Interview with Austin Kreinz From Atomix Logistics

Do you have a great consumer brand but looking for a US-based fulfillment company that confidently gets your product into the hands of your consumers? Austin from Atomix Logistics has the answer with his unique twist on 3PL.

Hey Austin,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. We first met a year ago when you were recommended to us as a US-based third-party logistics (3PL) company.

In 2021 I was unhappy with our current 3PL and was looking for a partner with who we could grow. Within a few months of onboarding with Atomix, we found the level of customer support was over and above any other 3PL we have used.

I am keen to uncover your journey, from first starting Atomix Logistics until now.

If you have EVER worked with a 3PL or are thinking of doing so then you reading this interview will save you a tonne of time. Austin not only details his journey but outlines essential information you need to know.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Thanks for having me, Adam!

Before we get started, I’d like to say thank you to the entire Atomix Family. Thank you, because you’ve been an exceptional partner, and we’ve enjoyed playing a small, yet pivotal role in your brand’s growth!

The word, “Family” is not only a meaningful word but also one that is at the core of my story.

My family has owned a small logistics business in Milwaukee, WI (right by the Great Lakes in the Midwest) for almost my entire life. And to be honest, I never dreamed about working in the logistics industry (I’m not sure many kids do!), but it’s such a fascinating industry to be a part of (more on this later!)

I caught the entrepreneurship bug early and have started all different types of companies (at a much scaler scale) since childhood – from training and consulting athletes to developing an app in college. Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s in my DNA and there’s nothing quite like its risk-reward profile and the ability to create something from nothing.

Back to my childhood, I was 1 of 5 kids and had a relatively “normal” childhood growing up in a middle-class, suburban neighborhood. My childhood and early life could be summarized by three words: Entrepreneurship, Sports, and Academics.

I took the leap of faith when I was 16 years old to pursue my dream of playing D1 Lacrosse. That required me to move across the country to attend a boarding school (lacrosse was a brand new sport in Wisconsin and I was on one of the first teams).

I was fortunate enough to earn a scholarship and eventually was recruited to play Division 1 at the University of Pennsylvania. I had the opportunity to win an Ivy League Championship, to be voted captain during my senior year and graduate Cum Laude. Interestingly enough, all 4 of my brother’s played college lacrosse!

What got you into starting your own third-party logistics (3PL) company?

I like to say Ecommerce & Logistics have been my entire life.

I grew up in an SMB Logistics Family and after college, I worked on Wall Street covering the Consumer Retail Industry. I saw the first-hand impacts that Technology and Ecommerce were having on established business models.

I think growing up in the industry has given Atomix a competitive edge – it helps to understand what fundamentally works, and how to develop solutions that business owners trust, understand, and can rely on daily.

Additionally, prior to starting Atomix, I spent a year partnering with a bootstrapped $20 million+ brand to help them grow and scale – from sales/marketing to operational improvements. That’s where I really learned about the pain points of shipping & fulfillment because it came up in almost every discussion with brand owners.

3rd-Party Logistics is the starting point for Atomix. Our vision is to create a Software Operating System that enables brands to Launch (build a store), Grow (customize physical operations), & Scale (fund growth/capitalize on profitability). We have a long way to go!

Photo Credit Atomix Logistics

When I was researching 3PLs your branding really caught my eye. Your industry is not known for its stand-out branding, can you go into more detail on how you developed your brand?

Defining a “Brand” is such a fascinating exercise.

The reason we’re constantly investing in, improving, and creating a “Stand-Out” Brand is two-fold:

• Our Core Customers: Who are they? What do they want/need/like?
• Avoid Boring: Attention is hard to get, especially with 3,000+ competitors, so the hard truth is boring = ignored

To expand on that, creating our initial brand identity was a relatively easy exercise at first. It was easy because I experienced the pain points first-hand and I was, in essence, creating a solution for myself. I was aware that the majority of 3PLs have boring and outdated websites, and I knew the industry was in need of a refreshing brand that actually resonated with modern brands and entrepreneurs.

While I mentioned it was “easy” to form the initial foundation of our brand, it takes time and iteration to perfect the branding because it’s a constantly evolving identity. I think building a Brand should be a focus for any and every type of company because a Brand is how you’re identified in the market.

Our team has deep conversations about our branding. We try to take a systematic approach to how we engineer and define our brand. Since we live in a world with an overwhelming amount of solutions to our problems it’s important to be precise and focused on ourselves and our message.

Further, in the digital-first economy, we approach marketing in an almost surprising way. We say, “we have to fight for and earn the attention of people because attention is an asset that is hard to get.” Especially for us, with thousands of competitors, our Brand is so much more than our website, it’s the essence of who we are, what we stand for, and the value that we provide.

Atomix Logistics does fulfillment a little differently from other 3PLs I have had experience by using the concept of “Pods”, what are these and how do they work?

Great question!

Behind the concept was a bit of, “forced innovation” in addition to listening to our customers.

I say “forced innovation” because when I started the company I had 400 square feet of spare warehouse space to utilize. Most warehouses are designed in measurements of feet and have hundreds of thousands of square feet.

For us, we had to focus on maximizing inches and being as efficient as possible. We quickly realized we needed a much bigger space (so today we have 50x that!).

Listening to our early customers really helped develop and refine the model. Most 3PLs and warehouses are focused on efficiency and there’s a good reason for that. For us, we wanted to provide efficiency, but also create an amazing customer experience because that’s what our brands do for their customers.

That means, we dedicate “Pods” (essentially mini-warehouses) within our facility to an independent or group of brands. By doing so, we manage our clients by brand and product and can customize their unique requirements based on their standards. The approach enables us to be more flexible and responsive in order to customize operations for brands, as opposed to over-systematizing a solution that dilutes the brand’s ideal customer experience.

Additionally, we layer on our real-time, text-messaging customer support platform with 2 dedicated Team Members.

First, the Pod Manager, who handles the brand’s physical operations on a daily basis, and

Second, is the Customer Success Manager, who handles all the technology, integration, billing, and administrative questions.

We enjoy taking the customer experience to the next level because when our brand partners are more successful, we are as well.

Photo Credit Atomix Logistics

I have worked with 3-4 US-based 3PLs in the last three years and experienced a few common failures. I am interested to know what mistakes you have seen 3PLs make?

The short answer is – The nature of the logistics industry has a lot of moving parts, and as such, we jokingly agree with Murphy’s Law that states, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

That being said, we’ve both seen and experienced a few common failures:

• Miss Shipments: Sending the wrong product or having a carrier lose a shipment accounts for 3-4% of orders (the industry average). The most common root issue is the lack of Scan-based Systems or SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). We implemented a fully-scan-based process, which required barcoding 3,000+ warehouse locations and 50,000+ units, in early 2022 and reduced our Error Rate to less than 2%.
• Accountability & Ownership: Most warehouses have a standard organizational chart. Meaning, Pickers/Packers solely pick/pack orders and Customer Support who are based overseas or in a separate office. The reason being is the focus, specialization and profitability which are all fair reasons, but I’ve witnessed this deteriorate cultures and create unmotivated employees which ultimately reduces performance and in turn profitability and customer retention.

This goes back to my point of re-thinking the industry. We have our office 10 feet from our Pods and have employees with hybrid responsibilities that extend between customer support and operations. For us, this has created a unique employment offering that results in a better experience for our customers and our team (a win-win).

Customer support has always been an issue with most of the 3PLs I have worked with, especially when a fulfillment company handles thousands of clients. How do you guys manage support?

I touched on this before so I’ll keep this one brief!

Here’s a great example that signals our value of customer support –

My first full-time hire was our Director of Operations & CX, Patrick Day. While it’s just a title, we fundamentally view the Customer Experience (CX) as the most important part of our business. We’d be crazy not to because if our customers aren’t happy then we’re not doing our job of achieving operational excellence.

For us, we’re growing from 50 to 150 brands in 2022, and I can promise that our customer experience will continuously improve and be a defining feature and benefit of partnering with Atomix.

Interestingly enough, the concept of the “Pod” intrinsically creates an improved customer support experience. We are systematically required to manage brands with dedicated team members. To my knowledge, no other warehouse in the U.S. empowers their warehouse team to take ownership and manage part of the customer support experience in the same way we do.

As we scale, we’re constantly adding new team members to dedicate the same level of service regardless of the brands’ size.

What challenges did you face when setting up Atomix?

Warehouse space!

In early 2021, before we moved into our new, renovated warehouse (20,000 sq. ft.), I had to rent shipping containers outside our spare warehouse space because we were growing so quickly.

We’ve had so much demand to open a West Coast facility, we’ll be opening one early next year! It takes a team and weeks of preparation to rapidly and accurately roll out a new location.

Technology

Approaching logistics in a differentiated way comes with inherent challenges. We’ve been licensing a 3rd Party Software App and it lacks the necessary customizations for our business model and growth plan. As a result, we have invested months into creating a proprietary warehouse and inventory management system. The process requires experienced developers/software engineers and a significant amount of investment.

It’s the most fun challenge to solve because our platform’s intelligence and eas-of-use will be game-changing for the industry and extremely impactful to our business and our partners.

You have grown significantly over the past year. Can you tell us about your growth and if you’re happy to share your secret?

That’s The Million Dollar Question.

I’ve read hundreds of similar stories and studied the best business leaders across history and the world, and I’ve yet to find the one-and-only true secret.

That being said, I’ll share how I operate:

I work, eat, and dream about Atomix and I’ll never stop. (Some people interpret that as narcissistic or too obsessive. I think they’re wrong.)

First, I can operate that way because I genuinely love what I do and have an insatiable desire to learn and improve.

I believe my passion and business-obsessed personality have helped attract similar people that want to make a difference and impact in the world in addition to being successful. Without our team, we would never have been able to grow so quickly.

I use the word love because the nature of early-stage businesses is intrinsically full of risk and uncertainty. Inevitably, plans will change and people will respond unpredictably. As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to make it work. If I don’t inherently love what I’m doing, how would I expect myself to work tirelessly and to expend all my effort into growing a business?

Lastly, I use the words, “never stop” because when it comes to learning, improving, and growing you can never reach your limits. There is always something to learn and it’s important to remember the Winston Churchill quote,

to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

I wish there was a secret because it’d make my late nights a lot shorter!

But until then, my advice is, “get started & never stop.”

What’s next for Atomix in the next 1-2 years?

Great question!

2022-23 Plan:

• Rollout Our Proprietary Software Platform: Mid-2022
• Open West Coast Warehouse: Early 2023
• Increase Current Warehouse Capacity: Up to 100,000 sq. ft. 2022
• Hire New Team Members: 10→30 in 2022 and 80 in 2023

Photo Credit Atomix Logistics

Are you struggling with customer acquisition? Jack and his team from Top Growth Marketing (TGM) could be the answer to making better marketing decisions.

Hey Jack,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. We met two years ago after being introduced by Benjamin Golden as someone to help my brand with a paid advertising strategy.

You’re a very busy guy running a digital marketing agency, a podcast, and SaaS tools. I want to delve into each of these for my readers.

So, Jack, let’s jump into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Super excited to do the interview. Initially I was born in Sydney, Australia. Then traveled around a little to England, Hong Kong and have been in the United States for the last 7 years.

How do you first get into working online and in particular with paid Ads?

Marketing started very early on as I discovered affiliate marketing, then I got extremely lucky to be very early on with Facebook advertising. From there the brands I worked with just compounded and our team got bigger and bigger as the demand increased.

We also diversified by having brands we work with, a brand we own, and some SaaS companies that help create tools that we see brands needing for growth.

You set up your Top Growth Marketing (TGM) agency in 2016 to help clients acquire customers. Can you give us an outline of your agency, what sort of numbers you manage in Ad spend, number of clients?

It all started at $10/day on Facebook for a brand I convinced to invest some of their budgets into Facebook ads while I was freelancing (well before 2016).

Now it’s at $1-2M a month in profitable ad spend across 25+ D2C brands inclusive of all social and search channels.

My background has been more SEO-focused and still relatively new to paid advertising. What mistakes do you see beginners making with paid acquisition channels?

Great question, a lot of it comes down to preparation before you start spending dollars. E.g. knowing your benchmarks for COGS, CPCs, Conversion rates, etc.

Make sure you know what goals you need to be hitting to make advertising work.

It’s also not a get-rich-quick solution, a number of founders think they can create a product, then just turn on some ads and be an overnight success.

It takes a lot of work to find product-market fit, test/find good creativity and copy, then have the right team too.

What have been your biggest wins working with a client?

There has been a number of brands that have been amazing to work with but the biggest wins are the ones we have taken from 4 or low 5 figures to 6+ in monthly revenue.

A few that have done really well are Appsumo, TasteSalude, SPRWMN, Private Stock Labs and Happy Wax, and a ton more.

With tracking of data becoming more challenging since the Apple ios updates, how have you addressed this with tracking client Ad spend and conversions?

Importance of setting up API tracking and using UTM’s is more important than ever.

On top of that, you can also use dedicated landing pages (in combination with knowing your benchmarks) or 3rd party looks like TripleWhale, Wicket Reports, Red Track, or Hyros.

What is TGM’s biggest advantage, your USP, that gives you the edge over other marketing agencies?

Very good question, a lot of it comes down to a number of things being done really well, and here are a few.

One, reporting and understanding the metrics is crucial to knowing where to invest and where to stop spending.

Two, the creative is becoming more and more important so a super solid creative team for images, design, and offers.

Three, the experience and length of time we have been growing companies, it much easier to fix/solve issues if you have already come across them before.

Four, the omnichannel approach of using paid advertising to acquire new customers/revenue, then email/SMS to nurture and grow that lifetime value.

You have recently moved into the SaaS space with a number of tools (Vyper / Hyax), what are these and how can these help customer acquisition?

These are products that we saw gaps in the market from. They are separate companies from TGM but there is a lot of overlap.

Vyper is for building email and SMS lists as it helps brands create gamified giveaways.

Hyax/HyPage (currently in the process of merging) is a tool for content creators to monetize their audience via bio links, fan requests, courses, etc.

You also have a podcast called the “Blitz Growth” podcast that I was recently on. It was super fun and I am looking forward to this being published. What was the inspiration for this podcast?

Podcasting is just a really good way to meet interesting and awesome people.

It creates a lot of content to repurpose and it's just a hobby more than anything I’d say. There is 0 ROI from it for us but we like doing it.

You can check out the Blitz Growth Podcast here.

A shameless plug here for the recent podcast we did together that you can watch below.

Supplement Brand to 6+ Figures Working with Affiliates

Relocating abroad is challenging but life is that much easier when you have a real estate agent that has your back.

Hey Sam,

Thank you for joining me in this interview as we delve into what it’s like being a real estate agent in Malaysia.

We were introduced to each other via a mutual friend when looking for our first condo in Penang. Since then you’re our go-to agent whenever we want to move.

I am keen to understand your journey and the challenges of being in Real Estate in Malaysia and how you can help.

So, Sam, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I was born in KL and my family moved to Penang when I was a little kid. So I am very much a Penang-nite.

My first occupation was as a sportsman. I did Karate and represented the national team from 16 to 22 years old. While competing for the country, I also completed my Bachelors in Business Management (Part-time study).

My best achievements are Sea Games Gold Medal and Asia Karate Federation Bronze Medalist.

What attracted you and how did you get into real estate?

Believe it or not, my mum insisted I give real estate a go. (I'm not Mummys Boy*).

I started off attending weekly meetings at Reapfield Properties in the year 2011 and slowly I build my love for real estate.

It took me 11 months to close my first rental deal.

You focus on both sales and the rental markets. As a real-estate agent which do you prefer and why?

A lot of realtors prefer doing only sales because rental is a tedious process. There is so much work to follow up on in rental deals.

I believe doing both is the proper way to go. Owners will appreciate the realtors who rent their property and probably forgets the realtors who sold them the unit.

So if you want to be relational instead of transactional with your client, handling rental and sales both are equally important as a full-time realtor.

When we moved to Penang we were surprised by differences in how fees were paid to agents and landlords, could you outline the typical fees involved?

Basically, the law states that our professional fees are paid by whoever hired our services regardless of whether it's a tenant or landlord.

So having two realtors co-broking (working with one another to close a deal) each represents their own respective parties to collect their own professional fees.

However, having said that, Penang and a few other states up north and south Malaysia have a culture where they collect professional fees from both parties from landlord and tenant.

Many expats have reported having frequent issues with Landlords and getting deposits back. To date, we have had no issues with getting our deposits back (thanks to you), but what can tenants do to ensure they get deposits back?

In my 10 years of experience in this industry, I have never come across any landlord taking advantage of Tenants deposit in Penang.

The most I’ve encountered is Landlords deducting off tenants' security deposit MORE than what is fair to reinstate the property back to its original condition.

It is really difficult to manage wear and tear expectations from different parties. Each has its own perspective. Hence the key to avoiding this pitfall is for me to mediate ALL the expectations of wear and tear at the beginning of the lease during the handover.

These days there are videos and clearer pictures as supporting documents to be attached in the inventory which makes our life easier.

I am always amazed at how poor many of the pictures of properties are. Why do most agents make what appears to be little effort with property listings?

It's gradually improving. Trust me, I’ve seen worse those days.

Our phones have those wide-angle capabilities and one of the best features now is that the phone automatically adjusts the lighting of outdoor and indoor all in one picture on the spot.

Those days I have to take one picture that is bright inside to see all the furniture indoors and another picture focusing outside the view which will black out the interior and combine both pictures together to make it perfect.

I have also started videography home tours two years ago when the pandemic hits us. I was watching a lot of videos of other successful realtors from New York, the US, the UK, Australia, and Singapore and I notice that home tour videos are the way to go.

I am still trying to improve myself and you may visit all my home tour videos of Penang on YouTube.

What are some of the tricks that less professional agents use to market properties in Malaysia?

The number one trick commonly used here is the fake listings being posted at all the property portals such as PropertyGuru, I-property, and others.

You see 100 available listings newly posted in this particular development but in actual fact, only 5 listings are genuinely available in the market.

It is a method to fish potential tenants and buyers to other properties and other listings that the realtor wants to sell/rent.

How have you seen the real estate market change in the last 5-years?

The real estate market in Penang has been in a slump for the past 5 years. It is definitely a buyers/tenants market because there is too much property being developed in Penang (Oversupply!) The market is quite balanced at the moment, and things are picking up pretty well.

For example, if your looking for a 4-5 bedder to rent in the North section of Penang, Tg Tokong, Bungah, Gurney, or Batu Ferringhi, the inventory is seriously running low!

What differentiates real estate agents today and what’s make you stand out from the others?

In the six years of competing in Karate competitions at a regional level, I have learned to put in hard work and determination to bring home medals for the country. And today, even with a switch in career, I carry with me these same values and commitment that have helped me excel in the real estate industry.

With over 10 years of experience under my belt as a realtor, I have certainly grown tremendously.

I strive to conduct my business with respect, integrity, and honor. I will not hesitate to do justice to nasty Tenants or Landlords who take advantage of one another.

But truly, what sets me apart is the commitment to my clients, which results in excellent after-sales service. Terima Kasih 😀

Making sometimes just minor changes to your website can massively impact revenue. Paul helps to identify those changes small or big, that can mean the difference to your bottom line.

Hey Paul,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. We have been friends for many years ever since we met in Nottingham at an affiliate gathering.

I was a newbie affiliate and you were incredibly helpful, even after a few drinks I said you looked bigger in your profile than in real life! Hardly a compliment when wanting help, eh?

You recently helped us out with improving conversions for my supplement store. So I am keen to share your story of how you got into conversion rate optimization and highlight the common mistakes business owners make and easy wins.

So, Paul, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I was born in Hull, England, and had a fairly typical childhood in the area. We weren’t wealthy but my parents worked hard to ensure we had a modest but comfortable upbringing.

I got really good GCSE results but then slacked off during my A-Levels and left college with under-par results. I remember deciding that further education wasn’t for me and I began looking for apprenticeships as college life was coming to an end.

I never did find anything I liked the look of (or that paid more than £60 a week!) and so I kind of fell into University by default.

That’s where I think I made my first good career move. Initially applying to do Geography, I went through clearing so I could switch to a Marketing course as I figured it would open more career options and I’d enjoyed the marketing module during my Business Studies A level course.

As it turned out, I really enjoyed my time at Uni and came out with a decent 2:1 and a job working in the marketing team of a supplier of supermarket’s own-label chicken!

While it was a great experience, I always craved to work in online marketing. In fact, I’d been kind of obsessed with the internet since around 1998 (I’d dabbled with building sites and even edited a Hull City fan website in the early 2000s).

My opportunity came in 2006 when I joined a company that sold… ahem… male enhancement products online (coincidentally, a job that led to me meeting you, Adam, but we’ll say no more about that!).

[Always great to see a personal interest crosses over to your job eh? – Adam]

While the product may not have been my first choice to work with (though I should point out, it was a clinically proven device!), I really did get a crash course in online marketing. The owner of the company was extremely knowledgeable and I have no doubt my career wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful without that experience.

It was during that role I first got involved in conversion rate optimisation (more on that later).

Since then I’ve spent time working for myself as an affiliate, I’ve launched my own products, I’ve consulted for what is probably the best CRO agency in the world, and I’ve spent 6 years heading up the CRO for a SaaS platform in the PPC niche.

I now primarily run my own websites again but, as my passion is in CRO, I also offer CRO video audits via my CRO Genie website.

How did you first get into conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

As I touched on in the previous question, I first got into CRO while working at a company that sold male enhancement products.

I had two main responsibilities. Looking after the website for the product (writing copy, producing wireframes, etc), and helping the affiliates who promoted it to generate more sales.

Looking back, this was a ‘money can’t buy’ kind of experience.

I was managing a website that was getting thousands of daily visitors so I could test different copy, images, design, and get results back very quickly. I also was speaking to lots of different affiliates, learning from them and working with them to improve their copy, their marketing, and how they generated traffic.

I had to quickly learn all the so-called ‘best practices’ but I also got to see so many different approaches and the results of each approach that it was easy to quickly upskill my knowledge.

But it wasn’t just about knowledge. I really really enjoyed it and soon became passionate about helping people generate more sales from the traffic they were already getting.

That led to me working at a leading CRO agency as a lead consultant and then on to being the Head of CRO at a SaaS in the PPC niche. I left that role last year in order to focus on my own websites but still offer CRO audits as a side hustle!

What’s your process for working out what to split test?

Firstly, put best practices to the back of your mind.

Then, forget about what you’ve seen your competitors do.

All that is important initially is finding out what is stopping your visitors from converting.

By far, the biggest wins you’ll ever get are when you systematically overcome the specific objections being raised by your visitors.

To do this, it’s all about research. I use a combination of analytics, heat maps, visitor recordings, surveys, customer support records, user testing, and more to try and uncover exactly where the issues lie.

It can take several weeks to collect all of this information but it’s worth it. Once the results are in, they’ll usually point pretty clearly to a handful of issues that need resolving.

Sometimes it’s not necessarily that something needs ‘fixing’. It may already be ‘fixed’ but it’s just not clear to visitors.

Either way, it’s simply a case of understanding the results, then devising tests that give you the best chance of removing ‘blockers’ and getting people to your end conversion point. This is where experience can really help.

It’s important to rank the ideas based on their likelihood to produce a business-changing result. There’s no point in optimizing a page that doesn’t get much traffic, for instance. I’ll also consider things like how easy the test is to implement and maintain if it wins as everyone wants a streamlined business.

It’s worth keeping in mind that best practices can be useful, but will rarely produce busing-changing results. Equally, what your competitors are doing can be a useful guide, but your aim is to beat them, not just get on par with them so why would you try and copy them?

That’s why this research-led approach is the key to success. It’s the only thing that can truly elevate you above your competitors.

I have used VWO in the past but now use Google Optimize, what software do you recommend using for performing split testing?

To be honest, split-testing software has come a long way in the last few years and there isn’t one that is far and away better than the others.

Some, like VWO, offer more of an all-in-one suite with some of the research products I mentioned included. Others like Google Optimize are much more basic offerings but still perfectly usable.

What’s more important is that you find a tool that works for you and just get testing!

As long as your chosen platform is giving accurate results, your approach to testing is what really matters. But any kind of testing is better than none!

I know I am not alone when it comes to being tempted to stop a test prematurely on pure “gut” instinct.

What’s the biggest mistake that most business owners make when looking to improve conversion rates?

Ha! Yes, I do always try to dissuade people from ending tests early. It doesn’t matter if it’s winning or losing, ending a test early isn’t usually a good idea.

Always aim to have at least a full 7 days of data, at least 25 conversions per variation and a statistical significance of at least 95%.

That said, there are occasions when you need to end a test early. For instance, if you’ve made a mistake, the results are taking too long (to prevent this, use VWO’s test duration calculator before starting work on a test to check its viability), or there’s a technical issue.

If you do stop a test early, always take stock of where you’re at. You can call a test a winner or loser early as long as you’re prepared to accept the results may or may not be accurate. If you make a habit of it, you’re not really split-testing at all as you’ll never have confidence in the results.

So, I’d say not ending tests early is important but I don't think it’s the biggest mistake.

For that, I’d say it’s people blindly copying what other people have done.

Whether it’s copying competitors or just following best practices, if that’s all you’re doing, you’ll always be playing catch-up.

What works for one site isn’t guaranteed to work for everyone. Every website has its own unique blend of visitors. Not every visitor will have the same objections to every brand they look at.

Take the time to properly understand your visitors and what makes them tick. Then, make sure you’re delivering exactly what they are looking for when they’re on your site.

What are the easiest wins to boost conversion rates?

The easiest wins are the ones that overcome a specific objection. Though I’ve probably banged on enough about that by now! 🙂

Headlines and subheadings are some of the quickest ways to get wins. They probably won’t produce huge wins (for that, big bold changes are usually needed) but they are very easy to implement and can have surprisingly good results.

That’s because most people scan-read pages. The heading and subheadings are what makes them decide whether to read the rest of that specific page or section. If you get them right, you’ll get much better engagement on the page which will make it easier to convert people.

Call to actions are also incredibly important and is another good area to focus on if you want to run some quick tests.

Also, the closer you get to the point of the conversion, the more impact you can often have (e.g. testing on checkouts). However, to be effective, you need to be getting enough visitors to that point, so it’s a bit of a balancing act.

You set up your CRO service business, CROGenie, what’s this about and why is it a no-brainer for anyone looking to improve their conversion rates?

CRO Genie offers one service and one service only…. CRO video audits.

I record a video going through your website, or any other marketing materials and pinpoint all the opportunities you have to improve conversions.

Essentially, you get to tap into my 15+ years of experience in CRO and get some solid, actionable suggestions for how to improve your results. Plus, I offer a full money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy with your video for ANY reason.

Now, after everything I’ve said about understanding visitors and not following best practices, this might sound like a contradiction. But…

1. If you already have research and data available about your visitors, share it with me and I’ll include it in the advice I give so you’re not just following best practices.
2. Even if you don’t have research available, my advice will help you pinpoint potential areas you can improve. You can then use research to delve into these specific areas in more detail and uncover exactly what changes you should make.

The main aim is to give you clarity on where you should focus your time for the biggest impact.

Plus, as it’s all on the video you can see exactly what I’m commenting on and can rewatch or share with team members in the future.

There’s one caveat though. Other than the CRO video audits, I no longer offer any other consultation services.

This is actually an advantage as it means the advice I give is purely designed to help you grow your business. It’s not biased towards me wanting to win a contract for regular work. I have my own projects and don’t really need to take on consulting work.

What have been your biggest wins with customers?

If we’re talking biggest individual split-test wins then one that always springs to mind is a 364% uplift I achieved for one affiliate by split-testing a new funnel on his website. I rewrote the copy and tweaked the design and the results were mindblowing. It gave him an almost instant boost in his earnings from that flow.

However, there’s something really important I need to say here. It’s not about conversion rate growth.

Well, OK, it is, but people fixate on that way too much. What’s much more important is the value of the wins.

For instance, let’s say I triple the number of people who opt-in to your mailing list. Sounds good, right?

Well, it might be. But what if the emails you send to people don’t actually convert very well? In that case, all I’ll have really achieved is increasing your email service bills! I’ve probably just cost you money!

What really needs looking at is how much extra income has been generated by your wins? Whether that is from direct sales, reduced churn, higher average order values, or whatever your goal is.

I’ve worked with several clients who have added 6 figures of income to their bottom line from a single winning split-test. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to name the brands but we are talking household names. The kind of brands most people have in their home.

Of course, it’s all relative. A small business may only need to add £10,000 in revenue from a winning test to transform their business. But the point is, don’t focus on % increases in conversions, focus on increasing the value to the business.

If you’re doing that, you’re on the right path.

Are you keen to scale your brand on Amazon but are not sure where to get started? Then Daniel and his team could be the answer to having a presence and scaling on this huge marketplace.

Hey Daniel,

We were introduced by our mutual friend John Cavendish when looking for an agency to set up and manage my Amazon store.

I was a complete newbie when it came to being an Amazon merchant and so we partnered to see what we could achieve on this platform.

I am keen to understand your journey and the challenges of getting started on Amazon and how you help.

So, Daniel, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I’m originally from Lima, Peru, my mom is from the US while my dad is from Peru, I'll come back to this part of the story later. There I started working in sales when I was 15 years old, I did door-to-door sales selling supplements, I had opposition from my family about this, however, it was one of the most important chapters of my life, I learned many lessons about persistence, good attitude, good customer service, winning the inner battle, self-motivation, confidence, etc. I don’t know how else I would have learned so much.

A few years later I decided to move to the US looking for new opportunities, I had become American thanks to my mom, so decided to take advantage of that and landed in Minnesota with about $400 dollars in cash and a lot of ambition, it was almost winter so spent 50% of my cash on a winter jacket, that’s how my time in the US began.

Started working in sales once again, this time for Apple ended up moving and working in silicon valley where I started flirting with the idea of eCommerce and selling on amazon from a podcast episode that a friend shared with me. There was the point where I decided to leave my job and start selling on Amazon.

So there I was living in one of the most expensive cities at the time, without a job… I ended up getting in debt, however that didn’t stop me from trying to grow a business.

I launched a product on amazon, this was back in 2015 where amazon was a wild wild west.

The product did well but I realized that without my job I was not going to be able to make a living in a long time so that’s where I decided to pivot and become a service provider, that’s where AMZ Clever was born.

I had joined a business mastermind, it cost me $25k to join which I put all on credit cards, it was a tough time with lots of pressure but I knew this was all good debt, investing in myself.

From that mastermind, I found my first clients which showed me early signs that this might actually work. Decided to move to the east coast to save up on expenses, yes I moved back to my mom’s, which was probably one of the most painful moments for my ego, I was broke, in debt, back to living with my mom… however I was willing to work day in, day out, and had invested so much on myself that eventually, it would pay off.

This is what happened, started finding some more clients, and that’s when a friend that had moved to China recently convinced me to go check it out, I thought that growing a client base there might be a good idea.

This was around late 2017 and it was really out of my comfort zone, however, I pushed forward. I ended up finding more clients, these were primarily western entrepreneurs that were either stationed or traveling to China for sourcing at the time.

Lived in China for 3 years, AMZ Clever continues to grow, I was invited to speak at numerous events in the eCommerce space several times in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, Amsterdam, etc.

Then the pandemic began, I moved to Bali where I lived for almost 2 years, I worked so hard during that time which allowed me to scale the agency to where it is today with several team members in America, Europe, Asia, and clients all around the world.

During that time I also got married in Bali and decided to move back to the states with my wife, where I’m currently based on the East Coast.

On our first call, I knew straight away that you lived and breathed marketing. What got you into Amazon in particular?

The idea of FBA really made sense to me.

I had sold some products on eBay before and scaling was more difficult because of having to fulfill orders manually. Amazon FBA allowed brands to focus on marketing, and let Amazon handle logistics, maybe today we see that as a given but back then that was groundbreaking, and still is!

There are many factors but what are the biggest challenges getting with traction on Amazon as a merchant?

I would say to really know what you’re doing. If you don’t then it is too easy to keep giving money to amazon or running in circles without building a business.

One needs to have a product that is not just another me-too product, for many that is already quite difficult, and the truth is that that’s just the first step, it doesn’t have to be perfect from the get-go, a lot of optimization will happen along the way, it is important to know what data to pay attention to on Amazon and then keep reiterating.

Then it is important to understand how Amazon works, many that are used to the FB ads model, are probably expecting a shorter marketing cycle where one can see ROI quick, however when it comes to amazon it is all about ranking, but then ranking is about product-market fit and marketing budget, then each of these can be broken into more sections.

There is this idea out there that making money on Amazon is easy, it actually isn’t but that’s what a lot of courses and gurus say, I would say it is very competitive, and if you don’t know what you’re doing you can get burned or waste a lot of time

What is one tip you could give new amazon merchants to help scale their account? Just the tip… to quote Archer 😉

I’ll share a few:

• Don’t grow amazon products, but rather grow a brand, something people can identify with, you don’t want them to go back to amazon thinking “I’m going to go buy another spatula from amazon” but rather “I’m going to buy another [your brand name here] product from amazon”
• Get your trademark through the Amazon IP accelerator, it will unlock amazon brand benefits much quicker
• Treat it as a business and be willing to invest 5-figures (high or low depends on the niche) before you see success

Is being a merchant on Amazon for every e-commerce owner?

Yes for every eCommerce owner building a brand, chances are your niche exists on amazon, as since you’re building a brand you won’t struggle with the lack of identity in the market that other sellers’ products have.

Did I forget that having a clear USP for your products and brand helps?

One of the biggest controversies recently has been with faked reviews. What’s your take on this?

Amazon is catching up, do not go for fake reviews, you will not outsmart amazon, they have sophisticated ways to detect the most minuscule behavioral pattern of reviews coming in, and they will shut you down.

There are kosher ways to get reviews quickly that work, and we implement them for our clients.

I think in general the market is becoming fairer when it comes to reviews, this benefits all brands that are in it for the long run. When I was in China I met service providers selling fake reviews, it is like a profession there, however even they admitted to me that it was getting harder and harder

From our experience it’s very much a case of pay to play on Amazon, is it possible to scale without paying?

No, and it has never been like that.

There are some stories of people that ‘got lucky’ at the beginning but a lot of them omit that investing in products and marketing has always been the case.

There are no shortcuts, long term thinking will trump those that look for a quick buck.

In 2015 when I started there were already notions of the market is saturated, the same happened in 2016, 2017, and 2018… you get my point.

Like one of my mentors, Dan Kennedy said;

the one who is willing to spend more to acquire a customer will win”.

The tactics change but not the fundamentals: you need traffic and conversion. Both cost money.

How have you seen Amazon’s merchant platform change over the recent years?

It has gotten a lot better!

More tools to do marketing, more sophisticated reporting.

I would say for someone starting out now may be more overwhelming than before, there’s more to learn, however, that’s all for good.

To give you an example, the types of targeting we can do now within Amazon PPC advertising are tremendous!

We dreamed of this level of sophistication 3-4 years ago, it would have saved us a lot of money on testing that now we can do much more easily.

Now you can also run real A/B tests on Amazon for your listing, that was also a dream just 2 years ago

The Amazon FBA marketplace is thriving at the moment, with sellers listing their businesses for 50x multiples, what’s fueling this?

We can do a whole interview about this question. (Yes, let's do it!)

The people out there realized that there’s a lot of money in the world looking for investments. Interest rates from banks and other financial vehicles are not paying anything and this money is hungry to be put somewhere where it can generate returns.

Growing a brand on amazon sometimes can be hindered by a lack of capital to buy even more inventory. This means a brand can be profitable but it could be much more profitable if it could place larger PO’s to bring costs down as well as launch more products.

This is why I think for some amazon businesses out there more money is the answer. This is what’s driving this whole aggregator wave.

Companies like Empire Flippers are facilitating many exits and some of these aggregators are raising money from investors to get bigger and bigger.

The question is if they are actually able to continue growing these brands at scale. Also without the passion from the entrepreneur, it is possible that some of these brands stop innovating.

I'll add to what I mentioned earlier, more money is the answer as long as the brand keeps evolving and taking better care of their customers going forward

You started your agency AMZ Clever in 2016, can you give us an overview of what services you offer?

I started in 2016.

What we offer is as follows:

• Full account management on Amazon (full launch if you’re a new brand), that is we take care of 100% of everything regarding Amazon
• PPC management on Amazon (full launch if you’re a new brand)
• For selected clients, we are also doing the above for walmart.com which is up and coming

From a sales role in a start-up in Singapore to executive coaching for the government, Dennis turned a side hustle of voice-over acting into his main job.

Hey Dennis,

We recently met up and enjoyed a few hours chatting over coffee in our local coffee shop.

I was fascinated by your background and experience in coaching and voice-over work. In fact, this is how we originally connected as I am interested in getting your help with adverts for my supplement brand.

I am excited to understand your journey to Penang where you now lived and how you got into voice-over work.

So, Dennis, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your back story?

I was born just West of London but my early teens were spent in a small village near Cambridge, where I started work as a Telecommunications Technician at age 16.

However, by several twists of fate, by age 21 I was traveling across Africa and the Middle East as a Sales Manager for the same company. I also spent 5 years living in Riyadh.

Following many years as an international Sales Manager in radio telecoms and then digital comms, I arrived in Singapore in November 2000 as a regional Business Development Director for a software company, still in the telecoms space.

Within 18 months of arriving, the company went downhill and people worldwide were retrenched, including me as an expensive expat.

Can you tell us a little bit about your career in the executive coaching field?

Having lost my job, I then wondered what to do next. The economy was in the doldrums, especially in my area of expertise. So I thought I would try my hand at training but had no skills as a Trainer.

Fortunately, I had just been granted Permanent Resident status in Singapore and received a substantial subsidy to embark on a Diploma in Training and Development. For the first time in Singapore, there was a module on coaching, for which I found I had an aptitude and enjoyed the process.

At the same time as I was studying part-time, I was offered a job as Business Development Manager for a global outplacement company and joined the Singapore branch.

The company offered coaching in the USA but nowhere else. I asked my boss if he would sponsor my further training as a Coach. He not only agreed but asked me to drive the training of employees from around the Asia Pacific region so that we could offer Executive Coaching across our region.

I successfully achieved the goal, even though there was only one Coach training company in Singapore at the time. Now there are dozens.

I was due to take over as Managing Director of the Singapore branch when the incumbent retired in 12 months' time. However, the company was acquired by a Venture Capital firm and the MD was put under daily, immense pressure. I decided I did not need that in my life, so quit to start out on my own.

The early days were tough.

People in Singapore did not know what coaching was or how and when to use it. I persevered and got my first contract with Barclays Capital to coach the head of their IT department, who was being groomed to take over as regional head. This was a good first reference.

In 2009 I got a tremendous break when the Singapore Civil Service College decided to try coaching for senior civil servants. I was one of three they took on as part of a pilot scheme. It was so popular they immediately started contracting more Coaches and I was asked to sit on the interview panel to assess potential Coach candidates.

I became a well-known part of the faculty and the College asked if I would like to train as a Coach Supervisor and a Facilitator.

I said yes to both offers. From then on, the work just flowed in, facilitating on the College’s leadership coaching programs and coaching Directors and Deputy Permanent Secretaries in the Ministries and Chief Executives of the Statutory Boards. I still do that work remotely on a reduced volume from my Penang home.

One of my goals this year is to be a better listener. You very astutely noticed how I struggle with this, so have you got any tips on how I can become a better listener?

Listening is probably the number one skill missing in leadership today. The key word is “skill”. People talk about ‘listening skills’ without realizing that listening is not natural. Hearing is natural, listening is not.

Learning to really listen takes time and practice. Normally, when we think we are listening, there are a myriad of thoughts going through our minds, often predicting what the speaker is going to say and constructing in advance our reply. So we are ‘hearing’, not listening.

The first step towards being a listener is to recognize when our inner voice is getting in the way of listening and shut it down.

The focus needs to be 100% on the speaker, asking for clarification if you think you don’t quite understand, or paraphrasing to demonstrate you are really listening and qualifying your understanding of what the speaker is saying. Body language is also important if you are practicing listening.

Eye contact should be steadily on the speaker, at the same time being aware of cultural nuances. The moment you glance left or right at something you notice, the speaker knows you are not listening.

A Coach needs to develop a very high level of listening skills, listening not only to words but also for changes in body language, energy, breathing, blinking, anything that betrays a change in emotion that needs to be picked up and explored.

This is the primary reason why coaching is tiring.

High-level listening is a skill that takes effort and a lot of practice. If you master the skill of listening, it’s life-changing.

The worst example of not listening is the person who is fiddling with their phone when you speak to them and they say, “Carry on, I’m listening”. They are not ‘ listening’.

Brain research has shown that there is no such thing as multitasking, just switching of attention.

Whilst living in Singapore you began doing voice-over work and quickly became more than a side-hustle. How did you get into voice-over work?

I got into voice-over work purely by accident when one alcohol-soaked New Year’s Eve in Singapore I was introduced to an Englishman who was a full-time voice-over artist. He commented that he thought my voice might fit some voice-over needs and gave me the number of a recording studio to try out as a VO artist.

I went to the studio and recorded some samples, which the studio put on their website, along with recordings of their other VO talents. As a result, I got some work and other studios got to know me and the rest, as they say, is history.

You now spend most of your time in Penang, Malaysia. What made this island your home?

When I started to think about shifting my work-life balance in retirement to more life than work, I looked at possible countries where I could enjoy a good lifestyle at a lower cost than Singapore.

I had visited Penang on holiday and liked the environment. I started looking for a home here in 2014 and bought an apartment the same year. I moved permanently to Penang under the MM2H scheme in July 2021.

Penang has the added advantage that, under normal circumstances, I am only a one-hour flight away from my Son and Daughter-in-Law, and friends in Singapore.

I am into music and never appreciated the importance of processing audio. What hardware and software do you need?

The scope of what you can do to an audio signal in software these days is immense.

You do not need expensive hardware or software to do some amazing things and produce music. With a laptop, $65 worth of software (I use a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation] called Reaper), and a pair of headphones you can do endless manipulations of a music recording.

If you want to record voiceovers or music yourself, that’s a different story.

You need to add a microphone(s) and an audio interface that sits between your mic(s) and your PC or laptop. The mic and interface do not need to be hugely expensive. You can probably buy a decent budget hardware voice-over set up for less than US$800. By far the biggest expense is acoustically treating your recording room.

I have spent RM60,000 so far and I’m not finished yet.

I know you can do a pretty good Michael Caine impression, what over accents or even impressions can you do?

Well, yes, many studio engineers when doing level checks before a recording will say, “Do you know who you sound like?”

I can confidently predict they are going to say, “Michael Caine”.

I guess it comes from my London roots and the fact that my father was a genuine Cockney. I can do a number of British regional accents as well as some foreign accents.

I was once asked to do a whole voice-over script in a German accent. When I asked the studio manager why they had not asked a German to do it, they said, “Well the client likes your voice”. It was for a Braun Buffel sales conference video. I managed to do it in two takes.

An unusual one I did recently was for someone putting together an audio library of accents for actors. This would enable an actor, asked to reproduce a particular accent, to listen to a sample and practice it.

I was asked to read an extract from an Anton Chekhov novel in a Cockney accent.

Chekhov must be spinning in his grave.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtMcG0o_jkSFh-slpGJwsqBkZc2l3w?e=fgo9Kv
(link opens in new window)

I enjoy doing documentary narration more than anything else. I have also just been commissioned to turn a 22 chapter book into an audiobook. It’s quite a challenge both in terms of the length of the book and the technical challenges it presents, as I now have to be my own audio engineer. It is something I would like to do more.

What’s been your most memorable voice-over experience?

One that comes to mind is one I did for MediaCorp. It was a promo for a series of British films coming up on Channel 5.

They called it the British invasion. I had to play an upper-class toff and a cheeky Cockney character. They had to sound completely different. It was a challenge but after a few takes, I cracked it.

Here’s an extract from that recording (opens in a new window).

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtMcG0o_jkSFh49IEMKt9qke3udraA?e=mA11Ab

Has it ever gone horribly wrong with a voice-over contract?

I haven’t yet had a disaster in the actual recording of a voice-over.

However, I did make a business mistake when I first started. A client asked how much I would charge for a re-read because the script had some slight changes.

I replied that it would cost the same as the original recording because it's the same amount of work and time. I later realized that voice-over artists do not charge the full fee for re-reads and may even do one free of charge. I was still learning the business of voice-overs.

I did not hear from that client again. Lesson learned!

Are you sometimes sat struggling to generate emotion with your readers? I know I did, that’s why I reached out to Freelance Copywriter Joe Cunningham to give my marketing content a much-needed pulse.

Hey Joe,

We recently connected after I consumed a number of articles and videos you produced on copywriting.

Not only did I enjoy your content but it resonated with me. So, we jumped on a call and shortly after began working together.

I am excited to discover your journey as a copywriting professional, how you get inspiration, and ultimately your secret sauce for bringing copy alive.

So, Joe, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Adam, thanks for having me on Life Hacker Guy!

I was born in Pennsylvania, U.S. and lived near Philadelphia until I was 14. Then my family started moving to a new state every 1–2 years for my dad’s career. I’ve lived in 7 different states and had more than a dozen addresses.

Moving a lot means you’re always the “new guy,” which felt lonely and isolating during my teenage years. But it taught me how to connect with people from completely different lifestyles, regions, and experiences than mine. It also helped me appreciate the variety and beauty of human beings—things I draw on every day to write copy.

I also got to do things like rope cattle in Texas and ski the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

But moving is exhausting, and I’m grateful to be home again in Pennsylvania and living in the same town for 9 years. I don’t see myself moving again.

You only became a full-time copywriter in 2021, how did you get into it and how was your first year?

Copywriting was my first job out of college. I finished my last exam, had lunch with the founder of a web development company, and boom, I was writing copy.

But though I’ve worked in marketing jobs for more than 10 years, I didn’t take copywriting seriously until I was treading water as the marketing-army-of-one at a nonprofit.

That’s when I encountered Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, one of the godfathers of advertising. His book changed my life.

Everything Ogilvy described corresponded to something in me: the purposeful, strategic nature of copywriting, the basis in research and human psychology, the combination of art and science, the drive to help humans live enriched lives, and the value of helping clients succeed in their businesses.

I knew I had to become a copywriter…and it was time to make a career shift.

So after studying copywriting for 2–3 years, taking courses, reading books, and practicing it in-house (and getting good results with it), I quit the nonprofit life and started freelancing full-time.

I went in with six months of savings and no expectations. I didn’t know if I would make money, or if I would flop.

Turns out I did make money my first year…up 75% of my full-time salary, which is wayyy more than I expected.

And my second year is already off to an incredible start, in terms of the amazing clients I’m working with and the income I’ve already got lined up.

Hard to see myself turning back. 🙂

I have seen a few of your videos that outline your approach to writing copy for clients, could you outline your method here?

Yeah, so my method isn’t anything crazy or ground-breaking. Here’s what I do.

First (and you’ll remember this part, Adam), I get to know the client’s business and business challenges.

I like to ask lots of questions about their goals, obstacles, the market they’re in, who they’re trying to serve and sell to, who their competitors are, which brands do they draw inspiration from, why did they choose their price point, what’s their vision for the business or their marketing, what have they tried that didn’t work, and so on.

I go pretty deep with this because context is EVERYTHING in marketing.

Next thing I do is research their audience. Surveys, interviews, testimonials, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, TrustPilot reviews, and so on. I copy and paste the common pain points and problems and successes and save them for reference.

Then I wireframe the copy in a Google doc using tables to create elements and buttons. That helps me (and the client) visualize the copy and understand the hierarchy of elements and the structure of the copy.

I write the first draft. I don’t edit, I just write. I pound out dozens of headlines, I pound out bullet points, I spit out a bunch of body copy.

Then I walk away. If I can give it two days, awesome. But usually, 24 hours of separation is best.

I come back and edit. Then edit, edit, edit some more. I try out new ideas and trash bad ones.

And when I feel I’ve done enough editing, I deliver it to the client.

Do you get writer’s block and what helps you overcome it?

If I get writer’s block, I know it’s because I haven’t done enough research.

We copywriters can’t make stuff up…it has to be grounded in the goals of our clients, the aspirations and problems of our audience, and the context of the copy.

So if I’m feeling blocked, it usually means I need to re-read the research, revisit customer testimonials, and so on.

Or it’s time to work out and get the blood flowing.

What are the top mistakes that business owners make with the copy you see? How do you fix these?

Hmmm…great question Adam.

First thing? Talking about the business instead of the customer. That’s the biggest one.

I see a lot of businesses say things like “we’ve been in business 37 years” or “integrity, customer service, and excellence and innovation” or something like that.

Trust me, nobody cares.

A simple fix is replacing “we” words with “you” and turning those claims or promises into tangible benefits to the customer. Make it about them. Show them how your business improves their day-to-day life. Goes for B2B and D2C!

Another thing I see a lot is companies trying to be clever or outrageous instead of helpful.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for big ideas. They’re essential to great campaigns and effective copy. But while people are smarter than you think, they’re also busier than you think. They have enough stimuli, and another advertisement or offer that feels self-serving is getting ignored.

The biggest ideas are simple. Really, really simple. And I think marketing and advertising would go a long way if they focused on getting simple and clear than on being clever and bold.

The last thing I'll add is this: a lot of businesses think jargon is impressive. So they sound like academic abstracts instead of warm, breathing humans.

The best thing you can do is be human. People relate to real, natural voices, not jargon.

You have worked with a lot of great companies, including a powdered greens supplement (LOL), who else has or are your clients?

Haha, supergreen tonik is one of my favorite clients to date, and I’m not saying that to flatter you.

A few other clients I’ve had the privilege of working with include Huel, a complete food company (if you want your food to be 100% nutritious, and don’t mind powder-based meals, check them out), Stacked Marketer (one of the best marketing newsletters around), and Caliber, which provides personalized and remote fitness coaching.

Also got to help Iris Creative, a nonprofit marketing agency, sell their live courses, and helped a couple who offers financial coaching with their homepage copy.

There are others, but I can’t name names. 🙂

What is the best type of client and are there types of clients you would avoid?

The best clients so far have been the ones who are trying to solve real problems and make a positive difference in their customers’ lives.

Whether it's fitness, or nutrition, or self-improvement…those are the clients I enjoy working with best.

I also find that I work best with in-house marketing teams or business owners. In those scenarios, we’re all partners trying to do the best work we can. I love that.

I tried the agency model a few times…it doesn’t work for me. You’re too removed from the client’s customers, there’s little interest in quality, and the turnaround times are ungodly short.

So, yeah, I don’t do agency work anymore.

Where do you get inspiration from?

All kinds of places. Martial arts training (I'm a black belt in taekwondo/hapkido), reading great advertisements, literature, history, art, the ocean, cocktails…even washing dishes.

I'm drawn to simplicity and purpose, so I love Hemingway’s writing, the artwork of Rene Magritte, mid-century modern design…things that have clean lines, clear contrast, and lots of space.

Are there any blogs/resources you recommend checking out?

Highly recommend reading and following Eddie Shleyner. He’s a master of copywriting, marketing, and content.

I’d also recommend reading Sarah Colley’s blog. She’s a true pro when it comes to content marketing.

Louis Grenier’s Everyone Hates Marketers emails are amazing, too.

Also, Katelyn Bourgoin. If you care about your customers, read her emails. You'll learn so much about psychology, buying triggers, and more.

Finally, a shameless plug: I send weekly emails that get into copywriting, marketing, and creativity. My readers seem to think they’re valuable…that’s all that matters to me.

Struggling with scaling your Amazon store to 6-figures and beyond? John Cavendish reveals how he got started on Amazon, what he learned, and things to avoid when scaling.

Hey John,

First off thank you for taking the time today for this interview.

We started messaging each other recently because we had started a coaching program with Health Evolved (interview with Emil coming soon). Soon we discovered that we had actually met very briefly in person in Bangkok in December 2019. We were having dinner after a conference at an amazing food and drinks place called Art Box.

Back then I never knew what you did, but after a few calls discussing how you guys run an agency that focuses on cementing brands within the Amazon ecosystem.

So, I am super excited to discover more about how you help established brands on Amazon, your journey in this space, and how you ended up living in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.

So, John, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your back story?

Cool. So, I was born in Nottingham in the UK, and now I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Back in September 2015, I left the UK to come to an event called DCBKK in Bangkok. From the group of people at that event, I built a friend network, and I've kind of been based in Southeast Asia ever since!

But first, let's go back to the beginning!

When I was in the UK, I was originally based in Nottingham. I went to university in Birmingham and then got a job in Derby. For anyone that doesn’t know the UK, Derby is just a third or fourth-tier city by Nottingham – it's not all that bad.

I was a mechanical engineer working on trains and I just wasn't happy with what I was doing. So, my big shift and big change occurred when I started to try and make money online.

I found Amazon FBA as a thing that lots of people were pushing back then. I mean, I tried blogging. I tried all the other stuff and I'm (as proved by this interview!) not the greatest writer.

Then FBA clicked and I saw it like, “this is the path, that could get me from here to there”, so I started at the end of 2014.

I immediately tripled my salary overnight when I was like 25, which was great, but I still wasn't happy.

I was still working as an engineer, doing the same thing, due to the fact that I got a contract on with the same job – I grew quite a lot over that first year from the end of 2014 until September 2015.

However, something finally just clicked. I was making enough money that I thought, OK, now is the time, I'll skip the country and go to this event in Bangkok! From there, the rest is history.

I am a huge fan of living in SE Asia. How are you finding working in Vietnam and what’s your typical day-to-day routine like?

I'm also a massive fan of living in Southeast Asia. I think anyone who's spent time in a “developing country” for a while realizes that it's the same as developed parts of the world.

We have amazing restaurants, high‑end bars, and even high‑end co‑working spaces, which weren’t here initially (6 years ago), but are popping up all over the place now! It’s pretty much how you have it in the West, but in general, it's a lot cheaper.

People are super friendly and it's a really good quality of life, as well as being super convenient.

Anything that you need can be delivered to your door within an hour, literally, almost anything – whether you want home appliances, food, or a maid! Pretty much anything you can think of can be delivered here, which is pretty cool!

My typical day‑to‑day routine in Vietnam is that I get up pretty early, around 5:30 am since I’m running an agency still.

Then, I hop on calls usually at 6 am/6:30 am and talk to people in the US until around 9 am/10 am.

After that, I’ll get some food and head to the gym (when gyms aren't closed due to COVID), and I’ll spend the afternoon working.

When I first moved here, I was new to working from home and I didn't like it at all, so I used to go to coffee shops and co‑working spaces. However, that changed over the past couple of years and I've really started to love working from home, so I spend a lot of my time at home!

I will often work into the evening until I realize I’ve been sucked too much into work, which is when I will then stop!

My biggest challenge is balancing my work and life. However, in general, I love living here and the routine I have.

Most weekends, we take trips. For example, tomorrow we're going on a trip to an island we love, which is pretty cool.

Wow, sounds like you’re super busy. Before we jump into Amazon, how are you getting on with the Health Evolved program?

I met Dr. Emil around a year and a half ago, although I've seen his posts in the dynamite circle (DC) for quite a while – I think he's grown a lot through the DC group.

His funnel is super long and super slow, but because there are always people joining the DC and getting into it, I think it works well for him.

Anyway, yes, I talked to him a year and a half ago because I wanted to make a change. My aim was to get into a certain weight, and it didn't happen. I then made a bet with my friend that we could both get into shape by Christmas – we both failed, and then we just decided to go all-in and join the program.

We're both doing The Health Evolved program right now, and, so far so good.

How did you first get into Amazon, was it successful? Are you still running the store today?

I first got into Amazon because I was looking for ways to make money online and I was listening to all those Piper podcasts, “earn money from home”, that type of stuff!

I remember listening to a guy called Daniel Moran talking about making money on Amazon. Interestingly, he was an affiliate for an amazing selling machine. So that's how he was making money at the time, as well as having his own brand. So I was thinking “wow, I could do this”.

I understood it enough to actually make money (from listening to this podcast episode and doing other research) and I was able to start ASM. However, I thought, if I can do this, I must get some extra value from it! So I paid the money, I joined it and then had a few terrible ideas.

When I started out, I started doing all sorts of different stuff, like selling different physical products, all from China, and finally, I settled on my final product.

We originally launched in Europe thinking it would be a test before we went into the US. However, Europe did really well for us!

This was before Amazon was pushing anyone to go into Europe and there was no real infrastructure in place. For the first year, I started to make some money. In the first couple of months, I was making maybe eight to ten sales a day, which at the time seemed like a lot, you know, I was making maybe four pounds per sale. So I was making 40+ quid a day and checking my sales every day. And I was like, “yeah, that's great but I want to make more”.

So, I launched more products. Then, at the end of the year, I pushed more and more into Europe, which was a pain in the ass to do! Nothing was set up, and it took a long time and a lot of effort, but it started doing really well.

We scaled over and over month after month, and at the end of the first 18 months, we were doing around a million a year run rates, which was awesome. It was actually really interesting because it was the first time I made any kind of real money and I was really driven by security at the time.

So, at that point, I just tried to make as much money as possible out of the business, which is a completely different way from how I'd run a business if I was starting again right now. Although, I think that's a really big change in how you see things as you mature, as well as when you get some more money behind you and more security.

So yeah, I ran that business, and it kind of stabilized and did very well for a couple of years.

I made around $1.5 – 2 million a year in revenue. Then from there it kind of started to drop off because the competition got really, really aggressive.

The other thing was that during that time, somebody offered to buy the business after two years of me running it. I thought, “ah, yeah, amazing, I'm gonna make a load of money”. With this mindset, I took my focus away from running the business, as that sale was supposed to go through, but in the end, it failed.

One of the big lessons I learned at that moment was to never assume things are done until they are actually done!

I'd already looked at the agency and looked at other work, and all of that was starting to grow. So I kind of automated the business – it wasn't in a growing niche at all! In fact, I still run the business now. I'm actually possibly going to do a deal soon and have somebody acquire part of it so they can take care of it since it's not my main focus currently.

When first jumping into Amazon, what do you see as being the main rookie mistake made by new brands onto the platform?

When jumping onto the Amazon platform, it really depends on whether the product is being produced just for Amazon or whether it is a product outside of Amazon that moves onto the Amazon platform. If it's a product outside of Amazon, it's going to have some traffic already and you're going to get some traction on Amazon too, which is awesome.

That is by far the best way to launch a business if that's possible.

The reality is though, a lot of people design products specifically for the Amazon platform. If you're designing something for the Amazon platform, what your really looking for is a marketing opportunity, and then you have to reverse engineer – this has to be done for a product-market fit.

The number one piece of advice I have about it is that it's all about defining the product for the platform.

The biggest freaking mistake is not doing enough research, not having a really good market fit, and not having some kind of advantage over the competition. Just launching a product that has nothing differentiating it is not a good idea simply because you've seen that 30 other people have done that and everyone's launching the same product at the same time. If you do this, it's just a race to the bottom.

Then, pricing goes to zero, profit goes to zero and that's not great for anyone!

My example of that was actually one where I was early to a market that then got saturated. My friend wanted to do weighted blankets maybe 6- 12 months before weighted blankets got popular. He owned a viral new site, made a video and it got like 36 million views.

So he was like, “we have got to do this”, but I was not very excited about it and was pushing back. I was thinking, “do we really want to drop a hundred grand into this product?”. But, we did.

In the first two weeks, we sold a hundred thousand dollars worth of product – in two weeks!

We rented a stock first container in a month because we ran out of stock and then we were waiting to be restocked – we made some decent money out of it as a project and then we managed to exit it accidentally by selling out. But it was not a long‑term business because it would have turned into one of these cash grab “me‑too” products. However, it was a great few months initially!

We jumped on a call recently to understand the process of getting a new account started on Amazon. It’s clear that unless you’re incredibly lucky it takes time to get profitable. How long do you recommend to clients to start seeing profitable months?

Yeah, that's a great question – it depends on the product and the margin, and to be honest, many different things.

I would always say 3-6 months before you see any real profit. The reason I say that is just building stability and building rank – unless your product ranks already, it's going to take time to build rank on the Amazon platform. Plus, you don't want to be so aggressive that you waste a lot of money in the first three months.

Do not throw as much money as humanly possible at it.

That is the strategy.

So it's going to be slowly increasing. You have to bend so that we can spend more, break even, and then take your foot off, then make a profit.

So yeah, it could be three months could be six months with a plan.

However, recently it was nine months. The product the brand was selling was quite a seasonal one, so they ranked by Christmas, then in December, they did a hundred, then something like a thousand, growing to 20,000 in December after. Now that the product is ranked it is making really good money. So, it really depends on the brand.

We often see fancy bidding strategies or targeting audience groups on other platforms as the secret sauce to scaling. How about on Amazon, how do you reach those 6-figure months?

Hmm. Yes. So it's all about ranking the products and about the percentage of page one that we can take for each particular scheme.

So, if it's a relatively competitive niche and with a medium number of reviews, and we think that we can get to that number of reviews within say 6 – 12 months, we might be aiming for 10% of page one volume for that particular scheme. So if page one volume is a million dollars that SKU may do may be able to do, 100,000 a month by the end of the year.

Usually, that's not the case.

Usually, it takes longer to rank.

Looking at average sales, the top five sellers make approximately a million dollars, then when you get to a hundred, it’s possibly up to $100,000 a month.

The quickest way I've seen brands building Amazon presence really fast is by having a product development team or leveraging their current suppliers to do as many different products as they can.

There are a number of Amazon agencies out there, what would you say makes you guys stand out from the crowd?

I mean, there are lots of Amazon agencies out there. I would say what makes us stand out are our systems and processes and the fact that we're ready and results-driven.

We’re going to set expectations and we're gonna support our clients in getting there – we're not going to say it's going to happen really quickly. We're going to say “this is what we're aiming to do, this is how long it's going to take, and this is the chance that it's going to be successful”. We're here to be the long-term partner. We've had clients for the entire length of our agency's existence, and that's what makes us stand out as an agency.

We also have our productized version of our service, which is called Seller Candy.

The thing about Seller Candy is it can really work for any Amazon sellers, and that's where we differentiate ourselves.

We're trying to help every Amazon seller do better in their business by getting them out of all the day‑to‑day stuff – we've all run agencies and different businesses that sell different products, and it's really easy to get bogged down in the stuff that makes us busy. That doesn't actually add value to the business on a day‑to‑day basis.

So with Seller Candy, it just lets you get all of those small little tasks off your plate. Then, if you want to move up to full management in the future, you can do that.

You have recently joined forces with another Amazon Agency, was this growth to fuel demand or for other strategic reasons?

After building my Amazon agency for two years, I realized that I was getting better and better at the business development side of it, but I didn't feel like I was getting fulfilled by that day-in-day-out delivery and management of the team.

So rather than having to take on a management team and growing it that way, I met this guy, Daniel Fernandez from amzclever.com/, who's awesome and is a really amazing Amazon manager.

He's been running his agency for a couple of years longer than I have. So I said, “you know, do you want to partner up, we'll work together while closing business, you'll manage the delivery team?”. He said yes, and since then it's been amazing.

We've basically 4X in size in the last year and we've done it scaleably.

Like we've still retained all our clients – churn has been extremely low and it's been a really, really great experience.

To be honest, that's kind of where I see myself moving with any project again, involved in working on the business development and the idea. The ideation and the growth side of it and having a partner to also do the technical part, as you know, is really a way of supercharging!

I've never worked with a business that's growing as fast as this and I think it's because we have our own focus on different parts of the business and it's hard to be focused on everything at the same time.

Due to the success of our sales, I've done some sales consulting in the last year, too. I worked with one another DCR on his agency and we went from like 30K a month to 60K.

Also, I guess I'd like to outline Seller Candy, as you know, I really love the full-service management and we're gonna continue growing and it's an amazing service. However, the way I think we can impact so many more people on the Amazon platform is through Seller Candy!

People that started out selling on Amazon themselves, want to grow a team, but they don't necessarily know how to hire people – they don't want to manage people, it would be a real pain to train people and get people who are actually experts in doing things. So, what we do is we basically rent them, a kind of virtual assistance, but they don't work for them. They work for us.

So we have a platform, you enter the outcome you want, you want listings merged, you want things fixed, you want reports run, you want inventory projections done, you want to get money back from Amazon for their messed-up returns, you want us to fix this as a pressed listing or suspense-dependent, suspended listing – we have our team do that for you!

We sort the team, we train them and things get taught and done much faster than if you were to hire them.

So that's why I'm super excited about growing. It's also eventually a channel for our full-service management as well.

So, if you are an Amazon seller, we'd love for you to join our Facebook group. it's called Amazon Seller Central Problem Solvers, and it gives you access to our team of problem-solving VAs.

If you have a question, you can just go in there and post it and one of our agents will answer and try to guide you through how to fix the problem. This is really just to give back and help people who want to get better on Seller Central.

Hi Minuca,

Thank you for getting involved with the interview today.

We recently connected as I wanted to put together an Expert Roundup on my site to discuss what is the healthiest diets. You helped to reach out to 61 nutrition experts to give their advice and put together the article on my site.

As well as getting awesome fresh content for my site, we got a bunch of great quality backlinks too. This is a win-win!

I am keen to find out more about how you get into this very niche service and how this could work for other bloggers.

So, thanks again Minuca for spending time with me today, and let’s jump straight into this with our first question.

Can you give us some background information on you, where you’re from, any particular study or courses you did, and the early days at work?

Hi Adam! Thank you for inviting me! It was great working with you.

I’m from Bucharest, Romania, South-East Europe. I’ve been doing expert roundups full-time for 5 years.

I studied social assistance at the University of Bucharest. In high school, I did a lot of volunteering so I wanted to become a social worker.

Later, I realized that, although this is a noble profession, it isn't very well paid. After I graduated with a bachelor's degree, I worked for four months at a call center while I was studying for my master's degree. I hated the call center so I quit that job and started working online.

How did you first get started working online?

I had an acquaintance that was doing affiliate marketing and copywriting. I started helping him out, initially as a favor, and then as VA. I was doing social media promotion, WordPress editing, online research, and writing content.

You’re getting a reputation for being the “Expert roundup” as you help bloggers connect with influencers. How did you first get started doing this?

After almost a year of being a VA, I decided to become a freelancer so I created my website, MinucaElena.com. I didn’t know exactly what topics I could blog about because I didn’t consider myself an expert in any particular area.

So, I made an expert roundup about the biggest challenges that bloggers face. I had some experience with roundups from my previous activity as a VA.

I worked so hard on that post, I got 40 experts, even some big names like Neil Patel, Tim Soulo, Gael Breton, and many others. It was my first post on my blog, I had a free theme, no fancy design, still, it was very successful. It got over 300 shares and about 20 backlinks.

After that, I did another roundup as a guest post for a potential client who was interested in getting regular roundups for his website but later changed his mind.

Then I did another roundup for Sue Anne Dunlevie from SuccessfulBlogging.com which had contributed to my first two roundups. I did an amazing roundup for her, which featured 110+ bloggers talking about social media, and it got over 3k shares.

That expert roundup really launched my career as a roundup expert because I connected with some influencers that were much above my newbie level.

Later on, I did two more roundups for Sue Anne, and she also recommended me to some of her students that were enrolled in her course.

You work with a lot of digital marketing and SEO as part of their marketing strategy. Can anyone with a blog or e-commerce site benefit from an expert roundup?

Yes, almost anyone that has a blog could benefit from an expert roundup. Still, there are some niches that I avoid, like online gambling, porn, and websites that follow black hat practices.

Before taking a new client, I always ask myself if there are other experts from that niche that would like to be featured on the client’s blog, to share the roundup and link back to it.

If the website promotes things that are very shady, then it’s possible that other experts won’t agree to contribute to the roundup so I wouldn’t be able to complete the post.

It’s more about the niche, really. Although it’s easier to get influencers to agree to be featured on established websites, I’ve also done successful roundups for sites that were new and had zero authority. It’s more difficult for me but the results are still great.

When we first got started with our expert round-up we spent some time deciding on the best question to ask. This is not as straightforward as I initially thought. Can you outline the best type of questions to ask and what questions don’t work?

The best type of questions to ask are questions that receive interesting answers. Avoid questions that can be answered by yes or not.

Other people that have done roundups suggest asking questions that can be answered very easily, like what are your favorite SEO tools, or what are your favorite plugins.

I don’t like such questions, because they are designed thinking of the experts, what they could answer in two sentences. Basically, it means sacrificing the content, and the reader, to gather as many experts as possible, especially influencers that wouldn’t take time to write a more detailed answer.

I prefer to focus on the readers, so I ask a question about how to achieve something that the reader would like to learn how to do, something important from that niche or field.

It’s best to come up with questions that don’t have a unique correct answer. An example of a question that you should avoid:

What is the best type of image to share on Pinterest?

This question is bad because there is only one correct answer, vertical images work best for Pinterest. Reading answers from 40 or 60 bloggers all saying the same thing it’s boring. People will stop reading after the third answer.

A good example of a question is the question that we asked for our roundup:

What is the healthiest diet?

This question is great because there are a lot of different diets so the answers aren’t the same. Also, even if some experts recommended the same diet, you can read about each person’s experience. In that roundup, the experts explained the benefits of 12 diets so it has a lot of diversity.

Typically you're looking to get the round-up content shared and receive a backlink from the influencers’ websites. What have been the best results you have achieved using this approach?

When I first started making expert roundups I was more focused on receiving a large number of social shares. My clients were also begging bloggers so they were more interested in getting more traffic to their websites.

As I’ve become more experienced, I got clients that were very focused on SEO and on improving their rankings, so I also shifted my focus on getting backlinks first, and second on getting social shares.

Although, I follow the same structure of the roundup, when I edit it on the client’s website, the way I am making the roundup has changed a lot since my first posts. Readers don’t realize that but I have improved a lot the backend process and the communication with the experts.

I work to improve myself and my work every day, so the roundups that I make now are better than the ones I made a year ago, and I believe that the roundups I will make 2 months from now will be better than the ones I’m working on right now.

I’m always expanding my network. I've done roundups in so many niches like internet marketing, health, fitness, food, beauty, fashion, parenting, tech, gardening, home decor, real estate, music, cars, horses, finance, career, traveling, personal development, dating, lawyers.

I’ve learned a lot of info from my roundups as well. With every new roundup, I either increase my network by getting involved in a new niche or I strengthen my relationship with experts that I already know by making yet another roundup in their field.

I know experts that replied to me when I was doing a roundup for a famous website, and they liked me and my work so now they agree to contribute even to roundups for new websites which they wouldn’t do if they would be asked by someone they don’t know.

In roundups, like in every other field of internet marketing or even in life, it should be about getting benefits for both sides, a mutual win. Most people make the mistake of trying to take advantage of others and seeking only their own interest and that’s why people fail to work together and help each other.

Building relationships, investing time and effort in cultivating them it’s a skill that’s immensely helpful in internet marketing, and in link building in particular.

The best result I had in terms of backlinks while taking into consideration the rapport between the number of experts from the roundup and the number of links that I got, is actually the roundup I did for you, with backlinks from 42 referring domains in a roundup with 61 experts.

[Adam – Awesome, thank you. Super happy with the content and results!]

What’s next for your Minuca, any big plans for 2021 and beyond?

At the moment, because of the pandemic, I can’t make any plans for the distant future.
Normally, I like to travel a lot, and I go to different city breaks across Europe, especially in the spring and the summer.

This year, I stayed mostly at home. I only went on a few short trips to Romania. Luckily, I’m used to working from home, I’ve been doing it for 6 years, so it wasn’t such a big change for me.

I hope things will get back to normal soon.

Hey Craig,

First off thank you for taking the time to get involved in this interview for my readers.

We were introduced to each other via a friend who is using your services to grow his Pinterest channel.

After jumping on a call with you I knew within just a few minutes on our first call I know that you would be a good fit for my business.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, then again you are from Wales 😉

I was impressed that you had so many referrals from happy customers that you have only recently got your website up.

So, I am super excited to share your story with my ears, and let’s jump straight into this with our first question.

It would be great to get some background on where you’re from, your early life, studying.

I’m originally from a village called Skewen in Wales. I don’t imagine too many of your readers knowing where this is – so the nearest town is Neath. And the nearest city is Swansea.

I left school at 16 and pretty much fell into a job within a few months of leaving school. Little did I know this at the time, but this job (which was eventually to become a Project Manager role at a Mechanical & Engineering company) would shape my life and career into what it is now.

For 12 years I remained at the job, but for as long as I could remember, especially the latter few years of that job, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing from my life.

Everything on the outside is what most people would see as successful.

New company cars, good money for a twentysomething, and 3 or 4 holidays a year, but in 2014, at the age of 28, I gave it all up.

I handed back the keys of the BMW and never looked back

Within the space of 3 weeks I’d handed in my notice and I’d left.

My vision at this stage was to work in professional sport. From 2010 up until 2014, I’d been working as a strength coach and personal trainer (on the side of my full-time job).

It was the vision of working in Professional Sport as a Strength and Conditioning coach that led me to head back into full-time education to study Sports Science at Swansea University. (I went to Brighton University to study Science too! – see my about page)

Alongside working and being mentored at professional clubs for 3 years I was now studying full time.

Fast forward to 2017 and I’d graduated with first degree honors.

In the summer of 2017, and after going through various interviews and tests I found myself in a position of being able to choose from 3 different roles.

Here’s where it gets funny.

Within the space of 36 hours, all 3 roles had either been given to someone else, or the roles did not exist anymore.

I’ll always remember this moment because it was at this point I realized that I’d put the trajectory of my life in the hands of others and was giving all my personal power away.

I could see that I had no say in the next part of my life.

I’d hinged everything I thought I wanted on the decisions of others. And I swore to myself that this would never happen again.

Three months later I’d started my first company.

The digital nomad movement is hugely popular now, with many people placing a high value on remote working by freelancing or starting their own business. How did you get started working online?

It definitely is a popular movement right now. I honestly believe that in the coming years (maybe a decade), we’re going to totally see how the majority of people and companies are set up for work.

This is just my opinion, but I feel the stereotypical “office work environment” will be a thing of the past – at least for the majority of the time.

I slightly touched on this above in the first question, but once I saw I was giving my power away to others, within the space of 2-3 months I had created my very first website (one of the most challenging things ever haha) and had my first clients.

The first company I set up as an online personal training company (may as well put that degree to use)!

For someone who had no idea how to run an online company, it actually did pretty well. It was this company that provided the income required to leave the UK and head off for Thailand in August of 2017.

Funny how things work out. I thought I’d be working in professional sport in 2017, but I ended up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, working online!

It’s easy to get distracted and disillusioned with the number of options with an online business, what made you focus solely on Pinterest?

Haha, this is a great question. And the reason why I’m laughing is that I just had a flashback to my second online company and how I was thinking and feeling at that time.

My second online company (after I closed the personal training one down), was a website that had a blog and sold info products.

I’m about to show you how naive I was back then…

…with this type of company and the way it’s set up for generating revenue. You actually need people to come to visit your site.

I hadn't actually thought about this. So, now I have a blog and sell info products, but no one is reading anything.

Bear in mind, I had zero clues about SEO, how to use Facebook or Instagram as a business, or what “traffic” actually meant.

I “tried everything” at this point, nothing was working. If I’m honest, I did not stick with anything as the results were not what I was expecting.

I remember being on YouTube and seeing a few people talking about Pinterest for Business. I kept seeing the website views they were getting from Pinterest and I actually thought it was too good to be true.

Must have been another month or so of struggling with Facebook and IG, and then decided to go all-in with Pinterest.

In the first 30 days of being intentional with Pinterest, my blog was now getting 1000’s of website views a day, plus making sales of the info products I’d created.

That first month with my new blog was pretty insane in terms of website visitors. I still have the stats from this first month as it still blows my mind.

This was all organic traffic. No paid ads, traditional SEO, or affiliate traffic of any sort.

Once I saw the potential of Pinterest it was a no-brainer for me. This is where my attention would remain, and everything else was put to the side.

You now run an agency called “Pin and Grow” (great name by the way!) that helps business grow their traffic from Pinterest. Can you give us an idea of how this started and what made you decide to go to the agency route?

Thank you! I like the name too! Haha

What a great question.

While being in Chiang Mai for most of 2019, I saw a post in one of the Facebook groups that there were limited spots for a MasterMind that would run during September 2019.

Honestly, I was a little apprehensive about joining as up until that point I’d kind of just been doing my own thing and was a little unsure of the value of a MasterMind, but I ended up saying yes.

At this point I had no Pinterest agency, I’d actually gone into this MasterMind with the full intention of creating a program for that blog I mentioned above.

And even though that’s what I ended up spending my time doing in the MasterMind, what was becoming so clear to me was that most online businesses, even high six-figure and seven-figure businesses had no idea how to use Pinterest as a business.

By the time the MasterMind had finished, I had a few people in the MasterMind tell me that I should probably think about doing something related to Pinterest and helping other business owners.

I took this as a sign, so that’s exactly what I did.

Within 24 hours of deciding, I opened up a beta testing group. My original plan was to take on 5 accounts and grow these over a three-month period. I remember thinking if I get 5 I’d have a nice set of results.

I didn't really know if I’d get 5 people, but within 3 days of opening up beta testing, 5 people signed up so I left it at that and started working with these 5 new clients.

I’m still a little unsure as to what actually happened, or what it happened, but I had people reaching out to me constantly after capping it at 5 clients.

I had people in Facebook groups talking about this beta testing, I even had people in Chaing Mai who I’d never met want to set up meetings with me to be in the beta testing.

After originally capping it at 5, I decided to re-open the beta testing and it capped out again at 5. Within a week or so I’d gone from zero clients or Pinterest Agency to now having 10 paying clients.

On a personal level, some of the people with who I was in the MasterMind, or signed up for the beta testing are now close personal friends.

A few of which are also still clients of my Pinterest agency.

The reason for going the agency route was pretty easy for me to decide on. If you remember, from the age of 16 up until I was 28 I’d been involved in Project Managing. A big area of this role for me was running teams of people.

I can now see that I was pretty good at building and running teams. I put this skill (which I’d learned at that job) as one of the main reasons why my agency grew so fast while still delivering on the promises to my clients.

In the space of the first 9 months of my agency, I’d built a team of 7 (including myself). I did not use any agency to find any of my team members, I handpicked each of these myself. This team now spans nearly every continent.

Two of these seven have been with me since the very first week of my beta testing.

It took me a while to recognize that I enjoy and I'm good at building teams. Once I saw this, it was an easy decision to build an agency with front and backroom team members.

I also love working with clients, which always helps when running a service-based agency!

I really underestimated Pinterest as a source of traffic but from speaking to you I can see the potential for serious traffic from this platform. Can you outline some examples of the sort of results you have got for your clients?

We have had some amazing results with a lot of my clients.

Doubling or even tripling their Pinterest traffic is pretty common for us, even within the first 30 and 60 days of taking over their Pinterest account.

For a few of my clients, this was the difference in experiencing five-figure months in ad revenue alone.

We grew one food blogger's account by undertaking an account update on their account and giving it some TLC in terms of Pinterest SEO.

Without us even pinning anything we saw a 33% increase in traffic from Pinterest in a 3 week period.

I recently wrote a pretty interesting case study which you can find on the main page of my site. This account is the US travel space.

For anyone interested, we also have a full page of testimonials from many of my amazing clients.

Are there any particular businesses that don’t really work with Pinterest?

This is a really interesting question.

I can only give my perspective on this (as this is all I have). On the first day of beta testing on the 1st of October 2019 right up until the day I’m writing this, I have only ever told one potential client that Pinterest was not a good fit.

This site was so niche, it was six niches deep in a niche of a niche.

This site was for a certain car part of a certain car.

As we’re now fast approaching the 300 mark for proposals, I’m pretty confident in saying that Pinterest will most probably be for most companies.

There are over 280M+ active users each month on Pinterest and also heavily skewed in favor of US users (even though all other countries use it).

It’s a predominantly female platform. That said, there are more new male sign-ups each month than females for the last year or so, which makes Pinterest especially existing right now.

Are there certain types of businesses that do well? Do they fall into particular niches?

There are some super popular niches that perform ridiculously well.

Here are a few of the big hitters from what we have seen.

• Anything related to food
• Health & Wellness
• Fitness & Weight Loss
• DIY
• RV/Motorhome
• Home Decor
• The “make money online” niche
• Mental Health
• Travel
• Printables
• Personal Development + Habits
• Survival related content
• Relationships
• Personal Finance

Most niches do well, but anything remotely related to those above will do very well.

If you don’t mind sharing, what is the process you go through when onboarding clients?

Sure, no problem.

One of two things will happen when someone reaches out to me via my site or FaceBook.

If a potential client already has an existing Pinterest account set up, my team and I will comb over everything, both from a Pinterest perspective and a website perspective.

We’ll then offer some advice on what can be improved, and also how we can move forward together

If a potential client does not have an existing Pinterest account but wants to explore Pinterest in an intentional way, then we’ll undertake some research on Pinterest and also take a look at their current website setup.

At this stage, we’re looking to see if Pinterest is a viable option for them while also setting some expectations on what it takes to make a brand new account from zero.

With either option, we’re pretty open and transparent with everything we find. I think this is the least we can do for even reaching out to me in the first place.

I know you have recently got your website live, and that you will be expanding on this in the future. What else do you plan for 2021?

It took so long to even get the site up and running for so many different reasons, but it is life now!

I have a number of new projects and services that my team and I are working on.

There are two main projects that are already mentioned. Both get me fired up for a different reason, and one is a big stretch vision for me

The first is that a certain percentage of my agency's revenue is now officially being sent to a foundation here in Bali, which is now where I live full time.

The second which really gets me excited is to create and launch a podcast. We already have certain things in motion to get started with this in 2020. I already have guest speakers lined up for the podcast which is also very exciting.

I believe that people will hear what they need to hear at the right moment. And if someone takes something away from the podcast that improves their business, then, for me, the podcast is worth creating.