443: The Single Most Impactful Thing I Did To Grow My Businesses With Steve Chou

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I’m doing a solo episode to talk about the single most impactful thing that I ever did to grow my businesses. And this is something that you all can do right now as well. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. It is a conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online.

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Now this event has zero fluff. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business and not high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people and we all eat together, we all party together every night, and I personally love smaller events and tickets always sell out far in advance. By the way, tickets are going up in price in just a week as well. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250K or $1 million per year, we also offer a special mastermind experience.

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where we break up into small groups, lock ourselves in a room, and help each other with your businesses. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. And as I mentioned before, tickets are going up in price next week. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce, and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger.

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Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. And finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this one, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience.

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No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna share with you the one single most impactful thing that I did, kind of by accident, I have to admit, that allowed my online store over at bumblebulinus.com to hit seven figures, my blog over at mywifequitterjob.com to grow over a million dollars per year, and my YouTube channel to make over $300,000 per year. Now this is, my opinion, the most important thing that you can do to propel your business forward.

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In fact, what I’m going to tell you today in this episode doesn’t just apply to business. It pretty much applies to everything in life, whether you want to make more money or to achieve financial freedom. So to begin this episode, I’m going to tell you three separate stories about my own experiences and then kind of tie it all together for you at the end so that you can do the same. Now, as I mentioned before, discovering this for myself was an accident, but it doesn’t have to be an accident for you. So the first story I’m going to tell

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happened around a decade ago. My e-commerce store was doing multiple six figures in revenue, but I think at the time I was kind of at a plateau. The prior couple of years, I was growing in the double and triple digits, but things started to stagnate and we weren’t growing as fast. Meanwhile, at this time, my wife and I, were arguing a lot more because we were both trying to juggle running a business and taking care of two very young kids. And if I remember correctly at the time,

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we were kind of at an in-between phase of our business where we were reluctant to hire more people because we didn’t feel like we made enough to justify hiring more people. But at the same time, we probably need to hire more people. Anyway, my buddy, Andrew Udarian, invited me to Montana for a mastermind group meeting along with nine other entrepreneurs. And many of these entrepreneurs actually have been on the podcast. Now, in case you guys don’t know what a mastermind is, it’s basically where a group of people

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Entrepreneurs in this case get together and help each other with their businesses and typically you go around the room and Everyone takes turns asking questions they have on how they can prove their business and whoever’s turn it is to ask questions Is in what is called the hot seat? Anyway, when it was my turn to get on the hot seat, I proudly showed everyone my website Told them how much I was making and asked for feedback now at the time. I actually thought I was doing pretty well

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So I actually wasn’t expecting much negative feedback. Maybe a couple tidbits here and there, but I was basically expecting praise and for people to tell me how good of a job I was doing. So I was appalled when everyone in the room took turns ripping my website to total shreds. By the way, the rules of the mastermind in general is that you give the honest truth and you don’t hold back. And trust me on this, no one held back that day. Here were some of the comments I got.

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This website looks like it was designed in the 90s. You need to redesign your website right now. You run an online course that teaches this stuff? I would not take your class if I saw your website. And then another fellow mastermind told me, hey Steve, these are the types of sites I like to buy, fix up, and then resell at a massive profit. Now hearing these comments, I’m not gonna lie. They really hurt my pride. And I tried my best not to be defensive, but man.

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Was it painful to hear every single person in the room basically destroy my business? Anyway, as soon as I got back from the mastermind, I immediately contacted my designer, whipped up a quick mock-up in Photoshop based on the feedback in the group, and started cranking on the redesign. And my process for the implementation was pretty straightforward. Basically went through, plowed through each and every page myself, laid it out roughly how I wanted it to look based on the feedback from the mastermind.

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and had a designer pick up the pieces to make it look better. And I budgeted about six weeks to get the redesign done with me contributing about 40 hours of my own time. And basically every single page on the site was completely redone. And overall, the project ended up taking seven weeks and cost me about $1,800. But immediately I saw the results. My desktop conversion rates increased by 46%. My mobile conversion rates increased by 21%.

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and my tablet conversion rates increased by 25%. And just in case you guys don’t understand the jargon, the conversion rate is basically the percentage chance that a customer makes a purchase when they land on your site. And with these changes, my sales went up nearly 30%. And I remember that year, my online store had the best year of growth that had experienced in a while. And it was all thanks to getting beat up in a mastermind meeting.

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All right, so hold on to that story because I’m gonna tie everything together at the end, I promise. Okay, so this next story was with my friend Lars and you probably recognize him. He’s been on the podcast a couple of times and he was instantly a member of that same Montana mastermind. Now this was a few years later after that mastermind. Lars and I, we’re good friends now, we keep in touch. And since that meeting, I can’t remember the exact year when this happened, but I’m guessing it was 2015.

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And one day out of the blue, he messages me and tells me, hey, yo, Steve, you got to get on Amazon right now. And I remember my first reaction was, hey, know, Bumblebee Lynn is doing just fine. Why would I want to complicate my life with another platform or another marketplace? And Lars was like, you know, right now it’s super easy. Think of Amazon. It’s almost like an ATM machine. You just feed it products and money comes out.

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And at the time, we were already making enough. We replaced my wife’s salary. It was all good. We were still growing pretty well. So I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything for months. And to be honest, I had major problems motivating myself to start selling on Amazon. Like I mentioned before, we were already doing pretty well, growing in the double digits. I didn’t really see a strong need to sell on a platform where I didn’t have any control.

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And back then, Amazon wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as it is today. Anyway, so months passed. Lars noticed that I hadn’t done anything yet. So that’s when he decided to go on the offensive. Every single week, he started sending me emails politely reminding me to list my items on Amazon. Then he started telling me how much money he was making off of just a small set of products. And then I kept dragging my feet. And when that didn’t do the trick,

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He started telling me about all these cool strategies that he was using to make his Amazon listings more visible, strategies that very few people were using. And he might’ve mentioned that this would been excellent material for my online store course because at the time I wasn’t covering Amazon. Here’s the thing about these conversations. Lars had nothing to gain from urging me to get on Amazon. He was just looking out for me. Anyway, after weeks of hounding, I finally broke down and decided to list a couple of items on Amazon on a whim.

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and the results were immediate. Within eight days, we sold out of our initial inventory of 60 units as a completely brand new seller and sales continued to rise. In our very first month of selling on Amazon, we made almost $3,000 selling just three products. A month later, we were doing over 5K a month, and today Amazon represents about 15 to 20 % of our business revenue. Now, while these numbers are still a relatively small fraction of what we make with our own online store, it’s definitely on the radar screen. And what’s surprising,

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is that our online store sales are up for the exact same products that we have on Amazon. Clearly there’s a halo effect going on here. Anyway, it just goes to show that sometimes you need a bit of external pressure to get yourself off your butt, which is why it’s extremely important to associate yourself with like-minded people on your entrepreneurship journey. All right, one more story and I promise to tie everything together. This last story involves my friend Grant Baldwin. Grant runs a speakerlab.com where he teaches other people how to do public speaking.

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And what he does for a living isn’t important. What is important is how he helped double my revenue. Now I want to say the year was 2015. Again, my memory is a little fuzzy, but that year I think I made around $400,000 a year selling my online course. And for all of you who don’t know this, I run a class that teaches people how to sell online over at profitableonlinestore.com. Anyway, I was chatting with Grant one day and our conversation started gravitating towards business.

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So we shared with each other how much we were making and how, and basically our business strategies. How are we selling our courses? And at the time, again, I was super proud of how I was selling my online course on autopilot. Sales were coming in every day on autopilot through my email mini course. And many of you guys listening are probably on this mini course. In case you aren’t, go over to mywaifkudojob.com slash free. Anyway, I kind of boasted that my free six day mini course was better than some people’s paid classes.

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And Grant, you know, he patiently listened to my story, congratulated me for my sales numbers that year, and then he dropped an atomic bomb. He was making 5X what I was making, selling a more obscure course that cost nearly 50 % less than mine did. And his email list was much smaller than mine as well. Right. So how did he do it? He was giving live webinars or presentations every single week and making like 30 to 50 K a pop.

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every time he presented something online and I was flabbergasted. Not only did Grant tell me his numbers, but he emailed me his spreadsheets outlining exactly how much revenue each webinar made and how we tweaked his presentations each time to improve his conversion rate. And when he told me this, he basically gave me his entire playbook. And when he gave all this to me, I was intrigued, but I was also terrified at the same time because at the time,

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I was deathly afraid of giving live presentations online. I was afraid that I’d hit the live button, go live with nothing to say. In fact, I still sometimes feel that way today. But once again, like Lars, Grant emailed me to check up on me. And it wasn’t anything major, like it’s not like he called me or anything. He just dropped a quick text, like, hey Steve, did you go live yet? Or, hey Steve, try this, I guarantee you it’ll work. And you know,

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Again, I dragged my feet. And so I think that final text that broke the camel’s back was he sent a text that said, hey, Steve, I just made 35K in 60 minutes. Do you want 35K in 60 minutes? And it finally worked. Now, as an engineer, I wanted to be prepared. So I watched all of Grant’s webinars and other presentations from top influencers online. Basically, I studied in excruciating detail over 15 webinars in the span of a week.

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and picked and chose which elements to incorporate into my own performance. And I also consulted with my friend Tony, who you all pretty much know, who was instrumental in helping me get my performance down pat. Now, everyone has a different style and a different strategy. Some people talk about themselves for 45 minutes, building up their authority and credibility, and only provide 15 minutes of useful content. Other people talk about their success stories for the bulk of their talk and tease their audience in a whine to learn more about how they did it.

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And some people just give one long motivational speech, get the crowd super excited about their program. And to be honest with you, all these strategies work, but you know, I’m not good at any of that stuff. I hate talking about myself. I’m not good at teasing people about offers and I’m not exactly a motivational speaker here. So for my webinar, I decided to just give away as much information as possible in a 60 minute span. And it didn’t hold back at all and taught some of my best strategies in my talk. And it worked.

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In the course of just 90 minutes, I made over $60,000 in my very first webinar. And once I added webinars into my mix, I hit the million dollar mark with my business just one year later. So you’re probably thinking to yourself right now, where can you meet your Andrew Udarian, your Lars Hunley or your Grant Baldwin? Now I met each and every one of these people at a live event. And here’s the thing, chances are your local friends are not doing the same things as you want to do.

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When I started my online store, none of my friends were in e-commerce. All of my close friends here in California are doctors, lawyers, engineers, and they couldn’t relate to anything that I was doing at all. So I I felt kind of lonely. But when you attend a conference, everyone is doing the same thing as you. And when you get that experience, it’s magical. All of a sudden, you don’t feel crazy anymore. All of a sudden, you can talk freely about marketing and sales without worrying about boring anyone.

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And this is exactly the reason why I started my own event, The Seller Summit, back in 2016, and I’ve been running it ever since. Seller Summit’s a conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And you’ve been listening to my podcast long enough now to know that I don’t tolerate any fluff. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business.

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I also keep my events small and intimate because, you know, personally, I hate large events. If you’re anything like me, you probably feel massive anxiety walking into a large group of people you don’t know, but it’s not like that in my event. Every year we cut off ticket sales at 200 people and we always sell out way in advance. Now remember that first mastermind where I grew my online store by 30 %? Well, we also run masterminds at seller summit as well. We split up into groups of 10, lock ourselves in a room and cater in food and just let the magic happen.

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Anyway, I don’t want to turn this episode into a sales pitch for Seller Summit, but I do want to say that meeting other like-minded entrepreneurs face to face is guaranteed to change your life. I have friends and attendees like Natalie Mounter, who met her mastermind group at Seller Summit 2017, and she’s been meeting with them ever since, and they’re now all good friends. I met Lars, Andrew, and Grant, and my business partner, Tony, at events, and to be upfront, I would not be where I am today without them.

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There’s this cliche that you’re the sum of your five closest friends and cliches exist for a reason because they’re 100 % true. In any case, my next event is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on May 23rd to the 25th over at SellersSummit.com. Let’s hang out in person and I can 100 % guarantee you that you’ll learn a lot and you’ll make a bunch of new friends who may become your future Andrew Udarians, your future Lars Hunleys or your future Grant Baldwins.

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Hope you enjoyed that episode and I was serious. Starting any business is a lonely process and having others around you doing the same things as you is liberating. For more information about this episode, go to mywebcoderjob.com slash episode 443. And once again, I want to remind you that my annual e-commerce conference will be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on May 23rd to May 25th of 2023. I really want to hang out with you in person this year, so let’s meet up. Go to sellersummit.com. That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com.

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I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for ecommerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash dv. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv. Now, I talk about how I these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course.

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Just type in your email and it’ll send the course right away. Thanks for listening.