The Hidden Power of Personalized Customer Service for Growth

The Hidden Power of Personalized Customer Service for Growth Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today's one brought to you by Klaviyo. And we have Isaac Lewin, who is the Director of Sales at Country Life Natural Foods. And he flew in all the way just for this episode. Isaac, first of all, thank you so much for making the time and coming here to grace us with the presence of taking a legacy brand and seeing what you've been able to have impact on and what you guys have been able to do from a growth tactic standpoint, but also from a retention tactic standpoint. Excited to break that down. Isaac, for the few people who may not know you, give them a little bit about your background. Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Ron. Speaker 1: Of course. Speaker 2: Thank you guys for having me. So yeah, my background, I started in sales and I was like 14 years old, standing outside of apartment complexes and pizza shops with spinning signs. Speaker 3: Oh, you were that guy? Speaker 2: I was that guy, but I was like 14 and everyone else was like big adults. Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Speaker 2: I didn't speak Spanish either, so I was like the only thing they knew. But so that, I didn't even realize that was marketing at the time. And then that led me to, when I went to college, I met these kids that were selling books door-to-door to pay for school, so I was like, yeah. When they told me how much money they were making, that was what really got me interested. So I started doing door-to-door sales, and that led me just, once I realized after my first two summers, I made like $8,000 my first, $10,000 my second. Wow. In two weeks, yeah, in two months. Speaker 3: As a kid, that's a lot. Speaker 2: Never seen money like that in my whole life. Speaker 1: That's too much. Speaker 2: So I was like, okay, selling is something I have a gift for. Then I got working at web.com. Yodel got bought out by Web.com, so that kind of gave me like a marketing agency, a Fortune 500 bigger feel. Speaker 1: What is it? Speaker 3: Like PPC? Speaker 2: PPC, SEO, selling dreams to plumbers. But then I got actually first-hand experience running ads and doing things for small ministries and small businesses and then just kept doing that until my budget got bigger. Speaker 1: Before we dive in, a quick word about today's sponsor, Klaviyo. In 2025, retention isn't optional. It's a growth engine for any brand that's serious about scale. That's why at Obvi, we use Klaviyo for all of our email and SMS marketing needs and to know what our customers are talking about. We're not just using Klaviyo to blast everyone the same promo code, but to make sure our message actually reaches the right people at the right time based on real customer behavior. Klaviyo combines real-time customer insights with AI to help us design smarter flows, create dynamic segments, and personalize every touchpoint based on what our customers are actually doing. It saves us time and helps us drive way more repeat business. Want to know more about your customer than ever before go to klaviyo.com slash chew on this to learn how Now let's get back to the episode You know, I think I think kind of what you just talked about with your background. Tell us into your journey into With country life like, you know, how did you kind of get the desire of wanting to work for a brand like this? Speaker 2: Yeah, so Shout out to Shopify. I've actually been a fan of Shopify for years, always wanted to get into the ecosystem. I've tried my own dropshipping stores for like a dollar a month a couple of times. Speaker 1: There you go. Speaker 2: Failed after three months and we're just like, one day. So I actually got a gig years ago as like a founding account executive for this GoHighLevel agency. And so we were just trying to get real estate agents to sign up with GoHighLevel. So then after recruiting people under me and directing a sales team under me because I'm like, I don't want to do this by myself. Then I realized that I started actually doing the go-high-level work and then started being able to make funnels, do automations, and so all that stuff. Because I had that skill, now I would go to small businesses where I was working at, get them on to high level and start automating everything. So that was what kind of led me to where once I actually, it was the previous president of CountryLife, Told the current president that hey, there's this guy you should talk to. So we had a zoom call back in like October before I actually came to the January and he was saying hey, come help me. I'm like, dude, you're in Michigan. Like why would I go up there? It's cold. It's all this stuff. So, but yeah, once he told me where he was at with his budget and with his spend, I'm like, I believe I could take that and improve that. And so that was why I decided to come. Speaker 1: Very cool. And you've had the need to wear a lot of different hats, even just with your past experiences, a lot of different things. I think one thing just for the founders and operators watching this, how do you manage to wear a lot of different hats but also not forget about the growth role in sales that you have to go and do and deliver month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year? How have you been best managing that? Speaker 2: So yeah, being a small business, even though it's an old business, it's a small business where we're less than 30 people really there. And when it comes to growth or marketing, like It's me. We have some agencies that we work with, so that's been nice in the sense that I don't have to, I mean, I will still make static ads or make videos and even edit the videos and shoot them. I will do that. But if I can get, hey, can you shoot me, can you make me some statics, please? I can work with certain teams to do that, or even the blog posts. We have someone that writes the content, writes certain things. My thing was looking at the biggest levers, like what pulls the needle or what moves the needle the most. And so we have three different customer types. We have like a wholesale customer, which is our businesses. We have our members, which is a new program we just started, which these are paying customers who are kind of like Amazon Prime. They're paying to shop. And then we have regular customers. So just looking at what would be the biggest things to make the most profit for the business, I knew that working on a wholesale customers, because Let's say our best members will spend $2,000 a year, our business might spend $2,000 and order, right? So it's just a different level of revenue there. So just making sure that I've, what I'd want to really go about it, but automating, automating as much as I can. Speaker 1: So I was waiting for it. Speaker 2: They didn't have an inbound flow for their wholesale business. I didn't even know how they got new wholesale business. I think that people would just call them. So I just put a little on the footer, just put a link, said wholesale. Got a form, automated, when the new fills it out, I know, I contact them. I've already added over 200 plus businesses, so it's like, yeah. Speaker 1: Incredible. Speaker 2: Inbound. Speaker 3: No, it's interesting what you said. You said you'll still do the static ads, you'll still do a video here and there, but I think that's an important lesson for founders and operators in general. Like, yes, we all have a skill set, but you can't be married to that skill set, and you have to do things that are outside of your comfort zone. You know, Ron, he's got a numbers background, but sometimes he plans events. Speaker 2: I saw you recently, you went to an event where you were selling for Target. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was actually mixing drinks. Unknown Speaker: Trade show, man. What you got to do, right? Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: No, you touched on it a little bit, you know, the automation piece and being able to take on skill sets that are outside of your wheelhouse. I think It has a beautiful marriage, right? If you can learn it quickly enough, create efficiencies, you're actually going to be able to make it go a lot further than hiring somebody to just be a specialist in something. You talked about adding something simple as a form and getting 200 businesses, probably bringing in $20,000 plus in ARR. I'm curious, what are some of the lessons you've been able to learn on Focusing on people that come back and buy consistently versus just always looking for the new fish, right? Talk to us a little bit about that mentality because a lot of people are driven both from a, you know, dopamine level but also ego level to just get new, new, new. Speaker 2: Yeah, so if my CEO is gonna watch this, because he is, and I understand where he's coming from, we really do need to get new customers. Like every month we need to have a certain percentage of customers being new. But what I, in creating the membership, one of the main things about that was driving that repeat purchase. Because we, looking at our data, we have a massive amount of customers that have just made one purchase. But then when a customer makes their third to fourth purchase, they're in for life. It's not to say we ignore them, but we made this VIP flow that just started converting people from three to four, and it's just been so effective. So effective. We're giving them a little discount saying, hey, thank you so much for being a special customer. You're making a good one. Here's a 15% on your fourth one. And because our product is food, it kind of already has that Um, cyclical to it, like you're gonna eat the food, you need more food. And I'm sure you guys, you know, with your supplements, people are gonna run out, they're gonna need to buy more. Yeah, it's just being that brand that they're going to come to, that comes to their mind when they're going to buy that. Because for us, it's walnuts or peanuts or like pecans. So we're competing with your local grocery store, your mom and pop or Amish bulk store. There's a lot of competition, so it has to be more than just Yes, it's the nut, but how do we make them feel and what was their experience? And even with us, some of our customers were raised on us. So we have customers who have 40 plus years raising their kids on us, their kids are raising their kids on us. So it's a special place to be. Speaker 3: So what makes your, and I think it's called Country Life Natural? But it's like plus, like it's your Amazon product, right? So what makes it, and you know, I've seen things like Thrive Market and some of these other brands, what makes yours better? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you brought up a good brand, you brought up a good point. So Thrive Market, you can't even shop on their website. Speaker 3: He's just like Thrive Market. Speaker 2: I wanted to look at their prices and I was like, I gotta pay you to see their prices? Like, okay, you're confident. So you don't have to pay, you don't have to be a member, you can just shop. We also take EBT right off the bat, so a lot of people who are in food assistance, we can help them as well. But the difference is and I'm actually this is from someone else who was a Thrive member that was sharing their experience. Oh, wow. So this is this is some Stephen Lee. This is Stephen. He said that he liked Thrive. He liked their variety, but he had to still go through and look at the ingredients. He had to like make sure everything was safe for him. So our customers are the type of people who read the ingredients on all the labels. Like they read everything to make sure that it vibes with them. And so we have a collection of almost 2,000 products that are all non-GMO. Or we have a lot of organic options too, so you can get either the conventional rice or the organic option. Speaker 3: Got it. Speaker 2: So a lot of people feel safe. So it's like a place where you can kind of have your guard down. You just, you know, you're getting your healthy nuts. Plus our employees, we take a lot of pride in what we do. And so even if you actually weigh our bags, our bags all weigh over. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 2: Right? So we don't want anyone to complain. Hey, you're supposed to be one pound, but it really wasn't. Yeah, and these are things even I'm finding out that the more I find out about this brand because there's so many different men over the years and decades that have really built it up from where it was just like a bakery in Grand Rapids to where now we're shipping, you know, it's funny we'll get like products from California and then ship it right back to California. Wow. Speaker 1: It's crazy. No, it's incredible. You know, I think talking a lot about this retention piece and customers and how much you care to know about your customers, I think when it comes to retention, talk to me a little bit about You know, where does customer service fit into it? Give me some experiences or examples where you guys had to put customer service over revenue, right? And how do you kind of really think about that priority and how much do you guys talk about even internally in your company? Because I think retention stems from this idea of the customer needs to feel confident to come back, not just feel like they're promoted to come back. Speaker 2: So and this is honestly a test to Mitchell. Mitchell Hagen is the owner. Because I don't, it's not my, I'm not the owner, right? So I can't just make certain calls when something goes wrong. But almost, I can say nine to ten times out of ten, if something goes wrong, his first reaction is like immediately comp the customer. Take care of it. Don't worry about it. We'll refund them. We'll resend them another one. It's not even a question he thinks about. And so that's one thing that I'm really proud of is if you look at our reviews, it's actually talking to our mobile team. We have some really amazing reviews. The only bad reviews we have on our app or whatever is the actual app itself, which I talk to my providers. I'm like, hey, you're bringing me bad reviews because our customer service is fantastic. But yeah, it's taking care of the customers, making them feel heard, and also if they ask us something, we respond right away. So even if it's just, hey, don't email me anymore, we'll actually not email them anymore. But yeah, it's things like that nature. If anything goes wrong with, especially because it's food. So that's the other thing that is very, some people may have even ordered the wrong thing, because we might have two variety of the same. Just just making them feel heard feel human. Yep Yeah, and even even actually one thing that I can say that I've done is with our members So anytime that one of them has an issue or has a problem with something, I'll just call them. Speaker 1: I love that. Speaker 2: I'll just literally call them and then walk, I'll like help them troubleshoot their app or troubleshoot the phone or whatever they're doing. And then every time they've always said, thank you so much for calling. Like, you know, and then they go talk and talk. Sometimes we have to try to get back to work, but you know, it's, We have great customers. It's families. It's not just like an individual. I always look at them as it's families. We know that, I mean, we are single people who do order from us, but majority of the people who order are families, you know, and so yeah, we're helping them to have some sustenance. Speaker 1: It's amazing. Speaker 3: You know, that's like when I'm on a website or I have a subscription to a product and I want to cancel that subscription, The ease of canceling that subscription through whether it's customer service or it's just some sort of form, that will pretty much make or break me ever getting back on that subscription. So there's been a lot of times where I've canceled something and because it was so easy to just get off of it, I get on later knowing that I can get off of it whenever I want to. But if it's a hassle and it's a terrible customer service experience in general, you're just never gonna want to get back on it. So I definitely agree with you. I think retention starts at that first touch point. Speaker 2: Yeah, and even for the membership, one thing that I started doing that, because I'm the type of person, I really appreciate the Chew on This podcast. You had the, I think it was a guy from Good Wipes. Speaker 1: Yeah, he was spitting out game. Speaker 2: He was spitting out so much knowledge. And I'm gonna go back and dive through and read, because this is what I do. I educate myself by listening to podcasts, listening to different guys who are ahead of the game or older than me, who are doing it longer than me, and I learn from it. So with our membership, when people were, we have a free trial that we're offering for 30 days to say hey, because my thought was the best way you should come in as a customer is as a member. Try it out, see if you like it, and then hopefully you stay around. But I wasn't doing anything after they would drop off, I just let them go. So I started doing a thing where it's like, hey, you tried our membership. We see that you're not going to go along with it. No worries. But hey, would you like a discount on the full year? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So I'm trying to roll them into you tried it for a month. Here's a discount on the year. And it's only been a few weeks of that. So what's funny is I've been making sales from that email. Not quite the membership yet, but hey, at least they're coming back and buying. Speaker 1: I mean, touch points are touch points, right? Speaker 2: Exactly. It was a flow that didn't exist before that wasn't making anything. Money's coming through. Speaker 1: Amazing. Speaker 3: That's great. Speaker 1: When we moved Obvi to Klaviyo earlier this year, we weren't just switching platforms. We needed a better overall system to manage email, SMS, and real-time customer insights to create long-lasting customer relationships. All under one roof. Since making the change, we've rebuilt our abandoned cart flows, created dynamic segments that tells us who's ready to buy again, and used predictive data to time our offers more effectively. The impact has been higher repeat purchase rates, Better retention metrics and even more control over how we grow our customer value. Retention isn't set it and forget it tactics anymore that used to work. It's a system that needs the right tools and infrastructure. For us and for a lot of top brands out there, we know that's Klaviyo. If you want to turn retention into a growth engine, go to klaviyo.com slash Chew on This to learn more. Now, let's get back to the episode. You guys are Klaviyo customers. Speaker 2: Correct. Speaker 1: Talk to me about consolidation, right? You have email, SMS, you know, there's so many different ways to even connect with customers now between the website and there's a chat feature and there's a phone number, etc. Talk through the experience of, you know, being able to run a retention program through a tool like Klaviyo versus, you know, having to kind of do these things in silos like many other brands do. Speaker 2: So, yeah, you know, I actually walked, I almost got looped into Klaviyo for emails, Attentive for SMS. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 2: And they pitch it well. They do. And what it actually ended up causing us to do was go Klaviyo for emails and Klaviyo for SMS. Because we hadn't even got the mobile app yet. Now we have a mobile app. So now we use Klaviyo for push. So Klaviyo has really been solid for us as a platform to really be multi-touch. Speaker 1: So you rolled out all three things there. Speaker 2: Everything is in Klaviyo. And we have a retention team. So I don't have to write every one of the emails and design all the emails myself. I got a team of guys working for us. Shout out to Michael Rathman. They're really solid workers. But yeah, it makes it so nice because Klaviyo does plug really well. I think it's probably the best integration with Shopify, hands down. So yeah, being able to, and not just on the back end of things, because what's so really neat about Klaviyo is they even roll out this thing called the Customer Hub, which goes now on the front end of the website. So Klaviyo, which used to just be an engine for retention in the sense of emails and SMS and push, actually are now going on to the almost acquisition side. I don't want to say acquisition, but they're giving the customers more ability to buy again. So they're showing them, hey, you recently bought this before. Would you like to buy it again? Or these are suggestions that look like things you might like. Speaker 3: It's very light acquisition. Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, it's suggestive selling. It's like a very positive upsell. You bought this once before, you want to do it again. Speaker 1: You know, it's so interesting. You said like, you know, usually people get pitched this for Klaviyo and then there's something else for that. And I think in the world we live in where we're trying to leverage AI, leverage automation, etc. It's almost like counterintuitive now to think about splitting up how your efforts go. And I find it to be almost like one of those things where it's like it's become a no-brainer. But then also again, there's an element of like, well, I want to use the best tool that specializes in the best. Feature set. And I do think the argument there has become more and more is feature sets are also getting commoditized, right? Like almost everything can do everything. So you're also almost like, all right, well, what's the big difference, you know? But there is obviously elements of different things that work for different people. But I'm curious on one thing on when it comes to your guys' retention program, right? How are you guys balancing segmenting? Versus just promo, versus just follow-up and abandoned cart, etc. How robust and detailed do you guys get into this person had this behavior, they're gonna get this experience, versus this person who came in from Google as well, but had this behavior is gonna get a completely different experience. How do you guys work through that? Speaker 2: So it sounds like you're in my meetings this last few weeks. Because that's literally what we just got off. We just made a new plan for Q4. Because with our emails, when I first got there, we only had two customer types really, which was just regular customers and wholesale customers. And then the wholesale customers, they got no emails ever, just nothing. And so now that we have wholesale customers, members, and regular, it's not just even then segmenting them or into those three was one thing that we tried to do to have the different experiences. Now I realize it's like, okay, we have the most engaged, we have unengaged, we have, you know, have been engaging with your emails but haven't bought yet. It's like, that group is such a strange group. Open it up every time. Unknown Speaker: What do you want to do? Speaker 2: Just put their recipes. Maybe they just really want the recipes. But yeah, it's, we have, we've literally started to, we were using this one platform called, he suggested I install this thing called Rayleon. We're supposed to like auto AI segment the customers and then we bailed off of it. So now I got stuck with like 11,000 tags on my customers. So I'm using this thing called Retool where a friend of mine set up this script so I can automatically get all the tags off. So, but yeah, there's, There is a strength and it makes sense to know who are your most engaged customers, who are the most, and especially for us, like with the members, one thing that I've been doing is each month we have special deals that only the members have access to. So I'll only send that email out to the members. And now that was one thing we weren't doing, that email makes a couple hundred dollars every time I send an email. And so, yeah, or the wholesale customers, every 90 days after a wholesale customer hasn't placed an order, I send them out an email that says like, hey, would you like to keep your wholesale status? Just checking in. Because, you know, people change. People get hired. People get fired. People switch. Things can happen. So it's just one of those, it prints money. Unknown Speaker: Every 90 days. Speaker 1: I love the wholesale status piece because it's like people are like, I don't want to lose money. Speaker 2: Correct. Speaker 3: People hate losing status. Unknown Speaker: What do I have to do? I'm planning one. Speaker 2: I swear I'm planning. So yeah, that was, and I can't take credit. I believe in God. I feel like God gives me the wisdom to do these things. Speaker 1: No, it's amazing. Speaker 2: You know, I, going into the brand and how the brand is such an old brand and it is a Christian brand. I knew I didn't have all the experience that it would take to really move the needle, but I knew that I'm one of those guys who's willing to try things. And the boss is also, he's willing to let me try certain things. So we test, we throw things at the wall, we see what sticks, what doesn't stick, then we move on and try something else, and if it does stick, Fire the flame, we work on it. Speaker 3: Is there any other way to do it? Speaker 2: I mean you have to, it takes a little bit of trust and it's a little risky but I mean that's the only really way to know if something will work is you have to test, you have to experiment. Dabble a little bit. Speaker 1: Super tactical man, super insightful too. I think a lot of people get stuck at the point of like, I think I don't want to break anything or I don't want to move away from what's working and it's like no one's asking you to move away, but it's just seeing if you can get a step closer to the finish line, you know? Speaker 2: And testing in a small set group before you really build up something. Speaker 1: Exactly. You know a lot of brands they lose momentum after the first purchase I mean even after you kind of mentioned like before when wholesale orders were happening they were maybe not talking to them afterwards or what not. What's one post-purchase step that you think brands overlook the most often? Like in terms of just, you know, whether it's customers buying again or customers not buying, what's been something that you guys have added that's been super beneficial beyond what you've already called out? Speaker 2: So here's what's also neat, I guess, about Klaviyo and Postpilot. There's physical mail and Physical mail has worked so well for our brand. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: So one of the ways that I tried getting that second purchase was after someone makes a first purchase I send them a physical postcard. Well, it's a handwritten postcard supposed to be from the owner, but yeah It's written with somebody's hand It's written from and and I actually we got a we took a staff photo of all the of our team and And so I have the team photo on the back, and it has like a message in there where it's like, keep this by your fridge, with our number on it, that way you can call us if you need us. Speaker 3: Ah, I like that. Speaker 2: Super smart! Unknown Speaker: Brilliant, brilliant idea. Speaker 2: I want to eventually go to one of our customers' house and see if they actually have it on their fridge. Like, I bet you their customers do have it on their fridge. Yeah, I'm in the picture, I'm in the picture. That's awesome. So when I first got there, the owner put me on like everything. I was in the warehouse, I did some deliveries, I did everything so I could just see the full business and shipping. Actually driving out there and going to the customers homes was one of the coolest things because there's no one size fits all. There's the Indian family in the high-rise city and then there's the Americana family out with the big farm. The main thing about them was that they all like to They all had to cook food from scratch. That was the main thing that united them all together. Whether it was lentils or rice or whatever it was, they cooked food from scratch. Speaker 1: That's so cool. Great experience, man. Speaker 2: It's been good. Speaker 1: Some great tactics you've shared too. This is exactly what people like to watch our episode for, which is like, is there one thing I can go and do to apply to my business? So super, super helpful. I want to take a crack at some of these rapid fires. Is there a lot of fun? Anki, you want to kick it off? Speaker 3: Yes. So we will do a rapid fire round now. What's a marketing or sales trend that you've currently ignored and why? Speaker 1: You're going to roll some feathers here? Speaker 2: I would say dancing on TikTok. Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of us ignored that. Speaker 1: It's so true. Speaker 2: I honestly have told the CEO, we used to have, we have these costumes and I told him I'm willing to put the costume on. I'll put the costume on and be on TikTok. I don't know if I'll dance in the costume, but it's just, just the dancing. I just, I just don't know. I've, I've seen there's like, I think Duolingo worked for them. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: I mean, it does work. You really got to get the personality. Speaker 3: Yeah. I think you have to be good at it. Speaker 2: So that's just not my cup of tea, but hey, power to those who make it work. Speaker 1: That's amazing. What's the most surprising growth hack you've tried that actually worked? Speaker 2: Yeah, most surprising growth hack that we've tried that actually worked. You know what? Before and after pictures. I was watching a podcast and it was talking about the power of before and after pictures and I was like, that can't be that effective. Speaker 3: Super effective. Speaker 2: Especially for statics. Facebook statics. Before and after. What I mean the whole thing about an ad is really like making the person who's seeing the ad the story of the character of the story, main character. In a before and after picture, immediately they can see themselves because one I had was a lady with an empty fridge. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: With the face like, ah. And then the other side was like a woman with like a full pantry. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: With like super happy. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So it's just like empty fridge to full pantry. Before and after pictures are a hidden secret. So if you haven't tried those. Speaker 1: I like that you created before and after because in the world of weight loss, it's always weight loss related. But you're talking about before and after from an angle of like just emotional before and after. Speaker 2: Who hasn't gone to a fridge and you want something to eat, you open it up and you're like. Speaker 3: No, it's great because you're almost selling this is the lifestyle you could have. Correct. Speaker 1: That's actually an excellent, excellent call out. Speaker 2: It was literally a random podcast and that's what I said, I'm the type of guy, if I hear it work for you, I'm going to try it. Speaker 3: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received that helped you make a tough business decision? Speaker 1: Hmm. Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I think it was advice I was given. But like, you sometimes you have to make hard decisions. You have to make hard decisions. One of the hardest decisions that we had that I've been there for making was We had an affiliate program and it was made by one of the workers there who eventually became an influencer. It was for the affiliates, not necessarily for the brand. We were just bleeding money through that thing. But they were getting paid out. And through code stuffing and all sorts of stuff, it just wasn't making sense. I tried switching from what we had before to Social Snowball. Social Snowball is a great platform. Shout out to Noah Tucker. It just also was like a square peg in a round hole. We didn't fit correctly and so I had to pull off of that which like disappointed so many people because they like lost their code or lost or this but we were one month we had made like four hundred and sixty what I thought it was it maybe was like four hundred thirty four hundred forty thousand dollars in revenue which was at the time was we were climbing back up. CEO showed me we were like negative forty thousand in the hole that month. I was like, what? We just made so much money. So after I saw that, that was when I really started just cutting all these Yeah, we didn't need just cutting the fat and it hurt some people and some people, you know, but the business needs to survive the business. Speaker 1: No, you got to put the business first. Speaker 2: If the business is dead, we can't do anything. Speaker 1: That's right. Speaker 3: We do that monthly. Yeah, just we take a look and see what's, you know, actually being incremental to the growth and what's not and then make some tough decisions. Speaker 2: And yeah, it's not we don't care about the people or we don't care about these things. It's just at the end of the day, It is what it is so It's great. Speaker 1: Great. Uh great advice. Um, what's one daily habit or mindset that keeps you motivated and focused on your goals? Speaker 2: Mmm Okay One tough, right? Speaker 1: Mmm. Speaker 2: I have a whiteboard in my office and every day I look at that whiteboard and reposition myself. I try to write what I'm working on, what I want to work on. I have certain things that are at the top and certain things for the group, so I just look at that. And it's kind of like having your goals and reading your goals. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I look at that, I read my goals and I move towards it. I actively go cross things out and then I erase eventually and then I write more stuff on there. So like the whiteboard has been my ritual of or if I like compass. Speaker 1: That's awesome. Speaker 2: Of where I'm going, what I'm trying to accomplish. And probably no one even in the office even realizes that like what that whiteboard means to me. They see scribbles and see stuff on there but Yeah, because I also use Notion and so like Notion is my second brain. I don't know how people remember Stephanie. Speaker 1: It's impossible. Speaker 2: Whiteboard is the physical version of Notion. Speaker 3: That's the North Star. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: All right. Can you share a story about a time when a customer complaint or negative feedback led to a major positive change in your business? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And again, it just, I, the reviews, have you found that you have like reviews on Yelp, review on Trustpilot, review on Google, review on Facebook? So it's like, man, I was finding all these reviews. So, but looking at the reviews, you really get to see how people are feeling about them, about your business. And so when I consistently, I'm seeing that the reviews are based on performance. Performance on the website, performance in the app, performance on these things. Actually one of the reasons why I've, earlier in this year there's a guy named Jan, Jan Frey, he is one of the biggest YouTube coding developers, and I paid like, he was gonna charge 1500 bucks for it, but I went in early at like 850 for his programming course. So I've been learning Shopify development and now with Cursor, I can just vibe code. I can just use English to do my coding on the website in Shopify. Because of the customers' frustration, and me being a web guy, I've known about code for a while but never really dove deep into it. It forced me to literally become a Shopify developer. That's awesome. Anytime someone does Shopify work, it feels like, oh, well, that's going to be $5,000. And so it's like, we don't have all that budget. So just taking things on my own hand, that way, again, it's a small business. And the more that I feel like I can do, it gives me skill set so that I can learn and do things later, but saves us money for the brand. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Especially with AI, everybody should be doing everything. Speaker 2: If you're not using cursor and you're in Shopify, I don't know what you're doing. Speaker 1: I agree with you. If you could only use one channel, email or SMS, for attention marketing, which one are you choosing and why? Speaker 2: Hands down, email. Not even a question. To get out of SMS is one word. Just reply stop. To get out of email, now it's supposed to be easy. You can unsubscribe, but really what that does is bring you to another page. And then you get to select it again. So it's a lot harder to unsubscribe from email. Not just that, if you have their email, they're getting it on their phone. You already got the phone. You got the phone. So, email. Speaker 1: I love that. Isaac, this was awesome. I mean, you shared wisdom, you shared some of the vulnerable elements, you also shared some incredible tactical things people can go and do. We love to end each episode, as you probably know, with one thing to chew on, one thing to give everybody something to go work on and think about. What's that one big chew that you have for our audience? Speaker 2: I'll say Shopify is an amazing ecosystem. If you want to be a designer, if you want to be a developer, if you just want to do marketing and sales, spend time in Shopify and just learn it. Even the Academy. Shopify Academy is free. It's free knowledge. Your value comes from what you know how to do. Truly, it really is what you know how to do and the problems you know how to solve. And Shopify has a lot of great people in there with valuable problems that they want solving. So I say stick to the ecosystem. That's my favorite thing that you want. I mean, honestly, for me, it's been so rewarding. I've only been in two years and I can already see I don't have to leave this. Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I love that. Speaker 3: Chew on that. Speaker 1: Chew on that. Speaker 3: If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website, ChewOnThis.io.