Trust me you don't want to miss this whether you're starting out or scaling up buckle up for a ride filled with wisdom Innovation and a dash of humor let's dive into the fulfilled podcast where we explore the world of e-commerce and Beyond welcome today to the fulfilled podcast today I'm excited to introduce Matthew moano which is he's a CEO and founder of connective CRM but also checkout Champs and today I want to focus a little bit more on checkout Champs because there's a lot of lot of talk on the street about what's going on with checkout Champs and I want to also introduce because he's a husband a father and a new new grandfather is that what we were talking about before tell me about this this grandbaby grandfather the second time remember when your wife gave birth to your little daughter yep I think my son gave birth like two days later to our first granddaughter but we just had our first grandson on on November 30th oh that's beautiful I was telling you I was like he doesn't look like a grandfather but Matt awesome man that those are going to be some uh uh some really I guess spoiled grandkids um your grandkids they're going to be well trained let me just tell you that's right they're going to know how to shoot for sure that's right but I also want to introduce that that you you have been a loyal friend for a long time you're somebody I can turn to in in in times of you know um times where where're we're trying to figure out what's the next best thing that that we should focus on um and personally and and business-wise so I want people to know that there there's somebody that I've depend you're somebody I've depended on in the past and you've G given great advice um so that that's meant a lot to me and you're also you're an innovator you're an innovator of sass technology you're an innovator in the field you're an innovator in e-commerce and I'm always interested to find out what you're working on next because that's something the industry is going to feel so I I just want to thank you for coming on today and um I want to ask you I'm G to ask you a couple questions because I know our listeners want to know more about you because most of them have heard of your technology um and they might not always know the man behind the scenes but Matthew I want to kick it off and just ask in check out Champs how do you guys make your money well our money is made it's very much performance-based if our clients obviously we have a we have a base monthly subscription fee which covers the cost of the technology but uh transactionally as we help our clients scale we get a small a little small piece of of that that volume like very tiny small piece y um and so their success very much relates to Our Success so we're we have a vested interest in really helping them build the best fastest highest converting checkouts and upsells and Order bumps and subscription billing models that the industry has ever seen so it's really our success is tied to their success that's right and I ask that because people sometimes wonder it's like well how is this person making money from me and a lot of times if it's tied to Performance then there's a cooperation there right that's right well you know you look at big big publicly traded companies and I hate to throw out names like just look at big Commerce I'm not telling you anything that you know out of school here you can just look at their numbers they have never ever been profitable you know so how does a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company that does essentially the same thing we do operate with with no profit there has to be profit so you can continue to hire and and build new technologies and things of that nature and we've just we've kind of figured out the right way to do it that's right so there's a big advantage to not having that red tape not having to to really answer to um I guess people that that aren't in the day-to-day but maybe not car care about the clients as much as as we might so I'm I'm speaking from the fulfillment.com side is is I love the fact that um we're not publicly traded I I love the fact that we're founder Le right now well let me let me also mention I know you gave me a great lead in here let me also mention to those that are watching Justin is Awesome Justin I met in San Francisco probably 12 13 years ago standing up in like a hallway and we just kind of bumped into each other said look there's there's opportunity here to to win business and win together and and I think you're probably going to ask these questions later on but I think that's a big part of the business you find people that are aligned with you you know not just on the business side but also on the personal side and and there are ways to win where it's not just you but everyone collectively Rises to the top that's right that's what I felt when we it wasn't it wasn't just us going out in trying to make money it was us trying we're trying to build something that gave back something that um we could show add enormous value to somebody we're we're transacting with so absolutely man when we met it was just like okay there's something here let's pursue this this is great and of course we had both had a military background so that helps as well sometimes we we talk the same lingo when others are like Alpha brao Delta Char what but let me ask you so in your Tech yeah what's that Dar one Dar two D that's right that's right like what so um I just like that commonality you know with with people as far as military wise and and we missed the camaraderie that we had so when we run into somebody else you know that had that as well um it's just we're we're on the same page as far as the the way we think think about a lot of ways so yeah I mean I i' I've enjoyed our relationship ever since and my my goal here today is um I want people to know the real checkout champ the real match I want people to understand there's some things I know we put advertisements out there sometimes but when people actually see who's behind the scenes who's developing who's allowing Those ads to go out who's behind the technology is that somebody I'm going to trust is that somebody that I want to do business with because this is all this is all discretionary income we're giving out to the different service providers based on what they're telling us and what we're hearing in the marketplace and I know that that I hear not just directly from what I hear on on just people talking at trade shows and those sort of things but we've got a bunch of e-commerce clients that that talk they talk about different Technologies and I know that that connective has been tried and true it's been a technology that has lasted the times and when Matt told me about checkout Champs and he and he explored and showed me actually behind the scenes in checkout champ um I wanted to I wanted to Showcase that I wanted to show others that what what really they could be um uh connected to to be able to push their business to the next level so let me ask you what else do you guys I know you get that you've explained how you actually make money what do you guys give away for free what do we gave away for free well in most cases we'll give the first month away for free because when people talk about the fees they're like well you know it's probably expensive a lot of these guys are you know they're small businesses many cases they're just starting off you know even if they're running a 50,000 $100,000 $250,000 a month company you know adding that one additional layer of expense it does affect the bottom line so you know I I know what our product can do so I'll say come on in I'm I'll wave your first month we're going to have you up and running in a couple of days and you'll see for yourself your conversion rates are going to double or triple you're going to make more money your upsells are going to go through the roof and you're never going to question dollar one that you'll ever pay me test drive right take it for a test drive got it man so now developing checkout Champs though why was it really created I know you you've got connect you've got a successful CRM but why checkout champ now you know that's interesting it actually ties back to one of your clients that we it was a mutual client and he said hey I'm I'm using a couple these these e-commerce platforms and they really just don't have all the features that connective does and I said what would you want it to do and this is probably going back five or six years Justin yeah um it was another funnel building platform I know you know what it is I'm not going to say it out loud uh but I said you know I bet you we can build something like that we have the team so we actually started hiring more people it took a couple years about two and a half years to build it but what we found is it doesn't just build the sales funnel it is a full repace replacement to most e-commerce you know these big CMS platforms that you've heard of it replaces the checkout entirely and the entire experience post cart so if you're going to a store let's say you go to I don't know a hunting or outdoor store you're putting you know gloves and hunting pants and hats and stuff in the cart once you click proceed to checkout it it does a complete handoff from that cart to the checkout page which you now have 100 100% control and customization of it's single step you can use any Merchant processor you want because we have Integrations over 200 gateways from around the world any currency and you can control the the pre- purchase order bump the postp purchase one click up cells and all the way to the thank you page so you're controlling that entire consumer and you know that customer experience so in the days of like the AMZ Juggernaut right where there's loss of control you're giving back these internet retailers more control of Their audience more control of how they check out those sort of things that's correct that's awesome and then you're showing the data to be able to so they can actually make adjustments in Scale based on all the different split testing that you provide that they're they're capable in that system is that right yeah absolutely it's split testing you hit the nail on the head there which a lot of companies don't split test but the companies that do they're usually just doing ab split testing but if you have a bunch of variants that you want to test to see which one's the winner going from going doing ab ab ab all the way down the line online it takes forever to get to that that final decision we built four-way split testing in our platform I don't know of any other platform that has it so you can do ABCD so you do four variants and you have a control and three variants you arrive at the conclusion much faster how competitive do you think the market places right now with with just uh internet retailers competing against themselves for for people I mean is this something where if you want to take it to the next level and you're really competing at that at that higher level with other internet retailers in the same space is this going to give you an advantage yeah well you think about the the product categories you know it could be kitchen wear could be Outdoor Equipment it could be survival gear nutritional supplements skin care whatever those categories are you know there's there's a limited number not a limited number of buyers but you know when you're looking at traffic what type of traffic can you generate for a certain product I have people that call me all the time just say hey I want to get into Ecom what product should I look at I don't know go look and see what the top selling products are on Amazon there's so there's thousands and thousands of them but you go and find a product category you're probably going to have a c a competitor in that category how do you beat that competitor well you have to have some type of competitive advantage that's right wow that's good so I'm going to jump a little bit and I want to ask you for our listeners what could be because we know they're competing with other people in that category in that space um what could be maybe some advice that you would give them um that maybe be able to take their business where they're doing well maybe they're doing a couple orders a day but how do you get to that 100 order a day 200 a thousand order of a day what's what's maybe the biggest lever that you would give them because you're seeing all kinds of different e-commerce retailers what advice would you give them well I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm going to talk about two things here the first thing I would tell you is you do not have to be the cheapest product cheapest does not always mean you're going to win yeah when I went to Market with some of the products that I've sold and Technology products I was never the cheapest you don't have to be the cheapest to win you just have to have a great brand and and a quality product if you have those two things then it goes to the second thing I was going to say people will come into this and they'll say oh well if I just do you know SEO or or paperclick through Google I'm gonna I'm going to drive new customers it doesn't do you have to have Facebook Google Tik Tok Snapchat you have to be doing email SMS you have to be you have to have a multi-prong marketing approach and you have to have every single one of them dialed in there are so many companies that I see Justin that maybe they're doing email great but they're not doing SMS or they're doing SMS but they're not doing great email follow-up sequences and I say that because we have companies that we work with that specialize in email and SMS and like look these guys when they start they set sign up with us we can generate them an extra 100,000 200 $500,000 a month depending on how much traffic they're coming in because they're just leaving all that money on the table and who would be somebody that for instance I know at fulfillment.com there's a there's a certain Avatar that we love to do business with and when we do business with them they love to do business with us who would be for checkout champ who would be that perfect client that be a m a mutual beneficial relationship there the type of client or you want a specific C the type of client just a type of client so if they're watching this they're like oh that's me and and that might be a good fit for me um I would say anyone who has a we're very good with nutritional supplement companies we have some of the biggest nutritional supplement companies in the world and they love our platform because our subscription billing platform is unlike anything else out there yeah it is powerful it's flexible and it has all the backend membership pieces that allow your customers to go to be able to manage their their memberships without ever having to pick up phone call so um I would say in the product of of nutritional supplement and health and beauty yep those are ideal for us but we also have a lot of clients that come to us that they could be apparel companies and apparel companies how do you set up a a a subscription well you could do a subscription box where you're sending out something that is hey we know you like this style we have your sizes let's let us send you a subscription box every month of different types of clothes and if you don't like it send it back that's one way to do it or the second way to do it if you don't have a product that you think is a natural subscription you can always do a VIP membership hey pay $9 a month and you're going to get discounts that no one else gets every time you come back to shop so you're saying it's like expanding the way you sell to a customer being more convenient for them so rather than you going in and buy you know spending $100 on a shirt if you're a member maybe come in maybe at 70 bucks yep yep so you're seeing the value by being a member I heard you're working on something called intelligent upsells um can you explain that and why that's a game changer yeah yes when you look when you look at the demographics of the of the customers that are visiting an Ecom store they're all different right different ages different Sexes different I don't economic socioeconomic right levels with it you know they may have more money to spend less money to spend it doesn't matter when you go to this site it's going to be and it could be my interest are different than yours when I'm going to this Ecom store so what the UPS the intelligent upsell product is going to do it's going to look at the items that you put into your C and based on what the system believes would be your customer profile it's going to deliver the most likely products that you would pick in your upsell flow that's awesome so it's j single has bought these products before Yep this is the product he's most likely going to say yes to is upsell one this is the product he's most likely going to say to upsell two and three and four all the way through you know however many upsells you have so that's something similar I think Amazon does right now but you're going to be able to do that with people not having to use Amazon on their own on their own pages on their own checkouts right that's correct that's awesome okay um thanks for explaining that so problem yeah so I want to also talk about um maybe some of the challenges you've had in with checkout Champs or you can even go far back as as connective and what was that moment because I know and when we create a business like what was it 12 years ago when did you create connect about 12 years ago yeah it was well 2010 a little little more than yeah and I know is creating a new business there comes a moment to where you're kind of I don't want to call it getting in the black but you become profitable you become this is actually people are paying for this uh for this value that I'm providing and this is a viable business model I'm we're actually helping and so when was that moment do you think that you you crossed over um into this is actually going to work this is something that that the that the industry loves when we started you know we had a couple of clients here and there and it was you know everyone was kind of working from home you know I built this company on my kitchen table there was was just me and one programmer you know now we have I know 45 47 programmers and a whole group a team of people but um once we hit 100 clients and they were sticking I was said you know this is it I think I think this is going to be a long-term product and then next thing we did we GRE to 205 500 and you know a th clients and became the you know I think the largest CRM and direct consumer on the DDC side of the business that there that was the moment when we hit a hundred clients I was I said yeah we have we really have something here get you know someone sells two or three accounts they like whoa It's Time to that's right I know there's a there's a moment that you're like this is real this is happening I mean the struggle is going to continue um but there is it's almost like a you you've peaked up right you've hit the top of the mountain you know this is going to work um but that's the point that I know in my business like I got to stay hungry still I still have to go out and see how do I provide more value to that 100 like you're saying how do I how do I start listening to them even deeper on what their needs maybe not what they are right now but what they they're gonna be tomorrow how do we get ahead of it you want to hear an interesting statistic yeah we now service over 117,000 storefronts on the platform oh my goodness that's a lot that's a lot i' I heard a long time ago that 71% of Statistics are made up think that's true that would be great 71% uh I hope I fall into that 29 but no but we just looked at we actually weit we just hit another interesting Benchmark on uh on Black Friday yeah we did over a million sales on checkout champ in one day net new sales through the platform one day wow so obviously people are seeing that that that's it's adding value and and these aren't just yeah these companies are do you see that these companies once they include checkout champ what's the common like what's the response from them is it over a couple of months they're like wow what happens what's the you know just with any business you're GNA get some people that come along and you know they they can't or they won't take the time to learn it but once someone digs in and they figure out how the platform works and we'll teach them yeah I know once you sign up you get a dedicated account manager who's going to teach you everything you need to know about this platform and how to use it to its its highest potential the people that take them the time to learn it and that's a great that's probably the vast majority you know you're going to have attrition anything but the people that they love it they'll never leave because you could do so much with it you know you get these these big Ecom stores Justin that have you know 50 products 5,000 product 50,000 whatever that it is our system is not just a checkout they're our clients are taking their top selling products I'm sorry I'm Italian I talk with my hands they're taking their top selling products and they're creating single product landing pages single product Landing you know where your your Ecom store is converting at what two or 3% a single product landing page to a targeted customer is going to convert at at 25 to 36% wow yeah so we have clients that'll have you know 200 websites running on one checkout champ that's amazing that's that's amazing and you can't that's hard to communicate that through if you decide hey I'm going to market for checkout Champs you know what I mean so that's why wanted to bring you on here is to demonstrate some of that value that doesn't really get talked about um unless somebody's asking you these sort of questions right well I'm G tell you the coolest statement that I've heard it was from a nutritional supplement company he said Matt I don't care if I'm paying you 40 or $50,000 a month to use this platform I'm making over $100,000 a day in additional income because of your oneclick upsells oo strong that's powerful yeah yeah so I'm going to switch gears on you and I I know people are going to check out check out Champs on their own um what's the easiest way they just go to checkout champs.com and and put their information in yeah singular checkout champ.com check out champ checkout champ.com yep and click the button talk to my people you know they'd love to talk to you whether you're a new store or you're you're a store that's you know doing millions of dollars a month we can help any one of you that's awesome so Switching gears now what do you think would be I I'm looking for something with your expertise something you see in the future like a marketing Trend something that people need to be paying attention to something that an Advertiser they're doing good but they need to be paying attention to this because it's coming marketing wise is there any anything that that you're seeing on the marketing side I think with the uh the new the latest iOS update it's going to be very difficult to to run Facebook ads just make sure you have a a thirdparty platform to do all of your your ad attribution for you because you're not going to be able to get that data I don't think and we use it we use Facebook too and I'm worried that we're not going to see our data in Facebook we may need a thirdparty pixel to do tracking a good one is everflow a lot of our clients will use everflow I'm not here to push everflow but they're a good one there's a handful of them to look at um I also think that these companies that are in the US selling product at a moderate level of success they need to look at Europe and I say that because Europe is usually always four to five years behind American Trends I think Europe is is an untapped market for a lot of these Brands and if they could figure out how to do cross border multicurrency I you know I they could triple the size of their company well that that's great advice and that actually leads into if if they want to cross border we've got facilities in Europe so um it we make it real easy on that side so you're right if they're doing something well in the US um I love the fact that you're pointing out that that they're a little bit behind us so it should work in Europe um you just go we've got to make it easy for them and a lot of times the hardest part is it's either payment processing and it's and it's the actual physical goods and and we can both make that easy for them look ladies and gentlemen Jus can help you with all of your product facilities and fulfillment overseas our platform does um Dynamic currency conversion based on the spot rate of any of any currency we have over 200 Banks from around the world so you don't have to use that that one that's embedded into your platform in most cases you're saving money if you're using a different if you're using a different product a system calculates that tax it it'll do everything for you and provides you the platform to scale in other markets that's good let me ask you a personal question if you could go to your younger self and Shake Yourself by the shoulders and say hey pay attention to this and starting this business what is there anything you would change or anything that you would tell your younger self to do or not do yeah and I hate to say it because some of our old friends are going to see it I probably would have avoided the the higher risk dtoc market and gone straight after Ecom back in 2010 that's good that's good I'm on the same page I would have gone straight after the brands the brands yeah let's just go after somebody that wants to create a legitimate brand and offer value so yeah I'm there man because that's I feel like that's exactly what we've strived to do so even just connecting with those people those relationships grow so let me ask you this also um where do you spend your time when you're not working on checkout champ you really want me to tell you oh yeah I want you to tell everybody H um so as you know I like to shoot yep I like long range shooting I love to hunt I love to fish I love to hike I just want to be outdoors uh it's always with my family that's right you know I drag my poor wife with me everywhere but thank God go she loves to do it um you know we just like to be outside doing stuff you we'll sit at the sit outside and in the summertime and I'll grab my fishing rod grab my boys we'll go I have a a pond on my property we'll go fishing you know we just want to be outdoors doing something so that's me I'm not want I don't want to you know we you're very humble man yeah there's a lot that you could have said there so the things that we thought were important you know back then I mean it's it's if I could shake my younger self um that's exactly that's the direction that that i' I'd like to to talk in right now is is I want to know a little bit behind the scenes is what do fulfillment really mean to you now like what does it mean if if if you were like if you had to paint a perfect picture of your life and you're like this is I'm fulfilled or if you are right now what do what does that mean when I ask you that question what does fulfillment mean to you oh well I don't have to be friends with everybody you know I it's it's nice to have relationships but but creating a core group of people that are loyal to me and I'm loyal to them um and I'm talking outside of family I think that's important right guys that would that would walk over broken glass through the the fires of hell for me because they know I would do for them those are the type of people I want around me yeah not these guys that are just sticking around because they think they're going to get something off of me one day right yeah I don't need that no one needs that in their life um just meaningful relationships people I enjoy being with people you know yeah people who make me fulfilled you know I that's right nothing makes me happier than seeing my family sitting around the table putting together a puzzle so the relationships the memories that sort of stuff is the stuff that makes you feel that you're doing what you need to be doing absolutely I mean that's your legacy you know what are people going to say about you not just the Next Generation but three generations from now I want people to say oh my gosh your great great-grandfather was the greatest man in the world yeah you know he did this this this right that's your legacy I wanted people to see the man behind the curtain you've done so much in the e-commerce space you've helped so many people um achieve their dreams whether it be one small tip or just kind of taking their hand because you believed in them so I want to thank you for for the contribution that that that you've made um in my life and and others that are are watching this and that you're still on it you're still pushing the envelope you're still being innovated you're still trying to figure out how do you add value to to e-commerce well let me just say that that I am blessed that you're my buddy thank you brother I really thank you for your time I know you've added value to people um today on what you're what the the advice you're giv is there anything else that you can give the audience on something that's coming down the pike that they need to be aware of so they can still continue to keep that competitive Advantage you know I would say don't buy into everything you know there's all these Guru courses and there's all these apps that's that promise you it's going to do so do your research you know talk to people who know I you could come and talk to us I don't care if you buy from us or not you don't have to be a client of ours you could be a you be a friend you could be a buddy um just talk to people who know they'll give you the best advice don't just don't be a follower yeah you don't have to follow every every Trend and every person that's doing oh this guy's doing this so I have to do that too be Innovative do something on your own that's going to effectuate change you don't be afraid to test something new go out there you know do something different that could shake things up that's my philosophy has always been disrupt everything disrupted yeah right this disrupt everything you never know what's going to happen you're blazing your own trail it seemed like you've been blazing your own trail for a long time well Matt well thank you so much for coming on the fulfilled podcast and I hope to have you on again soon and um guys go and check out checkout champ.com and uh see if what Matt's saying is true take him for a test test drive see if this technology is going to be able to take your business from good to great thank you guys when I do and when I do I want you to do an interview with me and tell the world how awesome we are that's how that's how we do things here thank you so much for being a part of the fulfilled family I hope you enjoy all of the clips and episodes coming your way join us on this journey towards a life that is truly fulfilled 7:34 NOW PLAYING Bitcoin can certainly 'replace or be alongside' gold as a store of value, says Anthony Scaramucci CNBC Television 23K views 4 hours ago New

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