In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley shares five strategies he would prioritize when launching a new e-commerce brand today. Drawing from over a decade of experience scaling his own brand to eight figures, Josh covers: building recurring revenue models for compounding growth, identifying products with TikTok Shop viral potential, securing favorable manufacturer payment terms to optimize cash flow, prioritizing TikTok Shop as the primary sales channel over Amazon or Shopify, and developing a mission-driven brand that commands trust and premium pricing. The episode delivers actionable insights for entrepreneurs seeking scalable, sustainable e-commerce success.

Bullet Points:

Timestamps:

00:00:54 Recurring Revenue is Key
The importance of building a brand with a recurring revenue model, like consumables or subscriptions, for compounding growth.

00:07:55 Viral Products on TikTok Shop
Focus on finding or creating products that have viral potential on TikTok Shop to unlock success across all sales channels.

00:09:57 Strong Manufacturer Relationships
Prioritize building relationships with manufacturers to secure favorable payment terms, creating a negative cash conversion cycle for infinite scalability.

00:14:10 Prioritizing TikTok Shop First
Launch new products on TikTok Shop first, as success there proves viability and drives traffic to other channels like Shopify and Amazon.

00:17:08 Building a Mission-Driven Brand
Focus on creating a true brand with a mission and values to build customer trust and command premium pricing.

00:19:28 Recap of the Five Strategies
A summary of the five key focus areas: recurring revenue, TikTok virality, manufacturer terms, TikTok Shop first, and mission-driven branding.

Links and Mentions:

Business Models & Revenue
“Reoccurring Revenue”: “00:01:54”
“Reoccurring Revenue”: “00:19:28”

Products & Tools
“Intake Breathing“: “00:04:04”

E-commerce Platforms & Sales Channels
“TikTok Shop“: “00:08:56”
“Sales Channels”: “00:19:28”
“Viral Products on TikTok”: “00:19:28”

Supplier & Manufacturer Relationships
“Manufacturer Relationships”: “00:09:57”
“Manufacturer Relationships”: “00:19:28”

Business Strategies
“Pre-orders”: “00:12:09”

Branding & Mission
“Brand Mission”: “00:17:08”
“Brand Purpose”: “00:19:28”

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  I’m going to share with you the five things I would focus on if I had to start a brand new e-commerce brand from scratch today. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I am a man of faith. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife and the father of four children. I’ve been selling you the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing over $20 million in annual revenue and selling multi-millionaire on Amazon, TikTok, shop and Shopify. And I am also the host of the number one business strategy podcast Ecomm Breakthrough. Today, I want to share with you the five things that I would really focus on if I had to start a brand new eCommerce brand from scratch.

Josh Hadley 00:00:54  And this is honestly coming from a point of identifying like the weaknesses within my own brand things I would wish I could change if I, you know, could have any dream or wish in the world. But also, after having run my own e-commerce brand for the past ten years and having pivoted that brand a whole number of times, and we’ve pivoted the brand multiple times in order to keep it afloat. And with all of that experience, here are the top five things that I would be actively working on if I had to start a new brand from scratch. So number one, the holy grail of all things I would be looking for in any new e-commerce brand is do they have reoccurring revenue? Okay, that could be two different things. I could have a consumable item and it could be like a razor blade as an example, right. For shaving if I needed. That’s why Harry’s Razors, All Dollar Shave Club, etc. like we’re all very familiar with them because they are able to spend a lot of money up front to go acquire a customer because they know the lifetime value of a customer, because they know that customer is going to come back and reorder the cartridges to refill their razor blades on their razors, etc. that is the holy grail of e-commerce.

Josh Hadley 00:02:06  And so it’s the same thing with supplements, right? That’s why there’s the supplement space is heavily crowded, but there’s so much opportunity because if you get it right, you now have a compounding vehicle. And this is the biggest mindset shift that I’ve had to go through. When I first started in e-commerce, I was excited whenever I got that first sale, even on Etsy, right? And on Shopify, you hear the catching sound and you love that sound and you’re just like, yes, I got a new customer. And yes, it gives you a good boost of dopamine. However, I’m getting really tired at this stage of my career in just being so front end acquisition heavy, and that’s one of the most disappointing things. If I were to look back over the past decade, is I have not compounded my growth. We have sold millions, millions of customers have purchased our products. That’s great. Sounds impressive. However, I wish that those millions of customers would have compounded over the past decade.

Josh Hadley 00:03:07  But instead we were so front end acquisition heavy and focused that yes, we could go generate a sell for a new product on Amazon. But then what? Every day we start at zero. Every month I start at zero. And that is one of the biggest challenges in business if you want. It’s all about having the right money model that sits behind your brand, and that is ultimately the biggest e-commerce brands that are able to scale more quickly and rapidly have either a consumable product that customers need to come back and repurchase, whether it be a supplement, whether it be, you know, maybe you’re selling soda or its candy food, or it’s even something like we talked about the refillable cartridges, which, by the way, here’s a new brand that I was actually very, very impressed with. They took this and they said, hey, how do we how do we invent reoccurring revenue into a business where, more often than not, it’s just kind of like one time purchases. So this is coming into it’s called intake breathing.

Josh Hadley 00:04:04  And what they have are these nasal strips. So instead of just like the tape nasal strips that ultimately people are willing to switch one nasal, you know, tape strip company to another brand, whoever’s cheaper. Like they’re all about the same. Well, what intake breathing did is said, hey, we’re going to put magnets in these like stickers and you can stick them on the side of your nose. And then we have this like magnetic clasp that’s going to go on top of your nose. And then guess what. These these stickers, they’re only like one time use stickers. So it’s going to work overnight. But then you’re going to need new stickers that next night. And so they give you a pack of, you know that lasts for 30 days. And then if you want to keep using the nose breathing strip, you’ve got to like, subscribe and get the little magnets that sit on your the side of your nose every single month. I absolutely love that business model, and that is the challenge that I give to any of you listening to this is you’ve got to think outside the box and say, even if it’s a product where most people just purchase one time, how do you expand that lifetime value of a customer.

Josh Hadley 00:05:05  Because here’s what shifts in your money model as a business. So let me give you a practical example of how game changing, reoccurring revenue can be into your business for compounding results. So if you have a one time purchase product where people are going to come in, they buy your product, they got value out of your product and then they’re gone, right? There’s no reason for them to come back and that they don’t need to rebuy that product over and over again, right. A good example of this is maybe one of those ring lights that TikTok creators use that sits in front of them so that there’s light shining on their face when they’re recording their videos. Do they need a new light every 30 days? No, they don’t. But here’s what happens if that’s the business model that you’re running on. Okay, over the course of 30 days, let’s say you sell a thousand units of that ring light. Congratulations. You probably made some good money on that. Made a good net profit. Okay, great.

Josh Hadley 00:05:54  Well, what happens next month? Well, I start back at zero, and every day I start back at zero. My business is only growing if I find new customers every single day. And yes, you can talk about like, well, I’m already ranked on Amazon, so I know I’m going to get new customers every day. And it’s like, that’s cute and fine at all. But what happens if you actually have a reoccurring revenue business model where let’s take the intake note strips example again and we say, all right. This month we found 1000 customers and all of them came from Amazon. Well congratulations. How many of those customers are? How many customers do I get to start with next month at? Well, it’s whatever the number of customers that have subscribed to get those refill strips, let’s say it’s 50% of those customers are coming back for the replacement sticker magnetic strip for their nose. Well guess what? Every single month. If that’s the case, I add 1000 new customers to the business every month.

Josh Hadley 00:06:55  50% of them will stick around for at least another few months after that. What ends up happening is like compounding growth. So during month two now I have 1500 customers during month three. Now I have 2000 customers coming in every month. During month four, I have 2500 customers and you get the pattern. So instead of hey, 1000 customers this month, 1000 customers the following month. Instead I am compounding month over month over month. And sure, there is attrition and you know you got to focus on retention. But I have a compounding vehicle and that’s what I look at, some of the supplement sellers that are in the e-commerce space. And I’m like, man, I’ve been working ten times harder than you guys, but you have a better money model that sits behind your business. And that is why, you know, yeah, it’s great that I’m doing 20 million, but that’s why you’re at 100 million and I’m not yet because I’ve been so focused on front end acquisition. So that is why it is my number one thing that I would focus on if I were to start a new e-commerce brand from scratch.

Josh Hadley 00:07:55  Today is reoccurring revenue. Can I create a membership or a subscription model around this product if I can’t? To be honest with you, I’m out. I’m no longer interested in starting any product that does not have that component in it. Let’s dive into the second thing that I would focus on if I were starting a new brand from scratch today in the e-com space, and that would be finding a product that is going viral on TikTok shop, or taking another product that is going viral on TikTok shop, making modifications so that it’s unique and differentiated. The reason why I would focus first and foremost on TikTok shop is because if I can get a product that can move and go viral on TikTok shop, I know I’m going to, number one, have success not only on TikTok and generate revenue there, but number two, if you’re having success on TikTok, shop it now has proven that you have a unique angle that you could run meta ads on to a Shopify storefront. And then last but not least, if you’re running ads on TikTok shop and on meta, guess where a lot of that traffic.

Josh Hadley 00:08:56  There’s going to have some halo of traffic. Where’s that traffic going to bleed over to? And that’s Amazon and our favorite marketplaces Amazon, Walmart, Etsy etc.. So what that does is it shifts the entire game to say I’m no longer looking at, hey, what does Amazon provide me? Or what does this product opportunity look like on Amazon? It’s hey, does this product work on TikTok shop? Because if it does. And it seems like there’s people in this category and they’re crushing it, then I want to enter it there because now it’s going to unlock every other channel for me. TikTok is the number one constraint for unlocking e-commerce growth in a massive scale for all brands. The third most important thing that I would focus on when starting a brand new Ecom brand from scratch is going to be my relationship with the manufacturer. Now, you may be listening to this being like what? That is like your third most important thing. Like you’re not talking about, you know, leadership or partnering with certain people.

Josh Hadley 00:09:57  No. The most important partner that I would focus on above anything else is my manufacturer. And here’s why. Your manufacturer can either be your biggest asset or it can be the biggest drag in your business. And here is the secret as to why your manufacturer can be your biggest asset. And the biggest thing that I want to develop with my manufacturer is a relationship so that I can get favorable payment terms. Period. If you are selling into e-commerce space, your number one constraint more often than not is going to be your working capital. And you never have enough money, especially if you’re scaling rapidly. You have to go take out lines of credit in order to fund new purchase orders, in order to then be able to generate revenue off of that. That’s the hard part about selling physical products, is you have to outlay the capital first before you can ever sell it and make a profit on it. Well, guess what happens if you can change the money model that sits behind that business? And what happens if your cash conversion cycle goes from positive to negative? Meaning this instead of you having to lay out capital to begin with.

Josh Hadley 00:11:09  Instead, you get paid from the customer before you have ever spent money investing in that product. That is possible if you have the right manufacturing relationships. And so this is the relationship I would care first and foremost about is that manufacturing partner. And I would dig and dig until I can find the right manufacturing partner that would be willing to give me, at a minimum, net 90 days for any of my POS. Now, obviously, if you’re brand new, starting from scratch and you have no track record, like you’re fighting an uphill battle, but I would be willing to maybe work with a manufacturer that’s willing to, like, put it into writing to say, hey, over the first six months you will be at like 30, 70 payment terms. But if you hit these numbers of sales units or order volume, etc., we then transition to net 90 terms for you. That’s what I would be looking for on the onset, because I know that if I can have a negative cash conversion cycle.

Josh Hadley 00:12:09  I know that I will be able to scale the business infinitely. And here’s another really good example. So yes, you can work with your manufacturer. This also comes down to a kind of a marketing tactic at the same time. And that is taking pre-orders. So. Hudson La Grande from Comfort Clothing does a great job with this. Whenever they launch a new product and some of their top selling products, guess how they sell it through pre-orders? You’re not getting the product shipped to you tomorrow. In fact, you’re getting it either. You know, 4 to 6 weeks from now, and it’s not because it’s a dropshipping business. It’s because it’s the money model that sits behind the powerful growth of how Hudson’s been able to scale to nearly a $1 billion brand in as short as three years. The only way you can do that without selling your soul to all the venture capitalists out there that want to suck your blood dry with money, and then take ownership of your business and then tell you what to do.

Josh Hadley 00:13:04  You’ve got to find the best money model for your business. And so that’s another hack that you could do is before the inventory is even delivered here in the US. We have done this as well. Fire up some landing pages, accept some pre-orders for your products, and then again, you’ve brought in capital before you’ve ever had to pay for that inventory. Massively game changing for the business. And if that’s something that you’re not focused on even in your current ecom brand, I would say that’s your number one priority today is to go improve those payment terms or introduce a kind of a pre-order process and see how that can change and revolutionize your business. The fourth thing that I would be focused on, if starting a new brand in the e-com space would be starting first on TikTok shop. I am no longer an advocate of hey, go launch this product first on Amazon. I’m no longer an advocate of hey, go! Go try to see if you can make this thing work on Shopify. I am a massive proponent of if your product cannot succeed on TikTok shop, you’re fighting a massive uphill battle not only on Shopify but on Amazon as well.

Josh Hadley 00:14:10  The game has completely changed in the e-commerce space with Amazon. It used to be that you could just slap any label or brand name on a product on Amazon and then sell it, and you’re just arbitrage and keywords. Well, what we’re seeing over the past five years on Amazon is Amazon’s heavily recruiting a lot of overseas sellers. That’s where invested. They’re investing more of their time, energy and money. It’s not to cater to the US sellers, it’s to cater to the overseas sellers because they know the overseas sellers are going to charge lower prices overall, and that is a net positive for Amazon and their business overall. They know that if they can get Amazon to be oh wow, look how cheap this is on Amazon. It’s even cheaper than I can get it at a retail store. They know that they will have more and more demand coming to the Amazon platform. And so that’s what the future looks like on Amazon. You have more overseas competitors that are going to be focused on racing to the bottom in terms of price, hoping to sell, you know, a few more thousand units than you just because their price is a dollar lower.

Josh Hadley 00:15:13  And so I don’t see that ever changing in the Amazon space. We’re also seeing ad costs being extremely inflated and Amazon’s increasing their fees. And if that’s the case that’s fine. Like they know that sellers are very interchangeable for them at this point. They’ve got so much massive momentum behind their business that they frankly don’t need all the sellers that they have. There’s so many people standing in line that if you leave their platform, somebody else is going to go rank in this in the spot that you were originally ranking for. And it’s no sweat off Amazon’s back. So if that’s the future of Amazon and we know that meta ad cost per click is only increasing as well. Where’s the arbitrage right now. Well it is on TikTok shop and TikTok shop unlocks every other lever. Because if you can go viral on TikTok, shop with your product. Whether you’re doing this through yourself, like you as the brand owner, you are really good at creating viral TikTok videos, or you’re working with affiliates to go and talk about your product.

Josh Hadley 00:16:10  And some of those affiliates go viral for you, or you’ve got a really, really good live strategy like selling game where you’re going live on TikTok shop, and that’s how you generate a lot of demand. Well, guess what happens if you can succeed there on TikTok shop, you’re getting a massive halo effect onto number one, your website. But number two, onto Amazon. How easy is it to rank on Amazon if you have external traffic flowing over to your business? That is why the pendulum is completely shifted. If I’m starting a new brand, it first must succeed on TikTok shop. If I cannot get it to succeed on TikTok shop, I am not interested in lighting that thing up on Shopify or on Amazon, because I know I’m just going to be lighting my money on fire. The fifth thing that I would focus on if starting a new ecom brand from scratch today, would be focusing on the brand itself. Too many people think that, oh, I have a brand. I’ve trademarked my logo, I’ve trademarked my brand name, I now have a brand and I call BS to that.

Josh Hadley 00:17:08  After selling in the E-comm space for over a decade, I understand the importance of brand and ultimately what is brand? Brand is the perceived trust that a customer has with your business and product. That’s why you are so confident, like you have no no problem paying a premium for an Apple iPhone or an Apple MacBook because you have like the trust has been built and established over decades at this point where they have proven themselves time and time again that they produce quality products, and they’ve also associated themselves with other other brands and other things and associations that are credible and provide that sense of quality and aspirational kind of like flashiness, so to speak, of, you know, this is who I am. Look how cool. I’ve got the latest iPhone. Okay, so number one, that is why Apple is able to command their premium prices because they have a trusted brand. And so that is ultimately what you want to do as a brand owner is think through What is it that I need to establish to establish credibility and trust? And ultimately that comes down to your mission.

Josh Hadley 00:18:18  What is your brand’s mission? And if you don’t have a mission other than, hey, I find really cool product opportunities that are underutilized or not exploited yet on Amazon. That’s my brand mission. That’s great for you, but your customer doesn’t care at all. And so my biggest takeaway is that mission and values driven brands are going to be what succeed over the next decade in e-commerce because they tell a story. They get customers that can a resonate with the mission. They can jump on your bandwagon, and they are willing to pay a premium for your products. I am I would never start an e-commerce brand that does not have a true brand and purpose and moat that sits behind it, because I am so not interested in playing the price game. The price game ultimately will cause your business to come to a slow death, and it’s a death by a thousand cuts at the end of the day. And so having the brand and that credibility allows you to not only command a premium when you’re selling the products, but when you want to go exit that brand, that’s where you’re able to really command a premium, and that’s where you’re multiple shoots through the roof.

Josh Hadley 00:19:28  So those are the five things that I would focus on if I were to start a brand new e-commerce brand from scratch today. To reiterate, number one, I would start with the product that introduces reoccurring revenue or some type of subscription or membership into it. Number two, I would find a product that has the potential to go viral on TikTok. I want to see that there’s other products similar to mine that are doing well on TikTok shop, and then I’m going to make mine unique and differentiated, and then I’m going to execute that same playbook to either go live myself or to work with affiliates to push that product to go live. The third thing that I would be focused on is finding a manufacturer that I can actually partner with that will give me favorable payment terms, because if I can get favorable payment terms and get a negative cash conversion cycle, which ultimately means, hey, I get paid from my customers and the money comes into my bank account before I have ever had to pay for that inventory. It’s a game changer for the e-commerce business, and that’s how you’re going to be able to scale and hit exit velocity.

Josh Hadley 00:20:27  Number four, the sales channels I would choose to prioritize would be first TikTok shop. And as soon as I unlock TikTok shop, I would then be able to unlock Shopify because I’ve got all the right ad creative. I know the right hooks, I know the right angles because that’s the same angles that are working on TikTok. Shop to run ads to my Shopify site. And then last but not least, I’m going to get all the spillover and demand capture from TikTok and from my meta ads, and from YouTube ads and from Google ads onto Amazon, onto Walmart, onto Etsy, etc.. And last but not least, I’m creating a brand that is mission driven that actually has a purpose behind it. I’m creating a cohesive line of products, not a line of products that are. Hey, well, I found this opportunity on Amazon and it looked great, but then I found this other one that’s over in the pet space, and I went from being a planner company to a pet supplement company. Like, though that’s not a brand.

Josh Hadley 00:21:22  You are a product opportunist. And yes, you might have an overarching trading company that might be your brand, quote unquote. But like, you don’t have a brand that’s equitable at a premium. And that’s ultimately what you’re trying to build, is a brand that actually has a mission that sits behind it so that you can command a premium price in the market. Customers know it. They can trust your brand, and they could identify it even if they went into a retail store and saw it sitting on the shelf. Those are my five focuses for you. If you are a current e-commerce brand owner, and some of those are weak points for yourself, start focusing on that today. And ultimately, if you found value in this podcast, in this video, please share it with another operator who needs to hear this. The best thank you that you can give me is by sharing this with either your mastermind group, dropping it in the WhatsApp group, or dropping it into the Facebook group that you’re in with another group of e-commerce brands.

Josh Hadley 00:22:12  Share it with others. Spread the word and we’ll see you next time.