In this episode, we have our guest, Chase Clymer, who brings a unique perspective for manufacturers and e-commerce merchants from his experience of helping customers getting their e-commerce businesses to grow from the ground up using Shopify.
He also shares his in-field experiences of what makes an e-commerce toolset or architecture, especially Shopify, successful.
Chapter Markers
- [0:00] Intro
- [2:14] Chase’s personal story and current focus
- [2:51] How to start on the e-commerce journey?
- [4:54] Overview of Shopify ecosystem
- [7:03] Differences of Shopify needs for B2B and B2C business models
- [8:38] Recommended verticals for Shopify
- [9:46] Limitations of Shopify
- [11:41] Shopify architecture patterns
- [13:54] Shopify gift card strategy
- [15:46] E-commerce KPIs
- [24:59] 30-60-90 plan to hire a Shopify agency
- [26:35] Closing thoughts
- [27:54] Outro
Key Takeaways
- For the customization of like wholesale orders in bulk ordering, Shopify is just a pain in the butt to make that work the right way that you probably want it to work.
- If you’re looking to expand direct-to-consumer, that’s a new growth goal for you, then, then you’re just launching a direct-to-consumer website on a platform that’s perfectly great for it.
- If you’re in fashion, or if you’re selling like a consumer packaged goods, or you know, just like a physical product, low SKU count, Shopify is amazing.
- Shopify has an inherent 99 variant limit on its products. For example, if you have it in 10 colors in 10 sizes, you’ve just hit 100 variants.
- Your user experience is directly responsible for your conversion rate, you got to make it easy to navigate, you need to make it easy to understand, you want to make sure people aren’t falling out of the funnel and Goofy places because of goofy stuff happening with your website.
- If you don’t understand how customers like to shop, or best practices for e-commerce, sometimes if you make a wonky decision in your website design or the layout, or how things are filtered, or how things are kind of played in the navigation, it can be detrimental to your conversion rate.
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About Chase
Chase Clymer is the Co-founder at Electric Eye where he and his team create Shopify-powered sales machines from strategic design, development, and marketing decisions.
He is also the host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast where we provide online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business.
Resources
- Connect with Chase
- Connect with Electric Eye
- Honest E-commerce Podcast
- YouTube video – E-commerce KPIs and Metrics – Mentioned at 21:32
Full Transcript
Chase Clymer 0:00
E-commerce is cool. And the numbers behind it are super cool. And it comes down to three realistic numbers and anybody listening to this that has an e-commerce store, you can like, do this with your numbers for the last 30 days and you’ll be like, Wow, he was right. That’s crazy.
Intro 0:15
Growing a business requires a holistic approach that extends beyond sales and marketing. This approach needs alignment among people, processes, and technologies.
So if you’re a business owner, operations, or finance leader looking to learn growth strategies from your peers and competitors, you’re tuned into the right podcast. Welcome to the WBS podcast where scalable growth using business systems is our number one priority.
Now, here is your host, Sam Gupta.
Sam Gupta 0:50
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of The WBS podcast. I’m Sam Gupta, your host, and principal consultant at digital transformation consulting firm, ElevatIQ.
When I was putting together a list of growth topics for this month, that could be valuable for our audience, especially with the changing business environment due to COVID, direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategies were on the top of our list. We wanted to cover D2C from different perspectives, including operations, finance, and marketing.
In today’s episode, we have our guest Chase Clymer who brings a unique perspective for manufacturers and ecommerce merchants from his experience of helping customers getting their ecommerce businesses to grow from the ground up. He also shares his infield experiences of what makes an e-commerce toolset or architecture, especially Shopify successful.
Chase Clymer is the co-founder at Electric Eye, where he and his team create Shopify-powered sales machines from strategic design, development, and marketing decisions. He is also the host of honest ecommerce, a weekly podcast where they provide online store owners with honest actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business. With that, let’s get to the conversation.
Hey, Chase, welcome to the show.
Chase Clymer 2:12
Hey, thanks for having me.
Sam Gupta 2:14 – Chase’s personal story and current focus
My pleasure. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what you do? And who you help these days?
Chase Clymer 2:20
Yes, my real big boy job these days is I run an e-commerce agency called Electric Eye. We help brands grow through strategic design, development, and marketing initiatives.
What that really means is like we build beautiful websites and help them sell awesome things online for Shopify partners. And it’s been a wild ride.
And along with that, I’m also a podcast host myself, so you can catch me over on the honest ecommerce podcast as well if you enjoy listening to the sound of my voice, which personally I don’t, but some people like what I have to say.
Sam Gupta 2:51 – How to start on the e-commerce journey?
I have actually caught up on some of your episodes, they’re really good. So I would highly recommend Chase’s podcast. It’s amazing. So, Chase, I’m actually going to touch on the topics you just mentioned about strategic marketing.
So let’s say if I have a manufacturer who has never done ecommerce before, and they have no idea how to start on e-commerce, what would be your recommendation for them?
Chase Clymer 3:16
Oh, yeah. So this is a pretty softball question. If you’re, if you have a product, and you have like wholesale accounts and whatnot, and people are buying it off of you, so you know that there’s like a fit out there in the ecosystem for your product, you should definitely reach out to someone that knows what they’re doing, like an agency or a freelancer or anyone else, because it’s going to get you selling so much faster than what I usually see happen is people fail through it for six months to a year and get frustrated.
And it doesn’t really work. Like if there’s a proven market for your product because other people are buying and reselling it like you’re gonna you’re entering a market that you already know that it’ll work.
But one of the bigger things with kind of launching a business. So I’ll give you some like, very straightforward like specific advice is just to start on Shopify, you can get away with using an off-the-shelf theme.
Chase Clymer 4:04
You don’t need a custom $60-$100,000 website. You don’t need to be oversold on any of that stuff. If you’re just getting started and you’ve got a product and you’re a manufacturer or distributor or wholesaler and you’re like looking to go DTC, just get it off the shelf theme. And you just got to get that MVP out there.
Because there’s so much goofy logistical stuff on the back end, you got to figure out like how you’re going to deal with returns and who’s gonna fulfill it, you know, discount codes like email automation, subscriptions, if that’s the space you’re playing, and there’s all that stuff you got to figure out.
So like, don’t spend any time worrying about the look and feel of the website. There are amazing premium themes out there in the marketplace, especially on Shopify, that’ll get you to where you need to be. I know like, honestly, from going from zero to $1 million, you can just you can survive perfectly fine with an off-the-shelf theme.
Sam Gupta 4:54 – Overview of Shopify ecosystem
I couldn’t agree more with respect to your thought process about not worrying about the technical stuff. When You’re simply starting, they should be worrying about the business first, and there is so much to do in the e-commerce business.
So thank you for that thought. And since you mentioned Shopify, you know, obviously, Shopify has a great ecosystem. It’s growing. But do you have any recommendations with respect to any other tools that our listeners can explore?
Chase Clymer 5:19
Yeah, I mean, so here’s the deal. We’re Shopify experts at the agency, right? And obviously, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So we use Shopify a lot. With that being said, there are better tools out there and better solutions out there for different types of businesses, I would sometimes recommend like so if you just have a content business or a website that just content stuff like a Squarespace or WordPress website would be just fine. You don’t need Shopify.
I mean, if you’re a restaurant, you need more specific stuff than a direct-to-consumer website, ie a Shopify site could offer you.
If you’re more wholesale, Shopify is a terrible solution. If you’re B2B, Shopify is a terrible solution.
Chase Clymer 5:56
So like there’s a whole bunch of other stuff you can look at. But if you’re selling a cool product direct to consumer, you know you’re shipping someone a box or something or you know, even these days we got are getting a little bit more into digital, like Shopify is probably a great solution for that if you’re just selling a product to end customer with no other weirdness, but kind of once you kind of get out of that core thing that Shopify is really good at sometimes begins to be more work than it’s worth to make to begin Shopify as well into what you want it to be, you know, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, as some people would say.
So just kind of really understand that Shopify is great at doing one thing, and one thing well, then anytime, like the further and further you get away from that, it’s probably not a good idea. A perfect example is the other day someone wanted to do like a launch a B2B business, and they were looking at Shopify, and I just told them, this is a terrible idea.
And I introduced him to somebody that knew BigCommerce very well, and they’re off to the races now kind of exploring that. That’s how to launch their business. So all of the solutions that exist out there in the ecosystem, have their fit in there perfectly. It’s just I’ve kind of tied my cart to the Shopify horse because we’re really, really good at it. And it’s a lot more profitable to just stick to what you know.
Sam Gupta 7:03 – Differences of Shopify needs for B2B and B2C business models
Okay, amazing. So since you’ve touched on B2B a bit, and obviously, you know, our listeners are going to be a mix of B2C, as well as B2B.
So can you touch on the differences of how B2C differs from B2B, as far as a tool is concerned like Shopify?
Chase Clymer 7:20
Yeah, I mean, just for the customization of like wholesale orders in bulk ordering, Shopify is just a pain the in the butt to make that work the right the way that you probably want it to work.
So if you’re looking at launching the Shopify website, and you don’t have a plan to go direct-to-consumer right off the rip, you know, it might not be the best fit for you, you got to really, you got to use it for what it’s good at. And it’s, it’s for going to the end, the end customer so you know, bulk purchasing or, or like really custom-like purchase orders, or like doing net-30 terms, like more things that are definitely more like a more traditional business to business sales techniques, like Shopify isn’t built to do that.
So you have to like work around it to make Shopify do that if you are trying to launch a B2B website on Shopify like it’s just a lot more work. But if you’re looking to expand direct-to-consumer, that’s a new growth goal for you, then, then you’re just launching a direct-to-consumer website on a platform that’s perfectly great for it. So you’re gonna, you know, be adding your products appropriately building a user experience that makes sense, and it’s good looking and elevates whatever brand that you’re bringing to the table. But you know, again, the hard part is going to be like you can build the most beautiful door in the world. But how are you gonna get people to see it?
Sam Gupta 8:38 – Recommended verticals for Shopify
And are there any specific verticals in B2B that you would definitely not recommend Shopify? Or are there any verticals that you would definitely, definitely recommend Shopify?
Chase Clymer 8:48
I mean, if you’re in fashion, or if you’re selling like a consumer packaged goods, or you know, just like a physical product, low SKU count, Shopify is amazing.
On the flip side of that, if you’re selling a vice product, so this would be anything that like, you probably can’t advertise on Facebook or Google, where you have like some really obscure payment provider because Shopify pay won’t accept you because you have a vice product.
I can be a little more specific on that if you want me to, but I think most listeners will get it. You know, Shopify is probably not the best idea for you.
I enjoyed this question, because if you have a super insane SKU count, like really, really high or you’ve got really, really variable products that are super customizable. Shopify may not be the best idea for you.
But I mean, if you’re selling like some tangible, cool, good, like some real product I can hold it in my hand, and you know, people want and it’s super photogenic. Shopify is gonna be great for that.
Sam Gupta 9:46 – Limitations of Shopify
Okay. Can you touch a little bit more on the variable product that you mentioned? And what are going to be the problems with Shopify?
Chase Clymer 9:51
So this is a problem that Shopify has but you know, most agencies where their salt like knows how to solve for it now, but Shopify has an inherent 99 variant limit on their products. An easy way to hit that limit would be to have like, one product in like, if you have it in 10 colors in 10 sizes, you’ve just hit 100 variants.
So if you think about it like a little bit more obscure so like say you have one product in three sizes in five colors in five fit or you know, you can have it be like this, this comes up a lot in more when you get more into like manufacturing and like buying parts or buying, you know, car parts for sure this comes up all the time because you have so many variables like, like makes and models and years and all that stuff. So dealing with high variant levels on Shopify is sometimes a pain in the butt.
Sam Gupta 10:42
Okay, amazing. So some of the fashion verticals, I would say, you know, might not be a great fit, just because they might have a lot more styles.
Chase Clymer 10:50
I mean, with styles it’s fine. Some of the biggest fashion stores on the internet or on our on Shopify fashion. Fashionova is hands down, you know, one of the biggest powerhouses out there. And they’re running on Shopify, like right now.
Sam Gupta 11:00
So other than the variable metrics SKU problem that you mentioned, do you see any other problems in the B2C space with Shopify?
Chase Clymer 11:10
You know, you can get away with it. There is some wholesale stuff out there. And if your wholesale system is pretty simple like Shopify might, you know, it might make sense.
But again, it’s like you’re not using the tool that was built for that. I believe, you know, there are probably better tools out there to solve for your use case for going business to business.
Again, it goes back to its use of the right tool for the job. And if you’re going business to business, there are better tools. If you’re going business to customers, Shopify is your it’s hard to find one that you know, will be hard to beat it.
Sam Gupta 11:41 – Shopify architecture patterns
And since you mentioned that use the right tool for the right job, that’s really important, in my opinion. So can you talk about some of the architecture that you typically see, when you work with any specific customer? Do you see any specific tools that you commonly implement along with Shopify?
Chase Clymer 11:58
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. Shopify has got a, you know, as I said, they’re really good at their core product and what they’re really good at.
And then anything that’s kind of like bolted on on top of that is like anyone that’s used to Shopify, like understands, like there’s this whole app ecosystem out there. So when you’re talking about tools and stuff that people have installed in their stores, it usually is an app that they have, right. And you know, we’ve been doing this forever.
So we’ve used almost every app under the sun at this point. And we understand, you know, which ones are actually going to work for people and which ones are kind of trash. So I won’t mention any of the bad ones.
But I mentioned some of the good ones that we use all the time. So I think one of our favorite tools to implement out there is for email automation and email campaigns. It’s called klaviyo that’s hands down our favorite email automation tool out there. We won’t work with any other platform on it honestly, that that one’s our favorite. That one’s fantastic. If you’re talking about subscriptions, recharge is definitely the number one in the game these days.
Chase Clymer 12:58
Does some really, really cool stuff for, you know, doing recurring orders and subscriptions. Like I said before, you’re talking about doing operations and stuff you’re trying to figure out, you know, how you’re gonna deal with returns and all that stuff. If you’re getting to a sales velocity, that’s pretty, pretty high, and you’re dealing a lot more with customer service.
Gorgeous is an amazing customer service ticketing tool and a chatbot that, you know, ties just perfectly in with Shopify, it was almost tailor-made for Shopify. So that was one that we are oftentimes like telling clients about, again, you know, I said Shopify does certain things well, but they don’t like really go beyond that core functionality.
Recently, we’re recording this about a week before, it’s actually exactly before American Thanksgiving. So next week is going to be Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And we helped almost all of our clients implement it, like more advanced gift carding, and you do that through rise.ai is an amazing tool there. I could go on, but those are just the ones that come top, top of mind for me.
Sam Gupta 13:54 – Shopify gift card strategy
Okay, since you mentioned gift cards, do you see any specific strategy that works with respect to the gift cards with the customers that you typically work with?
Chase Clymer 14:03
Ah, yeah, I mean, well, one, if you just want to hear a whole like the 30-minute episode about it, we just did that on the podcast. We had the theme from rise.ai on this podcast, they were talking about all the crazy strategies that their customers were having for it.
So this is interesting to you just like go find that on the Honest Ecommerce website. But specifically, the one that really stood out to me is when you have like this advanced functionality on your site, you can give instead of giving like a coupon code, you can give them like store credit like gift card cash, and like people that the perceived value of that is so much higher than Oh, like, I’m going to give you 15% off this $100 item versus I’m going to give you $15 in store credit, like one of those sounds way cooler, right?
Sam Gupta 14:47
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, just to retouch on your point about the link for the podcast. So what we are going to do is we are going to be including that link as part of this podcast, so if anybody wants to check that out, they can check that link. (Check the resources section for the link)
Chase Clymer 15:00
Yeah, it’s definitely a cool time. And then kind of going on it goes in line with the gift card thing is also just like customer loyalty programs is what we’re seeing a lot, especially a lot of people are gonna dump a bunch of money into acquiring new customers right now. Because it’s what you do with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you’re trying to acquire new customers and sell them whatever your cool deal is your cool products during holidays, the next thing you got to do is re-engage those customers and try to raise the lifetime value of them, right.
So your like investment is way more profitable on that acquisition cost. So a lot, oftentimes people are using like kind of loyalty programs, and you can build them out through a bunch of different apps in the ecosystem. But yeah, that’s like a great touchpoint to kind of follow up after the holidays, and you know, give people like double points, or like turn those points into gift cards, like I just said, but yeah, that’s another kind of great strategy to do.
Sam Gupta 15:46 – E-commerce KPIs
Yeah, that’s a great point. And in fact, I mean, since you mentioned so many different KPIs there, I wanted to know, if you have any insight on your favorite KPI that you definitely recommend tracking.
Chase Clymer 15:56
Oh, I mean, I’ll give you three with an asterisk because there’s a fourth one that like I’m always looking at, but ecommerce is cool, and the numbers behind it are super cool. And it comes down to three realistic numbers. And anybody listening to this that has an ecommerce store, you can like, do this with your numbers for the last 30 days, and you’ll be like, wow, that he was right, that’s crazy.
Um, so what you’re gonna do is you’re going to go into the back into your store, and you’re going to look, I always like to do last 30 days of the pretty good snapshot, you know, but unless you have like some crazy sales, or you went viral, or something like that, it might not be a good idea to look that I’d look at like your more average month, right?
So go and look at like an average month. And you’re gonna want to look at your conversion rate, right? How many people came to the site and actually converted conversion rate is only it only compare your conversion rate to yourself, don’t compare it to anyone else in the industry, because they are selling something different than you their offers different than yours, their brand is different than yours. If your friend’s conversion rates, you know, 3% and yours is 2%. Who cares? Like That doesn’t matter.
Chase Clymer 16:50
You just need to tie your success to your, your previous metrics, like don’t look at anyone else. So you’re gonna look at your conversion rate. And then the next thing you’re going to look at is you’re gonna want to look at your traffic.
So if that’s your, your sessions, not your unique visitors, you like wanna look at your total sessions for the month. And then you want to look at your average order value for that month, right? So like, what’s the average order value of although I don’t think I have to explain these KPIs smart people, listen, this podcast, that’d be so you get 10,000 visitors a 2% conversion rate, and a $75 average order value, that comes out to about $15,000 a month, right?
That’d be like your gross sales for the month. So what we’re going to focus on is like we moved forward with a project or what you should be kind of think of talking about with your team or your contractors, your freelancers, your agency, partner, whoever is used to focus on one of those KPIs, right. And the one I always like to start with is the conversion rate.
Chase Clymer 17:38
Because that one is like the biggest lever that you can really pull at the beginning is so you want to like look at your user experience because your user experience is directly responsible for your conversion rate, you got to make it easy to navigate, you need to make it easy to understand, you want to make sure people aren’t falling out of the funnel and Goofy places because of goofy stuff happening with your website.
Definitely, a lot has a lot to do with speed. And kind of like the customer journey and how that flow is mapped out. So let’s say you’ve been some time and energy and money and effort on your user experience, right it this is literally talking about your store design and how it set up.
You spend some effort on that and say you take your yours, you put all that effort in it, now you move the needle on your conversion rate from 2% to 3%. Your monthly sales have now jumped to $22,500 without doing anything, any work on your average order value or on your traffic, right.
But that one’s like the biggest one to focus on first. You know, once you get that to a place that you’re proud of, then the easiest lever to move honestly, is traffic.
Chase Clymer 18:40
You can do a paid acquisition, right? You can go and go into Facebook or Google or Pinterest, you know, now you got TikTok that you can put do ads with. So you can definitely pour a bunch of money in there, you will make sure you’re getting qualified traffic.
One thing to note though is when you do increase traffic with a bunch of new people, your conversion rate is going to drop that back down a bit. But it’s going to add so many more people into your flywheel for retargeting efforts when you know, that’s why we like to use klaviyo because we’re having to do the heavy lifting on like an awesome drip sequence that shows people the features and benefits and values of the brand over time and educates them on the product.
So you know, maybe they’re going to be exposed four months ago to some ad and kind of getting the funnel because they were thinking about purchasing and then they keep getting these emails over time. And then they purchase. You know, that’s kind of how you’re building up this flywheel. But let’s say that now you’d like to, you’re investing a couple $10,000-$20,000 a month into ad and ads and he tripled your triple your traffic.
Chase Clymer 19:39
Now you’re tripling your monthly average. So you’re going from, you know, $22.5K up to $67.5K a month in sales. And you know, you’re only focusing now that your only focus has been on two KPIs, the other KPI it’s a lot harder to move the needle on this and the ones where you got to get really tricky and fun with upselling prospects. bundles post-purchase upsell is average order value.
That one is where you’re, you know, I don’t believe that there’s good like an off-the-shelf plug-in in the Shopify ecosystem that will allow you to manipulate average order value very well. But if you find a trusted partner and you work with them on a strategy of like, increasing the average order value, obviously, again, you move that it’s gonna raise, it’s gonna raise the bar here, but those three are the ones that we like to focus on at the agency. And then, of course, I said there was a fourth, which is lifetime value.
Chase Clymer 20:32 – 30-60-90 plan to hire a Shopify agency
So you know, obviously, it’s a lot easier to sell to someone that you’ve already sold to before. So those are like re-engagement campaigns. And again, like loyalty programs, like we just talked about, doing cool things with like, you know, store credit and gift card, those are some ways to try to re-engage customers and bring them back again.
Because, you know, oftentimes people are talking about customer acquisition costs and all that stuff. And Facebook and Google are getting so competitive that it’s like really increasing what you have to spend to acquire a new customer on these, like paid channels, that if you’ve got a low average order value, or like a really cheap product, you might be paying, like, like paying the cost of your product to acquire a new customer.
So you have to make up your money on the tail end of it. And like get more sales from that customer. I just went off on an extremely long tangent there. Do you have any questions for me about all that?
Sam Gupta 21:22
That’s actually amazing. I think, you know, the KPIs are really important. And that’s one of the things that I really wanted to cover in this topic so that our listeners can get insight into that. So I thank you for that.
Chase Clymer 21:32
Oh, you’re welcome. I believe there is a video where I walk through this on our YouTube channel as well. (Check the link for the video in the resources section). I’m using some easy math as well. But I mean, it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s just you know, it’s just me writing numbers on a piece of paper, but it really just simplifies e-commerce.
And, you know, it comes down to these three KPIs, that’s where you need to focus, if you want to talk about growing the top line, obviously, there are ways to grow margin, but that’s a little bit more kind of on the business operations side of things. But you know, if you’re talking about, you want to hit a certain monetary goal, you got to focus on three things.
Sam Gupta 22:06
Okay, amazing. And, on that note, I think, you know, we have to include the video link as part of this podcast as well. So if anybody wants to check that out, they can check. And I am actually personally going to check that as well. Because you can always learn about KPIs, and you can draw insight even for, you know, other businesses. And hopefully, we can learn from it as well.
Chase Clymer 22:24
All right, yeah, once you get it down, it’s pretty simple. So, you, we talked about this in the kind of the pre-show, but you know, I wanted to kind of, I can give some rough numbers. An example of a client that we did this with, though, we started working with her back in 2019, probably in the summer, and we kind of were working on some smaller projects.
And you know, we had some, we had some quick wins there. And we were like, Alright, look like, here’s the deal, here are your numbers. You know this is the road, this is how you get to a million dollars. And we did a lot of work on the user experience of the website. This was a client that, you know, she had built this website herself using off-the-shelf themes, making all the choices herself, which is you know, that’s all well and good.
Chase Clymer 23:10
But if you don’t understand how customers like to shop, or best practices for e-commerce, you know, sometimes if you make a wonky decision in your website design or the layout, or how things are filtered, or how things are kind of played in the navigation, it can be detrimental to your conversion rate.
So we did a lot of work of the kind of polishing what she had already had there. and you know, going and looking at what you had, and just making it as much better you know, how can we make this as awesome as can be from what we got here. So we did all that work there, ping brought the conversion rate up a lot, and build a lot of awesome remarketing applications through you know, again, automated email marketing, we actually dove into SMS as well. And we did some really good work on Facebook and Instagram to kind of bring people back into the funnel.
And we’re like, Alright, like we’ve got when people get here, they’re usually going to buy like, now it’s time to pour some gas on this fire. It’s going pretty well. So we go to the top of the funnel, you know what I mean? So we started working on strategic ways to bring new people into the business, new eyes on the product. And yeah, so this year with the goal of this year was the help her hit her first million, we’re probably going to be leaning more into 1.5 by the end of the year.
Sam Gupta 24:28
That’s amazing. I think with COVID. If she can do that, you know, million dollars is what you mentioned within two years. That’s an amazing goal.
Chase Clymer 24:35
Yeah, well, the goal was for this year in 2020, was to help her hit that first million dollars a year. But we already did it as we passed it a month or a month and a half ago.
Sam Gupta 24:44
I think that’s phenomenal. And for your services, I guess I don’t know, you know how much you would typically charge. But that’s a huge ROI. Right?
Chase Clymer 24:52
Yeah, I mean, it’s just you got to it just goes back to the numbers was like alright, these are the things that we’re working on. This is how it’s gonna work.
Sam Gupta 24:59
Okay, Chase, so let’s say somebody wants to work with you, do you have any specific, actionable advice that you can offer with respect to designing the 30-60-90 day plan? So let’s say if I’m a customer for you, and I’m coming to you, what would you recommend with respect to aligning the e-commerce strategy or starting on the e-commerce strategy as of today?
Chase Clymer 25:20
I mean, well, first and foremost is like this, you got to be in it for the long haul, there’s no silver bullet, there’s nothing that’s gonna make you an overnight millionaire, you just got to understand it takes hard work. That’s the first thing is like, if you come to the table with realistic expectations, you’re already ahead of the game with then other people that I’ve met, are, you know, had conversations with.
So the first is always just having realistic expectations, right? You got to understand just like if your goal is like some super cool, awesome, you know, number, which numbers like don’t matter, you know, I mean, if million dollars, $10 million, whatever, like those, those are just arbitrary numbers.
But if you have big goals, you need to understand that it’s going to take a big investment of time and energy and monetary investment to get you there, you know, you’re not going to see any insane returns on any of this stuff.
But with that being said, I mean, we’re pretty, we’re pretty easy to work with, we’re a small shop, but you know, we’re bringing in about one or two, one or two new clients a month.
We start small, you know, it’s like, Alright, let’s kind of get under the hood of your business. And let’s learn what is working, what isn’t working. And let’s develop that strategic plan together. So that’s usually the first engagement. Well, usually that is the first engagement with everybody that we start working with. And then we just kind of pick a direction, focus on a KPI, and let’s make it better.
Sam Gupta 26:35 – Closing thoughts
Okay, amazing. So I think that’s it for today. Do you have any last minute closing thoughts?
Chase Clymer 26:40
No, I mean, this was super fun. I think we covered a lot of ground here, I just, want to go back to talking about kind of the two areas of e-commerce, businesses kind of where they are in their business lifecycle. I mean, if you’re, if you’re working on getting your first initial sales, like, you know, I think that zero to $10,000 is the hardest, the hardest part of starting an e-commerce business.
When you’re in that stage. Just focus on organic sales completely ignore paid traffic, like you’re gonna light so much money on fire and invest in weird, weird, you know, people that are stealing your money as far as it comes along with like gurus or whatnot, plug it you like get your paid media off the ground, nobody can help you find product-market fit, which I believe like once you kind of hit that $10k in sales a month like you’re kind of finding that product-market fit, you’re figuring out what your offer is and what your value is, and why people want to buy your product.
So when you’re going from zero to $10,000 a month, just focus on organic sales. After that, you can start introducing paid, but I would say the hardest thing to do is go from zero to $10k a month going from $10K to $100K is a lot easier. And then going from $100K to you know, something crazier is like is even easier.
Sam Gupta 27:49
So, okay, amazing. Thank you so much for your time Chase and your insight.
Chase Clymer 27:53
Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much.
Sam Gupta 27:54 – Outro
I cannot thank our guests enough for coming on the show for sharing their knowledge and journey. I always pick up stuff from our guests, and hopefully, you learned something new today.
If you want to know further about Chase, check this podcast at HonestEcommerce.co and his agency at electriceye.io. Links and more information will also be available in the show notes.
If anything in this podcast resonated with you and your business. You might want to check other related episodes, including the interview with Michael Begg from AMZ advisers, who brings a unique perspective on D2C from Amazon as a marketing channel. Also, the interview with Jason Chester from InfinityQS, who touches on D2C from a real-time manufacturing quality monitoring standpoint.
Also, don’t forget to subscribe and spread the word among folks with similar backgrounds. If you have any questions or comments about the show, please review and rate us on your favorite podcasting platform or DM me on any social channels. I’ll try my best to respond personally and make sure you get help.
Thank you, and I hope to catch you on the next episode of The WBS podcast.
Outro 29:10
Thank you for listening to another episode of The WBS podcast. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform so you never miss an episode. For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, check out our community at wbs.rocks. We’ll see you next time.