On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Johnny Russo. Johnny has over 17 years of Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, and Brand experience. He is the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Lamour, where he leads the Direct to Consumer division for 4 Ecommerce brands and 5 Ecommerce sites. We talk about addressing real-life leadership challenges, adapting to evolving demographics and interests, dealing with turnover & keeping a positive attitude, and so much more!
Johnny Russo has over 17 years of Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, and Brand experience. He is the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Lamour, where he leads the Direct to Consumer division for 4 Ecommerce brands and numerous Ecommerce sites.
He also handles marketing for over 20 licenses. Previous to Lamour, Johnny was at The Kersheh Group as the Vice President of Ecommerce and Marketing, and also spent time with Mark’s/Canadian Tire as AVP of Ecommerce and Digital Marketing.
He has also worked at multi-channel retailers like Buffalo Jeans, Bentley, and globally for Mexx.
Johnny is a published author. His book, Mastering Mindful Leadership: 105 Ways to Become the Leader Your Employees Need You to Be, was published in October 2022.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!
Johnny Russo
You don't necessarily have to spend a lot to do a lot.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today, I'm bringing to the show an amazing gentleman. Johnny Russo has over 17 years of digital marketing, Ecommerce, and brand experience.
Currently, he serves as the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Lamour, where he leads the direct consumer division for 4 Ecommerce brands over 5 Ecommerce websites.
Johnny Russo, welcome to the show.
Johnny Russo
Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure.
Chase Clymer
Alright. So for those that are unaware of Lamour and the holding company itself, what are the websites? What are the products you guys are selling? Quickly rattle them off.
Johnny Russo
Yeah. So we're a manufacturer. And it started out with a manufacturer basics. So we'll manufacture underwear, socks, hosiery, base layers, kind of in that realm.
Started out manufacturing for other brands and squirt some licenses along the way like a New Balance through the loop. And Joe Fresh as well in Canada. So Lamour's in Canada, but a lot of the business actually happens in the US. So we have offices in New York and North Carolina, and our headquarters is in Montreal.
It's a family-run business that has been around for over 40 years. And a couple of years ago, they started buying direct-to-consumer brands, and really wanted someone to lead that digital transformation for the company and the different brands that they run. And they brought it myself, and we brought a team to lead the digital, the Ecommerce part. We do the marketing as well for the licenses.
So we have retailers like Costco or Walmart and oftentimes they'll need a photo shoot or some campaign deliveries. And we'll hop along that way anyway we can. And yeah, that's a little more in a nutshell.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Awesome. Now take me back in time. You've got a 17-year career. Where do we want to start this conversation?
Johnny Russo
Well, yeah, I guess we could start before I thought I was going to be in marketing and Ecommerce. So I graduated in journalism so I had this dream of being a sports writer. Probably a sportscaster but I wasn't very good at that time with public speaking and so on. I was pretty good at writing and at the time, this was the late 90s, early 2000s, I didn't mind dating myself.
But print was kind of dying down and my specialty was in writing and I actually got a job for the Montreal Canadiens. For those that don't know too much about hockey, Montreal Canadiens are like the most storied franchise, they're really like the Yankees of hockey, most Stanley Cup championships at 24.
And so I got a job there writing blogs and articles at the time. And funny fact, I don't even like the Canadiens, they traded my favorite player in 1990, Seth Enriche and so on. I've been a New Jersey Devils fan since.
But so I was waiting for them and really, that started my evolution into digital. I was living in Montreal at the time I graduated and then moved to Ottawa to see if there were any jobs there or maybe for an English language, a newspaper writer.
And I got a job in marketing. After two weeks, I went to a bookstore and picked up a book called Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. It changed the trajectory of my career completely.
And at that time I said, “No, I want to be in marketing.”
Yeah, I learned everything, self-taught myself, because I graduated in journalism, right? So I specialized in that, which is very important. Reading and writing is great. So I self-taught myself everything, advertising and brand and digital. Ecommerce was up and coming at a time, but it really wasn't named that. That's kind of my starting to the marketing world and the digital journey.
And then Ecommerce part really started as a company called Buffalo Jeans, which I'm pretty big in North America. They've sold into Macy's and they obviously have their own brand and so on. So I got a job there and I love the fusion of technology, retail. I've always loved fashion and just how quickly it changes, like, everything in that industry.
And then I said, “Oh yeah, I'm going to be in marketing, in digital, in retail, in fashion, Ecommerce, let's go.” And I stayed on that journey and loved every minute of it.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
Again, can you mention the book again? And then a key takeaway or two that you remember to this day from that book?
Johnny Russo
Yeah. Guerrilla Marketing is really based on how you don't have to necessarily spend a lot to do a lot. I have this saying, “Action over talk,” and part of that probably comes from Guerrilla Marketing, where it's like… try things.
It’s like… you don't need a lot of money, and that's where the guerilla aspect of it is. You don't need a ton of money to try things.
The second important thing in that book is: do it. We can all sit here and strategize, but do it.
And yeah, it was such an easy read too. It got me really excited about marketing. And in that book he named other authors like Seth Godin and all these others. And then you kind of build your library of the authors you want to read. But those are the two takeaways really. It's like, you got to try it and don't think it's too expensive to do things.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Yeah. I always love book recommendations on this show.
I think that the one that did it for me was the guy behind ClickFunnels, DotComSecrets. That one was mind blowing about digital marketing and email marketing in general. That one really opened my eyes to things way back when.
Johnny Russo
I have not read that one. I'm putting it on the list. I got a book with a book list on it.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I mean, like most books, it's like Lee Jin for his business. It's trying to sell you click funnels. But you ignore that part of it. The rest of it's actually pretty much gold.
Awesome. All right.
Within this career, are there any other jobs that you want to touch on that helped level you up as a digital marketer, get you to this next level in direct consumer?
Johnny Russo
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've got the chance to work with some incredible brands. And thankfully, also some really, really amazing managers and bosses who are still my mentors to this day.
One of the jobs that I can say that sealed my career was the Canadian Tire Corporation, who was one of the largest retail companies in Canada. Called and they said, “Hey, we have this opportunity for you,” And I said, “Okay.”
Canadian Tire is out of Toronto. And I said, “Yeah, it's not a big move,” and they said, “No, no, it's actually for another company, Marks,” which is like a $1.3 billion apparel brand. They're only in Canada for now anyways.
They have Marks. They keep her, but Canadian Tire has other brands like SportChek, which is sports equipment and apparel. And they have a bunch of hockey stores as well. And yeah, so it was moving to Calgary all the way out west. You know, Calgary, Alberta is right above Montana for the US listeners and viewers. And it's a public company. Like I said, one of the biggest. It's so respected.
And when you work for a larger company at that magnitude, what do you get access to? You get access to more budgets and more vendors and you have a higher brand awareness, even just things like speaking, right? It was easier to book speaking engagements or get people to invite me to conferences or so on because now it's Marks and Canadian Tire.
So it was amazing, and you get bigger challenges, right? That's also a big thing. When you’re new, that's what you want. You want those big challenges and get them out of the way early on in your career so you know how to handle that.
And it was amazing. I spent four years there. Met some amazing people, great friends. It's always nice to have friends in different parts of the country or all over North America, I guess, for that matter. They really welcomed my time there and I got to learn so much.
And like I mentioned, just having a bigger mandate, you get connections at Google and Facebook, and TikTok was up and coming at that time. So we saw some of these technology platforms we worked with, let's say, Listrak on the email side at the time, and seeing some of their roadmaps and being privy to that and helping them understand what's needed for somebody like in my seat.
That was a really scaling point for my career, I would say. Yeah, very important.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. So you mentioned at the beginning, and I want to call back to it and ask a question that you were brought into Lamour to help lead up the direct consumer division.
What did you inherit? What was that part of the business like before you joined? And then what was that roadmap that you were trying to implement for those assets basically for your job?
Johnny Russo
Yeah, great question. Like anyone that comes into, I guess, a traditional company, let's say on the manufacturing side, it's predominantly wholesale. So it's selling a lot of units to other retailers, but not necessarily owning that brand.
Let's say we work with New Balance and we manufacture their underwear, they have certain specs and certain brand standards. And we manufacture a part of the business that… maybe they're more skilled on the shoe side, for instance, and maybe they work with licensees like us, manufacturers like us.
So when I heard some of these brands or sites, the branding wasn't really formalized in terms of brand guidelines and brand books. And if it was, it was very dated because they bought some of these businesses.
And the other thing was just from an Ecommerce perspective, usability was off, user experience was off. Things that we would forget about, like disability and all, like Consumer Protection Act, all that stuff…there weren't a lot of best practices, I'd say, that’s being followed for the site.
And also on the digital marketing side, wrong channels, wrong channels for budgets, email and retention wasn't necessarily focused, no loyalty programs, all some of the fundamentals and even just in terms of let's say graphics, not necessarily having campaign shoots or using lifestyle images.
And so we changed all of that because one of our brands, Thorlo, is a North Carolina based brand made in the USA stock performance stock business. It's a very technical brand so there's a lot of things on cushioning and compression and grip that not having some of these images or videos didn't tell that story.
And so we made sure to lay out a plan. It's not all done in one day, but we laid out a plan and had certain milestones in year one, in year two, in year three to build that up. And some of that required bringing in talent. We didn't want to outsource everything we do. And that was a big thing that we decided early on, we wanted to build this out.
So we worked with a few agencies here and there, but in terms of development of the website, it's all internal, email's all internal. We worked with some really good tech platforms.
So customer experience, all that stuff, all the things that are core that we believe in are all in this core.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I am always curious about businesses that own multiple web entities. Is there an economy of scale there as far as having these multiple assets and spreading a team across multiple things and any sort of software savings or keeping software stacks similar? Does that apply?
Johnny Russo
Yeah, so going backwards, I guess, in your question. So software is that huge economies of scale on that. And sometimes it doesn't work to your advantage because you're like, “Well, we have these four domains or these four brands.” They're like, “Well, we're going to charge you multiply by four.”
But for the good partners we have, they know that this is a nice package for all of us and we try to make a win-win. So definitely on that, what it does too, let's say we have four sites, maybe three will do with one.
Let's say a loyalty platform and then the fourth one, which maybe is our smaller one, will tinker with other platforms. So it gives us that flexibility. It gives it as the guinea pig.
You got it. Exactly. So that's been helpful. In terms of the team, it's very interesting. I'd say 90% of our team is not dedicated to one brand or one site. So we all work.
Chase Clymer
It's almost like you built your own internal agency.
Johnny Russo
That's exactly right. That's exactly it. That's what when people ask what you do, it's like, “Oh, we're actually like an internal agency but for everybody. And we run different brands.” So it's exactly that.
So we are… two things that, especially at the beginning, that I just tried with the team is like discipline and just priorities. I know a lot of times, they get to the day and say, “You know, I just couldn't get this.” That's okay. Move on to the next day. But it's number one on your next day if it's that important. And if it's not that important, you know, as long as it's done that week.
We have these changing priorities as you can imagine, because four different brands, five different sites, a sixth coming soon from the start of the day to the end of the day, some things could break, some things could be more important than others, or we're waiting for another team member to finish something, so you move on to the next project. So discipline and prioritization is so important when you're running that many brands.
And then the other thing is reporting. You don't want to be going into each platform and each instance to gather reports. So we have dashboarding tools that really help us engage where we need to focus on this week or this month.
What's red? We have all these KPIs and one of the things I say is, “Let's focus on some of the red ones,” but not necessarily just because one day it's red. If there's a couple of days in a row that'll be red, great, we know not everything's gonna be green all the time. That's okay. We'll fix those.
So it really does allow us to change priorities and shift depending on what's happening in the businesses.
Chase Clymer
Hey, Shopify store owners. Have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table? Imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads. Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not.
I'd like to introduce you to StoreTester. StoreTester is a done-for-you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants.
Could your store benefit from increased conversion rates, higher average order values, and improved revenue per visitor? StoreTester could be the perfect partner for you. From ideation to implementation, this full service A-B testing service takes all of the guesswork out of improving Shopify stores.
Stortester does all the work for you while offering month-to-month transparent fixed pricing. It gets even better. They believe in their service so much they're offering the first test for free for qualified merchants.
Let me repeat, the first test is free for qualified merchants. Curious to see if you qualify for a free test? Reach out today. Visit stortester.com to schedule an intro call.
That's www.S-T-O-R-E-T-E-S-T-E-R.com. Schedule an intro call today to see if you qualify for a free test.
Hey everybody, today's podcast is brought to you by Intelligems, the ultimate profit optimization tool for Shopify merchants. I'm telling you this, obviously, you know I own an agency. We use Intelligems when we're running split testing and CRO stuff for all of our clients.
Are you looking to maximize your profits? IntelliGems offers data-driven solutions to optimize your content, prices, discounts, and shipping rates. Join over 500 happy clients who have seen significant improvements.
With Intelligems, you gain control over your Ecommerce economics, boosting your profit per visitor by an astonishing 36%.
But that's not all. Intelligems users report a 54.62% increase in revenue per visitor and a remarkable rise in conversion rates.
How does Intelligems do it? Through a suite of tools that allows you to A-B test everything on your Shopify store, from landing pages to product prices and shipping rates.
Imagine testing new layouts, offers, even a new Shopify theme with ease.
We're testing a new landing page for our client on a new theme versus an old landing page on their old theme right now.
Intelligems empowers you to find the perfect price point for your products and optimize your shipping strategy.
But there's more. Boost your average order value with customized campaign offers and discover if your customers prefer free shipping or a lower list price.
With over $100 million in incremental profit generated, billion transactions ran through their software. They have over 400 million shoppers that have gone through their tests.
Intelligems is not a tool. It's a game changer for your business.
Are you ready to transform your Shopify store's profitability? Book a demo today at intelligems.io. Empower your brand to reach new heights.
Again, that's intelligems.io. Intelligems, giving superpowers to your customer acquisition, retention, and overall profitability.
Chase Clymer
You mentioned a traditional brand. In my head, I always think of it as a legacy brand. But with a brand that's breaking into Ecommerce and selling a product for the first time, what are the advantages of having that brand legacy and notoriety, for lack of a better term? What is also a disadvantage of trying to teach an old dog new tricks, I guess?
Johnny Russo
I mean, Thorlo is a perfect example. Yes. A 4-year-old brand… It sucks, right? It's not the sexiest of products, but we try to make it so. So Thorlo had a reputation for quality, and then it didn't spend too much on the brand side. It was really a lot of word of mouth.
And then I think it lost its way at one point, maybe five or 10 years ago, where it was making a product, but not really telling the story of that product.
It's the best sock you've ever tried on. Whether you're walking, I can be playing tennis, pickleball, running, whatever it is. I have team members that don't love sports and they all wear socks. It's like, “No, these are great walking socks,” “These are great for the office or walking my dog.”
So we had a great product and we needed to tell that story. Twofold, it was probably an older consumer, right? Because we didn't spend five, 10 years doing brand marketing that older consumers got older and wasn't necessarily… the funnel wasn't full or being fulfilled.
And so we had to do that. And thankfully at the time, I guess this was two years ago, two and a half years ago, pickleball was growing in scale. And pickleball was also said, “Ah, it's a bit older,” which was not proven true, like, everyone's playing pickleball, right? From like a 10 year old to a seven year old. So age was not a thing and neither was income levels or demographics. It seemed like it was scaling.
We got in really early with pickleball. At the same time, we redid our brand guidelines. We have some core partnerships and core categories for us. So pickleball was one of them. We're the premium sponsor for the Professional Pickleball Association. We signed on for superstar athletes. We sponsor J.J. Wolf on the tennis side. He's a top 50 American men's tennis player.
Running, golf, all these activities, we really upped our game and created new products and new designs for it. It used to be a lot like white and black socks that were really good. Now we have white and black socks that are really good and we added colors to them. New colorways, new fabrics, new technologies.
So it's almost three years into this journey and we see it paying off because the one thing I can say about that is we used to go after partners and be like, “Hey, what about this partnership? What about this partnership?” And now we're trying to keep up with all the requests to partner with us. Which is nice, right?
And you see the success of things like On and Hoka, and it's like wildfire, right? Like everyone seems to have a pair of those, and we want to be that for socks. And that's the greatest thing. Getting in the morning and having like four potential licensees or partnerships or sports organizations or universities.
Actually, close to working with a university on the pickleball side, a top five pickleball team. Stuff like that, we've been trying to get in the university game for a while. Now they're coming to us. It's fun. It's fun to be on that after the work is paying off.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now, I do want to pivot a little bit here.
Beyond your corporate endeavors. You're also a published author. You are known for your book Mastering Mindful Leadership: 105 Ways to Become the Leader Your Employees Need You to Be. It was published back in October of 2022. Tell me about that.
I guess first and foremost, what drove you to write this book?
Johnny Russo
I was speaking at an event last week. And I mentioned the book and I think they thought I was joking. I was like, “No, no, no.” I held it up. I'm like, “No, I have some giveaways for you if you answer some questions.”
I mentioned I graduated in journalism, right? So I've always had this thing about writing. I do love to write. I had a website and did some blogs and stuff. I just had this idea and I want to be an author. I definitely want to be an author. So once I set a goal, I accomplish it.
So I had this idea of writing on digital transformation and writing a book on transformation. And I had a process and a framework for the supply of pillars and the digital transformation I typically use when I work for a company.
And so I started writing some stuff and I'm like, “Ah, you know, by the time this gets published, who knows? This is sort of transforming digitally so quickly now and things change so fast.”
But what I did notice, I mentioned I worked with some amazing leaders along the way, I also saw some ways not to beat and not to manage. And I was traveling back and forth between Calgary and Montreal for a bit, weekends and stuff, sometimes I would come back. Most of my family are still in Montreal. So I spent a lot of time on planes and I had some free time. And I started writing. And I started writing on leadership.
I didn't know what I was writing, but I was just writing down thoughts. And I had this idea that each thought is a chapter. Whether it's like how to say good morning in the morning, or how to start your day, or how to do a performance review, or how to make someone feel at ease during an interview, or the airport test, just all these things.
And then I got connected with an editor, and she said, “You're writing a playbook. This is like a playbook of leadership.” I'm like, “Yeah, I like that.” So, anyways, we had that title and then the publisher said, “No, no, I like Mastering Mindful Leadership.” I'm like, “Okay.”
Once you work with a publisher, you kind of like give up a lot, but it's great, they're very helpful. So Manor House Publishing published the book.
But one of the things that I, and reasons I wrote it, is that I noticed a lot of books and I've probably read over 100 leadership books in my career, and I devour that topic. And a lot of them are written by consultants or maybe authors or people that are retired, not necessarily in the trenches, or authors who have their own agency or coaching or personal development.
But it wasn't often written by directors or heads of companies that were in the trenches. And I always say this about parenting books. Sometimes you read a parent thinking, “That's such a great idea.” But when your kids are having a tantrum, it's really hard to remember to do that type of stuff.
And I feel the same thing with some leadership books. The concepts are so good, but then what happens with real life situations? And so that's what I talk about in my book. One of the chapters or one of the 105 ways to become the leader your team needs you to be like, that's the premise of the book. So there's 105 of these examples.
And one of them is, what happens when you have a negative employer attitude? How do you handle that? And so I go through that.
So yeah, my book is really about helping new managers or managers level up, let's say, to a director role or VP role, bigger team, leading from one to four to many, or C levels that are potentially stuck when they're dealing with so many different personalities. It's really about helping them.
I do this every day, all day, so I hope that readers will appreciate that because it's not like I'm sitting here in a non-stressed environment and everything's utopian. And all these challenges that I talk about in the book have happened to me, and I've had to find a way to figure it out.
And that's what I mentioned before about being like Marks and Canadian Tire–the challenges are so big, and it's amazing because then you're like, “Okay, I've done this, I've done this.” Some of these challenges might take days and weeks to solve or fix for, or they're just ongoing.
So I just wanted, in the end, to help people become better leaders. That's the reason at the end of it.
Chase Clymer
That's an amazing gift to put out there to the world. 105 Ways to Become the Leader Your Employees Need You to Be. Mastering Mindful Leadership. Make sure that we'll link to that in the show notes.
Now, Johnny, is there anything I forgot to ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?
Johnny Russo
I guess challenges. If we wanted to talk about challenges a bit, I mean, you talked to a ton of people about this and I wonder if you're hearing some of the same thing. But for me it comes back like there's a talent. A lot of people are saying that there's not enough talent out there or people don't want to work.
I don't know if that's true, but I think retaining talent can be a challenge, right? I think the churn rate is like 18% right now in businesses, that's a lot. So retaining talent is probably top of mind, especially in this field where you've invested all this time and people on this digital strategy or something that's really specialized and you want to keep, I think, the fulfillment aspect of things on a profitability level.
Fulfillment in operations could be 15 to 30+ % of your business.
I saw a brand the other day who is on Shopify and Amazon is shipping all their goods. Whether it's an Amazon FBA business or the orders from Shopify, Amazon is shipping 100% of that with Amazon, by what's prime. You know, I'm sure ShopKey is going to have something to say with that. At some point, Shopify and Amazon are partnering, but we'll see where that goes.
But fulfillment is such a challenge for so many vendors, especially if it's not core. I'll give you an example, like we're a manufacturer, that's what we do best is shift thousands of units. So now you're asking a DC, we do most of this internally, we're asking a DC to ship thousands of units and now ship one and two. It's a whole different shift of what people have been used to doing for so many years. So that's another one.
And then attribution and cookies, right? What is going to happen there? It's really hard to not take Facebook or meta results and Google results and all this TikTok rise with a grain of salt.
And I always tell people, “Revenue matters and the bank account never lies. That's your true indicator.” We've been really focused on the marketing efficiency ratio on the digital marketing side. We know where all our channels are doing, but at the end of the day, they're all for reporting.
We work with a marketplace and their cookie attribution window is 28 days. Selling socks and other… I don't know many people that are researching for 28 days. So there's a lot of inflation happening on some of these results.
So just keeping an eye on cookie attribution and for us that means really focusing on first grade data and growing our lists, our loyalty, loyalty adoption rate reviews and all that good stuff.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I think attribution and first-party data is going to be a big thing for a lot of brands for the next couple of years as, honestly, new ways to track people evolve. And new ways to really account for where that spend is going and what it actually drove. All these things that are close to the dollar are always going to be the most important for digital brands.
As far as employee retention goes, it is definitely the Wild West out there. Especially now that remote is probably still the most popular in our industry and other technology industries where people can get a different job in a different city for better pay, which is the driving factor behind a lot of people moving on as they want to line their pockets.
But yeah, we felt it at the agency. We've had employees move on to bigger and better things. And I love it for them. Go learn new stuff, go make a bunch of money. But yeah, it is definitely hard.
I think maybe that goes back to a leadership thing. It's like, treat your team well and they will stay a little bit longer. But at the end of the day, they got to do what's best for them.
Johnny Russo
Yeah, it tends to be like, they move because of money or because of their boss or manager a lot of the time.
Unless you're like a senior and then you're like one level away from the president, that might be different. But generally, you kind of move on because you don't love your manager, you want more money.
And you know, like you said, I'm always not excited when people leave, but I'll fully support them. And that's part of never making it uncomfortable when someone resigns, you don't want that because I've had a few instances where someone left and two months later, they called back and said, I might go back. And you feel good.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Sometimes the grass isn't greener.
Johnny Russo
Yeah, it's not greener.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And it's like that with any... It should be like that with any relationship in your life. But this isn't a life advice show. This is a business show. Be nice to all of your ex employees, all of your ex contractors, all of your ex clients because those people will come back.
And we've had clients where there's been an employee that's been in charge of the Ecommerce decisions at 4 different brands she's brought us over the past 8 years. She's the best.
And it's like, you just got to be nice to all these people and just be gracious for their growth in life and in business and it'll work out for you. Karma is real, people.
Johnny Russo
Yeah, it is.
And networking is so powerful. People will sometimes be asking for advice and so on. I say, “Learn.” Everyone has ‘continuous learning’ on their resume, what does that mean to you? “I'll listen to a podcast,” And I was like, “What does that mean to you? How many books are you reading this year? How many podcasts are you listening to this week? How many hours are you devoting to this? How many courses are you taking this year?”
And sometimes they’ll be like, “Ah, the company won't pay for that.” That doesn't matter. Education does. The company doesn't pay for your car, you still drive it.
I always dive into that because there's continuous learning and there's continuous learning. And that's something I want to, as advice, drill into people: Have your plan. What are you weak at? If you're weak at finance, read up and take courses on finance and what accounting means, or different accounting principles or Excel.
Maybe you're not good at Excel. Learn all that.
I think the other thing I would say is if you're gonna leave a company, make sure you have that. When you're younger, you kind of leave for a couple of thousand dollars, right? And then you realize it might not have been the best thing to do.
And I always tell people: Make sure you're leaving because you're gonna have a great boss or someone that's gonna teach you stuff. Because that $3,000 you potentially left for, the value you get from somebody that mentors you and coaches you, or like a company that gives you good challenges to tackle, that's almost priceless.
At the end of the day, you want to make more money as you go. So people want it quick–is what I'm getting sometimes. And quick and easy is not always the best thing for long-term thinking.
Chase Clymer
Being patient definitely pays off at times when it comes to finding a new job. In reality, you want to be there a couple years at least as a hiring manager. If you see someone jumping around every 6 to 8 months, that's a red flag. So you need to make the right choices when you are going to play that career ladder game, I guess.
Johnny Russo
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Johnny, this has been a fantastic conversation.
If people are curious about the products, what are a couple websites or brands they should Google?
Johnny Russo
Yeah. Thorlo. Thorlo is one of them. So thorlo.com. The other one is Terramar Sports. And the other one is Wear Papi. So it's Papi Underwear, P-A-P-I. We Are Papi is another one.
And then Wear Within, so wearwithin.com, is another one where we actually house all the licenses that we manufacture for one site. So it's like a very own marketplace. And we're building a couple of these B2B sites as well. So smaller boutique stores can be able to go online and shop for their stores.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Awesome. And then the book? It's on Amazon. Any other places they should find it?
Johnny Russo
Yeah. Amazon, Indigo. Some other ones are popping up. We're trying to get it translated to a couple different languages. So we're working on the publisher with that. That's the thing when you work with the publisher, you kind of give up all this control. They do it all.
So sometimes they'll be like, “Hey, can we get on this site?” And they'll put it into their roadmap, I guess. But yeah, for now Amazon is the main one. I haven't seen it cross over into Europe yet, but I know people have bought it from Amazon.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Johnny, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all that knowledge.
Johnny Russo
Chase, thanks for having me. And so glad to catch up again.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Thank you.
Johnny Russo
Thank you.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox.
If you're enjoying this content, consider leaving a review on iTunes, that really helps us out.
Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.
Until next time!