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The 90-Minute Massage That Cost Him Half a Million · eCommerce Podcast

0:04
Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson. And
0:08
of course, it is great to be with you today, as it is every time we record a
0:14
podcast here on the show. And today is no exception. A very warm welcome to
0:19
wherever you are in the world. I'm based in Liverpool, England. For those of you
0:24
who don't know me, have not listened to the show before, I also run my own e-com
0:29
businesses. I've been doing it since 2002, which makes me a bit of an e-com
0:33
dinosaur. That's normally what I tell people. I've been around a while and I
0:39
just love doing this show because on the show I get to talk to experts and
0:41
founders about their insights, about their own stories in ecommerce. And I, like
0:47
you, get to learn from them so I can make my own ecommerce business run better.
0:52
And this year, let me tell you, if I was to If I was to put together the value
0:57
of the advice that I've got, I wonder whether I'd be hitting a million now,
1:03
based on what we've seen in our own business. I, I don't know. It's an
1:10
interesting question that I don't have the answer to, but it's close. Yours
1:15
might not be quite the same, but certainly as we've seen a lot of value from
1:18
this show, so I do love doing it. If you want to know more about the show, if it
1:22
is your first time with us, check out the website ecommercepodcast.net. You can
1:24
find a whole archive of episodes there. You'll also be able to find the notes
1:30
from today's conversation with Jayden. Any links, any stuff that he mentions
1:35
will go in those show notes and you can get those for free on the website at
1:38
ecommercepodcast.net, where incidentally, you can sign up to the newsletter and
1:44
have all of this stuff wing its way to your inbox automagically every week like
1:50
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what you get. That's what you sign up for. Before, but it's all great value
2:00
included in that newsletter. By the way, the email is a little thin, this a new
2:05
section. If you're on the newsletter, you'll see it's called SAM. And we give
2:09
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2:21
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2:25
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2:29
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get SAM yourself, check out ecommercepodcast.net. It's all on there. Yes, it is.
2:47
So without further ado, Jayden, welcome to the show, man. How are we doing?
2:54
Yeah, good, thank you. Thanks very much for having me. No problem. I'm looking
2:57
forward to the conversation, uh, as always. Uh, we always do this thing, the
3:01
pre-call, where we talk to each other before we do the podcast recording. Uh,
3:05
the pre-call is great. We find out a bit about each other. Mainly we want to
3:09
find out if we actually want you on the show. I'm glad I'm here then. Yeah,
3:13
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so since the pre-call, you know, you go, well,
3:18
if we— if actually we, we've agreed that this is going to be a good thing, then,
3:23
um, I always look forward to it. In fact, we have this thing, uh, now thanks to
3:27
AI. Whenever someone applies to be on the show, um, I don't know if I mentioned
3:32
this to you actually on the call, but, uh, we get a full, like, 3 or 4 page
3:37
research document, which AI does, uh, on all our guests. And AI scores our
3:42
guests, um, in terms of fit. You were 17 out of 18. You'd be pleased to know.
3:48
The classic out of 18 scorecard that you score. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
3:56
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'll be honest, I was a bit disappointed when you said
3:58
17 because I'm thinking out of 20, okay, out of 100, I'm really not happy. But
4:03
out of 18, I'll take that. Take that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take that. So you scored
4:08
very well. So anyway, all of that said, welcome to the show. It's great to have
4:12
you on. Thanks for coming on. Now, for those that don't know you, just give us
4:15
the sort of the brief elevator pitch of who Jayden is. Yeah. So 4 years ago,
4:21
Jayden was someone working at Sky, which certainly your British listeners will
4:25
know of. But for those that don't, part of NBC, Comcast, one of those kind of
4:29
big corporate giants, pretty miserable doing it, even though it's a great
4:34
employer and looked after me fantastically. I'd been there my whole working
4:37
career, a couple of 10 years. And so took a big plunge, started building an
4:42
ecommerce business alongside that. Very risk-averse person, so I did it
4:46
alongside the job for about a year, built that first store which was selling
4:50
high-ticket garden products, and that was from UK manufacturers. And yeah,
4:56
essentially it grew very quickly, got to about 7 figures in the first year,
5:01
which got me out the job and my wife as well. And then from there it's been a
5:05
bit of a whirlwind from continuing to grow that to having a bit of a mental
5:08
breakdown and therefore taking an exit that looks great on paper. Sounds
5:12
awesome. Yeah, sold for half a million after a couple of years, but that was a
5:16
bit of a veiled, okay, I've burnt myself out to the point that I had to give my,
5:20
my baby away to a private fund. Yeah. And then building a couple more from there
5:25
and learning as I go. So yeah, that's the, the last 4 years in 5 sentences. It's
5:32
a heck of a 5 years, dude. I mean, you packed a lot in. Yeah, it's been, it's
5:36
been brilliant. It's been higher highs than I ever had in the job, obviously
5:41
more stressed than I ever had. The fact that I look back and laugh now to think
5:44
that I was ever stressed in my 9-to-5 job, um, because— but also the fulfilment
5:50
of what I'm working on now versus that is also— yeah, different. So, and I'm
5:54
also pretty proud of the self-development journey. I'm sure all of your
5:58
listeners who are entrepreneurs will agree that whilst it's a corny thing to
6:01
say, like, the growth of yourself as a person is probably more satisfying than
6:06
that of your businesses. But yeah, I'm pretty proud of the growth in both. Yeah,
6:10
that's a fair comment. And it's one of those things with the— I think when you
6:14
undertake the entrepreneurial journey is you, you do sit there and you listen to
6:19
people talk about stress in their job and you just think, oh wow, if only you
6:23
knew what I go through every day running my own company. Not that it ever comes
6:28
out of your mouth. I mean, it's not like I'm trying to win one up on who's the
6:31
most stressed. Um, who has the most stressing in life? But it is the fulfilment
6:36
side of things, isn't it? It's the contentment, it's the, um, it's the ability
6:41
maybe to live life by a different set of rules. I think you still— you fight. I
6:45
think you work harder than you would in a job, but it is by a different set of
6:50
rules, right? That was one of the big things that, uh, left me kind of
6:55
demotivated in my job was I kind of worked out that what success meant in my job
7:00
was actually just what a couple of people, or a handful of people, thought about
7:04
me. Um, so it was a case of if the few people that mattered most to my career,
7:10
um, were impressed with me in the couple of hours per week I spent in front of
7:14
them, then things went well. Um, yeah, which makes it sound really easy. It's
7:20
like, well, just game the system and just enjoy that. But actually, that's not
7:24
very fulfilling to think actually what I do for 38 out of the 40 hours per week
7:29
is kind of irrelevant as long as I don't really annoy anyone or screw anything
7:34
up. And it's just how I show up for those 2 hours. And for me, that was like,
7:39
okay, on the one hand, it's quite liberating and I could have quite an easy life
7:43
here, but I kind of decided that an easy life didn't sound that fulfilling. Um,
7:47
and it was just, I had a holiday with my, my wife that I was excited for about a
7:52
year, and we took 2 weeks, and then I kind of thought, great, I'll be so excited
7:56
and refreshed to go back. And I was— it was like a mental breakdown in terms of,
8:01
wait, so is this just the next 40 years now? I do 50 weeks to earn 2, and then I
8:06
kind of go again. Or I really got to that place where I was just like marking
8:10
the calendar on when was the next respite from this, and that was when I was
8:13
like, okay, something has to change. I have to accept, yeah, the greater
8:16
stresses and, you know, some of the greater burdens that come with it in order
8:20
to, as you say, live life by different set of rules, which— and now I'm, I would
8:24
say, psychologically unemployable. The idea of now going back to, to a job is,
8:28
is unthinkable for me. Yeah, you do laugh, don't you? I, I do, uh, I do wonder
8:34
every now and again what it would be like to employ me. I think I would be a
8:37
nightmare. I think I'd be an absolute unmitigated nightmare to employ. I, you
8:43
know, I, I never say never, but I, I, like you, I— well, I, I've, I've run my
8:49
business maybe a little bit longer. I, I guess we're coming up for Oh, jeez, we
8:53
must be coming up for 30 years when it— almost 28, 29 years now. Um, so you kind
8:58
of think, well, yeah, this is, um, it kind of makes you who you are a little
9:02
bit. Um, and yeah, an easy life is not necessarily a fulfilling life, which is
9:08
ironic because I think a lot of entrepreneurs do what they do because of the
9:13
dream of the sales to get the easy life, right? So it's the, I want to build
9:18
this company, I want to sell it, I want to get my million bucks or whatever it
9:22
is so I can get a house on the beach, a yacht, and just have people bring me
9:25
margaritas all day, every day, or whatever the vision is that people have for
9:28
their lives. Um, only to find out when you get there, actually, that's not what
9:32
you really want. 100%. Yeah, no, I agree. I think— but I actually think that's
9:39
kind of liberating because I think if it was that, you would just chase an end
9:43
state, get there. Yeah. And then, or probably, to be honest, not get there
9:47
because you actually have to make a really large amount of money. To, uh, have
9:51
the yacht and sit on them. Yes, a long, long life. Um, but even if you could
9:55
make, you know, that insane money, I think there's very few people who could do
10:00
all the work to get there, enjoy all the fulfilment of ticking off all the
10:03
different kind of goals and milestones on that, and then go, right, I'm never
10:06
going to do anything. I, I think if I— if you told me tomorrow I have to stop
10:10
working and I can't work on businesses, I can't do any— I can't do charity work,
10:13
I can't do anything, I would probably just become one of those people who does,
10:16
you know, Ironmans and speaks 12 languages and whatever. So I would just swap it
10:19
for a different type type of addiction that also comes with sacrifice, right? So
10:25
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, you kind of have to buy into the idea that obviously
10:29
there's the times where you want to sit on the beach, right, and, and reap the
10:32
enjoyment of the, of the work you've done. But I think you kind of— part of the
10:37
fun is in the, in the work and the journey as well. I totally agree. And
10:41
actually, I think that the, the thing that I've realised over the years, it's—
10:45
whilst I think it's good to have a vision, it's good to have a goal, and it's,
10:47
you know, to try and achieve something and, and, and to understand growth and
10:51
what growth means for you, and your business. The thing that I've realised is
10:57
actually the lifestyle— I don't have a yacht, don't get me wrong, I don't want a
11:00
yacht, but the lifestyle that I was chasing, I can live in some respects now
11:08
whilst I still run my business if I run it in a smart way, right? It's not like
11:13
I need to sell up to get that goal. And I think that's quite liberating in many
11:19
ways that you get to a place in business where you can go, Actually, no, it's
11:24
not what I'm chasing. It's what, what this affords me, what I can, what I can do
11:28
now. Um, and it's that relative freedom just to go, well, actually, like last
11:34
week I went, um, to the, uh, to Aberafon, uh, which is sort of a site in
11:41
Caernarfon, the North Wales, uh, North Wales sort of peninsula. And I was, I was
11:45
up there just for 2 days. I needed to get some work done. I thought, why, it's 2
11:48
hours from Liverpool. I've got a van, um, I can camp in it. It's got a Starlink,
11:53
it'll be quiet, it's got its own private beach, beautiful place. And it's the
11:58
ability to go, actually, this is— I, I'm living what a lot of people want at
12:02
this point, right? Absolutely, 100%. Um, yeah, and I think I do have to check
12:08
myself sometimes because we, we actually had this last week, me and my business
12:12
partner. Um, one of our stores, uh, has done really well this year in terms of
12:17
revenue, but it's fallen probably about 5% short of where, where we wanted it to
12:21
be. For net profitability. So we've got some stuff to overcome. And we were both
12:27
kind of going through a little bit of the disappointment in that because we
12:30
were— we'd done a tremendous amount of work to go up to that point. And we were
12:33
saying, oh, it's very frustrating that we've missed by, you know, a not
12:38
insignificant number where we wanted to be in terms of net profitability. And
12:41
then we kind of had to check ourselves and say, you know what, we've still come
12:45
a really long way. We've taken a massive chunk of where we need— you know, we
12:48
know what's between us and that number now because there's these things we have
12:51
to solve. To make up that difference in margin. And actually, ultimately, if it
12:55
takes us 6 months longer to get there, you know, bills are paid, we're both
12:59
working for ourselves, we both get to do— we both manage to engineer the work we
13:04
do as well to be a good portion of what we actually enjoy. Probably flipped it
13:09
from doing 80% of stuff that we don't enjoy and 20% we do, to the inverse. And,
13:13
you know, there's always stuff you don't want to do, but we've certainly got the
13:16
majority of stuff that we enjoy and fulfils us. And so we had to kind of say,
13:20
you know what, if we want to take a holiday, we can do it relatively
13:23
stress-free. We built the team that can look after things. We didn't have that 2
13:26
years ago. We struggled to take leave and switch off, for example. So that's a
13:30
big win. If one of our family members or whatever needs us, we can just, you
13:35
know, at the drop of a hat say, right, we're not going to work for the next few
13:38
days, and just do that. Because sometimes things come up, and those are massive
13:41
wins. So sometimes you just get so intent on chasing the next set of goalposts
13:46
that you set for yourself that you forget how far you've come versus the
13:47
previous of yourself. Yeah. And I do think peaks and troughs are nice as well.
13:52
Like sometimes I want to be in a phase where I work a lot, and I'm, I'm actually
13:56
happy to do that, and I enjoy that routine. And then sometimes I'm in a phase
14:00
where I just want to put my feet up, but I don't really want either all the
14:03
time. I think I really enjoy the ability to kind of— and we try and work in that
14:07
way. We try and work in sprints, so we'll set a short-term set of goals and work
14:11
to get there, and then maybe have a slightly more relaxed period after that.
14:14
That's a really interesting way of doing it. Um, the sprints idea. And I, I've,
14:22
I've sort of followed similar protocol in the sense that you'd say have— I don't
14:26
know how long your sprints are for, Jayden, but let's say you have a, a 3-week
14:29
sprint every month and then you have 1 week where it's a little bit quieter and
14:33
you can catch up with yourself. Um, I tend to like, I tend to like that rhythm
14:38
of the sort of the 1 quiet week every month. Um, but I, I, I guess I'm curious
14:43
because, you know, you build an ecommerce business, you sold it, not for a
14:46
massive amount of cash, but not an insignificant amount of cash. Um, and then
14:51
you, you obviously have this sort of, this breakdown, and you've rebuilt, uh,
14:56
your second— or you've, you know, you've built your second business, not
14:59
rebuilt, but you've built your second business. Um, what are you taking into
15:04
this second build that you wish you'd knew in the first one, knowing what you
15:08
sort of, you've been through? What are the, the boundaries, I suppose? What are
15:12
the protocols, if we want to get fancy terminology. Um, you know, what are the
15:17
things that you've got in place? Yeah, for sure. So, so with the first business,
15:21
what caused the kind of burnout and the breakdown was the fact that I focused
15:27
entirely on the marketing engine, the, the demand, the sales. And that was
15:32
largely born out of firstly financial anxiety. I was— it was a fast growth
15:37
trajectory, which was fantastic, but it's also very intimidating because you're
15:42
then terrified, especially when you're only 1 year, 18 months in, of it being
15:45
taken away. Yeah. Um, so there was that. And also, me and my wife, we were
15:50
fortunate, we both had good corporate jobs, which meant that, you know,
15:53
naturally, like, lifestyle inflates. And so the amount of money we needed to
15:57
rely on from the business was not insignificant either. We probably needed about
16:01
$10K a month to come out of the business. So, you know, there's— it's a
16:05
reasonable sum only 18 months into the trajectory of that business, right? So
16:09
there was a lot of financial anxiety there, to the point where I wanted to have
16:13
at least 30 or 50% above where we needed to be regularly, so that I didn't have
16:19
to start running my business in a way that became very kind of short-term. I
16:23
don't think financially stressed people and financially scarce people tend to
16:28
make the best business owners. So I really tried to kind of push the business as
16:32
hard as possible. And then also, I think that's my background, that's what I'm
16:35
good at, that's what I enjoy. So, you know, you naturally lean into more of
16:38
where your skill set is, which happened to be that sort of marketing are
16:42
marketing and demand, and therefore all the way through to conversion side of
16:46
things. What I am not very good at and what I don't enjoy is what happens after
16:51
the, the sale, basically. And so you keep doing this, this, this, this, this
16:56
with the demand, and the gap between what the business is doing and what the
17:02
business can realistically sustain just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I
17:07
just keep trying to compensate for that gap by just doing more work and just
17:11
trying to continually roll my sleeves up rather than finding systems, processes,
17:16
hires, all that sort of thing. Again, kind of plays into the whole financial
17:20
anxiety. Well, if I've added 5K a month to the net profitability, I can either
17:24
hire someone for 3K a month to support with that, or I can take that in my back
17:28
pocket and feel better about the fact that the bills will definitely be paid and
17:31
just work an extra 20 hours a week. At some point that became completely
17:35
unsustainable. Yeah. Um, So it sounds a bit like a funny story, but me and my
17:41
wife, we got, we got married and we had abroad weddings. We had a UK ceremony,
17:45
and after that we— this was about 2 years into the business, so I was pretty
17:49
cooked at this point. And because we wanted to celebrate and mark the day, we
17:53
just had a little spa day after the UK ceremony. Um, and so I was having a
17:58
massage, 90-minute massage, and for me at this time that was like hell because
18:02
it was 90 minutes in silence with my own thoughts, thinking about all the
18:06
liabilities that exist. Yeah, all things I'm stressed about, worried about.
18:11
Yeah, all the hires that I'm frustrated that I've done a poor job training or a
18:15
poor job hiring, onboarding, etc. And I came out of it and I just, I remember I
18:19
just sat down there and said, I, I need this to sell, um, because I just, I just
18:24
thought about everything I need to do to get from here to where the business
18:29
needs to be to actually sustainably support what we've done in terms of growth.
18:34
And the idea of doing that work just, I was like, I've just I haven't got the
18:38
mental headspace for it. Um, and so even though I think we probably left, well,
18:45
a significant amount of money on the table, I think it would have been very
18:47
realistic to expect a 7-figure exit if I'd have been able to do that work and
18:51
probably stay on for another 18 months maybe. And so if you think about it, you
18:56
know, to give up probably half a million quid for 18 months' work is, is not
19:01
ideal. Yeah. Um, but I was willing to do it because I just didn't think I had
19:07
the capability to do that work based on where my mental state was. And so even
19:10
though the exit, in my mind anyway, versus the potential of the business felt
19:17
semi-modest, and I still have to remind myself that you'd have absolutely taken
19:21
a half million pound exit 2 and a half years in when you started this business
19:24
alongside your job. So I mustn't be too, you know, downbeat on it. But also,
19:28
luckily, looking back on it, to get back to your original question, in. Uh, they
19:32
made me stay on for 6 months, the fund that bought it. Fair enough, because I
19:36
created a massive owner's liability because I hadn't systematised what happened.
19:40
And actually, that was what— it was painful because imagine, you know, just
19:44
desperately wanting to run this business and having to stay on, indentured
19:47
servitude sort of thing. But luckily, the business that bought my business, I
19:52
would say, were experts in the complete opposite of what I was. And so they were
19:56
very, very good at the operations, the systems, how everything works, because
20:00
their whole system is to buy businesses and plug them into this existing team.
20:04
So they basically showed me how they took all these things that made my business
20:08
tick and give them to the right teams, departments, build the processes with me,
20:13
basically pulled everything out of my head and into an operating model. And that
20:17
is essentially what I've taken into this new business. I kind of feel confident
20:21
in my ability to build the demand, the conversions, all that sort of thing. And
20:26
now I feel like they've at least given me the tools to know how I then take that
20:30
and distill that out into a team that can support it. So that is why I would say
20:34
this second business, Camper Nation, is kind of enjoying all the similar growth
20:39
curves in terms of, um, you know, demand generation and revenue, but is actually
20:43
doing it in a sustainable fashion, which is a massive— in terms of the longevity
20:47
of this business, is huge. Yeah, it's really fascinating. Um, I, I guess that
20:53
you, by the time you do it the second time, you, you bring all the lessons you
20:56
learn from the first time, right? And so you're doing it in a much more
20:59
sustainable fashion. What are some of the things then that are non-negotiable
21:03
for you in terms of having this sustainable business, uh, and sustainable
21:08
lifestyle? So one thing for me is I, I hate doing, um, customer service, uh, you
21:16
know, sales or post-fulfilment stuff. So that's like one non-negotiable for me
21:20
is I, I don't touch that. And I therefore— because that's a very easy thing to
21:24
cling on to, in my opinion. That's one of the reasons. And I I personally,
21:28
whilst I believe that if you're an ecommerce business owner you have to accept
21:32
that customer service and good customer service is part of your business model,
21:35
um, is something that drains me. So that's one non-negotiable for me as a
21:39
business owner, is I have to completely trust the team to manage that. Um, I—
21:45
it's also a non-negotiable because I know that how to— you, you always think as
21:50
the business owner you can do things better, right? But the extent to which I
21:54
can better support a customer who's looking to buy or who has bought versus one
21:58
of my team I'm honestly probably at the point where they are better than me, but
22:01
even if I'm being my most arrogant business owner self, there's a very small
22:04
gap. But yeah, I would all— I would like to think the leverage I can create when
22:08
it comes to building the marketing engine, whether it be inside the ad account,
22:13
whether it be, you know, looking at our SEO strategies, whether it be looking at
22:16
how we're going to pull growth levers there, I would like to think that that's
22:21
my biggest gap between, you know, if you kind of say someone you would hire and
22:25
me. So like, that's One non-negotiable is that I spend as much of my time there
22:30
because that's where the biggest return on my time investment comes. And then
22:35
the other kind of non-negotiable that we have is that we are really, really
22:39
strict with, um, kind of the 80/20 of our business on a regular basis. So we try
22:46
and make— like, we, we have just— and to be clear, just to give context to
22:50
listeners, we work in a kind of domestic high-ticket kind of I'm hesitant to say
22:54
dropshipping because it's very, very different in terms of the business and what
22:57
people associate with that business model. Sure. But in essence, we retail on
23:01
behalf of other brands. Yeah. And so because of that, we hold very little stock,
23:06
um, and therefore we can pivot very, very quickly. So we really try and use that
23:10
advantage. On Camper Nation, we've literally just stopped selling our second
23:14
best-selling brand, uh, which feels uncomfortable, but we mandate that we have
23:20
these decisions because it was one of the big Uh, it has by far the worst
23:25
relationship between team time and profitability, even though in terms of
23:31
revenue value we sell a lot on behalf of them because they're very difficult,
23:35
because they have a reasonably high return rate. And by difficult I mean they're
23:38
complex, they take a lot of support for the customers, therefore sometimes it's
23:41
wrong. And so actually once you kind of look at that relationship between
23:46
profitability and how much the team is spending, and so we've made that. And so
23:49
we, we— another non-negotiable is we make sometimes difficult but very, very,
23:55
um, kind of brutal decisions where we need to, to really try and funnel into the
23:59
80/20 of the business, and always with kind of profitability and scalability in
24:03
mind rather than, you know, kind of vanity metrics like revenue. That's really
24:08
interesting. What I'm listening to you talk, um, about your two non-negotiables,
24:13
actually what you're doing, um, the, the first one you know, where you, you're
24:19
in effect understanding what drains you and what your strengths are and playing
24:22
to your strengths, right? How do you avoid stress? You play to your strengths,
24:26
okay? Because that's where you find your mojo. How you avoid stress— you're
24:29
going to get stressed. I think how you have the ability maybe to deal with
24:34
stress better is if the stress is in an area where you feel competent and, and
24:40
good, and this is your field, right? This is what you do. Um, I always remember
24:46
when I used to be, uh, on the ambos years ago, um, you'd get off an ambulance
24:52
and people would be all kinds of stressed, and I'd be under the same stress, but
24:55
it was a good stress, and I actually enjoyed it because I'm like, I know what
24:59
I'm doing here, right? This is, this is good. Um, and the second thing, you're
25:06
actually removing the stress out of the suppliers. So this actually, this
25:10
supplier here is stressful right? So yes, is the— we, we— and, and, and bad
25:15
stress is there's a lot of aggravation from this product or a lot of involvement
25:20
and not so much of a return on reward. Um, so I guess my question is, listening
25:29
to you talk about those two things, are these two things then that you didn't do
25:34
in your first business and that's what resulted in the burnout? Maybe Yeah, not,
25:39
not even close, to be perfectly honest. Um, I would say on my first business,
25:44
the first thing was I never really had the headspace to step back and do this.
25:48
So that, to begin with, is massive. I feel like in, in this current business, I
25:52
behave much closer— I'm not, I'm not going to pretend I'm doing it perfectly by
25:56
any means— but much closer to a business owner. And therefore, I'm able to so
26:01
much more frequently sit in that seat of Okay, what, what direction should we be
26:07
going in? What— where are we not getting the right rewards? And I think I'm
26:10
still just close enough to the team to understand, or at the very least have a
26:14
good enough relationship with the team to be able to understand on the
26:18
day-to-day what's— even if it's not abundantly clear in the numbers— what's
26:22
sapping us, what is taking a disproportionate amount of time, resource, energy,
26:27
and then what is really working. And we, we're trying to be much, much better at
26:34
just doing as much as we can before we hit a constraint of things that are
26:38
working, rather than trying to go as broad as possible in order to find more
26:43
things that might work. So we try and just go, you know, we, we know on Camper
26:48
Nation our entire business model is built around— we have a very, very clear set
26:55
of keywords that are long tail enough and commercial enough that they are very,
27:01
very high buying intent, and we just try and dominate those both paid and
27:05
organically. And then we put a huge amount of emphasis on lead magnets and
27:11
leads. I think that the value— also, we, we are high ticket, so we're dealing
27:15
with less transactions, so we can, to an extent, a little bit. But one of our
27:18
most important metrics in the whole business is percentage of traffic to lead
27:22
conversion rate rather than traffic to purchase conversion rate. And that is
27:26
because we know our on-site conversion is, is pretty, uh, I wouldn't say poor,
27:32
but most people would look at it— we convert about 0.3, 0.4%, right? Um, which,
27:37
you know, most people will pull a benchmark of maybe 1 or 2% in ecommerce,
27:42
right? Now luckily, we— our SEO and paid advertising efforts are strong, we get
27:47
a good amount of traffic, and our average order value is very high, it's about
27:51
£2,000. So ultimately we're still able to do well over £100K at 0.3% conversion
27:56
rate. But we know that because of the fact that our purchase is a high ticket,
28:02
they take a lot to get the customer over the line. We know that our conversion
28:06
rate is always going to be low, and traditional conversion rate optimisation can
28:10
help with that. But what we have found moves the needle massively is
28:16
relationship with the customer. By that I mean getting them into our ecosystem
28:22
and then building the right kind of touch points that exist in that ecosystem.
28:26
So for example, someone wants to buy an awning for their vehicle, and they've
28:31
got a camper, sort of like you were saying, you went down to the beach that you
28:33
work in, and they want to buy an awning to go off the side so they can have some
28:37
shade, or they can have a tent to sleep in off the side, whatever, right? We
28:41
always try and look at, okay, what are the biggest things that are between—
28:43
they're on our product page looking at that— what are the biggest things between
28:47
them and being able to pull the trigger and purchase that with confidence. And
28:51
then essentially we just try and build all our lead magnets around solving those
28:54
issues. So it— one thing that really stresses them out is, is it going to be the
28:58
right size for my vehicle? Is it going to be compatible? Or am I going to order
29:01
this, get on my trip, and find out, you know, it doesn't work properly? Yeah,
29:04
yeah. So just really simple: give us your registration, give us your vehicle
29:09
type, and we'll just give you a list of products that you can guarantee are
29:12
compatible. Then we do some risk reversal that if it doesn't if it doesn't fit
29:15
for whatever reason, we're going to sort it all out. We'll get you the right one
29:18
out, we'll pay for the return shipping, all that sort of thing. To be honest, we
29:21
have such a— we do so many of these that we kind of know we're going to get it
29:24
wrong so infrequently, but it's there for the risk reversal. Now what I see
29:30
often is people, right, they've been on page, they want to buy, right? Now let's
29:35
essentially hammer them with the more traditional— let's show them the awning
29:38
again and again, show them the fact that they left it at check out, all that
29:41
sort of thing. But if they don't feel confident that awning is right for their
29:43
vehicle, no matter how many times you bombard them with the product and more
29:47
traditional remarketing, they are never going to get to the point where they're
29:51
ready to purchase. And we're a retailer, so people can buy this same product
29:55
elsewhere, right? So we don't really want to compete on price or other things
30:00
like that. What we want to compete on is, uh, depth of relationship with the
30:03
customer. So every time we solve a customer issue we get another level of depth
30:10
of relationship with that customer. We're more memorable to them. Yeah, their
30:14
desire to come back to us is higher because we've helped them along that
30:16
journey. So that's, that's something we're absolutely massive on. And I do fear
30:20
that I've gone on a tangent away from the original question here. Can you help
30:23
me remind what I was— no, no, this is, this is perfect because you've actually,
30:26
and you've answered my question that I was going to ask, ask you, um, when you
30:30
start talking about lead magnets, because the Like you say, the standard route
30:33
for ecommerce is I have a product, I'm gonna do a really great product page, you
30:37
will buy the product, and I will measure how many people go on that page, how
30:40
many people buy the product from that page. That's my conversion rate, and I
30:43
will know if I'm winning or losing based on that, right? And if I can increase
30:48
that conversion rate, I'm doing well. I like the pivot that you have done, which
30:51
says actually sometimes that's fine if you're selling a $10 widget, right? But
30:58
your average order value is $2 grand, an awning, let's say, is £1,000. I don't
31:03
know how much they are off the top of my head, but I'm guessing they're gonna be
31:05
about— everything's £1,000 these days, right? So let's say it's about a grand.
31:10
Well, that's a very different purchase journey that you're gonna go on, right?
31:17
It just is. And so understanding that customer journey, I think, is genius. And
31:22
I love the fact you've pivoted towards focusing on your lead That's very
31:26
marketing, right? That's very, we understand there's a journey, let's deal with
31:33
that journey and be the best people at doing that. I always draw out, Jayden, on
31:39
a board when I'm with people, a quadrant. So on the horizontal axis, you have
31:45
trust, and on the vertical axis, you have knowledge. And so, and that gives you
31:50
4 quadrants. Right? So you have customers in the bottom quadrants, the bottom
31:56
left quadrant, where they have no knowledge of what it is they need or the
31:59
problem they're trying to solve, and they have no trust in you, right? These are
32:04
almost impossible to convert to anything. Um, and then on the far right, you've
32:08
got clients, uh, visitors to your site who are both high trust— they know you,
32:14
they trust you, they've purchased from you before— but they're also high
32:17
knowledge. They know exactly what it is they need to solve their problem.
32:20
They're your best clients. They're always going to be your best clients, they're
32:22
always going to have highest lifetime value, right? But the clients where you
32:28
can really make a difference are the clients where there's either low knowledge
32:34
or low trust. So if they know what they want but they don't really trust you
32:38
yet, how do we build trust? But I love how you're working on this idea that
32:43
actually you, you're a bit unsure. So knowledge is low and trust in us is also a
32:49
bit low. So we're going to onboard you with these, uh, lead magnets, and we're
32:56
going to build that relationship where we build your knowledge so you're going
32:59
to choose the right awning, and we're going to build that trust by giving you
33:03
this guarantee, and we're going to show you reviews, and when it goes wrong,
33:07
we're going to give you an incredible customer service. So the next time you
33:10
want to buy something that's going to cost a grand, you're going to come back to
33:12
us without any drama whatsoever. I think it's a genius business move. It must
33:16
be. Do you find— I say it must be. I'm kind of curious. Do you get tempted to
33:23
veer off it? Because the reason I ask it is because it's a longer journey,
33:28
right? It's a little bit more nuanced than the standard route. 100%. And also,
33:35
we find me and my business partner on Camper Nation, we bang on about lead
33:40
magnets and the importance of them all the time. Um, and it is one of the
33:44
things— so we have a community where we teach other business owners who have
33:48
very similar businesses, and we teach them all sorts, from our SEO strategies
33:51
and what's working there, ads, lead magnets, conversion, whatever, right? And we
33:56
consistently get the least interest if we run a workshop on lead magnets versus
34:01
ads. We will get such lower attendance on the lead magnets. Yeah, because it's
34:05
not sexy. And people's idea, in my opinion, of ecommerce sometimes— and I'm sure
34:10
this isn't the case with you because you've been it from probably even like when
34:14
maybe even direct mail was still like a thing. Oh yes, yeah. So yeah, you kind
34:19
of know the principles that stay true without it. And I think if you start to
34:23
see ecommerce as, okay, I basically just— I get to sit behind a screen and kind
34:28
of act like a pilot who just sort of turns knobs and then suddenly, you know,
34:32
conversion rate goes up a bit and traffic goes up a bit— there are elements of
34:35
that, but there are still kind of business fundamentals and And that is, I
34:40
think, why lead magnets aren't very sexy. But yeah, what they do to your bottom
34:45
line is, is very, very sexy. So it's a shame because I think sometimes people
34:49
don't give them the respect they deserve. But someone who I'd massively
34:52
recommend is George Bryant, is a marketer who speaks— George has been on the
34:56
show. Yeah, yeah. Oh really? I love his approach to, yeah, this sort of thing.
35:01
And I think he once spoke about, um, sleeping supplements and how he would do,
35:07
yeah, a nurture sequence for those. And I absolutely I actually loved that. And
35:12
I think what he talked about in terms of if someone's considered your sleep
35:15
supplement, how can you keep them warm by giving them some breathing exercises
35:19
to do to help them sleep better or giving them, you know, whatever it might be,
35:23
some sort of everyday thing they can add to their diet now. And a lot of people
35:28
would feel a little bit nervous about that. Well, I don't want to help someone
35:31
solve a problem that my product solves because then they're not going to need my
35:35
product. But it's actually what you've done is you've told them them either
35:39
consciously or subconsciously that you are, you are the experts in this stuff
35:42
because you've helped them take a step towards solving their issue, their trust
35:46
in the fact that your supplement, for example, is going to help solve that issue
35:49
further has just gone through the absolute roof. Yeah, it's also a lot more
35:52
engaging than, you forgot this thing at checkout, can you— yeah, it is, it is.
35:58
So yeah, we, we talk a lot, a lot about that. And yes, it is sometimes a little
36:03
bit uncomfortable, but another thing that— and by uncomfortable I mean knowing
36:07
that you're elongating what you have to do to try and get the sale from, you
36:12
know, simple push traffic, get conversion, to push traffic, get lead, support
36:16
lead, get conversion. But ultimately, we've got enough data now that the numbers
36:21
in terms of conversion rate with lead magnet versus conversion rate without are
36:25
absolutely ridiculous in terms of the, uh, multiplier of conversion rate when
36:30
they do, um, fall into that sequence. And we're in a very, very fortunate
36:34
position where we can take what our team does on a closer to one-to-one level.
36:40
So when we first push a lead magnet out, we always have the team fulfil it
36:44
manually, you know, manually send the emails, manually create what the customer
36:47
needs, manually follow up, etc. And then when that evolves into something that's
36:52
working, we just say, right now, how do we systematise and automate as much of
36:57
what that person has done. They've shown us the kind of gold standard, and now
37:01
how do we make sure that, you know, we're essentially using a system that
37:04
automates the, the emails, the WhatsApp messages, the SMSs, the touch points?
37:10
And there will still sometimes need to be human touch points in there, but even
37:13
how do we automate when those happen, and reminders? So we can kind of start— we
37:18
can start to take some of the burden away from that but still feel like we're
37:22
pretty omnipresent and doing a great at this, which I think, you know, obviously
37:25
things like being able to set up flows within Claude, etc., has helped us with
37:29
massively. Oh yeah, I mean, the, the AI and flows and, and, and what it can do
37:37
is incredible. Uh, just to circle back, George, who is a friend actually, uh,
37:41
George, if you're listening, you're a legend. I really like George. George and I
37:44
get on really well. Um, he was on the show talking about the sequences you're
37:48
talking about. If you want to check that episode out, it's called Apple
37:51
Sequencers, A-double-P-L-E, nothing to do with the Mac company, but it's just
37:55
his anagram for how he does emails. So do check out that episode with George.
38:01
And the thing that I like about what you're saying here, Jayden, I've— it's a
38:04
drum I suppose I've been banging for a number of years. Your ecommerce website,
38:10
its primary purpose is to make the sale, right? That's how we know if it didn't
38:15
make the sale, you kind of screwed us a bit. You've got to get the money in. In,
38:18
right? So the primary purpose of any ecommerce business is to get the sale
38:21
online. It sounds an obvious statement, but you'll be amazed how many people
38:25
forget this fundamental point. The secondary purpose— so if I go down to— that's
38:30
the primary. What's, what's next on the rung of the ladder? What's the next one
38:35
in the hierarchy? The next one is to get the email address of the person that's
38:39
been on the website. So if they're not ready to buy, they give you the email.
38:42
And the best way by far to do that is with with, um, high-value lead magnets,
38:48
right? So, um, I, I love it. I think it's, uh, it's a great strategy. And I love
38:54
your strategy of understanding what are the bottlenecks, what are the problems,
38:58
what are they suffering with as customers. Let's build lead magnets around that.
39:01
It's going to answer their questions and it's going to build trust. Genius. This
39:05
is— it doesn't have to be anything more complicated, I don't think. I agree. And
39:10
then probably to put a bow on this, because obviously we need to push lead
39:15
magnets to traffic. The other piece of this is also that if the intent of the
39:19
traffic is off, the performance of the lead magnets are going to be that much
39:22
poorer. And that sounds like quite a simple and obvious statement, but that's
39:26
the other thing that we heavily interrogate. It's how well are our lead magnets
39:29
performing, how well are the flows off the back of that performing, but also do
39:34
we have a lead magnet problem in terms of are they not compelling or do we have
39:38
a traffic intent problem? And that's the other— if there were two things that I
39:42
could optimise in my business, I'm going to say three things because I was
39:46
getting dangerously close to old Jayden there and saying I'd optimise the intent
39:51
of the traffic and I'd optimise the effectiveness of the lead magnet. And if
39:54
those two things are right, I have no concerns about conversion. The numbers are
39:58
going to look brilliantly, look going to look brilliant. The third thing is
40:02
obviously the ability to support that afterwards. Of course, yeah, you can still
40:04
scale it. But a lot of people come to me and say, I've got a conversion rate
40:09
problem, can you help me with conversion optimisation, lead magnets, that sort
40:12
of thing? And, and I would say at least 2 out of 3 times, maybe more, we
40:17
discover that actually primarily they have a traffic intent problem. Yeah. And
40:22
they say to me, oh shit, you know, I'm getting X number of, uh, clicks and
40:26
visitors, I should be converting more. They believe that they have this kind of
40:29
like like almost right to convert, you know, whatever it is. And it's like, yes,
40:35
absolutely, we have to do the job on page to support that. But also there is a
40:39
huge difference between, you know, for example, if we take pure keyword as a
40:43
proxy for intent, someone who has searched for a sleep supplement with two
40:49
particular active ingredients they're interested in versus someone who searched
40:53
something to help me sleep better. But there is a night and day difference
40:57
between the intent of those two customers. Yeah. And therefore, if you're, if
41:00
you're paid advertising and your SEO strategy, etc., is not geared towards
41:04
trying to optimise for the customers that— and obviously top of the funnel
41:09
traffic has its place, but especially where we're investing in advertising, we
41:14
need to be really clear on how are we getting the best possible proxy, whether
41:18
that's by the like audience signals, the demographics, search interest, or
41:23
keyword itself. As in my opinion often the best proxy for intent. But if we're
41:27
not optimising those towards people who have the greatest— they are essentially
41:32
ideally either they have the greatest desire for what we're offering or they
41:35
have the greatest extent of the problem that we're solving. And often the
41:41
traffic can look like it is optimised towards the problem you're solving, but
41:45
actually it is kind of one or two steps removed. And in that case, you can kind
41:49
of optimise on-page and conversion rate and lead magnets as much as you want,
41:52
you are always going to be running uphill if your traffic source is not intended
41:56
correctly. Yeah, so true. So true. Jayden, listen, I'm loving the conversation,
42:01
man, but I'm also aware of time. So let me do this. Let me just pause here and
42:08
say, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you,
42:12
what's the best way to do that? Maybe they want to come to your, your course or
42:15
whatever's going on there. How do they, how do they reach out? Yes, the first
42:20
thing is you can literally just, just email me. That's fine. Um, so
42:23
jayden@foundersclubhouse.com. Um, .co.uk, sorry, I forgot what country I was
42:36
in there. Um, we can also obviously— I'm sure it's okay to drop that below as
42:39
well. Um, so that's fine if you've got a question, just want to chat, anything
42:42
like that, it's fine. And then also you You can find me on YouTube as Jayden
42:46
Clark Ecom. So I talk about a lot of this stuff in my videos there. And then
42:50
also I have a community, as I mentioned, 1% Ecom Club, which is on Skool,
42:55
S-K-O-O-L. And that is the kind of where we have these members who are running
42:59
these businesses, all running ecommerce and want kind of close access to us. So
43:03
any of those places, depending on what suits you right now, is all good.
43:08
Fantastic. We will of course put all of those links in the show notes, which
43:13
will be in your inbox if you're on the newsletter. Or of course, if you listen
43:16
on a podcast, just scroll down in the podcast app or on YouTube, look in the
43:19
description. Or if you're on the website, ecommercepodcast.net, they'll be there
43:23
as well. Jayden, listen, before we go, let me ask you a few more questions.
43:27
Number one, I like to ask all of my guests for a question for me. This is where
43:32
I take your question and I will go away and answer on social media. What's your
43:35
question for me? I would like to know, please, what you think is the most
43:41
underrated, uh, or overlooked ecom practice in 2026, um, versus when you
43:49
started, and something that you think has been evergreen but has become unsexy
43:53
over time, and you think, you know what, this mattered hugely in 2002 and it
43:57
still matters hugely now even though ecom looks radically different. Fantastic.
44:02
Of course I will answer that question on social media. Come follow me. I'm at
44:06
Matt Edmundson, and you'll hear me talk all about that at some point in the
44:09
non-too-distant future. But Jayden, secondly, uh, we like to do this thing
44:14
called saving the best till last, um, and I love the conversation about traffic.
44:19
I love the conversation that we've had about lead magnets. So based on what
44:24
you've talked about so far, Jayden, what is your best advice for someone who's
44:28
listening to the shows going, right, I'm gonna do lead magnets, help me create
44:34
the best lead magnet possible? How would you answer that question? The
44:37
microphone for the next 2 minutes is yours. Okay, I'm going to try and do it in
44:42
a nice organised flow. Um, so I'm going to say the first thing I'd have them do
44:47
is get really narrow on what we're going to do this for, first and foremost. So
44:50
I don't want to think about every product or every SKU. Let's just first go with
44:55
the one that if you could only sell one product, service, whatever it is you
44:59
might be selling tomorrow, what what is the one thing you would sell? And we're
45:01
just going to focus on that. Then I want you to look at the traffic that is
45:06
currently coming to the landing page, product page, whatever it is for that one
45:09
thing that you've selected, and think, how am I getting— what, what does the
45:14
dream lead-in look like? If I could see a lead come in tomorrow and they told me
45:20
5 things about themselves, what does that dream person look like that I would be
45:24
licking my lips thinking, if a person's got that problem them, or they are that
45:28
sort of person, they are an absolute open goal for us. We will sell them every
45:32
single time. So think about what's— and then let's reverse engineer how do we
45:36
get them on the page. Do they have specific long-tail keywords and search terms
45:41
that they search that tell us that they have a particular use case, a particular
45:45
need, a particular feature they want, whatever it might be for yours? Let's
45:49
reverse engineer. Or indeed, do they belong to the individual individual
45:52
demographics. Like, how can we best get in front of them, whether that be
45:57
organically, paid advertising, affiliate traffic, whatever it might be? How do
46:00
we get as many of those on this landing page as possible? And then finally,
46:05
write down where this person are— where this person is, rather. Where are they?
46:09
Where this dream lead, in terms of what do they not know yet, what do they have
46:14
in terms of issues, what are their problems? And then write down all the
46:18
different ways you can help solve those to help move them towards the end state
46:23
that your product delivers, right? So if there's someone that wants to buy a
46:27
sleep supplement, what position are they in right now? What are they concerned
46:31
about? What do they not know? That could be everything from, is this sleep
46:35
supplement going to work for me? If I have— is it going to not help me get up in
46:39
the morning? I'm groggy, drowsy, that sort of thing. It could be, can I take it
46:43
with everything else that I've got going on? Is it going to affect my training?
46:47
Is it going to affect my, you know, medication that I'm taking? Or a thousand
46:50
other things. You will know your customer best here. If you don't, you need to
46:53
go and speak to customer service team or go listen to your call recordings, get
46:56
on the phone, whatever. But where are they now? Where do they need to get to?
47:00
Then pick the one that you think is either worrying them the most, blocking them
47:04
the most. That is what your lead magnet should solve. And then give, give as
47:08
much— give, give so much away it feels uncomfortable. Acceptable in the lead
47:12
magnet and then put it live. And I think, and then after that, think about in an
47:16
unscalable way, how do you do the best job serving that person now you have
47:20
their information, then automate it. And I think you, you have that ready to go
47:25
and then just roll it out to more products. And it's as easy as that. The
47:32
framework is great. And actually, as I'm listening to you talk, I'm going, this
47:36
is It's brilliant because you could just take that part of the transcript, put
47:39
that into Claude who knows your business, assuming you've got Claude connected
47:43
to your company and go, Claude, help me do this for my client, right? And half
47:47
an hour later you've got where you need to start, I would've thought. Such is
47:51
the world in which we live now. But Jayden, love it, man. Thank you so much for
47:56
coming on the show. Really, really appreciate it. It's been an absolute blast
48:01
and just love talking to you about this stuff, It's been a pleasure. Thank you
48:05
very much for having me. Wow. There you go. What another phenomenal episode of
48:11
the eCommerce Podcast. Love that. Do go and think about your own lead magnets on
48:17
your own ecom website, what you could do there. How do you get someone's email
48:21
address if they're not ready to buy? What's the best way for you and your
48:23
business? Go and have a play. And obviously do reach out to Jayden. I'm sure he
48:28
would love to hear from you. Whatever mechanism works for you. But do reach out
48:32
to him. And like I said at the start of the show, everything you need to know
48:35
about eCommerce Podcast is on the eCommerce Podcast website, which is
48:39
ecommercepodcast.net. That's ecommercepodcast.net. You can find everything from
48:46
today's show notes, a really detailed blog post will be on there, the links to
48:50
Jayden, everything. Do go check that out. But that's it for me. Thank you so
48:56
much for joining us, uh, wherever you are in the world. Have a phenomenal week.
49:01
I will see you next time. Bye for now.