In this episode...

Laura Hargrave: 0:01

Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it. Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: 0:26

Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup, and launched it in big box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family and self care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day. There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you.

Sophia Syed: 1:09

Hello everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I am going to be your host but along with me today is my online business manager and campaign manager, Hajra. Me and Hajra are going to be talking about all of the crazy challenges that we were facing over the last few weeks with our product based business, Also Sophia. So Hajra, do you want to say hi to everyone?

Hajra Ladha: 1:34

Hi everyone.

Sophia Syed: 1:35

I'll tell you briefly at what Hajra does for Also Sophia, and I know that many people that listen to do intend, hopefully, to expand their businesses one day and maybe even hire somebody to help them in their business. So Hajra has been along the ride with me since last year, she started off as a VA, a virtual assistant, and then we pretty much rolled right into becoming a campaign manager.

Hajra Ladha: 1:56

Yes, that's pretty much what I was doing with you even when I was a VA ,campaign management last year.

Sophia Syed: 2:02

Right, and so we started in 2020 in the heat of the pandemic. We rolled out a pretty good size influencer marketing campaign, do you recall how many influencers we had?

Hajra Ladha: 2:13

We had nine influencers actually last year for our Ramadan and Eid campaign, and that the campaign we actually started climbing for on a very short notice. The planning started back in January and we had a LaunchGood in February, but we managed to split off.

Sophia Syed: 2:27

Yes, and for anybody who doesn't know what LaunchGood is, it's a crowd funding campaign for the Muslim community. The goal for that campaign was to help us get into big retailers because the purchase order usually is very sizable, so rather than trying to front all that ourselves, we asked for a small amount from the community who graciously stepped up and helped us with that purchase order. So then we like rolled into March and April last year, and it was full gangbusters on how we promoted using influencers, and Hajra is along the ride for that. Helping with the communication and helping was just verifying contracts, helping manage the influencer marketing portal that we have in the backend. So Hajra, you want to talk a little bit about that? These are some of our trade secrets when it comes to what apps we use on Shopify for our product based businesses. Do you want to just give them a snapshot of what that's all about?

Hajra Ladha: 3:17

Yes, so when we're doing the vetting process for the influencers, we picked up influencers that really have the same niche and have the same audience that we are targeting for our business. And then we reach out to them and then once everything's good in that department then we enrolled them as an affiliate for our brand. The apps that we use through Shopify, it's a Secomapp app. It's actually really good. The free version that's off is pretty much what we've been using so far, and it has worked really well for us. I believe we upgraded that, but for the first year it worked perfectly well with the influencers and the affiliates we had on board. It helped us track how are they doing in terms of bringing in customers and sales. So it actually helped us decide for the next year who to bring onboard again for our campaign for this year, 2021.

Sophia Syed: 4:05

Yes, definitely. I love that. We made a good point that we started off with the free version of the Secomapp, and that app is called Affiliate by Secomapp, and we'll hyperlink it in the show notes for you guys. If you have a product-based business and you're on Shopify, we highly, highly suggest the use of Affiliate by Secomapp, and because of the platform, it made it really easy for us to run that campaign. So Hajra has been working on that for quite a bit. For the influencer marketing campaign this round for this season, she did all of that single-handedly. I didn't do much actually at all.

Hajra Ladha: 4:38

Yes, but you taught me last year so this year it was easier for me to do it on my own.

Sophia Syed: 4:43

Yes, and then because it was getting so crazy and I do suggest to keep an open mind to this, hiring somebody to help you as an online business manager. Somebody that will walk through the day-to-day operations of your website, who would communicate with any third-party companies that you're working with, and then also to help manage the initial onset of customer service. I think this is where our story gets really interesting is with customer service because we grew four times larger in one year compared to where we were last year, and we did not expect the amount of customer service involvement that was required. So Hajra, do you want to speak a little bit about that and our learning curve when it came to our hyper growth?

Hajra Ladha: 5:25

Yes, so when Sophia told me that the customer service is like a whole thing and we need to put a lot of work and time into it, I didn't realize how much work that's going to be until I actually jumped in and I started taking care of that part. While I was just doing the morning and the afternoon time, and evening was Sophia's time to take care of those things, but it still was a lot of work. It was so many questions that were constantly, there were repetitive and they kept asking the same questions again, again. They were mishap and so it was a shock and a learning experience that a lot of things that we don't know about these obvious businesses is that there's a lot of work required in the backend, and what you see is just the good part of the business. The majority of the things that's happening in the backend is like craziness.

Sophia Syed: 6:13

Yes. It's interesting that you mentioned that, because to a customer or to somebody who is looking at the business and saying: Wow, they have everything put together, on the outside it does appear that way. But there's a lot of backend things that are happening, for example, if we have a customer that got the incorrect order, or we have a customer that has a broken order, or we have a customer that has a damaged item. The list goes on and on, and we need somebody on the other end to basically take care of that, or communicate it back to the right individuals who can then take care of that. So as you grow, I know everybody wants to grow larger, but one of the things you need to keep in mind is how are you going to accommodate your growth? And we see small businesses go into this situation time and time again, especially if they get a lot of media and press, they'll have a website that may not even be able to handle the bandwidth. Again, that seems to be obvious, people would be like: Well, you should be ready for growth, but a lot of people are not. One of the things that can get forgotten about is the customer service component, and I know these days, many customers will only buy from you if you have good customer service. Because what makes our company different from most, a lot of the times people are saying that they enjoyed the customer service. The products you can get probably somewhere else or a variation of the same product, but if your customer trusts that you're going to follow through and get the product to them successfully, and if there's a problem, you'll take care of it, I guarantee you that you'll have a return customer. That's what we want at the end of the day, as a product-based business, or even a service-based business, you want a return customer because the return customer is more likely to convert. If they come to you once they're more likely to come to you again, then going and finding another customer. When we talk about acquisition costs per customer, it's cheaper for your business, it's less monetary investment to get an older customer to come back than to go and find a new customer. That's why people really rely on those email lists. Sorry, I went into a little bit of the technical there, Hajra, but I just really wanted to hone in on that because we grew so fast I required an online business manager to come in and help bridge the gaps. I think for Also Sophia, one of the things that we discuss, I mean Hajra when she came on, was the fact that she's not going to be able to do all of these things all the time. As we grow, we're going to have to continue to expand the team but as an online business manager, she has to know those processes in and out so when we do bring on new people, then she can basically oversee what's happening, for example, if we get a customer service representative and she knows all the processes for how to handle each individual concern that the customer brings up, or each individual question the customer has, then she can train and oversee and then they can do that type of work. So that's in a nutshell, I think it's so important to have that open mindset when you are considering growing, because if you can't have that open mindset to give those accountabilities to somebody else, it's going to be very difficult for you to actually scale your business. Hajra, do you have any input on all of that information?

Hajra Ladha: 9:03

We always talk about delegating, and I think we, as human beings, like to control every aspect of everything that we have in our life. But when you are actually looking into growing your business, that means you have to step out of your comfort zone and you have to start delegating the tasks that you think are taking up more time, and you're not able to focus on what you're good at. Because we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we need to know that as a good entrepreneur and a good professional person. You need to know what your strengths are and based on that, you can bring on a person on board to take care of the tasks that you think are not your strengths, basically.

Sophia Syed: 9:43

110%, and so everyone knows I'm a bit of a wild card. I'm a crazy creative who gets into a lot of mess without cleaning up some of the things that I should, whereas Hajra, actually, many of the people I've surrounded myself with are very organized and their inboxes are at zero. I just always use that joke about the inbox, because I have an inbox. One of the inboxes I'm looking at right now, it's 1400 unread emails. One of them is 11,000. I won't tell you which one that is, but the point is you need to be able to delegate off tasks that you're not good at, and know your own weaknesses. If you are that individual that's really organized, you may need an individual that that is a bit more creative or somebody who's a little bit ready to take on additional risks. They do say that those two sides of the brains, you're usually dominant in one side versus another, that's also a big part of business knowing who you are and really understanding who to surround yourself with. So that's an incredible advice actually, Hajra.

Hajra Ladha: 10:38

Thank you.

Sophia Syed: 10:39

The second part of this entire episode is about what we had to do over the past two weeks with Also Sophia, because we had gone through a few hurdles because of the pandemic.

Hajra Ladha: 10:50

That's what we call the roller coaster if you'd ask me.

Sophia Syed: 10:54

Yes, rollercoaster. I'll tell you how it all started. It really came down to the fact that our supply chain was delayed, and it happened because there were not enough shipping vessels crossing over to Canada. The entire web of supply chain is so intertwined that if one thing happens, it really is a domino effect on the whole supply chain for us and for many other businesses. Our stuff is crossing over from Asia, the ships now go every other week, not once a week and I obviously didn't know that our team in Asia didn't know that. Our stuff was delayed by a week, and so what happened after that was everything was delayed and we were late with, I wouldn't say late, but delayed with our Walmart shipment. We had a ton of pre-orders. We had, again, four times busier than last year so we had hundreds and hundreds of orders waiting to be filled, and then our warehouse was trying to get catch up. The logistics team was trying to catch up with everything, going quickly and getting everything done. So everybody was trying to catch up with getting everything picked and packed to the warehouse. And then Hajra, we were supposed to go to an onsite event.

Hajra Ladha: 12:05

For influencer campaigns, we have a schedule for the whole campaign period. We have our influencers posting in a certain time so they don't clash, or two influencers are not posting at the same time, so everybody can get the spotlight they need or require. But because of our delay in shipments, we actually had to last minute change our calendar, schedule for the posting and stuff as well. So it was not like from the product or how to get our products to the customers and to Walmart, and all the other places that we needed to get it. It was also the other stuff that is connected to the business. So when one thing really gets affected, but all the other aspects of business are definitely going to get affected even if they're not directly connected.

Sophia Syed: 12:48

Yes, exactly. We have marketing campaigns that are planned and launched things for different things that are planned, and if your shipment is delayed, then everything needs to be rescheduled or have to be accommodated. Luckily some of the influencers had stock from last year, so they accommodated by using what they already had. I think the lesson in that is that you need to be nimble and be able to quickly think on your feet, because even if you have a plan A, you need to have a plan B and C following closely behind to help you navigate those situations when they show up. I find a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, they think it's going to work out and there's only one direction but 2020- 2021 COVID lockdown has shown us that the businesses that survived and flourished were the ones that were able to quickly pivot and quickly come up with a solution to the problem. So I think that's another crazy lesson that we've learned over the past month and a half, actually for the whole year, but really hitting in on the last month.

Hajra Ladha: 13:45

Yes. That's something that I just thought of while you were talking about how the businesses that flourished actually had the capacity to pivot and come up with plan B, or just executed because it's already there. I've seen a lot of small businesses, the reason they don't drive or they do not get successful is because the entrepreneurs have just one direction, and they do not have a plan B, C D E because for them, if the A doesn't work, it's failure. But what we need to understand as an entrepreneur is that, it's not necessarily that you're going to be successful on the first or second or third attempt. If you have lots of different ideas and lots of different plans, then there is a fair chance that you're definitely going to be successful at some point. But if you believe that it's just one thing, and if it doesn't work out, if I'm done with it, then usually these people do not get successful when it comes to business.

Sophia Syed: 14:35

Yes. They say the first zero to five years is the worst years of business. It's the valley of death, and that's when I think they say 98% of businesses fail in the first five years. Again, don't quote me on that stat. I don't know. Hajra, do you know the most recent stat of how many businesses fail in the first five years?

Hajra Ladha: 14:50

I think the stats are pretty much changed our last year because of COVID. I'm sure there's going to be a bit more...

Sophia Syed: 15:01

Right. Actually the stats do show that by the end of the first 10 years, 30% of businesses will remain. So by your fifth year in business, only 50%. If we have a hundred businesses that start off in year zero, only 50 of them will have survived by year five, and only 30 of them will survive by the end of the 10 year mark. It really does show you that if you can't embrace change and pivoting and having multiple solutions to a problem, or multiple vantage points, I would say because everyone has a vision of where they want to go, but people have to know that there's different roads to that vision. You may not have that straight climb up. You will have these hills and valleys, and I know people teach that all the time. But again, this year, this season has shown us that in the last month, for example, we had to do a lot of changes, and we're not even done. Hajra, tell us what else happened in the last week that we needed to quickly pivot in our business.

Hajra Ladha: 15:55

So basically we're supposed to go on site, we actually have onsite events for like a three or four day event. We were going to take all our products there so the locals can come look at the products and buy them because a lot of people, they prefer buying things that they can visually see instead of paying online and paying for shipping, and all that stuff. So the day before we were supposed to actually start the event, last minute our Ontario Premier actually announced that we're going in a stay at home, or locked down and everything's going to be closed. We were literally on the verge of going in and setting everything up, but then we had to quickly change gears and we decided to use this opportunity to offer contactless curbside pickup, for the people who actually wanted to just come and pick up their order instead of paying for shipping.

Sophia Syed: 16:46

We had to pivot, again, showing us that although we had a plan A to go onsite at one of the biggest malls in Ontario to let our customers see touch and feel the product, and understand what it is exactly and also speak to us directly. Now, they were limited. They couldn't do that anymore, and we were like: Okay, we have a ton of customers that have reached out to us and said that they're going to come to us and see us in person, and pick up the products and now they can't do that. So we decided to offer curbside contactless pickup from my garage, because we don't have an onsite location for pickup, unless we're out at an event like that one at the mall. And another thing happened, I don't even know if I told you about this last point about Walmart and what is happening currently, as we record this in Ontario, our premier is saying to all of these big retailers that you are not even allowed to sell the product. They have wrapped up all of the products in the big sheets of plastic wrap. Customers can't even access it, so if it's not like a personal hygiene, food and pharmacy product, I believe it's marked, it's covered up. Our products fall into arts and crafts and party, so our end cap just went out the day before the lockdown in local Walmarts, and now it's covered up and wrap. The other team member we have is pulling the reports every day hoping that the Ontario and caps are moving. The first date moved, even though it was like an imminent lockdown, we were selling products, they were coming off the shef. But now she checked again and she's like: We've have little sales coming through. That means that the end caps that are up now in the other provinces are selling. So anybody in Canada that's listening to this, that's not in Ontario has access, but Ontario customers don't have access to the Walmart products. Unless they come to our website, but that's just, again, showing you we planned and we planned, and we pushed and we pushed, and in the end, it wasn't favorable for us. We, unfortunately, are stuck in a predicament where we can't do anything because it's the law. It's illegal right now for them to sell it. Guess how long that lockdown lasts for? 28 days. And our event was scheduled for one month. You used to laugh about it, right? Isn't that ridiculous?

Hajra Ladha: 18:57

Yes, because these 28 days are the season that we want to sell our products and then the entire time, our products are going to be off limits because they're not considered essential.

Sophia Syed: 19:06

That's right. So trials and tribulations of a small business. Just basically knowing that although we had plans..

Hajra Ladha: 19:14

No, your plan is not always going to work, so you just have to make sure you have your eyes on the prize. You just have to take a different route this time.

Sophia Syed: 19:24

Right. And so now what we're going to likely do in the next few weeks is probably, I should make an announcement and say: Unfortunately, I know many of you are waiting for our products to land on the Walmart shelves. If you are located in Ontario, Canada, you will not be able to access them. The alternative option is to buy from the website or pick up, and for everyone else that's out of Ontario and in Canada, they'll have the opportunity to purchase it on the shelves at Walmart, and then we'll have the location set up on our website. Isn't it nuts that as a small business owner and as a big business owner, it doesn't matter what kind of business owner you are, you have to figure it out on your feet as you're walking, or as you're running in this case.

Hajra Ladha: 20:05

One more thing that the majority of our stores that we were in to stock our products are in Ontario actually, so pretty much what we were expecting least make the most sales were in Ontario. But now since we are in the lockdown and it happens so fast, we're just going to wait and see how things work and roll out.

Sophia Syed: 20:23

Yes, I'm hopeful that the Premier will say something along the lines next week that he will be able to open up some of the product lines, because I know customers are already slightly frustrated. They can't access a few of the products and they consider them essential. Another thing that's happening anyways, is that they'll just order from another warehouse, another big box retailer. I'm sure we all know about Amazon, so that's also concerning for in- stores because it cost money to run an in- store environment. If they can't make the sales to support the in-store environment, question mark becomes: Do we just keep it in storage? Do we shut down our in-store stores

20:59

and start pushing more

Sophia Syed: 21:00

online, but there's people that work in those stores. So it's a really interesting predicament, and I can foresee a situation where the retailers will say: There's no point in having an in-store environment anymore. This is a food for thought, and not the point of this episode. We just wanted to share with you a high level overview of what has been happening on our end, in the product-based business, and also a few lessons that we've learned or we have learned. One being that you need to think on your feet, you need to be able to pivot and problem solve, and have your A, B and C plan because A may not always work. And then two, hiring on your team members. Hajra, said what's the best: you need to be able to delegate and be able to trust your team members to do the job that they can do, so you can grow and leverage your business, your small business so that way you don't become another statistic with a failure rate of 70% in 10 years if that is your intention to go to that length of time, or run your business for that length of time. I think again, this year, having going through COVID again in our busiest season, which is very interesting because we're locked down again. I think I really truly thought that we wouldn't lock down again. I thought that maybe we would go into the gray zone and stay there, but I think this lockdown really was for me is a bit more devastating because I thought that we were done, and I thought that we could go back to some normalcy, but there's always a plan and we need to keep everyone safe, and that's the name of the game. I know in this country, anyways, our vaccines are rolling out faster now so hopefully we can get everybody vaccinated and we can go back to somewhat of a normal environment. Hajra, what do you have to say to any of that before we close off?

Hajra Ladha: 22:31

I just think, like you said, that we just have to go with the flow and see us. We set our heart to think that we want it to work this way, or it doesn't work at all for us. Then we will end up becoming this statistic that one of the businesses that actually closed down before hitting the 10-year-mark, I agree with the majority of things.

Sophia Syed: 22:49

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So guys, that was all we have to say for today. It was pretty much a recap of what's been happening, but we have a few lessons in there that we really want you to reflect on because again, delegation, trusting, being able to see the future of your business is very important. And then also being able to have your plans, a, B and C, it's not always going to be a straight linear line, right? I know you've heard this before, but it's worth mentioning it again with these examples of how many pivots we had to do in the last month alone. So again, if you guys have any questions regarding any of the information covered in this episode, send us an email [email protected] and our team will take care of it. And again, remember, make a plan and take action, and yes, you can have it all. Talk to you guys later.

Hajra Ladha: 23:35

Bye now.

Sophia Noreen: 23:38

So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story and tag us @BossItclub. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to [email protected]. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our Top 50 Tips for Starting and Scaling a Business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers. So don't miss out. Now remember bosses: make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes you can have it all.