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Having crossed the bridge from employee to an entrepreneur myself I can relate to the wonderful excitement of starting something new. Even while I was working for others I always had the dream of starting my own business and used to day dream about it. Something about the freedom was so attractive to me. The freedom to choose what to work on, the freedom to choose who to work with, the freedom to choose how the work should be done, the freedom to choose where the work should be done. So if you’re about to start something new I hope you’re excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.

My purpose is to help more people make this jump and my passion is seeing them getting to the other side. My passion is also working alongside them in creating new businesses and products.

Let me tell you a story…

We worked with a client that had a “beauty box” business. The target were women from all ages and the business model was a subscription service where they could receive every month a “surprise box” with beauty products, skin care, etc. 

We worked with the client to create his brand and his website/online store. After months of work, iteration & refinement and sorting logistics out we finally set a launch date. 

This kind of business works in the following way: 

1. You inform customers you will only have available X boxes;
2. You inform customers the box will be available to purchase on day X;

So the client did the announcement that sales would open at 9am on day X.

When the date arrived we were a bit anxious and excited at the same time. We had deployed an infrastructure so that the website could handle peaks of traffic but both us and the client were doubtful of how much traffic would be generated and how much sales would happen. We were aiming for a few hundred and had planned to announce “sold out” by the end of the day even if only a few sales had occurred (a typical marketing play this kind of businesses sometimes pull of). 

We were at the office around one hour earlier before the sales opening and had arranged for the client to join us as well so that we could monitor and watch how things would go.

10 minutes to the “sales opening” we got a text from the client: “currently stuck in traffic, please proceed with the launch without me, I will be there as soon as possible. Thanks“. 

As the responsibility of “flipping the sales switch on” descended upon us we felt our insecurities surface as a cold air breeze climbing our backs. But the trust and the relationship with the client was so strong that we felt part of his team and partners rather than just suppliers and we couldn’t let him down.

We could see hundreds of people were at the website and furiously clicking refresh to be the ones buying first.

Finally at 9am we opened sales and glared at the screen to see what would happen next.

And then we saw the first order coming in. Then the second and the third. And so on. 

After a while the client arrived and couldn’t believe it. His vision had been realized, his dream had come to life, orders were pouring in!

After the first hour the client had sold hundreds of units and by the evening he had ran out of stock, surpassing his expectations at large! Both the client and us were amazed at the incredible results obtained and coined the day to be a tremendous success. 

What stayed with me that day was:

1. The rapport we had established with the client was so important. We had connected to him from the start and he involved us as part of the team, listening carefully to our advice and recommendations around how to set up the business but never leaving the driving seat and compromising on what he believed was essential for the success of the business. 
2. The client was well prepared from the start. He had prepared the business. He had studied the business model, the different parts he needed to be working together to reach clients, to sell and to fulfil orders. He had a checklist of things he needed us to ensure and did his due diligence to ensure we could deliver. On the other hand we were proactive in telling him were we was overlooking things and what the main obstacles would be.
3. The power of niche marketing: the client had a clear target client and did a good job of reaching that target through both paid and free advertising for a few months before the first “flash sale” day. This allowed his clients to signal their interest and allowed him to create demand/supply tension later on when he announced limited availability.

Last but not least.. the feeling I got from seeing this client succeed. 

My passion had unfolded.

Every business must rethink their online presence, making it more dynamic, more social and mobile in order to capture the attention as well as the spending in this current crowded market.

We don’t have all the answers, but we have a lot of experience working with businesses and a lot of advice to give on how to level up your website.

If you are interested in seeing how you can improve, drop us a line and we’ll follow up.