502: Stop Sending Thank You Cards with Products | Anaita Sarkar

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2:43Now let's jump in.

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3:31The first question that I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job? Okay. How'd you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? Well, I was not meant to do this. I don't think any business owner was meant to do this, but I actually was an accountant when I first got out of school because I was just that good Indian girl. And I went into accounting and I thought, this is it. Like my mom has said, I'm going to become a partner in an accounting firm and I've got to stick to this job forever. And I, you know, I hated it like most of us do. I just absolutely hated that. And I tried out that career and I actually resigned from that.

4:08And I tried another career in media and I hated that. And then I did another marketing stint somewhere and I absolutely hated it. And it wasn't the work and it wasn't the people because everyone was great and the work was good and the culture was good and I just couldn't figure it out. Like I couldn't figure out why am I so bloody miserable? Why am I a failure? I can't even stick at a job for a long time. And I decided I'm just gonna, I'm gonna test something myself. I'm gonna import some stuff and I'm gonna start selling it on eBay. Like I'm just gonna see whether that makes me happy. And I did that and I started to make sales all of a sudden with these like 8 million active users at the time on eBay, people were searching for leather bags and I just was importing them and selling them.

4:55And I would work nine to five and then I would come home and I'd do this like little business on the side, which was growing. And I was so happy to be able to control my life and like make money on my own terms. And I would do that till midnight, 1am every night. And then I would start all these other little businesses because I was like, listen, I can make money from doing that I love doing makeup I'll just do makeup for other people too like let me make some money and so on the weekends I would do that and then I'll sell bags at night and I realized I think I was unhappy because I just hated working for other people I just that was just the concept it was I didn't want to be in a little box and not understand the big picture I wanted to control the big picture and so I decided that business ownership was for me so I realized that selling things on eBay wasn't going to create a brand for myself and I wanted to have a brand of my own and so what I decided to do was take a business that was already successful with not many competitors and I decided I will just do what they're doing which was personalized leather goods I would do what they're doing and I will distribute it on places that they're not going to distribute it so eBay and Etsy and I will create my own brand that way through distribution a differentiation strategy that way and that business started to grow exponentially fast so I had two kids at the time but I was just selling and selling and then at this one point two years in I was probably doing about 60 or 80 orders a day and I just remember sitting there looking at it and it was like a whole bunch of plastic packaging so I was just looking at a pile of stuff waiting for the postman to come and everything was wrapped in plastic and inside of the bags was plastic and it was all bubble wrap and it kind of made me feel really disgusted.

6:45And at that point I was like, I think there's something to this. I don't think this is the right thing. I think just as one business owner in one period of time, one day, I'm going to be contributing so much to landfill. So that was kind of where the seed of my current business was planted and that was hero packaging. It was just a point in time where I felt really disgusted by what I was sending out into the world and I needed to have a solution to that problem. And to cut that story short, in about nine months of sampling and reiterating on the product design and getting all these fake compostable bags, finally got something that resembled plastic, but actually could be broken down in a compost bin.

7:28And that's kind of where the business started. And it's been five years of this month. So pretty exciting. Yeah. Wow. And basically for Hero Packaging, you guys really supply like 3PLs. It's more of like a B2B play, right? It's a B2B play acting as a D2C business. So we supply 3PLs, but our bread and butter, 90 % of our businesses are small to medium businesses. Ah, and so small e-com founders buy your packaging and then just use like a sender. So they're picking and packing themselves, right? Right. And then we also have large national retailers who also use our packaging as well. Yeah, got you.

8:13Awesome. All right. So talk to me about kind of some of the marketing strategies from your book sell anything online? And what compelled you to write that book? If you look at business books in any bookstore, it's always really high level learnings from really great businesses. And I am like such a book pro, like I would read a book a week in business books and I love them, but I feel like every time I close that book, I'm not able to take away any actionable strategies and implement them straight away. So I thought, well, I've grown two businesses and they're not B, they're still small businesses, but they've scaled up pretty quickly.

8:50I reckon I have some learnings that I can teach other small business owners who have started with a product. They've already made some sales. So we know there's demand for that product. Now I can take them to the next level and 10X their sales. And so I thought if I could just put that in book format and really specific stuff, you know, your Facebook ads, your Google ads, your SEO, website stuff, Pinterest and TikTok, if I can all put that into tactical strategies in a book, that could really help a lot of business owners. And that's kind of where it started. And then as I was doing it, I realized that what I had done, and I've been teaching marketing at uni for quite a while, there's a formula behind making sales for any business.

9:31It doesn't matter what business you are, B2B, B2C, whatever you are. It's brand awareness plus traffic to your website, plus optimization of your website, plus brand sentiment equals sales. And if you can, as business owners, if we can focus on those four things and the elements within each one every day, you can improve your sales every day. And so that's what the book is about. Yeah. Awesome. I have to ask you just because you have like a, quite a great following on TikTok and I'm noticing like a massive trend when it comes to early stage e-com founders capitalizing on TikTok. And I'm sure you've seen this, like, even if you look at Shark Tank in Australia, right, I've been watching a few episodes, a lot of the brands, physical product brands, are being built off the back of TikTok and or Instagram.

10:25So what advice would you have to e-com founders that want to use a platform like TikTok to grow their sales and to move product? It's necessary to do it. I mean, a lot of people are really uncomfortable with it. So the fact that you even show up on TikTok will put you ahead of 90 % of the businesses who don't want to show up. It is an absolute necessary way to get more brand awareness. It is one of the only social media platforms that is going to get you brand awareness. Instagram won't get you there fast enough. But TikTok will show your content to 97 % of new people every single time you post.

11:01And what people don't understand is that you get 200 views every time and it seems like it's so low. That's 200 new people that is looking at your content every single time. You don't know what comes from that. So when I am posting on TikTok and now I have about 300 ,000 followers, that doesn't mean that 300 ,000 people are actually looking at my content. Some content might get 5 ,000 views. Some might get 2 million views. The ones that go viral will target people that may not even be in your target market. So you don't want to, you don't always just want a viral video. sometimes my 5 ,000 views will sell me 20 books immediately so don't worry about the low views keep creating content on the platform and keep getting that brand awareness and I would say one of the other biggest tips I would have is the link in bio in your TikTok it should be somewhere where they can access multiple locations don't just send them to your website send them to a place where they can either go to your Instagram or to your website or to a digital product or whatever you're selling, your best sellers, the book that you've written, because people are following you for different things.

12:07And if your video is about something and that you direct them only to your website, they're not actually going to involve themselves in your world. So give them options when you're creating content. Yeah, got you. And I think one thing that a lot of founders face when it comes to TikTok is whether they show their face or not and what kind of content they create. what advice would you give to e-commerce founders when it comes to using platforms like a TikTok or Instagram? Some of the biggest brands on TikTok and Instagram, the founders don't show their face. If you look at brands like Scrub Daddy on TikTok, they're absolutely killing it for cleaning products.

12:48Like if it's just cleaning products, but they don't show their face at all. So you can find your signature series where if you really don't want to show your face, don't show it. You do what you've got to do. Be the creator that you want to be and be the founder you want to be. It doesn't mean you have to show your face just because everyone else is doing it. If you find something that's super engaging and super entertaining and relevant and educational, and that means not showing your face, don't show your face. But you have to find something that works because if you are not showing your face and your content is not crushing it every time, then something is wrong and change your strategy.

13:23Showing your face or not, it doesn't matter. You've just got to find what works for you. And what about influencers? I think influencers know how to build community better than anybody else. They know how to build community better than brands will ever know how to build community. And usually it's because influencers start by not wanting to sell you a product. And influencers start because what they want is to build a group of people around themselves, which is, I like fitness or I want to lose weight or I like fashion or I love traveling and I have five children and everyone else who has five children can follow me.

13:57So influencers are really there to build community and I think we need to learn a lot from them. I think that we are always looking at them to see how they build community, why are they getting so much engagement and brands don't. And it's because brands are approaching social media in the complete wrong way. It's always about selling and like, how come I didn't get a conversion when I posted that video about that best-selling product. It's because you posted a video about the best-selling product and that's all you ever do. You're not actually showcasing you and your why and the whole purpose around why you started the business.

14:30So I think brands need to learn from influencers and I think influencers doing it in the right way on TikTok can absolutely blow up. But if you take your Instagram strategies and take it to TikTok, it's not going to work. So let's talk about packaging. It's really intimidating for a lot of early stage founders really because there's so many ways to do it. Like how do you suggest founders approach deciding the right packaging for their products? I don't think it's very difficult at all. We don't have many options, especially in Australia. I mean, I think in the US as well, it's you have your postal service packaging and then you have some other options online which is usually boxes plastic and then they're sustainable and you just have to choose from them a lot of businesses they have e-parcel or they get they use send all and they use a shipping provider where they print out labels print it on their packages stick it on their packaging and send it off in the same way that you buy plastic packaging online or you go into the post shop and buy it I would encourage you to actually find a sustainable version of that online, buy it from NAN, the same thing happens.

15:39You get it delivered to your warehouse or to your house or to your 3PL and they stick the same printing label on top, the shipping label, and they send it off. So I don't think it's as intimidating as it seems. I was actually, I met with someone yesterday who owns a massive e-commerce brand and he was saying to me that, you know, oh, but it's so much more extensive to get sustainable packaging and I wouldn't know where to start. And I said to him, I feel like you haven't even tried or you haven't even looked yet because when you do, you'll realize it's actually not that much more expensive and it's actually a really easy process to transition away from plastic to sustainable.

16:18So how do you optimize your costs when it comes to packaging? What advice would you give to founders? Well, actually my advice is to reduce your packaging in the first place before you even make a swap. So you're already reducing your costs. You take away those thank you cards that you spend 20 seconds writing for each order. And if you take away all of that unnecessary packaging in the overall order or the overall package, you're already going to be saving costs. Not only that, I would say that it's not about saving costs, but it's about building customer loyalty over time. And we can see that customers are actually moving away from brands who are not using packaging that's better for the environment.

16:59So you are risking the loss of a customer to save six cents on packaging per order. And I would say it's less about that. And we need to think about that differently because of course, sustainable packaging is more expensive. Of course it is. But you actually going to keep a customer for a lifetime because you're trying to do the right thing. That's interesting. So you would not recommend the cards or any, yeah. It's controversial. I actually know that. And it's not just from a sustainability point of view. Of course that helps. But for me, my business is in making money for other businesses too.

17:38So I have Hero Packaging where I focus on sustainability. And then I also talk to other business owners to help them. And my business is to make sure that they are making money and making use of their time. Thank you cards. some people absolutely adore them and they think they're the bee's knees. For me, I think sometimes they work and sometimes no one actually cares and they go straight in the bin. So for me, it's like, think about your options. That 20 seconds, if you're doing 50 orders or 100 orders a day, that 20 seconds per order is a lot of time that you could be using to do something else to personalize the experience and not create so much waste in the process.

18:14hmm so I guess when it comes to AI let's talk about what tools are you using in your business right now for hero packaging and then also what tools are you seeing working for founders that you're working with as well yeah so there's so many things going on with AI and I think there was this huge buzz about it and it's kind of died down a little bit. But what I've realized is the businesses that continue to use it are making the most, they're using their time very effectively because what we know is we don't have time as founders and AI can help with that. So why not use it? And there are basic things that you can do, which is starting with the blog posts for SEO purposes, right?

19:03If you start with AI for your blog posts, because you don't want to hire a$4 ,000 a month agency to do your work for you. You can actually do your blog post. All they do is they set the foundation and you go in and you iterate it and you say, okay, I actually don't see this as my personality. You can give AI your personality as well, or you can just edit it yourself, put it online and your SEO blog post is done. Another thing that I do, which is apart from hero packaging, but it's more for sell anything online in my TikTok, I get a lot of my ideas and a lot of my viral content comes from AI ideas.

19:40So everything that I do, I'll put in, for example, I'll say, okay, these are my top performing videos. Can you give me 20 other ideas of videos that I can create within 15 seconds? So I use it in that capacity too. So it's great for content, great for SEO. And another thing that I've heard from another founder, and this is not my idea, but I thought it was absolutely brilliant, is actually finding customer personas. So looking at your Shopify data or your website data, pulling all your customer data, putting it into an AI platform and saying, can you please map out my top customers? So what are they?

20:17What are their demographics? What are their psychographics? And then actually putting my primary audience and my secondary audience in there and then actually understanding who they are so I can target them better on ads or on content or anywhere that I do my marketing. So, I mean, there's multiple uses, but I think if we stick to the basics and not overwhelm founders and we say, okay, we, you know, you need to create ads, you know, you need to have SEO and you know, you need to have content and they're the basics. So why don't we start there? Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode and learning a ton.

20:51As you know, in this series, we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation to find out how they did it. However, if you're thinking of starting your own business and you want to hear from some incredible stories from everyday people like you or I who are actually in the trenches, only been building their business for maybe one year or two years, like they're building right now and they're really in the early stages, but they're getting success. You should come and check out our new podcast from zero to founder hosted by our community manager, Molly Flynn. These are in the trenches stories from our very own successful students that have gone through some of our programs.

21:30People just like you who are deep within the process of building their very own successful business. These are the founders of tomorrow. You can find the From Zero to Founder podcast on all platforms. And remember, it's founder without the E. All right, now let's jump in the show. And then what other tools? So obviously like there's chat GPT, so like kind of content generation. Are there any other tools that you're using or you see founders using in a big way? I see a lot of brands now tapping into mid-journey and with the image generation for Instagram content as well. A lot of ads content that you see from big brands is actually generated on mid-journey.

22:15Yes, especially when you don't want to do those big photo shoots anymore. mid-journey if you pay for the premium one which is absolutely really nothing per month you're getting these high quality images that you can keep editing and keep editing and keep changing up in mid-journey to find the perfect image that you can post as an ad so mid-journey is probably the second biggest ai tool that i've seen okay and what do you think the main challenges in implementing ai solutions for e-commerce businesses are i think people you know we talk about e-commerce and then so e-commerce is split into so many things but let's talk about big e-commerce versus small e-commerce founders big e-commerce it's it's good for them they have a team of people who can maybe specifically look at that to use it for their marketing when we are founders and we're doing everything ourselves of course the biggest challenge is going well yes I know I need to use AI but where do I even begin like what what is the biggest priority for me in AI and and not knowing a lot of things.

23:18For example, if I get AI to write a blog post for me, will Google pick that up? Is it something that is a big no-no on Google? Where do I go for this information? So it's just that there's so much information that there's almost no information online about how to use it properly. And I think there's a big gap in the market there. Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered with proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs, and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success.

23:54Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. And when it comes to, I guess, the rise of chatbots and AI-driven support, what's your take and how do you balance that for having like a human touch in customer service? AI plays a great part in that, especially when it's just really simple questions, but there is nothing that can beat human interaction in, especially in a small business. And that customer service is something that you shouldn't give up for a very long time.

24:35You should know what's going on in your business and what customers are saying, what questions they're asking before you implement AI. So that, of course, in the future, even canned responses should come before AI. But I think that the human element makes you understand your customers better. So keeping that face-to-face, real personal element is way more important and implementing AI later on when you've got enough data to know the questions that they're about to ask. Yeah. And when it comes to hero packaging, do you guys use like a customer support software, like Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

25:11Yeah, we use Freshdesk. So we're like OG tech platform users and we do need to move over. But, you know, sometimes people are like, you know, Klaviyo is the gold standard. Gorgeous is the gold standard. Shopify Plus is the gold standard. And I'm telling you, you can grow to be a$10 million business and not have those. I mean, we have old school stuff. We still use MailChimp and we're still on Freshdesk, but it does the job. We have customer service people, we have tickets coming in, and we have people handling that because Freshdesk does its job. My mindset right now is think cash first. Cash is everything.

25:52I will always look in comparison to look, does Freshdesk and do Gorgeous, do they do similar things? Yes. Which one is cheaper for my business? I'm going to go with that one. I think that is a really important thing to remember. And there's so much pressure to use the best of the best always, but the best of the best comes at a price too. So human element, but always thinking about cash. Yeah, got you. And I guess, yeah, when you're in the early stages, you don't really want to be spending all this money on so much tools and fancy tools. And it's easy to get excited by tools and the newest, latest, greatest tools.

26:30are there any like kind of non-expensive AI tools that you're playing with or experimenting with that you could share with our community that might be helpful? No I'm actually only using the two that we mentioned and I don't want to overwhelm myself with AI I want to stick to the basics like I said so I'm only doing the bare basics of what I need to do with AI. But I would say that if you are going to experiment with tools, make sure it's worth your time to do that. Like I, it's so exciting. And this is not just, I mean, AI is being built into everything, of course, and it's fantastic. But if you are going to specifically look at AI, and that's the thing that you want to go after, make sure you have the time to do that, because I guarantee you're going to be taking time away from other things in the business.

27:20and if you get overexcited by it I mean of course to make things more efficient great but if you're just going to be excited by it and just follow this and like try and do all these different new things there's a lot of stuff that you're missing out on yeah that's really a good point like it is easy to get overwhelmed and that's kind of like you know why we're putting out the content we are to really kind of help guide people because there is so much stuff out there, right? There's so much. I mean, even I who like I've listened to your podcast for years and years, but I listen to every single podcast about e-commerce.

27:55I read every book and I read all the articles. I'm subscribed to all the e-commerce newsletters and there's a lot of information and everyone is saying something a little bit different, a little bit different. And I think what I like about you is you have the ability to make a complex thing much more simple. And I really like that because you always are like, okay, let's break it down. And that gives people actionable strategies. And I think that's what we need rather than just here's a whole bunch of information about AI, go and do with it what you please. But no, I've always liked your approach.