0:09

Did you know that most e-commerce

0:12

startups don't even survive the

0:14

first 120 days? Mainly because

0:16

they burn through ad budget

0:18

with little return Disappearing search

0:21

results and sell things nobody

0:23

is actually looking for e-commerce

0:25

in 2025. It's a battle

0:27

feed. It's brutal custom acquisition

0:29

is getting harder competition is

0:32

fierced than ever and without

0:34

a scalable data-driven strategy. Most

0:36

brands are doomed before they

0:38

even get an attraction. Welcome

0:40

back to Mastering Tech Growth,

0:43

where we interview industry leaders

0:45

to bring you actionable insights

0:47

and inspiring stories. I'm your

0:49

host, Mike Sirius, and today

0:51

we are joined by Sabir

0:53

Semerkant, a top e-commerce growth

0:56

strategy with over 20 years

0:58

of experience helping brands like

1:00

Coca-Cola Canon and Tommy Hilfaga

1:02

achieve massive growth. He is

1:04

a creator of AD method,

1:06

a step-by-state framework for unlocking

1:09

scalable, profitable e-commerce growth, and

1:11

his Rapid 2X program has

1:13

helped brands grow by an

1:15

average of 108% in just

1:17

21 days. Today, Sabir is

1:19

breaking down pricing, marketing, and

1:21

profitability strategies that will transform

1:23

your online business. Welcome to

1:25

the show, Sabir. Mike, it's

1:28

great to be here. Thank you

1:30

for joining us and we love to

1:32

kick off with this question, Sabir. When

1:34

I say mastering tech growth, what comes

1:36

to mind? Actually, it's interesting.

1:38

My background, before I became

1:41

this revenue growth hacker, I'm a

1:43

computer scientist. No surprise. No surprise.

1:45

So the tech, the tech and

1:47

optimizing the tech is actually one

1:49

of the dimensions of this framework

1:51

that I've created, AD method. It's

1:54

not just tech. Tech is one

1:56

part of it, but tech actually

1:58

is the thing that helps. you

2:00

elevate and accelerate your growth

2:02

profitably in your e-com business.

2:04

So if we come back to the question,

2:07

what comes to mind? So what comes

2:09

to mind is that the growth is

2:11

baked into the tech growth. And

2:13

when we say tech, is it

2:15

an actual technology like software for

2:17

automation? Or is it more like

2:19

data centers? Is it cost management

2:21

of the whole shebang around your

2:23

business? Can you give us a

2:25

little bit more deeper? Like what

2:27

do you? have in mind when you say

2:29

tech. So tech in my view, it should

2:31

be that we all have two,

2:33

you know, two hands, right? And

2:36

you have only, before we got

2:38

on the call, you said that,

2:40

you know, you're struggling with the

2:42

week and you're trying to make

2:44

the most of it and stuff

2:46

like that. Every entrepreneur is every

2:48

entrepreneur faces that, you know, whether

2:50

they're working 40 hours or 80

2:52

hours. The tech is the thing that's

2:54

supposed to give you that extra

2:56

limbs that you need in order

2:58

for you to accelerate, you

3:01

know, what you're trying to do.

3:03

It has become our assisted devices,

3:05

you know. I'm talking about for

3:08

all of humanity, whether it's your

3:10

iPhone, Shopify for you to launch

3:12

your ecom site nowadays in 2025.

3:15

the, you know, the amazing adoption

3:17

of AI, you know, clod, anthropic,

3:20

clod, and chat, GPT, and LLLMs

3:22

and stuff like that, right? All

3:24

of these things to automated and

3:27

AI-based, whether it's recommendation

3:29

engine or live chat

3:31

support for your clients

3:33

and stuff like that,

3:35

all of that. all of

3:37

that. That's where the tech is. Tech

3:39

is no longer just a calculator, right?

3:41

Where, where, you know, because I've lived

3:43

through all the tech evolutions, you know,

3:46

but from the time that IBM PC

3:48

became popular with MSDOS all the way

3:50

to now, you know, we're living in

3:52

the AI age right now, and it's

3:54

exciting to see that kind of stuff.

3:56

From the time I remember, I remember

3:58

what I said. I said to you

4:01

earlier on this podcast, I said,

4:03

I was a computer scientist. At

4:05

the birth of e-commerce, there were

4:07

no Shopify payments. There was no

4:09

authorized net. When you had to

4:11

do that work, you had to

4:13

create the API to connect to

4:15

the Chase Bank for payment tech

4:17

with the APIs for you to

4:19

actually take credit cards, you know.

4:21

But that facility is so much amazing now.

4:24

To me, it's like I'm a kid in

4:26

a candy store. You drop a Shopify,

4:28

you connect and get yourself approved

4:30

on Shopify payments, there's a whole

4:33

app store that gives you access

4:35

to incredible amounts of apps that

4:37

are out there. There's pros and

4:39

cons to it. We will cover

4:41

that today also, right? Why like

4:44

Shopify stores don't need like 2530

4:46

apps installed on their store? They

4:48

need more like maybe seven, you

4:50

know, and how that's actually hurting

4:53

their revenue. Let's jump straight

4:55

into it. I actually love. that

4:57

you're mentioning the evolution of technologies

4:59

and when you mention the birth

5:01

of e-commerce I remember helping people

5:04

to get integrated with PayPal that's

5:06

just way back in the day

5:08

when everything was kicking off it

5:10

was brutal I mean the amount

5:13

of reading people documentation and going

5:15

through the coding where right now you

5:17

know people probably don't appreciate that

5:19

enough that they just go to

5:22

the back and just they click

5:24

a checkbox except people pay. Exactly,

5:26

you know what's going on behind

5:28

so that abstraction which Shopify gives

5:30

or any other tools give is

5:32

Yeah, it's it's it's it's amazing

5:35

to see those things. So we

5:37

kicked off with this Sentence

5:39

which is effectively saying that

5:41

90% of e-commerce startups failed

5:43

within 121 days. So this

5:45

is coming from 2020 23

5:47

failure report which effectively states

5:49

that majority fail because of

5:52

high acquisition cost poor marketing

5:54

and low search visibility. So

5:56

Sabir you worked with small

5:58

and big brands. What are

6:00

the biggest hidden factors that

6:02

are killing e-commerce businesses today?

6:05

And why do so many

6:07

founders fail to see them? So, I mean,

6:09

those reports that you see

6:11

from small business administration and

6:13

other statistics that you see

6:16

there, they talk about the after the

6:18

effect. Like, after the thing happened, they

6:20

say, oh, this is what happened, right?

6:23

Like, for example, if there's a

6:25

car accident, you go like, oh,

6:27

the car swerved and hit. the

6:29

other car, right? But you don't realize

6:31

that maybe the driver was, didn't

6:33

get enough sleep the night before,

6:35

you know, because you have to

6:37

look at the foundation and then

6:40

you dig into that, the driver

6:42

has been dealing with a lot

6:44

of stress and anxiety and stuff

6:46

like that because of whatever is

6:48

going on in their life, work

6:50

or family or whatever, right? So

6:52

when it comes to these

6:54

statistics, the problem is, you know, yes,

6:57

it's true. these numbers are in fact true

6:59

and actually I've had quite a lot of

7:01

his in my history where I've taken

7:03

companies that went to the bankruptcy

7:06

court file for bankruptcy not just

7:08

for reorganization for asset sale like

7:10

it was dead basically and a

7:13

venture company or an investor came

7:15

purchased you know acquired all of

7:17

those distressed assets and then and

7:19

then joined the program and got

7:21

in contact with me in order

7:23

to in order to see how

7:25

we can revive it and actually

7:27

set it on the right foundation.

7:29

Right? Okay. So the two main

7:31

things that happen and a lot

7:33

of entrepreneurs, I mean, I exchange

7:35

community, you know, I do live

7:37

events throughout the week, every single

7:39

week of the year, right? And

7:41

I talk to entrepreneurs, hundreds of

7:43

entrepreneurs on a pretty

7:46

regular basis, right? The first

7:48

one is trying to find the

7:50

right people to help them in

7:52

their journey. Right? And when they

7:54

decide to do that, unfortunately,

7:57

because of so much

7:59

easy action. to platforms like

8:01

LinkedIn and Fiver and Upwork

8:03

and getting emails from people

8:05

saying that we, I can do your

8:08

CEO, I can do your affiliate marketing,

8:10

I'm sure Mike, you get hit with

8:12

quite a few of those. Tell me

8:14

about it. Right? Yep. Unfortunately, if you

8:17

are not, if you don't know who

8:19

to like hire to do that

8:21

thing for you, right, not on

8:23

full time basis, but freelance agency,

8:25

whatever, you could be kissing a lot

8:27

of frogs. right and you have heard

8:29

that saying kissing a lot of frogs

8:31

to find your prince yeah unfortunately in

8:34

case of e-commerce because you're you're going

8:36

to be wasting your time and money

8:38

you're kissing a lot of poisonous frogs

8:41

unfortunately I'll give you a very very

8:43

horrifying example right yep you know

8:45

you hear from Neil Patel or me

8:47

on one of our Neil Patel is

8:49

a friend of mine you know the

8:51

guy you know he does content marketing

8:53

he's really well-known SEO rated price and

8:55

stuff you hear that and you go

8:57

like okay you know what I need

8:59

to do back back links, right? Because

9:01

Neil Patel said we should do back

9:03

links, right? Then what do you

9:05

do? You go on on

9:07

LinkedIn to find people who

9:09

know who have something like

9:12

back links in their profile,

9:14

LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiver, and on

9:16

Fiver you find a guy

9:18

who does back links, $50,000

9:20

for 50,000 back links, right?

9:22

Bull shit. That $50 is gonna

9:24

destroy your company. your

9:26

organic ranking, you're going

9:29

to kill your company.

9:31

A lot, you know, in the 80

9:33

method, we will talk about that and

9:35

the Rapid 2X program that we have

9:38

in the first three weeks, four

9:40

weeks, up to six weeks, we

9:42

actually do a lot of this cleanup

9:44

because almost everybody has committed

9:47

what I call e-commerce sins.

9:49

And you have to reel

9:52

back from it and change

9:54

it around unless unless you

9:56

do that doing anything advanced

9:58

like meta ads optimization

10:00

or Google ads or anything

10:02

like that, if your house is not

10:05

in the right order, it doesn't matter

10:07

how much you spend on it, then

10:09

you'll agree with, oh, you know

10:11

what, I'll take a row as of

10:13

one because your agency said that

10:15

that's okay. It's not okay, by the

10:18

way. You're not running a profitable campaign.

10:20

You're gonna kill your company that

10:22

way too. So how to bankrupt your

10:25

e-commerce company? I have seen quite a

10:27

lot of that with you today. but

10:29

also not only that but also how

10:31

how we can get there from there

10:34

to save the company these ecom companies

10:36

so that they don't become that statistics

10:38

you just shared and in fact they

10:41

become a success story and you've seen

10:43

I mean if you've been to a

10:45

growth by severe.com I encourage your your

10:47

viewers to actually do that. go there,

10:50

take a look at all of

10:52

these case studies, all these entrepreneurs,

10:54

everyone from, you know, from a

10:56

startup become all the way to

10:58

like 10, 15 million dollars to the

11:00

likes of 100 million dollar plus

11:02

canon, you know, the camera company,

11:04

that all of these guys implementing

11:06

a good fundamental platform,

11:09

a good foundational platform

11:11

can help and have a compounding

11:13

effect. on growth and profitable growth,

11:16

not just growth, because anyone can,

11:18

you can throw money at meta

11:20

and that could deliver revenue to

11:22

you, but you're not going to

11:24

sustain that because you're going to

11:26

have a negative cash flow in

11:28

your business. That's exactly it. And

11:30

that's one of the top three

11:32

reasons how effectively e-commerce businesses dying that

11:34

120 days if they just run

11:37

out. of money because they're running

11:39

into minors with all the ads.

11:41

They have a cash flow but

11:43

it's not profitable so eventually the

11:45

money will run out. I love how you

11:47

put it e-commerce since and I

11:49

love the back-link story and I

11:51

really want to ask this question

11:53

severe because I'm exposed to that as

11:56

well. I'm getting these messages every day,

11:58

couple of them on LinkedIn. and

12:00

going like, hey, you know, we know

12:02

you have a successful podcast, you know,

12:04

we can give you downloads, we can

12:06

give you followers like, I know it's

12:08

a bot, right? So because I'm technical,

12:10

I come from this background, I know

12:12

it's bullshit. So I go like, thank

12:14

you, not. But at the same time,

12:17

it's so itching to go like, I can

12:19

give you 150 bucks and, you know, and

12:21

get into top of the charts. It

12:23

plays with your mind. So I do

12:25

understand why. people having e-commerce businesses, especially

12:27

if they lack patience. You know, they

12:29

go like, oh, we've been doing this

12:32

for three to six months and, you

12:34

know, it's not growing, you know, this

12:36

guy is suggesting me a cheap heaven,

12:38

as someone would say, it's so easy

12:40

by interjecting, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, how

12:43

do you think if you don't have

12:45

those right people, as you mentioned at

12:47

the beginning, as one of the most

12:49

important things to get these mentors to

12:51

get these mentors to be, you know,

12:54

you know, potential problems like how do

12:56

you how do you think what what

12:58

mindset you need to employ to really

13:00

do the things the right way for the

13:02

long term so this is what I'm

13:04

going to tell you you need to

13:07

have as an entrepreneur you need to

13:09

have a healthy dose of skepticism right

13:11

I love that skeptical need to

13:14

have skepticism yeah but in

13:16

the world where you're getting all this

13:18

noise the noise is by the way

13:20

when people are spamming you, it's

13:22

one thing, right? It hits

13:24

your inbox, you can ignore it.

13:27

The other part of it, which

13:29

you don't realize you're doing,

13:31

when you're sitting there, you're

13:34

bored, right? You're on your

13:36

phone, eating your whatever you're

13:39

eating, and then you're scrolling

13:41

through your TikTok, and something

13:43

comes up there, right? And

13:46

that's also conditioning you. As

13:48

a human being. We become

13:50

very impressionable, 7 to 9

13:52

digital touch points, right? And

13:55

we could utilize that fact, by

13:57

the way, in e-commerce, in order

13:59

to get... that person from an

14:01

intent to explore to intent to buy,

14:03

right? We're using the same strategy. But

14:05

the same strategy applies. When you're getting

14:08

conditioned, you're conditioning yourself through TikTok and

14:10

Instagram reals and stuff like that. As

14:12

you're going through it and the more

14:15

of the same content that you see

14:17

somebody who's telling you, oh, this matter

14:19

ads hack is going to do this

14:21

for you. Just change this one tiny

14:24

thing. That person that produced that produced

14:26

that content is to get. to get

14:28

to have a healthy channel on TikTok,

14:30

not for you to have a healthy

14:33

business. You know, so you need to

14:35

understand that and you have to have

14:37

a healthy dose of skepticism. That's number

14:39

one. And actually, all of our case

14:41

studies, when we have, when we tape

14:43

them, well, you know, when we ask

14:45

them to give us their video testimonial,

14:47

almost every one of them

14:49

starts with those. I was skeptical

14:52

about if Sabir would be able

14:54

to deliver these results for my

14:56

business, right? Which is great. I

14:58

love the word skepticism because more

15:01

entrepreneurs need to have skepticism

15:03

in there. So that to ask, ask, why

15:05

do you think this is going to work,

15:08

right? Not necessarily the how or the

15:10

what, right? Why do you think this

15:12

is going to work? Can you show

15:14

me, can you show me social proof of

15:16

other case studies that it works

15:18

for? Maybe it's in my industry,

15:21

maybe it's in similar industries, but

15:23

I adjacent industries or something like

15:25

that. I want to see that.

15:27

I want to see if it's

15:29

going to work, right? And have

15:31

that, right? Skepticism in New York, I'm

15:34

a New Yorker. I grew up here

15:36

all my life, right? We don't call

15:38

it skepticism. We call it the bullshit

15:41

meter. That's the term that New Yorkers

15:43

use, right? And you need to be

15:45

a little bit of a New Yorker.

15:48

Whether you're in Netherlands or you're in

15:50

Australia or you're in Egypt, it doesn't

15:52

matter. We have entrepreneurs from all over

15:55

the world that actually bring their

15:57

ecom sites and businesses to

15:59

actually. through our program and they

16:01

see these successes. For example, Oram

16:03

Brothers, you know, they were stuck

16:06

at $1.5 million for several years.

16:08

They were stuck. And what happens

16:10

when you're stuck, right? You're gonna

16:12

keep on getting that stuck number,

16:14

1.5, maybe it's gonna diminish also

16:16

to 1.4, 1.3, so only comes

16:19

down. But what you're doing from

16:21

an expense side of it,

16:23

you're trying to solve this problem

16:25

as an entrepreneur. The expenses go

16:28

up. What's happening to your net

16:30

cash flow? Negative. In their case,

16:32

that meant business, business loans, that

16:34

meant business debt. They just kept

16:36

on getting that into more debt

16:39

in order to fund the operations

16:41

of the business and inventory

16:43

and stuff. The realities of

16:45

everyday business, you know, they had

16:47

to do that. Once they joined

16:49

the program around January 20th of

16:51

2024, by September 9th, by the way,

16:53

in the first six weeks, 112%

16:55

improvement in the business. 112%

16:57

from being stuck to being unstuck

17:00

in six weeks, right? And then

17:02

by September 9th, 2024, 1 p.m.

17:04

we were actually watching the clock

17:07

very closely. They surpassed their 1.5

17:09

million. That's not impressive,

17:11

right? That's even though it sounds

17:13

impressive to you. That's that part

17:15

of it to me. It's not

17:17

impressive. We also worked on pricing, you

17:20

mentioned that we will talk about

17:22

pricing, discounting, discounting to death, stuff

17:24

like that. We will talk about

17:26

those things because some of those

17:28

things, if you make a bad

17:30

decision, leads to your company going

17:32

bankrupt. Unfortunately, that's the reality of it.

17:34

You're going to hear a lot of really

17:36

harsh truths from me, but the thing

17:38

is it's for the entrepreneurs to wake

17:40

up, right? Wake up and hopefully whoever's

17:43

watching this or listening to it in

17:45

a recording. They say that, oh, you know

17:47

what, I need to change, change my

17:49

attitude. I need to change the way

17:51

I'm approaching my business in order to

17:53

turn the ship so that I don't

17:55

become a statistics, you know, in that

17:57

sense. So September 9th, these are past

17:59

1.5. million. More importantly, positive

18:01

net net cash flow because

18:04

we've worked on pricing during

18:06

during the first nine months,

18:08

right? And then from there,

18:11

from September 9, 101 p.m.

18:13

through December 31st, was pure

18:15

growth. And do you know how much

18:17

we grew from just those four

18:20

months? 400 percent. Another 1.5 million.

18:22

So we have to take here

18:24

at 3 million dollars. with positive

18:26

net cash flow we paid off

18:28

all of our business loans so

18:30

that when we enter 2025 all that

18:32

that was behind us and this year

18:34

we are we our goal is to

18:36

go from three million to ten

18:38

million that's nice and I've done

18:40

that right so many times across

18:42

so many categories right and a

18:44

lot of companies when they get

18:46

stuck because the thing is as

18:49

you're growing from zero to five

18:51

hundred K you learn quite a

18:53

lot about yourself, about the business,

18:55

about your product category, about, you

18:57

know, different channels and stuff that

18:59

you have, from 500K to 1

19:01

million, different journey. From 1 to

19:03

3 million, very different journey. From

19:06

3 million, very different journey.

19:08

From 3 to 10 million, very different

19:10

journey. You know, this is one of

19:12

the reasons, like, there are amazing authors

19:15

out there, like Seth Godin, you know, he

19:17

talks about the gap, right? Unless

19:19

you do something different, either you

19:21

are stuck like this or it

19:24

just goes down like that,

19:26

unfortunately. That's just reality of it,

19:28

right? But that's one of the

19:30

reasons that foundationally, you need to

19:32

put the right strategies in place

19:34

for your business in order to

19:36

not do that exactly, you know.

19:38

Yep. I love that gap definition.

19:40

I have a different take how

19:42

I explained that, you know, to

19:44

founders as well, is that you

19:47

have these levels and you're right.

19:49

You mentioned there's going to be

19:51

a certain processes where you go

19:53

from 100,000 to 1 million and

19:55

it's going to be totally different

19:57

approaches from 1 to 3. So you have

19:59

these levels. And every time you penetrate

20:01

a new level, you basically

20:03

back to not knowing. You're

20:06

back to that position of being in

20:08

this new level, which requires different knowledge

20:10

and different approaches. So that means that.

20:12

all the skills and all the knowledge

20:15

you develop which brought you to that

20:17

level is applicable transferable but that's not

20:19

what's going to take you again to

20:22

the next level which means you know

20:24

you either need advice or a supporter

20:26

a mentor or you know you can

20:29

learn it yourself but that's going to

20:31

be a quite tough journey but effectively

20:33

you constantly if you're constantly reaching those

20:36

new levels where you just become a

20:38

new begin. In fact, what happens,

20:40

Mike, is that it actually becomes

20:42

inefficient. Some of those things that

20:44

worked for you before, right? I

20:47

hear this pretty constantly, right? You

20:49

know, and that's why I tell

20:51

entrepreneurs that don't dwell in the

20:53

past, like, oh, during my glory

20:55

days, during the pandemic, right? I

20:57

did, you know, this much, and

21:00

now it's... You know, the realities

21:02

of 2025 is very different than

21:04

the realities of 2020 and 2021.

21:06

Oh, 100%. If you want to

21:08

think about the glory days, right?

21:10

You're wasting time. You need to

21:12

figure out what's happening right now.

21:14

The administration is different. The world

21:16

economy is different. different types of

21:18

stuff that's going on global economy,

21:21

including regional or local economy is

21:23

different, right? Things that are happening

21:25

in the world is different. It's

21:27

a different time. Yeah. Time passes

21:29

by you. You need to, you

21:31

need to manage your, you know,

21:33

your expectations and your strategies based

21:35

on that timeline. You know, not

21:37

go back on law. We used

21:39

to. Okay, what are you gonna do? Do

21:41

you have a time machine? I've been working

21:43

on one in my basement for the past

21:46

50 years I've not been able to go

21:48

anywhere The movie I saw turned a guy

21:50

into a fly, right? That's a Hollywood reference,

21:53

right? So the reality is come back

21:55

to reality. There are things that are

21:57

happening right now. Look at the world

21:59

You know, you didn't have AI

22:01

in the pandemic. Now there is

22:04

AI. AI is going to have

22:06

an impact on that. So there

22:08

are things that happen today. You

22:10

need to wake up and say,

22:12

okay, you know what? I need

22:14

to focus on what do I

22:16

have in front of me? And

22:18

I need to utilize the things

22:20

I need to utilize in order

22:22

to get me there. Because the

22:25

thing that if you dwell on

22:27

it. One, it gives you anxiety

22:29

and depression and mental health is,

22:31

is a serious problem for entrepreneurs.

22:33

I interview and talk to so

22:35

many entrepreneurs, right? They have, at

22:37

a varying degree, they have a

22:39

level of depression because of what's

22:41

happening in their business, because that's

22:43

their baby, right? And then exasperated

22:46

with that, there is something going

22:48

on in their family, you know,

22:50

or personal life and stuff like

22:52

that. It just builds up. It

22:54

just builds up. So you need

22:56

to. At least these things you

22:58

can manage on the business side

23:00

of the equation, right? And turn

23:02

those kinds of things around so

23:04

that at least you can focus

23:06

more on the personal side of

23:09

issues if you have, but focus

23:11

more on the solutions that you

23:13

can implement for your business or

23:15

you can turn those things around.

23:17

So every system starts with the

23:19

problem that needs solving. What was

23:21

your aha moment that led you

23:23

create the AD method? And how

23:25

did you develop that into a

23:27

structural framework? That's a very good

23:30

question. So AD method didn't come

23:32

about like two years ago. I

23:34

have been working on this for

23:36

the past 25 years, right? And

23:38

as you keep on refining the

23:40

methodologies in different, so 8D stands

23:42

for eight dimensions of e-commerce. One

23:44

of the things I learned and

23:46

I was very lucky. because I

23:48

was there at the birth of

23:51

e-commerce as an industry, right? 25

23:53

years ago. It's about 26 years

23:55

old right now, right? So it's

23:57

been more than 25 years for

23:59

me. And as I was growing

24:01

with... the industry, I got to

24:03

touch every aspect of it. So

24:05

today, if somebody says, oh, I

24:07

mean, in e-commerce, they are hyper-specialized,

24:09

right? And usually it means that,

24:12

oh, I'm a meta ads person.

24:14

I only know how to do

24:16

meta ads. If you ask them

24:18

any questions about Shopify, no clue,

24:20

right? If you tell them anything

24:22

about logistics, they go like, oh,

24:24

that's not my domain. I have

24:26

no idea what that is, right?

24:28

but in my case I had

24:30

to build all of those foundational

24:33

things from the ground up so

24:35

into I'm very intimately involved in

24:37

all of these eight dimensions and

24:39

eight dimensions so like meta ads

24:41

is a sub dimension of a

24:43

dimension so it's not even a

24:45

dimension by itself right so you

24:47

have to you know as I

24:49

Well, as I went through this,

24:51

I just kept on refining it

24:54

because the world of e-commerce and

24:56

how you build traffic to your

24:58

site and the channels, social media

25:00

didn't exist, social media became a

25:02

thing in 2008, 2009, then you

25:04

had content marketing related to social

25:06

and socializing and engagement and stuff

25:08

like that. A couple of years

25:10

later, you had the paid media

25:12

platforms on social appear, but in

25:15

2001, you had Google. come up

25:17

with paid ads with Google ads

25:19

and back then it was called

25:21

Google Adwords, right? But prior to

25:23

Google AdWords, it was actually I

25:25

got, this is a historical thing,

25:27

I got a nice refrigerator with

25:29

a certificate from Google for generating

25:31

one million clicks for my ecom

25:33

site back then when when Google

25:35

ads was a novelty at that

25:38

time, right? So that's how long

25:40

I've been in it. So I've

25:42

touched every aspect of it. And

25:44

one of the things that I

25:46

realized, right, is that whoever says

25:48

that I'm a specialist in this

25:50

area, they overemphasize that one thing.

25:52

Right? Yeah. And then what happens

25:54

in your business becomes lopsided. I'll

25:56

give you an example, right? Let's

25:59

say you hire. the best meta

26:01

ads person in the world like

26:03

phenomenal person their role as is

26:05

great every metric you look at

26:07

it every dollar you give them they

26:09

give you back like five bucks right

26:11

so that's a row as a five that

26:13

you're getting from it right phenomenal

26:16

guy right they throw so much traffic

26:18

they're doing all these things but

26:20

you didn't work on your warehouse you

26:22

did not work on your order fulfillment

26:25

your orders are incredibly mounting. It's

26:28

like you were 100 orders. Now

26:30

you're getting 1,000 orders per month,

26:32

not 100 orders per month. If

26:34

your warehouse, whether it's a 3 PL or

26:36

you have your own warehouse, if you don't

26:38

know how to optimize and scale that

26:40

with your marketing, what happens? Before

26:42

when you are getting 100 orders,

26:44

you promised that by 4 p.m. you

26:47

would get the order out, right?

26:49

That's on your FAQ pages. It's on

26:51

your customer service. Says it on the

26:53

product page. Phenomenal, right. Everybody is happy

26:56

with you. At 100 orders, you're getting

26:58

those orders out. At 1,000 orders now,

27:00

now you're falling behind. Orders

27:02

are not getting out. And when orders

27:05

are not getting out, what's the other

27:07

part of logistics that gets hurt? Customer

27:09

support. Where the hell is my order?

27:12

Yep. You know, where is it? And

27:14

then if you are delayed too much,

27:16

because you're not fulfilling it fast

27:18

enough, what happens? Order

27:20

cancellations. Means means chargebacks

27:23

from... or people just do a

27:25

cancellation directly on their credit card

27:27

without even bothering you because you're

27:29

too busy you cannot even communicate

27:31

with them right so it just

27:33

ends up hurting you at so

27:35

many different levels even though on

27:37

the front end you look like a

27:40

company that's that's very successful and it's

27:42

working really well for you. Okay can you

27:44

break us down these dimensions I'd be like

27:46

can you list them like what are these

27:49

eight eight dimensions? Sure. So I'll list them

27:51

and then I think we can go

27:53

through a few of them, you know,

27:55

during this live podcast. Let's go, let's

27:57

list them for our listeners so they

27:59

can pretend. do their own research, but

28:01

let's talk about the most important

28:03

one in your view, or maybe

28:05

it's a couple of them, as

28:08

you said it. It's a building

28:10

block. We start with the first

28:12

one. The first dimension is performance

28:14

optimization. Okay. It takes about three

28:16

to six weeks. It's, if you

28:18

think about the Shopify owner, they

28:20

have invested in certain type of

28:22

tech stack, right? They have certain

28:25

apps that we know that that's

28:27

what they're running. They have Shopify.

28:29

they have they have clavial for

28:31

email and SMS, right? They have

28:33

meta ads, they have Google ads,

28:35

right? They might be doing a

28:37

little bit with SEO, potentially, right?

28:40

Maybe they have SEM Rush, for

28:42

example, right, or HRAFS or something

28:44

like that, right? So that's what

28:46

we can rely on, that they

28:48

have these, these like, five things,

28:50

right? And behind the scenes, operationally,

28:52

they have certain things going on

28:55

like a order fulfillment and stuff

28:57

like that, right, right? So in

28:59

these first three to six to

29:01

six weeks. You know what I

29:03

said about, you know, entrepreneurs commit

29:05

e-commerce sins, we need to undo

29:07

some of those sins and clean

29:09

up, not only do elimination, but

29:12

optimization of the current stack, right?

29:14

And this involves both marketing optimization

29:16

and tech optimization of the business,

29:18

right, of the e-com site to

29:20

begin with. It takes about three

29:22

to six weeks. It's the first

29:24

six weeks of the program. That's

29:27

what we are doing. That's what

29:29

we are focused on. So when

29:31

you say it's a bit, when

29:33

you're saying cleanup, is it more

29:35

about throw these tools away because

29:37

we know don't work or they're

29:39

doing expensive? Take our tool because

29:42

like we know it's delivered? Or

29:44

it's more like, oh, you did

29:46

so many like shitty decisions over

29:48

here that we need to do

29:50

some damage control over here, but

29:52

you really don't touch the textag.

29:54

The very first thing that we

29:56

work on in the program is

29:59

optimizing your site. for consumer attention.

30:01

That's number one. Okay. That touches

30:03

both marketing slash web design and

30:05

it touches tech optimization. What is

30:07

the consumer attention span in 2025?

30:09

1.7 seconds. Oh, I thought it

30:11

was three seconds. 1.5. That one

30:14

doubled. That's double shorter than my

30:16

data is old. 1.7 seconds. That's

30:18

all it is. And where does

30:20

that come from? You have, as

30:22

a consumer, you have been trained

30:24

to ignore things that take more

30:26

than 1.7 seconds. You might tolerate

30:29

two seconds. That's it. 1.7 seconds

30:31

is the magical number there, right?

30:33

Okay. For you to literally look

30:35

and say, oh, not for me,

30:37

boom. That's what you do on

30:39

TikTok. Boom, boom, boom, boom. You

30:41

go very fast, right? Your eye

30:43

is used to that. And that's

30:46

why we need to optimize the

30:48

business in that first six weeks.

30:50

In fact the first week. is

30:52

optimization of 1.7 seconds. So when

30:54

you do that, there are two

30:56

aspects to it, right? One is

30:58

a technical aspect. So that one,

31:01

you do GT metrics. You run

31:03

GT metrics. If you're familiar with

31:05

GT metrics as a tool, it

31:07

measures the, you know, what's slowing

31:09

down your site, right? And typically,

31:11

for Shopify sites, time to interact

31:13

is the KPI that I care

31:16

about. Right. Time to interact. That's

31:18

the, that's the KPI that needs

31:20

to be under 1.7 seconds. That

31:22

means that your page appeared, not

31:24

only did it appear technically, but

31:26

what appeared in front of me,

31:28

I can make a decision to

31:30

engage. And all of that is

31:33

1.7. If you optimize it for

31:35

that, then you're going to keep

31:37

that person. If you don't optimize

31:39

it for that, that's when you

31:41

have very high bounce rate. you

31:43

have very low row as you

31:45

have a very low conversion rate

31:48

so that starts on that very

31:50

small decision like that but that

31:52

so that 1.7 is for the

31:54

page to load to show all

31:56

the content and for me to

31:58

make a decision. Not all the

32:00

content, what's visible in front of

32:03

you. What's visible in the viewport

32:05

of your screen, which means could

32:07

be mobile app, could be a

32:09

small laptop. It is a mobile

32:11

app, actually, not the desktop. 70

32:13

to 80% of e-commerce sales and

32:15

traffic is mobile. In the United

32:17

States, is iPhone. So it needs to

32:19

be device first. So it's not even

32:22

mobile optimized anymore. That term is dead

32:24

long time ago. It's not even mobile

32:26

first. It's device first. Okay. Device first

32:29

means that for your market, for your

32:31

target market, what is the most popular

32:33

device that they're using? In the US,

32:36

it would be iPhone. iPhone 12 is

32:38

the minimum spec that you should you

32:40

should optimize your experience on. In

32:42

case of certain European countries, it

32:44

could be Samsung Galaxy. S20 or

32:47

S22 would be the minimum that

32:49

you should start with and up,

32:51

right? Okay. You should optimize it

32:53

for device first on that primary

32:56

mobile device and then secondarily the

32:58

second mobile device. In every market

33:00

you have two devices like it's

33:03

either iPhone than Android or it's

33:05

Android, then it's iPhone, right? So

33:07

you need to optimize it for those

33:09

two devices. So that if

33:11

you are, if you're web designers,

33:14

if you're web developers, are doing

33:16

a zoom meeting with you and

33:18

they're showing screen sharing a nice

33:21

beautiful desktop site. Yeah. In 2025, I'm

33:23

giving you my stamp of approval.

33:25

Ignore your desktop site. Ignore it

33:28

completely because it's 20% less than

33:30

20% of your traffic. Right. Yeah. Why

33:32

are you optimizing or even looking

33:35

at that? Look at obsess about

33:37

your mobile experience. In fact, go

33:39

and if you don't have an iPhone.

33:41

This investment of $1, $1,500 to

33:44

buy this thing is worth it. But you

33:46

don't have to even buy it on

33:48

Firefox and Chrome. You right click on

33:50

any white space off your site and

33:52

you say inspect. You hit that little

33:54

thing. It's for mobile and you say

33:56

iPhone 12. Yeah. And it gives you

33:58

an emulation at least. At least if

34:01

you can get the emulation right,

34:03

you're going to be okay with

34:05

that. So it is 1.7 seconds

34:07

and what and how much attention

34:09

is there on that viewport? 70%

34:11

of engagement happens before they even

34:13

do this. Yep. So you know

34:15

that amazing video you have down

34:18

the page somewhere you go like,

34:20

oh, if they get to this

34:22

less than 30% of that traffic

34:24

is going to that magical place

34:26

and how do you know that

34:28

you use tools like? Lucky Orange,

34:30

for example, Lucky Orange, like I

34:33

said, I'm a kid in a

34:35

candy store with this stuff, right?

34:37

Because I obsess about the data

34:39

and anything that lets me read

34:41

human behavior, I love it, right?

34:43

Lucky Orange gives me that, right?

34:45

It tells me the heat map,

34:47

so it starts with red hot

34:50

orange up here, and then that's

34:52

70% and as you scroll down,

34:54

you'll get to a part of

34:56

that product page, that's gonna be

34:58

completely blue. Yeah, completely blue means

35:00

it's dead. Like there is no

35:02

traffic. Nobody's going there. It's a

35:04

dead zone. It's your memorial park.

35:07

Nobody's going there. There are dead

35:09

bodies there, right? You could in

35:11

fact put 100% off your order.

35:13

If you place an order with

35:15

this code, you put that in

35:17

there at the bottom of that

35:19

area to just test if people

35:21

get there, they're not getting there.

35:24

You don't have to be that

35:26

excessive. You could just use lucky

35:28

orange to do that. And then

35:30

it also records the session. so

35:32

that you can actually see what

35:34

exactly what they're doing. And in

35:36

most cases, they stick with that

35:39

top viewport, your call to action,

35:41

information, interaction, engagement, everything needs to

35:43

be in that viewport as soon

35:45

as your page appears under 1.7

35:47

seconds. Okay, I love that. So

35:49

effectively, the outcome which is leading

35:51

our first phase of optimizing everything

35:53

is that the fact that we

35:56

have 1.7 seconds, everything is mobile.

35:58

That's our spot. So everything below

36:00

that leading towards that positive outcome

36:02

we want to achieve is the

36:04

optimization process. Get it. What's the

36:06

second? one. So we start with

36:08

that, right? Yep. The second part

36:10

of it is also looking at

36:13

that. So how do you prioritize

36:15

what you need to work on?

36:17

Right. Earlier you asked me, like,

36:19

what do you see as a

36:21

problem? Right. One is hiring the

36:23

wrong people. And then you run

36:25

out of funds because they wasted

36:27

not only money on them, but

36:30

also money on whatever they wanted

36:32

you to fund. Right. So you

36:34

wasted money on that. The other

36:36

area is What do you need

36:38

to focus on? What are the

36:40

five things, Mike, you should do

36:42

this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday?

36:45

Just one task every day, one

36:47

task that in the morning, if

36:49

you work on it, by the

36:51

end of the day, you feel

36:53

great about doing that and laser

36:55

focused and material things that are

36:57

going to impact your business in

36:59

a positive way, right? So. I

37:02

just said this to you, incredible

37:04

information, 1.7 seconds, optimizing, 70% view

37:06

purport and stuff, but where on

37:08

your side? You have so many

37:10

pages, where do you focus, laser

37:12

focus on? Number one, product page,

37:14

and your best selling product, you

37:16

should be your first target, the

37:19

very first thing, the best selling

37:21

product, you need to optimize that

37:23

page, right? That needs to be

37:25

the most important task you will

37:27

do. Number two, your second best

37:29

selling. three, four, five, you follow

37:31

the 80-20 rule. 80% of your

37:33

revenue is gonna come from 20%

37:36

of your product portfolio, right? It's

37:38

not, if you have a thousand

37:40

products, you're not touching thousand products.

37:42

If you touch thousand products, if

37:44

you touch thousand products, if you

37:46

touch just 20% of it that

37:48

represents, it's sometimes it's 70-30, sometimes

37:51

it's 90-10, right? You need to

37:53

focus on the thing that's generating.

37:55

80, 90% 70% off your revenue,

37:57

that many excuse, you need to,

37:59

those pages need to. ultra-optimized, right?

38:01

That's where you need to laser focus

38:03

your time on. Second set would

38:05

be collections pages, that's what Shopify

38:08

calls it, but on other eCon platforms,

38:10

it would be called a category

38:12

page, right? A best sellers page,

38:15

customer favorites, top rated, you know,

38:17

any of these things that show

38:19

you multiple products, new arrivals, you

38:21

know, spring collection, whatever. Those collections

38:24

pages that represents, again, follow

38:26

the 8020 rule. 80% of revenue

38:28

is driven by certain pages

38:30

and you also use them

38:32

for social media posts, you

38:34

use them for email marketing,

38:36

SMS marketing where you're driving

38:38

the traffic there, right? The

38:40

least important optimization on the

38:42

list is your home page, the least

38:45

important, because if you are

38:47

doing all of these campaigns, whether

38:49

it's paid media, you're doing social

38:52

posts, blog articles, anything. You should

38:54

always send people to a specific

38:56

landing page. And that should not

38:58

be your home page. Home page should

39:00

be because they know your brand

39:02

name. So they're putting in Mike

39:04

Cirrus.com, right? They're putting that because

39:06

they know your brand name, that's

39:08

the fashion company that sells amazing

39:10

suits, right? So you can send

39:12

them there, they can go there

39:14

because they know your name. Or if

39:17

they did a Google search for your

39:19

name, branded search, and then they clicked

39:21

on the organic to get there. But

39:23

if they. If they clicked on a paid

39:25

out on Google ads, you should send

39:27

them on a landing page

39:29

that you have control over

39:32

the experience. Okay. That's how

39:34

you prioritize. That's how you

39:36

prioritize that work, right? After

39:39

we're done with optimizing our

39:41

site and landing pages, right,

39:43

we focus on organic channels,

39:45

customer segmentation, email marketing,

39:48

and SEO, right? Those three are. Now,

39:50

before we touch paid media, we want

39:52

to get these three done. So we

39:54

fixed our foundation for the site and

39:56

landing pages, our entire traffic that gets

39:59

to our site. traffic is improved.

40:01

So our conversion rate goes up, session value

40:03

goes up, ROAS goes up, you know,

40:05

our bounce rate comes down, all of

40:07

these great metrics happen in that

40:09

first set of optimization related to site

40:12

and landing pages. And these are, there

40:14

are only five tasks you need to

40:16

do. It's not like 15, it's not,

40:19

it doesn't take months, right? This is

40:21

not a, at this phase, we're not

40:23

doing CRO optimization, we're not doing conversion

40:26

rate optimization. in that in that first

40:28

week. Second week, we focus on

40:30

customer segmentation, email marketing

40:32

and SEO. What is customer

40:35

segmentation? Most, most Shopify owners

40:37

don't know the behavior of their

40:39

consumers. They don't, right? They might know

40:42

it from what is their average order.

40:44

They might know how many units of

40:46

products they buy. They might know how many

40:48

orders they're getting in a day, but

40:50

they really don't know the consumer. They

40:52

don't know their customers, right. And

40:55

in that. You need to actually measure

40:57

your RFM score of your

40:59

customers. RFM stands for recency,

41:01

frequency, monetary value. Another term

41:03

for it is called life

41:05

cycle marketing, right? How recently

41:07

did they buy from me? How, and what segments

41:10

do they fall into? Zero months

41:12

ago, one month ago, three to

41:14

six months ago, six to 12

41:16

months ago, more than 12 months

41:18

ago, their last purchase, right? How

41:20

many customers do I have? How frequently

41:22

do they buy? If it's zero, that means

41:24

that they just gave you email sign up,

41:26

right? If it's one, I call these

41:28

people one-hit wonders. That's my

41:31

phrase. One-hit wonders. Do you know that

41:33

in the music industry, you have

41:35

like mumbo number five and hundred

41:37

and right? Those are one-hit wonders,

41:40

right? Those are one-hit wonders. You

41:42

have customers in your database. And

41:44

by the way, statistically, from 2024

41:46

and even today. In most

41:48

Shopify businesses more than 70%

41:51

of your CRM of customers

41:53

ignore the prospects prospects

41:55

are just email sign-ups

41:58

your customers 70 to 80 percent

42:00

of your database is one-hit wonders.

42:02

They came in. They just went

42:04

on a coffee date with you.

42:06

That's it. They just gave you

42:08

that one transaction. And if you

42:10

take into consideration return rates, probably

42:12

it's even higher, right? Because now

42:14

it's damaging your business because you're

42:16

refunding all those people. Why is

42:18

that, Sabira? Like, do you have

42:20

theories? Why such a big number

42:22

of people become one-hit-one? Is it

42:24

how we advertise has been... No,

42:26

no, you're looking at the tail

42:28

end of it, Mike. You have

42:30

to go back to the beginning.

42:32

If you don't, foundationally, if you

42:35

don't do life cycle marketing and

42:37

you don't look at this RFM,

42:39

this number just keeps on ballooning.

42:41

A lot of people that join,

42:43

I would say 99% of Rapid

42:45

2Xers. Rapid 2X is the implementation

42:47

program for 8D method, right? And

42:49

we have a special offer for

42:51

for your listeners today. We will

42:53

share the link. And you could

42:55

include it in the in the

42:57

show notes is growth by severe.com/mastering

42:59

tech growth if they go there

43:01

They'll get a special offer to

43:03

look into the rapid to X

43:05

program, right? Yeah, so when when

43:07

you when you when you are

43:09

not looking at this RFM because

43:11

you don't even know to look

43:13

at it and most people that

43:15

join our program they don't know

43:17

anything about it they just don't

43:19

you know unfortunately that has like

43:21

for some reason died away because

43:23

everybody looks at row as from

43:25

meta ads that's the thing that

43:28

they know and they keep hearing

43:30

my row as I need to

43:32

improve my row as the problem

43:34

is row as is such a

43:36

later thing you need to look

43:38

at your RFM to see what

43:40

do you need to do when

43:42

somebody goes and gives you their

43:44

email or SMS, how do you

43:46

get them to make that first

43:48

purchase? You need to be very

43:50

intentional about this. When they make

43:52

that first transaction, right, it's first

43:54

transaction, they're not a loyal customer,

43:56

it's just one transaction, right? They're

43:58

not your boyfriend. girlfriend, you cannot

44:00

call them that. They just went

44:02

on one coffee date, you know,

44:04

if I use that analogy,

44:06

right? You have to actively work

44:08

on taking that one-time buyer to buy

44:11

a second time. You need to

44:13

actively work on a second-time buyer to

44:15

buy a third time, third to fourth,

44:17

four to fifth. That's what you need

44:19

to be doing on a daily basis.

44:21

You need to be looking at that.

44:24

And because this one X or the

44:26

one hit wonder segment, is such a

44:28

big number, a lot of the businesses

44:30

are what I consider them to be

44:33

transactional businesses. Meaning that they

44:35

don't have, you know, because they

44:37

go like, oh, you know what,

44:39

I heard that loyalty programs are

44:41

good. I think I should implement

44:43

their loyalty program for points. They

44:45

implemented, and what happens after that?

44:48

Oh, the loyalty program did not

44:50

work for us. Because people earned

44:52

the points, it's meaningless because they're

44:54

not getting anything from it, like

44:56

they're not coming back a second

44:58

time to either redeem the points or to make

45:00

another purchase to keep on building the rewards up

45:03

so that they can redeem it and when it

45:05

gets, there is nothing built into it at all.

45:07

And the problem is, the problem is

45:09

not loyalty program, the problem is you're

45:12

not doing life cycle marketing, you're not

45:14

looking at RFM. So is the life

45:16

cycle marketing never stopping one or is

45:18

it like we do one you know

45:21

one purchase to every single day literally

45:23

like 365 right so if I have

45:25

a customer who bought from me 75

45:27

times I'm still going to be doing

45:29

something to get them to buy 76

45:31

times and 77 and it's just just

45:34

never stops no because the thing is

45:36

if you know people get distracted

45:38

just like you're distracted

45:40

as an entrepreneur consumers are

45:43

distracted in 1.7 seconds because

45:45

they saw some some tick

45:47

talk that said, oh, our

45:49

detergent gets you super white

45:51

laundry, right? Yeah. The one

45:53

that you have is only

45:55

white enough, but ours is

45:58

super white. Super white. So. Whiter

46:00

than white. You get distracted. That

46:02

customer that bought 75 times from

46:05

you in your example. Yeah, the

46:07

76th order, they already lapsed. They

46:09

moved on. Yeah. Right, that's why you

46:12

really need to do this on an

46:14

ongoing basis and when you have that

46:16

sort of a behavior Well, whether it's

46:18

a zero time one time seven times

46:20

15 times 25 times You need to

46:22

identify and you have to respect those

46:24

customer segments somebody in my list

46:26

that 75-time buyer I'm going to

46:28

put them in my VIP list.

46:30

I'm going to treat them differently I'm

46:32

going to when I come up with

46:35

the new spring collection if I'm a

46:37

fashion brand I'm going to give them

46:39

a secret sale pre-sale before anybody else

46:41

has access to that collection, I will

46:44

give them early access. Black Friday, I'm

46:46

going to expose it to them three

46:48

days early so that they're not out

46:51

of their size, color variation, whatever, whatever,

46:53

whatever, right? If I'm doing, if I

46:55

come up with a very limited addition

46:58

thing that I'm doing, right, something

47:00

very special, it's only 100 units

47:02

of it, I'm going to only open it

47:04

up to my VIPs, for example.

47:06

That's... making the loyalty program

47:08

meaningful. Not just, oh, you earn

47:11

points and then those points turn

47:13

into a rebate of a dollar

47:15

amount off your next purchase. Then

47:17

consumers go like, well, I don't, you

47:19

have to add other, you know, other

47:22

parts of the program and features into

47:24

your loyalty in order to get them

47:26

to do that behavior. I'm talking about

47:28

the other side of it, but you,

47:30

the first problem is 70% of your

47:32

database. And it's pretty easy. You can

47:35

go into Shopify, admin, you click on

47:37

segments, you say a number of orders

47:39

equal to exactly one, not greater than

47:41

one, equal to one in their lifetime.

47:43

And look at that number and then

47:46

do another one, greater or equal to

47:48

one. That's going to be all of

47:50

your customers, because we want to ignore

47:52

the prospects for now. We want to

47:54

see, we want to divide that number

47:56

of equal to one, divided by greater

47:58

or equal to one. run that, it's

48:00

going to give you a root

48:03

awakening. And in the program, we

48:05

actually come up with, well, we

48:07

have, you know, prescription on exactly

48:09

the campaigns they need to run in

48:11

order to see can we revive

48:13

and reactivate these one-hit wonders to

48:15

buy a second time? And what

48:17

about the other extreme of it? It

48:19

has been 12 months last time

48:21

that this segment bought. That's another

48:23

segment that's very big, also. So

48:25

we need to reactivate this group to

48:28

see do they come back and

48:30

become part of our active universe.

48:32

Active universe is buying within the

48:34

six months because the attention span

48:36

has been, I used to do 12

48:38

months, but the attention span has

48:40

been so much lower, zero to

48:42

six months for most product categories

48:44

should be the active universe, meaning that

48:46

people who are actively buying from

48:48

you, this is your hot file.

48:50

right here, zero to six months.

48:52

Anyone beyond six to 12 months,

48:54

six to 12 months is short-lapsed, customers,

48:57

and then 12 months plus is

48:59

long-lapsed. Right. So are you buying

49:01

something from a brand because of

49:03

some TikTok thing that you saw 12

49:05

months ago? Would you even remember

49:07

the domain name of that site?

49:09

No chance. Yeah, unless, yeah, no,

49:11

maybe if I go to emails, you

49:13

know, try to look for an

49:15

order or something like that, if

49:18

I read very, very, very keen.

49:20

You have to go out of

49:22

your way as a consumer to do

49:24

that. Exactly, that's very rare. So

49:26

are we optimizing our campaigns then

49:28

to always do these things or

49:30

is it automated in the sense? all

49:32

optimization so we do the we

49:34

do the customer segment campaigns Mike

49:36

are initially These are campaigns. These

49:38

are clavio campaigns not automation flows in

49:41

the first six weeks Because what

49:43

we're doing is we're testing the

49:45

segments Right the good side effect

49:47

of it some businesses are going

49:49

to see amazing numbers. You know during

49:51

that time because they will activate

49:53

zero to one-time buyers, one to

49:55

two-time buyers, and then people who

49:57

have lapsed in your universe, right? You're

49:59

going to reactivate them, right? That's

50:01

good news. If those things happen

50:03

in a positive way, that means

50:05

that you can, you know, there's no

50:08

more hope. You know, one of

50:10

the things that one of the

50:12

words I have banned in my

50:14

program is hoping and praying. We

50:16

hope they buy from us. No. We

50:18

will plan and we will use

50:20

the right strategy to see what

50:22

results we get back. We will

50:24

measure it and then we will repeat

50:26

the cycle. That's what we will

50:28

do. I like that. There is

50:30

no hoping and praying. There is

50:33

no like spray and send a

50:35

email campaign to all of my subscribers

50:37

on Clavio and pray. I call

50:39

it spray and pray campaigns, right?

50:41

Yep. That doesn't work. And plus,

50:43

what you're doing is, you know, you

50:45

are. just mixing up everybody in

50:47

that in that segment, people who

50:49

have never bought from you to

50:51

people in your example, 75 time buyers,

50:54

right? Why are you treating them

50:56

the same way? And plus, you're

50:58

deprioritizing the people who are amazingly

51:00

doing amazingly well with you. And

51:02

what does ESPs do? Email service providers,

51:04

right? Gmail, outlook and stuff like

51:06

that. If they see that not

51:08

many people are opening your emails,

51:10

they think that one either you are

51:12

a bad emailer or you are

51:14

a spammer, right. and deliverability suffers

51:16

you you don't make it into

51:18

the inbox all of these things happen

51:21

down the line because of this

51:23

foundational bad decision you made of

51:25

spraying and praying you know your

51:27

entire database yeah hope it's not

51:29

a strategy 100% Can we talk a

51:31

little bit about SEO, very tactically,

51:33

like what do you guys do

51:35

in that beginning and maybe later,

51:37

like, because for me, SEO is, you

51:39

know, it's all organic traffic, it's

51:41

building out some content and being

51:43

associated with that. I'm very interesting

51:45

to understand how e-commerce utilize SEO. So

51:48

it's again, in the first six

51:50

weeks versus the advanced stuff that

51:52

we do in the program also

51:54

after the six weeks, right? performance

51:56

optimization part of it is looking at,

51:58

you know, looking at the, you

52:00

know, just like we used GT

52:02

metrics, you know, initially for the

52:04

entire site. SCM Rush is one of

52:07

my favorite tools, right? SCM Rush

52:09

allows you to run what's called

52:11

a site audit as well as

52:13

a back link audit, right? So

52:15

the back link audit that we, that

52:17

you do, and you connect it

52:19

to your Google search console also.

52:21

when you run that it gives

52:23

you the toxic links right that's when

52:25

you realize how much you have

52:27

sinned right that's the dollars that

52:29

you paid it's going to be

52:31

very visible to you very quickly right

52:34

all bad bad decisions that you

52:36

have made over the years or

52:38

that guy you are hired thinking

52:40

that you know and by the

52:42

way I do want to touch on

52:44

that too you know it's not

52:46

about just going even in the

52:48

first phase going and hiring that

52:50

shopify developer severe said that oh we

52:52

need to optimize our GT matrix

52:54

it's that it's making the right

52:56

decisions even in the development because

52:58

you can hire somebody on the on

53:01

GT metrics they can take you

53:03

from an F to an A

53:05

with but they remove certain features

53:07

of the side you really need

53:09

so strategically they didn't think they thought

53:11

completely technically. So they eliminated things

53:13

that would have actually gotten you

53:15

that increased average order and stuff

53:17

like that. So in the program, there's

53:20

a specific prescription that we go

53:22

through, right? The same applies to

53:24

when you're doing SU optimization. The

53:26

first part of it is actually

53:28

looking at back links and getting rid

53:30

of toxic back links, being very

53:32

methodical about the potentially toxic back

53:34

links also. So that's part of

53:36

the cleanup. Then running the site audit,

53:38

when you run the site audit,

53:40

just like GT metrics tells you

53:42

what are the issues with your

53:44

site, you have to also look at

53:47

the SM rush because that those

53:49

errors and warnings are getting in

53:51

the way of you ranking on

53:53

Google on Google organic right you

53:55

have some sort of some type of

53:57

organic ranking that's happening on Google

53:59

right And but the thing is,

54:01

if you're doing, if you're not

54:03

correcting these problems, it's deranking

54:05

you, right? Backlings are deranking

54:07

you. If you have duplicate pages with

54:10

the same content, that's deranking you. If

54:12

you're missing meta title or it's too

54:14

short or it's too long, that's deranking

54:17

you. All of these things need to

54:19

be corrected first. Fundamentally, you need

54:21

to correct that, right? And then

54:23

once you get out of these six weeks

54:25

of the program, what happens is then

54:28

we then we then we then

54:30

we focus on. secondary optimizations that

54:32

we need to work on, or

54:34

even implementation, because not everybody

54:37

has this implemented, then we

54:39

utilize effectively, we utilize domain knowledge

54:41

from SEM rush, and we pull

54:44

in. This is where AI actually

54:46

helps quite a bit. We actually

54:48

have prescription related to AI with

54:51

Claude, as well as chat GPT, right?

54:53

Where we pull the data out of

54:55

SEM rush, we bring it into a

54:57

cloud AI or chat GPT to actually

54:59

generate. the content that we really

55:01

need to have on our

55:03

side, whether it's blog articles,

55:05

social media posts, and doing

55:07

very effective content marketing, you

55:09

know, checking for spam rates

55:12

for email, all anything that

55:14

touches content basically, right? Your

55:16

product pages need to be

55:18

optimized structurally for SEO, and also

55:20

content-wise you need to you

55:22

need to optimize that. And

55:24

there's a prescription for that in

55:26

the Rapid2X. Okay. So that's... That's

55:29

that optimization. I actually lost we

55:31

at which point in eight dimensions.

55:34

We are are there any other

55:36

dimensions left to be? No, no, so

55:38

this is just everything we discussed is

55:40

the first six weeks of the program.

55:43

Okay, first six weeks of the program.

55:45

That's dimension one. That's performance optimization. That's

55:47

still the same damage. Up through the

55:50

rest of them. Customer UX is the

55:52

customer journey and that's where we optimize

55:54

like Claveo journey and other types of

55:56

things like loyalty marketing and stuff like

55:59

that. Yeah. the next dimension, I'm

56:01

just going quickly through it to

56:03

kind of give you a top

56:05

overview. Yeah. After that, we look

56:07

at marketing and storytelling, like every

56:09

brand has a story to tell,

56:11

every product has a story to

56:13

tell, every product has a story

56:15

to tell. Yep. You as a

56:17

founder, you have a story to

56:20

tell. Why did you come up

56:22

with this product? What is your

56:24

POV? How do you use this

56:26

product? You know, if you're a

56:28

car parts company, you should show

56:30

how to install that thing that

56:32

you sell. Right? You should be

56:34

the one in front of it

56:36

doing that, right? And you said,

56:38

oh, I'm camera shy, whatever. No,

56:40

you know what? You have a

56:43

company. You know, in 2025, you

56:45

need your POV matters. You know

56:47

that average order you wanted to

56:49

go up? You want that conversion

56:51

rate to go up or session

56:53

value to go up or your

56:55

role has to go up? Your

56:57

face, your POV. This is how

56:59

you how I fit this in

57:01

here. People want to hear from

57:04

you and how many big companies

57:06

can they put a founder's face

57:08

on it? Not many or not

57:10

at all. You being a small

57:12

brand from zero to 10 million

57:14

dollars, you need to, you need

57:16

to be in front of the

57:18

camera. You need to show how,

57:20

what is your POV into the

57:22

cat fountain that gives you the

57:24

water for your cat. You can

57:27

show your cat and show how

57:29

loving you are and the type

57:31

of cat you have or a

57:33

dog or whatever you have. He's

57:35

like. It's your POV, that's part

57:37

of marketing and storytelling, coming up

57:39

with the pillar content and from

57:41

there, deploying that pillar content into

57:43

your site, into your social media,

57:45

into your blog articles, into your

57:47

email marketing, into third party sites.

57:50

That's where the pillar content, you

57:52

generate it, and then from there,

57:54

you figure out the distribution strategy,

57:56

that's also prescription, right, of how

57:58

to deploy that across the universe.

58:00

Okay, so we got process optimization,

58:02

UX, marketing, storytelling, pillar content, distribution,

58:04

strategy, that's one, two, that's five.

58:06

Are we missing a couple of

58:08

deaths? pricing pricing pricing when I

58:10

talk about pricing optimization and you

58:13

know I shared the you know

58:15

whether it's Oram brothers or lions

58:17

Leatherco Lisa Denin is a phenomenal

58:19

woman entrepreneur Carol's daughter you know

58:21

Walline that these are all global

58:23

brands and and they started from

58:25

zero right and What's interesting is

58:27

whenever we optimize, we do pricing

58:30

optimization, that's another dimension, right? Every

58:32

entrepreneur's heart starts beating like this,

58:35

right? Yeah. Why? Because they have

58:37

been coached and trained in their

58:39

heads, you have to coupon to

58:42

debt. Everything needs to have a

58:44

promo code. You sign up for

58:46

email, 15% off. You cart abandoned

58:48

20% off. You do SMS 20%

58:51

off. You do browse abandonment, just

58:53

remind them and then give them

58:55

another 15% off. Black Friday has to

58:57

be 50-60% off, right? It's just

58:59

coupon, coupon, coupon. Like, where's

59:02

this money coming from? When

59:04

you are doing a coupon or

59:06

you're doing a promo code, you

59:09

are funding a marketing campaign. That

59:11

money has to be coming

59:13

from somewhere. You're robbing yourself.

59:15

from the gross margin in

59:17

order to fund that. And one

59:19

other thing that kind of sneaks

59:22

in there that most entrepreneurs don't

59:24

even think about it as a

59:26

promo, free shipping. Yeah. Free shipping

59:28

needs to be paid from somewhere. So

59:30

now you're doing 30% off

59:32

of your product portfolio because

59:35

you're running some sort of

59:37

a card abandonment clavio campaign,

59:39

whatever. On top of it, you're

59:41

giving another 10 12 dollars off

59:44

for free shipping. True. Something needs

59:46

to fund it. Where is that

59:48

money coming from? Right. In the

59:50

pricing optimization, we think about, it's

59:52

not just about raising prices, it's

59:54

thinking about pricing strategies, bundling strategies,

59:56

coming up with waste. actually affect

59:58

a change and reward the people

1:00:00

who buy more into your selection

1:00:02

and collection right and rewarding those

1:00:04

people versus people who just buy

1:00:07

one-off product like not just one-hit

1:00:09

wonder they are buying one unit

1:00:11

of one product and that's it

1:00:13

you know so you need to

1:00:15

you need to think about how

1:00:17

you can increase that product or

1:00:19

adoption it with through that pricing

1:00:21

optimization and so that your gross

1:00:23

margin goes up, right? A big

1:00:25

example of that in the case

1:00:27

studies is Ashley Stewart and also

1:00:30

Oram Brothers very recently too, that

1:00:32

I just shared with you. Ashley

1:00:34

Stewart, the reason it went bankrupt

1:00:36

was the gross margin was 35%

1:00:38

gross margin, not net margin, gross

1:00:40

margin. That means that I made

1:00:42

the revenue, I just want to

1:00:44

pay off the products I just

1:00:46

sold. That's it. Not shipping, not

1:00:48

anything else. 35%. That revival went

1:00:50

from 3 million to 30 million

1:00:52

dollars at 30 million in two

1:00:55

years in 30 million That gross

1:00:57

margin went from 35% to 65%

1:00:59

Okay, so the net cash flow

1:01:01

actually funded the future growth of

1:01:03

the company That's what when you

1:01:05

are doing couponing to that you're

1:01:07

robbing yourself of your future self

1:01:09

of that brand and you cannot

1:01:11

continue doing that I was saying

1:01:13

that couponing is Has no place

1:01:15

or no perspective couponing has definitely

1:01:18

strategically it has a place in

1:01:20

your marketing plan but willy-nilly just

1:01:22

throwing coupons all over the place

1:01:24

that's a mistake I'll give you

1:01:26

a very solid analogy if I

1:01:28

gave you a barrel right you

1:01:30

know a barrel that you could

1:01:32

have wine in it water in

1:01:34

it yep you can hold things

1:01:36

right I only put only, you

1:01:38

know, the amount of money you

1:01:41

can afford to give away, I

1:01:43

just put it in there, in

1:01:45

that barrel, right? Every time you

1:01:47

do a coupon, you take a

1:01:49

money out and you just, you

1:01:51

give it to the person, that's

1:01:53

it. You cannot have it back.

1:01:55

Eventually, you're going to run out

1:01:57

of money out of that barrel.

1:01:59

I want the entrepreneurs to think

1:02:02

about couponing in that sense.

1:02:04

Right? If they have a limited amount

1:02:06

of coupons to give away, they will

1:02:08

be more careful. It's because it's

1:02:10

so easy to go into Shop of High

1:02:13

Discounts and create a new code. Or

1:02:15

even if you use a ClaveY or

1:02:17

stamp.io or something like that, it even

1:02:20

automates making these things a lot faster.

1:02:22

But that's not the purpose of it.

1:02:24

Yeah, I know the tech allows you to

1:02:26

do that and it gives you the convenience.

1:02:29

But you should always ask, should

1:02:31

I be doing that? Or why

1:02:33

should I do it? Right? Just

1:02:35

because it's allowing you to do

1:02:37

it doesn't mean that it makes

1:02:40

sense for you to do it.

1:02:42

And you know, you should understand

1:02:44

the why part of the

1:02:46

question, not the how mechanism

1:02:49

of because the tech is allowing

1:02:51

you to do that, right? So

1:02:53

what does it make sense? Just

1:02:55

throwing them out there because you know, it's

1:02:58

so easy and it feels like okay cash

1:03:00

flow coming in and because we gave this

1:03:02

50% off you know for this and that

1:03:04

and you know What is a good

1:03:06

way of using coupons like strategically speaking

1:03:08

like one example of a good way

1:03:10

of using coupons So I want to

1:03:13

one correct you use the word cash flow

1:03:15

when you did 50 off you're

1:03:17

not getting cash flow. You're not

1:03:19

getting cash flow. You're not getting

1:03:21

cash flow. You're not getting cash

1:03:23

flow. You're not getting cash flow.

1:03:25

After I take the difference between

1:03:27

what I got in and when

1:03:29

I paid off my expenses, the

1:03:31

operating expenses, right, your employees,

1:03:33

marketing costs, the building that

1:03:35

you're in, the microphone you're

1:03:38

using, your internet connection, all of

1:03:40

that, after I pay, the flow

1:03:42

is at the bottom. If that's

1:03:44

positive, that means that you have

1:03:46

positive cash flow, right? And if

1:03:48

you don't have it, that means

1:03:50

that it's a negative cash flow.

1:03:52

Your company is suffering from that.

1:03:55

a perspective, right? Cash in, yep.

1:03:57

So how do you do a

1:03:59

promotion? What about the coupon? How

1:04:01

do you do a promotion? Let

1:04:03

me give you an example. Let's

1:04:05

say, Mike, you and I have

1:04:07

a startup. You and I, it's

1:04:09

going to be very ironic given

1:04:12

the fact that I'm using this

1:04:14

example, right? Let's say you and

1:04:16

I came up with an incredible

1:04:18

shampoo conditioner and hair products, right?

1:04:20

Yep. We co-founded that. It's called

1:04:22

Serious Summercant Hair Products Company, right?

1:04:24

It's a nice brand name. It's

1:04:26

a very long brand name. We

1:04:28

should shorten it, maybe. So we

1:04:30

came up with that. Now, when

1:04:32

you think about promotion, most people

1:04:34

think, oh, you know, 15% off-side-wide,

1:04:36

30% off-side, why? What is that

1:04:38

going to give me? Why don't

1:04:40

I do, for a minimum, why

1:04:43

not do I do, if you

1:04:45

want to do a promotion, why

1:04:47

not do a bulgo 50? So

1:04:49

there are different types of promotions

1:04:51

that have that actually what it

1:04:53

does is it condones and it

1:04:55

promotes a certain type of behavior

1:04:57

by the consumer a Bogo 50

1:04:59

buy one get one 50% off

1:05:01

what it condones is making two

1:05:03

purchases Right yeah I buy the

1:05:05

shampoo at full price my conditioner

1:05:07

is going to be at 50%

1:05:09

off If you think about it

1:05:12

net net I'm giving 25% off.

1:05:14

That's all I'm doing even though

1:05:16

the messaging says 50% off Right?

1:05:18

Yeah. But for the consumer, oh

1:05:20

my God, I'm going to get

1:05:22

50% off if I buy the

1:05:24

two things together, right? And what

1:05:26

it's doing, that now you're rewarding

1:05:28

good behavior that's different than a

1:05:30

one-time buyer that buys one unit,

1:05:32

right? So when it comes to

1:05:34

the promotion, you have to test

1:05:36

it to see what sort of

1:05:38

behavior that you want to condone,

1:05:40

meaning that you want to promote,

1:05:43

you want more people to do

1:05:45

that behavior. And what happens, you

1:05:47

know, we sell this shampoo and

1:05:49

condition conditioner and conditioner to Susan,

1:05:51

to Susan. Right. Susan buys it.

1:05:53

She likes our shampoo. The conditioner

1:05:55

is too lumpy, whatever. She says.

1:05:57

And the conditioner is not for

1:05:59

me, but I love the fact

1:06:01

that the serious summer can shampoo

1:06:03

that I bought is incredible. It's

1:06:05

better than pantine. It's better than

1:06:07

head and shoulders. It's better than

1:06:09

any of the other things. This

1:06:11

is a magical shampoo. I'm going

1:06:14

to go on subscribe and say,

1:06:16

right? At least she went on

1:06:18

that. If she bought only one

1:06:20

product, let's say by mistake. I

1:06:22

mean, she bought it was a

1:06:24

mistake. Like she bought the conditioner.

1:06:26

What happens to that consumer? What

1:06:28

happens to that. So you want

1:06:30

to think about what sort of

1:06:32

a behavior, consumer behavior, that you

1:06:34

want to promote. And based on

1:06:36

that behavior, the people who actually

1:06:38

play that game, you want to

1:06:40

reward them. And you don't have

1:06:43

to always give big discounts out.

1:06:45

So it's not always about, because

1:06:47

the thing is, if you even

1:06:49

give your entire store away, like

1:06:51

most people do during Black Friday,

1:06:53

50% off, but they're not driving

1:06:55

enough traffic to play the volume

1:06:57

game, what happens? That's in November,

1:06:59

December, come January, bankruptcy filings go

1:07:01

up. That's very typical. It just

1:07:03

goes up. You can actually follow

1:07:05

bankruptcy filings around the world in

1:07:07

bankruptcy courts and business courts. You

1:07:09

can actually subscribe to see who's

1:07:11

coming up on the docket for

1:07:14

bankruptcy. And you could see these

1:07:16

companies and you could see their

1:07:18

PR releases in whether it was

1:07:20

social media or any kind of

1:07:22

a professional journal. like internet retailer.com,

1:07:24

digital commerce.com, whatever. You will see

1:07:26

that, oh, we had a phenomenal

1:07:28

Black Friday sale. We beat our

1:07:30

numbers last year, blah, blah, blah,

1:07:32

blah. And then because they gave

1:07:34

the entire store away, you know,

1:07:36

when your house is on fire,

1:07:38

everybody is going to show up

1:07:40

to actually look and see how

1:07:42

fast it burns down. Not that

1:07:45

they care about putting out the

1:07:47

fire. So you have to be

1:07:49

smart about running your business in

1:07:51

a smarter way than that. Okay.

1:07:53

What we're saying is you have

1:07:55

to have a proper thing of

1:07:57

you're going to

1:07:59

use the coupons.

1:08:01

It's not as

1:08:03

simple as just easy to create

1:08:05

and Shopify or even easy to

1:08:07

automate with some email campaigns and we

1:08:09

just spread it everywhere. It has

1:08:12

to have a strategic thinking behind some

1:08:14

data measurement and looking where it

1:08:16

actually yields and promotes our behavior we

1:08:18

want to see. So, I mean,

1:08:20

we went into a lot, what you

1:08:22

guys do in the program and

1:08:24

as well all of that is very

1:08:26

actionable advices which people can go

1:08:28

and do themselves. All of them are

1:08:30

positives. So, I want to ask

1:08:32

this question because you know what works.

1:08:36

What a common piece of advice

1:08:38

you see around inter, you know, e

1:08:40

-commerce growth online, which you know that

1:08:43

actually is bad for long term. There's

1:08:45

a lot of bad advice. There's

1:08:47

a lot of bad advice, unfortunately, right?

1:08:49

This is one of the reasons

1:08:52

that I make appearances on podcasts and

1:08:54

I'm trying to get the word

1:08:56

out so that because it actually, when

1:08:58

you're part of an industry and

1:09:00

it hurts you actually to see companies

1:09:02

going bankrupt, great products,

1:09:04

amazing founders, bad

1:09:07

advice, bad implementation and

1:09:09

aligning with the wrong

1:09:11

people, unfortunately, right? In

1:09:13

most cases, that's the part that

1:09:15

hurts the most, right? When they

1:09:18

come to me and I get a

1:09:20

lot of communications like through my social

1:09:22

media, LinkedIn, people DMing me, right? Hey,

1:09:24

you know what, Severe? I heard you

1:09:26

on mastering tech growth, right? I heard

1:09:28

you, you know, you hit the home.

1:09:30

I got some PTSD from the

1:09:32

things that you were saying to me,

1:09:35

right, through that podcast, but

1:09:37

unfortunately, this is what's happening with

1:09:39

my business. And in some

1:09:41

cases, unfortunately, it's so late in

1:09:43

the, you know, the damage

1:09:45

is so bad that for them

1:09:47

to reel from it,

1:09:49

it's they have to go

1:09:51

through bankruptcy in order

1:09:53

for them to come out

1:09:56

of the other side.

1:09:58

That's the unfortunate truth, right?

1:10:00

There's a lot of

1:10:02

bad advice. There's rarely good

1:10:04

advice. Like there are

1:10:06

some people like, I co-founded Vainer Commerce with

1:10:08

Gary V. Gary V. gives amazing advice, like he's

1:10:10

really authentic, he's a great guy, friend of mine,

1:10:12

right? Neil Patel is another great guy that tells

1:10:14

you and gives you a lot of great information,

1:10:16

but there are so many people that. either they're

1:10:19

doing it unfortunately they're not interested

1:10:21

in your business they're doing it

1:10:23

for the views right on tic-toc

1:10:25

to get engagement they're thinking

1:10:27

about their tic-toc metrics they're

1:10:29

not thinking about e-commerce metrics

1:10:32

at all right okay business and and

1:10:34

there are so many agencies a lot

1:10:36

of agencies unfortunately run on There are

1:10:38

maybe a face or two that's a

1:10:40

little bit older that might have a

1:10:42

little bit of an experience, but a

1:10:44

lot of the back end of

1:10:46

it is college students who are

1:10:49

just graduating or not even graduated.

1:10:51

And this is their first job

1:10:53

and they're touching your business and

1:10:55

you're spending $30,000 a month, $50,000

1:10:57

a month. And there are very bad

1:11:00

mistakes being done by these, you know,

1:11:02

agencies. that could be avoided unfortunately right

1:11:04

knowing the right people and knowing the

1:11:06

right prescription so part of our prescription

1:11:09

is not only here is what you

1:11:11

need to do and if you raise

1:11:13

your hand and I have a lot of

1:11:15

people if you're honest about your business and

1:11:17

know that you have the wrong people you

1:11:20

know touching your business which 60 to 70%

1:11:22

of people that actually joined the Rapid

1:11:24

2X program within the first two weeks,

1:11:26

they end up firing quite a lot

1:11:29

of their agencies and freelancers. Because we

1:11:31

actually even came up with Rapid 2X,

1:11:33

approved partners and tools, right? So that when

1:11:35

they say, hey, I don't have a web

1:11:37

developer severe, I'm a product designer, I don't

1:11:39

have it, I hired a couple of people

1:11:41

off of LinkedIn referrals and stuff like that,

1:11:43

didn't work out, do you have a guy

1:11:45

for me or a gal for me? Yes, the

1:11:47

answer is yes, we have that. So that when

1:11:50

you, we have those partners, what we do is

1:11:52

we do the referrals to them and they know

1:11:54

the rapid to X prescription because they have been

1:11:56

working with us for a while, right? So they

1:11:59

know the five things. that are material, that

1:12:01

prescription, they actually implemented that way, right?

1:12:03

And because they're working with that, they

1:12:05

know how to enhance it even further

1:12:08

to keep delivering results so that not

1:12:10

only in the program are you getting

1:12:12

the prescription and what to do with

1:12:14

your business to do it correctly, the

1:12:17

things that you may be able to

1:12:19

do yourself because you have domain expertise

1:12:21

in that thing, but where you don't

1:12:24

have the expertise, then there are people

1:12:26

in the program, we have the network.

1:12:28

that we connect you to that you

1:12:30

can go and work with those folks.

1:12:33

And a lot of them actually do

1:12:35

tutorials in our program. They do live

1:12:37

workshops in our program. So they get

1:12:40

to intimately get to know those folks.

1:12:42

That's good. And I think it's highly

1:12:44

underestimated by majority of founders and entrepreneurs,

1:12:46

especially when they are with their first

1:12:49

venture. when it comes to partnerships and

1:12:51

people you should be surrounding yourself with.

1:12:53

They pay for other people education in

1:12:55

a way and the... Expensive education. Yeah,

1:12:58

exactly. So they basically fund the failures

1:13:00

from which, you know, these freelances were

1:13:02

learning and, you know, build their names.

1:13:05

Even if it's cheaper, I always like,

1:13:07

I've been asked this like, well, you

1:13:09

know, they are like seven bucks an

1:13:11

hour, but... Like, what's the value add?

1:13:14

You know, like, would you rather pay

1:13:16

seven bucks an hour and get five

1:13:18

mistakes and one value add or would

1:13:21

you pay 60 bucks? Let's talk about

1:13:23

that mistake. $7 an hour or $25

1:13:25

an hour. The mistakes are, it's costing

1:13:27

you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah.

1:13:30

100,000 loss. You have to think about

1:13:32

it from that perspective. But people are

1:13:34

thinking that, oh, you know what, the

1:13:37

check I'm going to give to this

1:13:39

to this person, because they're going to

1:13:41

do this for me, right. That's what

1:13:43

they're thinking. Not that if it's being

1:13:46

done correctly, I'm going to be positive

1:13:48

$100,000. If it's done wrong, I could

1:13:50

be negative $250,000. And that's unfortunately in

1:13:52

a lot of cases. It's

1:13:55

not the other way

1:13:57

around. It's not

1:13:59

the positive 100 ,000.

1:14:02

It's the negative 250

1:14:04

,000, unfortunately. Unfortunately, yeah. And

1:14:06

it takes time to realize

1:14:08

that and getting yourself with

1:14:10

good partnership from a beginning,

1:14:12

it's a very, very highly underrated way

1:14:14

of doing business, in my view, because

1:14:16

I see that mistake as well very

1:14:19

often. I wanna ask about - And Mike,

1:14:21

one more add -on I wanna do

1:14:23

to that comment you did. It's

1:14:25

not also, not just the referral,

1:14:27

these specialists that we say that,

1:14:29

hey, these guys are great and

1:14:32

you should work with them, right?

1:14:34

Also, it's the network effect of

1:14:36

other entrepreneurs that are in

1:14:39

that circle, right? That's the other

1:14:41

major positive that we get

1:14:43

in our community, right? In the

1:14:45

Rapid2X community, that it's not

1:14:47

just the coaching that they're getting

1:14:49

from me and prescription and the

1:14:52

network of all these approved partners that they

1:14:54

have access to if they need it,

1:14:56

right? But it's also everybody else

1:14:58

around them that are going through

1:15:00

their journeys so that they share. We

1:15:02

have had a lot of great

1:15:04

recommendations from one entrepreneur to the other

1:15:06

entrepreneur during our community sessions, right?

1:15:08

When we do live events and stuff

1:15:11

like that and we do it

1:15:13

on a weekly basis, right? So

1:15:15

that's the other effect of it,

1:15:17

knowing other people who are going through

1:15:19

a similar kind of thing and

1:15:21

they have seen some positives in using

1:15:23

maybe this app that they used

1:15:25

for AI was a better app than

1:15:28

the other thing that you're using. So

1:15:30

they would say, hey, I'm using this,

1:15:32

it's working for me, let me

1:15:34

screen share, they actually screen share and

1:15:36

show the actual results of what they

1:15:38

are doing and how it's helping them.

1:15:40

And those recommendations, one person is in

1:15:42

one category, they're not competing against this

1:15:44

other person, they're sharing it, the other

1:15:47

person takes that advice and that's the

1:15:49

other, the network effect of knowing

1:15:51

your community of entrepreneurs is critical

1:15:53

also, so that you get to

1:15:55

hear from other people also

1:15:57

how to, not only how

1:15:59

to handle marketing, or tech,

1:16:01

besides the coaching coming from me, right? But

1:16:03

also, but also hearing it from

1:16:06

others, like what did they face, how

1:16:08

did they fix that thing, right? It's

1:16:10

also very useful too. Oh, yeah,

1:16:13

100% just full and effective. Yeah,

1:16:15

yeah, it's iron sharp and siren

1:16:18

and effectively surround yourself with the

1:16:20

people you want to be. And

1:16:22

it's one of these mindset and

1:16:25

personal growth situations. Yeah,

1:16:27

exactly. Yeah. So I have this one.

1:16:29

fact which comes from

1:16:31

Harvard business review which

1:16:34

is Businesses who increase prices

1:16:36

by 1% seed the boost in

1:16:38

profit by 11% Which you know

1:16:40

leads to this question like why

1:16:43

do founders and not necessary

1:16:45

e-commerce founders? It could be

1:16:47

you know, maybe coaches or

1:16:49

like consultants is or whatever

1:16:51

but if you talk with

1:16:54

the smaller businesses and

1:16:56

you go like why don't you increase

1:16:58

your prices you know they always have

1:17:00

this mental block where they go like

1:17:02

well if you want to start beating

1:17:04

like this yeah yeah yeah like yeah

1:17:06

it's gonna we're gonna convert less people

1:17:08

like and they start competing on a

1:17:11

price rather than competing on a value

1:17:13

of the service so like what what

1:17:15

it wise from your perspective is like

1:17:17

when one of founders and you know

1:17:19

think about the pricing is like what's

1:17:21

the Go to your way of really looking

1:17:23

at the price in in a right

1:17:25

way So here's the thing the

1:17:28

multiplier effect right? That Harvard

1:17:30

business review by the way

1:17:32

I have been published in

1:17:34

Harvard business review also, right?

1:17:36

I published a co-published and

1:17:38

a piece with Harvard business

1:17:41

school professors, right? So you can

1:17:43

find you can put my name in

1:17:45

there and you can find the article

1:17:47

there, right? That was a self-shameless plug there

1:17:49

Mike. It's all good. We'll put it in

1:17:52

the show notes. They should actually, it's a

1:17:54

very good article about Amazon and should you

1:17:56

sell, should your company be selling on Amazon?

1:17:58

It's a very good piece. they should definitely

1:18:00

check that out, right? So here's the

1:18:03

thing. That article that you're talking about,

1:18:05

I'm very familiar with it, right, points

1:18:07

to the fact that when you make

1:18:10

a 1% improvement in one area, in

1:18:12

effect, you're not making an improvement of

1:18:14

1% down the line. You're not. You're

1:18:16

getting an 11% improvement. In the Rapid

1:18:19

2X historical data, I can tell you,

1:18:21

we made 10% improvement here. you would

1:18:23

think that, oh, okay, it's going to

1:18:26

be 30, 40% improvement overall in the

1:18:28

business. The effect was 3X. All right,

1:18:30

so it's like a compounding cascading effect.

1:18:33

Okay. Because it's a compounding effect. It's

1:18:35

a compounding effect of that decision making

1:18:37

that you do that ends up actually

1:18:39

paying you huge dividends, right? So that

1:18:42

10%, 10% in this example that I

1:18:44

gave you leads to not 30, 40%

1:18:46

improvement in your business. It's a three

1:18:49

X improvement, three times improvement in your

1:18:51

business. The example I gave of, you

1:18:53

know, Ashley Stewart, going from 35% to

1:18:56

65%, there were, we actually went through

1:18:58

those hurdles to actually get to 65%,

1:19:00

it was not a easy thing. You

1:19:02

have to be very methodical about this.

1:19:05

That's why all the things that I've

1:19:07

described to you, can. Can you do

1:19:09

it and check it off the list?

1:19:12

Yes, you can. But the thing is,

1:19:14

it's very difficult to get it right.

1:19:16

And doing the right thing with your

1:19:19

business is the most difficult thing for

1:19:21

you to do. And when you have

1:19:23

the right prescription with the right guidance,

1:19:25

I see myself, if you know that

1:19:28

movie, movie from the 90s, the karate

1:19:30

kid. Yeah. You know, the original one.

1:19:32

Yep. Mr. Meaggy. Yeah. I'm not in

1:19:35

the tournament. I'm telling you wax on

1:19:37

wax off. When you're doing it, you're

1:19:39

gonna go like. Danielson is going like,

1:19:42

why is he telling me to wax

1:19:44

on wax off? But what I'm telling

1:19:46

you giving you the prescription of doing

1:19:48

it exactly this way, when you see

1:19:51

the effect of it, you realize that

1:19:53

you're defending yourself, you know, by doing

1:19:55

this, right? It's a good analogy. I

1:19:58

love that. That was the moral of

1:20:00

that story there, right? So the same

1:20:02

applies here, right? When the, it's not

1:20:05

about the checklist of things that you

1:20:07

need to do and you check it

1:20:09

off. I did everything severe said in

1:20:11

that podcast. It's not that. It's the

1:20:14

implementation and the correctness of that implementation.

1:20:16

That prescription needs to be exact, right?

1:20:18

When you implemented correctly, you're going to

1:20:21

see these kind of things. So that

1:20:23

1% improvement in pricing. comes back and

1:20:25

gives you 11% improvement in your business,

1:20:28

yes, and higher quality customers. You didn't

1:20:30

even think about that when you did

1:20:32

a 1% improvement. And why do entrepreneurs

1:20:34

worry about this 1% increase? Even 1%

1:20:37

is 1% increase. It went from 39

1:20:39

cents to, I don't know, 43 cents,

1:20:41

right? And you know, net net to

1:20:44

keep the numbers something, like it was

1:20:46

29. 29 49 you change it to

1:20:48

29 99 right it's a small change

1:20:51

that you did but the effect of

1:20:53

it is it's an 11% improvement in

1:20:55

overall business the traffic that you're getting

1:20:57

is going to improve the quality of

1:21:00

the customer you know that RFMI said

1:21:02

earlier about life cycle marketing yeah you

1:21:04

start seeing that shift happening also on

1:21:07

that right okay so anything you do

1:21:09

has a cause and effect a 1%

1:21:11

improvement in one area of e-commerce has

1:21:13

indirect improvement in other areas, a 10%

1:21:16

improvement in your logistics has 30% improvement

1:21:18

in marketing role as. You go like,

1:21:20

those two don't connect, Sabir, what the

1:21:23

hell are you talking about? If you

1:21:25

deliver that order, when I placed it,

1:21:27

what are you gonna get? Social proof,

1:21:30

customer reviews, amazing video testimonials. That person

1:21:32

is gonna come back and sign up

1:21:34

for your subscribe and save and keep

1:21:36

on buying from you, improving their RFM

1:21:39

score with you. Yep. they're there the

1:21:41

fact that they are doing this affects

1:21:43

all of the other consumers that they

1:21:46

see that this person these people are

1:21:48

doing it, they actually get into the

1:21:50

same cycle. Now the effect is not

1:21:53

directly 10% improvement or improvement just in

1:21:55

logistics. Your marketing role has just went

1:21:57

up by 3X. I love that. Everything

1:21:59

is so in. Yeah. Not only compounding

1:22:02

effect. You have to think about how

1:22:04

these things that you don't think in

1:22:06

your head. You don't think the only

1:22:09

way you're gonna get that is a

1:22:11

perspective like mine that with 25 years

1:22:13

of this experience. When I step back

1:22:16

and I look at the whole picture,

1:22:18

go like, oh, you know, if I

1:22:20

touch this area, it's going to improve

1:22:22

this area here. Nobody else thinks about

1:22:25

that. There are so many agencies today

1:22:27

when you go to them and say,

1:22:29

can you do my meta ads? They

1:22:32

say, yes. A lot of them, they

1:22:34

don't even look at your Shopify site.

1:22:36

You go like, can you give me

1:22:39

the URLs that you want me to

1:22:41

lend these people to? They're not even

1:22:43

looking at your site. What if that

1:22:45

landing page, that product page, that product

1:22:48

page is horrible. You're just throwing money

1:22:50

away. That's it. They're throwing money away.

1:22:52

You're getting low-roas. Yeah. Marketing agencies are

1:22:55

getting paid. They're charging you for 12%

1:22:57

14% of the media spend. Their interests

1:22:59

are absolutely not aligned with you at

1:23:02

all. Because the more you spend on

1:23:04

it, the more they get paid. It's

1:23:06

not based on how much revenue you're

1:23:08

making or any kind of a performance

1:23:11

lift that you're getting on the other

1:23:13

side. That's a very good tone to

1:23:15

finished episode, Sabir. So. for the listeners

1:23:18

who are listening right now, just like

1:23:20

me, you know, getting their hair up,

1:23:22

it's so easy by there to listen

1:23:25

to you, you know, and you throw

1:23:27

the facts in such a way delivered

1:23:29

way, way, way just sort of sinks

1:23:31

in. So I'm sure our listeners enjoying

1:23:34

this. I hope so. I hope so.

1:23:36

I hope so. It gets them to

1:23:38

their soul, not just the body. Just

1:23:41

the soul understands it. And they wake

1:23:43

up. Because it's hurting their business. But

1:23:45

if people want to get in touch,

1:23:48

they want to, you know, maybe understand

1:23:50

what you're doing now. you know, about

1:23:52

the programs or just in general, potentially,

1:23:54

you know, pink some questions towards you,

1:23:57

how they can find you. So, you

1:23:59

know, actually you could include it in

1:24:01

the show notes and if you could

1:24:04

share the link with them. We have

1:24:06

created a special link just for your

1:24:08

readers, I mean, for you for your

1:24:11

listeners and, you know, viewers. They should

1:24:13

go to GrowthBy Sabir.com/Mastering Tech Growth. So

1:24:15

when they use that, we know that

1:24:17

they came from you, my team is

1:24:20

going to take care of them. They

1:24:22

could apply to the program, they could

1:24:24

get on the phone with them and

1:24:27

go through the details, any details that

1:24:29

I have not covered with them, especially

1:24:31

the process and stuff like that. I

1:24:33

know you and I could be chatting

1:24:36

for the next few hours, you know,

1:24:38

but my team is there, they can

1:24:40

explain the process to them, they can

1:24:43

evaluate to see if it's a good

1:24:45

fit. for their brand to be part

1:24:47

of our Rapid 2X program, they could

1:24:50

go to Growth By Severe.com/Mastering Tech Growth

1:24:52

and my team knows this stuff really

1:24:54

well and they'll take them to that

1:24:56

journey. And I would love to see

1:24:59

a lot of your listeners on the

1:25:01

other side where you and I can

1:25:03

do an update to this podcast to

1:25:06

say, hey, you know, we had so

1:25:08

many of the folks from your, you

1:25:10

know, listenership come in and viewership and

1:25:13

I can give you the statistics of

1:25:15

how great they grew. That would be

1:25:17

awesome. That would be awesome. Right. So

1:25:19

if today's episode give you valuable insights,

1:25:22

the best way to support the show,

1:25:24

of course, is to share it with

1:25:26

your network, especially with the people who

1:25:29

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1:25:31

and insights, which has been shared here

1:25:33

today, as well. Don't forget to subscribe.

1:25:36

Leave as a review. We'll have some

1:25:38

comments. And as always, until the next

1:25:40

time, stay safe and see you online.