August 3, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode, Praise talks with David Lorango, founder of Startup Accelerators, about what it really takes to grow a successful startup and sell products online.
They break down key things every founder should know:
David also shares his biggest lessons from helping startups go from zero to over $30,000/month in sales, and why killing your ego might be the best thing you do for your business.
:/keywords: startup advice, founder mindset, selling online, how to grow a startup, startup growth tips, e-commerce strategy, business podcast, David Lorango
They break down key things every founder should know:
- Why grit matters more than ideas
- When an idea is ready to become a business
- How to test and price your product the smart way
- What most new founders get wrong
- How to grow your startup without wasting money
- The future of e-commerce and what to watch out for
David also shares his biggest lessons from helping startups go from zero to over $30,000/month in sales, and why killing your ego might be the best thing you do for your business.
:/keywords: startup advice, founder mindset, selling online, how to grow a startup, startup growth tips, e-commerce strategy, business podcast, David Lorango
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:15):
All right, good morning from here.
Mr. David Lorango, thank you for joining on this episode of the FWP Advice Report
because Griggs will be great to have you today. Mr. David is the chief executive officer
of Starbacelerators, also the founder and he is an e-commerce aspect. He has been in the
(00:38):
e-commerce industry for a couple of years now and he's here to tell us a little bit about
business, about his experience and his way to build a product, probably guide or soul
in guide-yong founders in making critical decisions in business. Mr. David has given anything
else that is anything about you that I haven't said of it?
(01:03):
No, you know, just a quick background. I've been doing this for 15 years, had my agency
now for several years, working with early stage growth startups and also established businesses,
so that's it.
All right, thank you for that.
Now, let's go into it. I want to understand your vision and your drive. What is your
(01:27):
vision? Where it comes to your company and your career? What is that your vision and your
drive?
The vision for the company is to help founders get out of their nine to five. Basically,
startups and the opportunity that e-commerce and DTC present to founders and anyone who's
(01:49):
looking to kind of get out of their nine to five is incredible. We really never had this
opportunity. If you wanted to do this years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,
you're kind of stuck. You need an institutional backing, institutional knowledge and a really
great idea.
Now you need a good idea and really good marketing and an approach to business and you can
make 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 100, 200,000 incremental a month. That's division. The drive for it is
(02:16):
to be able to, again, help others with their vision, right, with their drive, with their dream.
So getting them out of where they are and growing their business is something we're really
excited about doing, something we've been doing. And that's, I'd say, one of the big
purposes of the company, the other vision is to help start up scale from a million to
30 million a month, right? Something like that or 10 million a month, 20 million. What
(02:38):
have you? But to take them from where they are and to scale them rapidly, that's what we do.
All right. Thank you for that. What inspired you to start their company in the first place?
And what you have really talked about the problem that you were solving? So what inspired you
to start that, you know, was there specific problem that you saw that you were a passionate
(02:58):
about sort of?
Yeah, I think what certainly what made me start this business is I was kind of a nine to five
guy at, at the point where nine to five wasn't really fulfilling me, but also probably
like other owner founders, nine to five. What led me to be able to do this? And I would
say what led to the formation is the problem we're trying to solve is there are a lot of agencies
(03:23):
that exist out there for their service model. We're a full 360. We partner with you. We're
not a service provider in that way. What I saw was service providers tended to take the
dollars and then run if and when the business didn't work out for them. Agents, you take
your dollars and then maybe give you results. What we do is we partner with you. That's
a specific problem that I saw again and again and again. What would happen is I would come
(03:45):
on board and then try to fulfill what an agency was or wasn't doing. And I said, well, have
you looked at your entire funnel? Have you looked at CRM? Have you looked at CRO? Have you
looked at SEO? Have you looked at product market fit? Have you looked at your margins? Usually
answers somewhat maybe yes or no on a lot of those questions. We're solving the problem
that the founders and owners are having that they aren't able to find partners that can help
(04:06):
them scale their business. Maybe they can help them scale their ads but not their business.
So we're helping DTC owner founders scale their business as a partner.
All right. And when did you decide that it was the exact time to start this business?
Personally for me, I have three stages that I think every business should go, which is
(04:29):
the stage of I didn't find the problem. Number two, then I didn't find the solution and
then turning that into a business. So how did you decide on the timing to launch this
business? For example, when did you feel like this idea was now ready to become a business
(04:49):
for you? And what factors made you confident enough to take that step?
And question, in a way, there's two ways that I think I break this up. As somebody who's
a product person, you have to figure that out where the problem solution is their business
here. In my line of work, it's not quite that way. And I do recommend that to everyone
(05:13):
that we consult for. Is there a product market fit? In my case, the problem solution was
there. You need to bring your product to market. Their agencies as old as they are
probably is at marketing and in the modern era, right? Or advertising. When I found this
was a business, as mentioned, that they're coming to me with problems. My agency isn't
(05:36):
scaling my business. My, well, your ads look fine. What's really going on? I don't know.
Where I figured out that we could be partner and where there was real value here is there
was a problem that a business would come to me with and they didn't really be it. We're
already able to find the solution in the way that they thought they could, right? Whether
it's an ad agency, whether it's creative agency, right? There's individual pieces of this.
(06:00):
So did I find going out to market that that was missing? Absolutely. It was pretty readily
apparent to me that strategists in that way are not as common as there are media and service
providers. So I don't know that I had an issue with is there can we provide value? Is there
a way for us to kind of fit into this market? I think that was there. It was more can we
(06:21):
do it, right? I think the next question was, are we good at this? So that then becomes
not, is there a market can I make a business? The answer is yes, but can you make it a business
to be successful at it? That's a question that don't that owner founders don't ask themselves
enough, right? It can I actually do this thing? That is crucial. So then we had to answer
(06:42):
as an agency, can we scale a business from zero to 30,000, 30 or 50,000? With not a lot
of capital and not a lot of resources. That is incredibly difficult and you will find that
and that's what owner founders are trying to find that will be great. When we found a system
that we have that we can plug in, we know how to do this and not just once or twice, did
this very recently with one client clothing brand, did it another with a vitamin supplement
(07:05):
brand? We have a formula that absolutely works. That was that was the challenge and that
took a little bit of time, right? It wasn't like we just knew we had to stumble into it
on our own. That crucial piece is when we found that we were able to make it a business because
then we saw results and it's like, oh wow, this is actually working. Now we're able to take
on many, many, many more clients, right? So we in that to answer your question, and we think
(07:29):
about it, I think about it in a way that you do in a way, but the challenge in that way
is we know that there is a business here, but can we service and can we do it, right?
That is the challenge. So we do that now that we know it, we're doing it.
Right, in that aspect, what you talked about now, what personal qualities now do you think
(07:53):
are most important for you founded to have or in your own description or in a founder? So
what personal qualities do you think are most important for that founder to have? Every
founder would say. Every founder, I think a couple things, determination and grit and the
ability to learn and fail when you're wrong and know what it looks like to be right. You
(08:19):
can't be somebody that's worried also about failure. If you do, you're an employee. You have
an employee mindset and there's nothing wrong with being an employee by any stretch of the
imagination, but it is different to being a founder. An employee is working on the
behalf of others to help grow a business. They're part of an ecosystem. A founder realizes
(08:39):
that it's on them, that they are the ones paying the checks, cutting the checks. The owner
founder mindset is critical. You are determined. You are a go getter. You're a hustler. You
make your business work. You find the capital if you are raising, right? You're CEO or founder.
You're the one doing these things. So grit, determination, hustle, all these things that
(09:01):
are talked about often. I would give one, I'm trying to give you a unique one, but I'm
going to give kind of a unique one. There are a lot of people that start one type of business
and then think they can succeed in another vertical. Oftentimes those are the ones that fail.
They have a lot of money and they fail because their ego gets in the way. So one of the biggest
parts that I see is kill the ego, get rid of the ego, listen to the people that you're
(09:25):
hiring. I have one I think that recently worked with that decided to go their own way and
they're already failing pretty miserably in what they're doing. It's a fashion apparel
brand, specifically. They're not doing it in a way because they model it off of something
that they knew before. So what do I think? I think humility and being able to understand
that you still have, if you're an owner found or you're successful, right? That's no knock
(09:47):
on those that fail even. But what gets in their way is because I succeeded here, I can succeed
over there. I've seen, I saw this again with someone else who is an owner founder of a very,
very large calm and then tried to do something in funding with startups, the difficulty
there too is that the model that he had for the one is in the model that you have here.
(10:09):
So what's crucial now is don't be dumb, be smart and then be able to be humble because
someone else is going to come in then doesn't know anything is going to win because they
test them and test them. And this is almost a generational thing. Where are you in your
journey? But where are you? How old are you when you said, oh, I know how to do this. And
then it fails, right? This is why a lot of young entrepreneurs are succeeding wildly in
TikTok and others aren't. So grit, determination, obvious ones, but I think checking your ego
(10:34):
at the door and being able to realize it just because you won once doesn't mean you're going
to win again. Great. I believe an idea should be validated before execution. And I think
you will agree with me on that. But I want to know how you approach this stage in your journey.
How did you test and believe your idea before you committed to it? Because I believe that
(10:58):
there was a bit of trust in our validation of your idea before you committed to that. And
for the founder who just have $200 in your account, $300 in the account, $100,000 in the account
and want to commit it to a business. How did validate that idea? Today talk to potential
customers, beautiful prototypes and then from that, you know, how do you suggest they grow
(11:22):
out? How did you grow up out here, right? Praise. I think validating your products and making
sure that you know that there is a proof of concept is vital. One of the dumbest foolish
things I see any owner founder do is think that their idea is gold before they even know
(11:45):
where the gold is. What that looks like is over investing in product, buying up product,
heavily investing. So testing and proof of concept is crucial. You look at Mark Zuckerberg.
I think he has a great quote and I'm going to probably put you in but look at it. He said
it's not a business until it's a business. What that means is what you're doing is still
(12:05):
a side hustle until you've proven that people actually want it. How do you do it? That's
a question. We do this very simply. We have again a model that I use that I even use in
my own life. I invest small and then invest large. Invest small and test. What that looks
like as an e-commerce business is bring your product and website to market and understand
(12:26):
the data in the metrics are people adding the cart. Are they doing what you need them to
do? If the answer is no, you either have a product market fit problem or you aren't messaging
it correctly or you just don't have the right product. So I usually say take minimal investment
and get some signals, get some signs, get some early data. For me, the answer to that question
is early data. Early data is going to prove it out. Not an early data is not my friends
(12:50):
like it. Anybody listening to this podcast, if your friends like it, that's largely useless.
Yes, of course, some of your friends are going to know, but the mark are your friends going
to be the only ones buying your product and will their friends make a business for you?
They will not. So proof of concept is something even in e-commerce, like are you getting early
sales? Are you somewhat profitable? I mean early sales, frankly, is a good example. So
(13:11):
I say, yeah, test with every minimal amount that you can't. Small and then invest slowly
over time. You're absolutely right. There's no way that I would recommend doing a business
if you didn't get early data and early leads, right? On any of it. Yeah. And in the case,
where the founder now identifies that this particular, didn't just pivot from this idea,
(13:32):
from this business model, how do you suggest the girl about that? And from your experience,
how do you, do they react to that adaptation from a different business model? Great question.
I mentioned the one, the footwear brand. I don't know if they're going to pivot their model
if they're stuck. So some people are just stuck and they're not letting the data tell them.
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But the ones in most of them, the answer is how do they pivot? What do they look like? Most
business owners want to make money, right? They're part of the reason they're in business.
Now there's for their passion project, but if they're not making money, vast majority are
going to realize something isn't working. How do you pivot? One of the, I think the CEO
of Netflix tested and learned and figured out over time and he said he wished he would have
(14:19):
done this and learned sooner. That's a subscription model was the way to go because before that,
they were just having product being centered, the, just being sent and then they'd send it
back and they realized, oh wow, subscription service makes the most sense. You, how are
the, their business owners, I have found very receptive to thoughtful, meaningful, one-to-one
conversations. When I have that and say, look, these aren't, this isn't working, think
(14:43):
no, that I'm not there to tell them something they don't really know, they're not generating
revenue. I'm just putting it in a way that is clear to them that makes sense. Okay, well,
what do we do next? It's the, what do we do next that happens? And again, if they're passionate
about the idea, let's say they had a subscription business for product and that's not working
and I say it's not working for X, Y and Z reasons, they're very open to it. How do they pivot?
(15:06):
It really is again the same model. What are the unit economics in my business? Cost
of goods. What's the scale opportunity? What's the product fit? Opportunity, product market
fit. They're very open to it. I would say the vast majority of the time certainly as they've
hired me on consulting or what we're doing, they are very receptive to changing the model
(15:26):
if it makes sense. Great. We'll come back to product market fit
a little bit. We'll come back to that later, but you talk about pricing. So I believe that
setting the right price is a very, very critical decision and understanding the value of a product
will provide all to certain pricing. So how do you do those? I found that determined the
(15:48):
cost of the product. I believe you were, we have discussed before and you talked about service
business is being easier to set a price for based on maybe you can look at the market and see
what is it for. For the product business, how do you determine the cost of the product and
how do you measure the value of a product to be able to do timing the price for that?
Great question. Like, yeah, mentioned we talked about my business and being able to find
(16:13):
services model. It's also like, well, what's the value you're bringing versus what we're
bringing in? You can kind of do that math pretty quickly, but it is similar in a mathematical
way for a product. We do, we test through Microsoft clarity and through
intelligence, part of what we do is price elasticity testing. And we find the right point at
which you have influx of orders and you're still profitable. Most brands don't do this. It's
(16:38):
a great question to ask all of them here. Praise and I think it's, it's, it's the right way
to think about anything in a business. You're right price oftentimes is where brands have
a problem with conversion. It's not their branding. It's, I don't want to pay for this or
I'm not convinced to pay that particular price. I don't wish to pay for it. So we do testing.
(17:02):
We do a lot of tests. We use IntelliGems and we use clarity and we use other tools and
we, we test and test and test and then when we find the right one, we go to market with
that writ large. So it goes back to again, what we're talking about, which was how do you,
how do you know when it's time to pivot or how do you know when you're doing something
right and how do you know when to invest? It's the same kind of principle here is invest
small test and learn. You also can do some product market research. A lot of people do use
(17:26):
chat GVT. What are the consumers willing to pay? You can use something like Amazon and
we use Helium 10, which allows you to see your sort of price. You'll have to see the product.
So you're right. I mean, it's not talked about enough price and price sensitivity is, is
crucial and vital. When you have a good brand, you have a product that people want, then
you have to wrestle with your margins, right? So it is, it's a more mathematical concern
(17:48):
in a lot of ways than I think most owner founders think about, but it's certainly one of the
most crucial because when you find that specific dollar amount that they're willing to pay,
you have an inflection point, right? So let's say your conversion rate is 0.5%. You change,
you are price point by 30%, and then your conversion rate increases by 70%. Now you're moving volume.
(18:09):
You're viewing unit economics and volume. So enough of that has to be baked into the way
you're thinking about and testing as a business owner. So many are just focused on meta.
So many are just focused on why aren't my ads working. It's part of it and it goes back
to why I found in the agency that I did is because holistically, if you're not thinking
about things like price, unit economics, along with brand and your ads and your advertising,
(18:31):
then it's not really, you're not really going to find your sweet spot. And guess what? I mean,
ahead of that, you also do need to test into it over time as well. You need to test where your
audience is. A lot of brands have actually increased their prices over time and haven't seen a major
dip. Some of that has to do with the tariffs. Others have to do it just cost of goods going out.
(18:53):
But that's the majority I've had to do with cost of goods just rising and increasing, right?
So price, price testing and sensitivity is going to happen as always a part of your business.
You will be raising them no matter what at some point in your, in your business life cycle,
you'll be raising them. But you have to understand where your audience breaks and then where they go.
Yeah, let me squeeze this in a little bit because I've talked to a lot of founders,
(19:15):
especially from here in Africa and also in the Middle East. We are the most questions that is
often the most question that is often brought up is the balancing of affordability for customers
and also keeping the business profitable. So in a case where the price is directly the value of
(19:37):
that product and also the cost of production for that particular product now makes it harder to
balance that and get a profit out of it. Do you go about it with volume or do you think maybe
there's another way, is there another way that you would suggest that?
Volume, actually, I guess there's a couple things. Certainly volume is a big one, but also maybe
(20:03):
product diversification, category expansion. If you're a fashion apparel brand,
you kind of have to start thinking about that to some degree, right? There are very few businesses
to get away with just having one product and live detail. Product diversification is probably a part of it
or add-ons, right? So let's say you're squeezed a little, let's take, you're selling a water cooler,
(20:25):
right? You sell a water cooler or something like that. Okay, well, what else can we sell
for water coolers? Maybe we can sell a bottle, maybe we can sell the filters as well. You want to be able
to find other things that are ancillary to raise your average order value. So as your margins are squeezed,
if your AOV is driven, that is a good way to get additional incremental revenue.
(20:49):
Out of the purchaser that's already there. So I think certainly volume, but I think the other one
is product and category expansion. And not just that, you also grow your business too, right? And so
that's what I think you always think is an entrepreneur. You have the one thing, what else can we do in
scale? Oftentimes you see where a lot of owners, for example, somebody that were making masks during
(21:09):
peak lockdown. Well, it just makes masks forever. But what do you parlay that into if somebody likes
your brand, right? So you think of something like that as and it's anything you do as a business,
maybe your services start to diminish because things have changed. I think it's it's smart to always
think about what else more can we do next? If this core piece is not our core piece anymore, right?
(21:31):
Well, how do I explain? How do I explain? Yeah, so let's go back to product market fit for for a
second. So finding the right product market fits is I believe it's very, very critical for scaling
beyond initial traction. So we showed it to what around it looks. What does it actually mean? What does
(21:51):
product market fits mean? Product market fit means your odd, your demographic wants to buy it.
You service the need to need exists and there's a demand for it and you supply it.
Deeper than that product market fit is servicing the right need at the right moment. I think that is
(22:15):
important to always think about is there a need for my product? What is the need? How am I servicing
that need? Does my does my market want it? Usually, like, let's say something like skincare, right? Or
hair loss, hair loss treatment, right? There's certainly a need for that because people will always want
like better looking skin, healthier skin. They don't want to lose their hair. The right product would
(22:37):
then service and help you keep your hair, right? Or the right beauty regimen would be specific for
someone who has maybe sensitive skin. So you have to understand what is the need your consumer has?
Am I fulfilling that need? Am I fulfilling it at the right price? And am I also a brand that they
will then want to identify with and become a part of? So I think product market fit is certainly
(23:01):
just basically does your audience want to buy it? But then beyond that, product market affinity to
do something that you have to build into that. So yes, because you can be a product-driven brand. And
a lot of I would say things like, let's say you have motor oil, you have things for classic car parts.
Okay, there's an obvious product market fit there and then it goes back to the price. But you have
(23:25):
to also build a brand within it. So product market fit doesn't sometimes when you think about it,
you can neglect something like. Okay, for example, I'll give a good one. Did you water? People were buying
bottled water. But no one felt like they love bottled water before that. Did they love their arrowhead?
(23:46):
Probably not. This honey, no. They carried it around. It was a commodity. People need water. But they
did the market for I feel like I'm carrying a luxury good was then fulfilled as well within the water.
It's a commodity, same with coffee. So I would say my nuance here is when you're thinking of your
product market fit, also think about being a brand that can drive some love and infatuation with what
(24:12):
you're doing outside of just servicing the market space. Yeah, so in your experience, for example,
for me, I would agree that the most important thing in my line of business would be talent. I
work in cybersecurity and in our field talent is important. So in your field and also, you know,
(24:39):
what is the best thing? Let's just go to what the best single advice that you have ever received
in your entrepreneur journey. For me, it's don't compromise on talent. So for you, what is that?
Damn, the best advice on my entrepreneur. Probably something similar. Praise, I think when I
started this business, one of the biggest pieces of advice that I got from people were,
(25:01):
don't have a partner unless that partner is bringing something to the table. And I think if you
extrapolate that out, it's probably talent. But I think probably writ large is work with people that
are willing, not willing, want and are doing and are being and have the same goal in vision that you have.
(25:22):
That, that's similar to yours. I think talent, don't compromise on talent. I think that's great
similar to mine in terms of partner, something doesn't want, but you don't want. But for me, it was
don't work with people that don't want the same thing you do at the end. So I take example, if I have
clients that aren't willing to do the work or aren't willing to grow and be big and or don't have
(25:45):
the right mindset, right? So for example, I want to grow somebody's business. If they're focused on
the minutiae and the business is growing, but they're still focused on minutiae, we're not the right fit
together. We're not going to grow your business. You need somebody else who kind of focuses on
the margins. We're not, we are focused on growth. There's a reason we're start up accelerators, not
start up, um, um, many, many optimizing. Of course, we do that. We do that very well, but that's in big
(26:10):
numbers, right? It's we're going to save you 40,000 because you're not spending it stupidly.
The best advice for me is partner with people that want to do what you want to do and want to grow
the way that you want to grow because guess what? You're going to grow their business, they're going to
grow yours because you're going to have great stories. If you aren't wearing with people that are
thinking like you and want the same things as you, you're not going to succeed or you're always
(26:31):
going to be in a smaller place than you would be. So that is kind of my don't compromise on the types
of people. Don't just chase clients to chase revenue. It's going to hurt you in the long run. Find
the right fit. That's absolutely critical. Yeah, so, um, in that, in that as we are in that,
in also, I have heard people talk about hiring a players is going to significantly boost
(26:55):
the success rate of a company, uh, a first-auto. So in that, I understand you,
they'll get a little bit because when approaching an investor, maybe venture capital firm,
they want to see the team, you know, some of them value the team. So has this been true for you?
(27:15):
Has it been about hiring the eight players in your industry? Or do you also think there are people
also that would say that it's important to hire those who have not really achieved anything
and are curious and, you know, driven to achieve something and have something they hope
to their career. So maybe that would boost their, you know, their ability to work and ability to,
(27:43):
you know, contribute to the mission and to the mission of the slaughter. So do you think,
are you, what side are you on? I mean, the side of those who say, hire the eight players
and then let them scale on scale fast and then those who say, okay, hire the new guys and then
let them understand you and follow with you and grow with you.
(28:03):
Okay.
It's not an either or for me, but I'm going to tell you my thought process. I think you do need both
in your organization. You should hire, you should hire eight players that are going to help you grow
your business very quickly. So for me in any discipline, my, the person who runs our Amazon
discipline, he's exceptional, he's phenomenal, he's an A+ player. He does what I do on DTC. I don't need
(28:29):
to check in with him. He checks in with me. We understand and have the same goals in mind, right?
Crush it for clients. That's it. And obviously do what you can when you, when you aren't doing that,
right? Now you don't crush 100% of the time, but you can get there if you're working with them.
Smartly. At the same time, A+ players cost a lot, right? And they also have other opportunities.
(28:51):
And if you invest in them, they can also leave and that's fine. That's just the nature of business.
I, I think I'd like to, I stack my business with a few A players and then people who can
be come A+ players because they're going to be hungry. They, you know, I eventually, this business,
if I sell it, when I sell it, I can't do it on my own. I need to find a replacement, David. I
(29:15):
need to find a David that can do what I do right now and grow them into it so that they have some
investment in the business. So that, that has to be a part of it. I have to find the young guys who
are willing to learn, the guys and girls are willing to learn and grow and scale this business with me
and incentivize them because the A+ players may take your business or may not, but they will also have
(29:39):
other things going on, but you will need them. But I think if you don't find those people that you
invest in over time, it's going to be hard to scale your business profitably too in the long run.
In a short run, you're A+ players. So I said, like, it's not any other or it's where you are in the
journey, what you need. I will always say the A+ players are going to be worth it. I have found
that versus having a burn, you're going to burn through three non just to hire the one and you should
(30:01):
have just done that to start. But you should always be on the lookout for hungry talent.
Yeah, we have talked about this a little bit, but I want to know, I want to just share again,
your perspective on leading people. How do you define your role as a leader? Are you more
hands on or do you just create environment and then let the team live their starting environment?
(30:25):
I think I need to be more hands on. I think it goes back to what we just talked about is when
you have A+ players, you don't need to be that hands on. You create the environment and opportunity
and openness. As a leader, I usually give them everything they need. I do still need to give guidance.
I think guidance is most critical. Telling them, hey, you need to talk to the client more,
(30:48):
you need to give them this. I'm noticing where you're missing. I think leadership for me now is
finding their pockets, strength and weakness and helping them on the weakness and then buffering
them out and helping them also on the strength part of it. So leadership for me is seeing where
they are in their journey, helping them grow and find those weaknesses and get better at them,
whether it's client management, whether it's commenting, whether it's reporting, whether it's
(31:11):
just touch basis, leading them in that coaching way. I think of myself more at this point as a coach.
Leader as the business grows, I think it's going to be more about the vision and where they are in
their career. So I would say in terms of actual leadership at this point in the business,
it's probably more of the setting up the environment right now to allow them to grow and scale and then
(31:32):
giving coaching and opportunities. I think the next stage of my career is going to be creating a new
opportunity where they can really grow and prosper outside of me and then I can also give them
that vision. I think leaders should have vision. I think teachers teach and I think leaders lead
through vision and I think that is where we're going and that's probably where startup accelerators
(31:53):
will be in the next part of it. Personally for me, I had a problem. I had an issue with delegating
duties at the early stages of my interview. I had the problem for a while. Letting go some day-to-day
details, delegating some of the tasks to some of my employees. What part of your earlier approach
(32:18):
did you outgrow and what principles have you kept since the stage, your early stage in business
when it comes to leadership? Yeah, I think it's an interesting one. So delegation, I'm totally okay
with off-boarding. It's the delegation, the things that I've been able to do is say, hey, take this
Facebook account, take this Google ads, run with it, let me know how it's going. Now I still have to
(32:43):
kind of pop in there. I think the thing that I haven't yet fully been able to delegate,
it's been very difficult, it's client relationship and management because that is a hard one and if
people develop the relationship with me, they want to retain that relationship. So how do I off-board
and train? It goes back to like hiring a players or those that are learning. How do I get them to the
point where they can do and thank the way I do? So the client relationship, I have not been able to
(33:08):
take away and that's something that you're going to need to do as an owner-founder. You have to
relinquish some of those relationships to be able to grow in scale other months. You should still
have them, right? You're still always around. I'm still a part of those relationships that I have,
but I can't be the be-all and all because then they're going to be bugging me and I shouldn't be.
So off-boarding that is certainly, I would say, in the next phase of my career, being able to still
(33:30):
maintain great relationships with clients, but then also how do you grow and scale other relationships?
And that usually is because you have somebody else doing X-Want to you. So over time, it is, hey,
trust this person for this, trust this person for CRM, email, etc. And then bring me in as needed.
And I'm still going to be watching over it. This baby isn't going to be neglected by any means,
(33:52):
but you get the idea. Eventually, it is how do you build the relationship larger, right? It's always
nicer to have more friends, right? Just like it's more, it's nicer to have more people looking at your
account than not. If you only have the one friend, you only tend to be focused on the one thing.
So I think of it that way. And it's not that it's hard for me to get outgrown, but I have to train
them and teach them how to do that. Yeah, I went to the few founders and I think that this generation
(34:19):
of founders, I will not say this generation of founders because I'm somehow part of them, but
a lot of founders now seem to skip fundamental steps of growing the business. Like you would see
people who have not talked to any customers and then they get an affirm, paying a firm to
(34:39):
draft a pitch day or anything like that. And sometimes you just cannot convince them that
this is not the way to go. So perhaps I have tried to convince, convince a few people,
perhaps you can convince them with your experience. So what mistakes and blindspot do you think,
this, you know, the new founders are experiencing? And how will you advise them to go about
(35:08):
starting a business? I have tried my best, but perhaps you can try yourself.
So is the question, what are the blindspots and pitfalls that they currently have and how do I advise
around those? Yes. Good question. I would say probably for the new founders, don't expect sales
(35:34):
immediately and I don't think that that's new per se, but I think they see a lot of these gurus
that say you can scale it to 10 million a month or a million a month. You can do that and you will
do that. But I think the pitfalls are, no, have some cash in capital and know what you're willing to
invest in burn in the short term. So you can test and learn and iterate. Any new founder, probably if
(35:57):
you're getting into this to immediately make cash, it's not the right mindset and I advise against
it because then you're going to make more decisions because you're desperate or you're nervous
that you're blowing cash on something. So really the way to think about it and the way to get around
that for me is test and learn small, invest small like you mentioned much earlier on, product market fit.
(36:17):
My advice generally is let's take this slow, it's going to happen, it will happen, we will find
that break, but you have to let me know and you have to think about what stage of this are you comfortable
burning cash to be able to then make it. So it's very rare that owner founders come out of the gate
with something amazing and then they're just wildly profitable out of the gate. So I think that
(36:37):
that mindset shift is just okay, I'm willing to make this work as I mentioned. I'm going to grind
into my hustle, but understand the fundamentals and we're going to get there, you work hard in that
way, you will see results. So when at what stage, you know, from that point also, at what stage is
it started really to be funded? When is it started funding really? When, at what point? It's a great
(37:03):
question. I think it's less about the when the startup is ready and more about when the founder is ready.
So I have a client that we're working with, it's a beauty brand, they have 20 million in capital and
not really a lot in sales yet. They have a great idea, the owner founder has said that's outspoken.
People are investing in that founder, right? They know that that founder knows what they're doing,
(37:24):
they brought together the right people. That's ground zero, right? Even almost at negative. Others
have a business that's doing 50, 60, 70,000 a month, 100. They actually may not be ready yet,
not because they don't have a business, but because they don't actually fully know what funding can
and should do for them. So it's less about when the startup is ready, more about when the founder is
(37:45):
ready and understanding how to utilize that capital. That's the fundamental piece of this that I think
can be missed is dollars are only as useful as you know to do a whole. And that's why anybody in tech
who has been successful in tech all of a sudden gets 20 million dollar checks because they know what
they're doing. So you have to know what you're going to do with your capital. Start up,
Dan and should be funded in such a way that the business can utilize the funds. So it's less
(38:13):
about when is the startup ready and when it's more about when is the founder ready?
Yeah, and I believe this is different for a lot of industries, but for the e-commerce industry
and also maybe let's just focus on the e-commerce industry where you have a
like-states, experience, but what key metrics should you found the focus on just
(38:36):
kept business in the e-commerce industry? Yes, so I just want to quick set then I have the
my camera. All right, you know, put it back on and then you could reask it.
Sorry?
All right, so I said you have an experience in e-commerce industry so perhaps we'll focus on that
(38:59):
a little bit. What metrics should they found or focus on to scale the business?
Great question. Margin for sure. Understanding your margin, metric is going to be margin
when you're looking at your overall business, overall also your total, how much you spent and
(39:19):
how much you've made. You would be surprised, praise. Everybody listening to this would be
surprised and I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of owner founders. You'd be surprised how many
could actually tell me how much they spent and how much they made in a month. Genuinely, I mean,
I'm talking 10% can answer that. That is your main metric. How much are you spending in your business
and how much you're making? So many pitfalls and owner founders is they focus on my new shirt that
(39:44):
doesn't necessarily matter for the business. Oh, today my row as was 0.5. How'd your business do?
Because you're never going to be able to know how much your investment drove X, Y and Z dollars.
And of course those metrics matter if they're up or down. But if you're not, if you're spending the
right amount and you're still profitable, spend more. Understand where that is. It's a very simple
(40:05):
metric and I can't believe that I have to say this, but again, I'm saying it and I bet next time you
talk to ask an owner founder, do you know how much you're actually spending on everything overall,
how much you're making? What are your margin? What are your cost of goods? What's your profit margin?
A lot of them don't know. It's as simple as that. If you have a good EBITDA, you hear a lot in finance,
frankly, EBITDA is something that a lot of investment firms are going to look at. If you know what that is,
(40:28):
then you know when you can scale. Those are the main ones. Now within everything that you're looking at,
you're probably going to look at velocity of your product moved. If you have a lot of product,
you're going to look at things like your return on ad spend, of course. And you're going to look at
your metrics on site, which is conversion rate, ad card, etc. All important, but the most important one
is looking at is what am I spending and what am I making? Great. Great. I already just
(40:53):
supported last time you spoke, but I want to do it again for the audience. And it's about the e-commerce
industry, which I have here. The report says that the e-commerce industry is boomer, projected from
4.1 trillion dollars in sales in 24 to 6.4 trillion dollars by 2029. And it says, "Technology is like AI,
(41:14):
blockchain, AR, splash VR, voice commerce, and live stream shopping, are shaping retail." So my
question to you will be, where do you see the e-commerce industry in the next five to 10 years?
I see more third party. I would say almost a marketplace is taking over.
(41:35):
As margins and shipping become a little more difficult, I think there's a lot of white space
for someone to come in, like an Etsy from an Amazon and even from other places possibly in China.
Right? You're going to probably have third party type or marketplace is coming in.
E-commerce isn't going to go away, but margins are going to get more difficult. So the white space
(41:57):
exists to be able to take out Amazon to a degree or find a way to, I would say, be a second seller,
so to speak of your brand. Someone comes in and starts to build marketplaces. I think that's where
E-commerce is going to go. I think there's white space there. Great. And what trends do you think
will have the biggest impact? For, I mentioned, technologies like AI, blockchain, AR,
(42:22):
voice commerce, and live stream shopping. What emerging trends do you think will have the biggest
impact? And how should E-commerce businesses plan the other patient towards this emerging trend?
Well, I think you're right about AI. AI is certainly going to be a big one. Probably the thing
that to think about is emerging trends too in capital and capital investment. So the way that you find
(42:48):
capital, it could change. And I think that's an emerging trend. There's a lot more opportunity to
get capital in different ways than there were maybe two years ago even. So I see a lot of ways of
getting capital uniquely or funding it through credit or getting business lines of credit or
raising debt or doing equity raises. I think those are interesting trends that are starting to emerge.
(43:10):
More financial products are coming on the market. So those in business owner founders looking for
investors. I think that's a change that they need to take, take, we should pay attention to,
and take care of and thinking about how they should get funding for their business because you do
need capital to scale. And I think a lot are thinking about it nearly enough. But also outside of that,
(43:32):
owner founders should be looking at AI and AI is going to change the game. It's going to change the
game creatively. It's going to change the game in terms of optimization. Yeah, I think all of those
at a high level are things that are changing the game right now. Yeah, and speaking about AI
before we bring this decision to close, let's talk about AI for a second. People talk about AI
(43:58):
taking over jobs. And a lot of people are panicking over that especially with those who have
the AI and the client a lot of them. So do you really think it's possible for, well, we have had a
lot of people had the jobs taken over by AI quite frankly, but do you think a larger percentage
of three-pulse job will be taken over by AI at the cylinder? I think, here's what I think. I think
(44:26):
like every technological change that happens, there's always a fear that what exists will be replaced.
The reality is what exists will be replaced. That's how technology works, right? Whether it was the car,
whether it was cleaning, right? When you know cleaning, cleaning went away when you had the washing
(44:46):
machine, whether you had the internet, but we have more technical jobs than we've ever had.
The job infrastructure will change. The current jobs are going to go away to a degree,
and they're going to make way for new and different types of jobs.
Everyone's always worried about, is it supplanting what exists now? Yes, but that is also what
(45:07):
technological innovation does. Things change, right? That's a good thing, but it's scary in the moment.
Change is scary no matter what, because you don't know what's going to come. That's, but it's exciting too,
right? You know, sometimes it worst things in life or do the same thing over the last
of the next 50 years and it's kind of dull and boring. Things are going to change. Jobs that
exist now absolutely will be taken out. 20% could be my guess, 25, but that 25 is going to be
(45:31):
replaced by something completely new. So the change is going to happen. It will happen. Learning AI is
the best thing that everyone could do. Just like, remember, learning coding 15, 20 years ago?
It's the same kind of idea. AI and AI, it's going to just be a whole different ballgame.
I think strategists and people that are like higher level order thinkers, it's going to be interesting,
(45:53):
but then you may have to just have more skill sets, right? Before it could be these great examples,
you used to say how many words of minutes do you type? Well, no one cares about that anymore.
Typing was an essential skill. Now maybe using AI will be the essential skill.
So it's going to evolve. It will take jobs, but it's also going to create, I think, a plethora,
and that's what I think the market is betting on at the moment too.
(46:14):
Yeah, considering that you just gave a metric of 25, 20% of jobs,
been replaced by a ton of intelligence, what careers you think are most in that line,
that 20%, that 25%, what careers you think are in that line that will be probably replaced by that
(46:35):
Idaho to me or maybe Pashin. Careers that I think will be taken over, things like that we're doing
MediaBind. It's a good example. MediaBind, clerical work, probably even some like contract work,
anything kind of in that entry level data entry taken over clerical work taken over some financial
(46:56):
planning taken over. There's a lot that's probably going to be replaced in the very short term
that I think exists within our ecosystem at the moment. That will be removed. I don't obviously
hard skills won't be taken over, but any tech involving, I would say, light data entry or processing,
again, things like ad buying, MediaBind will be taken over. I mean, even customer service,
(47:23):
that's probably a big one. There's probably the one that's going to be taken over some of the most,
you probably somebody who manages AI rather than individual customer service reps.
Those are some of the ones that I can think of in the short term that will be taken over by AI.
Yeah, and for some of these things that you some of the discarries that you've mentioned right now,
how much time do you think it have to be algebraic taking over?
(47:46):
Great question. How long do these careers have?
If I'm a betting man three to five before they start really going the way of no one really
hiring for those roles anymore, I don't think it's a one or two year thing. I think it's probably a
five year stack that you have before these even in AI, tech even recruiting. But I think you probably
(48:08):
have a five year window before these really start to go away completely. Great. Thank you very
big. I think you need to use the data to see what it has to do with that.
Is that a fascinating thing? Is that a fascinating thing? Is that a fascinating thing?
Oh, great idea. I'm going to see. Thank you very much.
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you
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All right, good morning from here.
Mr. David Lorango, thank you for joining on this episode of the FWP Advice Report
because Griggs will be great to have you today. Mr. David is the chief executive officer
of Starbacelerators, also the founder and he is an e-commerce aspect. He has been in the
(00:38):
e-commerce industry for a couple of years now and he's here to tell us a little bit about
business, about his experience and his way to build a product, probably guide or soul
in guide-yong founders in making critical decisions in business. Mr. David has given anything
else that is anything about you that I haven't said of it?
(01:03):
No, you know, just a quick background. I've been doing this for 15 years, had my agency
now for several years, working with early stage growth startups and also established businesses,
so that's it.
All right, thank you for that.
Now, let's go into it. I want to understand your vision and your drive. What is your
(01:27):
vision? Where it comes to your company and your career? What is that your vision and your
drive?
The vision for the company is to help founders get out of their nine to five. Basically,
startups and the opportunity that e-commerce and DTC present to founders and anyone who's
(01:49):
looking to kind of get out of their nine to five is incredible. We really never had this
opportunity. If you wanted to do this years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,
you're kind of stuck. You need an institutional backing, institutional knowledge and a really
great idea.
Now you need a good idea and really good marketing and an approach to business and you can
make 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 100, 200,000 incremental a month. That's division. The drive for it is
(02:16):
to be able to, again, help others with their vision, right, with their drive, with their dream.
So getting them out of where they are and growing their business is something we're really
excited about doing, something we've been doing. And that's, I'd say, one of the big
purposes of the company, the other vision is to help start up scale from a million to
30 million a month, right? Something like that or 10 million a month, 20 million. What
(02:38):
have you? But to take them from where they are and to scale them rapidly, that's what we do.
All right. Thank you for that. What inspired you to start their company in the first place?
And what you have really talked about the problem that you were solving? So what inspired you
to start that, you know, was there specific problem that you saw that you were a passionate
(02:58):
about sort of?
Yeah, I think what certainly what made me start this business is I was kind of a nine to five
guy at, at the point where nine to five wasn't really fulfilling me, but also probably
like other owner founders, nine to five. What led me to be able to do this? And I would
say what led to the formation is the problem we're trying to solve is there are a lot of agencies
(03:23):
that exist out there for their service model. We're a full 360. We partner with you. We're
not a service provider in that way. What I saw was service providers tended to take the
dollars and then run if and when the business didn't work out for them. Agents, you take
your dollars and then maybe give you results. What we do is we partner with you. That's
a specific problem that I saw again and again and again. What would happen is I would come
(03:45):
on board and then try to fulfill what an agency was or wasn't doing. And I said, well, have
you looked at your entire funnel? Have you looked at CRM? Have you looked at CRO? Have you
looked at SEO? Have you looked at product market fit? Have you looked at your margins? Usually
answers somewhat maybe yes or no on a lot of those questions. We're solving the problem
that the founders and owners are having that they aren't able to find partners that can help
(04:06):
them scale their business. Maybe they can help them scale their ads but not their business.
So we're helping DTC owner founders scale their business as a partner.
All right. And when did you decide that it was the exact time to start this business?
Personally for me, I have three stages that I think every business should go, which is
(04:29):
the stage of I didn't find the problem. Number two, then I didn't find the solution and
then turning that into a business. So how did you decide on the timing to launch this
business? For example, when did you feel like this idea was now ready to become a business
(04:49):
for you? And what factors made you confident enough to take that step?
And question, in a way, there's two ways that I think I break this up. As somebody who's
a product person, you have to figure that out where the problem solution is their business
here. In my line of work, it's not quite that way. And I do recommend that to everyone
(05:13):
that we consult for. Is there a product market fit? In my case, the problem solution was
there. You need to bring your product to market. Their agencies as old as they are
probably is at marketing and in the modern era, right? Or advertising. When I found this
was a business, as mentioned, that they're coming to me with problems. My agency isn't
(05:36):
scaling my business. My, well, your ads look fine. What's really going on? I don't know.
Where I figured out that we could be partner and where there was real value here is there
was a problem that a business would come to me with and they didn't really be it. We're
already able to find the solution in the way that they thought they could, right? Whether
it's an ad agency, whether it's creative agency, right? There's individual pieces of this.
(06:00):
So did I find going out to market that that was missing? Absolutely. It was pretty readily
apparent to me that strategists in that way are not as common as there are media and service
providers. So I don't know that I had an issue with is there can we provide value? Is there
a way for us to kind of fit into this market? I think that was there. It was more can we
(06:21):
do it, right? I think the next question was, are we good at this? So that then becomes
not, is there a market can I make a business? The answer is yes, but can you make it a business
to be successful at it? That's a question that don't that owner founders don't ask themselves
enough, right? It can I actually do this thing? That is crucial. So then we had to answer
(06:42):
as an agency, can we scale a business from zero to 30,000, 30 or 50,000? With not a lot
of capital and not a lot of resources. That is incredibly difficult and you will find that
and that's what owner founders are trying to find that will be great. When we found a system
that we have that we can plug in, we know how to do this and not just once or twice, did
this very recently with one client clothing brand, did it another with a vitamin supplement
(07:05):
brand? We have a formula that absolutely works. That was that was the challenge and that
took a little bit of time, right? It wasn't like we just knew we had to stumble into it
on our own. That crucial piece is when we found that we were able to make it a business because
then we saw results and it's like, oh wow, this is actually working. Now we're able to take
on many, many, many more clients, right? So we in that to answer your question, and we think
(07:29):
about it, I think about it in a way that you do in a way, but the challenge in that way
is we know that there is a business here, but can we service and can we do it, right?
That is the challenge. So we do that now that we know it, we're doing it.
Right, in that aspect, what you talked about now, what personal qualities now do you think
(07:53):
are most important for you founded to have or in your own description or in a founder? So
what personal qualities do you think are most important for that founder to have? Every
founder would say. Every founder, I think a couple things, determination and grit and the
ability to learn and fail when you're wrong and know what it looks like to be right. You
(08:19):
can't be somebody that's worried also about failure. If you do, you're an employee. You have
an employee mindset and there's nothing wrong with being an employee by any stretch of the
imagination, but it is different to being a founder. An employee is working on the
behalf of others to help grow a business. They're part of an ecosystem. A founder realizes
(08:39):
that it's on them, that they are the ones paying the checks, cutting the checks. The owner
founder mindset is critical. You are determined. You are a go getter. You're a hustler. You
make your business work. You find the capital if you are raising, right? You're CEO or founder.
You're the one doing these things. So grit, determination, hustle, all these things that
(09:01):
are talked about often. I would give one, I'm trying to give you a unique one, but I'm
going to give kind of a unique one. There are a lot of people that start one type of business
and then think they can succeed in another vertical. Oftentimes those are the ones that fail.
They have a lot of money and they fail because their ego gets in the way. So one of the biggest
parts that I see is kill the ego, get rid of the ego, listen to the people that you're
(09:25):
hiring. I have one I think that recently worked with that decided to go their own way and
they're already failing pretty miserably in what they're doing. It's a fashion apparel
brand, specifically. They're not doing it in a way because they model it off of something
that they knew before. So what do I think? I think humility and being able to understand
that you still have, if you're an owner found or you're successful, right? That's no knock
(09:47):
on those that fail even. But what gets in their way is because I succeeded here, I can succeed
over there. I've seen, I saw this again with someone else who is an owner founder of a very,
very large calm and then tried to do something in funding with startups, the difficulty
there too is that the model that he had for the one is in the model that you have here.
(10:09):
So what's crucial now is don't be dumb, be smart and then be able to be humble because
someone else is going to come in then doesn't know anything is going to win because they
test them and test them. And this is almost a generational thing. Where are you in your
journey? But where are you? How old are you when you said, oh, I know how to do this. And
then it fails, right? This is why a lot of young entrepreneurs are succeeding wildly in
TikTok and others aren't. So grit, determination, obvious ones, but I think checking your ego
(10:34):
at the door and being able to realize it just because you won once doesn't mean you're going
to win again. Great. I believe an idea should be validated before execution. And I think
you will agree with me on that. But I want to know how you approach this stage in your journey.
How did you test and believe your idea before you committed to it? Because I believe that
(10:58):
there was a bit of trust in our validation of your idea before you committed to that. And
for the founder who just have $200 in your account, $300 in the account, $100,000 in the account
and want to commit it to a business. How did validate that idea? Today talk to potential
customers, beautiful prototypes and then from that, you know, how do you suggest they grow
(11:22):
out? How did you grow up out here, right? Praise. I think validating your products and making
sure that you know that there is a proof of concept is vital. One of the dumbest foolish
things I see any owner founder do is think that their idea is gold before they even know
(11:45):
where the gold is. What that looks like is over investing in product, buying up product,
heavily investing. So testing and proof of concept is crucial. You look at Mark Zuckerberg.
I think he has a great quote and I'm going to probably put you in but look at it. He said
it's not a business until it's a business. What that means is what you're doing is still
(12:05):
a side hustle until you've proven that people actually want it. How do you do it? That's
a question. We do this very simply. We have again a model that I use that I even use in
my own life. I invest small and then invest large. Invest small and test. What that looks
like as an e-commerce business is bring your product and website to market and understand
(12:26):
the data in the metrics are people adding the cart. Are they doing what you need them to
do? If the answer is no, you either have a product market fit problem or you aren't messaging
it correctly or you just don't have the right product. So I usually say take minimal investment
and get some signals, get some signs, get some early data. For me, the answer to that question
is early data. Early data is going to prove it out. Not an early data is not my friends
(12:50):
like it. Anybody listening to this podcast, if your friends like it, that's largely useless.
Yes, of course, some of your friends are going to know, but the mark are your friends going
to be the only ones buying your product and will their friends make a business for you?
They will not. So proof of concept is something even in e-commerce, like are you getting early
sales? Are you somewhat profitable? I mean early sales, frankly, is a good example. So
(13:11):
I say, yeah, test with every minimal amount that you can't. Small and then invest slowly
over time. You're absolutely right. There's no way that I would recommend doing a business
if you didn't get early data and early leads, right? On any of it. Yeah. And in the case,
where the founder now identifies that this particular, didn't just pivot from this idea,
(13:32):
from this business model, how do you suggest the girl about that? And from your experience,
how do you, do they react to that adaptation from a different business model? Great question.
I mentioned the one, the footwear brand. I don't know if they're going to pivot their model
if they're stuck. So some people are just stuck and they're not letting the data tell them.
(13:56):
But the ones in most of them, the answer is how do they pivot? What do they look like? Most
business owners want to make money, right? They're part of the reason they're in business.
Now there's for their passion project, but if they're not making money, vast majority are
going to realize something isn't working. How do you pivot? One of the, I think the CEO
of Netflix tested and learned and figured out over time and he said he wished he would have
(14:19):
done this and learned sooner. That's a subscription model was the way to go because before that,
they were just having product being centered, the, just being sent and then they'd send it
back and they realized, oh wow, subscription service makes the most sense. You, how are
the, their business owners, I have found very receptive to thoughtful, meaningful, one-to-one
conversations. When I have that and say, look, these aren't, this isn't working, think
(14:43):
no, that I'm not there to tell them something they don't really know, they're not generating
revenue. I'm just putting it in a way that is clear to them that makes sense. Okay, well,
what do we do next? It's the, what do we do next that happens? And again, if they're passionate
about the idea, let's say they had a subscription business for product and that's not working
and I say it's not working for X, Y and Z reasons, they're very open to it. How do they pivot?
(15:06):
It really is again the same model. What are the unit economics in my business? Cost
of goods. What's the scale opportunity? What's the product fit? Opportunity, product market
fit. They're very open to it. I would say the vast majority of the time certainly as they've
hired me on consulting or what we're doing, they are very receptive to changing the model
(15:26):
if it makes sense. Great. We'll come back to product market fit
a little bit. We'll come back to that later, but you talk about pricing. So I believe that
setting the right price is a very, very critical decision and understanding the value of a product
will provide all to certain pricing. So how do you do those? I found that determined the
(15:48):
cost of the product. I believe you were, we have discussed before and you talked about service
business is being easier to set a price for based on maybe you can look at the market and see
what is it for. For the product business, how do you determine the cost of the product and
how do you measure the value of a product to be able to do timing the price for that?
Great question. Like, yeah, mentioned we talked about my business and being able to find
(16:13):
services model. It's also like, well, what's the value you're bringing versus what we're
bringing in? You can kind of do that math pretty quickly, but it is similar in a mathematical
way for a product. We do, we test through Microsoft clarity and through
intelligence, part of what we do is price elasticity testing. And we find the right point at
which you have influx of orders and you're still profitable. Most brands don't do this. It's
(16:38):
a great question to ask all of them here. Praise and I think it's, it's, it's the right way
to think about anything in a business. You're right price oftentimes is where brands have
a problem with conversion. It's not their branding. It's, I don't want to pay for this or
I'm not convinced to pay that particular price. I don't wish to pay for it. So we do testing.
(17:02):
We do a lot of tests. We use IntelliGems and we use clarity and we use other tools and
we, we test and test and test and then when we find the right one, we go to market with
that writ large. So it goes back to again, what we're talking about, which was how do you,
how do you know when it's time to pivot or how do you know when you're doing something
right and how do you know when to invest? It's the same kind of principle here is invest
small test and learn. You also can do some product market research. A lot of people do use
(17:26):
chat GVT. What are the consumers willing to pay? You can use something like Amazon and
we use Helium 10, which allows you to see your sort of price. You'll have to see the product.
So you're right. I mean, it's not talked about enough price and price sensitivity is, is
crucial and vital. When you have a good brand, you have a product that people want, then
you have to wrestle with your margins, right? So it is, it's a more mathematical concern
(17:48):
in a lot of ways than I think most owner founders think about, but it's certainly one of the
most crucial because when you find that specific dollar amount that they're willing to pay,
you have an inflection point, right? So let's say your conversion rate is 0.5%. You change,
you are price point by 30%, and then your conversion rate increases by 70%. Now you're moving volume.
(18:09):
You're viewing unit economics and volume. So enough of that has to be baked into the way
you're thinking about and testing as a business owner. So many are just focused on meta.
So many are just focused on why aren't my ads working. It's part of it and it goes back
to why I found in the agency that I did is because holistically, if you're not thinking
about things like price, unit economics, along with brand and your ads and your advertising,
(18:31):
then it's not really, you're not really going to find your sweet spot. And guess what? I mean,
ahead of that, you also do need to test into it over time as well. You need to test where your
audience is. A lot of brands have actually increased their prices over time and haven't seen a major
dip. Some of that has to do with the tariffs. Others have to do it just cost of goods going out.
(18:53):
But that's the majority I've had to do with cost of goods just rising and increasing, right?
So price, price testing and sensitivity is going to happen as always a part of your business.
You will be raising them no matter what at some point in your, in your business life cycle,
you'll be raising them. But you have to understand where your audience breaks and then where they go.
Yeah, let me squeeze this in a little bit because I've talked to a lot of founders,
(19:15):
especially from here in Africa and also in the Middle East. We are the most questions that is
often the most question that is often brought up is the balancing of affordability for customers
and also keeping the business profitable. So in a case where the price is directly the value of
(19:37):
that product and also the cost of production for that particular product now makes it harder to
balance that and get a profit out of it. Do you go about it with volume or do you think maybe
there's another way, is there another way that you would suggest that?
Volume, actually, I guess there's a couple things. Certainly volume is a big one, but also maybe
(20:03):
product diversification, category expansion. If you're a fashion apparel brand,
you kind of have to start thinking about that to some degree, right? There are very few businesses
to get away with just having one product and live detail. Product diversification is probably a part of it
or add-ons, right? So let's say you're squeezed a little, let's take, you're selling a water cooler,
(20:25):
right? You sell a water cooler or something like that. Okay, well, what else can we sell
for water coolers? Maybe we can sell a bottle, maybe we can sell the filters as well. You want to be able
to find other things that are ancillary to raise your average order value. So as your margins are squeezed,
if your AOV is driven, that is a good way to get additional incremental revenue.
(20:49):
Out of the purchaser that's already there. So I think certainly volume, but I think the other one
is product and category expansion. And not just that, you also grow your business too, right? And so
that's what I think you always think is an entrepreneur. You have the one thing, what else can we do in
scale? Oftentimes you see where a lot of owners, for example, somebody that were making masks during
(21:09):
peak lockdown. Well, it just makes masks forever. But what do you parlay that into if somebody likes
your brand, right? So you think of something like that as and it's anything you do as a business,
maybe your services start to diminish because things have changed. I think it's it's smart to always
think about what else more can we do next? If this core piece is not our core piece anymore, right?
(21:31):
Well, how do I explain? How do I explain? Yeah, so let's go back to product market fit for for a
second. So finding the right product market fits is I believe it's very, very critical for scaling
beyond initial traction. So we showed it to what around it looks. What does it actually mean? What does
(21:51):
product market fits mean? Product market fit means your odd, your demographic wants to buy it.
You service the need to need exists and there's a demand for it and you supply it.
Deeper than that product market fit is servicing the right need at the right moment. I think that is
(22:15):
important to always think about is there a need for my product? What is the need? How am I servicing
that need? Does my does my market want it? Usually, like, let's say something like skincare, right? Or
hair loss, hair loss treatment, right? There's certainly a need for that because people will always want
like better looking skin, healthier skin. They don't want to lose their hair. The right product would
(22:37):
then service and help you keep your hair, right? Or the right beauty regimen would be specific for
someone who has maybe sensitive skin. So you have to understand what is the need your consumer has?
Am I fulfilling that need? Am I fulfilling it at the right price? And am I also a brand that they
will then want to identify with and become a part of? So I think product market fit is certainly
(23:01):
just basically does your audience want to buy it? But then beyond that, product market affinity to
do something that you have to build into that. So yes, because you can be a product-driven brand. And
a lot of I would say things like, let's say you have motor oil, you have things for classic car parts.
Okay, there's an obvious product market fit there and then it goes back to the price. But you have
(23:25):
to also build a brand within it. So product market fit doesn't sometimes when you think about it,
you can neglect something like. Okay, for example, I'll give a good one. Did you water? People were buying
bottled water. But no one felt like they love bottled water before that. Did they love their arrowhead?
(23:46):
Probably not. This honey, no. They carried it around. It was a commodity. People need water. But they
did the market for I feel like I'm carrying a luxury good was then fulfilled as well within the water.
It's a commodity, same with coffee. So I would say my nuance here is when you're thinking of your
product market fit, also think about being a brand that can drive some love and infatuation with what
(24:12):
you're doing outside of just servicing the market space. Yeah, so in your experience, for example,
for me, I would agree that the most important thing in my line of business would be talent. I
work in cybersecurity and in our field talent is important. So in your field and also, you know,
(24:39):
what is the best thing? Let's just go to what the best single advice that you have ever received
in your entrepreneur journey. For me, it's don't compromise on talent. So for you, what is that?
Damn, the best advice on my entrepreneur. Probably something similar. Praise, I think when I
started this business, one of the biggest pieces of advice that I got from people were,
(25:01):
don't have a partner unless that partner is bringing something to the table. And I think if you
extrapolate that out, it's probably talent. But I think probably writ large is work with people that
are willing, not willing, want and are doing and are being and have the same goal in vision that you have.
(25:22):
That, that's similar to yours. I think talent, don't compromise on talent. I think that's great
similar to mine in terms of partner, something doesn't want, but you don't want. But for me, it was
don't work with people that don't want the same thing you do at the end. So I take example, if I have
clients that aren't willing to do the work or aren't willing to grow and be big and or don't have
(25:45):
the right mindset, right? So for example, I want to grow somebody's business. If they're focused on
the minutiae and the business is growing, but they're still focused on minutiae, we're not the right fit
together. We're not going to grow your business. You need somebody else who kind of focuses on
the margins. We're not, we are focused on growth. There's a reason we're start up accelerators, not
start up, um, um, many, many optimizing. Of course, we do that. We do that very well, but that's in big
(26:10):
numbers, right? It's we're going to save you 40,000 because you're not spending it stupidly.
The best advice for me is partner with people that want to do what you want to do and want to grow
the way that you want to grow because guess what? You're going to grow their business, they're going to
grow yours because you're going to have great stories. If you aren't wearing with people that are
thinking like you and want the same things as you, you're not going to succeed or you're always
(26:31):
going to be in a smaller place than you would be. So that is kind of my don't compromise on the types
of people. Don't just chase clients to chase revenue. It's going to hurt you in the long run. Find
the right fit. That's absolutely critical. Yeah, so, um, in that, in that as we are in that,
in also, I have heard people talk about hiring a players is going to significantly boost
(26:55):
the success rate of a company, uh, a first-auto. So in that, I understand you,
they'll get a little bit because when approaching an investor, maybe venture capital firm,
they want to see the team, you know, some of them value the team. So has this been true for you?
(27:15):
Has it been about hiring the eight players in your industry? Or do you also think there are people
also that would say that it's important to hire those who have not really achieved anything
and are curious and, you know, driven to achieve something and have something they hope
to their career. So maybe that would boost their, you know, their ability to work and ability to,
(27:43):
you know, contribute to the mission and to the mission of the slaughter. So do you think,
are you, what side are you on? I mean, the side of those who say, hire the eight players
and then let them scale on scale fast and then those who say, okay, hire the new guys and then
let them understand you and follow with you and grow with you.
(28:03):
Okay.
It's not an either or for me, but I'm going to tell you my thought process. I think you do need both
in your organization. You should hire, you should hire eight players that are going to help you grow
your business very quickly. So for me in any discipline, my, the person who runs our Amazon
discipline, he's exceptional, he's phenomenal, he's an A+ player. He does what I do on DTC. I don't need
(28:29):
to check in with him. He checks in with me. We understand and have the same goals in mind, right?
Crush it for clients. That's it. And obviously do what you can when you, when you aren't doing that,
right? Now you don't crush 100% of the time, but you can get there if you're working with them.
Smartly. At the same time, A+ players cost a lot, right? And they also have other opportunities.
(28:51):
And if you invest in them, they can also leave and that's fine. That's just the nature of business.
I, I think I'd like to, I stack my business with a few A players and then people who can
be come A+ players because they're going to be hungry. They, you know, I eventually, this business,
if I sell it, when I sell it, I can't do it on my own. I need to find a replacement, David. I
(29:15):
need to find a David that can do what I do right now and grow them into it so that they have some
investment in the business. So that, that has to be a part of it. I have to find the young guys who
are willing to learn, the guys and girls are willing to learn and grow and scale this business with me
and incentivize them because the A+ players may take your business or may not, but they will also have
(29:39):
other things going on, but you will need them. But I think if you don't find those people that you
invest in over time, it's going to be hard to scale your business profitably too in the long run.
In a short run, you're A+ players. So I said, like, it's not any other or it's where you are in the
journey, what you need. I will always say the A+ players are going to be worth it. I have found
that versus having a burn, you're going to burn through three non just to hire the one and you should
(30:01):
have just done that to start. But you should always be on the lookout for hungry talent.
Yeah, we have talked about this a little bit, but I want to know, I want to just share again,
your perspective on leading people. How do you define your role as a leader? Are you more
hands on or do you just create environment and then let the team live their starting environment?
(30:25):
I think I need to be more hands on. I think it goes back to what we just talked about is when
you have A+ players, you don't need to be that hands on. You create the environment and opportunity
and openness. As a leader, I usually give them everything they need. I do still need to give guidance.
I think guidance is most critical. Telling them, hey, you need to talk to the client more,
(30:48):
you need to give them this. I'm noticing where you're missing. I think leadership for me now is
finding their pockets, strength and weakness and helping them on the weakness and then buffering
them out and helping them also on the strength part of it. So leadership for me is seeing where
they are in their journey, helping them grow and find those weaknesses and get better at them,
whether it's client management, whether it's commenting, whether it's reporting, whether it's
(31:11):
just touch basis, leading them in that coaching way. I think of myself more at this point as a coach.
Leader as the business grows, I think it's going to be more about the vision and where they are in
their career. So I would say in terms of actual leadership at this point in the business,
it's probably more of the setting up the environment right now to allow them to grow and scale and then
(31:32):
giving coaching and opportunities. I think the next stage of my career is going to be creating a new
opportunity where they can really grow and prosper outside of me and then I can also give them
that vision. I think leaders should have vision. I think teachers teach and I think leaders lead
through vision and I think that is where we're going and that's probably where startup accelerators
(31:53):
will be in the next part of it. Personally for me, I had a problem. I had an issue with delegating
duties at the early stages of my interview. I had the problem for a while. Letting go some day-to-day
details, delegating some of the tasks to some of my employees. What part of your earlier approach
(32:18):
did you outgrow and what principles have you kept since the stage, your early stage in business
when it comes to leadership? Yeah, I think it's an interesting one. So delegation, I'm totally okay
with off-boarding. It's the delegation, the things that I've been able to do is say, hey, take this
Facebook account, take this Google ads, run with it, let me know how it's going. Now I still have to
(32:43):
kind of pop in there. I think the thing that I haven't yet fully been able to delegate,
it's been very difficult, it's client relationship and management because that is a hard one and if
people develop the relationship with me, they want to retain that relationship. So how do I off-board
and train? It goes back to like hiring a players or those that are learning. How do I get them to the
point where they can do and thank the way I do? So the client relationship, I have not been able to
(33:08):
take away and that's something that you're going to need to do as an owner-founder. You have to
relinquish some of those relationships to be able to grow in scale other months. You should still
have them, right? You're still always around. I'm still a part of those relationships that I have,
but I can't be the be-all and all because then they're going to be bugging me and I shouldn't be.
So off-boarding that is certainly, I would say, in the next phase of my career, being able to still
(33:30):
maintain great relationships with clients, but then also how do you grow and scale other relationships?
And that usually is because you have somebody else doing X-Want to you. So over time, it is, hey,
trust this person for this, trust this person for CRM, email, etc. And then bring me in as needed.
And I'm still going to be watching over it. This baby isn't going to be neglected by any means,
(33:52):
but you get the idea. Eventually, it is how do you build the relationship larger, right? It's always
nicer to have more friends, right? Just like it's more, it's nicer to have more people looking at your
account than not. If you only have the one friend, you only tend to be focused on the one thing.
So I think of it that way. And it's not that it's hard for me to get outgrown, but I have to train
them and teach them how to do that. Yeah, I went to the few founders and I think that this generation
(34:19):
of founders, I will not say this generation of founders because I'm somehow part of them, but
a lot of founders now seem to skip fundamental steps of growing the business. Like you would see
people who have not talked to any customers and then they get an affirm, paying a firm to
(34:39):
draft a pitch day or anything like that. And sometimes you just cannot convince them that
this is not the way to go. So perhaps I have tried to convince, convince a few people,
perhaps you can convince them with your experience. So what mistakes and blindspot do you think,
this, you know, the new founders are experiencing? And how will you advise them to go about
(35:08):
starting a business? I have tried my best, but perhaps you can try yourself.
So is the question, what are the blindspots and pitfalls that they currently have and how do I advise
around those? Yes. Good question. I would say probably for the new founders, don't expect sales
(35:34):
immediately and I don't think that that's new per se, but I think they see a lot of these gurus
that say you can scale it to 10 million a month or a million a month. You can do that and you will
do that. But I think the pitfalls are, no, have some cash in capital and know what you're willing to
invest in burn in the short term. So you can test and learn and iterate. Any new founder, probably if
(35:57):
you're getting into this to immediately make cash, it's not the right mindset and I advise against
it because then you're going to make more decisions because you're desperate or you're nervous
that you're blowing cash on something. So really the way to think about it and the way to get around
that for me is test and learn small, invest small like you mentioned much earlier on, product market fit.
(36:17):
My advice generally is let's take this slow, it's going to happen, it will happen, we will find
that break, but you have to let me know and you have to think about what stage of this are you comfortable
burning cash to be able to then make it. So it's very rare that owner founders come out of the gate
with something amazing and then they're just wildly profitable out of the gate. So I think that
(36:37):
that mindset shift is just okay, I'm willing to make this work as I mentioned. I'm going to grind
into my hustle, but understand the fundamentals and we're going to get there, you work hard in that
way, you will see results. So when at what stage, you know, from that point also, at what stage is
it started really to be funded? When is it started funding really? When, at what point? It's a great
(37:03):
question. I think it's less about the when the startup is ready and more about when the founder is ready.
So I have a client that we're working with, it's a beauty brand, they have 20 million in capital and
not really a lot in sales yet. They have a great idea, the owner founder has said that's outspoken.
People are investing in that founder, right? They know that that founder knows what they're doing,
(37:24):
they brought together the right people. That's ground zero, right? Even almost at negative. Others
have a business that's doing 50, 60, 70,000 a month, 100. They actually may not be ready yet,
not because they don't have a business, but because they don't actually fully know what funding can
and should do for them. So it's less about when the startup is ready, more about when the founder is
(37:45):
ready and understanding how to utilize that capital. That's the fundamental piece of this that I think
can be missed is dollars are only as useful as you know to do a whole. And that's why anybody in tech
who has been successful in tech all of a sudden gets 20 million dollar checks because they know what
they're doing. So you have to know what you're going to do with your capital. Start up,
Dan and should be funded in such a way that the business can utilize the funds. So it's less
(38:13):
about when is the startup ready and when it's more about when is the founder ready?
Yeah, and I believe this is different for a lot of industries, but for the e-commerce industry
and also maybe let's just focus on the e-commerce industry where you have a
like-states, experience, but what key metrics should you found the focus on just
(38:36):
kept business in the e-commerce industry? Yes, so I just want to quick set then I have the
my camera. All right, you know, put it back on and then you could reask it.
Sorry?
All right, so I said you have an experience in e-commerce industry so perhaps we'll focus on that
(38:59):
a little bit. What metrics should they found or focus on to scale the business?
Great question. Margin for sure. Understanding your margin, metric is going to be margin
when you're looking at your overall business, overall also your total, how much you spent and
(39:19):
how much you've made. You would be surprised, praise. Everybody listening to this would be
surprised and I've dealt with hundreds and hundreds of owner founders. You'd be surprised how many
could actually tell me how much they spent and how much they made in a month. Genuinely, I mean,
I'm talking 10% can answer that. That is your main metric. How much are you spending in your business
and how much you're making? So many pitfalls and owner founders is they focus on my new shirt that
(39:44):
doesn't necessarily matter for the business. Oh, today my row as was 0.5. How'd your business do?
Because you're never going to be able to know how much your investment drove X, Y and Z dollars.
And of course those metrics matter if they're up or down. But if you're not, if you're spending the
right amount and you're still profitable, spend more. Understand where that is. It's a very simple
(40:05):
metric and I can't believe that I have to say this, but again, I'm saying it and I bet next time you
talk to ask an owner founder, do you know how much you're actually spending on everything overall,
how much you're making? What are your margin? What are your cost of goods? What's your profit margin?
A lot of them don't know. It's as simple as that. If you have a good EBITDA, you hear a lot in finance,
frankly, EBITDA is something that a lot of investment firms are going to look at. If you know what that is,
(40:28):
then you know when you can scale. Those are the main ones. Now within everything that you're looking at,
you're probably going to look at velocity of your product moved. If you have a lot of product,
you're going to look at things like your return on ad spend, of course. And you're going to look at
your metrics on site, which is conversion rate, ad card, etc. All important, but the most important one
is looking at is what am I spending and what am I making? Great. Great. I already just
(40:53):
supported last time you spoke, but I want to do it again for the audience. And it's about the e-commerce
industry, which I have here. The report says that the e-commerce industry is boomer, projected from
4.1 trillion dollars in sales in 24 to 6.4 trillion dollars by 2029. And it says, "Technology is like AI,
(41:14):
blockchain, AR, splash VR, voice commerce, and live stream shopping, are shaping retail." So my
question to you will be, where do you see the e-commerce industry in the next five to 10 years?
I see more third party. I would say almost a marketplace is taking over.
(41:35):
As margins and shipping become a little more difficult, I think there's a lot of white space
for someone to come in, like an Etsy from an Amazon and even from other places possibly in China.
Right? You're going to probably have third party type or marketplace is coming in.
E-commerce isn't going to go away, but margins are going to get more difficult. So the white space
(41:57):
exists to be able to take out Amazon to a degree or find a way to, I would say, be a second seller,
so to speak of your brand. Someone comes in and starts to build marketplaces. I think that's where
E-commerce is going to go. I think there's white space there. Great. And what trends do you think
will have the biggest impact? For, I mentioned, technologies like AI, blockchain, AR,
(42:22):
voice commerce, and live stream shopping. What emerging trends do you think will have the biggest
impact? And how should E-commerce businesses plan the other patient towards this emerging trend?
Well, I think you're right about AI. AI is certainly going to be a big one. Probably the thing
that to think about is emerging trends too in capital and capital investment. So the way that you find
(42:48):
capital, it could change. And I think that's an emerging trend. There's a lot more opportunity to
get capital in different ways than there were maybe two years ago even. So I see a lot of ways of
getting capital uniquely or funding it through credit or getting business lines of credit or
raising debt or doing equity raises. I think those are interesting trends that are starting to emerge.
(43:10):
More financial products are coming on the market. So those in business owner founders looking for
investors. I think that's a change that they need to take, take, we should pay attention to,
and take care of and thinking about how they should get funding for their business because you do
need capital to scale. And I think a lot are thinking about it nearly enough. But also outside of that,
(43:32):
owner founders should be looking at AI and AI is going to change the game. It's going to change the
game creatively. It's going to change the game in terms of optimization. Yeah, I think all of those
at a high level are things that are changing the game right now. Yeah, and speaking about AI
before we bring this decision to close, let's talk about AI for a second. People talk about AI
(43:58):
taking over jobs. And a lot of people are panicking over that especially with those who have
the AI and the client a lot of them. So do you really think it's possible for, well, we have had a
lot of people had the jobs taken over by AI quite frankly, but do you think a larger percentage
of three-pulse job will be taken over by AI at the cylinder? I think, here's what I think. I think
(44:26):
like every technological change that happens, there's always a fear that what exists will be replaced.
The reality is what exists will be replaced. That's how technology works, right? Whether it was the car,
whether it was cleaning, right? When you know cleaning, cleaning went away when you had the washing
(44:46):
machine, whether you had the internet, but we have more technical jobs than we've ever had.
The job infrastructure will change. The current jobs are going to go away to a degree,
and they're going to make way for new and different types of jobs.
Everyone's always worried about, is it supplanting what exists now? Yes, but that is also what
(45:07):
technological innovation does. Things change, right? That's a good thing, but it's scary in the moment.
Change is scary no matter what, because you don't know what's going to come. That's, but it's exciting too,
right? You know, sometimes it worst things in life or do the same thing over the last
of the next 50 years and it's kind of dull and boring. Things are going to change. Jobs that
exist now absolutely will be taken out. 20% could be my guess, 25, but that 25 is going to be
(45:31):
replaced by something completely new. So the change is going to happen. It will happen. Learning AI is
the best thing that everyone could do. Just like, remember, learning coding 15, 20 years ago?
It's the same kind of idea. AI and AI, it's going to just be a whole different ballgame.
I think strategists and people that are like higher level order thinkers, it's going to be interesting,
(45:53):
but then you may have to just have more skill sets, right? Before it could be these great examples,
you used to say how many words of minutes do you type? Well, no one cares about that anymore.
Typing was an essential skill. Now maybe using AI will be the essential skill.
So it's going to evolve. It will take jobs, but it's also going to create, I think, a plethora,
and that's what I think the market is betting on at the moment too.
(46:14):
Yeah, considering that you just gave a metric of 25, 20% of jobs,
been replaced by a ton of intelligence, what careers you think are most in that line,
that 20%, that 25%, what careers you think are in that line that will be probably replaced by that
(46:35):
Idaho to me or maybe Pashin. Careers that I think will be taken over, things like that we're doing
MediaBind. It's a good example. MediaBind, clerical work, probably even some like contract work,
anything kind of in that entry level data entry taken over clerical work taken over some financial
(46:56):
planning taken over. There's a lot that's probably going to be replaced in the very short term
that I think exists within our ecosystem at the moment. That will be removed. I don't obviously
hard skills won't be taken over, but any tech involving, I would say, light data entry or processing,
again, things like ad buying, MediaBind will be taken over. I mean, even customer service,
(47:23):
that's probably a big one. There's probably the one that's going to be taken over some of the most,
you probably somebody who manages AI rather than individual customer service reps.
Those are some of the ones that I can think of in the short term that will be taken over by AI.
Yeah, and for some of these things that you some of the discarries that you've mentioned right now,
how much time do you think it have to be algebraic taking over?
(47:46):
Great question. How long do these careers have?
If I'm a betting man three to five before they start really going the way of no one really
hiring for those roles anymore, I don't think it's a one or two year thing. I think it's probably a
five year stack that you have before these even in AI, tech even recruiting. But I think you probably
(48:08):
have a five year window before these really start to go away completely. Great. Thank you very
big. I think you need to use the data to see what it has to do with that.
Is that a fascinating thing? Is that a fascinating thing? Is that a fascinating thing?
Oh, great idea. I'm going to see. Thank you very much.
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