all right so listen up the Playbook at the moment to win in the e-commerce game is clear it is right in front of you and that's what I want to talk about in today's video I want to show you and give you case studies speaking from personal experience how to actually win in the e-commerce game now I know some of you guys might be wondering this is a bit of a random video you man you don't talk about e-commerce that much but I'm sure some of you guys know I have a few e-commerce Brands my
main one my eyewear business we are on target to do $10 to1 million this year and most of that is done through my personal brand and through having a Founder Le business which is exactly what I want to talk about in today's video you see as an e-commerce founder you need to wake up or quite frankly get left behind e-commerce is broken what if I told you that we are witnessing the great e-commerce collapse while a small group of Founders are secretly thriving you see the traditional e-com business mall that's built multi-million dollar Brands just
5 years ago is now destroying businesses at an alarming rate ad costs have doubled Customer Loyalty has plummeted and more e-commerce stores are launching daily further intensifying an already competitive market but beneath this chaos counterintuitive approach is emerging and it's what industry insiders call the founder-led economy while faceless Brands fight over diminishing returns founder Le brands are experiencing something truly groundbreaking customers who seek them out directly investors who chase them down a business not dependent on ads this is a fundamental restructuring of how online business works and those who understand it will own the next
decade of e-commerce it's the same way that I built my first e-commerce brand gadji to seven in fact even multiple seven figures a year literally as a passion Project without ever running a single ad and more importantly achieving negative cost of acquisition so let's really let that snc in for a moment while most e-commerce businesses are desperately throwing money at platforms just to stay afloat we built a seven figure brand where I actually got paid to make sales in my business that's right instead of paying for every customer like traditional e-commerce or organic traffic and
content exposure actually puts money back in my pocket with every transaction you see I get paid by these platforms for example through the form of Google AdSense like YouTube ad Revenue but in those videos I would be selling the eyewear brand so I would literally get paid to get paid I mean think of traditional e-commerce like owning a restaurant where you have to pay people to come inside you're constantly standing outside with Flyers offering discounts and essentially bribing people just to walk through your door each potential customer costs you money before they even consider ordering
a meal now imagine founder Le e-commerce as owning a popular restaurant where people are not only paying for their meal but they actually pay for the privilege of dining with you each customer pays to have a seat at your resta Resturant orders food and happily pays for their meal listen I'm going to be candid with you right now you are like the first restaurant owner number one your ad costs are killing you number two your product is no different or better to the average 15-year-old just importing from Alibaba and one ad platform change could wipe
out your entire business you are playing a losing game while the rest of us are playing by our own rules you are struggling with high customer acquisition costs I mean AD costs increase 15 to 30% annually while conversion rates decline what may have cost $20 to acquire a customer last year can now cost you do $30 to acquire a customer you have Marketplace competition I mean hundreds of new stores launch daily in your Niche making visibility increasingly expensive you have low customer loyalty and high churn most e-commerce businesses are treated as Commodities customers buy once
and then disappear you have the cash flow trap you see many e-commerce businesses hit a revenue stealing they can't break through because their growth model is fundamentally flawed they're stuck in this weird place between wanting to grow and not having enough money to scale every dollar is tied up in inventory marketing and basic operations leaving nothing for expansion without cash to invest or investors seeing potential most online stores remain small and struggling and then you have platform dependence one algorithm change one ad account shutdown and your entire business model collapses you are building on rented
land Now the default response to those challenges is typically spend more money on ads try different platforms cut product cost to maintain margins launch more products but these are simply Band-Aid solutions that don't address the fundamental problems they create a dangerous cycle of dependency that erodes profitability and prevents building real business Equity so what's the fix you might ask how do you play by your own rules simple by making yourself the most valuable asset in the business building a personal brand or a founder-led brand is where the industry is heading I mean think of creators
who have built massive wealth by leveraging their audiences you have Haley Bieber with Road Rihanna with Fenty Mr Beast with febles Logan Paul with prime Conor McGregor with proper 12 what is the common thread here they built founder-led brands that most people Trust follow and support I mean even some of these Founders aren't front and center in marketing campaigns their personal stories and brands are deeply intertwined with the company narrative and I know what some of you guys are thinking well that's great you man but I'm not Haley Bieber or Conor McGregor I don't have
millions of Instagram followers or worldwide Fame to leverage and you're absolutely right but you don't have to be you see what's interesting about today's market is that founder-led brands are succeeding at every level you don't need to be a global celebrity to build a brand that resonates deeply with your audience I mean just take Amy smil founder of onm when she launched her fashion brand she had 500 followers on Twitter not thousands not Millions just 500 with this tiny following she made a post on Twitter about her brand and its signature Blazer as interest grew
Amy didn't even have a proper mailing list she would manually collect email addresses through Instagram literally counting 2 468 all the way down to track responses after 24 hours she had collected 800 email addresses and with those 800 email addresses and a product people genuinely wanted she launched a pre-order of 700 Blazers there result £60,000 in sales in a single day just weeks after starting her business today odm has scaled to a24 million pound Business Without ever taking outside investment all from 500 followers and 800 emails and by the way the same is true for
all of these Founders I'm about to mention none of them started as household names you have George heeden with represent you have Bruno and Alex with nude project you have Grace Beverly with tala you have Chris Williamson with new tonic and you even have myself with my eyewear company or big day my consumable brand everyone with a personal brand now has their own product they understand that Their audience already trust them so creating products is a natural extension of that relationship so let me show you what this looks like in practice with my own brand
and this is where organic traffic comes in you see in traditional e-commerce you constantly paying for every visitor the moment you stop feeding the ad machine your traffic disappears overnight but with a Founder Le brand you are building an asset that works for you 24/7 every piece of content you create becomes a permanent customer acquisition channel that never gets taken down never asks for a raise and reaches thousands of people without additional cost videos I've posted years ago still drive traffic and sales to this very dat each piece of content compounds like interest in a
bank account creating a network of free customer acquisition assets that appreciate and value over time we can see some of my videos right here and all of these videos then promote and push to my iare brand you see while typical e-commerce businesses see only about 30% of organic traffic at best at times we get over 80% of our Revenue completely from organic sources now I want to make something very clear my belief is that to get to 20 to $30 million a year in the e-commerce game organic and building a Founder Le brand it is
by far the best way to do it now to get to 100 million year it's a different story like even in my eyewear brain now ever since my business partner bought 40% of the company you know8 months ago which we'll actually talk about how that came about that's really when we took it from a $2 to $3 million a year company to now you know we're aggressively scaling it and within the next 12 18 months we should be on a run rate for $30 million a year so I'm not against ads I'm just saying that
when you're a founder Le brand it is the number one biggest competitive Advantage you could have in today's market in next year's Market the year after that the year after that it will only continue to go in that direction and then when you can take that and you can turbocharger with ads on top I mean now you're on a straight trajectory to multi8 figures even nine figures a year in Revenue once again you got to remember that is traffic from links from my YouTube content organic search Instagram stories without spending a single Dollar on ads
okay and that's what I did for years with my iare company lit make a couple million a year zero ads however as I said having a healthy balance between organic and pay to acquisition is still crucial for your business growth organic traffic provides Baseline stability and profitability while pay to acquisition really lets you scale faster when you are ready to do so and that's why we recently in the last half year turned on retargeting ads you know a little bit of cold advertising and it's really like butter on bread it is super easy to convert
these people already know who I am so they are primed to buy so all we're doing really is just giving them a gental reminder so we use them strategically to amplify what's working not as life support for a business that would collapse with without them for me a healthy acquisition balance is 60% paid and 40% organic now let's move on to another aspect of why having a personal brand is so amazing for your e-commerce business you see Investments raising capital for e-commerce can be brutal investors want to see traction unique advantages and barriers to entry
before they'll even consider putting money in whereas a founder-led brand completely changes this Dynamics when your personal brand is strong investors see instant credibility built-in distribution and an unfair advantage that can't easily be copied making them chase you instead of the other way around I mean would you rather sit in front of VCS begging them or would you rather have them reaching out to you wanting a piece of your business what side of the table do you want to be on I mean this isn't just Theory by the way this is something that personally happened
to me with my eyewear brand this is Alex Hawkers my business partner he is the founder who built Hawker sunglasses into a billion dooll company they've done almost a billion dollars in Revenue in the last 10 years and he approached me to invest in gadji in the process acquiring 40% of the company I mean think about that the man who created one of the most successful iar brands in recent history with almost a billion dollars in sales wanted a significant stake in my brand so put the money aside and by the way he sold Hawkers
like 7 years ago so his full focus is on my eyar brand so apart from obviously the money which is great having a strategic partner in your industry who's done almost a billion dollars in sales you couldn't get a better situation than that and remember this isn't because I had revolutionary manufacturing technology or Decades of Industry experience but because he recognized the value of my personal brand and audience Alex saw what experience investors immediately recognize if founder with a strong personal brand creates an unfair advantage in the marketplace this partnership perfectly demonstrates the power Dynamic
shift the founder Le Brands create I didn't need to pitch dozens of investors hoping that someone would take a chance on me the season industry veteran literally came to me recognize what I brought to a table and that was something that even his money and experience alone couldn't buy you bring an audience credibility and built in distribution that investors find tremendously valuable and they are willing to offer better terms to gain access to it then let's look at hiring you see Finding and attracting top town is a struggle for most Ecom businesses you're competing against
thousands of other brands tens of thousands of other brands many with bigger budgets and more resources a founder-led brand creates a gravitational Poll for talent people want to be associated with personalities they respect and they will often choose to work with a Founder they admire over just some random Anonymous companies even if they're offering substantially more you see Ben Francis was able to bring in a heavyweight CEO from Reebok George heed represent attracted Paul Spencer who is the former Puma Regional sales director and I'm speaking from experience here I've seen this firsthand with my own
leadership team I've also just brought in my very own Superstar coo who I managed to poach off of a very big company in munic and they bring in extensive experience in digital marketing and e-commerce Consulting quite frankly probably overqualified for the role yet they chose to help gadgy turn into Hills so funny enough when Hawkers bought 40% of the company one of my conditions was that we actually change the name and I was like listen if we're going to take this big and turn this into $100 million company I definitely want to change the name
and it's time for a refresh and a Rebrand so I think you guys are actually getting the first inside scoop that full Rebrand with our new product Suite should be launching in the next 2 3 weeks or so so you might be asking how can you apply this to your e-commerce business even if you're just getting started step number one product founder alignment choose products that genuinely align with your interest expertise or lifestyle don't just Chase Trends or high margin products without a personal connection I see this mistake way too often founders with personal Brands
selling products they wouldn't be caught dead using themselves I mean you can't be serious that is like Tim Cook using Android that's like Ferrari Co driving a Lamborghini that's like Nikes founder wearing Adidas it destroys your credibility instantly second product is everything you can be a personality and sell a product and people will buy it because of you but if the product is they will never buy again and it's going to have a bad reputation jenu I'm saying this from bottom my heart my most wealthy friends I'm talking about the ones that only wear Chrome
hearts or Jac Mar m these are all like $1,500 glasses once I gifted them a pair of g1s for the past few years all they wear is that that is literally the only thing they wear and you also know like oh when you give your friend a gift and they kind of support you or they're being nice and they use it once or twice compared to like when it's years and like and my friends literally freak out if they lose a pair and they're like stressing out especially cuz a lot of times it's out of
stock that's our big issue actually is getting enough stock to fulfill the demand why because the product is pristine so ask yourself these questions when choosing a product would I use this product even if I wasn't selling it am I genuinely excited to talk about this product constantly does this product solve a problem that I personally understand would I confidently recommend this to my closest friends and family step number two is document your journey start creating content around your product development your industry expertise or your personal use of similar products this builds Authority and creates
an audience before you even launch by the way the content does not need to be polished or perfect in fact authentic behind the- scenes content often performs better than highly produced marketing material step number three is create a Content ecosystem you see today's consumers don't just want to buy products they are fascinated by the process behind them for Our Generation it's even more important to bring people behind the scenes people want to know how brands are actually built film everything here's what to document the origin story of why you're creating this product educational content about
your industry the design and development process manufacturing challenges and solutions lifestyle content showing the product in use customer feedback and how you are implementing it this content becomes the foundation of your brand story and creates an emotional connection that paid advertising simply cannot replicate now I've shown you how leveraging a Founder Le brand can transform your e-commerce business but I also know that implementing the strategy can seem overwhelming especially if you're just getting started or if you've been focused solely on products and paid acquisition until now there are so many moving pieces to get right
creating the right content strategy Building Systems that can scale hiring the best T knowing when and how to transition towards brand Independence how to navigate investment offers but if you are serious about building an e-commerce brand that stands out generates sustainable organic traffic attracts industry tight end as investors and is built to scale this is exactly how we are helping our e-commerce clients inside of a figure license once you are inside AFL you're going to have access to me and my super our team where we will Coach you on your specific questions about your next
steps get guidance on your strategy and connect with other e-commerce entrepreneurs for winning in the space right now you see inside of AFL you'll know exactly what's working in our business because we track everything no guess work just proven systems that scale but let me be 100% candidate with you we do not work with everyone if we don't think we can help you we will not waste your time so if you're doing at least 250,000 a year and you want to skip the headaches of figuring out everything on your own click the link in the
description book in a call my my team and you are going to find inside of adfl all of the systems I have and it's actually been so interesting to see that there's a lot of e-commerce based Founders inside of AFL who are using all the systems processes inside there to build founder Le Brands to not only attract more customers better Talent better investment terms a better deal flow I mean there are countless benefits to building a Founder Le brand and you get to legally steal every single one of our systems every single one of our
protocols and Lally just install it straight into your business and that is what we do inside of eight figure license so if that sounds good to you click the link in the description you'll speak to one of my three trusted business advisers have been working in my company for years you guys are not customers you actual clients of ours we have a limit as to how many clients we will take on for our licensing program so if it's the right fit we'll be honest with you if it's not I guarantee we will leave you in
a better place than we found you so click the link in the description and with that I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you took something away from it I know maybe some of you guys are surprised I'm talking about e-commerce yes sure it might be one of my smaller businesses at the moment but you know still in eight figure business incredible team we have our office in Madrid we have our team in Madrid we've been scaling quickly and all of that is possible through the power of a Founder Le brand so click the
link in the description book in your call for AFL and as always I'm watching from afar and I'm rooting for you [Music] he [Music]
