E55: Tobi Oluwole

Richard Hill:
Hi there, I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 55th episode. In this episode I speak with Tobi Oluwole, merchant success manager at Shopify. Tobi has spent many years building his own stores and now helps Shopify merchants scale. They are all at least doing a million dollars+ in revenues. Tobi works very closely with over 50 merchants directly and knows the platform inside out. So if you're a Shopify store owner or thinking of using Shopify, this is the episode for you. So some of the topics that we cover in this episode include specific growth strategies for Shopify stores. The two specific areas that you must utilize in Shopify ecosystem. Which are some of the biggest mistakes that he sees most Shopify stores make and how to avoid them. And we discuss multi-country sites and how simple it can be with Shopify. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe, so you are always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode. How are you doing Tobi?

Tobi Oluwole:
Doing well. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. How are you?

Richard Hill:
I am really good, actually. We were just comparing where the notes, weren't we? Before we... You're staring at a bit of snow where you are, which is amazing. And we've got a bit of sunshine here in the UK.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. I mean, I wish we could switch spots right now. That would be awesome.

Richard Hill:
Tobi is in Canada right now. I know my spies tell me that you posted on LinkedIn a few months ago about how sort of being relentless and the relentlessness of sort of you really wanted to work at Shopify, I believe. Is that right?

Tobi Oluwole:
Yes. Your spies are correct.

Richard Hill:
Yes. Maybe talk our listeners through that sort of persistence and that sort of really pushing through that got you in the position that you're in now.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. I mean, I've always been, I would say, an entrepreneur. I come from a background of entrepreneurs, both my parents are entrepreneurs. So while I was in university I would just start these businesses or side hustles, like flipping iPhones or selling noodles or whatever I could find, right? So my final year, it was 2015, I discovered the hoverboards, right? You stand on them and they move around. It was my birthday and I literally went, "This is going to be a hit product." And so I bought five of them from Alibaba at the time. And I was trying to sell them, but I didn't know how to build a website and wasn't technical at all. So I stumbled across Shopify and it was pretty easy to build a website, fairly intuitive. I was able to collect payments, look really legit.

Tobi Oluwole:
And that was the first time I fell in love with a piece of technology because I was like, this is insanely powerful that someone like me with not enough money to actually get an agency or build a website could actually start a business and do it for a hundred bucks, right? And so I just fell in love with the company and the product back in 2015. And I just locked in and I was like, "This is where I want to work. One day I want to work at Shopify." So in 2016, I'm pretty sure I applied, just immediate rejection, no skill or any chance of getting it. But then 2017 I got a referral from a friend and I went in for an interview, got to the first stage, didn't get through. I applied, essentially, twice a year for the next three years. And I'd get to the final stages, wouldn't make it through. Final stage, wouldn't make it through.

Tobi Oluwole:
And then 2020 I just got fed up with sales and I tried to get into Shopify a different position. And I applied, I got the job in 12 days. And they skipped me through the process. They were like, "You've told us your life story five times now."

Richard Hill:
It's you again.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. So it was one of those things where I think it was more if you really want to work somewhere or if you really want to do something, you just keep knocking, right? Just because it's a no doesn't mean it's a never, right? Every time they said no, it's like, "I should probably change something." So I would change the way I dressed for the interviews. I would change what notebook I came with. I would change the type of questions I asked and I just kept going back. And I think once I got in, people were like, "Why would you apply seven times? Why wouldn't you just go somewhere else?" I'm like, "Well, if you go to your house and you try to get in, you forgot your keys, do you just go to another house or do you just keep knocking until you get in?" Right? You'd call the freaking locksmith, try the window, right? So that was pretty much my attitude.

Richard Hill:
That's great, isn't it? I mean, that's a three to five year journey of knocking on the door. Different door, side door, back door, front door. Different disguises almost each time.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. Exactly.

Richard Hill:
Mustache.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Hello.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. Precisely.

Richard Hill:
So obviously, fast forward a year down the line. And you're obviously well and truly got your sort of feet under the carpet, if you like, as it is at Shopify. So tell us how you've helped eCommerce stores and eCommerce clients grow with their online business.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. I mean, so I oversee 50 merchants, right? 50+ merchants. And my job is really just to act as an extension of their team within Shopify. So giving them all the insight that they need, helping them when it comes to things like their acquisition, their conversion strategy, brand strategy, and just being a trusted confidant for them and also helping them get the most out of the platform, right? So pulling right resources, right people from different places, so that they can actually make the decisions they need to make, so they can keep growing.

Richard Hill:
So would you say there's some consistent threads there then for our listeners' eCommerce stores that will have Shopify. What are some of the things that maybe... So a couple of things that consistently impact a Shopify specific eCommerce store that they maybe quite often a lot of merchants miss or don't use, don't do? Anything you would say on that?

Tobi Oluwole:
I think because businesses are so different, I think we have almost 2 million stores on Shopify, right? I mean, you have restaurants, you have these individual people, you have staples, you have all these different types of companies. There's buckets of things that everyone should be doing, right? So you should have a great acquisition strategy to get the traffic to the store, right? You should have really great user experience and the user interface in terms of the pictures, where the product is and all of that, so that you can get through good conversion, right? You should have some sort of loyalty program, discount, email marketing to get them back for attention, right? You should have a strong brand strategy, right? And know where you're going. And so there's all these things that you should have, but here's the problem.

Tobi Oluwole:
I work with the merchants that will do millions of dollars and all they do is post on Reddit, right? And so there isn't really now a way, right? It's more just making sure that you cover your basis. You build credibility either by boasting, borrowing or branding, right? And so you either build credibility by going, "Listen, we've been in CNBC, ABC, BBC, and all these things." And people go, "Oh, okay. So they're boasting, I can trust them," right? Or you borrow someone's credibility. "We worked with Kim Kardashian," right? Everyone goes, "Oh, they worked with Kim Kardashian," right? So now you're borrowing credibility. Or you just have such a sick brand that people trust it, right? So those are the three ways you build credibility. And there is no right way, it just depends on what you're working with when you start the business.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it goes back to a lot of basics, isn't it really? You've got to do the fundamentals well. So obviously, a very interesting year to obviously get into the role. A ridiculous year in terms of growth for eCommerce worldwide, obviously. Shopify is right at the cusp of that. Yeah. I mean, I was looking at Shopify shares literally the day we went into lockdown. I was with a friend of mine like, "Shopify, that'd be a good one to sort of invest in." And it definitely was. So obviously, 12 months down the line or more than that, aren't we? Sort of 14 months down the line. Some crazy stats, some crazy growth, but is there anything really that surprised you with the sort of developments other than the growth? Any sort of particular areas that have really surprised you this last year and things that guys should be looking at?

Tobi Oluwole:
I think one of the big things is TikTok.

Richard Hill:
Okay. Yeah.

Tobi Oluwole:
It's like Facebook five years ago on steroids is what TikTok is, right? And so I think a lot of merchants, especially for acquisition, TikTok is a huge game changer because the algorithm does the work for you. And it's so different right now because it's cheap acquisition, right? And then right under TikTok I would say Twitter, right? Twitter is still so direct, it's still so cheap in terms of acquisition too. So between TikTok and Twitter for acquisition I think that's huge. I think there's a lot of tactical plays, right? For things like conversion, right? With free shipping bars and having a slight cart, right? An upsell in the cart. So there's a lot of tactical plays depending on what you're selling.

Tobi Oluwole:
For my stores, I only sell digital products, like courses, right? So there's only so much that I can do, I'm not going to upsell a t-shirt, right? So it's just making sure that you're following the right tactics there. I thought Clubhouse was going to be a big hit, but it's already sinking in terms of the daily active users and the downloads, right? So just, I think, relying on TikTok and Twitter to really drive traffic is going to be a huge revelation for a lot of motions.

Richard Hill:
So any specifics on TikTok around sort of a monetization of it or anything sort of drilling into TikTok a little bit, any merchants that you think... Well, actually specific strategy on TikTok?

Tobi Oluwole:
So TikTok, it's a numbers game on TikTok right now, right? So part of the for you page, the secret of that for you page is that it isn't a timeline, right? It's just curated for you. So my wife, she's all into fitness and working out and that's what she watches. Now I watch a lot of real estate and just funny videos and soccer videos, right? So we can be on TikTok for two hours and we won't see the same video, right? That's a crazy algorithm. So the key to TikTok is showing up consistently with the same type of content, right? And the algorithm will build your audience for you, right? And then the monetization really can happen because you're allowed to put a link in your bio, right? Just like in Instagram. There's a guy, he started selling these masks that you can take off and slap on your hand and it becomes a wrist-

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Like a bracelet. Yeah, yeah.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. And he takes it off, slaps on. Him and the five friends -

Richard Hill:
That's cool. I have seen that. I know my kids have those, but not as a mask, just as a bracelet.

Tobi Oluwole:
Exactly. So it was very, very interesting. He gets seven million views, okay? I mean, no marketing, no agency, no ad spend, just a video with five friends, taking the mask off and slapping it on. Seven million views, his business goes to six figures within a couple of days. That's an insane thing to think about, right? Mark Zuckerberg would gladly take six figures from you before giving you six figures back, right? So I think that's something that's being, I think, still underrated right now in terms of business. Because there's TikTok for business where you can run ads and things like that, but it's not ready yet. It's not actually as good as Facebook's algorithm in terms of ads. So paying for it, it's not the time.

Richard Hill:
So organic TikTok. Okay. So I think this probably partly answers the next question then. So if you're in a very busy or very competitive industry, a lot of players in that industry, a lot of players and companies selling the same product, very aggressive sort of niche, if you like. Have you got any strategies to really stand out and to really compete in a very competitive niche?

Tobi Oluwole:
I have a couple merchants that are in those competitive niches. Like apparel, apparel will always be competitive, right? So what I've seen them do for the people that are doing it really well is they have an insanely deep understanding of the psychographic parts of their demographic, right? So what do they want? What do they need? Right? And then speaking directly to that and going deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, right? To the point where it penetrates the content that they put out, the type of videos that they put out, where they advertise. So using, for example, podcasts and sponsoring podcasts for very, very niche, right? And so I think getting that deep understanding of your market within that busy marketplace is important because there's probably 100,000 people that look like that, there's 4 billion people online.

Tobi Oluwole:
There's probably 100,000 people that look like your specific niche market, right? And what I see that some people get wrong is they go, "Everybody's our market." Well, if everybody's your market, nobody's your market, right? And we know that, right? And then the other thing is I'm seeing a lot of merchants just leverage busy marketplaces in terms of Amazon, right? So Amazon's very busy and you could see the same thing a whole bunch of different times, but because of the traffic Amazon drives, right? You can still get a little bitty piece of a very, very humongous pie, right? So I've seen people use Amazon, I've seen people just understanding their market and targeting them as specifically as possible. And then the last thing that I've seen is just people experimenting and testing what might work, right?

Tobi Oluwole:
At the start of the pandemic there was all these merchants selling masks, everyone started selling masks, right? And we had a couple of merchants that had really good ties with people that were in the PR world, right? And what they did is just very early on just gave J-Lo and Ben Affleck and all these people these masks, right? And so that's a very busy space at that point, right? But they grew to millions within four months, right? Because if you're wearing a mask can you tell what brand a mask is, right? Right? So that was a very unique way for them to differentiate starting off. And I thought that was brilliant.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That was great. Thanks Tobi. I think we've got three takeaways then. We've got that drilling into that audience. Episode 50 of the podcast we had Rand Fishkin on and from SparkToro, and we talked about that for a whole sort of hour almost. So I think for you listeners that are listening right now, episode 50 we really go into detail about really going into those audiences and finding and targeting almost those sub audiences potentially where there's the potential, but maybe cheaper on paid to target. Talked about sponsored podcasts, sponsoring podcast, being on podcasts in your niche like this. And then leveraging the monster of Amazon. And I'm putting now obviously, a fraction of a percent of their demand for HQ or for a category, sub category, whatever it may be. Obviously, a huge potential.

Richard Hill:
And then that testing piece is something that we always try and hammer home on, on a lot of episodes. Having a budget potentially, have your budget, a percentage of your budget where you're always testing. I think that's so important because you are, if you're consistent with it, you're going to unearth and find some real gems in that testing that you will get, potentially, a little test here. We see that a lot of times that people that are testing new audiences in YouTube ads, for example. Next thing we know they've maxed the revenues from search ads by certain targeting on YouTube, for example. So you have some great takeaways there, Tobi, thank you. So obviously, 50 merchants, that's quite a lot of merchants that you're supporting, and obviously you own your own projects as well. What would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that you see merchants doing and that we need to avoid?

Tobi Oluwole:
So especially if they're on Shopify, I find merchants don't take advantage of the full ecosystem of whatever platform that they're on. For Shopify, the brilliance of Shopify, the reason why people do so well on Shopify is Shopify payments, the Shop Pay app, the Shop Pay, right? The ecosystem that makes it so successful, right? So with Shop Pay, for example, the Shop Pay app, we're seeing insane conversion because people are one click, a couple seconds they're gone, right? There's not even enough time for buyers remorse, right? So it's understanding that if you're going to start on a Shopify, right? Or any commerce store, understand the ecosystem and get the most out of the ecosystem, right? And then the other mistake is not getting enough social proof early on, right? So if you're going to come on and you're going to tell me that this is the greatest product ever, show me some reviews, show me someone using it, right? A human being, a normal person, not just an influencer, right?

Tobi Oluwole:
Show me some user generated content, right? And getting that extra social proof usually does so much more, right? Than just running ads and showing these mocked up images, right? And I think the last thing is branding, right? I see it over and over again. To be able to create a really great trustworthy brand right now is so cheap, right? Between Fiverr, Upwork, Canva, and freelancing, you can create a brand that looks like it came out of Silicon Valley for a thousand bucks, right? Maybe 500 if you look really close. And so not actually spending the time to just brand it so well, right? It costs money, right? Because everything else can get sorted out. The user flow, the email marketing, the UX and the UI and all that stuff can get sorted out. But you never get a second chance at a first impression, right? If I come on the store and there's pixelated pictures here, and then there's this thing that's broken over here. I mean, will I come back? Maybe one day, right? But it's very rare that I come back to something like that, right?

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Very cheap, isn't it? To solve those problems, right? In the scale of things. Even yesterday I was looking at a site, they'd just become a client of ours, actually. The site was built 15 months ago and straight away, exactly what you said it's like pixelated pictures. And this company, it's more of a B2B brand, but they're selling a service that is in the tens of thousands of pounds. And the pixelate images, which might cost, like you say, a few hundred dollars or even less than that potentially to fix. Or even if it was a rebrand for a few thousand dollars when they're selling a tens of thousands of dollars service, beggars belief. I think merchants can get quite blind to their own branding, can't they? And not, "Oh, no. What do you think of the branding?" And I'm like, "Well, I think it's terrible."

Richard Hill:
"Really?" "Yeah." "Well, we're not sure. We might change it." And they get wrapped up on they might be probably spending 20 grand a month on ads. Well, what's $500 or five grand even on branding and design. Yeah.

Tobi Oluwole:
Right.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you touched on UX. If you were to... 50 merchants and obviously, lots of other stores you work on. For UX side of things, what would you say is one thing that consistently lets sites down over and above the design side of things or in terms of conversion paths and user experience, what other things would you say or other main things that would let most sites down?

Tobi Oluwole:
One is the site speed, right? Being blocked down, taking too long to load, right? Not focusing on the mobile experience, right? Because tons of people are shopping on mobile right now. So not focusing on that and making it as sleek as, if not better than the desktop experience. And then the last one I talk to my merchants all the time, I'm like, "Talk to your customers. Call them. Ask them. Walk through it with them. Understand them better." Because it's one thing to be like, "Oh, let's fix this, fix this, fix this." But how do you know that's the right thing? Right? So with heat mapping, like Lucky Orange and Hotjar and all these different heat mapping tools, right? And being able to just see. I had one merchant, they had people spending 30, 40 minutes on the site before buying something and they thought this was great. They thought people were spending time going through the content.

Tobi Oluwole:
I was like, "Listen, let's do some recordings, okay? Let's actually look at what people are doing." It turns out people were trying to see if they shipped to where they were. And they were bouncing around all the pages trying to figure out if they would ship to where they were. That's not a good problem, right? You have to make it easier for them to get there. If they hadn't watched the recordings, they would have thought this is good, right? People are spending time on the site, right? So that's what I see is you got to talk to the customers, you got to see what they're doing, you got to understand from their point of view what is their experience and then test and optimize until you get it right. Just test and optimize, test and optimize, no assumptions in the eCommerce.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah. That's a really good story out of 30 minutes. Yay. That's fantastic. No, it isn't. They don't know. They're trying to figure something out that they can't find. Yeah. That's great. I've not heard that one before. That's a brand new one. So was that Hotjar then? Or something else that was on there?

Tobi Oluwole:
I think that was Lucky Orange, which is one of the Shopify apps. I think there's Crazy Egg, there's Lucky Orange, there's Hotjar. But the first thing, whenever someone goes, "Oh, there's something wrong with my cart." Or sorry, "There's something wrong with my website." I go, "Okay. Let's look at what's happening. Let's heat map it. Where are people clicking? What are they doing? Let's watch some screen recordings," right." It's like, "I think I need to fix this." Listen, thinking doesn't help here, okay? You need data, okay? And I think that makes a huge difference is if you can get the data to back whatever it is that you're trying to do, right? That's going to make a huge difference with the next move that you make, right? So that you don't keep making the same mistake over and over again.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agreed. So Shopify, I think we're seeing a lot of people are coming in, obviously, a lot of people are adopting and starting out and a lot of people, obviously, that are listening to the podcast have been on Shopify for a long, long time. But what would you say are a couple of the features that will really sort of push it that you quite often see not used or a couple of maybe their partner integrations plugins or what a couple of things that are really... If you were to do an install now and work with a merchant, you've made sure that they've got this, this, this, but what are a couple of other things that quite often you just don't see installed?

Tobi Oluwole:
So I work with merchants that are doing a million dollars Shopify+ right? And so what they require in terms of features is usually different from what you of me would require if we were just starting a store today, right? So for people that are just starting off, I would say that the best feature hands down is Shop Pay. It is hands down the best feature and it's just getting built out bigger and bigger. So there's Shop Pay instalments that is launching where people can buy and pay in four week instalments. And people can track their package from their phone. It's just such a good thing to have. Not from Shopify, but I do some coaching for people trying to build their own kind of side hustles. And this guy starts selling some socks and is using Shop Pay, Shop Pay instalments.

Tobi Oluwole:
And they have an insane kick-off, right? Very tiny email list, but it was such a great experience for people, they just talked about it, right? And so Shop Pay instalments, Shopify payments, that whole ecosystem right now is going to solve a lot of problems for merchants that are just starting off. In terms of bigger merchants coming on Shopify, I would definitely say the international pricing strategy and being able to use one store and selling pounds in the UK, selling USD, selling Australian dollars all from one store. That is a very powerful tool because we know that localization is huge when you're shopping. And there's a few other things coming that I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to say.

Richard Hill:
Oh, okay. Well, that was my next question. Well, I think those two are great. I mean, the international moving when you're establishing your locality or in your country. All right. Let's just enable the UK or enable the US. It's not that simple, is it? Well, you're saying it can be now or it is now.

Tobi Oluwole:
It is now.

Richard Hill:
I think that's such a key thing for growth, isn't it? Being able to do that. So that's a great one. So obviously, there's a couple of things you can't say, but if we were to look at the sort of roadmap pipeline for Shopify in the coming year or three, now I don't know if there's anything there that you could share with our listeners about new things that are coming down the pipe, new things that are on the roadmap? If you are allowed to tell our listeners. Nothing? Seriously? Come on. Spill the beans.

Tobi Oluwole:
I wish I could. So one is I'm not the person, right? Things change very, very quickly here. I know a feature, for example, that was supposed to launch, I think, May 2020 or around sometime middle of last year. And then the pandemic hit and this feature is not out yet. And so things change very, very quickly. And even in terms of roadmap and pipeline, we almost don't do timelines for Shopify, right? We usually build the most effective or the most needed feature for most merchants, right? And that can change at any time, right? So I wish I could give you the roadmap and the pipeline. I saw that question and I immediately went, "Not happening."

Richard Hill:
I thought you would've sneaked something in for us. Something. But okay, fair play.

Tobi Oluwole:
I would love to get a product person on this podcast from Shopify like, "You tell them. It's your..."

Richard Hill:
Well, maybe we saw that out then for the next two weeks. Let's see if we can get it out. Okay. So tell us about 3 Skills and how people can get involved with that.

Tobi Oluwole:
Yeah. So we built 3 skills just to help people be able to transition into the workforce, teach them how to communicate their value. So our mission is pretty simple. We want to create the most employable candidates in the world, right? So simple philosophy, no matter if we're in a recession or a boom, if you're the best candidate in a pool, you will likely get a job, right? And so over the past 20 months, we've helped over 150 people line jobs. And now we're building a membership, a platform. We have two courses going. Just depending on where you are in your career. And you can find us at @the3skills on Instagram, the 3 Skills on LinkedIn or the the3skills.com. And June 1st is our two year anniversary, which is very exciting. So we're going to be launching the platform. We're going to do a little conference on that week too. I'm really excited just to continue to see the impact. We have a community of almost 5,000 now. So it's a very cool.

Richard Hill:
Wow. Good for you. Yeah. That's great to hear. That is very cool. Thank you. So I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Have you got a book that you would recommend to our listeners?

Tobi Oluwole:
Yes. So one of the best books I have read in recent times is Atomic Habits. And I don't know if you've ever gotten that one, but Atomic Habits, I'm trying to remember who it's by. I always forget. Let's see. I've lost it. But Atomic Habits. Everyone go read Atomic Habits. Great book. I can't find who it's by, but it just shows the power of little steps, right? And as someone like me, who, even though I'm an entrepreneur, I hate risk and I hate being overwhelmed by detail, that book really shaped my life on if you show up every day act 1% better, right? By the end of the year, you're a completely different person, right? And so I think that's probably one of the best books to read.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. No, great. Habits and consistency. Love it. So we'll tag that up in the show notes. Well, thanks Tobi. It's gone so quick. If the guys that are listening want to find out more about yourself, what's the best place to do that and best place to reach out to you?

Tobi Oluwole:
LinkedIn. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn, pretty much every day. It's just Tobi Oluwole, O-L-U-W-O-L-E on LinkedIn. And I would love to connect with you.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Lovely. Well, thanks Tobi. It's been a pleasure having you on the show and I look forward to catching up with you again. I look forward to catching up with a product specialist as well. Squeezing out a few more juicy bits about what's around the corner. See you again. Thank you.

Tobi Oluwole:
Okay. Bye-bye.

Richard Hill:
Bye. Thank you for listening to the eCom@One eCommerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our eCommerce newsletter, that leaves a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eCom@One. The eCommerce marketing agency.