Call or Click?

Happy Wednesday!

Welcome to everyone new here! Lots of folks coming over from instagram, I hope you learn something awesome! You’re going to love this one.

I’ve got a cool business idea today, because this newsletter is really 4 things:

1. Ideas of what to start

2. Ideas of how to launch it

3. Ideas of how to grow it

4. Deep dives on businesses that are working for others that YOU can copy

The great thing about many of the ideas I talk about is that I’ve already tried and tested them. I KNOW that they work! I’ve de-risked them for you already.

“So why aren’t you still doing it then, if it’s so good?”

Because

1. I have ADHD and hop around from idea to idea (can’t you tell by now?) and

2. Opportunity cost is very real. If I abandoned an idea it’s almost always because I jumped to something else that fit my skill set or preferences more.

If I tried an idea that sucked but it worked, then I will tell you. I have nothing to gain by you starting an idea that you end up hating or failing at.

The idea today literally costs almost nothing to start, has almost no competition and can be done from home, or anywhere in the world.

But before we get into the idea….I want to thank you!

Today I reached #30 on the Business Podcast charts on Spotify! And similarly on Apple! That’s right behind MFM and Hormozi! Freaking awesome! Thank you for tuning in!

Apple has sub-genres within the Business category (like entrepreneurship), so it’s not quite as tough to rank. But Spotify has a main business category with only a top 50 ranking and has tens of thousands of podcasts in it.

Last week, 80% of you voted for a weekly update on all the episodes I put out the week prior, so I’m going to start doing that soon.

Also, a quick note before we bust into it today.

I want to speak directly to everyone that used to listen to my podcast but then stopped:

I know why you stopped, and I don’t blame you. This podcast is young, and I am always experimenting. “Let’s try this type of guest, or that type of concept for an episode, etc.”

But here’s the problem with testing concepts on a podcast: Your time is valuable! And these things are 30-60 mins long! So if you hear something that’s kinda lame, you might never come back and listen again!

And I don’t blame you, because I myself haven’t even listened to some of the episodes I put out, because I didn’t find them very interesting.

This is now my gauge: Would I listen to this, and love it? If yes, I hit publish. If no, I never publish to podcast, and may publish as a video only on YouTube.

Am I STOKED for an episode to come out? If yes, I publish.

But now, after 57 episodes, I know what this show is, and I want you to come back. Will I do more Q&A call in episodes? Absolutely, because many of you love them. But I’m undecided if they will be video only, or both podcast AND YT.

Last week and this week and every week hereafter we are only doing bangers of these 4 genres, once again:

1. Ideas of what to start

2. Ideas of how to launch it

3. Ideas of how to grow it

4. Deep dives on businesses that are working for others that YOU can copy, that encompass all 3 of the above

I have never and I will never charge for an appearance, because then it turns into a biased sales pitch that no one wants to hear.

So if you never stopped listening, I say this: thank you!

And if you did stop, I say this: I don’t blame you, but I want you to come back! You’ll love it now!

It’s growing fast despite my hiccups, and for that I thank you all.

Ok enough with the soliloquy, let’s get into the idea already.

The idea:

Be an agency for eCommerce store owners to help recover abandoned carts via a good ‘ol fashioned phone call.

The offer:

Don’t pay me a dime upfront. I will only charge 20% of all the sales I recover, and give you all the feedback I receive for free, as a bonus.

Why this is a good idea:

Because I have owned eCom brands for 16 years, mostly on Shopify. eCom brands spend insane amounts of money to bring people to their site and then lose 98% of them.

Isn’t that crazy?

Yes, but this isn’t a new problem. There are hundreds of apps and CRO agencies (conversion rate optimization) that help fix this problem via automated email, technical knowledge, automated SMS or a chat window.

Almost no one is calling customers because it’s not as sexy or automated as the above options.

But it works the best!

How do I know? Because I tried it with my own company, Texas Snacks! I did it myself.

“Hey Karen, I see you never completed your order for beaver nuggets and beef jerky. Anything I can help you with?”

“Shipping was more expensive than I thought.”

“What if I gave you free shipping?”

“Wow, thank you so much! That would be great!”

So now I make less money on the order, but I win a loyal customer for life. And that person will statistically tell 2 friends about Texas Snax. How many would they tell if they never purchased? Exactly, 0!

Why didn’t we keep doing it for Texas Snax? Because TS is a very, very unique brand. We are piggybacking off another brand, Buc-ee’s. This means that our margins aren’t as good as a normal direct to consumer brand AND that or reorder rates aren’t as good.

It doesn’t make financial sense for a lower ticket and/or lower margin item.

But the concept works similar well for all brands. Especially if the brand:

1. Requires some technical knowledge

2. Is high ticket (hundreds to thousands)

3. Is highly recurring (supplements)

4. Is high margin

If you have all 4 you’re golden, but 1 works as well. Texas Snax had 0/4.

I had a friend with a bidet store, and he lost a bunch of customers at checkout because they didn’t think they’d know how to install the bidet. He had an INSANE conversion rate once he got someone on the phone and walked them through how it would go once the product arrived.

Here’s what you do:

1. Use Carrd to launch a simple landing page.

2. Use Upwork to post a job that says “I need someone with a BuiltWith account to run an export for me for $20.” If you dont’ find someone right away, post it again a day or two later. BuiltWith has a database of every single Shopify customer (3m of them), but they charge $450. Don’t pay $450.

3. Start reaching out to customers with your grand slam offer. Only pay on performance.

4. Be sure that the Shopify store collects phone numbers at checkout (most do already).

5. There are 2 things at play here: Abandoned carts and abandoned checkouts. Abandoned checkouts are further along in the checkout process so they are easier to convert. But you should try with both!

6. When you get them on the phone, get as much feedback and data as you can. “How did you like our site? Was anything confusing? How do you feel about our prices?”

7. Remember, you are calling on behalf of the brand, and the data you’ll provide could save them millions. If you increase their conversion rate from 2 to 2.5%, their sales go up 25%! (I could see this pivoting into a data/feedback collection agency altogether.)

All you need is one customer, so work for free if you have to get them. Once you have 1 you have a testimonial, and customers # 2-10 will go so, so much easier.

Use Airtable or Google Sheets plus Zapier to track everything. Zapier will put abandoned carts into a new row the moment it happens, and that’s when you call.

YOU WOULD BE SHOCKED AT HOW MANY THOUSANDS OF SHOPIFY STORES DO OVER 1M IN SALES. Go look at Klaviyo’s S1 filings. It’s all in there.

Let’s say you find x10 $1m brands as customers.

You increase their conversion rate by 10%, so they each make $100k more per year.

You charge 20% of that as your fee, and you have a $200k business.

And 1 account manager can call for multiple brands. Calls only take a couple minutes on average.

This will work. I promise you. Go get after it!

There are my top tweets from last week.

Fun fact, I spent 80% of this post crapping on Tesla, and then threw in my referral link at the end, and got 7k clicks and sold 6 Teslas from it! And climbing. I wonder what would have happened had I just shamelessly shilled Tesla?

Please check out my podcast at the links below.

• Youtube

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Everywhere else

Thanks for reading!

Chris Koerner
chrisjkoerner