Ecommerce: From Agency Owner To Thriving Ecommerce Community Entrepreneur With Austin Brawner

Hey guys, we're here for episode 17 of the e-commerce opportunity podcast where I'm joined by Austin Austin, how are you? Hey Chase, I'm good, man. I'm excited to be here. You know, I'm pumped for you to be here Do you mind starting out by what you're working on? Yeah, man, so my big project the thing that I'm super passionate about is it's called brand growth experts and we help e-commerce entrepreneurs build six seven and eight bigger businesses that they can sell and we help them do it in a way that allows them to continue to live their life and have a Like build something that's incredibly valuable without burning themselves out So that that's my big passionate project the thing that I'm most excited about we've got about 300 e-commerce entrepreneurs in our community and Every couple of months we we run something called intentional wealth Which is a cohort based program to help business e-commerce founders Get a handle on their business get clarity on where they need to like what they need to do to grow and and then also Just make friends with other people in the industry So we do a lot of curation of on experiences and and the people in that program to make it really impactful That's awesome, dude. I want to talk about that in one second But before I do I want to talk about like your journey I know we were talking before this you mentioned that you have an agency for a period of time We talked about like what services you offered there like some of the things that you like disliked and maybe some of your learnings Yeah, man, so I had I built an e-commerce email marketing agency quite a few years ago, I mentioned this but one of the first the way I got into the e-commerce space was I was working at a Startup in Los Angeles called human healthy vending. We are putting healthy vending machines in to schools hospitals places all companies as well all of the country and we were growing incredibly fast as a franchise opportunity and we would sell big high ticket hundred thousand dollar franchises through email marketing and I Was building those emails sitting right next to the CMO the co-founder and I was just like building all these emails in infusion soft We grew to like twelve million dollars in two years from basically nothing with one salesperson I was like, this is incredible email automation is the most powerful thing I've ever seen in my entire life And I had a friend who was working started a company called blenders eyewear And I was like dude, I can do what I'm doing for this other company for you That was my first client in The e-commerce space I would drive down to San Diego I slept on a mattress in his house for like a month and a half while I built out all their Email and all their automations It's like early days of blenders eyewear and From that the next client was pure Vita bracelets who is right next to them And I did the exact same thing and I built out all their email automations At the time Klaviyo didn't even really exist. So we were using infusion soft And I just learned about Klaviyo because I just met the founders and that's how I got started in this and that I kind of accidentally built up an agency because At the time very few people were doing any email automations in e-commerce And so that led to like one referral after another after another after another after another and it was soon enough I had this is agency that we were running where we were installing different email automation and doing some campaigns mostly email automation and It was very cool We worked with a bunch of like really fast growing DTC brands that you probably have You know, most people have heard of today like movement watches and Yeah, I say accidentally because it was not my intention to to build an agency I definitely didn't have any idea like what I was doing. It was just kind of fulfilling demand and I built, you know what I learned from that experience was there is Something to be said about building something intentionally is again like building something that you want I felt like I was always fighting against this thing that was happening because I was like, well you know, we just keep getting more clients and I didn't have you know, all of my like Financials figured out about how to make this thing feasible long term. So there was like boom bust type environment and That went with a business partner that it wasn't his vision either of where we wanted to go so after about three four years We split it up and I shut it down and I moved in a different direction But learned a ton had a ton of fun Got to be involved in growth at some incredibly fast-growing companies and And yeah, man, I feel like that was just like a trial by fire and I learned so much from from that whole experience Yeah, that's super interesting so how much time was in between you kind of shutting down the agency and you starting like the coalition and kind of like the Intentional well how much time was in between that and what was the inspiration behind starting kind of like this community in this membership? so it kind of went in steps was interesting is after I the agency one of the things that frustrated me the most about the Running the agency the email marketing agency was the time it would take from signing a contract to getting things up and running Right, like my frustration was that it would take three months and most of that frustration most of the time was spent trying to interface with the client and get the client on calls to be able to like make To be able to get things done. So instead I said, you know, I'm gonna flip this on its head. I'm going to start a workshop where ten people can come in and We'll build all the emails in two days And I had people from I actually like flew people from Klaviyo down to the workshop had like Technical people there and in two days We would get the work that would take us 90 days to get done as an agency done and we get people up to speed running emails That was my first email intensives. It was actually the inspiration for Klaviyo workshops There was for a while Klaviyo workshops were happening with our traveling around hosting them That was directly inspired by the fact that I was hosting those before they were even Like that was I flew the people from Klaviyo down it's like hey you got to get connected to your customers here because we've got Tons of people who want to use your product and it's it's clunky at the time It was very very clunky And so they came down Learned a lot went back and they started building all like the flow library all this sort of stuff. So that was Four years ago. I think about time when I was doing that and that was a really cool I still enjoy doing those type of events The challenge with that is that It's like you do the event and then it's over and then you have to like sell tickets to the next event and there was No, like ongoing relationship. And as you know from Ecommerce and building a business. It's all about pressure over time. It's not like building a successful Ecommerce business is about the day in and day out improvements So we would get people ahead Quite a bit with this Workshop and then it was like, okay. Well then now we have no way to stay connected with them. And so After about a year and a half of doing that I was feeling like kind of burned out as well as like, oh man I'm always launching these things and they're fun, but I need to find something else to stay connected with people so I launched the coalition which is my community and that kind of worked really really well with my People would come to events because then they could stay together stay connected ask questions learn and we could do training on going And so that was about two two years ago, I believe Two yeah, it was two years ago that I launched the the coalition and That has been incredibly successful Community to that we have like training coaching all this different different things to be able to help people grow their business and Do it consistently over time Dude, that's awesome. I love that. So how do you acquire like paying members and then how do you retain paying members like of this community? So the biggest driver has been my podcast the e-commerce influence podcast. I've been hosting it for about seven maybe seven and a half years and have you know a pretty substantial audience all around the world and so You know and my podcast is for e-commerce entrepreneurs and that's basically that's the exact same audience that my community is for So most of the people have found me through the podcast or maybe my appearances on other podcasts like this one Those that that's the the main attractor for it or referrals, right? They get it. They they join and they're like, oh my gosh, this is so cool I'm learning so much and they bring in they ask their friend and And that allows them to go to the application process a lot easier because they get referred in So that's that's the most that's the the place that I probably get the most people from is definitely the podcast How do I how do I keep people around? so that is the most interesting thing and the most challenging thing about building a community based business a community and a like a recurring business and I've learned so much about that like from when I started to when I launched was 30 days And I had a really good Mentor somebody who I'd work. I was with a guy named James Schramko who really helped me get things up and running And it was just like get launched with a little bit of content and then improve and evolve over time I think building a community is very much like building software. It's iterations over time So the biggest thing that we do is we listen to our our members and we see what they want and we build it And that has led us to change up the community in so many different ways it's a lot it's We get like back-and-forth feedback about the type of trainings that people want. So if somebody's like, hey, I'm interested in in YouTube advertising I'll go and I'll find the best YouTube advertiser in the world and I'll bring them in and I'll have them do a training It's about an hour long and it's designed for It's designed to give People the ability to like get stuff done like my my criticism of a lot of training is that it's not It's not actionable. So we try to do things where we're like, okay, you got 50 minutes give People something they can do in two hours to move their business forward And so that's that's really the main thing around how to keep you how to how to retain members It's just building the features that they want and also building a community that people know each other, right? It can be kind of lonely for a lot of people who are building a business in isolation or in a silo. So Connecting relationships and that that's a it's a good way to retain members That's awesome. So on the on the personal brand side, so the podcast has been huge You've been doing it for a long time and I'm sure it's had some nights today grow outside the podcast Like what other channels are you personally on and and how do those channels contribute to? You know the growth of the membership or just you getting people on the podcast in general So other channels that I have like I'm on Twitter, I think that's probably where I have the like Potentially largest audience. I would say that I have an email marketing like a newsletter that goes out every single Thursday that talks about What's going on in the industry? It shares my thoughts lessons tools tips Those are probably the two other things outside the podcast that I do the most I've gone and spoke at most every conference that is out there for e-commerce But for the time being those are the things that that I've been focused on I think some I think people do find me on Twitter but most of its from honestly from the podcast a lot of my time is spent working with Clients that's one of the interesting things about my entire business is like a recurring model, so for me, it's I spend a lot of time just delivering value for current clients and then that continues this snowball rolling forward and you know people I'm fortunate to get a lot of referrals for our programs and That's where a lot of that comes from a lot of growth comes from that Nice that makes sense I have one more question on kind of what you're doing there and then I want to talk about Kind of the team and then really this topic around like how you get businesses from six to eight figures My last question on this one is in terms of like the intentional wealth Is that a program within the coalition or is that something separate and what what is it? How long have you been doing it for? How's it going? Yeah, so it's a program that's separate. It's for business owners the e-commerce founders that are doing Over $500,000 in in revenue most people end up there in the low to mid seven figures is kind of our sweet spot for the people in that program it's a cohort based program and We launched it this year, so the first cohort kicked off this year we had 20 members and The real goal with that program is to help People in the program get really really clear about what they need to do to get to the next level in their business in their life so it's it's like getting clear about where you actually want to go and then getting help and Sure and getting the shortcuts to be able to get there faster and that could be from working with people We have like a board of advisors that works Works with our members that you know it's an email marketing coach a Facebook marketing coach a mindset and performance coach and a copywriter and it's like The the goal is to really identify those things that are holding you back and a lot of those are actually Internal right? Like it may not just be Something that you're struggling with on the marketing side. It could be actually like your mindset about like your business and What you want or what you think might be holding you back stories that are telling yourself and so we get super clear on that and then try to move things forward and Knock out all of those things holding you back from from up leveling in your business in your life That's so cool, man. That's awesome. So you have two businesses. There's a lot of components within each business Like what does your team look like? Right? So it's you and then who else is on your team that make these businesses possible Yeah So I have a couple people on my team I've got a couple full-time Full-time employees one who is a Community manager and somebody who also really manages operations on for both of the programs Will bring in experts help me coordinate Training that sort of a thing and then I also have another Person who focuses mostly on like Honestly like project management and helping us move big projects forward We have a small full-time team and then we've got some contractors as well podcast editors video editors graphic designers that's that's what the team looks like but yeah, it will thing that I think is One of the most important parts the most valuable parts of my business is the Getting clear and then moving projects forward. So we work with a scrum methodology So we'll you know We're a small team So we'll we'll get really clear on what we want to build what we want to ship and then we'll map it out and then we'll run a sprint for two to three weeks where we all dive in and Build something on the website Nice that's awesome. Thank you for that I'm gonna purposely leave this next question kind of open-ended and I know that you got excited about this when we're kind of before We talked through like how do you take a business from six figures to eight figures? Yeah, so I'll specifically talk about my experience with ecommerce businesses and In in brands, I'll say that you know Most of my time and energy has been spent coaching Ecommerce entrepreneurs who have Grown to six or seven figures and I wanted to get to eight figures and I think what is The things that I've seen in this space and the things that usually make the difference between someone getting the next level or not come down to like First mindset and to like win and what they're doing and I specifically like win because I think the thing that holds I'll start with what I think holds people back and Where I spend a lot of my time it's what I've seen is that often someone will launch a product and They'll have some initial traction and some success and that could get them to like maybe five hundred thousand dollars in sales a year Right, and that's that's super exciting and that is an incredible breakthrough an incredible Milestone to hit and That milestone usually comes with some additional baggage or some additional Challenges and the challenges that usually hit around that level it usually start with like the desire to do a lot more and To start focusing on all these different things. I think one of the biggest challenges, especially for new business owners is not being able to separate what is going to move the needle and What is just like marketing noise? and And so at six at that range It's really like how do you get clear on? What's what you need to be doing right now and what you need to be doubling down on to be able to get to the Next level let's say you have and this is where you kind of have to determine about product So if it's a a product that has a large market and a lot of you know right now There are so many products that in the past might have seemed niche But the world is so big that they could actually be pretty pretty large right like just a paleo Coffee or a paleo tea or something like there are some type of paleo food or keto food can be a mass market So if you have something that can go to the mass market Then often what you're doing that that stage is like really doubling and tripling down on what has gotten you to where you're at and Building a system to the marketing that you're doing can be done consistently Effectively and without you as the founder being intimately involved in every aspect of it Because your role is going to change and you're going to be fighting all these different fires and hiring people and growing So you you really want to figure out how to systematize and make repeatable effective marketing and that will usually get you from like six to seven figures and That that's that that's kind of where I see my first challenge is like often it comes in super scattered They're like well, we are you know, we send out emails every once in a while. We run Facebook campaigns, but it's not systematized that's usually the first challenge at At seven figures and again, these are all the I hate throwing out these numbers because it's all different for each business Depending on I'm just gonna get some massive generalizations here at a certain point, right? Like you'll get to a level where you now Need to during that through that phase. You kind of typically will have to hire people that do things that you're not good at and That may be you may be really good at marketing so you need to hire somebody who's really good at operations to help you keep things moving forward or you might be really good at operations and You're struggling with marketing. So you have to hire somebody who's excellent at marketing to get you to the next level That's the step from like seven to eight figures Usually I see again generalizations It's like start starts to be time where you need to hire the for things that you are really good at And that could be a really challenging thing if you're a founder and you're excellent at at Facebook advertising and that's how you've grown to Be able to let go of that and have somebody take over the thing that has Most important to your business can be incredibly challenging now I can see a lot of people get hung up at that point But it's it's important because it gets you to the next level where you can start doing the things that really matter Which is like bringing in incredibly high quality talent recruiting working on organization structure or Developing new products, which is something that I think can get lost Somewhere on that journey big hiccups for people that get from six to seven figures They may hit a knockout product It gets into like two seven figures and They just keep going back to the well too long without rolling out another product when the best thing they could do is not Make their marketing more effective. It's launched something new to the same audience man. How's so good? Thank you for that. That was great Actually have two more questions. I just thought about Right now you have a community. Let's say you can't start a community again. You have to go start a business Would you start an agency would you start an e-commerce brand or would you go freelance and why? I would definitely Tooth, I would definitely start either. I probably I'd buy an e-commerce brand. That'd be where it where I focus couple things that I'm I'm thinking about one it's buying e-commerce brands that Buying or partnering with e-commerce brands that don't have the same skill set that I have and helping them grow One of the my I would consider my skill set the ability to retain customers and and boost profits in a business So finding a company that has really good acquisition buying it or partnering with it and helping them grow Or starting a company from scratch in the health space Those are the things that I'm most excited about. I think also the other thing I would probably if I was to To start something in the health space the way I would do it is I would start a company that Partners with I'm gonna say influencers or celebrities to help them create their own brands and Leverages the audience that they have and do all the like back-end work and let them take on top of funnel type type acquisition stuff That's killer. I love that. I thought a lot about that as well so thank you for that and then the other question I have is like in your business or even like in the e-commerce businesses that You have in the community. What are some of like the tools that you guys can't live without? Sure, that's a great question. I Could I will preface this by saying that I think over Saturating your website with apps is one of the biggest Mistakes you can make and if you have a ton of apps and you're a person who loves to like try to install Shopify apps Go back and delete and actually clean out the code from all the ones that you're not using Because it can slow down your website with that said I will share some ones that I really like I think the one that is I Would if I only had like one app it would be Klaviyo and I would use that to be able to Capture the information from all my customers and follow up with them by far I think the best email marketing app and also rolling out really strong SMS offerings as well Let's see here from a project management side I use monday.com slack I also use air table. Those are the three things that we use do zero Communication internally through email marketing or through email. It's all through slack or Monday Air table is one of my favorite apps It's it's incredibly powerful we use it for everything from reporting to recruiting to our it's our CRM as well for the business and I just think it's so flexible and so interesting and I'm a huge fan From the e-commerce side. I would say some apps that I really like what like recart Some sort of an upsell app depending on what I have what my product is like order bump.io or cart hook or One click upsell they all have their own uses and it depends on what type of product you've got and like what your business model Is I think that's one one thing that really I would look at first before installing a bunch of apps There's actually Those are the ones that come to me at the top of my head just from the marketing side of things I probably could go on a little bit longer but there's a actually a thread that we have in The coalition of people posting their Shopify stacks and It's it's pretty interesting to see one that you know, it's exciting is somebody who's really pumped about super metrics I haven't used it, but I've heard it's quite interesting quite cool Yeah, dude, those were killers. Thank you for that. The last question I have you could answer. It's gonna be a two-part question You can answer either part one is what do you think the biggest challenges that your brands face or to like? What do you think the biggest need of an app or? Technology for those customers and facing that problem would be you can answer it either or both of those questions So the biggest problem that you think people face Or like the biggest need that these people have that could be an app in the Shopify store That isn't already or that you haven't seen yeah I think the biggest challenge that they face is hiring quality talent quality people like I Think that is Single like a lot of my attention has moved in that direction because it's something that I've seen Consistently with my clients is like as they grow and they grow very very quickly finding quality people to work in their business that are talented have a little bit of a background and Recruiting so that's definitely one that that is a top of mind and a big challenge From a technology side of things. It's a good question Like what would be a good app you know, so Attribute another Apple shares inquire app Which is a an app that allows you to put a post-purchase survey and ask people where they heard about you The biggest challenge people face is attribution and it's it's been that way it has It will continue to be that way for a long long long time. And that's where I think the most money is From you know, that's why you see so many attribution type apps being built is because nobody's done it in a way that is that effective and so that that's interesting as well as just like apps that can help you figure out your lifetime value repeat per repeat purchase rate all those types of things that might create actionable metrics that allow you to To be able to spend advertising more effectively. Yeah, those are great answers. I honestly can't agree more and have one final question. I lied For sure, man would be how do you think about like a brand? Let's say you can pick six seven eight figure brand How do you think about like? when and where it makes sense for those brands the higher internal versus leverage a freelancer or an agency like Who does it make sense for or do you think there are certain things that you should outsource for certain certain things? You didn't take this any way you want to go with it Cool I have lots of opinions on this actually, it's a great question So I think let's break it up into two parts There's I'm gonna first start with acquisition, right? And when I say acquisition, I'm gonna say this There's multiple facets of acquisition, but I'll start by talking about like paid social for example And I think if you're spending under $2,000 a month, but that's like your budget Like you're not going to be able to find an agency that's gonna help you It's just it's not gonna work so you'll probably be and you're not going to have enough money to spend to Bring in anybody full-time So you're gonna be in a position of having a freelancer and that could be really really helpful especially if you have a freelancer who is somebody who you could pay to help train you like a coach freelancer is like an awesome fit early on and I also think it's important to remember to ask yourself. What type of business are you in? People make this Assumption They're like, you know Procter & Gamble, they're a huge company. They use agencies so we can use agent an agency as well The difference between Procter & Gamble and a direct-to-consumer brand is if you're a direct-to-consumer brand, you're a marketing company. That's what you are Procter & Gamble is not a marketing company They're a product company and they that's why they hire agencies to help them do their marketing So if you ask yourself the question, what are we truly what is the ethos of this business? Are we a marketing company or are we a product company? And if you're a marketing company at a certain point in your life cycle You're most likely going to have to transition to bring marketing services that are brand related in-house That may be on the paid social side. That's going to be creative, right? creative is one of the most challenging things to outsource at a Any level really but especially as you grow and you you know If you truly are a brand that is set like a lifestyle brand You're probably gonna struggle having creative outsourced at a high level So you'll probably need to bring that in you can keep media buying outsourced for a pretty long time to the point where you know I've seen me like the actual media buying being out being outsourced and tell people are at like eight figures or like high seven figures on the Google it like if you're and again The other question I have to ask is are you demand generation or demand capture business? If you're a demand generation meaning you need to go out there and advertise You're going to probably need people who? You're gonna need more emphasis and more expertise to be successful on that then on the demand capture side where You might be able to have somebody who's just like an expert at Google AdWords Work as a freelancer or consultant for you until you're in mid seven figures on the retention side of things I think where it can be really challenging is I Generally like to keep email marketing In-house after a certain after a certain point I think it can be really effective to work with an agency or a freelancer to get you up to speed But at a certain point if you're the one sending out campaign emails over and over again It can become cost prohibitive to work with an agency that charges you per email Especially if you get to a level where you need to send three to four you know Like say two to three emails a week Well at that point if you're at that level I think you should have somebody in-house doing that because the returns you're gonna get on that are gonna be really really high And it'll be challenging to make that work I think it's even challenging to make that work from an agency perspective Just because of the amount of work going into it and the amount people are willing to pay for campaign emails over time So that's that's kind of my take on it And if you are going to partner with an agency it can work incredibly well Only if you have a long-term vision of win-win for both for everybody like if you're thinking about Hiring an agency for a short term like a year It's going to it's it's going to fail Like you really need to think about if you're gonna hire agencies long-term you want somebody in-house Who's going to be the liaison between you and the agency and the one who's Helps keep agencies responsible for their metrics and communicates to an agency what they need so that they can be as connected to your business as possible and allows you to So that they could have success right the biggest reason that agencies fail with clients I think has to do with the fact that a client not giving agencies enough Connection to the business or keeping them up to speed and X and having expectations that they're going to produce like an in-house person Even though they're not clearly as connected. They're not connected to the to the brand So if you're thinking long-term you need to have somebody in-house that could manage one two Or maybe even three channels, but has to have experience in all of those to be able to have success Wow, what a fantastic answer a great way to end this. Thank you Austin so much for being here Best place for someone to join coalition follow you email you whatever they want to do based off the info that you shared What is our one of those? so if you want to become a member of or like Work with me. You can go to brand growth experts comm and it's all information about working together And then I have a podcast called e-commerce influence podcast Been hosting it for probably about seven years. There are Anybody you could imagine in the e-commerce space you think of and probably look up to in terms of building brands I've probably interviewed at some point So you can go check it out to e-commerce influence podcast or e-commerce influence calm Chase, thank you so much man for having me on chorus. You're the man. Thank you so much And I hope you guys enjoyed the episode Cheers Austin