Don't Make These Mistakes

We’re all going to make mistakes. Fuck ups. Things that we look back and make us scream what the hell were we thinking?

Whenever I’m around family or new friends I always get asked “Was going to college worth it?” It’s funny because not many of my learnings from college apply to running my business today, but the things I learned from the jobs post college, that required a degree and the connections, have translated nicely.

So in many ways running your first business is alot like getting an intensive 4 year, $200,000 college degree. But you’re paying for it all without student loan and the college may pay you back if you find success. I’d imagine if I ever pivoted into a new industry such as SAAS or B2B, I’d be enrolling into a brand new school and starting all over.

So how about the lessons? There’s been a ton…

Doing business with friends. 

Six years in and I’ve lost my two best friends over the stupidest pettiest bullshit. Sure in the moment building with your homies is the best feeling in the world, one day you’re at the casino flexing your Shopify dashboard on single moms and the next they don’t show up to your wedding and haven’t spoken in a year.

My suggestion? Don’t build with your Tier 1 “best friends” unless they possess a skill set that is so rare or unattainable elsewhere. It’s not worth the sacrifice. Building with acquaintances or friends of friends is much better in my opinion. Just make sure you know when to rip off the bandaid.

There’s never going to be a perfect time.

How many of you are waiting to do something? Launch that business. Quit that job. Stick up for yourself at work. Start a family.

There will never be a perfect time. You’ll always be able to trick yourself into saying just one more day, one more week. Kinda like my chocolate addiction. If I could have the same discipline with chocolate that I did with my work I’d be a super model.

When we launched CROSSNET I was $125,000 in student loan debt. Had $4200 in my bank account and probably $7000 of credit card debt. By all means it was not supposed to work. We should have ran out of cash. But we believed in ourselves and made it happen.

Networking is lame af…

I used to thinking putting myself out there, meeting people, going to events was a massive waste of time. At one point I even thought I was “too cool” for it or even had self doubt of “why would this person want to talk to me?”

After doing this for several years now the contacts that I’ve made in this industry are enough to set me up for life. Not only have these people helped our company grow with connections (ever heard of ESPN?); but also if CROSSNET goes south tomorrow, I know I could land on my feet in a second just because of the contacts I’ve made.

Not know where to start? Here’s how I got started - Set up one twenty minute meeting a week with somebody you admire or want to learn from.

Shoot them something like this:

“Hey man big fan of your work. Know we have a ton of homies in common. I think there should be some cool things we could do together in the future. Would love to connect if you had a few minutes later this week.”

If I knew the person was trying to hit a certain goal, I’d probably close it with a classic “give” where I’d say “Sure I can help introduce you to our broker who got us into Target.”

Get a mentor or somebody you can call

We all come from different backgrounds. I didn’t grow up around “rich people” who had SoHo house memberships or access to the beach clubs. I sure as fuck want that for my kids, but growing up I didn’t have access to successful business people. It was parents who worked normal 9-5’s to put food on their family’s plates and thats all.

There’s nothing wrong with this lifestyle, but when you’re building a business that you want to sell for millions one day you need somebody to call when times get scary, when you don’t know what to do, somebody with experience.

In the beginning these people may be “advisors” or "investors” that you may offer equity in your company in exchange of getting access to them. Eventually through networking you’ll add people into your corner that you can now just consider friends.

Just like building a team its important to network with people with all different skills sets. Being one dimensional and having 50 contacts who know everything about running Facebook ads won’t be helpful when you need to apply for a business loan and are looking for the most affordable way to finance your inventory.

Obsess over your finances 💰

In 2020 we took off like a rocketship. More money, more sales, more headcount. My biggest mistake that came from that growth at all cost mindset was taking my eyes off our finances. It’s crazy to type it out, but we just kept adding costs without looking at the bottom line.

This year we have successfully trimmed over $120,000 of monthly expenses.

Where’d it come from?

We moved to a 3PL, we reduced headcount, we cut down app expenses, we stopped overpaying for agencies… but most importantly we stopped spending excessive amounts on Facebook.

We have a golden number each day that we’re striving for from a pure profit perspective. The old company shot to hit top line sales and impress others. Now? We’re much happier selling less product, making $5000 in sales in a day with a 20% profit, then $6000 in sales with a 10% profit.

At the end of the day the most important thing is happiness and pure profit.

The customer always comes first

Let’s be honest… when you’re selling knockoff hockey jerseys on eBay to pay the bills when you’re 24 you don’t really give a shit about the customer. You want to make a quick buck and thats it.

I can tell you that that kind of behavior leads to two things: one getting shut down from the NHL, two a super poor customer experience

If I could go back and change one thing over the past five years it would be putting the customer first and prioritizing their happiness over short term cash. In the moment our team’s mindset was “hey we are a limited LTV (life time value) brand, lets make our money while we can” but what ended up happening was a ton of chargebacks, pissed off customers, people who never wanted to play the game, and the loss of loyal advocates who’d be more than happy to share our FB ads and love for the game if we didn’t piss them off in the first place.

Speaking of putting the customer first.

How CROSSNET Made $1m through Customer Support

In a recent survey, most DTC founders look at customer support as the first thing they would cut if they needed to eliminate costs. However, we actually look at it as a profit center as automation and live chat have been able to turn support into a real revenue channel.

It’s 3 simple tactics:

1. Centralize

2. Automate

3. Sell

We’ve made $1m+ on our site and wholesale through support at CROSSNET while keeping our budget reasonable (sub $250/week) and providing a great experience for our customers.

Here are the 3 steps we use to make millions through support:

1. All our customer data is in Gorgias allowing us to proactively answer customers’ buying questions in every channel (Email, Social comments, Live Chat) from one dashboard in minutes.

2. We also set up automation to reduce the number of tickets our team works on (Saving us a lot of $$$) and customers get their questions answered quickly, driving them back to shopping.

3. Assigning the right tickets to the right reps on our team. Tracking delays go to our support team. Wholesale orders go to our sales reps so they can focus on what matters.

Back in 2019, Dick Sporting Goods came in through our live chat the week we set Gorgias live. I was manning the chat after hours and jumped on the message when it came through. Those company-changing messages can easily get lost in the noise without a great system to get the right requests to the right people.

What I’m excited to try next is their new AI feature (Private beta) that will create responses for my team to review. Saving us tons of time creating new macros and responses to different customer requests.

As a special perk for being a Crossed Commerce subscriber, I got you a special offer. If you haven’t tried Gorgias yet get your 2nd and 3rd month free when you sign up and mention Chris Meade referred you.

Get Gorgias here now. It’s a no-brainer if you’re running a Shopify business.

I hope you enjoyed this. It was straight from the heart this week. Take a second and say a prayer for me that the New York Knicks win tonight. Drop me a note back on your biggest learning and I’ll make sure to answer in between timeout breaks.

Until next time,

Chris Meade The First