AP 1113: Should I Create a Separate Brand for My E-Commerce Clients?

AP 1113: Should I Create a Separate Brand for My E-Commerce Clients?

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Pat Flynn:
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Pat:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1,113 of AskPat 2.0. This is a show where you get to sit in and listen in on a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today we're talking with Meryl Johnston who launched Bean Ninjas. It's B-E-A-N Ninjas. No, they're not ninjas that throw beans at you. She is helping people around the world with their finances and bookkeeping. You can check out Bean Ninjas at beanninjas.com. She started in 2015 with just a $1,000 and a dream of changing the global bookkeeping game and it's grown into something amazing.

Pat:
However, there's parts of her business that are growing. However, it's kind of providing a little bit of a just friction between what should they be doing and what they could be doing. Sometimes when we grow our businesses, we have new opportunities and we aren't quite sure how to handle them or how they might even fit into the brand or should we just completely ignore that opportunity and keep doing what we're doing? Very common struggle in a very unique brand. Here is Bean Ninjas. And here she is, Meryl Johnston. You're going to love it.

Pat:
Hey, Meryl, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks very much for being here today. How are you?

Meryl Johnston:
Thanks so much, Pat. I'm excited to be here and doing great.

Pat:
Awesome. And as I was saying before we hit record, I just love Australia Gold Coast. I love taking my family there. It's gorgeous. I'm a little bit jealous that you live there and you get to surf and have fun in the sun all day. Although I can't complain too much, I'm in San Diego, so yeah. Anyway, take a quick moment to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Meryl:
Sure. I run a business called Bean Ninjas and we help people who run online businesses. They might have an eCommerce store, they might be a blogger, a coach, consultant, and we help them with our done-for-you bookkeeping service. And we also help them to understand the numbers through online courses and group coaching.

Pat:
Love it. How did you get started there? Because that's, bookkeeping, especially for business people, that's not something we often think about until we absolutely need it. How did this come about for you?

Meryl:
It's a bit of an interesting story. I actually was running an accounting consulting business and was finding it difficult to scale. And I was working out of a coworking space on the Gold Coast with a guy called Dan Norris and he was running a business called WP Curve, which was fixed-fee WordPress fixes. And that was the first time I came across the productized service business model. And I was chatting with a guy, another accountant who I was in a mastermind with and we thought, let's try WP Curve for accounting and create a productized service. And he actually flew up to the Gold Coast and we launched in seven days. We created a website, a logo, and put up three fixed fee bookkeeping packages. We had no idea how much we should charge, what we should include, and we found our first customer in that week. And then gradually we scaled back our other—we each had consulting businesses—we scaled that back to focus full time on Bean Ninjas. And we've been going for a little bit over four years now.

Pat:
That is incredible. Well, congratulations. That just speaks to just the art of just doing it and getting out there. For those of you who are wondering, it's bean like the bean, like a pinto bean, beanninjas.com but it's counting your beans. That's what I would imagine that the brand name.

Meryl:
It is. I was actually at a cafe getting my coffee on the way into the office this morning and someone saw my Bean Ninjas t-shirt at the cafe and said, "Oh, are you doing something in the coffee business?" And I had to explain, no, it's bean counting and they're, "Oh right. Okay, that makes sense."

Pat:
That's really cool. And I haven't chatted with Dan in a long time, but he was on the SPI podcast back when WP Curve was rolling. And of course he's since let that go and had done very well with it, but just, he's inspired a ton and it's so cool that you're a part of his story as well. Very cool. What's on your mind? Things seem to be going, but where can I help you?

Meryl:
Maybe I'll talk about the good part first and then that kind of frames up the challenge. We're really proud of the brand that we've built with Bean Ninjas and we stand for freedom and remote teams and culture and we're really all about the people in our organization. And if I go to an event, sometimes people won't know who I am, but they'll see the Bean Ninjas t-shirt and then they've heard of us from content or from our podcast. I'm really proud of the brand that we've built. But what I'm noticing with our customer base is that we're working with more and more eCommerce businesses and they're facing, they have different accounting challenges to other businesses because they hold physical inventory. And so I'm finding that they have pain points that we're not solving at the moment with our productized service bookkeeping.

Meryl:
And they need extra advice around things like forecasting cashflow and figuring out how much inventory to buy and when to buy, to optimize that. They need help in figuring out how much money they making on their different products, which are their most profitable or not. And I can see these pain points and we have been starting to address those, but the challenge I'm facing, it's a different offering and I don't know whether it fits in the Bean Ninjas brand; and maybe so what I'm thinking about is should we be creating a higher end brand that's more related to this more complex advice for eCommerce businesses? And I feel like the messaging would be a lot easier if we did that and had a separate website, separate branding, different prices.

Meryl:
But when I think about that, it feels so overwhelming because we put so much effort into the Bean Ninjas brand. I'm really proud of that. I love what we've created. Or we could do it under the Bean Ninjas brand, but I'm finding it difficult to have this slightly different product offering and different price point within all of the messaging that we've already created around what we do with fixed-fee bookkeeping.

Pat:
That makes sense. And this is speaking to me right now very highly because as you likely know, I had recently released along with my partner Caleb, a physical product and we now have and own an eCommerce business and we had been struggling with numbers and we've gotten a lot of help along the way thankfully and have connected with a lot of people. But it's a totally different ballgame. It is a completely different ball game like you said. It is a different set of requirements. There's a lot more to think about. Right now we're in the, we're closing in at the end of the year and we have some inventory but we know we want to place another order before Chinese New Year and then there's, how much do we order?

Pat:
And all this stuff and we only have one product. Imagine multiple products. There's a lot to think about here, so there's definitely a need there. I can feel it on my end and you're obviously having this conversation because you felt the need on your end as well. Creating a totally separate brand. I would love for you to tell me why that would be a good idea, if you were to go down that route. What's the benefit of doing that for you?

Meryl:
The main benefit I see is that we can position ourselves as higher touch, higher value and a more expensive product offering and also we can have messaging that really speaks to those pain points. At the moment, if someone comes to our homepage, we're talking about more general pain points around bookkeeping and knowing your numbers, but then not hitting on the eCommerce specific pain points because it's quite broad. It was still in a niche, which is digital businesses, online businesses, but we're not hitting those key pain points anywhere on the homepage because it would probably turn off some of the other businesses like maybe ship sites or bloggers. And so I feel like the main advantage would be having a homepage and branding that just really resonated with eCommerce businesses and positioning us as the eCommerce bookkeepers and accountants to go to. And I feel like that messaging would be a lot easier if it was separate branding and that was bang right in your face homepage, all of the social media content, everything was all about eCommerce.

Pat:
That would make sense in terms of me as a eCommerce store owner to go to the specialists. And to know that who I'm going to be working with is not messing around. They're there specifically to help me. And I do feel however, that that can still be addressed in a way on the current brand because it is still quote unquote bean counting. It's still money management that I need help with. However, it's just a different kind of money management.

Pat:
Tell me a little bit about the reason why you're a little bit anxious about just including this as another product offering specifically for those. If I could go to the website and I can, there was something that said, "If you're an eCommerce owner, click here." And then I go there and it has all the things that you just mentioned that would be on another sort of webpage but it's all for me, it's all smacked dab for me and I can read the copy and it's just, I know it's for me as an eCommerce person. You're speaking my language. Why would that not work well on the current Bean Ninjas website, just in a special sort of holding place there separate from everything else?

Meryl:
When you say it like that, it makes sense. I think the challenge, and maybe they're not real challenges, but I think what I was picturing was that when someone's coming to our homepage, it's not really hitting someone if they're an eCommerce business that they should work with us, but I can see what you're saying. If on the home page we said, "Well, if you're an eCommerce business owner, click here. If you're a consultant, click here." And then it goes off into a separate page that has everything that that type of business owner would need to know.

Meryl:
I think some of the roadblocks that I was picturing in my head were that we've tried to keep our product offering and messaging really simple and when someone goes through the homepage then they look at, well we've got three standard offerings with fixed-fee prices and so I think that was the flow that I was picturing. The way, someone might want to read a bit of content and engage with us in other ways before they go straight to signing up, but I think that was how I was picturing the flow, but that actually makes sense to try and segment it that way and then have messaging that's more specific to that industry niche.

Pat:
Yeah, for me, and I'm just playing role of eCommerce person who needs help with accounting and I'm just thankful that I also have that experience. If I see that you can help all kinds of businesses with accounting and I see there's a thing that says, "Own an eCommerce business? Click here." Everything else that's on the page that is there already or your current brand, doesn't matter to me anymore. It's where I end up. And so if it still has the Bean Ninja brand, it's even supported by the social proof of people already working with you in different ways. But now I'm in a place where I know there's a reputable brand there, there's brand authority and that's amazing. I would definitely a 100 percent utilize that. And if I end up on a page that just is tailored just for me, hey, you own eCommerce business and you have a lot of numbers to deal with, let us do the dealing for you or whatever the copy is.

Pat:
And you can have your standard plans just for me as the eCommerce owner. I don't even care what you offer the digital people or consultant. I am just there to see what's available for me, and I'm not necessarily going to go, oh well let me see what they're charging the digital people. And go, well why is this so much higher? I think that it's just kind of inherently known because I'm there that, well this is the offering for eCommerce and I won't even have to worry about how it compares to everything else. You can treat a separate page, a landing page on your website, like a homepage of a different brand, but it's in the same brand and it's just speaking directly to me. Now the big question I want to ask you is do you want to go there?

Pat:
And the reason I ask is because just because the opportunity is there doesn't mean you have to do it because this is a completely different business model. It's likely going to mean you're going to require some other team members to come on board who have specialization or it's going to require you to learn about that sort of field if you don't know those things already. How committed are you to including this as a leg of your brand? Do you need it? And I'm just playing devil's advocate because sometimes we just get bright shiny object syndrome and I want you to sell me on this idea.

Meryl:
That's a great question. And I've been very conscious when we've been building Bean Ninjas that I can't be involved in service delivery and I had to be in the first year because we didn't, it took six months for us to hire a bookkeeper and from the inside it took me four years, but I actually had a, my partner and I had a baby earlier this year in April.

Pat:
Oh congratulations.

Meryl:
Thank you. And I was able to take a month out of the business then because I had a team looking after everything from sales, onboarding, HR, marketing. I said the business actually grew when I was off.

Pat:
That's awesome.

Meryl:
Had that month off, not checking in. And it was incredible. It took a lot of hard work to get there and a lot of discipline too. Delegation and making sure that I handed over responsibility to team members. That's been my mindset and if we were to offer this more advanced, and it's a bit more like consulting, our business model is still a productized service. And so I want to find a way to package up this higher end consulting still into a product. And we'd probably have to test it and do one on one consulting in the beginning to figure out exactly how we deliver this and how we could do it at scale. But the idea would be that it wouldn't be me doing that testing, it would be someone in my team. We've got a team of accountants that work for us. Someone else would be figuring that out and then we'd be figuring out a way that we can deliver this in a package format but at a higher price point because it's a bit more complex.

Meryl:
But I think it'll be harder to systemize and productize than bookkeeping. It sounds like a fun challenge and I feel like this is the direction the world is moving. If I look at the number of eCommerce stores that are opening, I follow some of Shopify's statistics and how many new Shopify businesses are opening, and then I look around me in the main streets around the Gold Coast and some of the bricks and mortar stores, they're struggling or closing. And so I think this is an industry that really has a lot of opportunity and growth, and I don't only want to play in that industry, but I think that it's a great one to be a part of and to have my team to become experts in.

Pat:
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Okay, cool. I'm convinced. How might you approach this in a smart way so that things can be controlled, you can understand the process. I have some ideas I want to hear from you. What are your first steps? How are you going to get in to serving this particular group of people?

Meryl:
We did some testing earlier this year, so pre-baby being born, and my business partner and I set ourselves a challenge to do product launches in a really short amount of time. And so I launched an online course and he launched this advisory type service, not specifically for eCommerce but just for us to test out what it's like delivering things like dashboard reports, cashflow forecast. And so we have had to go, we just gave ourselves really tight timelines. We actually did a weekly accountability podcast with updates of how we were tracking against trying to launch these new products.

Pat:
That's really cool.

Meryl:
And so we have had to go with delivering some of the elements like cashflow forecasting and tracking margins, for eCommerce businesses because there were some eCommerce businesses in that beta launch. I think we need to continue that, but specifically target eCommerce businesses and just learn more about, I think I have a general feel for what their pain points are, but get really specific and just practice delivering it and then figure it out.

Meryl:
I actually had a question for you back on what we were talking about a little earlier with having the landing page. Using the Bean Ninjas branding and then going off to an eCommerce specific landing page and then having more information there. I think the other hesitation I had was thinking about if there's other eCommerce accountants who would just, their branding is all about just eCommerce, bookkeeping and accounting, and that's all they do. And so I, that was another hesitation I had in using the Bean Ninjas brand. And I feel like what you talked about with asking me if someone's eCommerce and then going off to a landing page helps to address that, but I wasn't sure if someone would still pick the person who just does eCommerce accounting over us.

Pat:
Yeah, I could see that for sure. It would be something where really that comes down to your messaging and the offerings that you have. And this is why we test—to see if people are interested in what you have to offer. I don't, again, the specialization is there if you say, "We have a dedicated team of people specifically to help you with your eCommerce business because we know there's specific things that you need versus what others need." And I think that that messaging will have to be refined and split tested and whatnot. I don't think it's a hesitation that is a blocker. I think it's just something to perhaps force you to think about how you can make the messaging even stronger. To have a person on the other end know that you are going to take care of them and that you have the specialization there too.

Pat:
That's number one. Number two, I think the other important thing related to this is just getting those beta tests is going to be really important because that'll get you to find some success stories that you can then share on that page. When I go to that landing page, I want to see who have you helped already? What other businesses and how have you alleviated a lot of the stress for them? How have you supported them? And if you can get some testimonials or something like that to live on that page, they're going to sell it better than you can just because they're a story that you've created. And you offer your platform as a sort of way to paint them the hero instead of you the hero, you're just the tool that allowed them to become the hero in their business like you would for any other potential clients that would come on.

Pat:
No, I don't think that's a huge hesitation in my eyes because you have the advantage of the brand reputation in whole with Bean Ninja. What I do think that you could do to have it feel even more of a specialization is have it be like, I don't want to say Bean Ninja Pro, you know how like pro is being added to everything now? Like AirPods Pro. This could be, you can find some sort of modifier that would make it seem so, it could be like Bean Ninja Commerce Division or something like that. I don't know, that's lame, but something that would help me understand more that there is a specific division within your company that is meant just for me.

Pat:
Versus, oh, am I just going to get any person and they're going to have to be forced to kind of figure out my business model? And I think again, the positioning and the storytelling and just sort of the individual offers that you have. If you could speak to the manufacturing process and holding inventory and tax savings for inventory type businesses like that. You're speaking that language now and it's not just like a generic sort of bookkeeping service now. It's now I feel like it's for me.

Meryl:
Love that. Yeah, great idea the division, because we kind of do that internally. We've got people that are specialized but we're not communicating that externally. That's great advice.

Pat:
Yeah, I think that would help. And if I even got a sense of who on the other end was there, I don't know if you do this with your current team members, but I know some companies who very much are open with, hey, here are the leaders or here's the sort of, this is going to be your point of contact for the eCommerce division and this is a point of contact for the digital marketing division. And I can get a, kind of get a sense that there's people on the other end who I can actually talk to and go to. Even before I pull the trigger and purchase something. Those little things often go a very long way in the branding sense of things. Just kind of getting to know who's behind the scenes and who's going to be helping me even before purchase. Yeah. What other hesitations do you have? What other objections might you come across that I can help you with?

Meryl:
I think those were the main ones. I was trying to think about the first was if we were competing with other specialized eCommerce accountants and then if we were to do it under the Bean Ninjas brand, the mechanics of what that might actually look like, where we could communicate our eCommerce expertise but not take away from the other businesses we like working with. We really hit on both of those pain points and I think now that it's about execution and testing, doing the beta testing, getting the testimonials and documenting the results that we can get for people and yeah, really getting cracking with it.

Pat:
That's great. Yeah, I think the specific packaging, the sort of productization of stuff for eCommerce is going to be really important. That'll be a very, very big part of the beta program. Not just that this can work for the clients that you have, but to have them tell you exactly what their needs are so that you could just beautifully display all the offerings in that package in a productized way is going to be key. Because I think that the better that you can nail that, the more I know this is what I'm getting in return. I think that's going to be really key. And I think I'm just really excited to see what ends up happening because this is awesome.

Pat:
What I also think is a benefit here of keeping the brand the same is there's crossover. There are people in the digital space who are creating physical products now, like me. There are people in the physical product space who now know that they can also add additional services for their customers with digital courses and coaching and other types of things. Now that that's all wrapped around in one brand, there's actually an advantage to being under one brand in that way if people were to sort of expand outside their sort of what they initially got in for.

Meryl:
That's so true. And we actually have a number of clients like that, that have built audiences, have a membership site, and then have launched physical products or have had physical products and then got into coaching as well. Yeah. Interesting that you said that. That's a great point too.

Pat:
I think that that could be a great case for you to kind of keep it all under one brand in your mind. But on the other hand it's also going to challenge you a little bit because you're going to have to figure out, well when people move, what does that mean exactly for them? Do they get bumped up to a different level and maybe there's a discount because they were with you in one area already? I don't know. That could lead to more sort of case by case offerings but just something to pay attention to because I'm just thinking about that from my perspective as well. And I would definitely see a lot of people moving around or that sort of thing. It's cool that you've already had experience with that. I'm just really excited.

Pat:
Do you mind if we reached back out to you later down the road to see if we can get you back on the show to talk about what happened since then or since today and just see how you put things into place? Would that be okay?

Meryl:
Yeah, I'd love that.

Pat:
Cool. Meryl, this was fantastic. Where one more time, can people go to learn more about you and your business and everything you have going on?

Meryl:
The best place is our website, which is Bean, B-E-A-N ninjas.comand we have that same tag Bean Ninjas, is all of our social media tags as well. And I'm quite active on LinkedIn and that's my name, Meryl Johnston. I can share that link with you and happy to connect with anyone there as well.

Pat:
Cool. Thank you so much for this and congrats on the success and keep up the great work.

Meryl:
Thanks so much, Pat. Really appreciate it.

Pat:
I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Meryl Johnston. You can find her and her brand and all the bookkeeping stuff she's doing over there at beanninjas.com. That's B-E-A-N ninjas.com. What a great brand and what a clean looking website and just what a crazy story. I love stories like this and to help with something that is often overlooked in the business space, I think that's just tremendous. Congrats Meryl and I can't wait to see what you do with the information that we talked about today.

Pat:
And if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, I would love to be on this show and get coached just like Pat coached Meryl today, you can. All you have to do is go to askpat.com, fill out the application there and that can help you get the chance to, I can't select everybody, but I'm not going to select you unless you try, answer the questions they're at askpat.com and I'd love to potentially reach out to you in the future to get you on the show here to help you out and also help everybody else who listens to the show too. And help spread the word of your brand a little bit as well.

Pat:
Keep up the good work, everybody. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for being here and make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. And of course, I love reading those reviews on Apple podcast. If you have a chance to leave a review today, that would be incredible. My team and I, we read them all and just thank you so much for that. Anyway, you're amazing. Take care. And as always, #TeamFlynnforthewin. Peace.