Navigating the Process of Selling a Business
Need real-time advice that works? Foxwell Digital Membership has the expert guidance you’ve been looking for.
Rahul Issar, head of paid digital at Reach, shares his experiences as a serial entrepreneur and discusses his current venture in the menopause supplement industry. He talks about his previous ventures in dropshipping and print-on-demand, including the challenges he faced in building customer personas, conducting market research and the impact of COVID-19.
Rahul goes on to discusses the process of testing different offers for brands and the importance of creative strategies in driving revenue. He explains how they analyze cart analysis and customer behavior to identify product bundles and determine the gross margin. Rahul also shares the offers that have worked well for their clients, such as discounts, buy one get one, and subscription offers.
Key Takeaways
Why entrepreneurs should have backup suppliers and manufacturers to mitigate risks.
How selling a business can become a complex process
How business valuations have been affected by COVID-19
Why customer personas should go beyond demographics
How market research can be conducted through platforms like Listener and other feedback platforms
The one thing that is crucial for optimizing customer acquisition costs
Being able to add this one service to your agency can play a significant role in client retention and revenue growth.
To connect with Rahul, you can head here.
If you'd like to learn more about the Founders Community or want to become a member you can do so here.
Full Transcript:
Edwin @ Snappic (00:57.947)
Guys, welcome back. We have another episode of Founders Forum. I'm your host, Edwin. We have Rahul with us today. He is a two -time. He's exited twice the man with the beard. He is the head of Pay Digital at Reach. He also has his own brand. The man practices what he preaches. Tris, kick us off.
Tris Dyer (01:08.534)
I'm Triss.
Tris Dyer (01:24.929)
Raoul, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us. Tell us, this isn't your first venture, the brand that you're launching here. Edwin mentioned you got a two times exit. Tell us a bit more about what you're doing. Feel free to brag. We're dying to hear more about what you've done.
Rahul Issar (01:38.978)
Yeah, definitely. So prior to the agency, was, you know, the first kind of brand I initially started with was, I'm pretty sure it was like a lot of people was like dropshipping brands. you know, that's the best way to kind of learn and practice. so that's kind of how I got my first gig was like just practicing a lot. I used to be a developer. So in my spare time, I used to practice, you know, just learn, learn things, everything to do with dropshipping. so the first venture was like a big failure.
Edwin @ Snappic (01:53.886)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (02:08.878)
lost a lot of money, think, you know, 20 to $30 ,000 easily. Everything what I was earning was just going straight into the brand. The second brand I started was going relatively well. I was like selling like teddy bears or something like that. And then it was like, it was almost like, you know, Ted, like when you squished Ted, it would have like a voice. It was like that. So
Edwin @ Snappic (02:14.558)
Ouch!
Edwin @ Snappic (02:26.246)
Okay. Is there one in teddy bears?
Edwin @ Snappic (02:34.918)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (02:36.846)
Yeah, I started, I started running that up, um, when the Ted movie launched. Um, so that was going really well. And then I went to go drop another set of like, like another order of inventory. Uh, and I wired my supplier like $20 ,000, um, for the next batch. then literally no response from the supplier. And I just completely ghosted and I to, I had to figure out how to get, first of all, I couldn't get that money back then.
ads were still running. So I was losing a lot of dollars then I had to refund everyone that was essentially already purchased, can really do anything. that that was a second venture that just completely went out the window. What was this, sorry.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:18.782)
Did you ever find the dude? Did you ever find him?
Rahul Issar (03:23.582)
No, he just like, apparently he, did this to a lot of other people. So I, I like got in contact with other founders who used him as a supplier, cause he had like multiple different factories. and he had just completely ghosted everyone like pre COVID. so yeah, we were all trying to figure out and one guy I was talking to, he's like, yeah, I've been talking for like a couple of weeks now and he hasn't responded. that was kind of a
Edwin @ Snappic (03:39.24)
Jeez.
Tris Dyer (03:47.562)
I knew it how many times had you ordered from him before he ghosted
Rahul Issar (03:51.584)
we've been, we were working together fine for like four or five months. and it was just like, was a good relationship. We had like a process in the system. and then ever since that I learned like, okay, I need a backup of like a supplier, like on my next brand. I need to make sure we have like backups of like manufacturers and also three BLs. Otherwise it's just, yeah, I don't want this to happen again. So it was a good lesson learned and a very expensive one.
Tris Dyer (03:54.955)
Okay. Okay.
Tris Dyer (04:17.539)
Sounds like it. $20 ,000 for everyone else can learn. So having a backup on a supplier, but also 3PL you mentioned. Have you been burnt by
Rahul Issar (04:26.406)
not really, but it's like, you know, if you have a manufacturer issue like that, it's always good to just have like a backup for kind of everything else. So I have like a really good list of three PLs even till this date where I've got like three to four in my, in my pocket where I can like leverage. and same with like manufacturers, you know, I've got one for a couple of niches. If I wanted to like start a new brand for like, heck like a haircare brand, I know who to contact, in terms of like products and like where to find ingredients and stuff like
Edwin @ Snappic (04:44.84)
Go.
Rahul Issar (04:56.482)
So it's really helpful for that of situation. So yeah, that went not so great. And then I started the next one during COVID. And that was, I don't know if you guys know if Iconic. Yeah, so it's very similar to Iconic. So my friend was like an artist.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:00.057)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (05:00.067)
can
Edwin @ Snappic (05:14.679)
We used to run some of the ads for iconic.
Rahul Issar (05:17.212)
that's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. So essentially, when I was doing my product research, I was basing it off iconic. So we used to sound like motivational. Yeah. Yeah. Just control C control V. it was a lot of motivational artwork. instead of like ads, we started with like influences. So I used to go, do you guys follow NBA at all? Yeah. Do you know like Kelly Ubre?
Edwin @ Snappic (05:24.159)
I'm so far out.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:30.3)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:42.567)
Yeah, yeah.
Tris Dyer (05:42.643)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:46.769)
Okay, no.
Rahul Issar (05:46.838)
Yeah. So like we, shipped out products to like his, his dad for like his, his birthday and stuff like that. So we would go try and figure out how to get to like influences and like celebrities. And I used to go to like everyone's following and I used to find people with the lowest amount of followers. And I used to see product to them in hope that, can you get in contact with this person? They follow you like the celebrity followers. You would love to work with them. So that was kind of like my way to get to the celebrity.
Tris Dyer (05:56.707)
heard stuff like this before.
Tris Dyer (06:03.479)
Yeah. Makes
Tris Dyer (06:14.295)
I've heard stuff like that before. Yeah. I've heard software people try, I think it's Lulu Lemon and other people like that. They used to get to the trainers. nobody's trying to talk, everyone's trying to talk to Kobe Bryant's coach. They're trying to talk to his agent, but then nobody talks to his trainer.
Rahul Issar (06:32.914)
Exactly. That's what we did through IG is like, let's say like Drake follows like one of us. I will try and go ahead and talk to you guys first in order to get me in touch with Drake. That's what I did for the brand. No, I was trying to though. I was really trying. Because there were lot of celebrities that we got the prints to, but they couldn't post for us because it was against their contracts. So they would just do like a story, but that story would generate like hundreds
Tris Dyer (06:42.164)
Mm. Yeah, yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (06:45.086)
Wait, did you touch a drink? Like, did it work? Okay.
Rahul Issar (07:01.934)
thousands of dollars, you know, because it's just like the reach. Yeah. It's just like, like 3 million followers, 4 million followers. Um, so that's how initially we started growing it. And then, uh, with print on demand, I was just like, yeah, we just got to exit this while it's like at a hockey stick growth. Like I don't really see much potential. So kind of lift that. Um, and then yeah, started the second one, which is kind of in like a similar niche print on demand again.
Tris Dyer (07:03.459)
Amazing, amazing, a lot of reach.
Edwin @ Snappic (07:03.74)
Rahul Issar (07:31.918)
And then applied the same playbook, uh, and then sold it for around 300, 350 K. Um, which is a nice little chick. Um, and then now we're kind of starting two months ago, we started like this new supplement brand called Saku, which is like, um, essentially got like helping solve, like not solve, but like helping with menopause for a woman 35 and above.
Tris Dyer (07:38.865)
Nice.
Tris Dyer (07:54.963)
Good niche, good niche. So slightly off -piste, so just slightly on that. In terms of your exits, just talk us through, this isn't something that's in the pre -script, but actually really interesting. How did you find someone to buy your print -on -demand brand? Did you go on a marketplace or did someone come and find you, or how did it
Rahul Issar (07:56.172)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (08:06.222)
What's
Rahul Issar (08:10.797)
Yeah,
Rahul Issar (08:14.742)
Yeah. So the first one was through when Shopify had Shopify marketplaces. They used to have their own platform similar to like acquire or like flipper. They would have their own marketplace where you could list on there and sell through there. But then now it's like discontinued essentially. So the second one came through acquire, which is like, can just, you know, let's go platform on there. And then eventually you become friends with like a lot of these brokers who sell.
Tris Dyer (08:25.728)
Mm, okay.
Rahul Issar (08:44.302)
you know, sell businesses for a living essentially. So like now, for example, if I had to sell or if I had to even buy another one, I would go ahead and reach out to these guys because they have like, you know, 10, 12 businesses in their portfolio that are ready to essentially like, you know, sell, yeah, buy or sell.
Tris Dyer (08:58.891)
cell.
Yeah, nice one. like that. So it's kind of, it's a broker's world really buying and selling business.
Rahul Issar (09:06.806)
It is a broker as well. Like, that's what, that's what made me start the acquire weekly newsletter is because I was actually, once I saw that I was looking for an acquisition cause I was getting bored. And I did it like, I didn't find anyone who was like breaking down deals, like acquisition deals. know John from Foxwell. He was kind of doing that. So I talked to him a lot as well. But it was just
you know, when you look at a deal, it looks great on paper, but then when you get behind the PNL and you really start to dive into things where, you know, the owner's not claiming like a salary and all these sorts of things are happening, or they'll claim like a massive salary. And it's like, there's all these sorts of numbers that happened behind the scenes that give like a false narrative on like the valuation. So even when selling the whole selling process takes like three to four months, even longer, you know, because you're talking to
So many people, half of the people just want to steal your idea. Half of the people just want to look at your numbers like competitors. So you have to sign like a lot of NDAs. So it's just, yeah. And then half of the time, people don't even have the funds to acquire
Tris Dyer (10:15.693)
Wow.
Edwin @ Snappic (10:15.836)
Wait, so tell us, then this is really interesting. guess tell us currently, what are the multipliers or what are the valuations? And obviously they're different at different tiers. And so tell us, where, because you have your finger on the pulse, right? So tell us, where is that sitting at at the moment?
Rahul Issar (10:36.064)
It's much lower after COVID, like pre COVID you could sell for like, I think like, you know, maybe four, maybe like five X multiple. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But now I think it's closer to like, two or three. but again, it just depends on your business, right? The, if you're independent, if your business is solely, you know, ads based.
Edwin @ Snappic (10:39.677)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (10:48.934)
of Ibiza or of Tabla?
Rahul Issar (11:04.374)
it will sell for like a lower multiple because that's more of like a skill. You know, depends a lot on the team who's running it. but if you've got like a subscription business that has a high multiple already, if you're in the health and beauty, higher multiple versus like, you know, if you're selling like keyboards or something like that. so like it all depends on like industries and also depends on like what your revenue channels are. Like for example, one of our clients got acquired and
Edwin @ Snappic (11:08.071)
Okay.
Rahul Issar (11:33.42)
You know, during the acquisition phase, nothing changes in terms of revenue, really. Like, because all their revenue came from like PR articles, essentially, like publications. So it's like, that's like constant. The traffic is relatively constant. The only variable thing that will change is like ads. And that's like, we left and that would change. So valuation for them was quite
Tris Dyer (11:56.491)
Okay, okay, so it's a lot to do with if you're dependent on ads or not, if you're getting, like if you've got multiple income or like traffic sources that will drive revenue. I suppose recurring revenue is also a massive impact on that as well, if you're hair care or whatever, it's gonna be high recurring revenue.
Rahul Issar (12:09.315)
NASA.
Rahul Issar (12:13.079)
Yeah, that's right.
Tris Dyer (12:14.593)
Is that the thought process on this upcoming kind of, this one that you're running right now is higher multiple.
Rahul Issar (12:19.086)
Yeah, this new one, I was like, it's gotta, it's gonna be very well thought out. So my kind of thought process is who's got the biggest wallet size in America? Um, and it's women 35 above, um, and they just are able to essentially spend on anything and join subscription programs versus men, like men and women buy totally different. Uh, like, yeah, like men, like for example, myself, if I'm buying clothes, I'll go to like UniClone, I'll buy
Tris Dyer (12:41.111)
Yeah, I heard
Rahul Issar (12:48.398)
I'll buy like a pack like a bundle like I buy like 10 shots. Oh like, you know, I want Yeah, same same colors, you know, like I won't like like I'll get creative for sure But like it's not something I'll do every month where I'll go ahead and you know Get some get some jeans or something like that Whereas like women are more open to like, you know changing up the wardrobe constantly trying new supplements trying new beauty products Never happy with the current situation and always want like progress and improvement
Edwin @ Snappic (12:51.176)
Yeah, the same. The same shirt.
Tris Dyer (12:52.727)
because of the same day
Rahul Issar (13:17.902)
Um, so I was like, yeah, this is, this is the target audience I need to go for. Um, and then I just wanted to go after, uh, you know, an audience inside of that, that doesn't get talked about much. So I started listening to, I would go for runs every day and I would start listening to like, uh, podcasters about like menopause. So like anything menopause related, like I probably consumed over 40 hours off just like podcast content alone.
around that industry to understand like what the pain points are, how uncommon. Yeah, it was a weird kind of, yeah. Great motivation. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:50.034)
while you're running.
Tris Dyer (13:53.979)
And so it a weird phase of your life, let's say listening to menopause.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:55.846)
Like, there's no NBA Youngboy or like...
Rahul Issar (14:00.332)
No, me and boys, no young guys, nothing. My fiance is like looking at my podcast, I mean my like playlist and stuff. She's like, what's going on? Like, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, it's just so weird talking about it, but like, yeah, it's funny when you like look at the search history on my Spotify.
Edwin @ Snappic (14:04.559)
You
Tris Dyer (14:10.679)
Are you menopause, Raul?
Tris Dyer (14:20.789)
You obviously learned a lot from that, that you were like, is a niche that needs a revolution or needs a change, or there's not enough products here specifically for this. So you went off and you started researching, you know, how do you make these products? Or you're saying you had some contacts that you knew where to get the ingredients.
Rahul Issar (14:36.226)
Yeah. So didn't really have like specific contacts, but it was, I know there's a couple of bigger brands in the space and I'm like, I just want a piece of the pie because the pie is big enough. so we kind of followed a lot of the best practices that they kind of laid out for us. so I know like better body is one big one, that I think specifically work with like, you know, people, going through menopause. so kind of they're mostly like tablets.
Like you know supplements the difference with us is we have like different ingredients as well, but We're also a truffle So we like a chocolate
Tris Dyer (15:15.927)
Nice
Edwin @ Snappic (15:18.372)
okay. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (15:19.452)
of that, of that.
Rahul Issar (15:19.544)
So yeah, the perception I wanted in someone's mind is when they're eating it, it should replicate the lint experience. know, lint, lint. Yeah. Because it's highly addictive. So I was like, okay, there has to be a way we can replicate the lint, but still have like the same flavor combination or like not flavor combination, but like, know, whatever products or ingredients we're using inside of that product. So that's, that's kind of where we're at.
Edwin @ Snappic (15:28.392)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (15:32.883)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (15:49.422)
So initially when we started gross margin for the product was like 55 % horrible. Very difficult. Yeah. Very tough. we started just, what was that? Sorry.
Tris Dyer (15:56.387)
That's tough. How do you scale that?
Edwin @ Snappic (16:00.136)
Very
It's very tough. 55, it's like, it's hard.
Rahul Issar (16:05.326)
Yeah, 55 % gross margin, you're not really playing with much. So yeah, yeah, just bleed, just bleed money. You just pay and figure out what your cack is. And then now we've got a good idea of what our cack is. And then as of three weeks ago, we onboarded a new 3PL and a new manufacturer. So now we're at 77 % gross margin. It's completely changed the business and made us
Tris Dyer (16:09.645)
Yeah. How would you get customers?
Tris Dyer (16:32.139)
Mm hmm. You're shipping chocolates then, right? This is this is your shipping chocolates across the states. That must be tough on shipping. I mean, the cost to try and keep them cool, right? Must be a
Rahul Issar (16:44.46)
Yeah, because it's no longer like with three PLs, it's no longer just putting them in like the three PL. You need to make sure the three PL it's like at a certain temperature essentially in order to store a lot of chocolate. And it's like, if it's there for long, I don't think it's going to be great. so you got to move it really quickly. so yeah, I think we're going to face more problems, but I'm excited for it. I think we'll figure it out as it goes.
Edwin @ Snappic (16:54.344)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (17:00.587)
No. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (17:10.594)
So you're working in a space that's clearly, you are not the target customer, right? And so you gotta build the personas, right? And tell me what is your process for building that persona?
Rahul Issar (17:27.714)
Yeah, like there's, there's a lot of different, with, with how I've looked at this brand in particular is less around persona. Like personas are more like, you know, busy moms, you know, stay at home moms. Like you can branch it out into those, but I've gone into, more emotion based marketing. like there's, there's a psychologist, I think it's like a psychologist theory called like James, James Lang or something like
And he has a theory of like, know, essentially your emotion is based on the visual things that you see. So if I see a scary person, I'm most likely going to not interpret it. I'm going to interpret it first visually and then my body will react from that. So we're trying to take a lot of principles from there, with a lot of the marketing. So we have, there's like a circle diagram, which I can link later on, but essentially inside of that, you have like angry, sad, happy,
joy and all these different emotions. And we're just plucking different emotions from there. like, for example, with menopause, a lot of it is quite negative. So it's a lot to do with like, you know, night sweats, hold shivers, a lot to do with, you know, getting proper sleep in the night and your partner having problems. So we kind of break it down how we initially started. we just tested like three to four angles around, those particular problems. And we branched those out into
Edwin @ Snappic (18:27.219)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (18:54.872)
kind of more emotion -based drivers. one example is, that's at least working for us now is a lot of women say, yeah, we don't get good sleep, but we don't know why. And it's like, okay, cool. So there's like this platform called Listener, which allows you to upload a bunch of questions and you can survey just like the general public. So we started surveying the general public around what are the main problems that you guys are facing during sleep.
A lot of people came back saying like cold shivers and night sweats. So we just immediately started creating all our angles and concepts around just night sweats and cold shivers during the night. And that's what was one of the breakthroughs for us to essentially like get profitable on CAC. It's just by focusing on this one particular angle rather than going after just like saying menopause in specific, if that kind of makes sense.
Tris Dyer (19:45.975)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (19:47.723)
So tell me about that process. So you're on this platform, it's called Listener, right? And so what do you, you're just asking like, you have men and women and...
Rahul Issar (19:57.11)
So it's like a questionnaire platform. So when I log in, you can ask a bunch of questions. So let's say I'll ask questions like, hey, you're going through menopause. What are the common symptoms that you see? Are there any supplements you're taking? How are the supplements working on you? What are the side effects and stuff like that? And then what happens is, in Listener, you can just...
Edwin @ Snappic (20:06.685)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (20:26.35)
have a bunch of like conditional statements to choose like give them a bunch of options and you can just upload and send it to like a general public and So it's like, you know those online surveys you see that people get paid to do surveys It's essentially that so like on the other side of the screen. There's like a bunch of women who are like 35 plus they are free to do Yeah, that are like they're like, oh you want to get yeah you
Tris Dyer (20:46.051)
answering your
So it's less assumption based. It's less assumption based. It's more like actually going and asking the person who's going to buy this, what do you think? What are you currently doing? What's your
Rahul Issar (20:57.854)
Literally this whole brand is built off of someone else, not me, off like randoms. I'm literally asking everything to these people on internet and they are just telling me, yeah, like all my landing pages for this brand is built off of some random ladies in America through this platform. I'll just upload a Figma file and I'm like, what do you think of this? Break it down. Do these words make sense to you? Is this commonly used?
Tris Dyer (21:14.551)
Nice.
Rahul Issar (21:25.054)
amongst like, you know, the community and menopause. And then from there, I break down like each section with them and they'll just like put a bunch of comments on the Figma file. And then that's how we just like iterate on the landing pages.
Tris Dyer (21:37.441)
Nice, nice. is it listener .com? what's it called?
Rahul Issar (21:41.974)
So it's called lyssna .com.
Edwin @ Snappic (21:49.798)
and your cack, where was it, where did it drop down to? you ran, like, let's start with that. How did it actually end up affecting your cack?
Rahul Issar (22:01.39)
So it started, our initial CAC started at... For like a $49 product, it initially started at $110. Yeah, scary, trust me. Yeah. That was, yeah, playing into LTV, don't worry. For one month. It hurts more, it hurts more.
Tris Dyer (22:14.179)
Holy shit, you're saying leaked money, that's bleeding, you're dying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were playing that card, right? It's harder when it's your own money though, right? It's harder when you're actually bleeding. Yeah.
Rahul Issar (22:31.278)
Started there then that dropped to 70 with this new kind of like, you know Persona over motion -based targeting and then we tested a new offer. We were just offer testing like crazy and We dropped that down to like a 35 and I think this week it's like a 20
Tris Dyer (22:51.683)
Nice. Yeah, so we're gonna break that down. We're gonna break that shit down. That is that is top right? So you went from 100 bucks to 35, but 110 to 35 offer testing. So so many people are like, just throw a BOGO at it. Throw this at like, no, no. What's the offer testing?
Edwin @ Snappic (22:51.728)
Whoa. Whoa, bro. Bro.
Rahul Issar (22:55.192)
you can tell them.
Rahul Issar (23:08.831)
Nah.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:11.112)
Wait, yeah, tell us about this offer testing
Rahul Issar (23:13.162)
It's, it's harder when it's like one product, right? but usually, how I break it down, like, let's say, so the general way for other brands we work with is we use, you can use like lifetime, knee trip away or like Shopify if it's a regular plan on Shopify, there's a reporting that shows like, cart analysis. Have you guys used that before? Yeah. So cart analysis shows,
Tris Dyer (23:37.303)
Mm -hmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:37.726)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (23:41.07)
what people are pairing products together with. we, you if it's like a brand that's got like 20 SKUs or something like that, we usually start there. It's like, look at the cart analysis. Then we'll look at like Triple Whale or Lifetime Lee and see what people are buying together. And that way we'll make bundles from those products. So that's like figuring out what products need to go together. That's like the first step. Then the second step is like, okay, what is, it's like we figure out what the gross margin is if we had to bundle these two together to make sure we're actually.
able to like make money. Like we don't want to just go buy one, get 50 % off and we're just bleeding the whole time. So we need to figure out if we're actually making money or not. So we kind of like break that down in a template to see if we're making money or not. And if we're not, then it's like, okay, scrap it onto the next one. So what we initially start with is like really simple. And usually with the brand, a lot of brands don't want it to discount off.
Tris Dyer (24:11.619)
Make money.
Rahul Issar (24:38.124)
So the easiest way to go about it is just doing gift with purchase. And then you can also like quiz a lot of customers. So we send out a survey with a bunch of different offers around like, what's the most exciting to you in terms of like, like we're launching like a new bundle we'll say. And like, we just give them a multi -choice question. Like, what's the most exciting? Is it like a gift with purchase? Is it a subscription flow where you get like a free gift with purchase on the second flow? Is it like a discount off?
you know, free product and you just pay for shipping, you know, was as aggressive as that. So yeah, which is really great.
Tris Dyer (25:11.718)
You're already bleeding, you're already spending 110 bucks if you're giving them the product for free. Yeah.
Rahul Issar (25:15.566)
Yeah, it just turns into a charity, right? So that's kind of like the phase we were going through. So we surveyed a lot of the customers and a lot of customers we noticed for this particular brand was anything consumable is, it's kind of like really scary for the person on the other side, especially if it's a new brand, right? You're barely on any other platform. You're asking someone to consume a product that you've literally just finished making like 30 days ago.
Edwin @ Snappic (25:43.793)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (25:44.558)
You're telling them it's going to help them sleep better. Like what is going to make me sleep? You know, so there's a lot of barriers you have to overcome. Um, so that was the main challenge. So the offer that worked really well for us or, know, well, the first offer we tested was, um, just discount off plain and simple. get 25 % off. Um, and that just didn't stick. That just wasn't, you know, they thought we were kind of like bullshitting them. Like it just wasn't really working that well.
Edwin @ Snappic (25:49.118)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (26:11.811)
Yeah. Everyone's given 25 % off now. Everyone's doing that. it's, yeah.
Rahul Issar (26:13.57)
We moved away from that. It's just generic, right? So we kind of moved away from that and we went into buy one, get one X, X percentages off. But then we were like, why would we do, why would you make them buy more if they haven't even tried the product? They don't even know us. So it's like, it's like saying buy two sets of jars, but it's like, I don't even know if I like one jar. Like, why am I going to buy? Yeah. Like why am I going to buy two? So that went out the window. That was a second one.
Tris Dyer (26:36.373)
on one set of jars, like alone too.
Rahul Issar (26:44.046)
And then the third one was the one that kind of worked for us. So this one is a subscription offer. So essentially how it works is we'll give you, it will be like half price, so it's 50 % off, but you go into a subscription flow and you don't get the option to just buy the product alone on this particular landing page.
Tris Dyer (27:07.651)
Okay, so you subscribe for three months or six months and the longer you subscribe, obviously the cheaper it is or no?
Rahul Issar (27:15.916)
Yeah, so how, you know, we talked to a couple of platforms and what we noticed are these subscription platforms. They said the flow that works the best in subscription is on the second flow. So you have your first billing cycle, right? And then your second billing cycle is if you give them like a random free gift, like a surprise, kind of like a mystery gift. Like if you just, you know, get an email that, hey, your second billing cycle is coming up, we're going to send you a free bag.
They're more likely to stay on. So you get past that second. It's usually the second month that is the hardest month to get past. Like if you're on a 30 day cycle, right? So that helps you retain them for at least 60 plus days. So that's what we do. So we have them on the 30 days, which is easy to get through. you know, I'd say 80 % stay on for like the first billing cycle, which is perfect. And then the next billing cycle, we just send like free
like not that same product, we'll send like products that are like, you know, that you can package along with the initial
Tris Dyer (28:22.115)
Okay, okay. And then those people stick on longer. Do find that they refer on? Do they say, this is a product that I'm using? What other, obviously it's complimentary you're sending with so many questions there. Do you find they stick longer because you've given them a surprise and delight after the second cycle?
Rahul Issar (28:42.082)
Yeah, we haven't hit the third cycle yet. So, in terms of the second cycle, they do stick around. And we've got a bunch of emails from a couple of the customers saying that, would love to refer it to friends. Is there like a referral code? And two or three customers have sent that already. So it is a bit of positive signal. We had one other customer who's actually a doctor. And she was like, if this really works, I'm going to recommend it to my clients. And I was like, yo.
It does.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:12.894)
That is...
Tris Dyer (29:13.249)
Yeah, that'll work.
Rahul Issar (29:14.648)
Brilliant. that is amazing. Please, I will send you whatever commission you want. so yeah, that's like an exciting one.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:20.99)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (29:24.299)
Amazing. so tell me what, when it comes to like, so you've got your cat down now. So you've got your, your suppliers. So obviously you're, you've got your three PL. The dream is to put it through the roof, like start scaling it and start adding in three more zeros after everything. What's stopping you going to that, you know, three more zeros level.
Rahul Issar (29:40.92)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (29:45.644)
I think the hardest part now is because we're so majority of our revenue is subscription driven. It's more like cash collected upfront is the problem. So I think in order to us for us to truly scale, we might have to get some type of funding or like a credit line or something in order to go through.
Tris Dyer (30:01.825)
Mm -hmm. One second, Edwin, can you mute?
Edwin @ Snappic (30:07.614)
Sorry, hold on. Let me just get it, Chris. Hold on.
Tris Dyer (30:12.675)
People are crying hearing how good your stuff is, Ro, just to be clear.
Edwin @ Snappic (30:19.089)
should.
Rahul Issar (30:20.492)
The family all good Edwin.
Tris Dyer (30:25.119)
Sounds like a bit of pressure there, So, Roel, I know we're going a lot into this. This is massively, I mean, we can talk about obviously outreach and everything else, but this is like, it sounds like this is way you, this stuff you do for fun. bye Edwin. It sounds like stuff you're doing for fun.
Rahul Issar (30:28.628)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (30:44.426)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, always enjoy doing this. Like I've been doing like a lot of these ventures for fun on the side and it's kind of become, you know, almost like a major part of like a lot of the learnings that I applied directly across to Reach Digital, which is always, you know, beneficial to all our clients there as well. And I'm pretty sure eventually at Reach, we're going to get to a point where we start building some brands inside of the agency as the competition builds.
Tris Dyer (31:10.145)
Yeah, yeah. We're actually starting to do that actually, as it happens in Webtopia. So we've changed our corporate structure a little bit. we have Webtopia, but we have a thing called Webtopia Ventures that we're starting to invest in brands like this. We're starting to launch them. like the idea here, we haven't started any yet. We're in the recruitment phase of actually, because instead of me doing it, it's the people within Webtopia launching it and then we're backing it. And so it's part of both sides. So.
Rahul Issar (31:14.542)
That's great.
Rahul Issar (31:21.997)
Nice.
Rahul Issar (31:34.029)
Nice.
Tris Dyer (31:38.987)
The idea being that like if you are if you're in Webtopia, you work for Webtopia, you're a media buyer, but you have this idea to launch a water bottle brand. We'll go through all the due diligence, we'll do everything else like that. And then we'll say, right, we'll invest in that. We'll help you grow that. You can use Webtopia tools like email marketing and creative and Facebook ads and all that to run to start launching that. So you don't have to go and do all that yourself. It makes a ton of sense.
Rahul Issar (31:52.248)
That's really cool.
Rahul Issar (32:00.534)
Interesting. Yeah. Do the team members approach you and be like, Hey, you know, Chris, I've got like an idea. I'd love to own this idea and help me bring it to life.
Tris Dyer (32:08.075)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we work a four day work week. And so what we do it is to say, right in your fourth day, in your fifth day of the week, you can run this as your brand. And they have approached this probably about five team members. And since we launched the idea back in, what, two months ago, about five team members have come to me and said, I've got this idea. want to launch this. And so what we do is we've got, we take, it's cool. Yeah. Right. It's, it's, we are thing.
Rahul Issar (32:15.278)
on.
Rahul Issar (32:31.566)
Dude, that's so cool.
Tris Dyer (32:37.923)
But our thing is we create commercial masterpieces. That's our thing, right? And commercial masterpieces are people, passion projects that grow and build to be something big. They actually help the world. They make a difference. I use water bottles as example, but it to be recyclable water bottles, something like that. The idea here is it's using our power, using our strength of what we're doing to grow businesses that will actually change. I'm hearing myself, Edwin.
Edwin @ Snappic (32:58.184)
It's using our power, using our strength to go up to businesses that will actually change. Here myself, Evan. Yes. is it echoing? Yeah, I it's better. Is it better now? Yeah. No. Okay, I'm gonna leave and come back.
Rahul Issar (33:06.434)
Yeah, same.
Tris Dyer (33:09.473)
Yeah, I think it's better.
Hello? Nope. I can still hear myself.
Tris Dyer (33:21.016)
Everyone's having a nightmare this morning. It's all good. We've got a pretty good editor. She cuts a lot of this kind of stuff out. We don't normally, this is little bit higgledy -piggledy, so apologies for the back and forth. But no, sorry, yeah, I was telling you about that. Is that something that you think Reach would do?
Rahul Issar (33:23.436)
Little good, though.
Rahul Issar (33:33.048)
No, you're good. It's true.
Rahul Issar (33:39.554)
Yeah, I think so. think we've built, we're at the point where we've built like the capabilities now inside the agency. and now it's kind of just like figuring out how to essentially get time back from all of us so that we have time to allocate, like similar to how you mentioned like a four day work week and in the fifth day is like on the brand. I don't think we just don't have that at the moment. I think we're still, a little bit away from getting to that position where everyone can spare at least three to four hours a week.
that they can allocate towards this. think that's the hardest
Tris Dyer (34:11.307)
It's tough. It's tough. What I will say is that your profitability within the agency will go down. It's just, it's something that you have to face. short term loss for a much longer term gain. You're starting to push out things that are much more passionate for people. People really give a shit about this stuff. it's like, I'm trying to create an environment where people get up in the morning and go, let's fucking go. Whereas like other people are like trying to avoid this Mondays, the whole.
Rahul Issar (34:17.464)
for sure.
Tris Dyer (34:40.203)
met on sunday night been like ahhh another week he's like no i can't fucking wait you
Rahul Issar (34:44.962)
Yeah, and I think that's the right environment to create. know, when you have like team members who can initially create brands inside of the agency, like that was, that's super exciting. Like, I don't know who wouldn't really want to do that. So, I think it's a really cool initiative and like pretty interesting to see you guys execute
Tris Dyer (35:03.935)
Well, we haven't done it on the way. So we'll keep you updated. I'm happy to share any learnings because obviously it's something you guys want to do as well. Happy to share learnings with you for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. No problem at all. All right. Let's get back into this real quick because we've got a few minutes left and I want to talk specifically about Reach. mean, just kind of hear more about like, so obviously you're head of performance. Is head of performance at Reach? Is that your title? So tell
Rahul Issar (35:13.742)
Please do.
Tris Dyer (35:30.679)
What's performing right now? see obviously on your Twitter, you're talking a lot about the different creatives and everything else. You're hiring a lot of creative strategists you said in the intro there. So why, what's the need for that at the
Rahul Issar (35:41.57)
Yeah, I think a lot of our service offerings lately have been like a combination. So I think maybe four, five, maybe five months ago, we started some suddenly getting really good at creative. I don't know where this came from. So we started working with a lot more brands on paid media and creative. And we're essentially just retaining them for a much longer period. You if we look at retention across a lot of our clients, the clients that stayed there for the longest were
Tris Dyer (35:52.471)
Mm -hmm.
Rahul Issar (36:09.336)
had the services involved that were paid media and creative versus the clients that were just paid media alone weren't, didn't have as long as a retention cycle. So we're like, okay, maybe it's time to invest more heavily into this. We're essentially all new leads are closing on these services. So we need to just onboard really quickly. So we onboarded two new strategists, one from Foxwell, actually Eric. Yeah, he's a great guy.
Tris Dyer (36:35.395)
Nice. I saw you hiring that. Yeah. And you hired Eric. nice one. Nice one. He's a good guy.
Rahul Issar (36:42.112)
Yeah. He's great. He's great. So he's, he's leading out the creative team, which is exciting. And then we hired another person, Christina from New York. We didn't really have many females on the team, so it's good to have Christina there. And then we got one more person, Sophia from Europe. So she's in Spain right now, but that hire was a really interesting one. And I think it's probably one of our most successful hires.
Tris Dyer (37:08.961)
okay. Tell me more.
Rahul Issar (37:09.78)
And the reason being is she was a content creator first, never done creative strategies. So came in as a junior creative strategist, but she just understood content so well that every brief she was just writing, whether it's static or video was just like, it would just outperform anything we would have. And you know, we would just dive in
Edwin @ Snappic (37:15.383)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (37:30.157)
Nice, nice. And so she's writing briefs, she's briefing our content creators, she's working out what's working, she's looking at the numbers, all that kind of
Rahul Issar (37:38.902)
Yeah, she's a, she's a bit behind on the numbers, which is fine. Like that's, that's coachable. but I think what is harder to coach is the creativity and kind of like division what she sees. and I think that's what's the, what's really exciting. And, know, if we had to hire another strategist, I am considering going down like content creator and then strategist. versus maybe someone who's just purely just worked across a lot of like DTC brands as a strategist.
Tris Dyer (38:02.251)
Yeah, yeah,
Rahul Issar (38:09.751)
because she had you know 700k followers on TikTok she did a lot of like those short film acting gigs so she understood a lot of you know a lot of how to make good content so that was awesome
Tris Dyer (38:22.423)
It's the right type of person in the seat, right? It brings you back to that. Do you remember the big short where he's like, see this guy, he's my quant. It's like, that's the, yeah, this is my creative person. They know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Rahul Issar (38:29.003)
Exactly.
Yeah, that's exactly what I do.
Edwin @ Snappic (38:38.867)
So, that has 700k followers on TikTok, how do you, how do you pull, because in my head, when I hear that, I think she's going to ask for a ridiculous sum of money. And so is she, she's your full time staff member or this is just like her style?
Rahul Issar (38:53.774)
She's a full -timer, but she's like a junior strategist. So she wanted to navigate away from, kind of like the content creation. Like it wasn't really monetized. She did it for fun. Which I don't know how you do it for fun and get to 700k anyway. She wanted to get really into like the DTC side because I think she wanted to eventually start her own brand. So she's like, better way than to actually like teaming up with an agency and learning. So that's, yeah, that's currently how.
She's kind of on boarded with us. I'm not sure where we found her, but I think Archer found her maybe on LinkedIn or something like that.
Tris Dyer (39:30.587)
It's good to find someone good and we always have a thing we hire people good and we find something for them to do rather than trying it the other way around. It makes a ton of sense.
Rahul Issar (39:36.832)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Edwin @ Snappic (39:39.712)
And the creative strategy part, so a lot of other agency owners I've talked to, the creative strategy is sort of financially is difficult. It's sexy, but they find it that it doesn't make money. Like it's the media buying that makes the money. Have you found the same thing? Did the unit economics work for you guys as well?
Rahul Issar (40:05.742)
That's interesting. actually think it's the opposite way. actually think it's, um, like it's so, you know, I've talked to the team about this and I think it's, it's easier to manage an account that does, you know, over 150 K a month and spend versus anything below that. think anything below that requires a lot of media buying and a lot of like testing and a lot of product market fit versus anything above 150 K.
Edwin @ Snappic (40:08.994)
Rahul Issar (40:34.594)
where we've got like a lot of creative services, the thing that's going to move the needle are like literally two things. And it's not that complicated. It's just like your creatives and your offer. Like there is nothing else apart from like channel diversification. Like, so apart from those two things, like, yeah, you can run it on cost cab, can run it on lowest cost, whatever you prefer, like be my guest. But like, yeah, but
Tris Dyer (40:56.651)
I was gonna say you caught up on that I know.
Edwin @ Snappic (40:59.434)
Hahaha!
Rahul Issar (41:01.94)
In reality, it's your creative and it's your offer. know, what specific audiences are you speaking to in your creative? Can you hook them in? And then how long can you hold them for as a customer? And that will come through your offer and your landing page. So for us, creative services are so important. And if we don't have an intermediate buying only client, I honestly have to like make sure we grow them big enough so that they can afford us, afford our creative services.
And I kind of try and map it out as quickly as I can. So I can be like, Hey, like I'm going to try to do the forecasting for this brand for like the next three to four months in terms of where we're looking to hit. and then, you know, once we're at that rate, we can bring on like creative services and kind of like stack that separate offer on, because now I'll have support as a media buyer. won't be doing creative finance and media buying. I'll just be doing media buying and finance. And then I have support with creatives on, on, on our end, at least.
Tris Dyer (41:59.063)
Makes sense. so when you talk to client, is it you're going and saying, look, we're going to charge you this fee for a media buyer. But once you get to this level of spend, we're going to bolt on a creative strategist that will help you grow further. It's like a booster.
Rahul Issar (42:11.852)
Yeah,
Edwin @ Snappic (42:11.982)
or do you them second month as that gift?
Rahul Issar (42:15.572)
Yeah, we've done that a couple of times where it's like, some clients have been quite, you know, worried about signing on. it's like, okay, look, we'll give you five or six ads free to sign on as a sign on thing. You know, it's like, it's a thank you thing. and that usually gets them across the board is like having like, you know, a thousand dollars worth of assets come across as like, you know, it's a great, you know, buy on. So yeah, yeah. So definitely try that out if you guys are looking to do
Tris Dyer (42:36.365)
Okay, sweetener. It's a sweetener all right.
Tris Dyer (42:44.771)
I like it, I like it. And so talking about the creative strategy process, like how are you selling that? Like if we're talking to a brand and they're spending 40 grand a month and they're looking for a 3X or they're making 120 odd K a month, like on those numbers, you get a media buyer in there, but like, are you looking at saying, right, okay, to go to, you know, spending 100 grand a month for 40, like your 30 or 40.
What do you need? You need a media buyer. You need a creative strategist. And what is that creative strategist doing? How are you selling that to them? If I'm a medium, a brand.
Rahul Issar (43:19.181)
Yeah. So I think usually a pod, I usually try to sell like a pod structure. So media buying, creative strategist and your editor, like graphic designer editor. I think when you're at that media buying stage, what is, you know, you mentioned like 40 K a month. The, a lot of the creative execution comes from the client. So in my scenario, I'll do a lot of like the briefing.
a lot of the strategy that, we need to focus on these specific things. and then the client will either go ahead and execute on those, or they'll have like a, you know, an internal staff member that will do it as well. So for me to get them to, you know, a hundred K per month, the responsibilities of the creative strategist become that, they all have to do a lot of the briefing and a lot of the, maybe even like the execution of
the content creation, well not content creation but like the asset development versus the client doing that. So it's kind of like freeing up the client's time to focus on other things is the most important part which we we pitch with our creative services. So our strategist won't come alone, they'll come along with like a video editor or a graphic designer. So that way we kind of work in a pod and that way the client no longer has to do any like creative development essentially.
Tris Dyer (44:43.659)
Yeah. Do you shoot your own stuff then as well? Because sometimes that can be a difficult one for clients. They're like, well, I got all the photos.
Rahul Issar (44:49.1)
Yeah, yeah, soon.
So we have a couple of clients where we shoot assets for. We have one client that's quite difficult to shoot content for, even seed product for. So they're essentially like a clothing brand for shorter men. And yeah, which is a very interesting market. It's actually a huge market, who knew? But the hard part about getting these content creators is no one likes...
Edwin @ Snappic (45:07.48)
Yeah.
Rahul Issar (45:20.44)
talking about their height on social media. So it's hard to find short men. Right? Right. So that's how you sub it. Where is
Edwin @ Snappic (45:24.549)
You
Tris Dyer (45:25.869)
I'm
Find the guys who are talking about not talking about their height. They're the ones they're short.
Rahul Issar (45:31.915)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (45:32.862)
You put them against like a telephone pole and then you
Rahul Issar (45:35.41)
Literally, dude, you have no idea how hard it is. So it's like, there is no filter button on a lot of these agencies. A lot of these content agencies don't even have like a, they don't even know the height of their own creators. So it's like, shit, like now I have to figure out like how to get the height. And I was like, the only place I was doing a lot of research, the only place to actually get a height is actually modeling agencies and like acting agencies. So there's like a couple of databases in the States that have like acting agencies. So I would just.
Tris Dyer (45:35.54)
You
Edwin @ Snappic (45:56.258)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (45:57.799)
Yeah, makes
Rahul Issar (46:04.554)
mass DM actors, and these like acting agencies are like, Hey, I love you. Cause, cause they already upload their own portfolio, right off, like the films and like the short films they do. And I'm like, this is great. They've got the portfolio, they've got the price, they've got the height. Let's start working with these guys. So we started working with DMS content creators. so yeah, for, for a lot of our clients, we do make content on our end. but in some scenarios, they already have their own creators.
Tris Dyer (46:33.833)
I you, I hear you. And then you take it and then you work it out into whatever structure that, we see your newsletter, we see what's going on in terms of what kind of creative is going on.
Edwin @ Snappic (46:43.574)
And so tell me, we're heading, we're in July or we're in the summertime. We're heading into Black Friday. What, what are you, what, how are you preparing and what is, what is your current strategy for Black Friday?
Rahul Issar (46:59.742)
Yeah. So we did a lot of testing and like Memorial Day, and Father's Day for like different types of offers, like really mixing it around. so like that was kind of like a phase one of testing what offers really work for the brand. the second phase will come in like August and September where we test more offers. it could be like, we just create like a random brand day or maybe like a birthday folds in that month for the brand. Or maybe there's actually a holiday.
holiday event coming up that we can leverage. it's just the phases are just testing different offers to see what works. And then what we'll do is we'll try and compare that to the baseline of what we did in Black Friday, like what offer we ran during Black Friday. And then during these months, we're also testing out different like post -click experiences, you know, it could be like different landing pages, could be like a long longer form product page, either one of those.
And then we see which one just has like the highest like revenue possession or even conversion rate. And then we kind of go with that leaning into like, you know, Black Friday.
Tris Dyer (48:06.381)
There's a lot of test and learn the whole thing. It sounds like a lot of the process you do is just have a few things you test and then go with that.
Rahul Issar (48:15.116)
Yeah, and that's the common strategy. think a lot of, you know, good businesses follow is just like making sure you've, you know, everyone says test everything, but it's like, much as that, you know, that's important. think it's important to like test and review rather than just being like, yeah, we tested this on me on Facebook. doesn't look good. It's like, well, why didn't it look good? Like, let's actually dive into some results. There's like document on like just some simple Excel spreadsheet.
Get their numbers in front of you and then we'll figure out like why that didn't work and then like let's reflect and review like almost like a retrospective Which I think is the most important part when you when you run all these tests
Edwin @ Snappic (48:55.66)
So there are offers that you could do obviously for subscription products. And so if you have, let's say you have a clothing apparel product, right? That doesn't have like a subscription element, recurring element to it. What are some offers that you might queue up for testing for that kind of brand? Clothing, like a clothing and apparel.
Rahul Issar (49:13.26)
Yeah. You said this was for a cooking? A clothing. Yeah. For clothing and apparel, the best offers we run, like we've got a couple of clients in that niche, is discount off or the other one is like similar to how I mentioned before, it was like bundles, like having like a stack of just like shirts and different colors available. That is like the best way, like a five pack. You'll see true classic do this a lot where they bundle a lot of their shirts together.
either same colors or different colors because that's just how like Men shop is like they like to buy in like higher quantity and they only like to buy once and the next time they buy is but probably a while away And then the last thing that works really well is like build your own bundle. That's like a really good one And you can have like a lot of these Shopify apps where you just put it on a page People will go ahead and add to cart a bunch of things
And then you just like gamify the process. like, you hit $50, you'll get like a free pair of socks, you know, hit $80, you get free shipping, hit $120, you get something else. So it's like gamifying that process, making a little bit more fun, usually is what works for like a lot of these apparel brands.
Tris Dyer (50:26.295)
that makes a lot of sense because it kind of makes it less like I'm doing a transaction here more like a game like more like a motion based motion led
Rahul Issar (50:32.108)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And motion based, like you already know you're going to spin the bag, so it's like, might as well just put like everything on the way. Like, yeah, mega fun.
Tris Dyer (50:39.996)
Make it fun while you're doing it. Love that. Okay, cool. So what we do, was just conscious of time. So let's wrap this up. So what we do is I'll just go say, you know, thanks very much. I'll say, I'm Trish. He'll go, I'm Edwin. You say I'm a rule and I'll say thanks. All right. Cool. So guys, that was all we have time for. That was an absolute banger. We went through so much. They were at Role talking about exits, talking about how you find a buyer, talking about how you test your different offers. It was
So thanks for spending your time here. I'm Triss.
Edwin @ Snappic (51:10.572)
I'm Edward.
Rahul Issar (51:11.692)
And I'm Rahul.
Tris Dyer (51:12.732)
Talk soon guys, thanks a lot.