Breaking Down the Million-Dollar Playbook: A Deep Dive into Entrepreneurial Growth | Leonardo Caracas

Matt: Welcome to the e-Commerce podcast with me your host, Matt Edmundson. Now, this is a show that is all about helping you deliver e-commerce.

Wow. And to help us do just that today I'm chatting with Leo Caracas from Jump Ventures. About breaking down his million dollar playbook, a deep dive into entrepreneurial growth. But before Leo and I jump into our conversation, uh, let me share with you some podcast pics. Oh yeah. Some previous episodes that I think you're gonna enjoy.

Check out the episode with Maureen Mwangi called From Startup to Growth, which was a fantastic conversation. And also the three top. Tips for startup success with Heikki Haldre, which was Heikki is just such a legend and I still remember that episode. So it is in the archive. You can access our podcast pics and our entire archive for free on the website, which is ecommerce-podcast.net.

That's ecommerce-podcast.net. Plus, if you're there and you haven't done so already, Make sure you sign up to the newsletter and we get an email with all of this good stuff. The podcast picks the show notes, the trans, well, not, you don't want the transcripts, but you get the show notes, uh, you get the links, uh, to the guests and all that sort of good stuff, no cost to you, which is pretty amazing.

So make sure you sign up for that now. Are you struggling to grow your e-commerce business? Do you feel like you are constantly spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to focus on next? Well, we have been there, let me tell you. And I know how frustrating it can be. That's why. Oh, yes. I'm a partner in e-commerce cohort.

I, I'm a big believer in what's going on and we have something called cycles, a free training, uh, which you can access, uh, at ecommercecycles.com, which is the sort of the. Well, I guess it's my, my Inner Secrets on how I'd build e-commerce businesses, uh, and the, the system that we use here. So make sure you check that out.

It's for free at ecommercecycles.com. Now, that's the show sponsor. Let's talk. About today's guest, but before I read his bio, let me just give a shout out to John Roman, who has connected both me and Leo today. John Roman has, as you will know if you're a frequent listen, has also been a guest on the show.

Uh, and we talked about how to use content to connect with your community. And also, a couple of weeks ago, actually, at the time of recording, I hooked up. With John at Subs, Sumit, where we met in person, and what a legend that guy is. So do check out that episode, uh, and also John's website, which is battlbox.com.

But that's battle without an E. Oh, yes. Now let's talk about Leo. An entrepreneurial dynamo who's propelled over 50 companies to new heights. As a partner at Jump Ventures, he's mastered the art of scaling direct to consumer businesses from a modest six figure enterprise to a booming eight figure powerhouse, driven by a single mission to elevate founders.

Uh, and their companies. Leo has become a leading light in the world of business growth. So I'm excited because one, he was recommended by John, who's a legend. And two, uh, he's got a truckload of experience that we can jump into and pick his brains on, uh, as we get into his playbook and unearth his secret to strategies for success.

Leo, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you here. How are you doing

Leo: great. Thanks a lot, Matt. It's a, it's a good day to be in the show.

Matt: It is a good day to be in the show. I like that. That should be a slogan actually. It's a good day to be in the show. Whereabouts in the world are you?

Leo: I'm in the Netherlands.

It's a city called Utrecht. We are based in Amsterdam, but I live in Utrecht. I'm at my house today.

Matt: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. And are you enjoying the weather boom that we seem to be getting in the UK at the moment?

Leo: That's it. That's why it's a good day to be in the show. It's, uh, quite nice in the, in the background.

It's a nice, uh, nice weather. So, uh, yeah, I'm happy.

Matt: Fantastic. Fantastic. And how do you know, um, I mean, we gave a shout out to John. He's connectors. How do you know John?

Leo: Yeah, so John is part of one of my mastermind groups, uh, uh, that we, we discuss everything about E-com and how, how to scale companies. He's in one of the groups that I'm part of, and.

True experience. This is how we, we actually connected with like-minded people and, and people that really have, uh, nice tips, tricks and experiences from the past on, on how to grow E-com business.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ima, well, I imagine Johns of all of them really, uh, those helpful tips and tricks. How long have you, um, been doing masterminds?

Have you find those to be useful?

Leo: Oh, very useful. Not only Masterminds, but uh, as a whole being part of communities that, uh, are sharing, uh, lessons on entrepreneurship that doesn't, it doesn't really matter for me if it's only e-com or of entrepreneurship as a whole. Um, it, I've been part of it for the last six years almost, uh, immediately as we, we started our first, uh, startup.

Matt: Yeah. Fantastic. And how do you find these different communities? I.

Leo: Yeah, so basically, um, it works through referral. So it, uh, the ones that we really found out that were great communities are the ones that get, uh, referred to us. And this is how we actually, uh, build, uh, really strong relationships with, uh, with other interpreters or, uh, Actually get a lot of value from, so are the ones that we get referred to.

So from the start, the ones that we get referred to and get exposed are the ones that, uh, that we stick out and, and stay the longest.

Matt: That's interesting. That's interesting. I like you, I'm a big fan of masterminds, so I'm always kind of curious how people find them and, and how they get involved. Um, so tell me about Jump Ventures.

What is Jump Ventures? What do you guys do?

Leo: So Jump Ventures is a sort of an atypical venture capital. Uh mm-hmm. It's something between an incubator and a venture capital. We basically accelerate companies, uh, that are focused on the e-commerce business, uh, D2C space mm-hmm. That are within the six figures.

So companies that are really up to 1 million, um, Dollars, uh, annual revenues. We scale them up to eight figures at least, uh, in usually a timeframe of one year. So we basically operate their growth. We accelerate and strategize, uh, how we going to, to scale them. And, uh, we have a team that supports this, this growth, um, throughout the whole process.

Yeah. So we take these companies from six figures all the way to eight figures and, uh, we do it in the D2C e-com space.

Matt: But you. I mean, I, I don't want to just gloss over what you had just said because, um, six figures to eight figures in one year. Yeah. Um, I, there's a lot of people listening to the show who can, if I can be so bold as to say, probably are dreaming about that kind of growth, um, but has been.

But it has proven elusive, uh, let's say, uh, to many a business over the years. So how do you do that? I mean, we talk about your playbook, but is is there a, is there sort of. Yeah. Strategies that are, are they different for every company or are there some commonalities amongst what you do?

Leo: Yeah, so that's the playbook, that's the commonalities, right.

So what we, what we learned in the past is we started our own company called Go Case back in 2015. And we took this company bootstrapped to, uh, eight figures basically in three years. And throughout this process of getting, uh, Go Case to eight figures, we actually had done thousands of tests and. The surprise, uh, only a few tests really matter.

Only a few tests really move the needle. Right. And basically what we got good at was, uh, our prioritization process. Mm-hmm. And knowing of course, from experience, what are the most important things to move a needle? What is going to create the highest impact with the minimum effort? Yeah. So when we, when we did this with Go Case, we basically started coaching, mentoring other companies just for the joy of it, uh, two years ago.

Yeah. And seeing if our strategy, our playbook was replicable and we found out was highly replicable. So replicable that we had a company last year that, unfortunately, I cannot mention specifics because of NDA, but we took them from 1 million to 20 million in basically one, one year time. So, um, Everything that we learned and that we, we applied with Go Case.

We started teaching and applying to other companies and seeing how far can we take, uh, uh, those companies. And it's important to say, of course. Um, you cannot do this with any company, right. It's not, not any company can go from six figures to eight figures quite fast or even get there at all. Yeah. But we found, uh, common traits and KPIs that really show the ones who have potential and the ones who are going to have a tough time doing it.

So we prioritize the ones who do have that potential. Right.

Matt: So what would you look for then, in a company? I mean, what are some of those, um, how would you prioritize, you know, how do you know which ones are gonna make it and which ones aren't?

Leo: So we basically look at four KPIs and the first KPI. Will tell us if there is product market fit.

It's reviews. So when we find companies with a significant amount of reviews that are a 4.6, 4.7 out of five stars mm-hmm. We see, hey, there's a product validation here. There should be a product market fit. This company should be highly scalable. If we see companies that are in the four range, four, four out of five, I say, look, there's.

Problems here, either in the product, in the experience or whatever. But this company cannot scale very sustainably or cannot scale, have easy ride scaling. So we, we first and foremost try to find companies which have a product market fit. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The second point, uh, is about repurchase rate. So if we find companies that have around 30% repurchase rates, uh, we see that these companies have a very good, um, probability to continuously sell and to have a profitable growth.

So if we are around 30%, we see we can still grow this, uh, there is a room to, to continuously evolve over the months and there's a potential to, uh, scale. Yeah. If it's basically a one product, uh, kind of company, then this, you'll see that the reportage rate is going to be 5%, 10%. Yeah. And yeah, it's going to be a very tough road to actually scale this profitably with, uh, advertisement.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. The third KPI that we look at is AOV. Usually we try to work with an AOV that is around 50 US dollars and can go all the way to 75 US dollars. We have worked with companies in the past that have a 20 to 25, and the most important thing for us there is. Knowing that there's a path to grow this company to a 50 to $75.

Mm-hmm. Even if they're not there today. But if it is a company that is way below or doesn't have the potential to grow because it doesn't have the portfolio to do so, then we say this is going to be too tough. Uh, especially, uh, if it's. Based on paid media, paid media, uh, costs just keep increasing year over year.

And if you don't have an AOV that can work towards with that, it's going to be very tough. So if we see an AOV that is, can go all the way to 75. Yeah, we say there's potential here and 75 and above we say, yeah, there's definitely something to work with. And the last one is the thermometer. The thermometer for us is the conversion rate.

Yeah. It will really depend on the context of the traffic. How much paid media was acquired, how much organic traffic is there, which channel was used, how much in terms of volume of traffic. There is year over year, but when we look at something that has 3% and above conversion rate, we see there's still room to grow here.

There's still room to to push paid media traffic here. And, uh, this, they are in a comfortable situation. If we already see something that is 2% and below and hasn't invested too much on, on acquiring, uh, traffic before then we see this is a tricky situation to scale. Yeah, so the four KPIs are really, uh, reviews, star reviews, uh, repurchase rate, conversion rate, and AOV.

Matt: Wow. And I what, what I find fascinating, Leo, about what you've just said is there aren't many people that come on the show. Talk about the number of reviews as one of the primary factors for valuing a business, um, or valuing a business, uh, in terms of understanding whether this business is go, has got any kind of longevity.

Um, and so you said you're, you're looking for companies with a significant number of reviews, which are sort of 4.6, 4.7 stars out of five and above. Yeah. Which is a validation point. Um, what's a significant number of reviews look like for you?

Leo: I would say 500 is enough. If you have 500 plus reviews, that's enough to get a validation.

Yeah.

Matt: Okay. So let's assume then that I have a company with, uh, let's say 2 million turnover. I've got, um, I, I meet the requirements on all of the things that you talk about. Um, I've got reviews. My repurchase rate may be as, as high as 60%, um, average order value. Maybe a little bit high. Well, let's go with $75 and conversion rate year is above 3%.

So we're singing, we're, we're, you know, the choirs and the angels are happy because of the four KPIs, um, have, have been met. What, what do you do then to take that type of company through such rapid growth?

Leo: Yeah, so. Basically, if we have those KPIs, we establish this is a very high potential company to grow.

And then we try to understand why they haven't grown before. And usually the case is you have founders, uh, or founding team that is very focused on product. Experience and customers. So they know really well why they started a company, why they created the products and so forth. But they have no clue how to navigate the paid media, uh, growth sites, how to strategize pricing, how to think about, um, Their portfolio increase for repurchase.

So all the growth mentality is not really in the back of their mind. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So when we see that is that is when we come in, we say there's really a synergy here of what we can offer and how we can, uh, help, uh, these companies and what they currently lack. Yeah. So the first thing we see, uh, and we try to understand is the overall growth strategy in terms of channels, uh, revenue buckets and tech levels.

So is this a, is this a company that can be, uh, scaled through TikTok? Is this a company that can only be scaled via, via meta channels? Is this a company that, uh, Has grown via Facebook communities. What was the primary channel and what are the, the, the channels that I can see immediately, uh, being the main driver of, of the growth, which usually it's comprised of meta, it's usually a meta, uh, uh, company.

Yeah. But nowadays we have very good experiences of. Scaling and, and having a very good portion of the revenue coming also from TikTok. Yeah. So we understand how much, uh, uh, farther they can go. If we also go on TikTok. Yeah. Then we try to understand which revenue buckets they have. Are they a subscription, uh, based company?

Are they a one-time purchase? Um, How can we really understand, uh, their, their revenue buckets? So we think on a growth level, which are the channels that we can push, which are the types of revenue they, they can get. Mm-hmm. Uh, and tech and in the tech level, what are the tools that they have to, to implement those, those kind of, uh, those kind of things.

Yeah. So it's just laying the ground of saying what is available? What do we, from our experience see that is, uh, attainable to those companies? And what are they not grasping because they lack the experience that we have. This is just the lay of the land. Yeah. Then it comes the second step, which is one of the most impactful steps we understand, uh, that it's nowadays you are playing a content game.

So paid media growth on an e-commerce D2C level for us is a content game. Mm-hmm. And what we try to create with these companies is a content machine. How do you constantly spit out content that has converting messages that does the trick in attracting the right clicks and can actually get a very, uh, profitable, uh, acquisition cost?

So trying to understand from the brand. Which assets they have in terms of, I have influencers. I have UGC, I have my own, uh, internal team. I have a studio. Which assets do you have to actually create content and how can we turn this into a machine? Mm-hmm. To constantly spit out content that will be tested, that will be competing against, uh, the content you, you, you had before.

And that can achieve the highest level of KPIs, which for us is. Oh, uh, click to rate and CPC. Yeah. Mm-hmm. This is how you constantly evolve a process to speed out content and actually attract traffic at a cheap rate and therefore have, uh, scale and a affordable acquisition cost. This is one of the points that most entrepreneurs and most brands don't understand.

You are playing nowadays a content game. If you're not good at content, if you cannot create amazing content, you cannot have amazing results, so you don't go to the next level once you. Unleash that part. Okay. I get a lot of traffic. I get a way that I can sell the cus uh, to customers. I get different concepts of how I can sell to a customer, and you get, you unleash the next level.

Yeah. So the content, uh, strategy is a big point and it's a second point. The third point, and it's almost as equally important as the, as the content, but it comes later, is the commercial plan. How are we doing with pricing? How are we doing with bundling? How can we think about, uh, promotions and merchandising for, uh, repurchase?

So how do we strategize so we can constantly improve the AOV and we can constantly improve the conversion rate as well. Because as you start to push traffic to your website, you will see that the, those initial KPIs that we had before are gonna go down and you need your. Your job is to kind of maintain a healthy balance between all these KPIs to make sure that you have a sustainable growth.

Mm-hmm. So making sure that you constantly can improve your aov. You constantly can improve your repurchase rate so you have a profitable uh, performance. Yeah. Is the way that you work out your commercial plan. Yeah. And this is highly subjective to what do you have in your portfolio? How are you constantly doing product launches?

How are you thinking about the pricing of the product launches? How are you thinking about the merchandising. Bundling those products into one, two, later on. Figure out, uh, if you have the right aov, if you have the right purchase rate to get a healthy conversion rate. Yeah. So this is the third step, which is almost as equally impossible, uh, uh, important as the content strategy.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then we have a couple of following steps, which the following, following is the financial structure. So we work, uh, hand in hand with the companies because many, many, many interpreters in their beginning don't really pay that much attention of how the, their p and l should look like. What are the areas they should optimize, how they can finance for growth?

What are the things they don't know? Yeah, and we worked very tightly, uh, with the interpreters to figure out, okay, let's set up your p and l. Let's set up a cashflow forecast. How, uh, do we see the bills coming in? How can we optimize logistic costs? How can we optimize, uh, your costs, so and so forth that you can actually, uh, afford your own growth?

Yeah. So the financial structure, uh, is something that comes afterwards and is very important. And then the data and tech stack. So thinking about. Everything that we do is very data driven. So how can we, uh, make dashboards, how can we connect different, uh, tools for attribution, for reporting, uh, and uh, for acquisition purposes that we know are the, the, the best ones to use?

And that will give us all the information we need to have, uh, uh, To to avoid analysis paralysis. Yeah. So we can really take steps and understand how, let's do this. This is the right decision, and we can see this on a real time, on a day by day or week by week, and we don't have to wait 30 days. So the PNL gets closed, and then we finally see the results and we see what we did wrong, and we did bad.

No, no. We can do this very fast if we have the right tools and we have the right setup. And this is, uh, an optional step and it's really depending on the company and the product, but it's internationalization. So figuring out if a company is able to internationalize, go to, to foreign markets, uh, expand at the profitable rate, and, uh, if this is the best step it should do, uh, which we, we usually try to do it, uh, after we reach certain kind of saturation in the home market.

Mm-hmm. Wow,

Matt: Leo. There's a lot there dude. There's a lot there. So let's dig into some of this if we can. So I just wanna summarize, uh, some of the things that you said. So from my notes, the first step, um, Once we've gone through the four metrics, uh, is to understand the overall growth strategy, um, and figure out what's going on there.

We are then looking at this idea, uh, in level two of the content game. Um, you said something, uh, I, I can't remember the exact phrase, but if you are not good at creating content, you've not got a, a sort of a future business in a, in a lot of ways. This is now a content game. You've gotta get good at creating content.

Uh, level three is the commercial plan. Which we need to think about. Number four is gonna be the financial structure, uh, number five, data and tech stack. And number six, possibly, which is an optional step. Uh, does your product translate internationally? Have I got all of those correct?

Leo: Yeah, that's it.

That's

Matt: it. Fantastic. Go me. Um, so, so let's, uh, one of the things that you said at the start, um, when it came to the overall growth strategy is typically. You come across companies that are led by the founders, by the guys that are really passionate about the product or the customer in some way, um, but aren't really focused on growth as maybe you would be focused on growth because you're a little bit, um, Can I use the word disconnected here because you're not as emotionally involved, maybe, uh, in Sure.

The companies. So let's dig into that a little bit because there's a lot of founders listening to the show going, oh, this is interesting. Um, what are some of the common mistakes you see business leaders doing when it comes to their own products in terms of growth strategy?

Leo: Well being overly, uh, the first one and, and clear one is being overly picking and micromanaging the way that they want the products to come out and the way that they want, um, the advertisement, the content to come out to make sure it's perfect.

And I mean, uh, good. Always beats perfect. So, uh, one of the things that they miss out is understanding that, uh, you are in the game of acquiring. Customers and the experience and the product is, um, of course an enabler for that. But, uh, in this, in this venture of trying to acquire customers, you need to figure out first what really triggers people into buying and how you can create a system.

Of spitting the right messages at the right time to the right people. Mm-hmm. If you're not focused on that, if you're focused on it needs to be perfect, then you miss out on the biggest, uh, on the biggest, uh, Point, which is testing approaches constantly. Mm-hmm. And yeah, this is the biggest mistake, uh, being overly careful of how you say it when you say it and et cetera, and not really thinking, Hey, this, the, the reason I'm doing this and doing it fast is so I can figure out what is the best way that I can do this consistently over time.

Matt: So did you get a lot of kickback then from founders about this? Or do they, once you explain it, are they, are they into it? I'm kind of curious as to, to understand in that mindset and that struggle maybe that they go through at this phase. Um,

Leo: Yeah. Um, one thing that we, that we find it pretty, um, fascinating is when they get out of their own head.

So they're so into the product and, and to the brand and experience that they start only talking to themselves and they start and they stop looking at, uh, objectively things that they should be doing to trying to get to a, to a new headspace or trying to reach new people. Yeah, so. I've done this exercise many times now, and it's a, it's a, it's a nice hack to, to share with the community.

Uh, it's using, uh, a couple of AI tools to quickly have a grasp of what is the customer feedback. Mm-hmm. So if you have, uh, uh, a lot of feedback already, you can't, uh, download, uh, all your reviews mm-hmm. Um, and save them in a PDF document. And use chatpdf.com. Mm-hmm. Uh, and just start having a conversation with ChatPDF to say, okay, what are the highlights of the reviews?

What are the pain points? What are the different personas here? Uh, uh, attributed the reviews. How can I turn this into ad hooks? How can I turn this into video scripts? What are the things people miss out, uh, from the reviews? What do they, uh, cherish the most? How do they view us compared to competition? So, Me being a very unbiased person at the, uh, coming into this uh, uh, uh, situation.

Uh, I just grabbed this export of all the reviews and start having a conversation with multiple clients because I have all the reviews and start, Hey, did you see that actually people are talking about your brand compared to competitors this way? Did you see that the thing that they value the most is number three in your list of, uh, usps, when you always talk about one and two, but it's actually the number three that gets them to tick the most.

Did you see that? So this is the way that, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I never really thought about it and I'm really selling number one, two, and three. So, uh, this is one of the, the, the exercises that get customers, uh, that get, uh, founders mostly, um, they get their head spinning when they say, oh, shit. So much feedback here that I'm not contemplating or taking into, into account when, when thinking about my, my decision making.

So, That's

Matt: really powerful. chatpdf.com was the site that you mentioned, right? Um, yeah, but that's, I mean, we've done that in the past actually, where we've used ChatGPT to, um, look at reviews and the data you get out of stuff. Like, that's so insightful. Uh, yeah. And stuff that you would never have thought about really.

Um, yeah. No, that's interesting. Okay, so the content game, let's focus a little bit on the content game. Um, I think. I think first and foremost, Leo, if, if I'm a founder in an e-commerce, which technically I am, I, you know, if I'm a founder in an e-commerce business, um, the content game is probably one of those things that scares me because if I, I'm just gonna pick a random product on my desk here I have, um, I can't remember what they call 'em.

Funky pops. Uh, I've, I've got my little Apollo Creed, right? There's, yeah, watching on the video there he is. Little Apollo Creed, funky pops. I'm from a certain era, what can I say? Um, so I've got Apollo Creed there and I manufacture, you know, Apollo Creed and I'm passionate about what it, the story and, and all that sort of stuff.

I can do that. But to ask me to do content is radically stepping outside of my comfort zone. At least in my head It is. I dunno if you've found this to be true with founders. Yeah, for sure.

Leo: For sure. You, it's you. You need to having that, that's why I mean, I was trying to tell you, it's all about a content game, but not everyone can play the content game because not everyone can have that content mind.

It's, it's something you have to really experiment a lot and try a lot and have different angles to it. There's the scientific angle to it, which is looking at KPIs and try to adjust KPIs. There's the creative angle to it, which is, okay, how are we going to create different concepts? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And there is the, the, the angle that puts everything in together and.

We say it's the angle that creates desire. It's the, the, the creative strategist or the, the ad buyer, which has that view of the data and the qualitative, uh, uh, uh, perception of the content that says, look, if we sell it with this angle, with this hook, with this amount of, of footage, we should be able to convert much more than just that.

So, uh, it's the creation of desire. Because we are in a business there, there's also two businesses that we separate. There's the demand generation and there's the demand capture business. Demand captures the Google business. So people already have a certain type of, of, uh, of, uh, they're already looking for something and they're just gonna find the ones who has the best price at the best review level.

Sure. And that's a, a demand capture game. And the demand generation is the Facebook TikTok word. Yeah. Where you can spit out an idea to someone. That they were not expecting, and they are going to be instantly, um, activated to go to the website and maybe buy it. Yeah. Immediately. Or, or they're really gonna have that desire.

Whoa, this is really interesting. I'm going to keep this in my, in my, I'm gonna save it. I'm going to keep it in my mind, so maybe I can purchase it later on. Yeah. And creating that desire. It's, it's the art and science of trying to figure out how to create content with the right concept, with the right words, with the right amount of length, and for different platforms.

Mm-hmm. The way you create content for TikTok is very different than the way people used to create content for Facebook early on. Yeah. It's very short, snappy, entertaining type of content that, okay, wow. I want to go and click. Yeah. Um, and Facebook, um, Uh, five, six years ago, it was a very different way to create content.

You really see like an ad type of, of, uh, of content popping up in your feed. Like, buy this now. But, so it's, it's very different type of, uh, Of, uh, content. So you have to have a mind, uh, to develop and test out different concepts that are going to have a focus on converting people. Yeah, so this is a skill, uh, and this is a set of of ingredients you need to actually have.

Internalized, uh, uh, to be able to succeed. So I, I've met founders which are really focused on the brand level and want to only make really nice pieces of stories, but don't really think about how the story is connecting to a product or connecting to a purchase. Yeah, and I have the other way, which is just about sales, sales sale, promotion, promotion, promotion.

They really don't build up something that. Why are people buying this? What problem are they solving? How can they propose in a short way, uh, uh, uh, why people would need that? So it is a tough game to play. It is not easy. And, um, Not everyone can have it, that's for sure. So this is one of the reasons why we also, uh, are successful, uh, scaling these businesses because we had to experiment a lot with that.

We constantly get exposed to new concepts and we are constantly trying to learn. Whenever there's a new platform, like TikTok, we got, uh, on the band, on the bandwagon, really, uh, um, soon to try to learn how to get good at it. And, uh, yeah, it, it takes time. It's not easy.

Matt: No. No. Is it, but it's a skill and like most, like you, I mean this is the word you used, it's a skill, isn't it?

Um, I'm a, I guess the question is, can most people learn that skill? Um, or is it something that I need to go and get external help with?

Leo: Look, I think, um, it is a crucial skill to have internal, let me say it like that. I don't know if you can get it. I dunno if you can learn it, but it's. It's, uh, strategic to have it internalized.

Yeah. So if you are not able to experiment with content internally, you're going to be always, uh, dependent on a third party to do it for you, and you're going to leave the impact, or you're going to leave your, your company in the hands of. Someone else. Mm-hmm. For them to come up with the concept, for them to come up with the angles, for them to come up with, with the stories and internally, uh, you should know the best your customer, the experience.

What do they value? You're constantly having a feedback look from customers if they're liking the product, if they're not liking what they're not liking, and you're fit in this in a loop to create constantly new content. Yeah. So it is very important to have it, uh, internal, this kind of power. Yeah. If, if people can have it and then later on build out the, the ads buying machine behind it.

Yeah. So if it's, we learned it because we had to mm-hmm. We had to go to get good at it. Um, But we know it's not the easy thing to learn, that's for sure.

Matt: So where do, um, if people are listening, go, well, this is, this is something I need to get into. I need to understand this a little bit more for most people, where's a good place to start?

Leo: Ooh, that's a tricky one. So, Nowadays, um, you know, one of the easiest exercises that, uh, that we do is just trying to understand TikTok, for instance. Mm-hmm. If people start to understand which content is going viral on TikTok, which are the different angles, which are the different concepts, how people are doing it, uh, on an organic level, then you start to work your mind off to say, okay, how can I apply this to my brand?

Yeah, how can I apply this to my product? So this, the platform is one of the platforms that, uh, still allows you to have organic virality, uh, different than, than than Instagram, uh, for instance. And this is a place where you can see unbiased way of, uh, of content creation on a, on a crazy scale. So you have a lot of organic profiles creating original content and getting, uh, very.

Big virality and you just have to analyze that. You have to study, okay, was it because of the music? Was it because of the filters? Was it because of the story? Was it because of the product? And then you can start reflecting, okay, if this was a trend, if this got viral, how can I use this with my product?

Yeah, so. I'm sure that, uh, you just showed me your, your, uh, uh, your product, and it's, for me, it looks amazing for, for demand generation, you just have to find similar, uh, um, similar companies that are doing the same or with similar products. Okay. How are they telling a story about this? Yeah, yeah. Uh, how are they pushing this product in a way that the content is highly entertaining?

But at the same time, ha is actionable. Go and get it now. Right. Um, so I think analyzing TikTok and the trends on TikTok is the easiest way to, to start to understand how to create content yourself.

Matt: I like that it has to be entertaining and actionable. Um, brilliant. So, um, Leah, I'm aware, um, Uh, of time and we could spend all the day talking about TikTok and uh, content creation.

But I want to switch tracks very slightly if I can. Yeah, because there's the other side to what you said at the start, which is you can grow from a million to, so from six figures to eight figures within 12 months. I listen to that and I kind of go as an e as an entrepreneur, I go, yes, I, I understand how actually, if you've got the right content machine, I can scale, right?

Because that makes, that makes a lot of sense. It's just, I, I'm in effect, I'm buying customers and if I can find enough customers at the right price, price, I can grow that business and I can bootstrap it and I can keep investing back into that. So in one sense, that. Seems sensible. It seems a little bit scary, um, but it, it seems sensible.

The thing which, um, the first sort of questions that go through my head are, how in the world am I gonna manage that kind of rapid growth in terms of, um, Going back to my Apollo creed, how do I get more Apollos on my shelf? How do I have, I gotta go get a bigger way? There's all sorts of questions, which then from a practical operations point of view come into my head and I wonder if you could just speak to some of those.

Leo: Yeah. So definitely it scares people, uh, if you goes to such a rapid growth. Yeah. Uh, but I, I want to remind, this is a talk I have with, with several of the, the companies who accelerate our help. I, entrepreneurs have to figure out ways to make things work, right? If mm-hmm. If you cannot, if your lead time now is, uh, 90 days, okay, figure out, let's make it shorter.

Let's make 60 days, let's make the 45 days. But when you are in this comfort zone, That your growth is stalled and you continuously make the same amount of revenues, or you only go five to 10% year over year. You don't really get to the stage where you have to significantly prove everything else in your company.

So you might be paying way too much for customer support, or you might have really crazy lead times, or you might be not optimized on the way that you are. Um, Thinking about your cash flow. Yeah. Or, uh, your payment, uh, terms. And what this does is really pushes you to, Hey, are we going to say no to this growth?

Which we don't know if it's gonna come back, uh, later on because there might be another event like an iOS or, uh, whatever it might be. Uh, yeah. Or are we going to figure out the problems that we think it can be figured out? So, um, definitely the things that, uh, start to, to, to come to point is okay, production and lead times.

Yeah. Making sure you can actually fulfill a larger amount of items with the same speed. Yeah. Making sure your customer support doesn't blow up and you have the right infrastructure to continuously reply to customers at a with a good time. And, um, With the right, um, how to say, um, with still the same tone of voice and not just, uh, have an overload of, of, of tickets to reply to.

And I think. And the last of course, having the fi the, the cash to finance it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Being really clear on what you can spend, how you can spend, and if you cannot spend it right now, how you can prepare yourself to, to continuously spend. Yeah. So I think the financing side, the supply chain and the customer support are the three big, uh, areas where, uh, it would be really painful to grow.

Yeah. Um, This is just how are you going to figure this out? And we talk with the, with the founders on, on the, the experience we had in the past for negotiating better payment, payment terms, being able to do short term financing, uh, being able to, um, think about how to optimize our customer support flow.

So we have already a lot of, uh, of, uh, of, um, yeah, best practices we acquired in the past, uh, of how to quickly scale something that is very beginner level. Uh, it's a more advanced level, but these are the three big, uh, I think tickets.

Matt: Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? And I, I'm sitting here listening to you talk thinking, oh, this actually would be, um, for those listening who run their own e-commerce business, who are founders, um, this for me would be a really interesting thought exercise in the sense that let's say tomorrow you had 10 times more sales than you normally do, and that growth was gonna carry on for 12 months.

How would you, how would you cope with that? Um, just thinking that through, I think would be a really interesting idea, just because, like you say, it's easy to get comfortable in the rules, which you currently play the game, right? So I'm currently playing this e-commerce game. These are the rules, these are the boundaries.

Um, my production time is X. My, uh, my custo customer support is why my finance is Z. But ones, if we start to turn that on, on our head, I think is just, it would just be a really interesting thought exercise to do. Um, I I

Leo: can give you one, uh, very interesting case that we constantly, uh, have it and it's one of the best hacks for growth.

Yeah. Okay. One of the best hacks for growth is product launches. Having a good product launch calendar, constantly releasing new products. If it's on, on a cadence of two weeks, three weeks, four month, doesn't matter. You need to have a product launch calendar that you constantly release new products. What usually the, the entrepreneurs would come back and say is no, but our lead time is this, and our MOQ is that.

Okay. Have you. Talked with your supplier to say, I don't care about your MOQ, just charge me higher high unit prices, but I just need to release a new product every two weeks, three weeks, and you can give me, instead of 500 units, 100 units charge me more for the unit price. Mm-hmm. Because what you get out of this exercise, It's constantly having a bump of sales increasing your purchase rate because the ones that are most interested about, uh, product launches are also your, your, mm-hmm.

Usual customers, and you start to figure out what are the most important products to constantly release this insight is way more important than keeping your MOQ and keeping your lead times stable. Yeah. You know, like you show me again your product, um, you can have 1000 different products you can release and you might be overloaded with choices of what's the next character I should release.

Yeah. And you need to plan where ahead because you cannot make a bad investment and so on and so forth. But if you do very limited shots for about six months, you figure out which ones have the really high potential of sales, and you turn this one into a regular product in your portfolio after you have gone through a round of tests and you can, okay.

I don't care. Now, it's not the MOQ that I'm going to, I'm going to order, I'm going to order 10 times the MOQ because this was so successful and I have tested with, uh, even with a breakeven uh, uh, financing here of this product, that this is going to be crazy successful. So in the end, what will be analysis paralysis?

Uh, uh, uh, problem now is enabler for you to continuously grow your portfolio.

Matt: That's really powerful. I've seen companies do that super well. Actually, there's, I'm a bit of, um, uh, you won't know this Leo, but I'm a bit of a woodworker. I like to do joinery in my downtime, and I've seen, there's one particular tool company that I'm thinking of.

They're constant releasing new products, but in limited quantities. And then if they say sell, sell, well that product then becomes part of their main product catalog. But there's always, there's lit, there's new stuff coming out literally every week. Um, it's like they've just got a department which just makes stuff, uh, and see how it sells.

Then they come out with version two and that's them, you know, that then becomes part of their sort of main catalog. Otherwise, if it doesn't go well, it just kind of goes, well, that's, you know, the last chance to buy kind of thing before it's gone forever. Um, and they might iterate on it or they might change it at some point in the future.

So, But there seems to be this constant, uh, evolving of, of products, which is I. Which I think for, for most people is as probably as scary as trying to create a content machine, isn't it? In a, in a lot of ways you're, you're now creating a product machine, um, where the challenge is, right? Um, once every two weeks, once every month, we are gonna release something new and I want to see, and we're gonna release it in a, a limited batch, and we're just gonna see how it goes.

And if it, if it goes well, we'll put it in the main product catalog. Um, Yeah, I think it's a really interesting strategy, a really, really interesting strategy. Um, what are the, what are the hacks? Do you have, Leo, I'm kind of curious. That was one. What's another one?

Leo: Um, well the biggest hack is pricing and bundlings, I would say to have immediate, uh, immediate, uh, impact.

I mean, What people don't put a lot of effort in is thinking about what is the sweet spot pricing your product should have. Mm-hmm. And constantly, uh, testing and iterating. So you have to understand that there is a magic number. There is a magic number for your product that people instantly decide if this is good or bad or cheaper, expensive, or it's worth the money.

So, Having a lot of tests, uh, uh, for that is super crucial to have the right conversion rate and the right aov. So if your product is, if you're, if you, there's a whole psychology behind several books around it as well of how you should write, uh, how you should come up with a price. Yeah. But having prices that are very easily anchored on experiences of, like this 19.99, just below 20, what is 20 for me?

Maybe 20 is a dining out. Maybe 20 is, uh, is, uh, something I would spend in an afternoon. So, okay, 20 definitely worth it. It's 23.50. 23.50. What is 23.50? Like? It's something in the middle. It's broken, so okay. Maybe you're going to have a way higher conversion rate if you put this to 19.99. So constantly testing and iterating on pricing.

It's one of the biggest things entrepreneurs should, uh, spend a lot of time, uh, iterating on. And. These are one of the things that you change today, tomorrow, maximum in one week. You already have a good feedback if this was a good or a bad decision. Yeah, yeah. Uh, it does. It's not gonna have a huge, uh, implication and take months to figure out, but this can have a significant impact in your business, both in a profitability as well as finding the right conversion rate lever.

And the second thing is bundling. Um, we found that, okay, if we really need to get to a higher and higher aov, we need to have a portfolio of products that enables us to create bundles. And, uh, these bundles are later on sold in a way that the best value for money. Way better value for money. So, mm-hmm. In this way, you can significantly shoot up your, your AOV and achieve a much higher profitability just because, uh, you're selling, uh, more products in one go.

So bundling is also something people have to really come up with, uh, develop and give visibility in the website so customers don't have to think too much. This is the best value for managed package. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. And we see it over and over that this is one of the, the best tricks to actually get to a better place, uh mm-hmm.

Financially. Fantastic.

Matt: I feel like we should do an entire episode just on how to do bundles because it's always a hot topic of conversation, but, um, uh, they're great hacks. Uh, really like them. Leo, listen, I'm aware of time and, uh, time always feels like it's against me when I get into these conversations on the podcast.

So if people listening to the show wanna find out more about you want to connect, want to maybe look at how to work with Jump Ventures, what's the best way to do that?

Leo: Sure. Um, if they want to connect, they can definitely connect on LinkedIn. Uh, you can find me at, uh, Leonardo Caracas from Jump Ventures and if they are entrepreneurs, uh, that are in the six figures are in that, uh, 1 million range or a little bit below, and they think they have a interesting company to, to, to be mentor or coached, we do this pro bono.

So we actually mentor and coach, uh, companies that we believe have the potential to scale, uh, pro bono. And they can go to our website jumpventures.co. So jumpventures.co. Uh, fill in the, the intake form and we can try to have a conversation and see if we can help.

Matt: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, Leo, listen, um, we will of course link to all of that information in this show notes as well.

So, uh, thanks for coming on the show, man. How, I guess, what's, what does the future look like for Jump Ventures? What's the next big step for you?

Leo: Well, we are now accelerating a portfolio of companies that we, we really believe, and we are constantly getting new people, new companies, new founders that we believe in, uh, uh, to invest and accelerate.

Mm-hmm. So we, yeah, the future looks, uh, for us, a very interesting space where we become the, uh, Thought leaders, uh, so to say, because we have a proposition that is very different from, from what we see in the industry. We don't see anyone playing both cards as an investor, but also an accelerator. Mm-hmm.

Um, and we believe that we can become thought leaders for the D2C uh, e-com space. And, uh, for us as what we are, we are aspiring to do.

Matt: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, listen, uh, Leo, all the best with that and thanks for coming on the show, man. Genuinely enjoyed the conversation and, um, really appreciate your insight.

It's been, I've got pages of nights, uh, which has been fun, so thanks for coming on.

Leo: Thanks, Matt. Uh, thanks a lot. Thanks for all the listeners and I hope I, it was helpful and for everyone. Happy sales.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Happy sales. No, you're definitely helpful. What a great conversation. Huge. Thanks again to Leo for joining me today.

Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor. The e-commerce cohort. Remember to check out their training, uh, at ecommercecycles.com. And be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them.

And in case no one has told you yet today, you are awesome. Yes, you are awesome. Created awesome. It's just a burden you've got to bear. Leo has to bear it. I've gotta bear it. You've gotta bear it as well. Now, the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.

The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Estella Robin and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript. Or show notes, just simply head over to the website, which is eCommerce podcast.net. That's it from me. That's it from Leo.

Thank you so much for joining us, uh, wherever you are in the world. Have a fantastic week. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.