GE 144: Drew Sanocki On Why Expanding a Business Too Fast Can Actually Lead to Bankruptcy (podcast)

Today our guest is Drew Sanocki, founder of Nerd Marketing. Drew writes about e-commerce and bootstrapped his own retailer in 2003, grew it into a national brand, and sold it in 2012. He now spends his time advising e-commerce executives on how to achieve growth.

In today’s interview we’ll be talking about how expanding too quickly can lead to bankruptcy, how he grew a drop ship retailer from zero to a million in revenue in the first year and a half, and why he pays comedy writers to write his product descriptions.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: Drew Sanocki On Why Expanding a Business Too Fast Can Actually Lead to Bankruptcy TRANSCRIPT

Episode highlights:

• [2:34] – How expanding too quickly can cause a behemoth company to go bankrupt. Once a company grows unprofitable it starts to cascade.
• [3:14] – Drew discovered the world didn’t need another design brand, they needed a better way to sell design. He started a drop ship retailer that went from zero to a million in revenue in the first year and a half.
• [4:01] – In 2010, Drew noticed there was a lot of VC-backed competition and it was a good time to sell. Which he did.
• [7:51] – Design Public’s success was SEO based. To have unique product descriptions, Drew paid comedy writers to create them, and developed a tool for users to submit product photos and receive a purchase discount.
• [9:30] – For the future, Drew is passionate about direct to consumer brands. Building brands that resonate with certain customer segments.
• [15:59] – Drew is focused on achieving results through customer segmentation. His favorite tool is Excel and he teaches his clients basic segmentation tactics.
• [17:40] – Customer analysis will tell you what is driving your business
• [22:24] – Internal struggles within their own team slowed down the early process of Design Public.

Resources from this interview:

• Nerd Marketing
• Drew[at]NerdMarketing.com
• Twitter – @drewsanocki
• Design Public
• Karmaloop
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• James Clear
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall – must-read book
• Sellers Summit Conference

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