The TL;DR:

• Let’s Chat D2C: Maximize reach by utilizing Shopify’s sales channels.

• What I’m Thinking about this Week: What are the qualities of a great leader?

• The D2Z Podcast: In this week’s episode, I sat down with Cade Proulx, Partnerships at Sendlane, a unified Email & SMS Marketing platform for Ecommerce.

• App Updates & Highlights: Inveterate Lifetime Memberships, ARPU, and PostPilot.

• Upcoming Events: I’ll be in Deer Valley 11/16-/11/24, San Francisco 11/28, Sonoma 11/29-11/30, and LA 12/8! Let me know if you’re around and want to connect.

Also, you can now easily share this newsletter with a friend! As you refer, you earn:

• 3 Referrals: A Free Tech Stack Audit

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• 10 Referrals: A Free 30-minute Consulting Session

Let’s Chat D2C - Shopify’s Sales Channels

You can leverage Shopify to sell your products on various other platforms, allowing you to find and reach millions of new customers where they’re shopping. Manage your inventory with real-time syncing, fulfill orders, and measure channel performance, all from within Shopify.

Shopify’s Owned Sales Channels

Shopify offers a variety of sales channels beyond the obvious one, your online store.

• POS: Provide your customers with a unified experience in person and online.

• B2B: Sell to your business customers and run your wholesale operations with Shopify’s new B2B sales channel.

• Collabs: Connect with creators to sell your products to their audiences.

• Shop App: Connect with 100M+ engaged shoppers and instantly grow your brand presence.

• Buy Button: Embed buy buttons anywhere on the web and connect to Shopify checkout.

• Shopify Inbox: Let your customers chat and buy with you.

Marketplaces

You can leverage Shopify Marketplace Connect to sync your product catalog to the top marketplaces in one place, including Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy. There are also options in the app store for:

• Wanelo: Marketplace connecting customers to stores with the best deals in fashion, beauty, and home products.

• Newegg: Consumer electronics marketplace.

• Faire: Wholesale marketplace.

• And more!

Social Media

• TikTok

• Meta (Facebook/Instagram)

• YouTube

• Pinterest

• Spotify

• Twitter

Online Search

• Google: Sync your products to Google and list them for free across surfaces like Search, Shopping, Images, and Lens.

• Microsoft: Reach millions of people on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network. You can also show your products on the Microsoft Bing Shopping and Start Shopping tabs.

Miscellaneous Sales Channels

There are many other options in the Shopify app store, and some apps that allow you to connect to up to 200+ other sales channels.

As with anything, make sure you’re targeted and focused with which marketplaces you choose to sell your products on. Aside from the obvious (if you’re a skincare brand, you should not be selling on Newegg), do not bite off more than you can chew!

What I’m Thinking About This Week - The Qualities of a Great Leader

As the founder of multiple businesses, something I’ve been thinking about more and more is the common traits and qualities of great leaders. Your job as the founder and CEO isn't super tactical, especially when you have businesses that are different or in separate industries. So, assuming two equal businesses, what separates one from the other? The leader.

BIG disclaimer that I am not claiming to have all of the below, but I certainly am striving to! 😃 

Vision

You MUST have a clear vision for the business, which must be clearly and succinctly communicated to your team. Everyone must be in the same boat rowing in the same direction for your organization to be successful.

Accountability & Consistency

Not only do you need to build a culture of accountability within your own organization, but you need to hold yourself accountable as well. In addition, consistency is extremely important. If you’re inconsistent with your accountability approach, you’ll lose trust within your organization.

Emotional Intelligence

Empathy allows you to understand your team’s desires and emotions, enabling you to help them thrive while helping the business thrive.

Decision-Making Ability

You need to be rational and think through decisions, but you also can’t become paralyzed by indecision or overanalyze everything to death.

Communication Skills

Clearly articulating goals, challenges, problems, strategy, etc. to your team is critical.

Problem-Solving Skills

Not only being able to but also having the desire to roll up your sleeves and address problems head-on instead of pushing them off and letting them fester and grow is what any dynamic and fast-growing organization needs.

Delegation and Empowerment

You CAN NOT do everything! Delegate to your team and ensure they are set up with success by properly training them, giving them the right resources and guides, etc.

Passion for Learning and Improvement

Being the leader of a company requires that you have a constant desire for learning and continual improvement. If not, your business will get left behind.

Resilience

Just in the last four years alone, we’ve gone through multiple business peaks and valleys. If you can’t weather the storm, neither will your team or business.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict is a part of life, but use this as an opportunity to bring your team closer together and not as a dividing factor.

Strategic Thinking

Yes, you’re overseeing the day-to-day of the business, but you, more than anyone else, need to be strategically planning your company trajectory.

This Week’s The D2Z Podcast

#79 – Pivoting a Venture-Backed Startup and The Power of Ecommerce Partnerships with Cade Proulx

🎧 Listen Now 🎧

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Cade Proulx, Partnerships at Sendlane, a unified Email & SMS Marketing platform for Ecommerce. Specifically, we explored the following:

💰 How to navigate pivoting a VC-backed startup with product market fit because it simply isn’t the right thing to do for the business long term.

📲 Building organizational processes and structure.

😎 The value of staying in the same industry and ecosystem when switching companies.

🚀 Different ways to assess the health of tech and agency partnerships than just referred revenue.

App Updates & Highlights - Inveterate Lifetime Memberships, ARPU Customer Activity Feed + Subscriptions Upsells + Collections Campaigns, and PostPilot Birthday Data Enrichment.

Inveterate Lifetime Memberships

Members can now pay a one-time fee and be a member for life instead of paying on a recurring schedule with Inveterate. Use this as an opportunity to provide the absolute MOST value for your customers, and it doesn’t always have to be centered around financial incentives. You can provide exclusive access to products, donations to a social cause, special content, etc.

ARPU Customer Activity Feed

From the Upcoming view inside ARPU, you can now search and drill down into individual email addresses to see a timeline of what happened and when - making it easier to investigate customer issues when they have multiple paths to make changes to their subscription order.

ARPU Subscription Upsells

You can now feature subscriptions in your upsell block, allowing customers to choose between a subscription or 1-time on the ARPU checkout page.

ARPU Collections Campaigns

Create new custom campaigns based on Shopify Collections, allowing your upsell block to automatically update itself based on changes you make to specific Shopify collections.

PostPilot Birthday Data Enrichment

Brands can now tell PostPilot who they want to target (everyone or just a segment of customers); PostPilot will find birthdays for them and then automatically send a personalized card a week or so before the big day with an incentive! Of course, it's all automated too!

Upcoming Events

I’ll be in Deer Valley 11/16-/11/24, San Francisco 11/28, Sonoma 11/29-11/30, and LA 12/8! Let me know if you’re around and want to connect.

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