SCALE

From First Order to One Million Orders

First thing to understand is that in order to get to one million orders, those customers are buying from someone else right now.

You are going to piss someone off on your journey to 1 million orders.

If you do not know who your competitors are, then you need StoreFilter
Sign up at StoreFIlter.com for a free trial
Know everything about every store!

Note: I use StoreFilter every day to research what my competition is promoting in ads, what engagement they are receiving and how their revenue is growing or dropping off.

Ok lets get into it!

Your First Order

This is the fear that stops so many people from moving forward. As my wife was launching her store, she had this fear.

Her background was a paralegal and she was going to school to become a lawyer, then she met me.

“I want to do what you do, I don’t want to work as a defense lawyer and defend the scum of the earth, that is not rewarding.”

^ That is the realization (in some form) that every future millionaire entrepreneur has: I cannot see myself doing this (job) for the rest of my life

Ok… so what do we do?

Step 1: Start creating an audience
An audience in what? Who cares! Create an audience around something you enjoy creating content about.

NOTE: There is no product in mind yet to sell. The product will reveal itself eventually in the process. TRUST THE PROCESS

Also note… it is FAR MORE DIFFICULT to sell a product without creating an audience of people who like and trust you. CREATE AN AUDIENCE!

Sidebar: I used to speak at events with people who were there to launch or grow their eCOM businesses. And I would hear them talk at the mastermind all about their products, features, the market competition or what makes their product great.

I would say:
“All that is great, what is your best social media platform for your message?”

They respond with: Facebook or Instagram or TikTok whatever…

Ok, what is your username / handle? Let’s pull it up on the screen here and dissect your messaging.

INCOMING EXCUSES:
“Well we have not launched yet” or “We are waiting to post”

So you are telling me that you are building a product BEFORE the audience?

This was 3+ years ago, and I still follow some of these people.
They are still limping along to sell their product to ZERO AUDIENCE.

You know their number 1 excuse?
“Facebook ads just don’t work for my business”

Facebook ads don’t buy products from you.
People buy products.
Facebook ads show your offer to people.
People only buy from people they like and they trust.
Get people to like and trust you.

Ok… back to this, where was I? Step 1: AUDIENCE!

It doesn’t matter if you are posting as YOU or as an ALIAS or BRAND
bUt yOu SaiD i dOn’T nEeD a BrAnD yEt?

Listen… if you love a TV show, make a page about it
If you love Ferraris… make a page about it.

JUST MAKE CONTENT ABOUT A SINGLE THOUGHT

Love cooking… make an audience about cooking.
Trust me… you will eventually come across a product to sell.

Step 2: Ask people what they are looking for

Connect with them, understand what they like and don’t like!

Back to my wife’s story… So she is making content, no idea what she is going to sell, but creating content and building an audience.

She got up to 10k or so followers on Instagram alone just by getting active.

Still no idea on what to sell. But has an audience now!

Then she got pregnant with our first kid. Starts buying stuff like crazy.
Starts joining all these “soon to be mom” Facebook groups
Starts making baby registries. And planning a baby shower.

In the process my wife says: “I really like this product but I cannot find a design that I like on their website”

She then buys products from ALL THE COMPETITORS and gets a login to StoreFilter.com to start researching companies.

“Did you know this one company makes $2m a month! Selling baby clothes!”

She joins the VIP group on Facebook and hears what all the moms are complaining about with the company.

We use ImportYeti.com to find their suppliers. And then we have a designer work up our designs and we order samples to try out.

We share the samples with the group to say: “Do you like these?”
Thousands of likes and comments about our design ideas.

Validation achieved! $2000 invested total!

Step 3: Go live as fast as humanly possible

Your energy towards a project diminishes with every passing day.
Which then turns into negative energy towards the business and idea.

Which makes your FIRST SALE the most important focal point of your business future, and that sale MUST happen as fast as humanly possible.

Often I will have an idea in the morning with my morning coffee.
Then have a landing page / order form live by midday.
And make my first sale BEFORE I go to bed that day.
THE SAME DAY I HAD THE IDEA!

I don’t care if you have the product on hand or not…
Make the first sale, and if you cannot fulfill then just refund and apologize.
Offer them a free product when it lands and tell them the product is held up in delivery. They will appreciate it! Sell with integrity but get validation early on.

Ok so now you are live, what now?

Step 4: Your first sale!

You cannot build a sustainable company based upon just people you know in real life. You must have a plan on how to grow beyond those who you know.

However, asking for a sale from people you know is not a bad way to get off the ground. Ask them directly for the sale, or to at least share your business through their social media.

The share button and a few positive comments on your posts can go a long way with earning your first customers from your content.

Again, organic sales are one of the best ways to get traction on a new brand, so create Reels, Shorts and TikTok videos, those have the best organic reach to new profiles right now.

Once you can make a few sales, you are beginning your journey towards a million sales. And I can tell you one thing… it is often times harder to get your first sale verses going from 10,000 sales to 100,000 sales!

Step 5: Your first 1000 sales

Ok, so you have a few sales rolling in for your business. Great work!

Let’s cover all the strategies available to get to your first 1000 sales.

• Organic content on social media

• Organic search engine traffic

• Paid promotions from influencers in the space (Social media posts)

• Paid Search Engine and Shopping ads

• Meta Ads and TikTok ads

• Referral business through affiliates and previous customers

• Cold outreach for wholesale or bigger orders

^ In order to get to 1000 customers, you could find that one of the above strategies could drive you there.

Pick a couple to test and when one of the strategies works for your brand, then 10X that effort to ramp up to your first 1000 customers.

Step 6: Your first 100,000 sales

Typically around this level, I start looking for scalable offers that we can promote.

We have done this successfully with “free product” campaigns, where you can get a product for free, then we take them through upsell sequences in cart and post sale.

These promotions are typically effective when you know your numbers and you can afford a loss upfront in order to run a scaled paid promotion

Let’s break this down into numbers:

Try to find a leading product that people will love to get them hooked into your culture. Typically at this point you need to have your fulfillment process dialed in, your follow up campaigns all dialed in and your customer service ready to handle scaled promotions.

Start small with paid video ads, UGC content and image ads cycling with lookalike audiences of your previous customers and engaged users on your store.

Then have a clear offer like “Get this product free! Typically valued at X but this week only you can get it for $0. Limited inventory available”

Setup your ads to start at $1000 a day, and start slowing ramping up as you start seeing great traction.

Watch your cost per customer acquisition cost, typically you want this to be under $10 for this free product sale. Then make sure you have an upsell take rate that is affording the upfront costs of the advertising and the product.

Typically we like to see an average order value of $35 to $50, where our cost per customer is $10 and our product COGS are around $30. So we want our front end campaign to be a wash to where the company makes $0 on this first sale. If you can get your numbers there, then it comes down to scaling paid promotions to ramp up revenues.

Using software like Klaviyo, you need to watch your customer lifetime value, and at this point I recommend adding a software like Triple Whale to your software stack. Both softwares will help you to keep on pulse on ads spend in comparison to revenue.

If you want to get granular into your reporting, then I recommend Zoho Reports where you can customize your own dashboard to see how ads and profit over time are being collected.

And be sure your UTM codes for your ads are passing into your Shopify account! This is essential as you need to know where sales are coming from as you will be advertising on multiple platform with several campaigns running.

Step 7: Scaling from 100,000 orders to 1,000,000 orders

Ok, so you have this all setup and dialed in, now you are on your path to serious ramp up of revenues.

Here is how I structure campaigns for massive growth:

Continue doing everything above, and continue to drop new products to engage loyal customers.

Note that 200,000 customers can drive 1m sales for your business if you focus on building brand loyalty and repeat sales.

We typically like to see the average number of sales per year for our customers to be 3x. So if we can acquire 1000 new customers per day (first sale) then get them to buy 3 times more in the year, then we are on our way to scaling this brand.

A great way to do this is through building an “army” of loyal customers and using social media to showcase product loyalty through social media content.

Remember, people want to feel special, and the best way to get repeat customers for your brand is to make them feel like they are part of a community.

Without this brand loyalty, it becomes expensive to scale a brand to 1m sales.

Start securing brand deals where you can cross-promote other products to other product lines.

Look into doing branded deals with wider audiences to turn your brand on and consider other traditional media like TV (note YouTube ads can bridge to TV and Hulu ads are a thing too!)

Test everything and when you see something connecting, then ramp up. Traditional media can be a bigger commitment, but the impact on search engine traffic can be massive for your brand.

The more people you can get to search for your company by name, the bigger opportunities you have to scale your campaigns.

Continue to lower your customer acquisition costs and scale your advertising costs as you are ramping up your business.

Conclusion: As you can see there is a formula to scaling to 1m sales.

If you hit a ceiling then continue testing new ideas until you unlock massive growth.

For our businesses, we like to run promotions for 90 days to see how they impact the business bottom line. Then we have new product drops weekly and keep the website fresh as we are growing and scaling.

Keeping your website fresh is essential for getting repeat buyers and keeping your momentum going.

At 1m loyal customers you are getting into the 9 figure valuation numbers for your business and it might be time to start thinking about preparing your business for an exit over the next few years.

When it comes to exits, having your numbers and books clean for at least 2 previous trailing years is essential to get top dollar for your exit. Otherwise you are throwing red flags in a big deal like this, so be mindful about your intentions as you are scaling from 100k sales to 1m sales.

From your first sale to your 1 millionth sale, now you know so it is time to get to work!