understanding your financials and then making a decision about whether you want to just maintain so maintenance, keep your profitability, do the same or if you’re looking to grow. And I think the one thing that I run into a lot with founders and CEOs and, and leaders is that when they’re in growth mode, they’re just making big decisions constantly, and they’re not thinking through the financial impact because you’re you got to spend money to make money.

(00:17:05) Courtney: But it sounds like what your approach is, is to really understand your PNL. And then in the decisions that you’re making, you understand that you’re reducing your profitability for a short period of time. But you kind of have like a game plan for like how how are you able to make that balance or make those decisions, whether making a decision where you’re you’re losing profitability is worth the growth.

(00:17:26) Courtney: Like what? What tells you that it’s that that in the short.

(00:17:29) Kunle: Run subscriptions subscription. So in the, consumer good space and we’re replenished bowls. So it’s not like we’re selling Gucci bags where you buy once and then you’re thinking, oh my God, Gina, it’s not what you might count. And it’s you think rethink my life unless you know, you can afford it. But like, you know, if you’re selling protein powders, just hypothetically speaking, selling bone broth powder, for instance, you know, it’s going to it’s it’s going to need a top up, you know, in 30, 45, 60 days.

(00:18:02) Kunle: So your, my goal if we’re in growth mode is I’m confident I stand behind my product. Number one, the taste is great. We need more people testing. We need to get more people in. And what is the cost of that. And we look at how long people tend to stay with us, and, and then decide how much we’re willing to pay for them upfront.

(00:18:27) Kunle: But once we understand that, okay, we have a good product, that’s number one. Look, yeah. You it’s growth, growth, growth. You know, it’s it’s like you we, we got into to a company, and the subscriptions were thousand and, you know, I pushed it to, to close to 3000 in 9 months. So it’s that sort of thing as in like once you once everybody’s a liner.

(00:18:52) Kunle: Okay. We’re looking for subscriptions. You’re sitting now with the with the PPC team. Team. And you’re essentially telling them that, we’re not doing anything, sexy, like, you know, above the line, you know, branded, like on brand billboards and all of that stuff. Most of it is, is digital at the, at the level we’re playing.

(00:19:14) Kunle: But obviously at the next level, it’s like, do we buy this billboard? And no, that’s a big, big decision, you know, do you know, do we, do we sponsor these. There’s busses, you know, if you’re in London or do we do some subway advertising? That’s another sort of level. You’re probably at the 5100 million mark or approaching that and you have a different set of, decisions to make.

(00:19:35) Kunle: But again, I if I’m making a decision of that magnitude for the first time, I would need to lean on an expert that’s on it, you know, at least 50 times, you know.

(00:19:48) Courtney: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(00:19:51) Kunle: And then yeah. And then and then and then, you know, it’s just so humility also is very important, you know, in the game just. Yeah, I was trying to think that, my of, you know, when you’re, you’re like in a room with, with clever people and you’re now sort of doing intellectual jujitsu. Yeah. Then, you know, you’re in the wrong room because just you really want to listen.

(00:20:15) Courtney: Yes.

(00:20:16) Kunle: You really want to listen. It’s like you just want to listen so that that’s that’s the challenge, actually, because as a consultant, you’re trying to prove your worth all the time and get people to, to, to, to take, the suggestions you’re making. But as an operator, you need to listen a lot more.

(00:20:35) Courtney: Yeah. One of the, one of the things I tell the founders that I work with a lot is. So if they were making, protein powder, they they, like you are so good at making protein powder. You should not also be good at marketing. Marketing as a whole. Other thing, you shouldn’t know all of this stuff.

(00:20:53) Courtney: Like, you can have opinions about it, and you can have ideas about how you want your brand to be presented. But ultimately, it’s not your responsibility to understand how Facebook ads works. That’s like so hard. People train for this like they make careers out of it. So I think understanding like where your strengths are, where your what your role is and when to listen and when to share is it’s a it’s a really fine line, that a lot of founders, kind of the most successful founders, tend to listen a lot more than say, and like they’re smart about it.

(00:21:25) Courtney: You know, you you’re not going to just believe everything you hear, but, but you’re right. Like, you want to go into a room and be able to, like, listen to experts and get all the information so that before you make your decisions.

(00:21:37) Kunle: It’s a good point. This is you’re right, you know? Yeah. I can’t do that. It’s you’re spot on.

(00:21:47) Courtney: Yeah. So when, when you’re scaling these brands. So, is there any point where you’re feeling like you’ve consistently gotten to a certain point where you’ve decided that you need to pivot or change or abandon the project completely? Has that ever kind of come up for you?

(00:22:05) Kunle: Well, the time, yeah, all the time. All the time. There are two ways of of looking at this as a brand, scaling a brand and then scaling a product. You know, scaling, scaling a product line, you know, there’s can we pause this? Yeah. Please. Okay. I just need to answer that one second.

(00:22:26) Courtney: Oh, yeah. Of course I think.

(00:22:28) Kunle: Connie, I apologize. It had to do with coffee and. Yeah.

(00:22:32) Courtney: Very important. No worries. Okay, so, where were we? Was the last thing we were saying here. Oh, how have you, made pivots and stuff as you realized things weren’t working? And how did you come to those decisions?

(00:22:50) Kunle: Yeah. So with with from my, speak to my personal experience, there’s, there’s, scaling a brand. Right. And then scaling the product line. Scuse me. Let me just get my breath.

(00:23:04) Courtney: Yeah. Of course.

(00:23:05) Kunle: Okay. So, so from my perspective, this scaling a brand and then scaling a product line. So with scaling a brand, it gets it gets scary because, you’re looking I think you should to scale a brand. And this is from, from my personal experience, you should. We’ve always taken this approach of where it’s the lowest hanging fruit and the lowest hanging fruit has always been a product within a brand.

(00:23:34) Kunle: Right. So we find we look at macro trends on the one hand, and we then look at, we look at what we have or what we can bring in. Is it a product launch? Is it is it a product within our portfolio that we the has the potential to scale based on trends? Can we create demand? So it’s when you sort of break the problem down at a product level, it becomes much more manageable.

(00:24:03) Kunle: And if you fail, you’re you’re failing at a granular product level and you’re learning actually taking those learnings and applying it to another experiment to another product. And and that is how you find success. And if you if you get a series of successes, they accumulate and help scale the brand further. Excuse me.

(00:24:26) Courtney: Yeah. No, that that totally makes sense. I think, when we often think about the best way to scale a brand, what we’re looking for is someone who was a hero product and then how can we build on that hero product? And also, is the brand unique enough? Is there a differentiator? Is there something that makes it unique, makes it unique in the current space?

(00:24:47) Courtney: And I think that’s what you’re talking about with can we create some demand around something different about this compared to its competitors?

(00:24:55) Kunle: Absolutely, absolutely. And you just made a very, very important point on the uniqueness of the brand, the story, how you know, how how it how you turn up, you know, in the marketplace, that’s the messaging is very important from a personality, you know, perspective. And one thing we’ve done, you know, is for for every acquisition, there are two things we, we do.

(00:25:22) Kunle: One is is obviously process extraction that is given. And the second really is we we have a brand, agency like the branding industry based out in London. And we, we sit down with them for, for a full day. So we give them the brand, everything we know about the brand and they assess it, you know, for, for a couple of weeks.

(00:25:45) Kunle: And then we have a one day workshop where they, they essentially lay out what is initially and then, the, the layout or brand strategy of where we should go. We don’t necessarily execute on that immediately, but we know, okay, these are this is the customer base. This is really who our customers are. This is the potential, this of the macro trends in this space.

(00:26:10) Kunle: And this is a this is what we should be saying. And these are things and this is what the brand didn’t necessarily use to say. This is not what they used to turn up. This is how we should actually turn up. Moving on from from here. And that’s essentially helps, you know every other person. So whether it’s it’s it’s performance search.

(00:26:27) Kunle: Every everybody then has, you know, some sort of guidelines, you know, which which we, we then give them. So it’s, it’s important to, to have that and you another very, very good points in the hero product. Yes. For one of the brands we got, because they were, were essentially contract manufacturers when we acquired them, the hero product actually, went out of stock when we acquired the brand and we had to dig in to, to, to, to to make another hero product, you know, and we had to lean in on, on macro trends and kind of like, understand, okay, this category is taken off.

(00:27:08) Kunle: The founder has done or the, the X founder has done, the founder has done a very good job at this identifying this, how can we take it to its full potential. So sometimes you need to look really inwards, you know, and see okay. What what potential do we have. You know, in our portfolio. Have we missed.

(00:27:27) Kunle: And and then kind of like, you know, really test the waters and you need a good team to, to help you test the waters. You know, whether it’s the, whether it’s a design team, copywriting team, you know, performance team, everybody needs to be in sync to, to to make sure that, you know, you tried your hardest in the test and then, and then when, when you, when you get the results, you know, you kind of like, you know, you crunch it and see, okay, where, what what could we have done.

(00:27:56) Kunle: Right. And you know, where did we win? And, you know, and and how can we iterate, you know, further regret regardless of the results.

(00:28:03) Courtney: Yeah. When you, it’s so impressive that you were able to come up with a new hero product for me. Just putting myself in your shoes. I don’t know if I could handle that stress of acquiring a company. And then the hero product goes out of stock. So you have to create a new one very quickly.

(00:28:20) Courtney: I’m assuming. How much testing did you have to do to find that new hero product?

(00:28:25) Kunle: I’ll. I’ll give you the the actual. What happened? We acquired the brand and the top seller was bone broth powder. Like it was fantastic. As in, it’s the most natural protein product powder you can ever get on this shop was the they were scaling it. You know, they’re scaling it to the moon, as they say. And when we acquired it, those, we, we sourced from Sweden, there was a crunch, you know, there’s a there’s a current supply chain chain crunch.

(00:28:53) Kunle: I think the from the way we were sourcing it from was having issues and they’re like, look. So we, we acquired in I think it was March and they’re like look for the next supply. The stock we had available could only take us till about August. Right. So and you know there’s a shelf life of this things you can’t keep a year’s supply for food.

(00:29:16) Kunle: Right. And we have to be very careful with that because, you know, you’re dealing with food is going into people’s bodies. So we, we we dug inwards. We we didn’t create a new skew. What we did was we, we looked at the entire portfolio and like, okay, there was also coffee in the, in the mix, you know, it was it’s more micro toxin free coffee similar to a bulletproof coffee.

(00:29:40) Kunle: So everything is clean in this brand, in caffeine. And, we said, okay, micro toxin coffee, clean coffee. We did some keyword research and all that stuff. We noticed there was a mushroom coffee in the mix, and we realize, oh, this mushroom coffee is really doing what it should be doing. Given that mushroom coffee is seems to be on the up and we double down on it.

(00:30:04) Kunle: So we rebranded. It’s we changed the packaging. We, we we made sure that we were, selling the benefits, a core benefits of it, you know, before, adaptogen adaptogenic mushrooms were in it. And we, we doubled down on advertising. So at the product level we were like, look, we, we initially like three acts advertising with creative, you know everything’s digital right.

(00:30:35) Kunle: So we almost three advertising and then it worked. And then we’re looking at the subscriber counts. Those that are not star really subscriber counts. You know how many people are subscribed because once they hooked they hooked.

(00:30:48) Courtney: Yeah.

(00:30:48) Kunle: Yeah. And we just, we just went and became the hero product. Right. After like nine months, it just became the hero product. So sometimes you don’t need to. And then we had another experiment. This is another kind of powder. MCT powder. Yes, it worked, but it didn’t really work. In the sense that, yes, we got subscribers.

(00:31:09) Kunle: We needed more money to sort of point to it. But what we realized is that we needed to educate the market more, which gets more expensive. So with that, you need a tick tock. You need to really, really, you need the tick tock campaign that is with, with with creators to really, really educate the markets and, you know, get them to, to understand the benefits, why they should start their morning with this.

(00:31:33) Kunle: And you know, so so that’s a longer game. It is possible. So but we thought, okay, do we have the resources and the resources to really, you know, really educate the market? And we’re like, it’s just not worth it of a low hanging fruit on there. Would we go back to it? Probably. Yeah. We could we could go back to it.

(00:31:52) Kunle: But sometimes there’s just alignment with what’s out there. You know, what’s what’s what are people actually buying now and then once you have your unique message as a brand, you could tap into that and use that to then fund an education, campaign.

(00:32:10) Courtney: Yeah. Well, and also if you’re, if you get your hero product going correctly and you’re reaching this market that would likely by other products, you know, within your portfolio, then you can use email marketing as a much lower cost way of educating that market rather than something like TikTok. And then eventually, once you scale enough and your hero product can kind of fund all of the other, like education and, and testing.

(00:32:35) Courtney: I like to talk about how we use once we get a winner, that winner helps fund the testing. But you have to have a winner before you can like test all these other cool, interesting ideas. And I really think that it takes a lot of control to also say, you know, I really like this product. I think it’s going to work really well, but looking at the market, how much it’s going to cost, it’s not time for it yet.

(00:32:59) Courtney: So let’s put it back on the shelf. Well, you know, we’ll keep selling it, but we’re not going to put effort into it until we have the right resources. And that takes a lot of a lot of insight. A lot of control because I think sometimes two founders are like, I believe in this product so much. If people just get it, they’re going to go crazy for it, and they don’t do the proper amount of research to confirm that before or like, understand how much education they actually have to do.

(00:33:27) Courtney: Because a it’s a really good example of that.

(00:33:29) Kunle: Yeah. It’s it’s expensive. It’s expensive to boot from a, an emotional toll, you know, because if you’re, if your emotions have the best, you know, view, you double down and double down, the experiment doesn’t work. It’s very hard to step away from it objectively and say okay, yeah, fair, fair, fair points. You know, I was wrong. Because you were too positive, you know, on the, it’s this business is is all about survival, right.

(00:34:01) Kunle: And, you know, taking informed bets is, is very important, particularly if you know, you’re looking to replace a hero product. You know, for instance, it’s very, very important to, to, you know, just take informed decisions, you know, and know how to go to market, you know, really know how to go to market and have that thought nailed down.

(00:34:22) Kunle: And the way people, you know, went to market 18 months ago is different to how they go to market today. So, having that adaptability to, to how, you know, consumer trends, a changing is, is important also.

(00:34:38) Courtney: Yeah. When you think about the types of businesses that you look to acquire at octillion, I know sustainability is a pretty big element to what you’re looking for. Why did you choose sustainability? And are there other elements that you really prioritize when building out your portfolio?

(00:34:56) Kunle: So just to correct it, what we love sustainability. We go for sustainability for sure. But what’s more, the impact on your well-being? That’s the number one, criteria for us. If if there’s a net negative, we wouldn’t even touch it would not have a conversation. Even if, you know, we stand to to gain a significant upside financially.

(00:35:23) Kunle: Yeah. Right. So it’s really good for you. It connects to my personal health journey. You know, I felt invincible at one point in my life, and I was just. Yeah, I didn’t take care of myself. I didn’t I didn’t realize, you know, once I was putting into my body. And health is truly, truly wealth. And so, when we were going through deal flow three years ago or three and a half years ago, and we’re just going to deal one day, Pont de la Pont don’t think we went to 150 deals before we got our first deal.

(00:36:00) Kunle: And this is just going through IMS investment memorandums and, you know, going through PNL sometimes, you know, going a bit deeper, having, you know, calls with founders, it became very clear that this was the space we wanted to play. And good for you. That there’s also the, the upside. Well, not the upside, but there’s there’s also it’s also very important to focus, you know, and and then align with, with another organization should we want to, you know, to offload, you know, some of the assets, we, we, we have to another sort of health conscious or, you know, wellness, wellness focus group.

(00:36:42) Kunle: So, so, yeah, putting it in and just, you know, when you turn onto, when you turn to work on, you know, that’s okay. It’s what’s what you’re doing is it’s just not, positive financially, but but also, you know, positive thoughts. That’s a human. That’s a human level, you know, helping humanity. Yeah, I think it’s good.

(00:37:05) Kunle: We we we also, you know, we we’re also striving, from a sustainability standpoint. The packaging we use, we, we try to be as lean as possible. We’re not all for fancy stuff. Most of the time, we’re conscious about that, but. But we think that if you’re conscious, as a human being, that’s a health level.

(00:37:27) Kunle: You naturally. Because when you’re conscious at the, at a health level, that’s, that’s a human level, you will find that you’d be literally you’d be mainly consuming like single ingredients, you know. Yeah. Products and so that will naturally make you more sensitive to farming, to the environment, you know, to to sustainability. So, so I think it’s fundamental that we, we almost go back, from a nutrition standpoint.

(00:37:58) Kunle: But yeah, I don’t want to sound like a zealot here, but but yeah, it’s, it’s those are fundamentals.

(00:38:05) Courtney: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that it’s important for firms like yours to have a very clear value system and take on very specific types of portfolios, because that way everything you learn kind of crosses over to other companies. And I think it’s important to believe in something. Have you ever felt a clash between this kind of rapid growth and maintaining the quality of product?

(00:38:30) Courtney: And, and this good for you, wellness, value.

(00:38:33) Kunle: So I’ve come to the realization that there’s going to be a cap to the size of businesses we can grow. I was having a conversation with ChatGPT, and I was like, yesterday actually is like, what’s the size of the health conscious market? And then it’s like, oh, it’s 80%. I know it doesn’t really make sense. I’d like to challenge it a bit.

(00:38:52) Kunle: Yeah. You know, it does. This doesn’t make sense. Is it. This is as well for this reference okay. You’re actually right. It might be 6% of 60 is too much. And it sort of it sort of came to a point where it’s like it should be like less than 10%. You know, and this is of, of people who, you know, just are conscious of food, skincare production and all of that stuff.

(00:39:16) Kunle: And so, yes, we are, but if you compare it to like 2010, there is a change. So it’s it’s a slow growth thing that’s going to take decades for us to, to realize that, a lot of the choices we think we have when we go into supermarkets are the other just not choice at all. Or, the, the there’s just a net negative in the long term, health or, or wellbeing, you know, of, of, of, of for us.

(00:39:50) Kunle: And so yeah, we just realize that the, that there is a cap and the cap is a cap and, yeah. Well, we, you know, should we go higher up the chain that we are seeing brands that are, I’ve not seen besides, like, athletic greens and just a handful of, of wellness brands, I haven’t really seen, any billion.

(00:40:17) Kunle: I mean, skincare will be, will be different, but, unicorn level skill now, because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s it’s not it’s not going to be coming in droves, you know, further down the line. But it would take time. It would take time. Scaling is relative, right?

(00:40:34) Courtney: Yeah. Well, then I also think that when you think about the types of brands that you’re working with, understanding that education is just is part of what you have to do. So I you mentioned when you were figuring out what your next hero product was, you did research and you identified a place where you didn’t have to do as much education because you’re like, mushroom coffee is something that people already know about.

(00:40:56) Courtney: They’re already searching about, let’s make that our hero product. But for other products, it’s just understanding that that’s going to be part of the growth. Strategy is educating the public and creating that demand, which is challenging, but it’s worth it for the value that you know, that you’re trying to to put into the world. And I also do think that things are changing there.

(00:41:19) Courtney: There is a growing demand for this type. But when we are learning so much more about microplastics and what’s actually happening to the food that you’re putting into your body, I think the more the general public understands that 10% will slowly grow over time, and you definitely want to be in on the ground floor of it, you know.

(00:41:40) Kunle: Absolutely. And you just made a very, very good points around you know microplastics in foods. You know that is the intersection of wellness and sustainability pure. And it’s, it’s in fish seafood. It’s in our water system. So it’s. Yep. It goes hand hand in hand.

(00:42:01) Courtney: Yeah.

(00:42:02) Kunle: Yeah.

(00:42:02) Courtney: So when you look kind of back on your, your whole journey and, and with the brands that you’ve worked with, in the past and looking at e-commerce, what is the most valuable lesson that you learned kind of in the early days that still influences how you operate your business?

(00:42:19) Kunle: It’s a very, very good question. Let me think. I think profitability, you know, so from a very financial binary level, just ensuring you’re profitable, you know, is is key, contribution margin very, very, very important. And, true contribution margin even more important. Just educating yourself at that level. If you’re VC funded, that doesn’t really matter, but it’s it should be tracked.

(00:42:54) Kunle: Because at some point, you know, you’d be judged, you’d be valued off the back of that, and a bit, well, I think profitability is, is very important. Just to add to, to that on, a brand as an organism. So the, the, the brands that that have faltered, from, from my, from my, from my experience, being brands that didn’t stand for anything.

(00:43:22) Kunle: Didn’t really when you mention the brand to to to a customer of theirs and it’s just it’s nothing it’s just there’s just no mindshare. So, you know, just ensuring that your brand is an organism, it’s it’s a living, breathing, you know, entity in the way it spurs, you know, messaging out and, and and that links things to this founder led brands.

(00:43:50) Kunle: I think it’s very powerful to have founder led brands. Because it then sort of puts that on, on steroids really where people are, their downsides. Obviously your founder led brands, but you could get a founder led brand to to, to to to hundreds of millions of dollars or pounds in in valuation and revenue. So, if profitability and sustainable profitability is, is their is, is one of your things and you don’t want to sort of rely on on.

(00:44:18) Kunle: Then and again, I’m speaking of a CPG standpoint, on an addictive product. And when I mean addictive, you know, sugar ridden and all that sort of stuff, then you need to sort of always remind your customer base as to why you’re doing what you’re doing on a regular basis. And when that comes from a human or a group of humans, it is powerful.

(00:44:40) Kunle: It is really, really powerful. So, would you stay profitable while you doing all that?

(00:44:45) Courtney: Yes. Bottom line, stay profitable. But we talk about authenticity a lot on the show, and there is something about it that it’s really hard to quantify, but every brand that I know that has succeeded has has some kind of authentic founder or the authenticity is really baked into the brand, into their culture, because you’re much less likely to sell out and do something that doesn’t align with, you know, your values.

(00:45:15) Courtney: And, and I think a big part of authenticity is saying, this is what we do and we never do this. So for octillion, you guys are focused on wellness and good for you and improving human lifestyle. And we do not touch brands that that don’t fall in that line. Even if those brands are making millions and millions of dollars.

(00:45:35) Courtney: It’s just not what we do. And I think that’s what makes octillion a more valuable overall, and will have much more longevity than those quick wins. And those like quick profit. But yeah, bringing it back down to profitability at the end of the day. So what is next for octillion? Do you see, are you working to acquire any new brands right now, or are you just working on growing the ones that you have?

(00:46:02) Courtney: What’s next?

(00:46:03) Kunle: What’s next? We we we’re looking forward to this is going to probably air in 2025. And we you know, if we we get a brand under our belt this year it would be a big plus. To to to us, we we’re we’re we’re having big conversations and we puts it that way in the, in the, in the background.

(00:46:24) Kunle: We’re having I was in London to two weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago. And we were we’re talking with we had some partnerships underway. So, so bigger, bigger deals, bigger deals, bigger deals, bigger problems to solve. And, with interest rates going down, you know, and, you know, the, the they’ve gone down twice now, base rates has gone down.

(00:46:54) Kunle: We’re hoping that there will be, more inflow of, of capital, which will make its way to, to, to, to, to us, to deploy and, and essentially, you know, do better for the world through to, to commerce.

(00:47:09) Courtney: Yeah. Amazing, I love that. Do you see any, trends coming down the pipeline on an industry level? Do you see anything that you think is going to be taking off in the next couple of years?

(00:47:20) Kunle: Interesting. You mentioned that because I just, I just put together, three predictions. This is going to be going out on Forbes through, through a writer that I know. She, she just was asking people like, just folks around the industry about, e-commerce trends and my, my three trends. Prediction. One is with lower interest rates, it’s going to drive up more e-commerce acquisitions, I think.

(00:47:46) Kunle: But the frenzy of, like, aggregators is not going to repeat itself. What I think is, stronghold codes are going to emerge. There’s going to be more consolidations. E-commerce companies that look like e-commerce companies will be more hold codes. They’ll have more access to it, to capital, you know, buy more and more businesses and just make it more appealing for lower tier, you know, private equity firms to, to, to essentially, you know, you know, buy them out.

(00:48:18) Kunle: So I think there’s going to be more activity with, with interest rates, you know, going going down. My second prediction was I agents, I really think that, you know, right now, I think for any savvy e-commerce operator, at least 50% of their customer service now is handled by handled by AI. I, I think that’s a given.

(00:48:40) Kunle: AI is taking over, customer support. Have you ever thought about, like, an AI, agent for, like, kind of for an operations manager?

(00:48:48) Courtney: No, no, that feels scary.

(00:48:51) Kunle: It is scary. But I think they’ll be essentially initially assistants to one which would essentially accelerate their throughput. So I think agents agents are going to be really, really trained on aspects of roles. They’ll be assistants initially. I don’t want to predict what will happen in 2026 and 2027. But, you know, savvy e-commerce businesses will have, all of their managers or directors or need to key leaders have these agents which would essentially accelerates or perfects their also reduce human error.

(00:49:25) Kunle: And then I don’t know, with, with with Tick Tock Shop and Tick Tock, I think it’s just going to strengthen in the US. First of all, there’s going to be less political scrutiny on them. So far, so good with with what we’re with the headlines I’ve read. And yeah, we’ll see. With that, I do want to explain trying to expand on on that.

(00:49:50) Kunle: So with the potential change in the US leadership, you know, TikTok’s future in America will hinge on how the administration addresses lingering concerns about ByteDance ownership and, you know, data security. Yeah. But it’s been positive thus far. I’m over. The company was positive. So, we’ll see. We’ll see. I don’t think they’re going to leave the US anytime soon.

(00:50:11) Courtney: No. And I it’s even if they do, I think there will be some kind of I don’t see TikTok leaving the U.S, whether they’re with ByteDance or with another company or it’s a different version of TikTok. Something will fill that gap in some way. So hopefully TikTok sticks around because it’s there’s already been so much growth on it.

(00:50:32) Courtney: But yeah, no, those are those are great predictions. I’m looking forward to seeing those things happen because they’re all pretty positive. I would say.

(00:50:38) Kunle: Chairs are you are you active and on? Are you tissue agency work work on TikTok?

(00:50:44) Courtney: We do occasionally. The the main challenge that we have on TikTok is that you need to produce so much content, and most of our clients aren’t able to produce that much content at at scale. And we have easier wins on Meta and Google, generally speaking. So TikTok is kind of like once we have maxed out our, meta and our Google and all of our other platforms, then we can start testing on, TikTok, because at that point, we have a ton of content that we’ve used for meta ads that we can just start using on TikTok, but it takes a lot of client participation, to be posting as well and like understanding that

(00:51:23) Courtney: platform, because it is it is different than, you know, meta and Instagram.

(00:51:28) Kunle: Yeah, I think one one of my, one of the guests who came, they were on, Teej Kelly, Kelly, he’s like they produce about his team, produce about 500 pieces of content a month.

(00:51:42) Courtney: Yeah, yeah.

(00:51:44) Kunle: Like it’s just you got to do it. You they just churning out and like. Yeah. But that is from the organization. It’s internal. Yes. You know so it’s it’s not an agency. You know us Scout that’s massive.

(00:51:57) Courtney: No I mean and that’s I think that in the coming years brands that invest in content creation, whether it’s their internal or their, you know, partnering with content creators, those are the ones that are going to be the most successful with DTC brands. Just because it is an exhausting process, because it’s so much content, but it has the most payoff, and you might produce 100 pieces of content, and if one of them works, it’s worth it.

(00:52:24) Courtney: If you’re able to scale one piece of content out of the 100, you can really make a difference. But you have to kind of commit to the volume of it. Unfortunately. Well, thank you so much for joining the show today. Can they, do you want to tell people where they can find you online?

(00:52:39) Kunle: So I’m, I’m most active on, on LinkedIn at the moment. Just search for Kunle Campbell on there. octilliancapitalpartners.com or connect to e-commerce dot com? I host a podcast. It’s called the 2XE Commerce podcast. And, there’s a newsletter attached to it. Subscribe. Yeah. And, you know, thank you for having me call me.

(00:53:02) Courtney: Amazing. Amazing. Yes. Definitely. Go check out his podcast, subscribe to his newsletter. I think, you can like you’ve had so much great insight and I’m sure people will be begging for more. And, thank you to everyone at home or on the go for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend and leave us a review.

(00:53:23) Courtney: If there’s anything you want to hear on an upcoming episode, just let us know. For more insights. Follow us on LinkedIn or visit Right Left agency.com and we’ll be back next week with more stories of success, innovation and marketing strategies to help you grow. Thank you so much.