This is What I Would NOT Do if I Started Again

Transcript: 

Jared Ward: 0:07

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Ops Unfiltered. My name is Jared Ward. I'm the founder and CEO of Luminous. Today we have a new guest. Our name is Keri. Everybody welcome, keri. How's it going, keri?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 0:21

Thank you for having me. Nice to see you.

Jared Ward: 0:24

So Keri is well, she's the founder of a lot of things, but a couple of things that we'll be diving into is the data for dog box Um, she's after she sold one of her brands. Um, she dove into a lot of um marketing, freelancing and I believe right now you're the founder of the e-commerce society. Yeah, what is? What? Is this thing you're most active on right now? Is it the e-commerce society?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 0:53

Yeah, so I I've been doing since I sold the dapper dog box. I started doing, you know, consulting work and you know agency kind of work, doing websites for people, kind of all the things you know Shopify, doing emails, and then I sort of wanted to go into the mentoring and education kind of space. So I've been doing that for four years and now sort of looking to minimize that and do some other things. So I'm kind of simplifying my current business, which is the e-commerce society, and we basically do mentorship, education, training stuff for people who want to start an e-commerce business or want to grow it smaller scale but don't want to rely on advertising. So that's kind of my bread and butter is organic marketing, organic traffic. And yeah, I do definitely dabble in a lot of things. I get bored easily, so I'm always looking for the new thing and which makes it fun.

Jared Ward: 1:47

It's amazing.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 1:48

It's fun. You know, if you can start a business, you then want to do all these other businesses. At least that's how I feel. So I know that you're probably. Your story is pretty much similar, like with starting all these other things, so it's fun.

Jared Ward: 2:01

Yeah, I'm excited to dive into the Dapper Dog box Because, on Ops and Filter, where we try to focus conversation is the messy beginnings of e-commerce companies.

Jared Ward: 2:11

So, e-commerce operations is such a black box. There's plenty of marketing gurus who will tell you how to get the best ROAS and all those things. I think there's a conversation severely lacking on the beginning days within ops. So I'm curious. Walk us through any founder who's taken something from start to exit in e-commerce. Walk us through your story with the Dapper Dog Box. Why did you start it and how did you get started?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 2:47

Sure. So I think, in a nutshell, my corporate background is in marketing and sales for education. So I used to work for an international education company and I basically got paid to travel the world and promote and sell and market, studying in the USA so dream job when I was in my 20s and all that. And then I had a baby and I wanted to do something different, went through a bit of a hard time with that transition and literally out of thin air I was at the gym and the idea popped into my brain you should start your own online store. You should start an online store.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 3:21

I had never thought about it before, so I'm sort of an accidental entrepreneur, because it wasn't my whole life, I wasn't dreaming of starting a business. It literally flew into my head and within a week I was literally sitting at a Starbucks working on the logo for what was the Dapper Dog box. So the idea came into my head and then I thought, ok, I should do an online store, I should sell a physical product. And then I was like, maybe I'll do a baby subscription boxes. I literally had a six month old at the time and then I was like you know what? That's not my thing. What about something with dogs? I'm a huge dog person and that kind of made the most sense and I sat down, I did all the market research and I can. I can talk about like how I started it, but the nutshell was, within a week or so of the idea, I just knew, like I knew it came out of nowhere, I knew and I just got started and yeah, the rest is history, I guess.

Jared Ward: 4:14

So even I don't know. It's funny that when people ask we skim over it.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 4:18

We skim over.

Jared Ward: 4:19

I have a similar. Yeah, I also skim over, but like those are the interesting things. How did you file an entity? What did you do? What did you not do? How did you get your first product? Yeah Well, because there's some of that, sure.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 4:44

Some of the early days. I love talking about them. I love just hearing what people did when they first started, because there's so many mistakes that we all make but there's also so many really interesting things that you can kind of pull from that. So my early days, you know, again I came up with the idea. I think it was March of 2016. I launched in July, so I don't know. I just like five month runway or something I had never, even though I was in marketing. My background again was selling international education, and so I was more selling an experience, and so the physical product stuff was just, I had no idea what I was doing and so I kind of just did market research. I figured out I want to do a pet box. I wanted to. How can I be different? I just knew, okay, I need to do something different. I can't follow the herd of everyone else. And I figured out this one loop that no one was doing, this one thing which was in a dog subscription box. No one was giving accessories, so I wanted. So I thought, okay, I'll do dog bandanas and dog bow ties, cause that's a very differentiator and no one's doing it and people that love bandanas for their dogs. They really, really like them, because that was me with my. My dog is almost 12 now and so she's been wearing a bandana every day since she was a puppy.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 5:56

So I think I I think how I first started with the product and all that, I started as a sole proprietor. I had no idea the paperwork and I was like living in Southern California, idea the paperwork. And I was like living in Southern California at the time and I'm like how, how the Googling? Like how the hell do you start an e-commerce business or subscription box? And I discovered a couple of platforms. I filed as a sole proprietor, which I then turned into an LLC. Once I made money, um, and I like, again, things happen for a reason.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 6:25

Serendipitously, the same month I decided that I wanted to start this business. The same month there was a huge pet trade show in Irvine uh, not Irvine, california, but somewhere where I lived in orange County and so I was able to go and then start meeting potential vendors. Like here's my idea that I'm looking to, and I had no idea what to say. I was basically going up to people like I had no idea what to say. I was basically going up to people like I looked like such an idiot. I was going up to these brands at this trade show and saying I'm going to do a subscription box and I kept. I wasn't calling it wholesale, but I was calling it something else. So people were looking at me like I had 300 heads because I had no idea what I was asking.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 7:02

But what I was actually trying to do was basically create a wholesale account with these people. So I was fumbling it up and anyway, but I ended up leaving that with a few contacts and they ended up being some of the first people that I purchased their products from. So buying product initially was pretty easy, because I just found a couple people in California and just started with that. I signed up with a platform called Cratejoy at the time Literally no idea what I was doing, but I'm like oh, cratejoy does subscription box. Okay, cool, I'll just start with that. And I just kind of fumbled my way through. One of the biggest mistakes I made was I thought, okay, I need to have a good website, so I'm going to create a custom website, which is a huge mistake. So I hired and $1,500.

Jared Ward: 7:51

Why was this a big mistake? A lot of people.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 7:55

Yeah, yeah, just because I wasted money. I think when you're doing an e-commerce business, in hindsight I should have done Shopify Way more powerful. Cratejoy kind of sucks, but again, at the time you just don't know what you don't know. They make it very easy. If you're doing a subscription box, they make it very easy to get started and I think when you're in that early stage and you're like you have so many decisions that you don't know whatever, the easiest one is the one that you're probably going to go with.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 8:25

But I don't think you need a custom website as a first-time business, first-time e-commerce store. Shopify has really good templates that you can customize. Even Cratejoy, their templates are kind of bad, but they still have templates that you can just customize. And then once you know your customer, you know your messaging, you understand the things that you need to focus on in the website, then do some custom stuff. So it's kind of starting scrappy and then, once you're making money, getting customers understanding like how you should structure the website, I think then you spend more money. So I ended up spending it wasn't that much money, but at the time I was like bootstrapping it. I think I spent like 1500 bucks and this developer, I remember, emailed me one day and he was like, yeah, I'm playing around with some colors and shapes on the website and I was like you're fired, like no, I had nothing.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 9:18

I had absolutely nothing on the website. It was like basically a hero section and maybe a button or two and that was it, and he literally charged me like $1,500.

Jared Ward: 9:28

I'm like okay.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 9:29

I need to learn how to build a website now. Like cool, let's do it.

Jared Ward: 9:33

I'm like okay, I need to learn how to build a website now. Like cool, let's do it. So that happens. I feel like there's so many e-commerce owners who they get bamboozled into. I mean, your story actually isn't too bad like $1,500.

Jared Ward: 9:44

No, it's not Some people. They get charged $20,000, $30,000 for like absolutely nothing. And then it's like, how are you going to upkeep this? And then, once you start implementing inventory systems, you start using a three like, of course, like a bad decision for all that. So interesting though. So you came up with the idea because you were part of. You experienced the problem firsthand. You had a pet, you were on subscription box. You noticed a gap in the market. You went and found some wholesalers. You acquired your first products. Now you had a little botched website. What did you end up doing and how did you get your first sales?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 10:28

So just to like take back to the early days. So when I first got my dog, asha, I got BarkBox. So BarkBox is the number one leader in the pet subscription space. They're basically Godzilla and everyone else is like their little mice. They're huge, they take up so much market. And basically I got BarkBox early on.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 10:51

When I got my dog I didn't like it. I thought the quality was really poor dog. I didn't like it. I thought the quality was really poor and I just didn't like it. And so again, when I was creating the idea for the box, I knew, okay, I want to do whatever BarkBox is not doing high quality. I'm going to attract this like the millennial who has a golden doodle, who cares about the aesthetic and all that. So I kind of really ran with that vibe. I wanted it to be the highest quality and I was the most expensive. So I basically launched with the most expensive product and not oh, I'm going to do what everyone else does and do something really cheap. So that was one thing. And then basically, when I came up with the idea, I instantly knew some of these things too. I'm not really sure how I knew to do them, but I just I don't know. I just did it.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 11:33

I started an Instagram and I really took people behind the scenes with me. I started to share here's the logo I'm doing, here's like, here's what I'm doing. What do you think of this? I started showcasing some of the vendors I was going to be working with. Even if they weren't going to be in the first box, I still shared. You know, we're going to be working with this company, this treat company, this is the first bandana. So I really took people behind the scenes and actually grew the account quite quickly, even though now it's pretty much impossible to do that on Instagram.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 12:03

Um, and so I also started growing the email list. I had a really good not good, it was a landing page and I'm laughing cause I I have a funny story about that but I started landing page and I started promoting whoever gives me. You know, give me your email and you get 10% off for life. So I tried to give a really good incentive to get an email list and, as I was pre-launching the business, I really pushed people to join the email list and I sent them teaser emails. I told them you know the story here's pushed people to join the email list and I sent them teaser emails. I told them you know the story. Here's the story about my dog. My dog is the inspiration. Blah, blah, blah blah.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 12:39

I really leaned into email marketing and when I launched I was like, oh my God, am I going to get any sales? I was so nervous and I think I made I don't remember what my first month was, but maybe a thousand or 500. I don't know like not a lot, but I still people bought it. So I'm like, okay, people bought the product. There's something you know again, your first month is probably not going to be good and I didn't have expectation it was going to be good. But I knew I got people on the email list. I promoted an Instagram and after I got that first week of sales, I emailed every single person and I asked them how did you find me and why did like I'm under? You know I'm trying to understand the business, so it's new. Tell me why you chose me and not competitor.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 13:23

So I tried to understand yeah, I tried to understand the why. But then also, how did you find me? And most people at that point said I found you from Instagram and then joined your email list. So that was the first early days. Was Instagram email list and I kind of just focused on those two and you know, grew slowly but the first year, but you know, got some traction.

Jared Ward: 13:47

So oh, walk me through some of the things that were happening. Um, oh, walk me through some of the things that were happening within, things that people don't think about, like fulfillment and purchasing. Like how did you run those your first couple months? Was it just very reactive? Did you have any tech that was helping you out? So, did you have Shopify? Did you download ShipStation, like?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 14:11

what were you using? So I was using Cratejoy and I was using a shipping platform Pirate Ship so I was using yeah, I love Pirate.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 14:19

Ship was great. They made it really easy, so I use those two for shipping and all that. Fulfillment was just like literally every time there was an order I'm like, yeah, I got an order and I would literally like run and pack a box and literally I'm not joking run and ship it. And I would literally like run and pack a box and literally I'm not joking run and ship it, like I would drive every single order immediately to the post office, which again, I understand is not smart with systems and all that. But my goal for that first few months was get people their order as quickly as possible, create whatever kind of good experience I could immediately and then get them to share with friends and family.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 14:59

That was sort of my strategy from the beginning. But there was no systems. There was nothing. I literally would get an order, I would print out the shipping label on paper and then I would like so so messy I would tape the paper on the box with some kind of tape or something. And then eventually I ended up getting a label printer, which makes sense. But yeah, there was no inventory systems.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 15:23

I literally was doing everything out of my living room. I had boxes and pet toys everywhere. It was a mess, but it was it was I talk about.

Jared Ward: 15:32

I talk about this all the time, so luminous. We talk about the, the journey of like an e-commerce entrepreneur with ops, and I talk about there's the garage stage at the beginning, where you're not using any systems for inventory, like an order comes in, you're jazz, you just slap on the label, ship it out yeah like I always talk about.

Jared Ward: 15:51

I always try to find the transition to growth stage, like when did you start to understand? Like, oh, I actually might have something here Was when. Like when did you make your first hire? Did you outsource to a 3PL? Like when things started expanding a little bit talk us through that? What were the trigger points?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 16:10

Um, I didn't really. So my business, you know I was making. So when I first launched it again, I think I made 400 or 500, whatever, maybe the first month. By the time I sold the business my sales were about 200,000 per year. That was the final year I had my business. I made 200K. You know, no ads, no influencer stuff, just organic scrappy. Know, no ads, no influencer stuff, just organic scrappy.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 16:37

Um, so really, by the time I went to sell the business I had about 600 subscription box subscribers. But I also sold on Amazon. I was, I had Amazon subscriptions, I was one of the first to be invited to the Amazon subscription, so I sold Amazon subscriptions. And I also sold one time like e-commerce style products on my website and on Amazon. So I was kind of. And I had another marketplace I was selling on. So I was kind of selling on a bunch of different places and I literally, from the first day I had the business until the very end, I did everything. So by the end of the business I was literally my garage, so we lived in.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 17:12

At this point we moved to Seattle and we lived in a townhouse and my husband had to sell his car because we literally had no space to run the business. The business was the bottom floor of the whole townhouse, so one indoor interior room, a huge like massive closet and then the whole garage and so everything was stacked with boxes, dog toys, everywhere. So at that point when I was looking to sell the business I actually was also I knew if I didn't sell it I had to move out of, like I had to move into either a 3PL or a warehouse. The problem was the subscription box and the fulfillment was so messy I wasn't sure that I would actually ever be able to go into a 3PL because of the customization that I offered. People and people had different, you know, people like no chicken for this person and no this for this person, and I had to. You know, people got different dog bandana sizes and then just I was literally doing things off of an Excel sheet I had. Every month I would ship orders out and I would have to write in a freaking Excel sheet what I gave them. It was such a disaster and it was so messy and I still feel like I have post-traumatic stress syndrome over packing boxes because I spent so much of my life at the end packing boxes and shipping them and going to the post office.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 18:33

Life at the end packing boxes and shipping them and going to the post office and it's so clear to me today that okay, carrie, you should have hired someone. That should have been. The first thing that I did in year two was have someone come to my house and pack boxes, and I was such a control freak I thought no one could ever pack a box like I could like an idiot, because no one can learn how to pack a box right. I never had employees. I never hired people. I did have a couple of contract people that would help me with graphic design sometimes and I did a website update and I had a designer who helped me. So I had a couple of contract projects, but I didn't have any employees or any help. I just did basically me doing everything like a crazy person. I worked 24-7 and it was not a good situation.

Jared Ward: 19:22

So I want to dive a little bit into that. Why do you think you didn't hire somebody? You talk about being control freak, but was it because you're so cost focused, like every hire at that point seemed like, okay, that's cutting from my margins. What do you think was holding you back from making that decision to hire somebody or to put in a system?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 19:44

Yeah, I don't know honestly. I think part of it probably was losing money, even though you're not, because you're buying your time back Again. Things are very clear today as I'm sitting here talking to you, but back then it was just like I don't know. I think I was either a just really control freak I know that I was but I think part of the problem too is probably I don't want to pay, a fear of paying for things. So I also was always afraid of investing in software or investing in, you know, joining a coaching program or something.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 20:18

I remember I found a course once and it was $200 and I'm like, oh my God, I can't spend that much money. So I think part of it was just being really cheap and part of it was the control freak thing. But control freak part, but control freak part. 100% took over.

Jared Ward: 20:38

So if it was you looking at it nowadays, how do you make it? Let's transplant you back into that time where you're fulfilling orders every day? How would you walk yourself through that decision of like oh, actually, you know, it's probably worth it to hire a $10 an hour employee to do this so that I can, you know, focus on selling marketing? Like, how do you view those decisions today and how do you balance like oh no, this actually is too expensive, it's not good for this phase. Versus like no, we actually need it.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 21:06

Yeah, I think today I would just view it and look at how much is my time worth and how much do I like or hate that task. So I think today I would just view it and look at how much is my time worth and how much do I like or hate that task. So I think that's a huge part of it. Obviously, cost plays a part At some point. You know, okay, I can't afford $1,000 a month software, but I can afford the $100 one. So I think cost can, as long as you're okay to spend it, and you maybe, I don't know, for me it was really hard to spend money.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 21:37

I'm very different now. I'm kind of like here take all the money as long as I don't have to do that. I don't want to do it. So I think it comes from. For me it came from experience. But today I view decisions based on time, Like how much will that take? Do I want to do it, Do I not want to do it? Is it worth my time and do I want to do it?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 21:56

So I tend now to outsource things that I despise doing, and I'm actually starting another e-commerce business and one of the first things that I 100% will be outsourcing is the fulfillment Cause. That's the thing that I don't want to do. I don't want to pack boxes, I don't want to pack orders, I don't want to go to the post office, so the. And I don't want to do customer service emails. So with the next business, those are the first things I will hire out for a virtual assistant, and then probably someone to come to the house and pack boxes. Then, I don't know, come up with some kind of a system. But yeah, for me it's just from experience. You know I value my time more now than I think I used to.

Jared Ward: 22:37

Yeah, it's so interesting because I talk about like when I see the evolution of e-commerce companies as they grow and expand and part of that, when you're in your garage stage, when you transition to the growth stage, it's like you outsource everything Like fulfillment to a 3PL bookkeeper customer service in the Philippines, like anything, like I don't want to touch it, I just want to sell my product. And then, what's interesting, I see companies as they transition from the growth stage and like it's like oh, oh, wow, you know we've got some serious revenue here.

Jared Ward: 23:09

Then they start bringing stuff back in house and forming like a big enterprise, like I've seen companies now you know they hit $50 million and where they're wanting to optimize margins, they'll bring the three P. Okay, let's, let's actually start to doing more film in house. We can save more money. We have more control of the brand. Let's. Okay, let's actually start doing more film in-house. We can save more money. We have more control over the brand. Okay, let's actually hire a bookkeeper. It's going to be more cost-effective in the long run. So it's interesting how that all comes into play. It does. So walk us through. When you got bought, what was that like? What was the process like?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 23:53

Oh my gosh, I still think the selling of the business is my most proud business achievement, even though I didn't make a ton of money or anything. It was a good first starter sale. I'll say that I made enough, but just a good achievement. I also think too, when I started that business I never intended to sell it. I didn't even know that you could sell a business. Now when I start my next one, from day one I know I'm building this to sell. You run it totally differently. So again, I just think it's funny what comes from experience and like the mistakes you make with the first business versus the second or third. You know, you know so much better. But I kind of knew in the second year I started to feel so someone actually in this right after about a year into the business, someone who I met at one of those pet events. They reach out to me and they were like oh, my boss wants to buy your business, could you come and meet us or whatever. I'm like, okay, interesting. So I ended up meeting these people and they had this weird company in California. It was. I don't know if they made like towels or something, I don't know. It was like a really weird, very sketchy situation the whole thing. But because of meeting these weird people, it got into my head oh, I could sell my business. Like that's really cool. So then, maybe a year later, I was in a Facebook group and a subscription box business broker kept posting that she helps people sell subscription boxes. So anyway, I reached out to her and I said oh, you know, I might be wanting to sell my business at some point next year. What's the process? Could you help me? So she kind of gave me a couple of pointers like get as much profit as humanly possible, profit, profit, profit. I'm like, okay.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 25:36

So then, maybe six months before I sold, then I was feeling burnt out. I was like I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do something else. I'm ready to move on. I think I wanted balance in my life, even though that doesn't really exist.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 25:44

I think if you have a business because my, you know, I had a young son at the point and I was like you know, I'm spending all my time working I need to not do this anymore. So, um, so I reached out to her and she, we started the process of the sale. You know, she had me fill out some paperwork and we had a couple of calls and I mean we listed the business in maybe November or December no, november. And then I someone bought it in January. I had a couple of phone calls with a couple of perspective people and then that was pretty much it. So it was honestly so easy. It was such a positive experience. She did everything for me. She was absolutely incredible. Um, really really good experience. So, and I've never felt happier than the day that that escrow payment went through and I just I felt this like literally wave of freedom over my body. I'm like I don't have to go to the post office anymore.

Jared Ward: 26:40

It was really funny.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 26:41

Yeah, it's like one of those. You have moments in life that you, just you can remember back, but you can picture what you, how you felt and everything, and that's, I would say, few moments in life, but that one just totally stands out in my memory. I was sitting on the couch. It came through. I'm like, oh my God. And then a few days later we're literally packing pallets of stuff to be shipped from Seattle to California and just getting rid of the business. I just spent three years building. It was like my second baby and you know you have mixed emotions. But the best thing I ever did was start the business. The equally best thing I did was sell it. It was time to move on and like I think you have to know when it's time and just move on.

Jared Ward: 27:22

So what a great story. I love that Now that we talked through the entire journey of that business. What was your biggest regret? What would you go back and change? And it doesn't even have to be one.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 27:37

Yeah, I think I really regret not outsourcing stuff. So I'm a marketer and I'm better at marketing physical product than I am with what I'm doing now. I feel like I'm a bad marketer with my own business because I don't know it's different when you're. You know, buy my program, buy my. Course it's not really fun, but hey, buy this really cool dog product for your dog, like it's so much easier.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 28:03

I really regret not leaning into the marketing side of things more. I really relied heavily on leveraging customers to basically sell for me, in a sense Like I really I had a referral program. I had. I didn't have a loyalty program but I would give customers that were loyal, I would give them extra things. I really relied on getting UGC from customers. So anyway, that was kind of my main strategy for the business. I did affiliate marketing. I really relied on getting UGC from customers. So anyway, that was kind of my main strategy for the business. I did affiliate marketing. I really relied on email, but by the end I was spending so much time fulfilling orders, going through my scrappy Excel sheets trying to figure out what did I give this customer last month Because again I had no good systems.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 28:46

I wish I would have found you, although I think I was probably not big enough to have joined your company at that point. But yeah, just not. You know, when you have a business, marketing is everything. Marketing is how your business will grow. And if you're spending all of your time doing, you know, the $10 an hour tasks, then your business is only going to get to a certain point. And I, like I said, I didn't do advertising, I didn't pay influencers. Everything was organic, scrappy, you know SEO, email, social media. Um, I had a really like 42,000 followers on on Instagram and Instagram was a huge source of yeah, and.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 29:23

I just built this really engaged community. Dog people are the best. For anyone listening that wants to start a pet business, they are the best customers. You can create such community with dog people because people love to talk about their dogs, show their dogs all the things and they're the best customers because they love to showcase your product if, if they like it. So, um, yeah. So I think that's my my big regret.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 29:47

I don't really have any other regrets because I give myself grease. It was my first business and I literally just had a child, but that's a big one. Like if I had just outsourced, I would have freed up more time and mental space to do more marketing, I could have grown more and maybe I wouldn't have gotten so burnt out that I wouldn't want to have. I wouldn't have wanted to sell the business, Although I think in the end it was the right decision for me but spending hours every day packing boxes, that's not a good use of my time. And it wasn't a good use of my time and I should have known better. But I don't know, I didn't know better. So, yeah, that's a big regret.

Jared Ward: 30:25

Well, I think your story is definitely one worth sharing no-transcript to do what you did, which is bootstrap everything you don't have to have, you don't have to do meta ads, you can build an engaged community, organic um, and you can have a good outcome like this. I think I wish more stories like yours were at the forefront of e-commerce, because I think these are the true cool stories in e-commerce.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 31:23

Well, thank you. Yeah, a lot of. I also think, too, when you're small and and scrappy, it's. Most online stores are going to be like that. You know, you hear about the poppies who you know. I think they went to a farmer's market to showcase. Do you know poppy, the soda brand? I'm obsessed with them.

Jared Ward: 31:42

Yes, I do yeah.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 31:43

They went to a farmer's market and I don't know how much of this is actually accurate. They went to the farmer's market when they first came up with the product idea, went to a farmer's market and a whole foods distributor or someone found them and instantly wanted them to be in whole foods. I mean, how, how often does that kind of thing happen? It doesn't. It's like it's the unicorn story. But I think a lot of people will see the poppies of the world or I don't know other companies and they're like well, my business isn't growing, what am I doing wrong? And you know, most businesses don't have those whole food stories. Or you know, then they were on shark tank and I think I don't know if they got a deal with one of the sharks. I think they did. But it's just like those aren't the normal stories. It's more of the normal stories are the people who start a business and it doesn't go anywhere and they close it. You know that's actually like the norm, even though that's unfortunate. But yeah, the small, the small stores are more normal.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 32:40

But you have to kind of go through those, I think, at least go through the scrappy stages to kind of know what you're doing. I think, like I have a friend who started a company and she was a business coach and she started um, a, an accessory brand, and she hired out everything from the beginning. She hired someone to do the website for her. She hired um me to help her launch the business. She hired someone else to do this and this and this and she kind of didn't have to go through and there's no shame in this.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 33:07

I think if you can afford it, awesome, like you don't need to know how to do all this crap. But you know there's some merit in going through the trenches of figuring out and learning how to. How do you build a website? How do you? How do you do all the email marketing stuff? Like how do? How do I actually do SEO and keyword research? Like there's a lot of positives for kind of going through all that crap work and learning what to do, because then when you do a second business you're so much better set up because you know all the stuff that you didn't know the first time. You know what I mean.

Jared Ward: 33:37

So I don't know, a hundred percent.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 33:40

Yeah.

Jared Ward: 33:41

Well, that was a wonderful story, um, and our time is almost up. Um, I I appreciate you coming on and sharing that with everybody. Um, I think a big takeaway for me is, especially as I run a software company is it's always this reminder of um focusing on your organic reach is is so important. It sounds like that was actually kind of your secret sauce there.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 34:09

Oh yeah.

Jared Ward: 34:10

You were really good and you doubled down on that and you built a profitable bootstrap business that was able to exit. I think everybody and even in the software B2B marketing industry we underestimate that a lot. So that was one of my takeaways.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 34:26

Oh good, thank you. I appreciate that, but thank you for having me on.

Jared Ward: 34:33

Where can everybody find you?

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 34:34

Sure. So my Instagram is kerryafitzgerald K-E-R-R-I-E, my website, kerryfitzgeraldcom, and I also have a podcast which Jared was on recently Ecommerce Society Podcast.

Jared Ward: 34:48

So those are some places you can find me. Yeah, she's a great follow, but anyways, thanks, carrie, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye.

Kerrie Fitzgerald: 34:55

Thank you so much.