Chase is the Co-founder at Electric Eye where he and his team create Shopify-powered sales machines from strategic design and development decisions. He is also the host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast where he provides online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business.Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Chase Clymer, co-founder of Electric Eye and host of the Honest Ecommerce podcast. They explore the challenges Amazon brand owners face when transitioning to Shopify. Key insights include understanding the distinct skill sets required for each platform, the importance of a cohesive brand strategy, and leveraging influencer marketing. Chase emphasizes the need for a robust marketing plan, a solid business operating system, and the effective use of AI tools like ChatGPT. The episode provides actionable advice for scaling e-commerce businesses from seven to eight figures.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

1. Assess and Build Your Team’s Shopify Skills

 – Evaluate Skills: Review your team’s current skills and identify gaps related to creative marketing, customer engagement, and website management.

  – Invest in Training: Consider training programs or hiring experts to ensure your team is equipped to handle Shopify’s requirements.

2. Optimize Your Amazon Performance Before Transitioning

– Enhance Listings: Conduct a thorough review of your Amazon listings, ensuring they are optimized with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and relevant keywords.

  – Leverage Promotional Tools: Make full use of Amazon’s promotional tools, such as Sponsored Products and Lightning Deals, to boost visibility and sales before making the transition.

3. Develop a Robust Shopify Marketing Strategy

– Create Effective Ads: Develop targeted ad campaigns to drive traffic to your Shopify store.

– Leverage Content and Influencers: Regularly generate fresh content to engage customers and consider influencer marketing to build brand credibility and attract new customers.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today, I’m speaking with Chase Clymer, the co-founder of electric AI, and we’re going to be talking about why Amazon brands fail on Shopify. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help you take your business to the next level, my team and I bring on hands-on experience, strategic insights and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or somebody you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s ecom with two M’s. And let’s turn your dreams into a reality. Today I’m excited to introduce you all to Chase Clymer. Chase is the co-founder of Electric Eye, where he and his team create Shopify powered sales machines from strategic design and development decisions.

Josh Hadley 00:00:51  He is also the host of the honest eCommerce podcast So Weekly Podcast, where he provides online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their businesses. So welcome to the show, Chase. Thank you so much for having me. You are a killer at those intros there.

Chase Clymer 00:01:05  No. No hiccups.

Josh Hadley 00:01:06  Hey, well, you know, I, I had to practice. That’s why I didn’t tell you this, but I was just repeating this for, like, 20 times before we jumped on the call.

Chase Clymer 00:01:13  Yeah, it’s the inside scoop of being a podcaster.

Josh Hadley 00:01:17  Chase, super excited to have you on the show. I know I was on your show previously, and that’s kind of where this all where our connection was made here. But what I am super excited to be talking to you about today is something that I think a lot of Amazon first brand owners, they see Shopify as this, like, shiny object of like, ooh, if I can do $1 million on Amazon, surely I can turn around and just do $1 million on Shopify if I just open up the Shopify storefront.

Josh Hadley 00:01:38  Right. And I think that is a myth. And there’s a whole method to the madness. But you’re the expert here. Imagine you’re talking to a bunch of seven figure plus Amazon brand owners, and they’re looking to diversify. What are your recommendations and what’s your insights? What are you talking to them about?

Chase Clymer 00:01:53  Yeah I mean if this isn’t a hypothetical conversation I have this conversation maybe once a month. these people end up, you know, in our inbox and they, they kind of want to diversify. So there’s a lot of different answers. The first one, I think, is a little less what people want to hear. It’s like just because you can should you it might not be the right move. Especially at that time. $1 million isn’t that big of a business. Let’s be frank. Right. And at that scale, a business probably doesn’t have a fully fleshed out team in place and building a completely separate. Sales channel is a huge investment for a brand of that scale. As far as time goes and capacity goes, I think that a lot of brands should be doubling down on what’s working.

Chase Clymer 00:02:42  More often than not. So I think the first argument would be like, is this the right time to do this? you know, there are pros and cons like how the, the fees work out, etc., but, like, just like a really simple answer, the question to ask yourself is like, have we really maximized our market share on our current marketplace that is already working for us? We obviously are onto something. If, you know, we’re selling millions of these products every year. So that’s like the first kind of thought exercise. I always push on people. But, you know, if this brand, they’re doing five, 6 million and this really starts to make sense, they have team members that are dedicated to this project and this process. Then we start talking about the expectations and, kind of what, what’s the difference between Amazon and Shopify that you still have to explain it to people sometimes, right? So I’d say the first thing is, you know, if you are going to build out a new store on Shopify to feature your products, one, those products better make sense in an assortment together.

Chase Clymer 00:03:35  There are successful Amazon brands all over the place, but some of their product offerings are a little chaotic to do at the end of the day. So like having, you know, shoelaces next to hair trimmers, next to deodorant, like, how do you build a brand around that and build like a marketing funnel to support that? Because at the end of the day, you build this new Shopify store to feature these products or products, you need to drive traffic there. The biggest difference between Amazon and Shopify is that Amazon, it’s their customer and they’re letting you rent it. But that’s why you can hit that velocity so fast. If you are onto something with Shopify, they’re not bringing you any customers. Just because you build a store doesn’t mean you’re going to get sales. And that’s a conversation that I need to always have. And it’s like we built the most beautiful store in the world. It tells the story of this product. How are you getting customers? And if people can’t answer that question, I know, that’s not my problem.

Chase Clymer 00:04:25  That’s not what my agency does. Really, at the end of the day, we’re not breaking brands. We’re not building new sales funnels. We’ve just built awesome websites and we know how to do that really well. Make them pretty, make them sell, make them optimized. But they aren’t. We’re not building a funnel around it. And that’s a whole different game. And going from 0 to 1 and breaking a new product on its own website, like a Shopify. I’m using Shopify here to stand for any standalone e-commerce website. Shopify is obviously the best, but you know, WooCommerce or Wix or whatever. Don’t use Wix, Squarespace. but breaking a new brand like that is a skill set in and of itself. So when you’re talking about this and thinking about this and you’re like, all right, we’re gonna we’re gonna branch this business out off Amazon, I’m sick of giving them margins. This makes sense for the business. We really have to do it. We have a type of product or products that make sense to live as a brand on a standalone store.

Chase Clymer 00:05:11  The next thing you should do is obviously find someone to help you build a website, but you also need someone to help you build that marketing funnel, and you need to find someone that has done it before. If they haven’t got a case study that shows that they have broken a brand before. And when I say break a brand, it comes from my old life of breaking a band. It’s basically like helping a band get, grow and get a record deal and all. It’s like doing that is super hard. And the same thing as building a business. It’s super hard and if someone doesn’t have experience doing it, you’re going to be wasting your money because they’re not going to do it for the first time with you. Like it’s lightning That’s like lightning striking. You need to find someone that has a proven process, or a system or experience in really doing it, and can explain to you what that process is going to look like. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve got a few people that I recommend.

Chase Clymer 00:05:49  but I just rambled there. Josh, forever. I saw you taking notes, so I’ll let you ask me some follow ups.

Josh Hadley 00:05:53  I love it. I do have some notes here for you, and, I am feasting over this because I’m kind of in that area right now where it’s like, do we double down on and try to do Shopify? So let’s go back to the first thing that you talked about, which you recommended. Sometimes it’s better to maybe double down on what’s currently working. Right. And we’ve talked about that in previous podcasts as well, which is hey, before you start to think, hey, I’m going to diversify myself off of Amazon, make sure that you’ve taken full advantage of everything Amazon has to offer you, right. Do you feel like you’ve done all your A+ content? You’ve, you know, gone live on Amazon, like you’re you’ve done everything you possibly could to maximize your sales on Amazon, then maybe is the time to start considering this. I’m interested to hear when you feel like it is the right time or is it a revenue threshold? What would you feel are some good indicators that like, okay, now would probably be a good time for you to open up your Shopify storefront?

Chase Clymer 00:06:43  Yeah.

Chase Clymer 00:06:45  I would say I don’t think $1 million a year is the right time just because of the investment that you’re going to be making, I’m just assuming you’re going to be using paid media to really jumpstart things. But still, like you, you still need to allocate some sort of marketing and advertising budget to break this new channel the right way. And I think a million is just like, it’s not that the math isn’t there yet. I would maybe argue like maybe 5 million makes a little bit more sense, as when it might it might be a time to do it. but it’s so funny about just like the doubling down concept, it’s something that on the other side of things, like when I’m talking to native Shopify, like DTC first brands like that, they’re always thinking about launching on a new marketing channel, and we don’t really do any marketing or advertising stuff at the agency, but we’re always talking to people about what these things are because we’re like in tandem, building the landing pages and doing the CRO with all these growth teams, and sometimes they’re like, oh, we’re gonna try a new channel.

Chase Clymer 00:07:29  And it’s like, well, why? Like meta is crushing for you. Just double your spin there and you’re going to get roughly the same results. It’s like, why people There’s this this busy work of like, we need to be doing, constantly doing and iterating and trying new things, which is true. But also it’s like you can make your life a lot easier by optimizing the things that work first.

Josh Hadley 00:07:47  Yeah, I agree with that statement. And I also think that, you know, in businesses. So I love following Alex Hermozi. And one of the things he talks about is do you understand the true business you are in, right. And the way he kind of frames this approach is as follows. Right. You may look at like a let’s do a a local carpet cleaning business. Right. You see you’re like their web presence is terrible. They have really poor marketing. Right. Like I guarantee you, if I own this business, I would turn this thing around in in two seconds, right.

Josh Hadley 00:08:17  However, the true business of maybe a local carpet cleaning business is this can you hire and retain and attract enough local talent to be able to scale that business? Right? The focus of that business is actually more focused, not on the marketing. You probably have enough business just from word of mouth, right? Like it’s that that will keep you busy enough, especially if you have a small team. But if you truly want to scale, you need to have a good process to hire, find, recruit and retain talent that you’re paying probably minimum wage to go clean those carpets. Right. And so I use that analogy to say, you know, the grass is always greener, right? And sometimes you think, oh, it’s going to be so much easier. I have this good idea. Like I see these other people on Amazon crushing it. So surely I just need to upload my product on Amazon and it’s going to crush it, or vice versa. I just need to upload my product onto Shopify, run some dumb, you know, meta ads, and I’m off to the races and I think it’s always the devil’s in the details.

Josh Hadley 00:09:08  Well, that’s.

Chase Clymer 00:09:08  A that’s a great, a reminder for me of like a talking point for this. And I do this talk track all the time. and it’s, it’s that the, expertise of Amazon is a completely different monster than the expertise of, you know, they call them e-commerce directors, usually at, like, DTC brands, it’s like the person in charge of managing all the aspects of, like a.com experience. and these days, I’m even seeing that they’ll have like a head of Amazon and then like a e-commerce director at these companies because it’s, they’re just two completely different mindsets and ways to think about things. There’s obviously a lot of overlap, and that’s true about a lot of job positions. There’s a lot of overlap. But like just because you found success on Amazon doesn’t mean that you are going to be the person to find success on Shopify. Sure, there’s unicorns out there and people are super smart. They can learn whatever they want. But I think it’s a little a bit hubris to assume that you’ve got it all figured out.

Chase Clymer 00:10:01  I think that’s probably one of the major ways people go wrong is they just don’t take it seriously, and then they just stand up a store, do it miserably. Don’t don’t try to do any ads and then just say, that doesn’t work for us. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:10:14  Yeah. And I think here’s the other I think misconception, right. Is that coming from an Amazon standpoint, if you think that, hey, I’m just going to, you know, create a create one ad and that one ad should hopefully, you know, generate some traffic to my Shopify store. And that’s my hypothesis. I think that when I have had people that have Shopify first brands on the podcast or whenever I’ve spoken to them, their business model is completely different than what yours is on Amazon. Guess what? Yours is on Amazon. On Amazon, you’re just trying to find the next niche, the next product that there’s prime potential, right? Underserved keywords, competitors that don’t have good listings or they don’t have the right keywords in their listings, that’s your area that you’re identifying, and you’re probably doing lots of research on a daily basis to uncover those niches, right? On the flip side, I think Shopify first brands your entire focus is what is my hook for my ad? And you are constantly coming up with brand new ad types that you can run, because you can’t just create one ad and imagine that that ad is going to run for the next three or even 12 months, on its own.

Josh Hadley 00:11:12  Like you have to continually come out with fresh new content. Would you agree with that?

Chase Clymer 00:11:16  Yeah, and I would even take it a step further, listening to you kind of break it down that way. I think that the Amazon mindset now is probably going to be canceled. But the Amazon mindset is product first, where the Shopify mindset is customer first, right? and you’re looking for the next product that’s going to accelerate through the listings and all that stuff. Where on Amazon it’s like, what is what are my customers saying and how can I iterate and build something that solves that problem that they’re talking about. And it’s like just two different ways to approach building, you know, a business.

Josh Hadley 00:11:43  Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think the argument from your Amazon customers can be like, well, I read all my competitors reviews and then I’m tweaking it. I’m refining it so that it makes it a better experience for the customers. But I also agree with you because on the Shopify front, you need to have a very specific niche audience that you are serving in order for those ads to succeed, right? You need to be able to say, like, I’m creating a baby product.

Josh Hadley 00:12:04  However, this baby product is going to be geared towards grandmas purchasing it for their grandchildren. And the reason why you have to get that specific is because that’s the riches are in the niches, especially when you’re advertising. True or false?

Chase Clymer 00:12:17  Oh, absolutely. And that’s it. So that brings up another thing is Amazon kind of locks in the amount of customization that you can do to the UX. And you know what information you can present on that page. Obviously there’s ways to add more flavor and all that stuff. but on Shopify you can do whatever you want. A lot of people do it. The people that do it themselves often don’t have that understanding. There isn’t a there is no crossover between Amazon and, say, a Shopify build where the UX choices are often extremely interesting, which are often to the detriment of that that net new brand. And so the way that that experience is built and the way that that customer journey is thought out and the content is laid out in the copy speaks to the problems and the solutions and the benefits of whatever that product is.

Chase Clymer 00:13:03  They need to be as professional as you can afford, I guess, because what that Shopify website doesn’t have is the brand trust that the world’s largest marketplace has. There’s such a difference in level of trust between those, like anything on Amazon versus a standalone store. Amazon’s always going to win. And that’s why I use, you know, you’ll break a lot faster as far as like testing a new product on Amazon. It’s because you have that confidence of an Amazon. Like, I know I will get my money back. I know they’ll go to bat for me. If this doesn’t solve my problem. I have a fear and uncertainty and doubt. All of that just wiped away by Amazon’s insane customer centric policies, which a standalone store often hasn’t really fleshed out yet. And people don’t know you from Adam when you’re talking about these net new, like standalone Shopify stores, you have to work to earn that person’s trust through a compelling offer, through testimonials, reviews, all these things that doesn’t matter on Amazon because they go, I know Amazon has my back.

Chase Clymer 00:13:56  I’ll take a chance on this weird thing.

Josh Hadley 00:13:58  Yeah, I love that. Chase. I think this is a great, great conversation. So let’s some things up. The first question was, hey, how do we know if we’re an Amazon first brand? How do we know when it’s the right time to go on to Shopify? I think it comes down to these following kind of questions you need to ask yourself, have you maximized everything you possibly could on Amazon? Right. Have you done everything? Have you launched into all the verticals that you wanted to launch into on Amazon? Did you create the, you know, maximize all the promotions, etc.? Okay, if you’ve done that and you’re probably above $5 million in revenue, now may be the time that you can consider Shopify. However, you need to ask yourself the following question am I willing to start a brand new business? Because these businesses and the focus of these businesses, in my opinion, are two very different skillsets. Right. And we discussed that, I think on the Amazon storefront, you’re looking for niches, you’re looking for opportunities.

Josh Hadley 00:14:52  Okay. On the opposite side, for Shopify, you have to get really, really good at creative and advertising. That’s like your that’s the secret sauce. That’s a very different skill set, in my opinion, than 99% of the Amazon sellers that I know. They’re not they’re not advertisers or meta gurus that know how to create good hooks and viral videos and things like that. But you need to get into that frame of mindset. So which I think Chase kind of leads us to the next question, unless you have anything else to add there.

Chase Clymer 00:15:19  I would just say if you are, if you feel that you know the answer, those questions are leaning towards like, I’m going to build out the Shopify experience. just make sure that the store you’re building and the product or products that you’re focusing on have a cohesive message together. Maybe you focus on one of your best selling products as like a flagship hero product for this brand you’re building out versus, trying to throw all 127 SKUs that you have in one internet bodega store that’s always going to fail.

Josh Hadley 00:15:45  I love that. What would be your recommendation. So that’s a good question. So we have 1500 SKUs on Amazon for to go Shopify right. It’s one thing to open up a Shopify storefront just to show you have presence right. And list your products there. But we’re not heavily like featuring ads and stuff like that on meta right now. But let’s say I do want to. Do you do you recommend like almost creating like a subdomain of that brand that’s like, hi, like you’re specifically trying to target your hero product?

Chase Clymer 00:16:11  this is where things get super interesting. I was, you know, 8020 rule, obviously, like, there are going to be certain SKUs that outperform others use. I would say, the products that lend themselves a little more towards luxury and less commodity are where you’re probably going to find, you have an easier time to scale, because I’m assuming you’re gonna have a little bit more of a margin. You’re going to have a higher average order value. So the cost per acquisition against growing that business is going to be an easier time versus if you’re trying to sell, you know, an $8 product that also exists on Amazon, people just gonna buy that product on Amazon.

Chase Clymer 00:16:42  so higher average order value is probably a thing I’d like to keep in mind $75 or more. something that is not commoditized about anything that you have that’s super unique and niche is probably going to do well, and then maybe you just tailor the brand around that. And also it’s like it doesn’t have to necessarily be the same name or brand name. It could be you repackage your existing best seller on Amazon because you know, this thing works because Amazon’s already told you it works because it’s selling a million units a year. Now you’re just like, all right, we’re going to actually do a little we’re going to take a step back. We’re going to rename this product. We’re going to rebrand this product. We’re going to build the story out. And we’ve already got like all these awesome reviews on Amazon to mine to get the information to help us build this whole sales funnel and this standalone website. Then you just build out a site for that hero product, and then the next thing you want to do is kind of maybe think about what are those add on products that will help increase that average order value, that will bundle together well, help you with kind of building out those offers for those sales funnels.

Chase Clymer 00:17:28  but yeah, there isn’t a single right answer here, but the wrong answer is taking all of your products and making an internet bodega.

Josh Hadley 00:17:35  I love it. All right, Chase. So we’ve we’ve agreed that we think that Shopify may be on the roadmap for us. So if that’s the case, one thing that you talked about previously is finding somebody an expert that is kind of broke a brand on Shopify before. I want to go deeper into that. A what does that mean? What is what type of unicorn type of guy am I looking for a guy or gal and what do they do? What experience do they come with, how do I find them, etc..

Chase Clymer 00:18:01  Yeah, so this is going to be a growth marketing agency is the names that they’re all going under these days, not my agency. We build cool websites. so what these what these companies are the case studies that you’re going to have to find is like them taking a product from $0 in sales to actual sales. Right. And the reason that they’d be interested in your business and be excited about it is because you already have product market fit proven because you have this high velocity of sales on Amazon.

Chase Clymer 00:18:25  So that’s going to make these these companies be like, oh, like this will work. We just have to figure out how to make it work. It isn’t a it isn’t. It’s no longer a question of will this work? It’s like this will work. Well, we have to figure out how. And that’s the cool thing about having that kind of like existing social proof of like, this thing sells on Amazon. And so what you’re going to be talking to these companies about is just like, you know, what does this look like? They’re going to be giving you recommendations on like what the investments going to be on ad spend. Obviously they’re going to take some cut of that or have some sort of fee involved in that, but that’s going to be outside of building the website. That’s going to be the majority of your cost, especially going into this as like, this is a new business. You should, you know, hire us or someone like us and do something templated. Make it straightforward.

Chase Clymer 00:19:03  Focus on the copy and the content. You don’t need a custom website because again, this is a net new business line. That’s the way I always like to make people think about it. Pretend you’re a startup. Like this is a new thing. You need to be cautious about your spins so you can get kind of ROI a lot faster. And people get caught up in custom and all these things. And it’s like you, first of all, I can show you a dozen websites that are all the same template. You would never know. Second, custom is just more investment from a development perspective. Time in there with the code from QA. and you know, obviously design like all these people are involved, extends the timeline of these projects. And at the end of the day, these choices that you’re making are maybe coming from a, a personal preference and not the preference of your customer. So you could argue that it’s just a waste of money and time. but I’ll pause there because I see you nodding and I know you got some follow ups.

Josh Hadley 00:19:47  Yeah. No, I think that’s really interesting. Is like approaching this from, like, I’m starting this as a brand new business. Right. And so you don’t need to go all out. And I think I’ve heard this time and time again where it’s like, you’d be surprised how many people are just using one of the Shopify theme templates. Right? And you don’t need to spend five 1020 K designing your website and spending all of that money. It’s almost like, all right, get your minimum viable product up and running first. See if that if you can at least gain some traction, see if you’re, you know, if you start running ads, see if your customer acquisition cost is in somewhat of a ballpark. And if you say, hey, this is this looks like it has potential, then you can maybe focus in on the CRO optimization, refining things on your, you know, maybe that’s where you start going into the customizations. do you have so if we’re looking for like a growth marketing agency, are those the type of guys that like, they’re going to help you create your hook and your like your, your meta ad, they’re going to think of like, hey, I think we should really target grandmas who are buying these type of products for their grandchildren.

Josh Hadley 00:20:43  Like, is that the is that the people, or do you almost need to have that already set up yourself?

Chase Clymer 00:20:49  Well, you can have assumptions about your ideal customer profile, but I think also going into things with an open mind, especially when you don’t really have I don’t know how much data you can get out of Amazon. Can you find that data in Amazon? Like who’s buying buying things?

Josh Hadley 00:21:01  No, I mean, the best you could do is, you know, you’re reading the reviews. So it would be public info anyways, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chase Clymer 00:21:06  But I mean, so these these growth teams, yeah. They’re going to help you come up with some ideation on the offers, the hooks etc. and the way that so now it depends on like what your product assortment is. Right. So if you build out a store and it’s like one hero product, you know, you got like one kind of straightforward funnel, you can even probably just build out a landing page on Shopify that allows you to kind of iterate through a couple of headlines, a couple of pitches, a couple offers, all that jazz really starting to see what resonates.

Chase Clymer 00:21:33  but, you know, on the flip side, if you had, you know, something that had, you know, like a dozen SKUs, you know, maybe you’re not going directly to that hero product. You’re going to like your best selling collection page or, you know, maybe if it’s something it lends itself a little bit to bundling. You make sure that functionality is still built out on the website. but yeah, at the end of the day, the growth team is going to help you with ads, hopefully content creation of the ads, the hook, the offer, implementing those ads and then reading that data and helping to then suggest iterations on those ads to help bring down those costs and improve those KPIs that both teams are looking for, which at the end of day is going to be sales. But before you really start to hit the sales, it’s, you know, click through rates. It’s time on site. It’s a little more, indicating factors.

Josh Hadley 00:22:14  I love it, Chase. It sounds expensive.

Josh Hadley 00:22:15  So that’s my next question to you. So even so, let’s say again, for all intents and purposes, anybody that’s an Amazon brand owner that wants to take their brand onto Shopify or some guy just coming out of college, that’s like, I want to create my own Shopify storefront. They’re basically starting at zero. Okay. how much money if you’re talking to one of either of these people, how much money are you telling people like, you need to be able to bring X amount of capital to create your store Work with a growth partner and be able to spend on advertising. Do you know what you’d be budgeting?

Chase Clymer 00:22:48  yeah. And you know, obviously you get what you pay for at the end of the day. And I know that where we’re pricing the ecosystem is a little high for a net new brand, but it’s also we’ll do it right the first time extremely well. so I would say if you’re going to spend less than $10,000 on building a net new store, you might not be happy with the result.

Chase Clymer 00:23:09  And you can find people on Reddit complaining about that specific price point all the time. Shopify does a fantastic job of talking about how easy their their platform is. maybe to the detriment of the actual customer. There’s just there’s so much in that product now. And I mean, I just think my if I was going to try to build out something on Amazon, I’d be lost for days and weeks trying to do it the right way. so there’s obviously that opportunity cost of do you want it done the right way or do you want to save money? So keep those things in mind. If we were going to launch a net new brand and we’re just building up the site, our budgets are like probably going to come in between 20 or 30,000 and explaining all the bells and whistles that we believe. You also need to do this the right way. Things that aren’t native to Shopify, understanding the ecosystem, the integrations, all that jazz. Like we’re just going to get you set up the right way in a timeline that makes sense.

Chase Clymer 00:23:48  Or, you know, there’s other people out there that will do it for less. There’s people out there that will gladly charge you more, but that’s kind of a realistic expectation if you’re going to use an actual subject matter expert. Obviously, there’s also fluctuations between what market it is that people that you’re talking to are. and then on the side of ads and stuff. If you’re going to give this a real good shake. And again, we’re talking about an Amazon brand that’s coming over. So they should have a bit of a budget to to earmark over here. You shouldn’t come into whatever channel you’re launching on. I assume it’s going to be meta or Google with less than $10,000 a month. Should be like your expected spend, but obviously going to scale up to that. on the first couple of months, as you’re trying to figure out what hook and all sorts of jazz works the right way. And then kind of as long as your KPIs are are hitting the right way, kind of scale that thing to infinity, it’s the same thing on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:24:31  Yep. Makes a lot of sense. So you’re you would budget what, ten grand for the website.

Chase Clymer 00:24:36  I would say minimum ten grand minimum okay.

Josh Hadley 00:24:39  How much are you budgeting for the growth partner?

Chase Clymer 00:24:43  I mean, it’s all over the place these days and what these people are charging. but, like, roughly, it’s they’re charging 20% a month of what you’re spending. So if you’re spending ten grand a month for three, six months, you know, that’s 6 to $12,000 that they’re taking. That’s 3 to $6000 that you’re giving to whatever this marketplace or whatever this advertising platform is. So let’s just say and then also, I think three months is not necessarily long enough to actually see results when it comes to to trying to break a net new brand. Like I think it’s six months or a year, you have to like really make this investment into figuring out where those customers are, which messaging is resonating. Because, again, Amazon has all the customers in the world and all of the brand trust in the world.

Chase Clymer 00:25:23  And if you have a product that makes sense on their like, they’ll buy, but you’re starting from zero, you don’t have any of that stuff you’re going to need to be finding out those customers, finding that message that works. Slowly, you’ll start building off that social proof through testimonials and unboxing videos and user generated content, and just slowly adding all these trust factors to the website over time. but yeah, it’s a it’s a bit of an investment. and that’s I think what scares a lot of people is the they, the velocity at which Amazon works versus like building a net new brand is like kind of scary to people. Yeah, but also the margins are awesome once you figure it out.

Josh Hadley 00:25:54  Yeah, I think that part I think that part is, super enlightening, right. And maybe just like a complete different mindset shift because it is true, like on Amazon, there are some brand owners and I think these are the bigger brands that have deeper pockets that like, they’re willing to lose money for 6 to 12 months.

Josh Hadley 00:26:07  Right? And so they’re like, yeah, this is a this is an investment. It will pay off down the road. Whereas I would argue most of the Amazon sellers like they’re going to go into the red probably for the first month or two, but then they see like, oh, the flywheel is already starting to churn, like, I’m going to be profitable here month 3 or 4. whereas and I guess what has been your experience whenever you’ve worked with net new brands, is it a 6 to 12 month haul? Just it depends on.

Chase Clymer 00:26:32  What your go to market strategy is. We just worked with a brand. It’s not live yet, but they’re they’re partnered with an influencer with 10 million followers on TikTok. That’s very specific to their audience. So it’s just whenever they say go, we know that thing’s going to work. Well, right? but on the flip side, you know, if we’re working with a startup that’s got some funding and we build the thing out, we’re always like, all right, well, what’s your go to market strategy? Like it’s, you know, we build the most beautiful.

Chase Clymer 00:26:55  Like, let’s just pretend we’re talking about mortar shops, right? So we build the coolest brick and mortar thing ever. Like architecture inside’s awesome. The layout just makes a lot of sense. It’s got really cool music in there too, right? But it’s in the middle of the desert, right? That’s like, no one’s going to get there. Like, how are you going to get people to this place? How are you marketing this thing? How are you going to get that foot traffic to your store? It’s the same thing with a website. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean you’ll get sales. You need to have a marketing strategy. You need to know what that is. And obviously we talked a lot about paid and setting budgets for paid today. But I think what a lot of brands are doing these days that are actually helping them break things a lot faster is they’re doing kind of what’s called influencer seeding. And so they’re finding these micro macro or whatever influencers, you know, not, you know, million followers, but like, you know, 5000, 8000, 20,000 followers that are in their niche and they’re just giving without an expectation of their product, sampling their product out to hundreds of these people.

Chase Clymer 00:27:44  And then that will help kick that flywheel a lot faster. They’ll get, you know, if those people are posting about the product and they start to establish, you know, affiliate relationships with these folks, that will send traffic back to their standalone store a little bit quicker, which then all of that traffic they can retarget that makes their advertising efforts a lot better because it’s learning. These are the types of people that are interacting, buying with the site and buying this product. so that’s a way that oftentimes, people are kind of getting there a little bit quicker. and I think that that’s if I was to launch a brand, I haven’t found anything that’s tickled my fancy just yet, but that would be the way I would do it. Is influencer seeding strategy into remarketing. And obviously then from there, branching out into prospecting.

Josh Hadley 00:28:18  Okay, I love that. So you’re going out. You’re giving out lots of free samples to people. They’re on Instagram, TikTok, whatever. You’re just saying, hey, talk about my product and are you having them link are you like creating like an affiliate link for them to say like, hey, share this, you get 20%.

Chase Clymer 00:28:32  This strategy is from a friend of mine’s agency and they just say, what’s your address? I’m sending you a free product. No expectations.

Josh Hadley 00:28:42  And they’re not they’re not signing it. They’re not asking them to become like not asking them for anything.

Chase Clymer 00:28:46  They’re just following their socials and seeing what happens.

Josh Hadley 00:28:48  So you’re hoping that that influencer is just going to speak highly about your product. Yeah. And say your.

Chase Clymer 00:28:53  Brand name.

Josh Hadley 00:28:54  But not even linking. Maybe not even linking to your website.

Chase Clymer 00:28:56  So here’s what happens. You know, there some people will like the product, some people use it, and some people will feature it because you know, the way, the way the relationship started with no expectation. And then there are ways to follow these people and see if these tags happen. And you can reach out after the fact. Be like, hey, like, would you like an affiliate thing? Would, can we repurpose this for advertising purposes? Like, you know what, you know, there’s a few asks involved there.

Josh Hadley 00:29:16  Yeah, okay. I love that, I love that. now here’s what I would encourage. So if people here’s my secret hack that I’m going to share on this, because we got on to TikTok shop and I think TikTok shop literally is, from what I’ve heard from a lot of like previous influencer affiliate marketing managers, they said TikTok shop has built everything that we possibly could have dreamed of in any software. because it is, it’s showing you all the data from all of these influencers, how much money they’ve been able to generate, how many views their videos get. it talks like it follows them. If you send them a sample, it will say whether or not they talk, you know, posted a video about that sample that you gave them, etc.. So what we’ve been doing is just like continuing to to give out samples to all those TikTok creators, right? Similar to yourself, where it’s like there’s no expectations. And, you know, some of those videos have gone viral, which are great.

Josh Hadley 00:30:07  But, you know, on the flip side, I hear so many people are like, oh, don’t send out a sample unless you give them, like really clear guidelines of like, this is how I want you to talk to the product.

Chase Clymer 00:30:14  Talk about I would say.

Josh Hadley 00:30:15  That’s so.

Chase Clymer 00:30:16  I would say that you’re boxing yourself in and you’re not allowing yourself to be creative, your brand to be creative, your influencers to be themselves. Because why like you’re selling yourself short. It’s like, what if the way that this influencer is going to talk about your product, which is off brand, and I think that’s the dumbest thing in the world, but like modern advertising is, is UGC, right. So you’re telling this creator don’t talk about the product in the way you want to talk about it. Talk about it in the way I want to talk about it.

Josh Hadley 00:30:38  Yeah.

Chase Clymer 00:30:39  That will not work as well as the creator talking about it in a way that is authentic to them, authentic to what their audience expects.

Chase Clymer 00:30:45  And we’ll go way better just letting them do what they want to do. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:30:50  Makes tons of sense. Tons of sense. Okay, I love this. All right, so now, Chase, we’re on this, we’ve dove down the rabbit hole of. How do you get traffic to your Shopify storefront? I think the first thing we talked about is, is was evident meta ads, TikTok ads. Okay. But you just brought up a great strategy, which is influencer seeding, just giving out hundreds of free samples, no expectations, and then remarketing to those people. You said if you were to start a brand today, that’s the strategy you would take and then kind of scale up from there.

Chase Clymer 00:31:18  This is a question that I ask every so on my podcast, honest E-commerce available where they are available. I interviewed the main feed is me interviewing, brands that are Shopify first, usually or just direct consumer first and one of the first. Like one of the questions I’m asking every one of them is like, how did you get your first customers? And I’m doubling down to was like, what was the strategy that actually helped you go from 0 to 1? And you actually had a repeatable flywheel of getting, of getting customers.

Chase Clymer 00:31:43  And there are a million different ways that people were getting customers. But, you know, some of the standouts are that weren’t mentioned here, but we’re like, going to where their customers were. So like trade shows or, farmers markets or, you know, conventions like and doing the things that don’t scale and talking in person like that was a that’s a strategy that came up again and again and again when I asked this question. one of my favorites was though, I had a gentleman on the show, and I’m not remembering his name, but he had a, advanced pool filter products. Right. And the way that they were getting customers was this is so like San Francisco, like hacking, like growth hacking things. So how they were getting customers was he was getting on Google Maps and looking at neighborhoods that had a lot of finding neighborhoods that had a lot of pools, and then joining their Facebook groups and asking, who do you use to clean your pool? And then coming back a week later and saying, oh, I’m using this guy.

Chase Clymer 00:32:33  And like planning his like, smart pool cleaner and like, that’s how they started to acquire their first round of customers.

Josh Hadley 00:32:38  Wow. That’s fascinating I love it I love it okay, so give me some more Chase because I think this is super valuable. I mean, you’ve you’ve had hundreds of interviews with the Shopify store owners. What else are some creative ways that you’re seeing people go from 0 to 1? As many details as.

Chase Clymer 00:32:52  You can share. I alluded to it earlier, is like partnering with someone that already has an audience. So if you can get some sort of celebrity involved in the brand or athlete or whatever, someone that’s coming to the table with an audience like that’s obviously going to help you out. the grind of like, that’s what makes it breaks any brand, not even if you’re coming over from Amazon. Just like getting started with building a brand on on online, it’s getting customers that aren’t your friends and family is the hardest thing. so traditional advertising is not something that has ever really came up.

Chase Clymer 00:33:20  So like TV ads or whatever, like it still exists and it still works. One of our clients is like a big asset on TV conglomerate. Like we know that still works, which funny enough, they’re shifting. It’s no longer like one 800 hours. They’re sending them to the landing pages that my team is building. It’s crazy.

Josh Hadley 00:33:32  Interesting.

Chase Clymer 00:33:32  That’s cool. but obviously like paid through TikTok, meta. And Google is often the way that people are, are building a brand. But it’s very expensive. And it usually it’s usually like two different camps of people. It’s an entrepreneur that, tried a bunch of people, and then they said, I’m gonna learn how Facebook ads work myself. And then that’s when it clicked for their business. Or it’s entrepreneurs that were lucky enough to know someone that had done it before. They paid them what they were worth to do it again.

Josh Hadley 00:34:02  Okay. I’m curious for the other brands that you said like that kind of got their start at like trade shows or farmer’s markets.

Josh Hadley 00:34:08  Like the things that don’t scale. Give me like how does that work. Like you’re at a farmers market and you’re telling people like, oh, check out my website.

Chase Clymer 00:34:15  And they’re trying to sell the product in person to people, and they’re getting they’re getting immediate product feedback from them. I’ve had a gentleman on the show that has a huge coffee company that’s got a bunch of different subbrands now, and he said that between maybe 2000 and 2020, he’s like, I think I personally gave away 1000 cups of coffee at Costco. He’s like, and I give away a cup of coffee and then someone might buy a bag. And he’s like that. He’s like, that is probably responsible for $1 million in sales. Fascinating. Him as the founder of the company did this right. And that’s not something that really necessarily could scale. But it does work once kind of that flywheel kind of gets in place. And you know other things would be it’s like think about what what problem is your product solving. Right.

Chase Clymer 00:34:52  And so another example I had was like a guy built out, he had a hat that had a strap on it. You know how you have the sunglasses with the straps so you don’t lose it in the water, right? He built a hat. Kind of the same thing, but it was more of like a modern hat and not like a not like a, I don’t know, an older look anyways, but he would go to like, where his customers were. So we go to like, kayaking, events and stuff. And he just put up a booth there and talk to people and have them, you know, rip his product apart. And so go build a better product. And like, just getting that one on one customer feedback is so important into building a superior product and learning how to message that product to the customer and talk about the problems that they have.

Josh Hadley 00:35:21  Okay, I love that Dude, does it make more sense to have a product that is more of like subscription based, like the coffee example? You know, like is that where like I could see like going to farmers markets and being like, hey, like I’m seeding and I’m giving away a bunch of, you know, coffee cups because I know if you get hooked on my coffee, you’re going to come back, right? If you love it so much.

Josh Hadley 00:35:45  I’m curious to hear your kind of take on that and whether, like, I love businesses.

Chase Clymer 00:35:49  I think that they’re super fun. I think that it kind of it it has the the advantages of the subscription businesses is like, it’s usually like one one funnel and message and flywheel that you’re optimizing. So that’s oftentimes like kind of cool. So anything that is, consumable can lend itself to a subscription business. It does have to be edible. It could be soap. It could be, dog food. Right. There’s like all sorts of different things that can do a subscription element to it. And I was just on a podcast yesterday talking about how subscription is very, it’s a difficult concept to explain a to a computer and B then like talk about it. So a lot of people are like, I want a subscription company and I’m building a subscription brand. You’re like, well, what is the subscription? And they can’t really articulate what it is, just like they sign up and they get it every every what? Every month.

Chase Clymer 00:36:28  Every two weeks. Can I pause, can I skip, can I get more, can I get less? And those are you really have to walk through all those things. your question is, is a subscription business better? No. Like, any business can be great, but, like, I find them very interesting, I find them. they’re definitely in an investor’s eyes. Like superior people love seeing that recurring revenue on the books. but inherently, I don’t think they’re any better or better or worse than something that’s, you know, someone selling, say, a flagship product, you know, once every so often. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:36:54  Okay. Have you seen any creative, maybe, like, subscription models or, like, membership models? Like, my favorite analogy is, like, so the hoop. the what band. Right. I have the what band? They have a hoop pro membership. So not only do you have to have be a member and pay a monthly rate just to have your hoop in and of itself, then they have an additional membership, which is what pro which is what, 20 bucks or nine bucks a month or something like that.

Josh Hadley 00:37:17  But every quarter you can get a new band, you know, of your color, of your choice for free. You get 20% off any of their other accessories. I can’t remember some of the other bonuses. Right. Maybe early access to certain stuff. That in my opinion, is a very creative way. Maybe if you don’t have a I think it’s very straightforward. I have a consumable item or soap that’s like you’re going to need to come back and get it at some point. But for somebody that doesn’t like let’s say you’re buying a, a poster for your children’s bedroom, like, well, probably not for another five years till you want to redecorate. Do you need another poster for your child’s bedroom right now? There might be other products you could offer them for sure, but any creative ways that you’ve seen kind of like membership or subscription rolled into any of these e-commerce brands you’ve worked with?

Chase Clymer 00:37:56  Yeah. So I think membership is a fantastic thing to bring up. And obviously, like some of these ideas we’re talking about now are like things you can’t necessarily do as well on Amazon, like building out these, these bundles that have maybe subscription and one off stuff and then building out these membership things like these are these are reasons to go beyond the Amazon platform.

Chase Clymer 00:38:12  So an interesting thing I see all the time in like the supplement space is usually these brands are the person behind them, like a personality that’s probably in a good shape. Right. And they have they always have a unique story. And these these like supplements are speaking to kind of unique problems to solve. And so like if you subscribe to the supplement for X amount of it every so often like also usually are getting like access to like a library of either, you know, weight loss tactics or like, meal plans or exercise routines. So like, there’s this, digital element to it. That’s pretty easy. so that’s like a cool way I’ve seen memberships work out in tandem with like a subscription item, but also like on another side, memberships are extremely powerful for things that can’t do subscription, like, for example, like a home goods company. I don’t need to buy a new dining room chair every month, but I could show the brand loyalty to this brand and sign up and join their membership.

Chase Clymer 00:39:02  And then I’m always getting, you know, 15% off and free shipping, free express shipping on every single order. And once a quarter I can have a one on one with, you know, an interior designer or, you know, there’s personalized product recommendations for me because I’m in this membership. So there’s ways to think of the value beyond just like discounting a product or giving away something for free. Like there’s are things, there are reasons consumers find value in things that aren’t like the actual product at the end of the day.

Josh Hadley 00:39:27  I love that, love it. Chase, this has been fantastic. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you think we’d be amiss if we didn’t discuss today?

Chase Clymer 00:39:36  I mean, the only other thing is, is, at the agency, we do a lot of migrations and net new builds, and then we also do a lot of conversion rate optimization. And, we have just kind of launched that as a standalone business as of late. So if you head over to store tester.com, and you are already on Shopify, if you’re doing kind of north of 5 million, because that’s what we need for the metrics to actually work.

Chase Clymer 00:39:55  We’ll launch your first test for free. Straight up.

Josh Hadley 00:39:58  That’s awesome. That’s that’s a solid offer. That’s a solid offer.

Chase Clymer 00:40:01  Absolutely. And it has to be kind of that high because you need to be able to hit statistical significance in like a short enough time frame to make it make sense.

Josh Hadley 00:40:07  Yeah. No, that that does make sense. So not for the beginners, but for those who do not know.

Chase Clymer 00:40:12  But it’s something to aspire to.

Josh Hadley 00:40:13  That is, I love it. All right. Chase, I love to leave each episode at the end with three actionable takeaways for our audience. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I know to chase you. Let me know if I’m missing something here. But number one, I think changing the mindset of how you’re going to approach business and understanding that if you’re an Amazon first brand, know that the skill set that brought you success on Amazon is probably not going to be the skill set that’s going to bring you success on Shopify. See them as two completely different businesses.

Josh Hadley 00:40:40  See that the Shopify brand, they are probably really good at either of the following, either influencer marketing and they’ve got a partnership with somebody, or they’ve also gotten really good at advertising, and they know how to churn out viral videos. They understand the hooks, they understand, and it’s literally is a numbers game. Again, going back to Alex Hermozi, he said what he did with his brand, they were doing 100 pieces of creative every single week, right, for an e-commerce storefront. So like, if that’s not what you’re willing to do, maybe that’s not the right approach for you. So that’s action. Item number one is having that mindset shift and understanding that the grass isn’t always greener. Understand what you’re signing up for if you move either direction to Amazon or vice versa. Action item number two is once you’ve identified that, hey, Shopify seems like it might be a good option for me. I loved your approach of approaching this with like, what is your go to market strategy? And I think you shared some very actionable insights with the go to market strategy.

Josh Hadley 00:41:31  Your first recommendation for yourself is I’m going to just do influencer seeding work, you know, reach out to a bunch of Micro-influencers, 5000, 10,000 followers or whatever. I’m just sending them product and that’s it, no strings attached. I’m going to see what happens. And then I’m going to have I’m going to cookie them so that when they come to my Shopify storefront, I can start then sending them remarketing ads on meta, on TikTok, Google, etc. and that would be an easier flywheel. Alternatively, you go what? You said maybe a more expensive, more difficult route is straight meta Google TikTok ads right from the beginning. so having your go to market strategy and I think being very clear with that, is going to make all the difference. And then last but not least, I would say adding on a membership or subscription model to your business. And I think this would be this is personally my appeal to wanting to do something off of Amazon, because I’m a huge proponent of like, if you can start igniting recurring revenue into your business and hypothetically speaking, could you change your business model by saying, you know what, I can be the low cost leader on Amazon because what it’s doing is it’s sending more people back to my website, where I’m funneling everybody into a membership model.

Josh Hadley 00:42:39  The secret behind my brand. The reason why I can have really low margins on Amazon is because I have a membership program that’s growing and growing every single day, so that’s kind of a recommendation is another reason why you might make that argument for Shopify. So Chase, is there anything else that we missed in terms of an action item for our audience?

Chase Clymer 00:42:55  No, no, I thought this was a fantastic conversation, and I tried to be as honest and open about kind of how I would approach these things. But I do think that, Amazon’s fees are never going to go down. so if this is something that you’ve been thinking about, you know, the time is probably correct to start reaching out to some people. just knowing when this episode is going to come out, though. I wouldn’t really think you can get anything done before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. The ships probably sailed there, so just take a deep breath and just kind of give it the right amount of time and let it go live when it goes live.

Josh Hadley 00:43:26  Love it. Great insight, great action item.

Chase Clymer 00:43:28  Also a terrible time to launch a brand. How ads are so expensive during that time.

Josh Hadley 00:43:32  And that’s that’s a really good to know as well. So Chase, here are the following three questions I like to ask each guest. So question number one what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Chase Clymer 00:43:43  Oh it’s a fantastic question. So I don’t know if it was necessarily the most influential, but this one changed my business, which I basically changed my life, was I actually read Traction by Gino Wittmann, I would guess seven years ago, before that, we were just a bunch of dummies, like doing freelancing under the same name. After that, we started to build a business with processes with, understanding what our goals were, making sure everyone’s going towards that kind of that vision of the company. You know, just we kind of run a modified version of iOS at our business because we’re a small boutique team. We don’t have the leadership structure to really run actual iOS.

Chase Clymer 00:44:17  book is boring as heck. Let’s be real. But reading it is worthwhile.

Josh Hadley 00:44:21  Yeah, I completely agree that business operating system, whether you’re a five person team or a 30, a 300 person team, 3000 person team like is super invaluable to make sure that even if it’s five people, you’re all rowing in the same direction and that there’s a method to the madness, and it’s going to set yourself up to be able to scale. So can I.

Chase Clymer 00:44:39  Mention a second book, though that was like less than a month later was Profit First by Michael Coutts. That changed my bank account.

Josh Hadley 00:44:46  Hey, even. And that’s even better. That’s what we’re in business for, right?

Chase Clymer 00:44:49  Love that. Absolutely. Those are I recommend both those books to every entrepreneur that I see actually has that like star and they’re really in their eye. They’re like, they’re actually gonna put in the work. I’m like, go read these two books and then talk to me later.

Josh Hadley 00:44:59  Love it. Chase, here’s the second question that I’m going to ask you.

Josh Hadley 00:45:02  And I’m going to flip it, flip it a little bit. Then what I told you about before. Okay. What is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been utilizing? Or you see other ecommerce brands utilizing that you think is effective?

Chase Clymer 00:45:14  I mean, I hate to be the answer to this question with the same question, like everyone’s saying ChatGPT, but I use the we use it a lot in our business, and I can kind of explain what we’re doing and even give you some prompts. So great. So one thing we’re doing, if we’re building a net new brand, or like if we’re actually building something for an Amazon brand, like we’re not asking them for copy, we’re just using AI generated copy based on their product listing to help us just get the site done faster. And a lot of that copy ends up just being the copy that exists on the website, because it does a pretty decent job of giving you kind of that MVP doubling down there. We are using AI to help us write the copy for landing pages and offers and stuff like that based upon, kind of just really, really simple inputs.

Chase Clymer 00:45:51  Right? So, the other day, me and my business partner were kind of just being like, well, how good can this be? Like, we’re going to build a landing page out for one of our clients flagship product. It’s a, skin care products. And all I did was I into ChatGPT. I pay for the new like, I pay for the nice one. It’s like 20 bucks a month or whatever. But I said, write me a landing page layout for this product and it’s linked to the actual product page listing using this format. And I linked to the Ida formula, which is like a copy landing page copywriting thing that stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. And it just pooped out an outline. I was like, this is better than sometimes the first version of of an outline that we asked our writers for. so it’s just, using the tools that are available to you, using AI to help you go from 0 to 1, I think is like the best way to use it.

Chase Clymer 00:46:32  and this one necessarily is an e-commerce. This is just me in my life. I use it for writing a lot, where I’ll just use talk to text on my phone and just get my ideas out of my head in a terrible way. And I’m like, can you format this in a better way? And then I use that to actually continue writing.

Josh Hadley 00:46:45  I love that. Yeah, I love that, you know, I can give you that first real good push, right? I, I think it’s pretty rare to say like, oh, I copied and pasted it and I never had to edit anything. Right. I think that it gets you 80% of the way there, and then you make some modifications. You’re like, oh, this was a really good first draft.

Chase Clymer 00:47:00  I think that just goes back to creativity. It’s hard. It’s hard to look at a blank page. It’s hard to look at a blank canvas. But if you can have I like like this is my goal. And here are some other things that I know that we want to do with this goal.

Chase Clymer 00:47:11  Can you give me a good first draft? And it’s like, even if it’s off base, you know why it’s off base. You’re like, well, that gives me this idea and then you’re off to the races. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:47:18  Love that. Love it. Great use case scenarios. Thank you for that, Chase. All right. Final question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Chase Clymer 00:47:27  Well, I bet a lot of your listeners already follow Curt Elster, but that guy, he changed my outlook and mindset on business. the first day I met him, he, I had a I had a scarcity mindset about business, and I was a little aggressive, about competitors. And Kurt changed my entire outlook with one conversation and a rising tide raises all ships. He’s been a great friend and mentor. everyone go check out Kurt Elster. the unofficial Shopify podcast is his podcast. I think it might be the biggest one in our space.

Chase Clymer 00:47:51  but he is a very genuine human. He’s a nice guy. and he made me a better person.

Josh Hadley 00:47:55  That’s awesome. I think that that, that’s that’s a really good insight for, like, viewing, flipping your, your mindset shift in terms of like, are you really competing with your competitors and focusing on yourself? So I love that.

Chase Clymer 00:48:07  I mean, we could talk about that for a little bit longer. I think that my, the, the biggest coaches in my life that I’ve learned the most from and our biggest, like, referral network are our direct competitors. if you can be friendly with the person selling the same thing you’re selling, you’re going to both grow because there is absolutely enough out there. and it’s just a better way to live your life. this translates beyond business. having an abundance mindset just makes you happier in general. versus thinking, you know, at some point it’s finite. Life is finite. Things are finite. It’s just. I think that’s stressful.

Josh Hadley 00:48:41  I love that.

Josh Hadley 00:48:41  Good words of wisdom. Chase, if other people want to follow you, they want to learn more about you. Reach out. Have you do a website for them? where can people find you?

Chase Clymer 00:48:50  Yeah. well, first, if you want to listen to me interview brands, or obviously Josh Allen, we do bonus episodes all the time. Honesty, Commerce, SEO, honesty, commerce. The podcast is available wherever podcasts are. That’s a great way to kind of just, you know, keep in touch and learn. Learn from things. the agency is electric. Io you can kind of head over there, click a contact form schedule call, you’re going to schedule it with me. And then if that like, CRO thing, sounded interesting to you, that is a store tester. Com.

Josh Hadley 00:49:14  Awesome. Jace, this has been super valuable. Thanks for your time today.

Chase Clymer 00:49:17  Absolutely had a blast.