Podcast Episode #001: Relaunching with a new 10 minute format
--- Transcript ---
What is up, everybody? This is basically me relaunching this podcast for I don't even know like the third or fourth time.
Every time I basically tried to do it, I've just not been consistent with it. So this time, it is actually in my calendar every single day. And there's gonna be a slightly new format to it because none of us actually have, well very few of us actually have, the time to sit down and listen to an hour or 2-hour podcast on a daily basis. It's just not possible. Unless you're commuting a shedload or, frankly, that you can actually listen to podcast and work at the same time, which is not me, I cannot do it.
So going forward, I am literally to go make a 10-minute episode (up to 10 minutes) every single day, which is just gonna be hopefully strategical and tactical advice that you can take and apply to launching and growing your own online ecommerce business.
Who the heck am I? Why should you listen?
My name is Tom Brown. I have been basically running direct consumer brands since about 2014-2015.
Almost the entire time on Shopify. I actually started on Squarespace and then transitioned to Shopify once I discovered it in probably mid-2015. Thereabouts. I want to say... maybe sooner than that.
Anyway, I built Posted Protein at that point, scaled that up to over a million pounds over the course of six years.
Then in 2019, I kind of took a bit of a step back. Not gonna lie, it was tough to run: 1000s of SKUs, enormous competition, very tight margins... I still own it.
In 2019 I was actually sat in a hospital waiting room while my mom was undergoing treatment and kind of realized that time was gonna be a bit of a struggle. That I wouldn't actually be in the office as much as I had been going forward. And that really I needed to find something else at that point that would allow me to go to hospital frequently with my mom and let me step back a little bit.
So, I transitioned into consulting for Shopify Plus and Shopify merchants.
That took off like a little rocket took. Basically, took a small team, workingly remotely around the world, and scaled it up just a little agency that was helping Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants to build, grow and scale.
That was kind of like a 365 marketing agency. So we did anything from Shopify site builds, custom themes, running Facebook ads... I mean, really anything and everything that came with just running and growing an online store.
And it was kind of through that process that more and more people were starting to reach out to me and basically asking how
1. How I'd gotten Posted Protein off the ground
and
2. How I was kind of helping these brands to scale. You know,, what was the recipe essentially?
So I took that question. And as much as I was trying to answer hundreds of times in Instagram DM's and Twitter DM's and Facebook comments, and everything else.... I kind of figured the easiest way, rather than telling people was to just show people.
So in early 2021, in January, I put up a post on Facebook to basically say "I'm going to launch a new brand, and you can follow along."
I ran that inside a little paid community, it was like $40 a month, which was the literally me just documenting every single step of growing a brand new direct-to-consumer brand from scratch profitably.
And that was January. On February 4th I actually launched it, so almost a month to the day from talking about it.
That was a little personal safety brand.
Within 30 days, we hit about £12,000 in revenue, which I was happy with that to say at least. There was some profit in there; about £2,000 in profit.
The second month scaled it to about £50,000. And it just took off like a little rocket.
I think in October, we surpassed about £110,000 in monthly revenue, very profitable sort of 20% net margins.
And that is one of the brands that I own today that still continues. I mean, that's kind of my present-day story.
There's a lot more backstory that I could go into coming from quite a wealthy family initially that lost everything that put me into the position of homelessness for a little while, living in a bed and breakfast, living in council housing/ social housing and kind of just clawing my way back.
Really, that's been a process for, jeez since I was about eight years old. So it's, it's been a minute.
I'm very fortunate at this point to spend a lot of my time advising merchants, consulting with merchants and getting to work on my own brands.
The goal at this point really is to have about four or five brands in very different verticals, very different niches, very different audiences, that really just give me a diverse portfolio of small brands.
I'm in the weeds basically every day. I'm an owner and operator, but I am also in the weeds with a lot of Shopify merchants – I have been for almost a decade at this point.
Really this podcast is I hope just going to be a resource for you, as I say to just come in, grab a cup of coffee, stick it on during your morning commute and just take the learnings that I am getting daily, the learnings that I am sharing with my clients/with merchants on a day to day basis and hopefully just help you to get going if you're just starting out or hope you continue growing or get out of a position of stagnation, if that's where you're at right now.
That is the goal.
I'm gonna stop waffling on.
And I will see you tomorrow because the goal is really to do this Monday through Friday, 10 minutes a day. This ones only gonna be like six minutes long, but I hope this gives you a little bit of an introduction as to who I am. This is definitely gonna be a bit of a learning curve for me, and you're figuring out my voice, what works, what resonates, what doesn't... so bear with me.
These first few episodes are probably going to be terrible, and hopefully, they will get better.
I will talk to you soon.
Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
- Build a profitable direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand here.
- Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs here.
- Work 1:1 with me to grow your brand. (100+ clients)
