E99: Joshua Chin

Richard Hill:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest is Joshua Chin, CEO and co-founder at Chronos Agency. How're you doing, Joshua?
Josh Chin:
Richard, it's great to be here. I'm doing great. Sunny and humid in Singapore as usual.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, we were just having a chat before we came on, weren't we? Joshua is in the amazing Singapore. I spent quite a bit of time there back in my university day. So it took me back to some great times, great memories and obviously the weather there is insane in comparison to where I am in the... Not so sunny UK right now.
Josh Chin:
Yeah, so I've heard. Yeah.
Richard Hill:
It's not too bad actually. Okay, so I think it'd be good to tell our listeners a little bit about the motivation behind Chronos Agency, what you do there and how it came about.
Josh Chin:
100%, so Chronos, essentially, we exist to help eCommerce brands find profits. And my belief is that profitability comes from what happens on the back end of an eCommerce business with retention, with life cycle marketing. And that's only been proven over and over again with the iOS updates and the changes in algorithm on the front end between Facebook and Google doing their thing and Apple coming into a picture. It's getting harder and harder to acquire a new customer. It's still important.
Josh Chin:
It's absolutely critical to scaling, but what brings in the sustainability and profitability and value of an eCommerce retailer comes in lifecycle mark thing. So we focus primarily on email, SMS and mobile push mark thing with Tapcart, which I'll dive into a little deeper later on. And so that's what we do. And we have a fully remote team of about, last I checked about 90 over... We're coming close to 100 people spread out globally working with brands that are digitally native, scaling quickly and wanting to find profitability as they scale.
Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Fantastic, there's a lot of things that I'm really excited to dive in. So I think a lot of eCommerce stores very much you said, it's getting harder and harder to acquire customer. A lot of people and a lot of store owners I think are so obsessed with new business, new business sales and maybe forget that customer lifetime value. So where we're talking about customer lifetime value, what would you say is the best way to measure that? What's the best way to look at that as a store owner, as a customer lifetime value of an individual or a group of individuals?
Josh Chin:
That's a fun one. And the way I think about it is instead of segments of customers, I'm going to look at the historical spend off a customer, historical customer lifetime value and predicted customer lifetime value as two categories of what we deem as customer lifetime value. And the idea of CLTV or CLV as some might call it is the combination of both those categories. So historically, what has a customer spent with your brand and what they are predicted to spend over the course of your lifetime before they churn.
Josh Chin:
That forms customer lifetime value. And it's really important to think about that because when we think about marketing spent and marketing efficiency and that there's a lot of talk around marketing efficiency ratio, MER, we often forget that the cost to acquire a customer can often be just break even in terms of what you're making in the first transaction or even losing a little bit of money and making a ton of profits on the back end and making that whole transaction and relationship profitable.
Josh Chin:
And the that's why it's really important to look at the entire picture of what a customer's relationship is going to look like in the long term and for how long. And well, subscription brands do it really well because obviously they're going to be typically losing money in the first purchase and then making a lot more money in the recurring purchases.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, so I think... Yeah, I mean, subscription businesses, I've signed up for quite a few if I'm honest during this last 18 months or so more than ever. And some of the experiences I'm having with those have just been phenomenal and I know certain coffee brands for example. I bought over one of these proper Grim coffee machines and bought the coffee beans and that super experience of them arriving and the packaging and the way it's packaged, the documentation that comes about the grower and the family and the history of that family in Ecuador or whatever it may be, it's real story and it makes me want to stay. And I have a cupboard full of coffee, yeah, absolutely, cupboard full of coffee. And I can't bring myself to cancel it even now probably I've got enough coffee for the next three months probably, yeah.
Josh Chin:
Same here, same here. And I have something to add to that. Let me tell you a story. Just towards the, I want to say, the end of Q3 last year, I subscribe to a local coffee subscription company called Perk Coffee. Amazing offer at the beginning. Essentially, I got free coffee for my first shipment. I paid a little bit for the delivery, but essentially I was paying effectively 10 bucks or five bucks for a month's worth of coffee. And I had a really good experience at the beginning.
Josh Chin:
And then I forgot about it. And I am a huge coffee drinker, but I travel, I travel quite a bit as well. So I forgot of my shipment. And when I came back home from my travels, I found three packages of coffee sitting on my doorstep. And I was like, "Hold on, did I buy coffee? Did I make another order without knowing." And it turns out I was in a recurring billing that just never ended. So the experience that I had was there were some pluses and some minuses and the great experience about that was I didn't have to think about making another order. I'll never run out of coffee.
Josh Chin:
Every time I open up a cupboard, I would always have coffee in there, but the issue is that I didn't like the surprise of not knowing that I was paying for coffee. And I'm pretty sure that they've sent me tons of emails reminding me that my next shipment is coming, but what I felt they could have done better in that entire experience was in using a multi-channel approach in managing their relationship with me as a consumer. As we know, the most optimized email program only generates about 20, 30% open rates per campaign per email.
Josh Chin:
You're still missing out on 70% at the very least of people who are not reading your messages on email. And that segment of people can be very critical. And I'll talk a little bit about the metrics that we look at with emails and how we overcome that whole thing. But when it comes into a subscription and a rebuild, it's super important to notify your customers and make sure that they're well aware that the next shipment is coming, that you're charging a card coming up next. A lot of people don't think about this and they often think about...
Josh Chin:
They're going to forget about it and I'm going to retain a customer and I'm going to make it a lot more money. And they're not going to say anything about it if they don't remember. And that's okay. But that's a terrible way of maintaining a strong, long term customer relationship because you're going to end up with lots of pissed off customers who might become detractors of your brand, which will be terrible. So coupling those email notifications with SMSs plus push notifications, if that is an option is going to be incredible because now you're covering people who may not have senior emails, retargeting those people using SMSs.
Josh Chin:
SMSs are known to be really effective in capturing attention. It is a very personal form of communication. It is one of those channels where open rates are at 80, 90% plus, 80, 90% plus opens. You won't see that on email. But the amount of information I can pack in an SMS, very limited and relatively more expensive than sending out an email. But it's important to have that coupled in. And then with push notifications, you're looking at a channel that has an incredible amount of potential.
Josh Chin:
Because now between web push and mobile push, web push is actually the low notification that we get on our screen on the bottom right hand side when you click on yes to send me notifications on desk or browser, but on mobile push, you're essentially getting free notifications sent to you. So if the same notifications you get from Google Calendar or Messenger or WhatsApp and as a brand, you're able to send those messages for free essentially without any limits.
Josh Chin:
And the limits being your setting cadence and how much you want to irritate your customers. And between the three channels, you're basically building a lifecycle strategy that would cover pretty much all the basis essentially ensuring that at least 80% of your customers are seeing the messages that you want them to see.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, that's brilliant. I think the guys that are listening in, if you ever think about what you've got in place now, I would imagine most of you are obviously sending those, if you're on subscriptions or you've got customers on subscriptions or you're using email marketing, no doubt, you're obviously sending emails, but your open rates will be nothing like they are on SMSs push. I mean, SMS. Last time you got, how many texts have you got on your phone that you've not read? None I would imagine.
Richard Hill:
So it's pretty obvious that SMS is obviously going to have a crazy open rate. But just stepping back a little bit, there's quite a few things there I think and when you think about this lifetime value and something you said there was obviously you potentially lose money on that first order. So understanding that lifetime value is so important because if you are in your space as an eCom store, if you are able to acquire that customer or pay more for that customer than anybody else, you can really dominate that space.
Richard Hill:
Whereas a lot of people I think can be quite short timed and shortsighted in effect that we bought that product, we're making two pounds on it, whatever it may be. If we can sell it for less than two pounds, cost of acquisition, they're making money. No, you're buying a customer that over two years is maybe going to make you $200, 200 pounds. Then obviously you can afford to lose X amount, maybe 20 pounds or whatever it may be on that first customer. And I think depending on what you're selling, especially products that are high value and high average order values and car values, that's really... I mean, what else would you say? Why is customer value so important, sorry, customer lifetime value so important?
Josh Chin:
The idea of customer lifetime value goes beyond the transactional value and revenue of a customer. The idea of customer lifetime value is in two parts. It's the length of that interaction, the length of the relationship measured by the number of transactions times the average value of each transaction, the AOV and that gives you custom lifetime value. Now the number of transactions matter a lot because the more transactions that are being made with a brand, the deeper the relationship.
Josh Chin:
And I had a really interesting conversation on Twitter with another marketer. And we found that on average, 20% of first time buyers end up being a repeat buyer if the store and the business is optimized for repeat purchases, but a repeat purchaser would become a third purchaser about 60 to 70% of the time. So if you've bought a second time, it's way more likely for you to buy a third time and so on and so forth.
Josh Chin:
So it's important to look at that. And the value of a customer who has bought from you at least three times is way higher because the likelihood of that customer being a promoter of your business, when we think about the whole NPS model, Net Promoter Score, the likelihood of the person becoming an evangelist of your brand or your products way higher.
Josh Chin:
The likelihood of me talking about Perk Coffee, for example, after having my experience with them, buying from them multiple times, way higher. So the expanded effect of growth from a long term customer becomes way higher. And obviously the cost of getting someone to buy again versus a new stranger to buy from you, way lower, way cheaper. And that's where profitability comes from.
Richard Hill:
So how would you say then, our listeners, they're listening in, obviously we don't know the specifics of who's got what in terms of, are they running SMS? Are they running... But what things would you say our listeners can do to increase customer lifetime value? What are some of the specifics that... Obviously you working with hundreds and hundreds of brands and obviously you see a lot of recurring themes, what are some of the things the business is looking at to increase that lifetime value?
Josh Chin:
That's a great question, but a massive one at the same time. I'm going to structure my answer in a few parts. When we think about lifetime value and retaining a customer, it starts from that initial interaction that you have with your customer. So it's important for us to map out the entire journey from start to finish, from the initial interaction to the sunset of that customer relationship and identify opportunities for you to elevate your customer's experience at key points in that journey.
Josh Chin:
I'll give you an example. So for a brand that's just starting out or just about to experience scale, there are three junctures in that journey that is critical to maximize experience and the quality of experience on. So it's prepurchase, that initial interaction that typically that's coupled with a popup and a welcome series on email. And then the second instance is in cart abandonment. When someone's abandoned their cart about to make a purchase that hasn't completed their order, got distracted for whatever reason.
Josh Chin:
The third instance being post-purchase. Right after someone has completed your order, what happens next? These three instances would dictate, I would say, 70 to 80% of the quality of a customer's experience without going too complex on the entire customers journey and all the different moving parts. If we could optimize these three instances using email, SMS and potentially person notifications, we are set to scale really, really effectively and really well.
Josh Chin:
Now diving a little bit deeper into each of these instances. With a welcome series, that's literally the first impression that we were getting from a brand as a consumer. So it's really important to showcase number one, what your brand stands for, your personality and also what are your best products that you know your customers love. Put your best foot forward. And then at the cart recovery stage, a lot of people rely on using plugins. A lot of brands are relying on plugins and templates and that's a terrible way of looking at it.
Josh Chin:
One of the metrics that we look at with cart recovery rate between email and SMS should be at the very minimum 10%, but we typically aim for 15 to 20%. Meeting 15 to 20% of customers that abandon a cart should end up converting at the end of your email and SMS automations. So the only way you're able to achieve that is if you have full control over the messages, the creatives and the cadence of emails and SMSs that you're sending during this period of time.
Josh Chin:
The last piece with push, sorry, with post purchase is where things get really, really exciting. You've just made a sale, the person is now a new customer. How do you then set up that relationship to scale? That initial interaction after a purchase is made, it's incredibly important because it's very, very fragile. The person has made an order, they paid you, but they haven't received their order yet. It's like the, I want to say the...
Josh Chin:
So there's the zero moment of truth, first moment of truth and the second moment of truth. I believe the zero moment of truth is when you Google first time for your brand. And then the first moment of truth is the first interaction. And the second being, when you have the product, correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's-
Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Josh Chin:
... When you have the product in your hands. So the period between completing the order to receiving the product is where a lot of regret happen. Buyer remorse is a big thing, especially with products that have that impulse buy element to it. It's more important to reinforce what's important in the relationship, what makes your product unique and why they made the purchase in the first place. And then showcase your personality, go along with it.
Josh Chin:
One of the emails I really love comes from a brand called CD Baby by Derek Silvers. Amazing post purchase email. Highly recommend you guys check it out. Just go Google it. You find the email I'm talking about. It's funny, it's witty. It showcases the brand personality beyond just an order confirmation email. A typical order confirmation email from Shopify is boring, it's dull, it's black and white, it doesn't say much, but that's a key moment in the relationship that you can elevate.
Josh Chin:
So that's how I structure it. And now between the three channels, email, estimates and push, I think of email as a core communication channel that is still extremely effective in delivering a relatively large amount of information for a relatively captive audience. When you're on an email, there is nowhere else for you to scroll too. It's not like a Facebook feed. You're literally having to read the entirety of the email or just exit the email.
Josh Chin:
So great opportunity to deliver a lot of content that is relevant, that makes sense, that captures attention. With SMS, high attention tool, really high open rates, really high delivery rates. It's very easy for you to deliver information quickly, but there is a limit to how much information you can have on that channel. With push notification, this is a really interesting channel. Now we work with a company called Tapcart that essentially creates a brand new sales channel for Shopify brands using a native dedicated mobile app.
Josh Chin:
So brands are then able to create a mobile app that's essentially a merit to what's happening on their Shopify store, but it is a pure native mobile experience wherein the whole purchase journey can happen on the app itself. It's a tool that you can use for content delivery. Can have your blog posts on there, your recipes, your guides and stuff, but also the entire purchase experience can be built on the mobile app. Now mobile push notifications is, as I mentioned, there's no limit to how many push notifications you can send.
Josh Chin:
It's free, but it can be annoying. It's personal. It appears on the phone the first thing you see before you even unlock your mobile device. So it's important to be prudent with the way that we use mobile notifications in terms of staggering messages across email, SMS and push. One of the interesting use cases around mobile apps and push notification is when it comes to, for instance, a product launch, with brands, launching new products, we have experimented with product launches happening only on the mobile app alone for the first 24 to 72 hours.
Josh Chin:
And it's not available anywhere else. And nobody gets a notification on an email or SMS. They only get a notification on the mobile app and the push notifications that they receive on the mobile app. This is incredibly effective for fashion brands, for companies that rely on the new product launch model. And that generates a lot of hype because exclusivity breeds a lot of attention. And once we channel all the attention onto mobile app, subsequently with the trickle down effect on SMS and email becomes way more powerful.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, so it's not really a case of choosing one over the other, email, SMS and push, using them together is the best weapon. It's not really I think-
Josh Chin:
Absolutely.
Richard Hill:
I would say a lot of our listeners will no doubt be using them all. There'll be a lot... I'd say nearly all will be using email, but will they be using email in the way that you are discussing there? I mean, what would you say, if we dive into email for a second, I think that's probably a good start point with a lot of people where they probably are doing. The abounding cart and post purchase, but what are certain things on email if we were to dive into email specifically and just sidestep the two for a moment, what are some of the things that you think our listener should be really looking at?
Richard Hill:
So we've got that abandoned cart piece, which is you said, if that's done right, that can giving you an uplift and should give you an uplift of circa 20%. So I think if our listeners one, if you don't have abandoned cart email set up, so straight away, obviously there's a serious uplift in business there. But even if you do, what are some of those things, Joshua that you should be thinking about over and above that basic implementation of installed widget, plugin and abandoned cart emails are going? What else and what can you do? What would you recommend to do with those abandoned cart emails? And what else would you recommend to do with email for staff?
Josh Chin:
Yep, so with cart abandonment and cart recovery, it's a huge piece. For a lot of brands, that's typically the number one or number two driver of revenue in their email program. So it's critical to think about optimizing cart recovery as a function on its own. So when we think about optimization, it's really just split tests. Your split testing starting from your subject lines to your headlines, to your creatives on email if there are creatives, to the copy and to the offer. And it goes step by step.
Josh Chin:
One of the biggest winning tests that we have come across is in split testing, a HTML-based email, something that's well designed versus a pure text-based email that has absolutely no creatives at all. Pure text, only one link that sends people back onto the cart page. It used to be the case that the text-based email always won regardless of brands. But recently, I've come to find that it's actually a mix of results.
Josh Chin:
So what that tells me is that you really cannot assume that one variation is going to work better than the other without actually putting data behind your design and testing it out on the ground. You never know what your audience is going to respond well to. So that's one of the tests that I would conduct. And I would go down that funnel of testing until I reach a 15 to 20% conversion rate on my cart abandonment sequences.
Josh Chin:
With email, a lot of people think about number one, open rates and well, in conjunction of open rates, engagement as a function of success, but that's often quite limiting because there's only so much you can optimize in a single email campaign. And there is just no way of getting everybody to open every single email, not even a majority. So that's why the true open rates that we've seen at an optimal level sits at between 20, 30% and the rest of the people are just not going to open your emails.
Josh Chin:
So one way to work around that is what I call list utilization rate. List utilization rate basically tells us how well are we engaging our lists in any given month? So I'm looking at a total number of people, subscribers who have opened at least one email in any given month versus over the total number of email subscribers that I have on my list. And assuming that I'm sending out 10 campaigns in a single month, I need at least 50% of my subscribers to have open at least one of those campaigns.
Josh Chin:
That's a success metric I look at on a more holistic monthly point of view. That's much more productive to think about because then you are essentially targeting different segments of consumers and different segments of audiences with different messages and different offers that apply almost exclusively to each party that may not work when you cross promoting that way. So that's for email. The last thing I want to touch on is in deliverability.
Josh Chin:
I've recently had a number of conversations around deliverability. It's a really boring topic and it's one that not many people think about until they land in hot water. Most often the messages... I actually just had to reply to an email today about a brand that's been doing really well on Klaviyo, on email, but all of a sudden, emails are landing in s.pam and operates have plummeted over the past couple of campaigns and they have no clue why. It's very common.
Josh Chin:
And it's really troubling to think about because with deliverability or your ability to land in inboxes and you get the right messages in the right place is critical as a first step for everything else that you're doing with your email program. None of the split tests matter, none of the conversions matter. Well, conversions wouldn't happen if you are not even landing in the right inboxes in the first place. So it's a foundation that we have set in place.
Josh Chin:
A couple of things that could help and it's really a wide ranging topic is number one, keep an eye on your deliverability using tools like Glock apps. That's G-L-O-C-K-A-P-P-S.com or the mailgenius.com that gives you basically a report of where your emails are landing. If they're landing in one of those tabs on Gmail or spam or if you're on a black list of sorts or a spam, trap of any kind. That gives you a really good insight into how you're performing specifically with each ISP.
Josh Chin:
The way that Gmail treats deliverability, so called deliverability is going to be very different from the way that Outlook treats deliverability and it's going to be slightly different from the way that Yahoo treats deliverability. So it's important for us to understand where our problems or issues are coming from in order for us to isolate that segment of audience.
Josh Chin:
So for instance, if I'm landing in spam with my Gmail subscribers, which is going to be horrifying because that's going to account for 70, 90% of people, I would then have to isolate all my Gmail subscribers into a segment, fix that while I work on the rest of my subscribers, which are not having a problem and work through the process that way. Another thing that people could look into is setting up a dedicated sending domain. What that means is essentially when you look at marketing emails that you receive from brands, it's typically going to say from brandname.com via Klaviyomail.com or something along those lines.
Josh Chin:
Right, so setting up a dedicated setting domain would take that via Klaviyomail.com away and it allows you to have full control over what we call your sending reputation, which iconically Gmail and Google weighs really heavily on your algorithm when it comes to spam and all that stuff. So it gives you full control and gives you a little bit of opportunity for branding as well. And it's much easier fix that way. So-
Richard Hill:
Yeah, I've seen that a lot actually. Yeah, I've seen that a lot I think... Yeah, I mean, there's so many things there, Joshua. That was brilliant. I think deliverability, I mean, straight away, it's just obvious, isn't it? You're doing all that work on maybe segmentation, copy, creative, split testing if your emails aren't getting through. So guys, I would literally be pausing this episode right now, going to the tools that Joshua mentioned and be testing your deliverability.
Richard Hill:
And then that opportunity there to potentially, so you are saying I think to create another domain name and use that, by another domain name and use that to send you emails. So I'm actually doing that in one of my businesses. We bought the same domain name with an extra E on it. It's identical, but it looks the same. It's got extra E on it. And we use that for a lot of our outbound... Our outbound marketing team use that because they're sending a lot of emails per day per month and then it doesn't potentially then interfere or compromise our main domain name.
Richard Hill:
And then we can obviously look at that on its own. And we've been running that ourselves probably about a year and a half now. And then I see a lot of brands doing that, but you don't really notice it as you are working with that brand. So it's fine I think, but yeah, a lot of great things there. So I think it'd be good to maybe talk us through a brand if you can mention it, if you can't mention it, that's fine, Joshua, but talk about a brand that you've scaled through, some of the things you've talked about by improving this life cycle of touch points with a brand. Talk us through a particular case study if you will.
Josh Chin:
Yeah, we actually published quite a number of case studies recently on our site. If you go to Chronos data Agency, you find a ton of them. One of my personal favorites, which is a really interesting brand is called Truly Beauty. It's T-R-U-L-Y Beauty. And they sell products that are really, really visual, really nice looking. And it's something that really attracts a certain type of demographic of people. It works really well advertising on TikTok and the organic content of TikTok works really well also.
Josh Chin:
One of the things that we had to think about is in terms of that, there's that impulse element to a product like this because it's visual, it's nice. It's not priced crazily high. So it's really easy for someone to just say, "All right, I'm going to buy this. This looks great. Let me make a purchase right now." Then the challenge is then how do I then retain that relationship and elevate that relationship beyond a single impulse purchase? So that's where email and SMS came in really handy.
Josh Chin:
We used, I believe, post script for SMS and Klaviyo for email. And really you can use any software to accomplish what we've done. But I truly believe that Klaviyo has helped a ton in the process because it allowed us to own the data that we needed to create automations and segmentations around the identified audiences from engagement levels to frequency and monetary RF. The whole RFM model is very easily done up within Klaviyo using the data points that we have and using Klaviyo as a central depository of information and data between all the applications that we are using.
Josh Chin:
So postscripts, SMS data and first party data and zero party data is fed back into Klaviyo as a central depository and acts like a CDP, a customer data platform, which we then use to create automations that are hyper personalized almost at a perceived one to one scale for all customers. So over time, in 12 months, their email performance actually eight X and SMS became a big part of their revenue as well. We grew the SMS program, I believe three X as well over the period of time that we worked in SMS very recently.
Josh Chin:
And it's been great and they're continuing to grow. I know they're going into retail and it's really helping to create that overall journey. And we talked a little bit about creating evangelists and so-called promoters. And it all trickles into the offline world when people go into a retail store and they see a brand that they've seen online, that have received emails from and have had constant and consistent communication with. It's so much easier to scale that way.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah, that's when it gets exciting. Isn't it? Brilliant, well, thank you, Joshua. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice today. So I think that there's so many takeaways in this episode. It's been fantastic to have you on. Have you got any resource you would recommend, feel free to obviously mention your own offerings there. I know you've got different courses and things as well, but any resources specifically for improving and understanding that lifestyle, life cycle, I keep seeing lifestyle, I don't know, life cycle marketing and improving that customer lifetime value.
Josh Chin:
Yeah, 100%. We do have a course, but it's absolutely not necessary. The information is out there. The course is just having all of that packaged into one place. It's just easier to consume, but it's absolutely not necessary. The ideas and insights are available all over the internet. We have an amazing YouTube channel and we also interview quite a number of amazing folks on our YouTube channel, on our podcast as well. So great resources all around.
Josh Chin:
We have recently created an industry report on our site. Great download. Our team has interviewed a bunch of our partners, gathered insights and trends and where we're headed as an industry. Some other resources outside of Chronos, I'd strongly recommend just YouTube. That's how I got started. That's how I learned. And Twitter, of all places, Twitter is a really good place to learn and ask very specific questions that you may have about the problems that you might be facing, the opportunities that you have.
Josh Chin:
And it's such an easy way for you to interact with people that you typically may not have access too. I've been able to connect with some amazing folks on Twitter. And I've recently just started my Twitter account and I've been trying to post a little bit more regularly in there, but I realized that eCommerce Twitter is a great place to learn and connect with folks who are doing amazing things.
Richard Hill:
Brilliant. Brilliant, well, thank you for that. So I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you'd recommend to our listeners, Joshua?
Josh Chin:
Yeah, there are so many, there are so many, but I'll have two. The first being Principles by Ray Dalio.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, that's right. Remind me, yeah.
Josh Chin:
Yep, Principles is a great book and the ideas that Ray put forward has shaped the culture and core values that we have had in our company for a long time. I'm a big fan of his ideas. And we've adopted some of those insights into our company in how we've grown, especially as a remote team. The second one is a book that I'm currently reading. It's called innovation Stack. Let me just pull that up. Innovation Stack by... Innovation Stack, subtitled Building and Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time by Jim McKelvey. He is the co-founder of Square.
Richard Hill:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Josh Chin:
Yeah, co-founder of Square. And he talks about what it means to be an entrepreneur and the idea of building a resilient and world changing company. And it's really interesting because Square happens to be one of the only companies that have taken a massive attack by Amazon and survived. And he talks about the idea of innovation, what innovation means, why innovation exists and how do you go about the idea of innovation? It's not what you think. And the big idea is that innovation is a necessity. It comes out of necessity. It is a means not an end in and of itself. So you don't strive for innovation, you go for innovation because you have to. And he talks about the thought process-
Richard Hill:
That sounds brilliant.
Richard Hill:
... interesting.
Josh Chin:
I'll get that ordered. Well, thank you, Joshua, for being a guest on eComOne. The guy that want to find out more about you, more about what you're doing over at Chronos, what's the best way to reach out to you?
Josh Chin:
I'm on Twitter, @joshuachronos. That's Joshua C-H-R-O-N-O-S. You can also email me at joshua@chronos.agency or you can go to chronos.agency to find out more about our company.
Richard Hill:
Brilliant. Well, thank you for being on the show and I'll speak to you again soon.
Josh Chin:
Thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure.
Richard Hill:
Thank you. Bye, bye.