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Scaling DTC Brands with Jessie Healy

Episode 7

In this episode, I sit down with Jessie Healy, a celebrated marketer and the founder of Ecomm Rockets Coaching Group, a platform that helps DTC brands scale profitably by focusing on foundational business strategies. As the former owner of Webtopia, Jessie scaled her agency to 20 employees, worked with global clients, and eventually sold the business to focus on coaching and consulting.

[00:00:00] So many of these small brands would come to the agency wanting ads, but actually what they needed was like business advice. Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to how they scaled it where 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 from e commerce and SAS sectors.

[00:00:21] We showcase their journeys, unpacking pivotal moments, marketing strategies, and the key decisions that shaped their success. Today, I’m bringing on Jesse Healy, a former agency owner and founder of Ecom Rockets Coaching Group. Jesse is a celebrated marketer in the DTC space, and through her platform, she empowers DTC brands to scale profitably using her vast industry expertise and firsthand experience of scaling her own ventures.

[00:00:46] Jesse, it is so great to see you and welcome to How They Scaled It. Yeah, thanks for having me along. Amazing. Well, I want to kind of start from the beginning, um, because you had the great experience of growing a marketing agency and exiting it. So I want to know a little bit about how you started Webtopia, your marketing agency, and Kind of what that journey looked like.

[00:01:09] Yeah. So it’s kind of a wild story. Well, to an extent, um, but yeah, so I was, I had worked brand side as a digital market in my whole career. So I’d kind of worked for lots of different brands, but, um, some of the more well known among them would be Etsy where I was head of performance marketing for everything outside the U S and real player, which is going back a time now that’s a brand that, um, Only people who have been on this planet a while have heard of, but yeah, so I had worked, you know, brand side, sort of like managing agencies, firing, hiring, you know, all of that.

[00:01:44] Um, and I was never really that happy with what I, my experience with agencies, there was generally, especially at that time, a real sort of sit and forget mentality, set up your ads and then I’d kind of run them and spit out a report and maybe tweak a little bit here and there, but really didn’t feel like I had a growth partner.

[00:02:01] Huh? Kind of helping, helping me crack the puzzle of, of how to grow these brands. Um, and it really felt like it was always on me as the internal kind of CMO or head of growth or head of performance marketing to actually drive that. So I sort of always had that thought in the back of my mind that there must be a better way.

[00:02:18] Um, and then when I was seven months pregnant, the company, I’d taken this kind of. After leaving Etsy, I’d taken this job at a brand that was, well it wasn’t really a brand, it was a, it was a unicorn, like, tech business that had all these other businesses involved, and, um, you know, had been doing really well, but then they obviously didn’t get funding, something happened behind the scenes, and the business went completely bust.

[00:02:43] It was a whole crazy thing, anyway, they walked us into a room, and all ten of us in my team were told, you job, no final paycheck, nothing. So, um, there I was seven months pregnant, couldn’t really look for another job. And so I just thought, Oh, I’ll just put the feelers out and see about freelancing. And immediately like found a ton of freelance work and from there the agency kind of just was born almost by accident.

[00:03:06] And so I launched the agency properly about a year later. And then not long after that, probably another year into my agency business and I just started hiring employees, et cetera. Um, COVID hit, which, because I was purely in e com was obviously not something I’d wish upon the planet again, but it was really great for growing my business.

[00:03:26] Um, and it meant that, um, we could just go into real scale mode and, um, and we scaled up the agency, scaled it to 20 people. Wow. Wow. That’s very impressive. And really coming out of a place of just uncertainty. I’m so sorry about that. That’s the thing about the tech world is that it can be so big and exciting, but also it can all fall apart like so quickly with funding.

[00:03:51] Yeah. One minute the founder was like doing part have throwing parties for us where there was like fireworks in the sky of the brand name. And we were like being like taken to these like amazing elaborate parties. And then the next minute. There’s literally no money to pay us. That was pretty wild. But then once you kind of got into Webtopia and you started growing that, what were the initial like big challenges that you were facing as you started growing the agency?

[00:04:16] One of the first kind of things I really like realized fairly early on was the importance of niching. I, um, I had a kind of a mentor called Kat Howell and one of her things that she talked about was like niching down within digital marketing to like one, So I had a lot of good experience with e commerce.

[00:04:34] So we niche down to that and started saying no to other types of clients and that just made such a huge difference straight away and meant that we became real experts and our area and we weren’t being distracted with trying to solve the problems of like a myriad of different types of businesses. And we could focus more on solving.

[00:04:52] The problems in our business and you know, all the challenges in our business, I guess the biggest challenge really like from the early days onwards, I think the biggest challenges for me were like finding and hiring. A team quickly enough to keep up with the demand of the growth of the agency and be able to like onboard them, train them up and get them kind of like up to speed quick enough in order to continue to serve our clients to the level that, you know, we wanted to serve them and give them the expertise that we were promising them.

[00:05:23] So my focus was a lot around. Recruitment and finding great team members and in those early days and those heady days when like there was just so much business around and so many e commerce brands or wanna be e commerce brands that needed a good agency. The problem was more the team. Yeah, well, and it’s kind of like chicken or the egg where you want to like build up a team and have them be like cohesive and everyone doing the same thing, but you need to have the revenue coming in from the clients first, but you can’t actually bring on those clients until you have the team.

[00:05:58] So it’s really hard kind of game to time everything out. It is really hard. Yeah. I think where we kind of got to was like always having like a good forecasting system and knowing, okay, so we’re going to take on this many clients per month. This will mean that we would need to hire again at this point.

[00:06:17] So working backwards from that, we know it takes six weeks to hire. Yeah, we need to kind of start that process knowing that the growth is coming. And then also. The other part of it was always sort of, eventually we got to a point where we had an always on hiring kind of funnel live and we would have kind of open conversations with potential candidates ahead of time on the understanding that they would be sort of like our first pick if and when we landed the next kind of like batch of clients.

[00:06:47] That works pretty well, I think, um, and then it makes your focus as the founder, you can kind of, once you’ve got that system in place and it’s working and I had a team, like I had an amazing shout out to Emily, uh, Hatton, my, um, she was my kind of chief integrator, so she was our head of operations by then, she kind of handled all of that recruitment side of things and, and got that going.

[00:07:08] So then my focus as CEO could be focused on. Client acquisition and, you know, marketing the agency so that we could hit those growth points that we predicted that would require us to hire the team. Yes, it is really hard and it’s hard for small agencies. But interestingly, like I’m consulting now for Econ Brands, and I would say they have it almost harder because First of all, they have all their money tied up in stock and trying to like order so there’s that thing But then you’re trying to grow a brand, you know an A class brand, but you’re doing it with like a scrappy little team Yeah, and if you hire the full team that you need Then you’re putting the kind of cart before the horse and cause you haven’t got the revenue in yet.

[00:07:49] So whereas with agencies that you can expand and contract based on your client base and you can have some kind of flexible team members. So maybe it’s just in like the beauty of hindsight, I kind of think the business model of an agency, although it’s not a, always an amazingly easy business model to scale, it is somewhat simpler on the people side.

[00:08:11] potentially than Ecom. I’m not sure. Yeah. Well, and I think also, especially like early stage Ecom, just figuring stuff out, they’re also figuring out like their margin and like what to price things at and exploring all these things that they probably never done before. Like if you’re selling makeup, you’re probably a makeup artist.

[00:08:28] And so now you’re figuring out all these like businessy things, but you coming from the world of digital marketing, you kind of had like a sense of all the different roles you need and how they should have been done. Do you think it’s a lot harder for, for e comm because they’re, all of a sudden you’re a business person and you haven’t been doing that, you know, for very long.

[00:08:46] That’s so true. I mean, I think that’s part of the reason why I started my coaching program is because I noticed that so many of these small brands would come to the agency wanting ads, but actually what they needed was like business advice. Yes. Um, yeah. Or foundational marketing advice and, you know, trying to get an agency to solve your problems when you don’t even know what bro is.

[00:09:09] We’ll solve your problems. And actually, when you look under the hood, the ROAS you need to be profitable is 10 and no agency is going to achieve that you’re already failing before you’ve even begun. So actually having solid business and foundational marketing and kind of product market fit advice is actually more valuable at that early stage than having a team of, you know, marketers run some ads for you.

[00:09:34] Yeah, well, that kind of goes back to the original. Problem you’re trying to solve where there were no agencies that were partnering. And like, it was kind of a set it and forget it thing. And it sounds like you’ve kind of moved more into the role of, I’m going to advise you. I’m going to give you the best advice possible.

[00:09:48] And maybe that includes ads, but first we probably need to tackle like your website and your email flows before we start paying to send people to your website. You know, at what point did you decide that you wanted to sell your agency and then start this consultancy? Yeah, around five years old, I lived in the UK and I’m from New Zealand and there’d always been a plan to move back to New Zealand.

[00:10:10] Eventually I had a little boy and I wanted him to grow up like at least a good chunk of his childhood here in New Zealand. So that was why from the get go, my agency was remote and like, it was kind of hybrid remote in the sense that back then before COVID, I would meet clients in person quite regularly.

[00:10:27] I lived in London, you know, most of my clients were from London. And I had a team who were based in and around London, we’d still meet up. COVID happened and we became a fully remote agency with clients and, and team all around the world. And so it seems like feasible to move back to New Zealand. However, the time difference is insane.

[00:10:46] It’s 12 hours. So, you know, the time difference in New Zealand and And America is kind of fine. There’s lots of work crossover and, and like, vice versa with the UK and, and the US, but New Zealand to the UK, there’s like no work day crossover at all. I was doing my meetings every evening at like 9, 10, 11 PM at night with my team.

[00:11:07] And though I wasn’t really client facing anymore, I occasionally did have to jump on client calls. And the whole thing just became really like, I wasn’t happy. You know, I wasn’t in my best place. I wasn’t doing the best for the agency, for my team, for myself, for my body, all of that stuff. So I had kind of done that typical, I think entrepreneurs are often optimists.

[00:11:29] I’m like, I can make this work. We can make this happen. I’ll be living the dream by Lake in New Zealand. But the reality was it just became very hard. So after two years, I started to just look around for options and like chatting to various potential acquiree, acquirers of agencies and met someone who was really interested, who seemed like a really good fit.

[00:11:51] We got along well, we put together a deal, and the rest is history. Yeah, balance is so important. And every, I totally agree, like, entrepreneurs are always like, I can, like, push through, I can make it work, I can get creative, because you are constantly having, like, these, like, creative problem solving moments, so why wouldn’t you be able to do that for your own life?

[00:12:11] Yeah, that is such a hard time zone, especially with, like, a new son, and, you know, you’ve just moved back, and, um, What’s great is that you had built an agency that was valuable to somebody. Yeah. And actually the, the good thing was I was running it remotely from the completely different time zone I had had to put in place systems that mean I was not on every client call.

[00:12:36] I was not on any client calls. I wasn’t doing the sales anymore. I was every two weeks, like a team call with everyone. So in terms of selling it to. Another agency, they could see very clearly that they were buying something that would run without me. Yeah. Yeah. And so the fact that like increases the value and the salability of your agency for sure.

[00:12:57] When you were selling Webtopia, were you already in your mind saying, okay, now I’m going to switch to more consulting and coaching for smaller e com brands? Or how did you come to that? The new business venture? Yeah. So I had actually already started the coaching program sort of a year or two before. And so I had been running two businesses at once, which I don’t recommend unless, I mean, some people do it, right.

[00:13:22] Yeah. We’ll definitely do it fine. And I think it depends if you’re, you know, a parent and whatever else you’ve got going on in your life. Definitely something you could probably do prior to having kids potentially, but yeah, running two businesses at once was pretty difficult. That was the time difference.

[00:13:37] I think it was the. So I had that kind of a fledgling little coaching business there with, you know, maybe like 10 students. And so once I stepped away from webtopia, I was able to just like double down and focus on the coaching program and grow that. So that’s been kind of steadily growing since then.

[00:13:54] And then the consulting kind of just came naturally. I stumbled across. It’s like a program where they sort of teach you the principles of how to be a marketing consultant and how to, how to price your services, that kind of thing. And the business model really appealed, like the idea of being able to go a little bit more behind the scenes with brands and like actually implement some of the stuff that I’ve been teaching or telling clients to implement was quite appealing.

[00:14:20] So I added that as kind of an extra service and, and yeah, it’s been, um, it’s been a fun ride. Yeah. The things that you’ve learned kind of with Webtopia and, and growing that business and scaling it, do a lot of those still apply to this new, newer venture or are you still like learning new things as you go?

[00:14:37] I’m always learning new things, especially in the digital marketing space, right? It changes all the time and there’s always kind of new techniques to learn. What I’m scaling a business to a team of 20 and a revenue of like over a million dollars a year. It’s like. What it takes really to grow a business, any kind of business, right?

[00:14:57] You’ve got to have like, you know, a vision and you’ve got to have systems and you’ve got to have, you’ve got to know your numbers and you’ve got to like motivate and incentivize your team in a way that works for them. You’ve got to create a culture that is inspiring to people. You’ve got to learn how to like lead people without micromanaging them, you know, give them enough space to, you know, step up and take responsibility, but also step in when they’re not.

[00:15:20] You know, when they’re dropping the ball. So all of those things I think apply to like any business I might run, but it also very much applies to like the businesses that I coach and consult, you know, that experience of having been on the same side of the table as them means that I have a lot to kind of offer them or I have a lot of empathy for them as well and where they are at.

[00:15:41] Kind of what you’re saying is like, all these things are not digital marketing agency specific. Like everything that you listed is. That is what you need to run any business anywhere, any industry. And none of those things are like for the love of making the widget or the industry or whatever it is, it’s more like for the love of running a business, you need to have systems, you need to have people in place and you need to have a leadership style, having that understanding allows you to like go into these e comm businesses who are just like figuring it out, like figuring out how to run a business.

[00:16:13] And. You can say like, yes, I’ll help you with marketing, but also have you thought about e systemizing X, Y, and Z? And I’m sure that is what actually brings much more value and helps differentiate you. Exactly. Yeah. Like a fun experience or like a rewarding experience I guess I would say. Yeah. Because it’s more than just like in an agency, you kind of only able to ever address the marketing.

[00:16:36] Yes. And there’s often fundamentals. Yeah. In the business that you’re kind of itching to help with, but you don’t know enough about it to be able to help them. Yeah. It’s definitely rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like you can kind of like complete the puzzle a little bit more than just being like only marketing, which does feel like it would be really fulfilling just cause also sometimes it’s like changing the price of a product can change everything about a business setting up or getting hiring a really good VA can change everything for, for a founder.

[00:17:05] And so. Just to be able to kind of be there with them for that is probably pretty cool to watch that transformation. Yeah. Yeah, one of the most common things I see founders do is get themselves drawn into like busy work that’s low, low value. Yes. Because it’s easier to just do that than it is to try and fix the bigger problems in your business.

[00:17:29] And so they’ll sort of hide behind, I can pick and pack quicker than, you know, hiring someone to do it or whatever. So they’re picking and packing. And meanwhile, the SEO is like. Terrible or their ads have been completely neglected and the ads could have, you know, been fixed and turned around, you know, double the revenue in the same time period.

[00:17:47] So it’s good to be able to understand the whole business and the person behind it. And like so often it’s like, what’s going on up here is, and I’m tapping my head for the listening, um, is what holds an entrepreneur back. And it sounds like a cliche. People say it all the time, but I, Because I’ve just been working so closely with like so many businesses as an agency owner over the years, I can really see it’s like the ones with the right mindset and approach, they crush it no matter what, like even if their first product is an ideal, it’s the attitude that sees them through and being able to kind of pick themselves up, dust themselves off.

[00:18:23] approach the problem rationally, figure out the solution. That’s what sees people through versus like the killer business idea or not. Right. Right. And I love how you’re talking about, it’s easier to do all these kind of like tedious mind numbing tasks. Cause you’re like, oh, I can do this faster. But I think a lot of it also has to do with fear.

[00:18:42] And this is from my own experience and like running an agency where. Sometimes, like, the next step to get to the next level, you have to kind of either take a risk or do something that, you know, you’ve never done before. And it’s so hard for founders to do that because it’s their life work. And so to take that one next bigger, scarier step into something they’ve never done is so challenging.

[00:19:03] When you could just be like, well, we’re doing okay now, we’re stagnant now. And I know that doing exactly what I’m doing now will give me these results, but it’s a mindset shift to be able to say, but I want to scale, you know, I want to grow, which is scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s so true. And I think it’s like different business owners are different, right?

[00:19:24] And I see the ones that are like somehow like more relaxed and yeah, like taking these bets and able to kind of separate themselves from. The dollars and cents of the risk they’re taking and part of that is mindset. Part of it is also, you know, I see the, the entrepreneurs that have done it a few times and have got, you know, some money in the bank.

[00:19:44] They can take more risks than business owners that are like, you know, very much on their last dime or their family money or their houses on the line. So you have to kind of be empathetic towards their own situation as well and whether it’s going to be easy for them to take those risks or not. Of course, of course.

[00:20:01] I know you’re kind of on this mission to empower the next generation of iconic brands and create brands that are really powerful visually and, and really effective in their advertising. Um, how do you approach creating profitable ad campaigns and these growth marketing strategies with that aren’t only just like getting quick sales, but also building brand equity?

[00:20:24] Yeah, it’s a great question because Oftentimes people see the two as like at odds, right? Like a beautiful, stylish brand that is really well thought out and like everyone sticks to the like brand book and the brand guidelines is often not the brand that’s able to scale with ads. So often ads are quite lo fi unpolished and those are the ones that work best.

[00:20:50] But I was thinking about this before this call. And I was thinking, well, what is the solution to that? And I think the key really is the customer, right? If you really understand your customer on a deep level, you’ve interviewed them, you’ve surveyed them, you’ve analyzed kind of how they, um, you know, what did they say in reviews about you?

[00:21:10] What did like your competitors, um, customers say about them or not like about them. And if you really understand your customer. And as long as whenever any piece of marketing you’re doing is speaking to them on their level and where they’re at, that’s not going to damage your brand. So you can have elevated assets that kind of position the brand as, you know, iconic and, and unique and different.

[00:21:34] Elevated, but then you can also have in parallel to that more relatable, raw content, as long as it speaks to, it’s the right kind of the right representation of your brand, talking to them in the language that they understand and meeting them where they’re at. So I guess we’re brands kind of fall down as if they.

[00:21:53] Like, I had a brand I worked with who was, uh, like a high end, aphrodisiac chocolate brand for, for couples kind of in their 30s and 40s, you know, like maybe they have kids and they don’t have much time for romance anymore, but he hired like a agency to do UGC ads and it was all these like, Really young Gen Z, like student types and like tank tops and, you know, rented apartments with fake, fake plants behind them.

[00:22:22] You know, that kind of thing. That’s not the right vibe to build an iconic brand. Cause everyone can see that it’s just kind of fake UGC, but it’s not to say that everything he needs to do needs to be this kind of chic, elevated thing. It’s just, he needed to find the right UGC creators that represented his brand well on their level.

[00:22:41] And then it can still be raw and relatable and kind of real. But it’s not like jarring in terms of like, who are these people that are ripping this brand are completely wrong. I think can still be raw, but it’s that your brand needs to have a cohesive, like clear idea of who the target audience is, what language they use, you know, what is the reason they buy from you?

[00:23:01] And like, what are they all about? Yeah. And when you’re thinking about UGC, oftentimes the way that I try to explain it to clients is that. You either want the person doing the UGC to look like your customer or be aspirational, like your customer wants to look like them. And so you don’t want to go backwards.

[00:23:19] You don’t want to, you don’t want to show 30 year olds, like, you know, 20 something year old in their crappy apartment. Like you want to show what they could be or show them where they’re at right now. I love that if you’re just using the right language and talking to your customers, your brand can’t be wrong because those are your customers.

[00:23:36] That’s who you want to relate to anyways. I do think that luxury brands have the hardest time with this. Uh, and it takes a, like, we’ve worked with a lot of luxury brands where it’s a very slow process to get them, get them to the point of being okay with UGC or ads that are not fully on brand. How do you handle those conversations usually?

[00:23:56] Yeah. It’s tricky. Like fashion is one of those areas I think is one of the hardest to get brands over the line to like sort of believe in the style. One of the best ways is to try and get them to test it. And then once they see the data, then you know, you can’t deny it. They can’t deny it. They can follow the data.

[00:24:13] Exactly. But again, it’s kind of the same answer really. It’s like making sure that the representation of that brand, the people that they’re choosing to represent them. Yeah. Are the right fit for the brand and like represent the brand in the right way and that might not some top influencer or model But it still needs to be someone that like realistically and I guess aspirationally fits with the brand When you’re thinking about kind of a great ad because you’ve seen thousands of really great ads at this point You’ve made thousands and thousands of really amazing ads.

[00:24:46] Is there certain elements that makes an ad great? Not just good but like a really great ad it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on it and you kind of know it when you see it. And usually, but also the data will tell you whether you’ve achieved it or not. Yeah. That relatability factor that comes in, I think, in that first three seconds, like when I’m scrolling past, has this grabbed me, the potential customer, no one else, doesn’t matter if it grabs other people, but the potential customer who you want to pay attention, like, has it grabbed them enough in a way that they’re like, Oh, That’s me.

[00:25:22] Or like, I can relate to this. This makes, this is important enough to me that I’m going to keep watching more of this. And then it’s like. more of a bit of it. Like, I think the hook is everything and then the rest of it has to then kind of do the rest of the job well, right? Like, so it has to like, maintain your attention, you know, fast cuts, social proof, um, a bit of storytelling is often good having like a, you know, a curiosity hook and then a payoff at the end or a payoff that comes through on the landing page.

[00:25:51] Those are all things that are kind of like, The mechanics I think of a good ad, but at its foundation and at its core, it’s like, does your customer like relate to this and feel like understood or seen or spoken to by this ad? Or are they just like, meh? Yeah, a lot of times it’s like, does this ad have any kind of intention or are we just like putting stuff out there?

[00:26:13] You know, like what is the purpose of this thing? Like, what are we trying to say? Why should I care? Yeah, it’s hard because like, you just have so many ads, like you have to put in so many hooks and try so many different things that it can be really exhausting to constantly be coming up with that intention and coming up with those ideas and those angles, but Ultimately, like you have to test a lot just due to the way the algorithm works, and they all have to have some kind of the things that are always winning, at least on our end is the things that have the most intention.

[00:26:46] Yeah. And that whole thing of like, how many ads you have to create and test, like, I feel like that’s like on a stuck record sometimes saying this to founders and brands. Like to the point I start to be like, am I right? And then I need validation. Like I’ve said this so many times that this is how many creatives you need.

[00:27:03] Like, is it actually true? But it is true. I can tell you it’s true. I’ve got the data to prove it. Like, yeah, product brands and to an extent B2B as well, but like product bands, particularly they need to be Product makers and content makers. Yeah. Yeah. Business of like selling products online is a business of creating products and creating content about those products.

[00:27:28] So can’t be an add on, it can’t be an afterthought. It can’t be a favor. It needs to be part of your core business that you dedicate resource time, a department, a team, a system. To creating content and you can outsource some or all of that. Um, but time or, or money needs to be invested. And generally I think when brands do a bit of both, like have some external help with the content creation, but also like produce and, you know, create stuff in house, that’s going to be the best formula for like having the best mix of creative.

[00:28:02] Yeah. Well, and when they do it in house, there is like, a sense of authenticity that you really can’t get anywhere else. You can’t outsource authenticity for your brand. And so I really like saying like, you don’t have to do all of the content creation, but if you do a little bit of it and you’re telling your story and like people who know your product really well, which is, you know, your employees are making the content, you’re going to be better off in the long run.

[00:28:24] And if you can just get into the habit of it, cause it is a lot, it’s a lot to ask of somebody, but that’s going to have the biggest payoff in the long run. Yeah, totally. Moving kind of into more of your, like, business, uh, consulting, and specifically around profitability. I think that is one of the things that e com brands have the hardest time with at the beginning is figuring out how to price their products, how, what to spend money on, where to cut costs.

[00:28:53] How do you set up your, um, your clients for success and making sure that the, all the strategies that you’re implementing are profitable from the start, or are they profitable from the start? Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, like when I get a founder come on a call and I ask them like, what’s your margin?

[00:29:12] What does it cost you to like get a product in someone’s hands from, you know, production to picking, packing and shipping? If they don’t know that number off the top of their head, that’s a problem. Maybe not a red flag, but that’s, that kind of helps me identify straight away, like where we need to work first and foremost, those numbers just need to be like, and it’s the same with agencies or SAS businesses too, right?

[00:29:35] You need to know what it costs. To fulfill the service or the product and you need to know what you’ve got left over after you’ve charged the customer and then that gives you what you can then spend on marketing and particularly with e com, you need to identify exactly what you can afford to pay to acquire a customer and you need to figure out what’s the most you can possibly afford to pay and still be either profitably profitable or break even or it makes sense in terms of your numbers and your forecast of what you need to hit.

[00:30:02] So looking at that. Um, customer acquisition cost like target and then assessing that against like market, right? So if you’re, if in order to be, you know, a viable business, you need to get a 50 customer acquisition cost. But you have a conversion rate of like half a percent and your typical ad cost in your industry is 2, then that equation is simply not going to work.

[00:30:28] You’re going to have to like bring the conversion rate down, sorry, up massively in order to like even become close to those numbers. So market averages are pretty, a pretty good kind of rule of thumb. So you can look at like, if you’re in fashion, what is the typical return on ad spend or the typical customer acquisition costs?

[00:30:46] And is that kind of close? To where you need to get to for your numbers to work. And if so, then yeah, you can kind of optimize it, the margins, and you’ll probably get there as long as you have product market fit. However, if like your customer acquisition costs that you need to achieve is like way, way, way lower than the industry average, then you’re going to be It’s just going to be an uphill battle from the start to get there.

[00:31:09] And you’re, you’re fighting around the margins to try and make a huge leap. That’s not going to be possible. So I think that’s the first kind of hurdle to get over is like, is this even like a viable equation and to be viable? What do we need to get to? Like, what’s the conversion rate we’re aiming for?

[00:31:24] What’s the area we were aiming for and what sort of traffic costs are we going to need to get to how much of our traffic’s going to have to come from organic and how many repeat customers are You know, what percentage of people repeating and how often are we going to have to expect them to come back?

[00:31:38] And then you’re just gunning to hit all those numbers and unblocking the bottlenecks. Right. And then if like, if all the numbers add up and they make sense from a platform perspective, then it’s about your messaging and your ads. And it’s about your product market fit. And so you’re kind of testing those two things to try and find the winning creative formula and ultimately test whether like this product has legs and people with the right message will consume it at a level that’s going to be.

[00:32:05] Viable for you. The tricky thing is you’re testing a lot of things at once, right? When you launch a new product, you’re testing product market fit, you’re testing your website, you’re testing your ads, your agency, your landing pages. There’s so many variables at play. Um, it can be hard to figure out which one is the one that’s kind of broken and not getting you there.

[00:32:24] So yeah, it’s complicated, but I think starting at like real foundational numbers is the key. I love that you said that because not, not every founder knows their numbers, which is okay. Like I get it. Yeah, it is. But it is something that it’s like before you spend a dime on ads, you need to know your numbers.

[00:32:42] You need to know your goals. You need to make sure you’re tracking a setup and that takes a little bit of time and effort, but it’s going to save you so much more money. If you realize that you’re not, your numbers are off and they’re not going to work for ads to fix that first. Um, and it sounds like while there’s a lot, like you said, a lot of different things that need to happen before you kind of get to this like growth.

[00:33:03] It’s a pretty straightforward system. You know, it’s not like it’s like unique to each individual person. It’s like, Make sure your numbers are right. Once the numbers are right, make sure you have a product market fit. So I think that there is something really comforting about that, where like someone can come work with you and know kind of exactly what the journey is going to be and that at the end of the journey, we’re getting to a place where we’re, we can start scaling, which is really nice.

[00:33:29] Yeah. And that’s the next thing, right? They have the, once we’re at this like profitable CAC. And we’re ready to scale. Are they ready to scale? And I think like some businesses are, and they’re like, yep, let’s go. And others like, for whatever reason, deep inside, they fear it. And they stand in front of it and they don’t actually scale when they have this big opportunity in front of them.

[00:33:51] Yeah. And I mean, with especially with like meta ads, um, if you have an opportunity to scale, you better be ready to do it because you don’t know like how often you’ll get those opportunities. Sometimes the algorithm is really kind to you and you got to scale when you can, but sometimes it’s not. And so being ready to scale, I think, is another thing that you probably work on with them as you’re.

[00:34:12] building out this whole plan. Yeah, exactly. So having a forecast so you know when you’re going to have to do the next order so that you don’t sell out when you’re in the middle of scaling is super important as well. Yeah. And balancing that cash flow so that you’re ready to do that. So yeah, it’s um, it’s a finely tuned system.

[00:34:31] But yeah, with the right inputs, you can, you can definitely, um, have some fun. Yeah. Do you, so you’ve obviously worked with like a lot of different founders. Are there certain founders that you’ve had to like walk away from because you didn’t feel like they were ready enough or have you been able to kind of like break through and figure it out for most people?

[00:34:51] Yeah. I mean, definitely in the sort of first half of my agency, like, I think this is pretty typical of agencies. When they first get started, you work with a lot of smaller clients, you cut your teeth and you kind of prove your capabilities and then like bigger and bigger clients start getting attracted to working with you.

[00:35:08] So that was pretty typical. And I think in those early days, we probably weren’t as discerning about who we took on. We maybe didn’t scrutinize their numbers before we took them on. Um, and so we would have to end up having those hard conversations about performance. We think it’s great. It’s not working for your business.

[00:35:25] And we got better at all of that. But, um, definitely because of the hangover of some of those clients we’d taken on, went through a period of kind of shedding clients like us, more so us proactively, like Ending the relationship with clients because we wouldn’t be able to scale them. What’s the point in kind of working with them?

[00:35:44] They didn’t really have the appetite or the numbers to work in that way. And it kind of wasn’t serving either of us to like, keep playing this kind of game of standing still and not really getting anywhere. So, yeah, I think that was kind of part of the evolution of the agency is just realizing that you’ve got to kind of like move on from certain types of clients and then getting better at kind of picking the ones that are going to be.

[00:36:04] a great partnership and really be on the same page as you with wanting to scale. I think one of the weirdest things when you’re a business owner. Like, and as an agency owner is realizing, like, some people’s business, you care about it more than they care about it. You want their success more than they want it.

[00:36:22] And it’s like, what? Like why don’t you care about your business? Mind blowing to me. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the case. Well, and also, I mean, like their point of view, that’s probably great that someone cares, you know, as much or more about their business being successful than they do. That’s what, that’s who you want to work with.

[00:36:42] You want to partner with people who really, really care and want you to succeed. Um, so that is, that’s pretty crazy though. Yeah. So you, you kind of mentioned, um, systems a little bit earlier and I know that scaling is just about building repeatable systems. That’s something that can happen over and over again.

[00:37:03] Are there certain systems or processes that are crucial for these early stage e commerce brands to implement as they’re starting to scale? So I guess the main systems really are like in terms of the marketing side, which is what I know the best. It would be like having a system for analyzing your data and like tracking what’s going on in your, um, and your analytics.

[00:37:24] So it can start really simple. Like one of the things I implement with new brands that come into my program is like, look at your key metrics every week, like have a process for putting them in a spreadsheet, looking at them every week and comparing them. Right. So it’s things like. You know, sessions, conversion rate, average revenue per visit, revenue per channel.

[00:37:45] And then more importantly, I think your blended customer acquisition costs and your blended return on ad spend, you compare those numbers week after week. And that’s a system that’s going to give you a much better understanding of your business. Um, and then you, you’re creating systems like weekly send of your email, like of, of an email to your list.

[00:38:05] And Having a system for creating your ads. So you’re systematically like launching new creative. I would recommend every week. So you have a system for like gathering UGC, working with influencers, creating that content, and then maybe you’re starting to find like support for the business in terms of like freelancers that you work with or small agencies that are able to like take some of those tasks off you.

[00:38:29] One of the things though I notice is. Founders sometimes want to, like, if they don’t understand something, they want to get it off their plate really quickly. But if they take it off their plate before they understand it, that’s often where things get messy. If they’re lucky, they find someone who does. Is it, you know, really great and does that thing well and has done it before many times and can do it better than them.

[00:38:50] But the chances are, because they don’t understand it, even finding that person is going to be difficult because they won’t know what they’re looking for. And so they’re trying to kind of like, it’s, Typical with ads, right? Like I want someone to just solve this ad problem for me and I don’t understand it.

[00:39:03] And I’m just going to put it over here, but I think in turn it like the, the founder has to understand enough of it, have kind of like built the system and then they can outsource that system. They can say, okay, freelance, I want you to do the media buying, but I’m going to do the creative in house or I’m going to outsource the creative, but I’m going to keep doing the media buying.

[00:39:20] I understand how these different systems work together, and now this is like a this is like a repeatable thing that I can get someone else to do. But before it’s like you figured out how it works for your business. Outsourcing it can be really problematic. Um, so I think that and then, you know, the typical things I think.

[00:39:38] Become repeatable quite quickly as things like picking and packing or having customer service like outsourced. So you have like standard responses and like, you know, a kind of guidebook of like how to respond to different customer queries, how to solve the typical problems. You can create that system and then give that to someone who’s like much lower pay grade than what you are as a founder, then that frees up your time to like solve the bigger things and the, you know, and figure out the marketing problem, for instance.

[00:40:08] Yeah, well, and I think the other really important element of understanding how your systems work and like building them yourselves, is that when you do hire a freelancer or an agency or someone to do the work, you’ll know if it’s right or wrong. Um, you know, you can kind of smell the bullshit a little bit more because you’ve had some experience with it.

[00:40:26] You don’t have to be an expert at it, but you should know the basics of everything, like what your goals are. So that way, when someone comes to you and gives you a subpar product, you can kind of like push back on that and feel confident in it. Ideally it’s not for, and hopefully you hire people who make your systems even better and do a significantly better job than you’re doing, but you do have to it.

[00:40:46] So I’m going to spend a little bit of time understanding all the different pieces first. Totally. Yeah. So when you think about what’s next for EcomRockets, what’s coming down the pipeline? What are you guys working on right now? Well, I’m really excited about the power of AI to help these early stage businesses.

[00:41:04] Where I’m kind of thinking we’re going to head with it is. Just more and more empowering the group with what I myself have learned about AI and you know, other people that I work with and giving them like the ability to plug and play those systems into their business so that they can free themselves up for like the tasks that are going to move things forward.

[00:41:25] And they’re doing less of the kind of repeatable things. I mean, I can take some of those. I always think it like what’s AI is good for is it does a great kind of like first draft of of things of all sorts of things of started, you know, it gets you started. Exactly. And so you can get more done because of that.

[00:41:43] And like, You know, having a GPT that’s built to specifically your, but for your business, that’s like trained on your, um, your writing style. That’s like specifically there to create like blog posts or create email and how to kind of like build that in a way that’s going to be not just You know, turn out the same old crap as everyone else and how you can kind of like build that system, but add the human element to it.

[00:42:07] So I think there’s a lot we can teach founders. They don’t have often the time to learn this stuff. So, yeah, I think that’s an exciting kind of area for econ markets and then continuing to teach like the foundations and also be their guide in terms of what’s changing. On the platforms and what’s actually working and like media buying systems so that they’re not kind of led astray by the latest YouTube guru that says that, like, I should run the ads in this certain way or whatever.

[00:42:32] That’s amazing. I feel like AI is there so much and it’s moving so fast and there are so many ways that it can help people, but you’ve really got to, like, know what you’re getting into and not rely on it too much. So I feel like walking that line is really important to have a partner who understands it like yourself is going to be vital for these founders.

[00:42:51] Yeah. Okay. Well, to kind of wrap up here, um, I always ask this question when, if you could give yourself one piece of advice, like when you were just starting out Webtopia, starting your own brand, what would you tell yourself to do? Well, I guess when I’m, if I was going back to starting Webtopia. That’s a tricky one, right?

[00:43:10] Because everything I, like, did wrong got me here. So it’s hard to, like, think of, like, what’s the thing I did wrong that was just, like, pointless? Like, if I could go back and say, well, like, yeah, there was this, like, database I paid ten grand for. I definitely wouldn’t do that again, but that doesn’t really help many people.

[00:43:27] Um, so probably just say no to more of those bad opportunities. Yeah. But, you know, I would caveat that by saying You know, a lot of those, I had to kind of go through that learning to get here, right? Maybe put your prices up. That’s probably the big one. I should have put my prices up earlier. Again, it’s all part of the learning and I got the clients I did and got some amazing case studies and maybe they wouldn’t have said yes to me if I had priced myself higher at the beginning.

[00:43:54] So, yeah. Well, and I, I think that like saying no to the bad opportunities for me, at least I am the same where I’m like, man, I wish I didn’t do these things. And I knew when I saw those opportunities, like in my gut, like I had this intuition that it wasn’t right, but. The numbers made enough sense and, you know, you feel like you got to do, you got to take what you can get, especially early on.

[00:44:16] What I learned is that, like, your gut feeling is actually coming from somewhere that’s, like, very real. And it’s based on all these experiences in your subconscious. And so learning to trust your gut and say no to those bad opportunities. I think that’s a really good piece of advice. Yeah. And yeah, put your prices up early.

[00:44:33] That’s, I think that’s true for every single agency, especially if you’re doing like good work for your clients. Like there’s a ton of competition for agencies doing incredible work. So put your prices up. Yeah, totally. Awesome. Well, where can people find you online? I think the best place is either LinkedIn or Twitter.

[00:44:51] I’m a bit more active on LinkedIn than Twitter. So Jesse Healy on LinkedIn, um, and from there you can find all my other stuff like my newsletter and um, I’ve got some nice freebies, um, on my LinkedIn page as well. You can download. Amazing. I encourage everybody to, to go check out Jesse and we’ll, we’ll link you in the, um, the description.

[00:45:11] We’ll tag you on social media. Um, thank you so much for being on the show, Jesse. This is, this was really fun. Awesome. It was great to be here. Amazing. And thank you everyone at home or on the go for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend, leave us a review.

[00:45:27] If there’s anything you’d like to hear on this upcoming episode, please just let us know. And for more insights, um, follow us on LinkedIn or visit rightleftagency. com and we’ll be back soon with more stories of success, innovation, and marketing strategies to help you grow. Thank you so much.

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