Speaker A [00:00:00]:

What would you do if your business doubled in the next 21 days? Because that's exactly what Sabeer Samarkand helps E commerce brands do. Sabir is the growth strategist behind over a billion dollars in revenue and the creator of Rapid2X, a program that's helped brands across 17 industries boost their growth by an average of 108% in just three weeks. He's worked with global names like Canon, Tommy Hilfiger and Sour Patch Kids. And he's the guy that Gary Vee, Neil Patel, and Matt Higgins all turn to for e Commerce strategy. One of his most impressive wins take taking Ashley Stewart, a fashion brand, from 3 million to 30 million by breaking the rules, rebuilding the brand from scratch, and doubling down on what actually works.

Speaker B [00:00:37]:

This is my story about the brand Ashley Stewart and how I took it from 3 million to 30 million in two years.

Speaker A [00:00:44]:

If you're an online business owner, e commerce founder, or just curious about how to grow a business fast, this episode is for you.

Speaker B [00:00:50]:

I've seen so many brands, so many amazing brands go into bankruptcy because of a lot of mismanagement. Money mismanagement, mismanagement of media mismanagement of how the businesses run. Like, I can point to exactly the point in their timeline. What led to that? What decision was the root of the problem? You cannot say, oh, I'm a product designer. I'm a creative guy. Right. I don't touch any of the media stuff. That's not me.

Speaker B [00:01:14]:

No, it's your business. As an E Commerce founder, you have to take control of this thing. The whole damn thing is yours.

Speaker A [00:01:20]:

Today, Sabir is sharing how he spots hidden growth and what most e commerce brands are doing completely wrong in 2025. Welcome to Creators Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey, everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heights platform. Let's get into it. Hey, Sabir. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B [00:01:47]:

Thank you, Brian, for having me.

Speaker A [00:01:49]:

Yep. My first question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing that either you are doing or you've did to help achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy.

Speaker B [00:02:00]:

Learning to say yes, you know, that's. It sounds like a very simple thing, but, you know, a lot of people preach that, you know, you're supposed to say no, right? Say no to a lot of things and yes to very few things. I think when you're starting out your career, and that was my start. Like in my start of my career, I. I basically took on, I tackled everything because I didn't know any better. I did not know it was the right thing to do. It. Would this help me in my career or not or whatever.

Speaker B [00:02:32]:

I mean, I did evaluate. I didn't do things willy nilly, you know, I just wanted to make sure that, you know, at least I got the experience. I think that was, that was the interesting thing. And, and life threw a, an incredible pivot at me in my career.

Speaker A [00:02:49]:

Yeah. Well, what do you say? So that's kind of what led you, because I know you started kind of as an engineer and now kind of turned marketer. So is that what you feel kind of enabled that to happen?

Speaker B [00:02:59]:

So I, I've been a, I had been a quarter and I still code. So I've been a programmer since the age of six, you know, because I just fell in love with it. To me, that was the, the greatest thing that kind of my love of my life, you know. And when I went to college, initially I wanted to become a neurosurgeon and I sat down with a college guidance counselor to ask them about what's gonna, what's, what the career looks like and stuff like that. They went like, well, you do four years of college, then you do this, then you do that. So when do I get to do neurosurgery? Oh, that would be about 12 years from now. I said, I, I'm not gonna do that. So then they said, okay, what are.

Speaker B [00:03:39]:

Because by then I had taken biology, chemistry, a lot of like medical and, and biology courses, human physiology and stuff like that. I was really, really would, would have loved to do that. But then, you know, the conversation turned into, hey, what is your passion? I said, well, the thing is, since the age of six, I've been programming. Since age of six. Wow. You know, that's, you know, now I'm in college. Well, we offer computer science degree if you're interested, you know, we can explore that. You're gonna, I said, you want to give me a degree in something I just love to do? He goes like, yeah, we have a, we have a degree for that.

Speaker B [00:04:13]:

And it's not just a, a frivolous degree, it's an engineering degree. You know, you got to be getting a computer science degree. Back then it, you had to like major in physics because of the hardware, hard hardware aspect of it, and you had to learn mathematics also. But nowadays computer science is more about programming, you know, but I'm more well rounded, so I've written millions of lines of code launch sites like, I was one of the founding team members of TheStreet.com that's Jim Cramer, CNB, his startup, right. So I was part of that team too and many others. I had written millions and millions of code, over 20 plus programming languages like Total Nerd, right. And that. And, and I wanted to do exactly that for the rest of my life, right? So what happened 25 years ago through the network, through my network and through a mutual network, a gentleman named Jeff Horowitz.

Speaker B [00:05:12]:

And Jeff Horowitz is the founder of the Vitamin Shop.

Speaker C [00:05:15]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:05:16]:

And the Vitamin Shop is a well known retailer. A vitamin retailer has ex. You know, it's an iconic brand now, right? Thousands of stores everywhere, right. In their history. What happened was the, in the first Internet boom, right? A lot of brands were spinning off their dot com, you know, and, and to go to the public market. So did vitamin shop. Vitaminshop.com went into NASDAQ, they got listed all of this information. By the way, I'm gonn value is public information, right? So went public just like a lot of other companies and they did a lot of frivolous spending and stupid things, right? They, they spent all of the capital that was raised and went into a huge debt.

Speaker B [00:05:58]:

And then it was bankruptcy and it, US Marshals basically put a lock on the company when all of its assets and everything took it to bankruptcy court. And from there Jeff Horowitz went back and bought out, outbid everybody and bought out, bought back all of the intellectual property, all the hardware, software, everything to do with that. And then he looked into his network to say, hey, who can come in to run this thing for, for me, right? And everybody started pointing at me because back then I was known as the guy that if you wanted to, you know, raise your Internet startup correctly, I was the guy to go to, right? So I get involved and I, I, you know, he meets me, I get involved, I go like, yeah, I can, I can do it, right? Thinking in my head that this is a tech job, right? This is not, you know, this is a tech job. That's my assumption. So I, I go in back then, there is no Shopify. Google is in its beta, right? None of the social media stuff exists. There is no Shopify, right? So everything you wanted to do, you had to buy hardware, like, you know, servers and stuff, get a data center. You would put those things in there, you would configure it with Cisco and Sun, sun equipment and stuff like that.

Speaker B [00:07:07]:

Very expensive stuff, right? It's not like you plop down a credit card and you have a Shopify store. Nowadays you Know that's a blessing right now, right?

Speaker A [00:07:14]:

Yeah. It's not just the hardware because you have to build the whole E Commerce. You have to build the Shopify.

Speaker B [00:07:20]:

There is no E Comm platform. I had to build the thing myself, right? So I started to pull together. The thing is, I inherited the platform that they had built it. There were parts of it that I didn't agree with. So I started pulling it out and replacing it. You know, in fact, one of the things that I replaced back then, there was no E Commerce search engine at all, right? So I actually, given my programming background, I looked at it, I looked around, I couldn't find anything. In fact, that was one of the hardest conversations with Jeff when I said to him, like, hey, you know, the software that you spent a few hundred thousand dollars licensing and you spend another few hundred thousand dollars implementing is piece of trash. It's garbage, right? I'm gonna yank it out, I'm gonna, I have a replacement for it because I already develop the thing.

Speaker B [00:08:08]:

So in fact, I actually custom coded my own search engine, right? And as I was reading writing this email to Jeff, when I was writing it, it came out to an acronym and the acronym was Moses, M O S E S. Right? So before audience gets excited about, oh, he's talking about, he's going to be all preachy and Bible and stuff. No, Moses was an acronym. Remember at that time I was an engineer, so we love acronyms, right? So the acronym was moscs, My own search engine by severe. So that was Moses. And what it did was changed the conversion rate on the site from less than 3% to between 2 to 3%. We were averaging depending on the month all the way to 12%.

Speaker C [00:08:52]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:08:53]:

Because I was beta testing Google, I knew that relevance is the biggest thing that you need to solve for search, right? And that's what I solved. So I did that. He saw that I did that and then I went to him, I go like, okay, now I did everything that I could do from an engineering standpoint. Who's my counterpart, the business marketing guy I need to talk to or gal that I, I need to partner up with them so that we can take it to the moon, right? He look, gives me a puzzle look. I was like, what are you talking about? You already improved this, the site already by multiple folds. Nobody on my marketing business, you know, [email protected] ever could do that, right? And the people I have here, they're into retail marketing. They have no clue how to run E commerce, right? You're It, I'm like, no, hold on a second, Jeff. Now it's like a Scotty and Captain Kirk conversation.

Speaker B [00:09:43]:

Like, Jeff, I'm an engineer, not a marketer. He goes like, what are you talking about? Like, my network told me that you're the guy. That's why I hired you. And you already have shown me that you're doing better than any of the marketers I knew. Like, have you taken any Back then I was young, so 25 years ago. I'm an older guy now, right. Even though I have a very baby face, I'm an old guy. So he goes like, well, did you take any marketing courses in college? I said, I took accounting 101 and economics 101.

Speaker B [00:10:15]:

Does that count? He goes like, no, it's. That does. That's not marketing. He was like, like, listen, you're a smart guy. I've already seen you do these things right on the site. That, that's fabulous. How about I, I teach you or I explain to you what the, you know, vitamin industries ebb and flow is because every industry is different, right? So I'm going to teach you that. And remember at that time, I know quite a lot about vitamins and supplements.

Speaker B [00:10:43]:

Now at that time, I had no clue what vitamins and supplements were like, I had not even, my parents had not even given me a multivitamin. I was a healthy kid, so there was no need for it. I, I ate healthy and that was it.

Speaker C [00:10:54]:

Right?

Speaker A [00:10:55]:

So yeah, well, I, I think kind of like fast forward from there for, for everyone watching and listening. Like, it's not just that you did that. Since then you've helped gener over a billion dollars in revenue in E commerce. And so like what, what would you say, like kind of made it click for you besides kind of being pushed into learning about this, that you realized that you have this kind of unique approach to growth.

Speaker B [00:11:19]:

And so a couple of things.

Speaker A [00:11:20]:

How do you think your approach to growth is different?

Speaker B [00:11:22]:

So couple of things like the learnings. Let's, let's fast forward. You know, four and a half years, took a bankrupt under. It was under $10 million. Between eight and $10 million in four and a half years. First try, this engineer turned it into $52 million. Highly profitable channel for vitamin shop right there. If you count working days, that's less than, it's about less than a thousand days, right? So more than 5x of, of that in the first time around.

Speaker B [00:11:51]:

The lessons I learned, which, which became the, the roots of this 8D method that I have authored over 25 years now. Right number rule number one.

Speaker C [00:12:02]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:12:03]:

Rule number one is, you know, don't ever make any assumptions, right? Check your ego at the door. Opinions do not matter. Like opinions are dime a dozen and resumes are trash, right? You look at a resume, somebody come, you know, because it's Vitamin Shop. Let's say maybe their North Star at that time was GNC at that time, right? Oh, we're gonna, oh, this person wants to join our company. We are so blessed now, you know, GNC is in a different track. You are in a different track. It just so happens that you're in the same industry. Completely different, right? That's a big mistake a lot of people make, right? Or, or the ego, like I'm the founder, I'm right.

Speaker B [00:12:44]:

You got, you better listen to me. Like, why? Why? What makes you correct as a founder that you know somebody who actually lives this thing day in, day out? Let's say meta Ads, right? Day in, day out, every day that you know more than they do, right? Unless you have tested it. Maybe, maybe you have like every hour of the day, every minute of the day, you know, every nuance of everything that's going on right now in Meta Ads, right. Then, yeah, check your ego. Even at 1 billion dollar across hundreds of DTC brands since then, over the past 25 years, I always check my ego at the door. I don't think I'm ever right. Even today, I don't think I'm right.

Speaker C [00:13:22]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:13:22]:

Because why economic conditions change, right? The trade wars that are going on has changed the landscape, right? The, you know, meta ads with the iOS 14 update from a couple of years ago still is hurting a lot of companies, right. Even today to this day, right. So things like that, that's the reality of the landscape. It's. It's a very dynamic environment that we are living in, especially in E commerce. The big explosion of AI, right. That's touching every aspect of business. So you can never say that, like, look, you know, I have 25 years, $1 billion that I'm right, right.

Speaker B [00:13:57]:

It's what we have to do is we have to get to. Right. We have to find the right answer.

Speaker C [00:14:01]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:14:01]:

And the thing is with, especially with my study hand that we have, I have gone through recession, the Great Recession and so many economic cycles and stuff like that. I've taken companies that were in bankruptcy and I got to know be known as the guy who comes in and takes bankrupt companies and actually revives them. I, that was my other notoriety that I had several brands that I that I went through.

Speaker C [00:14:25]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:14:26]:

So that's the, that's the thing that, that's, that's a number one lesson. Number two, don't treat your business as a lottery.

Speaker C [00:14:33]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:14:33]:

A lot of entrepreneurs, E commerce founders have this mentality that, oh, E commerce is great. I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend this money, I'm gonna build this thing. I'm gonna have an incredible exit.

Speaker C [00:14:45]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:14:45]:

$100 million exit. Do you know how many incredible $100 million exits happen? Rarely. Right. And even those are incredible, like snowflakes in the market. And most entrepreneurs, ecom founders that think that they are snowflakes, they're not. They're just follow the basics, build the right foundation, do the right thing, look at the right data, set yourself up for success. And what does success look like? 1% improvement daily. In any of the important KPIs in your business.

Speaker B [00:15:17]:

Right. In any KPI. 8am when you start your business.

Speaker C [00:15:21]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:15:23]:

Set your goal. Today I'm going to look at email open rates and I'm going to improve it by 1%.

Speaker C [00:15:28]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:15:29]:

Like this is the analogy I'll use that all of us grew up with as kids.

Speaker C [00:15:33]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:15:34]:

And I'm going to tell you this is the biggest advice I can give you. Be the tortoise, not the rabbit. Slow and steady wins the race. And I can tell you I have grown businesses. My speed, by the way, it took me to 5x. It took me five years my first time around. Now I am 2xing to 10xing in 12 to 18 months.

Speaker A [00:15:56]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think so many people kind of miss out on being able to understand the long term of things. They don't have success in the first year or whatever it is, and they give up or they burn out. They try going too fast and then they burn out. But if you can set up a way for yourself to make enough money to keep going and just never stop, then you get to the point that you get better and better and everything starts compounding in a way that you maybe didn't even picture was possible when you first started.

Speaker B [00:16:29]:

Yeah. You know, one of the amazing things I've heard in my life is by Bruce Lee, right. Bruce Lee said that, you know, I'm never afraid of a person who knows a thousand moves, Right. I'm most afraid, definitely afraid of a person who has tried the same move a thousand times. And, and, and in, in the game of E commerce, that game is 1%. Like on A, on a daily basis. We're we. You know, if you count the Math, right? That's the.

Speaker B [00:17:01]:

There are 306, 36, I mean 365.25 days in a year, right? That's calendar days. Like yeah, but I take vacation time and I get sick and I want to spend time with the family and there's federal holidays and their regional holidays and stuff. Okay, I actually did the math for you. It's 220 working days, right? In 220 working days, if you do 1% improvement and reliable stuff that actually is meaningful, that's going to give you compounded growth and there are, there are hundreds of them, then that's the program. That's the way I have structured it.

Speaker C [00:17:37]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:17:37]:

And when you do that, when you start on January 1st or the 1st weekday of the year, right. And then December 31, the last weekday of the year, your business is going to grow 22x. But you go like, well, the thing is 1% sounds good, but you're not going to win all the time, Sabir.

Speaker C [00:17:55]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:17:55]:

You know, you're not going to have all the right answers. Okay, let's be less than half, right? That, let's call it, you know, 10x.

Speaker C [00:18:02]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:18:03]:

You can 10x. I have case studies after case studies in 12 to 18 months, you know, you can 10x, you can 2x between six to 12 weeks.

Speaker C [00:18:13]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:18:14]:

But you have to have this laser focused, ninja focused effort into not winning gigantically big 1%, just 1%. Like even when you're looking at the percentages you, you have to like use a calculator to figure out is that a 1% improvement that I have today.

Speaker C [00:18:32]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:18:32]:

Because 1% sounds so mediocre.

Speaker C [00:18:35]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:18:35]:

But the thing is, this is the thing that actually when the compounded effect that, that you get from the making the right decisions.

Speaker C [00:18:43]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:18:43]:

And you will get better and better at it over time. And this is what the framework that I have, the AD method that I have authored.

Speaker C [00:18:50]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:18:51]:

That's what it teaches you by giving you the tasks, exactly the tasks. By looking at the eight dimensions of E commerce so that we can optimize each one of them. And in varying degrees people see amazing results. Some of them see even like 70 to 80% increase in the first week of the program. Because it's very, very prescriptive program.

Speaker A [00:19:14]:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's such a great, like kind of like North Star to work towards because so many people are just spending time on the wrong things. Like they could be like looking at these giant, giant opportunities like you're talking about and then they never really turn out the right way. Or they just invest so much time into it that they don't even get a chance to work on those 1% opportunities. Or like, maybe they're not really even working on growth at all when they should be, and they're working on just this busyness of things to take care of the business. And if you're able to focus on and realize, like, okay, well, what's something I can do to just increase this by 1% today and have that as your goal, then definitely that makes sense. And it sounds like creative voice.

Speaker B [00:19:59]:

You know, the syndrome, I call it shiny, shiny object. That's what it is, right? It's like you're sitting on the toilet seat, right? You're taking a little break from your business. You're on the toilet seat, you're looking through your phone, right? By the way, I'm referencing Snapchat's ipo, right? When they said that our app gets used on the toilet seat, right? And you're going through your TikTok or LinkedIn and you see a piece of something, right? And then you're done with your bathroom business, you get out, call it. You're all excited, but like, oh, I just got this thing. We need to do this right now.

Speaker A [00:20:33]:

This is the new marketing idea. This is. We have to drop everything.

Speaker B [00:20:36]:

It's gonna change everything in our business, right? Why, why would that person that said that one. It's possible that there. Let's look at people's motives, right? That content that you just consumed, highly likely they did that as a clickbait or like a. They're an influencer or a creator. Content creator, right?

Speaker A [00:20:56]:

Their metrics, their hypothesis was they're going to try to get you excited about this. And it worked.

Speaker B [00:21:01]:

It did. You commented on it, you liked it, you spent dwell time on it. That's their KPI day one, right? Does that mean that that thing that you heard where you are in your stage of growth, does that make sense for your business at this moment in time?

Speaker C [00:21:18]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:21:19]:

Maybe it's possible that it might make sense for people who are starting out at the very beginning of their journey or they're somewhere in random part of their journey and that one fluke is going to help them, right? But that's going to be a fluke. That's always going to be right. And the other thing that you just commented on, the way you spell business is with an I, not with a y, right? It's not busyness, right. And a lot of ecom founders get themselves into trouble by looking Busy, Sabir? I'm working 18 hours a day. I don't know what's wrong. I'm working seven hours, seven days a week. I just went through a divorce because my wife left me. Husband left me because of my obsession with my business or whatever.

Speaker B [00:21:59]:

Like work smarter, I mean, not harder. You have to. This is not a cliche, right? People who go through, you know, the program, the framework, one of the biggest takeaways that they learn about themselves is to pay, pay attention to the things that are meaningful that are going to actually give you that boost, right? So in the program, the prescriptions are you're going to do work on five things this week and for the advanced ones, you're going to work on two things in a week. That's it. You're not doing anything else. You're working on five things. How long do these things take? These tasks in the beginning of the program take anywhere from 15 minutes to 90 minutes. That's it.

Speaker B [00:22:36]:

Per day. That's it.

Speaker A [00:22:38]:

Yeah.

Speaker B [00:22:38]:

That's all it takes.

Speaker A [00:22:39]:

So this is your, your rapid 2x program, right? So how did, how did you come up with that? And who exactly like is that for?

Speaker B [00:22:46]:

So the Rapid 2X, just for clarity, 8, the 8D method is the framework, right? And actually I have a book out. You can, you can find it on growth by severe.com you just have to go 3/4 down on the page on, on that homepage you will find the link and you could click on it and I'll. By the way, we have a special offer for, for your listeners and they should use this link. It should be growthbysevere.com adventure.

Speaker C [00:23:09]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:23:10]:

So if they go there and then 3/4 down on the homepage you'll see the 8D method book. Definitely grab a copy for being a listener here they can grab a copy of it so they can learn more about the eight dimensions of E commerce and what they need to do to grow. And the Rapid 2X program is a structured program that implement, helps you implement the 8D method, right? And you're given during the duration of the program, like literally you're reporting into me, right? I am telling you that these are the five things you need to work on. And what, you know, what's the, you know, the folks that actually put the blinders on and go like, okay, I paid for this. I'm going to just follow whatever Sabir has to say. They win big. Big.

Speaker C [00:23:52]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:23:53]:

Ryan from Globetrotter, an iconic brand that has existed since 1897.

Speaker C [00:23:58]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:23:59]:

This is a Luxury luggage company.

Speaker C [00:24:01]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:01]:

They are in Japan. They're in the UK and eu. They're in US Multi currency, multicultural, multi site.

Speaker C [00:24:08]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:09]:

So this program is not just a US based thing. It works across the board. Actually 20% of our participants are from the US 80%. They're all worldwide. Right. Every, every language you can imagine.

Speaker C [00:24:20]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:21]:

So he wanted to try it in three different markets by. He attended one of our workshops. It's a complimentary workshop that they attend. So they attended that. He goes like okay, I love this. I want to, I want to drive now. I want to do this.

Speaker C [00:24:33]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:34]:

Let me see if it's going to work in multiple markets. 333% uplift in six weeks across three continents. Multiple languages.

Speaker C [00:24:45]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:46]:

Lion's Leather, Lisa Denon 1400%.

Speaker C [00:24:50]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:24:50]:

There are brands in the program and we have also Aurum Brothers. I have done a very detailed walkthrough on the site and you know people when they visit my site they can actually look at exactly what we did in their case. Phenomenal. They joined us January 20, 2024. They were stuck at $1.5 million for three years.

Speaker C [00:25:08]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:25:09]:

And mounting losses. They joined the program within, within like first six, six weeks. 112% increase in revenue. And we started clearing the path and getting rid of stuff that was, that was actually causing, that was hindering growth. You know there are things that decisions you make in your business that are actually harmful for your business. You have to your E commerce business. You have to be careful with that. Fast forward.

Speaker B [00:25:31]:

September 9, 2024 1:00pm Aurum Brothers breaks out of the $1.5 million. So by September 9th we actually broke out of our one year from last three years. Right. And then from September 9th through December 31st we scored another 1.5 million. We ended the year at $3 million. Two Xing in 12 in less than 12 months. They started like 11 and a half months. They started on January 20th.

Speaker B [00:25:56]:

It.

Speaker C [00:25:56]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:25:57]:

And this year we have set a goal for 10 million dollar year revenue and profitably and they're all of their loans and stuff. We, we paid it out completely was paid out because of the cash flow.

Speaker A [00:26:09]:

That's awesome. Yeah. So I would imagine like with some of these just massive jumps in revenue that there's some like pretty like obvious things that you can find or diagnose that are missing early on. So for people watching, listening, like how would you personally diagnose like within the first few minutes looking at a business, are there specific like red flags that would jump out to you Yep.

Speaker B [00:26:32]:

So actually, you asked me another question. I don't want to. I don't want to miss that question from you, right? You said that who is it for? And I. And I missed that. I gave you the examples of who actually succeeded, right? So what I was saying was that these three examples that I just gave you are folks that they put the blinders on, go like, okay, you know what? Sabir has been doing this for 25 years. I'm gonna listen to him. It's like Danielson listening to Mr. Miyagi, right, from Karate Kid, the original one, right? Wax on, wax off.

Speaker B [00:27:00]:

Catch the, catch the fly, right? You have no clue why you're doing it. You just have to do it, right? And you have to literally do that. If you can do that, because it's very prescriptive. I'm telling you, do this, do this, do this, do this. 5 Things I Need you to do Monday through Friday. That's it, Right? Don't do anything else. I just want you to do this. Should I be doing that? No, that's not.

Speaker B [00:27:20]:

Now, you need to fix this first. You know, so the ones that do that, they win big time. But there's also a specific type of an entrepreneur where this program is not for them at all, right? It's absolutely not for them. They should not even bother applying. These are the folks, E Commerce founders that believe they don't appreciate the expertise, right? They always think that the answer to the problem that they're facing, whatever the challenge they're facing, is out there in some agency. I'm not an agency. I'm not a consultant. The sharks from Shark Tank call me an E Commerce growth advisor, right? Completely a different term, right? Because I'm not.

Speaker B [00:28:00]:

None of the other terms, right? And the folks that come in, they go like, oh, what does your agency do? Number one, I'm not an agency.

Speaker C [00:28:08]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:28:09]:

I'm going to be your advisor. I'm going to advise you on what you need to do to fix this, Right? Because I'm not going to be with you forever and ever, right? Three years from now, five years from now.

Speaker A [00:28:18]:

That's kind of exactly the problem. A lot of agencies are not actually focused on results.

Speaker B [00:28:23]:

They're not. I mean, if you think about most paid media, we have paid media agencies that are partners in the, in the Rapid2X program that help implement the correct prescription from Rapid2X, right? But most paid, paid media agencies are interested in a certain percentage of your media spend. In that sentence, there is nothing that says if they're going to improve your revenue, they're going to improve anything. If you don't like it, you're going to exit out, they're going to find somebody else to sell them. 14% of your media spend is the fees that they collect. Interests are absolutely not aligned at all in any of the agencies out there, you know, so that's why, you know, you have to be careful about who's getting paid, how are they getting paid, right? And when you, when you have that misalignment in, in that right, where there are some agencies that have actually, even though they, they take a, a share of the media spend that you do, but they have been around for a while, they actually know how to deliver great results, great case studies and stuff like that. So I'm not saying all of them, but those are rare rarities. Most of them are in that kind of a, kind of a scenario.

Speaker B [00:29:32]:

So this type of an E Commerce founder always is bouncing off trying to find their prince and by kissing frogs, unfortunately, it leads to kissing a lot of toxic frogs. And why toxic? I've seen so many brands, so many amazing brands go into bankruptcy because of a lot of mismanagement, money mismanagement, mismanagement of media mismanagement of how the businesses run, right? That led down that path. Like I can point to exactly the point that in their timeline, what led to that, what decision was the root of the problem? And that's why you need to have these things. As an E Commerce founder, you have to take control of this thing. You cannot say, oh, I'm a product designer, I'm a creative guy, right? I'm not, I don't touch any of the media media stuff. That's not me. No, it's your business. When you worked in corporate America, corporate Europe or corporate whatever that you were a unit of work.

Speaker B [00:30:32]:

Now this is your business, E Commerce founder, the whole damn thing is yours. The whole baby is yours. Before you were babysitting, this is your baby, right? So you cannot say that, oh, I'm this kind of type of a dad or that type of a mom. No, the whole thing is yours. This is. The whole baby is yours, right? If you give that baby out to other babysitters that are not qualified to handle that thing and especially if you don't know how to feed your baby properly or change the diaper properly and why there's a rash on that baby or whatever, right? All these things are business analogies, right? And all of those things, if you don't do that, right? And you always think that oh, it's on. Fiverr. It's on.

Speaker B [00:31:14]:

Let me, let me Google it. Let me go use AI to find the next agency. Oh, wow. This guy sounded very interesting on TikTok, right? Or YouTube or whatever. You're always forever kissing frogs, right? You're not going to find that.

Speaker C [00:31:25]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:31:26]:

And that person, what we have found from a personality test standpoint does not appreciate getting the right advice and the right expertise. And as far as when it goes to the implementation side of it, you know, people do raise their hand and go like Sabir, but I don't know, I've already kissed a lot of frogs. I couldn't find the right expertise. That's why in the Rapid2.x program we have a structured partnership program and as rigorous, we are in evaluating through interview process to bring the right entrepreneurs on board to go through the program. We do the same thing with our partners.

Speaker C [00:31:58]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:31:58]:

So when you raise your hand and go like, oh, I don't, I'm not a Shopify developer guy. Do you have anyone? Yeah, we actually have a person who actually implements every nook and cranny of every, every part of the prescription from Rapid2.x for your Shopify site.

Speaker C [00:32:12]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:32:12]:

If it's, if it's meta ads or Google Ads or influencer marketing or affiliate marketing or SEO or stuff like that, all of that we have, we have a Rapid 2. X approved partners that go through certification process to actually implement those things.

Speaker C [00:32:27]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:32:28]:

But the thing is, ultimately, as an, as an E Commerce founder, you have to be responsible. I speak to you. You need to take that in. You have to understand it. Understand. And, and the thing is, that's where a lot of that learning needs to come from also. And you get that learning and then from that learning, then you can go like, okay, agency. Why, why is my ROAS.

Speaker B [00:32:49]:

Why, why do you think my ROAS 1.5 is okay? It's not okay, right? Even if you look at a product category margin, on average it's about 50%, right? So let's spend a dollar on meta, right? And you got 1.5 ROAS. That means that I spent a dollar. You got me $1.50 in revenue, right? If my, if my margin is 50 cents, that means that it's 0.75 is my cost of goods for my inventory that I just sold, right? So let's take away, let's do the math, right? Number one, that $50 you got me, first I need to pay. The first person I need to pay is Meta Ads. I need to give the dollar back. To meta ads because I spent it, right? I need to pay that. What's left over? 0.5, right? 0.5 $0.50 is left over and from the amount of products I sold, just to do the math, it's 0.75, right. It's $0.50 off $1.50 revenue.

Speaker B [00:33:50]:

So 0.75. What are you netting? Negative 0.25. All I paid was my ad cost and my cost of goods sold. That's it. I have not even paid the Fiverr guy that I bought for $50 and I thought it was a brilliant idea, right? I've not even paid that guy yet.

Speaker C [00:34:08]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:34:08]:

So you're already negative 2.25. This is the root of your problem, right? Once you don't understand this, right? And but most people go, you know, but our agency said that, you know, when you we acquired the customer for you, they're gonna buy that soap, they're gonna buy that shampoo, they're gonna buy that thing over again, right? Wrong. Shopify stats right. 2024, 2025. Hundreds of brands that have gone through Rapid2X, right? So this is not a some hypothetical number, the number of one hit wonders, customers who bought from you one time in their lifetime, right? Only one time, one transaction out of total number of customers that you have. Customers not prospects, customers, people who have bought any time from you.

Speaker C [00:34:59]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:35:00]:

When you divide those two numbers up, get ready for some rude awakening. Shopify business owners.

Speaker C [00:35:05]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:35:06]:

It's the. At a minimum that number is 70%. At a maximum, I've seen 100%. And then if you take into returns into account that 100% goes to 130% because they have 30% return rate even on that first purchase, right? So it gets even worse from that. So that thing when you are taking that argument from an agency to say that oh that's okay because we will be converting. Fact is, you're not, you're not doing that at all. Your data, you can actually do the math.

Speaker A [00:35:40]:

Let's say we've got somebody here today and they're saying, all right, Sabir, I got it. I'm going to take responsibility for my business. I'm going to stop kissing frogs. What's something that I can implement now to either like catch some of these other maybe red flags in my business or start progressing and making improvements.

Speaker B [00:35:59]:

Let's go with number one, right? The number one thing you're trying to solve, it's not your product, it's not where you're listed, how you're advertising. None of that stuff, the number one problem that you're solving is your number one enemy. I'm going to share with you what it is, right? And this is the thing that you need to work on, right? Number one in your business, regardless of what, what category you in, doesn't matter, right? The reason I'm disqualifying these things because ecom entrepreneurs start putting up roadblocks in their heads, you know, So I want to get rid of those roadblocks. Remember, at my core, I'm an engineer. I want to eliminate all the bad assumptions you have, right? So let me get rid of them first. The number one thing you need to pay attention in your business is consumer attention span, right? That's your number one KPI you're operating your entire business on in 2024, 2025. The consumer attention span, thanks to TikTok, Instagram Reels and Amazon app right is 1.7 seconds. If you, if your site, your landing page is not making its point and getting through to the consumer.

Speaker B [00:37:12]:

And this is, this goes beyond page load speed, right? If you are not making that, that's the speed you need to. To worry about. If you're not making not only your pages loading in under 1.7 seconds. You have to make your point before I do this and why did I do this on my hand just now? It's not desktop is this gets your. For the audio listeners, I'm pointing to my. To my iPhone, right? 80, 70 to 80% of your traffic and your revenue comes from. From mobile. So stop looking at your site on a beautiful gigantic Mac that you bought.

Speaker B [00:37:53]:

So you're so proud of. Nobody cares about that is less than 20% of your traffic. What. What about the other 8%? Where is that coming from? Tablets, right? So in 2025, because you're listening to this creator creators adventure, right? Podcast, I'm giving you 100% permission. Ignore desktop and mobile if you have OCD. OCD about mobile experience, right? Not mobile optimization. Not mobile optimized. None of those terms.

Speaker B [00:38:22]:

Those are 10 years old, right? Mobile first. In fact, it's device first. What do I mean by that? It's iPhone in the US market. In your market, take a look at your device profile. You can get it from your traffic analysis. It's your most likely it will be iPhone, Apple phone, Apple iPhone family of products. Or number two would be Samsung Galaxy family of products, right? The view ports are a little different. You need to optimize it for both of them.

Speaker B [00:38:48]:

You can prioritize by looking at the number one Device, then do the number two device. Ignore your desktop. If, even if your desktop looks like crap, I don't give a. You know, I wanted to insert a word here. I don't want you to censor it.

Speaker C [00:39:02]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:39:03]:

Nobody cares about that. And 1.7 seconds you have to deliver to the consumer before they even scroll up means that your CTA needs to be there. And how much of that interaction comes from that CTA? 70% of interaction comes from before they scroll up.

Speaker C [00:39:22]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:39:23]:

So you need to make that happen. That's a number one thing you're resolving. And then you'll see magically all of your roas starts going up, your bounce rate comes down and actually the wrong KPI conversion rate that you're used to, that's a wrong KPI. It's a bullshit KPI, right? You should ignore that and you should replace it with session value. That's something that we preach in our rapid 2x program, right? That's a KPI. That's a good replacement for a conversion rate that actually gives you valuable and productive information about how your traffic is performing on your site. Conversion rate doesn't tell you anything. It's just a BS that existed from the early days of E Commerce that in 2025 it's irrelevant right now and you should not be using conversion rate as a KPI.

Speaker A [00:40:11]:

Yeah, I think we looked at like conversion rate more so even early on because there was things about solving problems of does the customer even understand how to press the checkout button and things like that. And we all know how to buy online now and we're using all these platforms that have been optimized very carefully for all of that. And so what's left is what you're saying is actually making sure we capture their attention enough so they actually can go through the process.

Speaker B [00:40:39]:

Yeah, I mean there are so many sites that commit a sin of.

Speaker C [00:40:44]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:40:45]:

Knowing that I just told you like mobile is the king, right? That's the platform, that's the device people are using, right? So even I think I had to buy something like a week or two ago, right? I was using my phone, right? And I go to the site and the site is expecting me to put down my credit card number, my cvv, my expiration date, my billing address, my shipping address. The checkout is already pre configured by the consumer on the mobile device. It's called Apple Pay. And if you're an Android guy, you have it on there as a Samsung Pay or Google Pay.

Speaker C [00:41:22]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:41:23]:

Or if you're even using other other payment methods like PayPal. PayPal is very popular, right? PayPal. Or you're using Amazon Pay for your Shopify site, right? Amazon Pay. Why? Because in the United states, more than 72% of households are prime households. So that means that Amazon app is already on the phone and all they need to do is yes, I confirmed that. Verify that this payment is correct. Boom. Let me get in and get out.

Speaker B [00:41:49]:

Consumers should be able to get in and get out from your site from the time they clicked on your ad. And you're blaming all my meta ads. My creative needs to be tested and my audience needs to be tested. No, people clicked on your whatever you were telling them on the ad, they clicked on it. Meta did its job. When they showed up on your site, you dropped the ball, right? Fix that, right? Why are you asking them to put credit cards in where your site traffic is more than 70% mobile?

Speaker C [00:42:15]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:42:15]:

It just doesn't make sense. You should. That consumer should be able to from that part of the journey. When they clicked on the ad, they came to your site. When I say ad, I don't mean just paid ads. It could be social media, it could be your email, it could be SEO, it could be search engine serp, whatever, it doesn't matter, right? They come to your site, they should be able to get in, get out in under 30 seconds. And here's the average for every landing page on a Shopify site, that consumer attention span at 1.7 on average is 28.5 seconds. For average Shopify store, they are more than between 22 to 24x bad than where they need to be.

Speaker B [00:42:58]:

So you can see how much revenue is being lost by not tuning your business to the consumer attention span, number one. Number two, what is the other side effect you're spending money on? Meta ads, Google Ads, TikTok ads, Pinterest ads. You're probably spending money on some email marketing. Also, even if you're paying klaviyo, right. There's money involved and you probably have an email designer or whatever. You have to take that into account as part of your cost, right? So you're spending money the roas is actually are artificially wrong because you're not. Your business is not tuned to that consumer attention span.

Speaker A [00:43:35]:

Yeah, yeah. It's excellent advice. All right, Sabira, I got one more question for you. And that is if you could ask a question to our audience, what would that be? Whether it's something you're kind of curious about or just want to get everybody thinking about.

Speaker B [00:43:49]:

So here's my Question to you, like, remember why you got into what you get, you got yourself into, Right? Oh, remember that?

Speaker C [00:43:58]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:43:59]:

And if there, if there was a passion behind it, like in case of Lisa Denon, for example, she loved handcrafted leather goods, right? She wanted to get into that. And that's what she crafted. Her life, you know, her life. And, and that's what she got into. Because you want to do that for the, you know, for the foreseeable future. I don't want to say for the rest of your life, but foreseeable future, you want to create value and then maybe you have ambitions. Like, you know, Lisa Price from Carol's daughter, when her brand got bought out by l', Oreal, for example.

Speaker C [00:44:29]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:44:30]:

So there are ambitions like that. Like if you have that ambition, you want to create that value. But the thing is, if you got into it just because it was a quick rich, get rich type of a scheme or whatever, you know, you will give up.

Speaker C [00:44:45]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:44:46]:

Remember your why.

Speaker C [00:44:47]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:44:47]:

And once you start on that why, everything in your business that you go through, ask yourself, why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? Why does this make sense?

Speaker C [00:44:59]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:45:00]:

I gave you one example that how damaging that is. Like believing that ROAS of 1 and 1.5 is okay. It's not okay. So you should ask the question why do your math, like down to that $1. I gave you that example of $1, right? Do that basic math. And even in that example, I paid two things I could not even pay for the whole thing. That means that I'm going to buy less inventory because I couldn't pay it. I have to pay meta ads.

Speaker B [00:45:27]:

The only thing I could do is I can buy less inventory in order to break even, which is not a business you want to be in.

Speaker C [00:45:33]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:45:33]:

Always ask the question of why.

Speaker C [00:45:35]:

Right.

Speaker B [00:45:36]:

And I think it was Simon Sinek said that it start with why. That's his, that's his book, right? Really good book. I read a lot, by the way. 100 to 150 books a year I read. And these are not Reddit posts or LinkedIn posts or anything. These are actual books, right? On variety of topics and stuff like that. So start with your why. Ask your question that you know of.

Speaker B [00:45:56]:

Does you know, first ask the why question. Dig pretty deep and then ask does this make any sense for me to be doing it this way? Right. But always ask the why of yourself first because you want to be in this game.

Speaker C [00:46:09]:

Right?

Speaker B [00:46:09]:

And, and once you get through that, like, then I would recommend checking out the program which is growthbysevir.com adventure. We have a very special offer for your listeners when they come through that and they mention that they heard heard us about on the Creators at Adventure podcast. My team will take you through that. There is an interview process that you go through to see if you're a fit for the Rapid2X program. And then when you get through that, I'll definitely see you on the other side.

Speaker A [00:46:42]:

Awesome. Sabira, thanks so much.

Speaker B [00:46:44]:

Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me on your show.