Start With A Win - Leadership Insights from an E-Commerce Expert | Robb Green

Starting point is 00:00:00 The number one thing is know your numbers. So many entrepreneurs are stuck when you know yourself and your team's capabilities. Here are the biggest growth areas in e-commerce. What would you point to? Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win headquarters at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Contos with Start With A Win. Today, we have Rob Green, a dedicated lifelong learner, entrepreneur, consultant, and devoted family man.

Starting point is 00:00:32 With a successful career owning eight brands and hosting the podcast, I'm the One, Rob turns challenges into growth opportunities. Driven by personal empowerment, he guides others to build wealth, nurture relationships, and achieve well-being, as well as Rob is going to share some secrets about e-commerce with us today. Let's check out Rob Green on Start With a Win. Thanks, Adam. I'm excited to chat. Awesome. Hey, give us a little bit of your background. During the intro, I told everybody, you know, entrepreneur, multi-brand owner. I mean, you coach CEOs and entrepreneurs. Tell us a little bit about who is Rob Green on the inside? Who are you about and why are you the person who people seek out? Yeah, I think I try to balance the three aspects of my life and the three pillars that I focus on all the time, which is the health, the wealth, and the relationships. And I find that most of us hard-charging entrepreneurs, type A personalities,

Starting point is 00:01:31 we tend to be really good in one, maybe two of those categories, and then the other one or two fall by the wayside. So I've really recalibrated over the last five years to focus on all three of them and try to achieve an A in all three categories at all times. I'm not saying I do it, but that's the goal of what I shoot for all the time is just trying to maintain that A status in each of those three categories. I love what you're saying about that because ultimately, you know, we always hear people say it's about balance, but you and I both know there's no balance in it. You're, you're constantly contributing to all of those different things in order to maintain what people seemingly see from the outside as balance. So how do you continue to focus on that, even though there's distractions and frustrations, things like that? Wake up. There's that knocking at the door. Wake up. You missed that one today. How do I

Starting point is 00:02:25 recontribute to that in order to keep my bucket full in that aspect of my life? How do you focus on those things? It's a great question, Adam. I think balance is the wrong way to think about it. So first of all, I think that's the wrong framework, right? Balance implies that I'm giving one thing away to do something else, right? So I've refocused on integration. Right. Right. So I integrate my business with my kids and my wife. I integrate my health with my kids and my wife. I integrate everything together. We work out together. My daughters do the cold plunge with me. They, you know, my wife and I will take a sauna at night before we go to bed. We talk about the businesses. We try to teach them how to make money, how to learn. They're 15 and 13, my daughters. What do they want to do when

Starting point is 00:03:08 they grow up? So it's the same conversations that we all have in isolation or in certain segments of our friendships. I try to fully integrate. And what I've found is that then I'm able to learn one thing here and bring it over to this part of my life or learn in this part of my life. My kids, my daughters teach me more, Adam, than I teach them these days. I don't know anything about Snapchat and my oldest daughter can't talk to anybody unless it's on Snapchat. So I'm learning what's up to date and what's happening in the, especially in the younger generation right now from them. So there's, it's a two way street for, for both of us, to be honest with you. Awesome. So a learning mind. I mean, we keep hearing that from you. It's interesting you talk about that because, I mean, you've owned

Starting point is 00:03:48 eight different brands. You're like this multi-preneur instead of, you know, we've got these entrepreneurs. A lot of times people dabble in something here or there. You know, they're like, I'm an entrepreneur, but they only work for themselves. They're a solopreneur. And it might just be mowing lawns or, you know, who knows what, but the reality is you've tried a lot of different aspects of business and learned a lot of lessons in those, I would assume. Take us through your business life briefly. What did you start doing and what have you come through in order to get to where you're at today? Yeah, I consider it an evolution, right? It is continuous learning.

Starting point is 00:04:27 I'm always seeing new opportunities and learning. And that's kind of a curse, to be honest with you. But I worked in corporate America for a long time, realized I wasn't a great fit. I consider myself unemployable. I didn't enjoy the bureaucracy or the corporate America. I started dropshipping first. I learned about dropshipping, that concept. Did that for a few years while I maintained my job.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Then I moved into private label, most people call manufacturing. So I created my own brands. I've been doing that for the last nine years. I bought a brand. I've sold some of these brands. I still maintain a handful of brands today. I'm actually putting an offer in

Starting point is 00:05:01 in a couple hours for another brand. So what I've really learned is where can I keep my core competency and my unique abilities? Where can I spend my time, energy, and what I'm great at? Leverage other people, the who, not the how to do that, building out my team. And then this is the part I really struggle with, Adam, in all fairness. I struggle with focus. I've got a billion ideas every day. So we try to stay in one core competency, which is e-commerce, which we're really great at as a team. And so how do we stay in that space? The other thing I've really learned is going from zero, from an idea to a

Starting point is 00:05:35 business, let's just call it making a million dollars a year in revenue, is really, really hard. Most of us fail at doing that. I'm looking to now acquire businesses that are already at or above that level, take my expertise, and I'm the rocket booster. The team is the rocket booster to take them to the next level. And that's really where I've evolved in my thinking. Let's talk about that for a second. So what do you look for in one of these businesses? Obviously, profitability is a big piece, or maybe it's not. Maybe it's near profitability, but you have revenue that you can do some internal tweaks with in order to find that profitability. What do you look for specifically in those businesses in this day and age? Because there are some people on the market right now that are looking to exit their business. How do you find them? What do you ask

Starting point is 00:06:19 them? And what are you looking for as far as a lever to pull in order to create an upside to that? It's a great question, Adam. Number one thing is you need to know yourself and your team's capabilities. So what are we great at? And then we look for companies or brands that are not good at those things. Those are the levers that we have excellence at that they don't have. So we can pull those levers. And then it depends on the

Starting point is 00:06:45 opportunity of what their revenue currently is. I'm not afraid of a company that doesn't make any profit, first of all, as long as I have a clear, obvious path to making profit, right? So it comes down, I'm a finance guy, it comes down to the math at the end of the day. What are the unit economics? Can I turn this into a better situation? So we focus on e-commerce. So the biggest opportunities for us are people that sell on marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart or their Shopify store, and they're not world-class. So we see obvious things that we can go and do immediately. I'm talking within the next week to two weeks to improve either their traffic, which is visibility, or their conversion rate, which is the

Starting point is 00:07:27 customers that come to their page and have them convert. So we look for a low, I guess I'd say low-hanging fruit, but that fits into our capabilities that we already currently have. Because that person typically is a one- to five-person company. They don't have the expertise across everything. We all know how hard it is to wear 100 different hats. So we look for those opportunities. That's what we're trying to look for. So do you find that a lot of these people that end up in that situation are doers and not leaders, and that's where they hit their head?

Starting point is 00:07:55 100%. And I know you're like this, just like me. You're this consummate learner. You are always looking for self-improvement and ways to improve your team. How do you fold that into this in order to help this person achieve more? Because ultimately, as an M&A shop or a business growth consultant, our job is to create an environment where people can be as successful as they want to be, but they all, they figured out that, okay, I want to be more successful, but I can't because of, you know, my limitations or whatever. How do you reinstitute that energy and that, you know, your, your personal development, your self-development, business development into that in order to help them? Cause you, you don't want to run the

Starting point is 00:08:40 business. No, your, your job is to, to be the kind of that guidance to help them run the business. No. Your job is to be the kind of that guidance to help them run the business and find greater results. So how do you go through that path of uncovering where these people can be learning and growing? Yeah. I mean, our primary goal is to buy people like that out, to buy the business from them. And the reason is most of it, I think limitations are mostly self-limiting beliefs. And we all have them in some aspect of our life, right? A lot of people see a billionaire and they can't fathom being a billionaire themselves. It's not even in the realm of possibility. You know, I've got a buddy who's a billionaire and he's just like us. He puts his pants on just like we do, Adam. He's a regular guy. He's brilliant and he's had some great success. But there's sometimes meeting people that don't have, there's a mystique or a

Starting point is 00:09:29 stigma around some of them that people can't see themselves in that situation. One thing I do with people a lot to help get an idea of where their mindset is, is I ask, what is your dream budget? If you had a dream budget, Adam, to spend every month, what is your dream budget? Just design the life you want, house, cars, chef, travel, whatever it is. That tells me a lot of where people are. And the number one answer I've received is $25,000. So as big as people can think, this happens all the time, Adam, it blows me away. I give them a few minutes, they think about it and they're like, if I had $25,000 to spend a month, that would be my dream budget. And it blows me out of the water every time it happens.

Starting point is 00:10:12 I've had people say $10,000 or $5,000. So they've got these limiting beliefs of what a dream could live, their life could be like. And they could live. And I think getting past that. So number one step is really finding out where these people are and what's blocking them in their mindset. Can they, what do they think is possible? Right. And then creating an action plan around that. If I can create an action plan around, how can we break through some of those beliefs and see what's

Starting point is 00:10:36 possible? That's, that's the trick. I think in my opinion. Now you probably also find the roadblocks in their business by doing that, I would assume. Yeah. And what do you typically find are those roadblocks? It's interesting. We've seen so many different things. You know, marketing is a big one, right? So marketing is really, really expensive online now. It's much more than it was over the past few years.

Starting point is 00:10:57 It's going to continue to get more expensive. spoke to a brand owner last week and they said they were spending less and less money on their marketing dollars because it was so expensive, the cost per click. And I said, but have you ever looked at the value of that customer over the lifetime relative to how much you're spending? I never thought of it that way. They never think of it that way. They just see like the first transaction, right? So a lot of times it's little tweaks that make a huge difference in a business from no advertising to advertising profitably is an absolute game changer, especially in the online business. Awesome. Obviously a lot of this is mindset. You know, you kept talking about limiting beliefs. So we have challenges and opportunities. And most people live in this challenge space of, you know, they wake up in the morning and they're like, oh my gosh,

Starting point is 00:11:48 this is going to overwhelm me today. Or I can already feel the pressure on my heart. I know my, you know, my neck is tensing up, whatever it might be. How do we take these entrepreneurs from this challenge mindset to this opportunity mindset, yet keep them focused instead of running around chasing every squirrel that's out there? I think the biggest thing I've noticed in people's lives is when they're around other people that I'm going to say are not special, right? They're smart people, but they've seen success. I've got a small mastermind, a bunch of friends of us, we get together and I've seen the growth in everybody else. And you look at this guy and you're like, wait a minute, how's that guy doing a hundred million? He's not any different than I

Starting point is 00:12:32 am. And I think getting awareness and proximity to people who have had tremendous success opens up the possibilities in most people's minds. So many entrepreneurs are stuck in the solo entrepreneur, the solopreneur by themselves. And I just can't say enough getting old school belly to belly at them. Get next to somebody, see them, talk to them. And you're like, this guy's no or this woman is no different than I am. I think that's the number one thing for creating possibilities to getting past those limiting beliefs. That's an incredibly powerful statement because Jim Rohn said we're the average of the five people

Starting point is 00:13:08 we spend the most time with. So choose wisely. And if you go into a room of business operators, if you will, take a look around and go, okay, do I want to be like any or all of these people? And if the answer is no, find a different room, right? 100%. So let me ask you this. What are some of those key aha moments? What's some of the low-hanging fruit that you're seeing out of some of these different situations?

Starting point is 00:13:32 You talk about marketing. Yeah, I mean, marketing is like saying daytime. I mean, it is so it's out there. They're like, all right, I need daytime. Yeah, perfect. You do. But you also need marketing. What can we hone in

Starting point is 00:13:45 on that in order to make some quick adjustments? You have a podcast. I have a podcast. YouTube channel, outreach, building email lists. I've heard your money's in your list, whatever it might be. What low-hanging fruit items are you seeing people attack first coming out of some of these masterminds? Or if you have a seminar for people, any key takeaways that they're walking with that they go after quickly? The number one thing is know your numbers. I think so many business owners don't know the data. And because it comes back to this, Adam, most people that start a business have a certain skill. Whether you're a bricklayer or a landscaper or e-commerce, right? Or marketing guy, you might have one skill, but we all start off wearing a lot of hats and we're not, nobody's great. Nobody's world-class

Starting point is 00:14:36 at every aspect of owning a business. And what I see most of the time, and maybe because I'm a finance guy, a big gap is the data and understanding your numbers. And once you understand the true numbers and the financials of your business, your unit economics, the old adage, I lose money in every sale, but I'm going to make it up in volume, right? I see this all the time. You're not going to make it up in volume. It doesn't work that way. So the biggest thing I see a lot, and again, I live in the online world a lot, but this applies to offline businesses is lifetime value. If you don't know your lifetime value, pay somebody to figure that out.

Starting point is 00:15:10 You need to understand how much revenue the average customer brings in, how much profit the average customer brings in over their lifetime with you. That is the most important number because now you can understand how much the cost to acquire a customer is. If that number is positive, you need to ramp up your marketing and your ad spend because the reality is I have an unlimited budget for profitable activities. And most people think of a budget as a cap or a constraint on how they want to market and add to their business. I have an unlimited budget for profitable activities. I like that.

Starting point is 00:15:45 I want to write that on the wall. I mean, when you think about it, realistically, folks, take a look at your business. And we own multiple franchise brands, as well as operate a lot of those businesses ourselves as well. And what it comes down to is, yeah, where are you making money? What are your highest margin products? And how do you increase people purchasing those? So it's weird to me that we have people that, you know, they see the highest margin product, but they try to sell the easiest to sell product, which a lot of time is a lower margin product. So how do we make that mindset shift? And, you know, the customer is going to believe us when we say what we're saying.

Starting point is 00:16:25 If we're an expert and we're believable in our space, how do we get that mindset shift where we're believable in talking about selling our highest margin product instead of our lowest margin product? How do we change minds here? Is this something that is doable with the entrepreneur or do you think that you're stuck in a rut? I think so many times putting it down on paper and writing out and seeing what these numbers look like. I think most people are smart enough to say, and I interviewed a buddy of mine who's got an aesthetic clinic. He knew it. His lifetime value is $5,000.

Starting point is 00:17:03 I don't know what I would do if I had a lifetime value of $5,000. And that makes me so happy. I have a lifetime value of $5,000. And that makes me so happy. I have a lifetime value of like $50 online, right? So living in the world of $5,000 lifetime value is unbelievable to me. He had a front desk person who he was paying good money to, but she wasn't great. Tell a customer, that customer couldn't buy a $10,000 gift card because it was past the opportunity date. Right? So it's these little things where you're like, when we had this conversation and I said to Dr. McCoy, I said, have you thought about, I mean, in reality, you could probably pay that person a hundred thousand dollars if they were an amazing front

Starting point is 00:17:39 desk person and make more money than having the person that's costing you business at the front desk. So really understanding your numbers gives you the freedom to explore other obvious opportunities. I have another friend who has a gym, and she had the exact same challenge. She didn't understand her numbers, so she couldn't make a good decision on how to market or how to get referrals because she didn't really understand the value. And so many of these offline businesses have tremendous value. I don't know about you, but I had the same landscaper for six years. I've got the same pool guy for six years. Like we have the same service providers. They just make money weekly every other week from me. There's tremendous value from that. And I think getting

Starting point is 00:18:25 to the details of those numbers is step one. And if you're not good at it, that's okay. Go hire somebody. Find someone on Upwork who can help you calculate your lifetime value. And that is the starting point I recommend everybody do today. So this is fascinating because we all live in this world of minimals. It's weird. We set the bar low and like in a Salesforce and you talk about lifetime value and the Salesforce and things like that. All you have to do is change the mindset of your Salesforce or of yourself in order to up that lifetime value. You know, realistically, business is not complicated. There are three ways to, uh, to increase how much money you have, how much top line revenue you have coming in, get more customers,

Starting point is 00:19:09 sell more things to each customer and charge more per each of the things you sell. That's it. That's how business operates. So go ahead. It's, it's fascinating to listen to you talk about this because I'm like, Whoa, this is, it's fundamental, but it's also like right there, but nobody sees it. Well, and there's a, there's a multiplicative effect of what you just said, Adam, right? You get more customers, you sell them more things, and you charge them more money. Those compound, if you're able to do one, you had success. If you do all three, now imagine that effect over the lifetime value of that customer. Right. And I think, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are afraid to charge more. That's also another thing I find a lot, Adam, is people are afraid to charge

Starting point is 00:19:53 more because they don't really analyze what the market is, what they're providing, the service level they're giving or the product they're selling. And they just, they have this fear around it. You know, we're in the online space. So we test all the time. We test pricing like crazy. I find most of my friends that do offline business, their own offline businesses, rarely change their price. They keep the same price all the time instead of testing or split testing different pricing.

Starting point is 00:20:18 That's probably the lowest hanging fruit is charging more. We know it's harder to get more customers. I think charging more is number one for me. And then number two is selling more items We know it's harder to get more customers. I think charging more is number one for me. And then number two is selling more items to the same customer. And three, getting new customers is probably the hardest out of those three, in my opinion. Wow. Okay. All right. I'm going to ask you to pull out your crystal ball here, Rob, and tell me, you know, in the e-commerce space and the listeners to my show typically are in real estate mortgage, um, as well as different levels of business leaders and entrepreneurs. But we're, we're

Starting point is 00:20:51 always curious about, okay, e-commerce it's to me, it's this interesting thing. And I'm actually consulting to an e-commerce company right now. But if you were to look at your crystal ball and say in 2024 and 2025, here are the biggest growth areas in e-commerce, what would you point to? Number one, TikTok. TikTok shops is absolutely blowing up. It just went live in the US in September. Our mastermind this week is going to, TikTok's going to be a big focus of that conversation. They are meeting people where people are spending time. And that is the key. This is interruption marketing with highly, highly targeted algorithm. The volume we've seen on some of these brands in days or weeks, Adam, not months or years is absolutely insane.

Starting point is 00:21:42 The amount of traffic the algorithm can drive is, I've never seen anything like it. Amazing. And what type of product on tip on Tik TOK marketplace are you, do you think is it like self-care or everything's being sold? Number one is beauty category. That's the number one category. I saw, I saw a great video the other day. Guy had retractable tie-downs for his truck. So you know tie-downs, you tie something down, but he combined that product with like a retractable tape measure. So it had a handle, you push a button, it cinches up the tie-down. Great little one-minute video. I wanted to buy it. I don't own a truck, Adam. I was about ready to buy it myself. It was a great little video. It was demonstrable. So it was a product he could show quickly how it worked and what problem it solved. The guy did $800,000 in a month on TikTok shops. On shops, not anywhere else.

Starting point is 00:22:41 Just on shops, not on Amazon, Shopify, just on the native platform. And I don't think it's a, it's not a science. It's still quite a bit of art to figure out what's working, what's not working. But the volume that people are able to hit so quickly is unlike anything I've ever seen because they're leveraging the platform, which is the algorithm, which is also the best I've ever seen. Once you start to hone in, it will send it to who deserves to see it. And it's unbelievable. So I think it's a real game changer. I mean, China has been coming for the e-commerce market in the US for a long time with first Shein and Timu and now TikTok. It's changing the environment dramatically in e-commerce. Interesting. And how long, you know, we hear about those micro moments

Starting point is 00:23:21 where people have to be able to say, I know what it is, and I know if it's for me within, what, like 1.8 seconds or three seconds or something like that. How much time do you have and how complicated with the products can you get with these e-commerce pieces? Because you're not doing like this. It used to be these commercials that were like an hour long of somebody selling a slicer, dicer, chopper, back massage, or whatever it might be. We're not talking about lengthy presentations here. We're talking about micro moments, right?

Starting point is 00:23:53 From a physical product perspective, I would say yes. But if you were a service provider, there's a guy that I follow on there. I think he started not on shops, which is on regular TikTok, maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago. And he's a business jet. He sells jets. Okay. And he shared his story on one of the videos. And he said, I got on TikTok. I was playing around. A month later, a guy called me and said, hey, I saw you on TikTok. I want to buy a $20 million jet. And he said, I think I'm going to keep doing this TikTok. I think it's working out okay for me. And all he does, he talks about the experience. He's in a suit. He's in his office and he's talking about what are the realities? What are the actual operating costs of owning a jet?

Starting point is 00:24:28 What are the different size of jets? Just education about business jets. He built credibility. And now he has new customers from the platform because the platform is sending it to the people that want to hear it. It's really awesome. The whole environment has completely changed, to be honest with you.

Starting point is 00:24:46 All right, now I guess I need to check out TikTok market. Something new and amazing to take a look at for our marketing. And we've got a hodgepodge of different brands. We sell everything from Harley Davidsons to sandwiches. So maybe someplace we want to start playing. All of them can be used on Adam. Adam, all of them can be used on TikTok,

Starting point is 00:25:04 shown on TikTok. I'm not a Harley guy. I've seen some amazing Harleys that are fully tricked out. They look like Batman, you know, Batmobile, Batman's motorcycle. And I'm like, oh yeah, maybe I should get a motorcycle. My wife keeps telling me I can't get one, but I had never thought about buying a motorcycle until I saw the video of a tricked out motorcycle. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting. And so I think that you can step in front. It's now a new world where whether it's service-based or product-based, you can step in front of the consumer with creativity and not just buying traffic. And I think that's where, especially using AI, you can leverage now at scale much more than we've ever been able to

Starting point is 00:25:45 do a few years, even a few years ago. Amazing. We've gone through a lot with you talking about the mindset of the entrepreneur, all the way up to e-commerce and selling private jets on it, for crying out loud. It's pretty amazing. Rob, you have a podcast called I'm the One. It covers topics like building wealth, maintaining healthy relationships, achieving wellbeing. Uh, you know, tell us a little bit about your podcast and where can we find it? Thanks. I'm the one.com, but we're also available on, um, uh, Spotify and Apple podcasts and, and YouTube. But really for me, it's about bringing out the case studies of examples. So I've been interviewing more and more business owners because I feel like a lot of people don't talk about the challenges we all face. And I'm an open book. I'll tell you all the things I've failed at because those are the

Starting point is 00:26:31 opportunities for us to learn. And I want to dig in and do more case studies with individual entrepreneurs and say, hey, here's the challenges you've overcome. Here's the challenges you're still facing. Maybe together we can help solve some of those problems. And then also a lot of the mindset. I believe in a lot of mental models that I currently use. And I love sharing those things that I've learned with other people. And it allows me, gives me a platform to share everything I'm continuously learning from with everybody else. Awesome. Everybody make sure you check out Rob at I'm the one.com and the I'm the one podcast. Some great information on there. I'm a listener as well. Rob, I have a question I ask

Starting point is 00:27:06 all of our amazing guests on the show, and I'm sure you have an incredible answer to this being that super focused, growth-minded entrepreneur and human being. How do you start your day with a win? I'll tell you how I started today, Adam. So I preheat my sauna. I have a traditional sauna at my home. It's preheated before I wake up. I wake up, I jump in the sauna for 20 minutes and stretch. And that's the easy part. Then I go into the cold plunge. And it is so difficult.

Starting point is 00:27:36 I hate cold water. I live in Arizona. But it's all about the mindset of me getting in. Once I get in, I feel amazing. Once I get out, I feel even better. But just the overcoming that. Your mind's trying to talk you out of it, but getting that wind, that's the hardest thing I'm going to do today, is getting into that freezing cold water and sitting in there for two to three minutes. And every time when I get out, I feel amazing and

Starting point is 00:27:58 I have a great perspective for the day. Awesome. Rob learner entrepreneur business investor and a great coach and a wonderful human being for that matter we appreciate all that you do thanks for growing these businesses and these little tips and tricks you shared with us today and thanks for being on start with a win thanks adam i appreciate it Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok

Start With A Win - Leadership Insights from an E-Commerce Expert | Robb Green

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