Million Dollar Ecommerce Podcast with Alaa Hassan

Million Dollar Ecommerce Podcast: Episode #3 with Alaa Hassan (Feb 10th, 2023) - Audio
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Alaa Hassan: [00:00:00] There's a famous quote that says " There is no growth in the comfort zone". And today, I wanna talk about growth in e-commerce.

Welcome to the Million Dollar Ecommerce Podcast. My name is Alaa Hassan, the most passionate ecom guy you'll ever meet. I've been helping brands sell millions of dollars online with e-commerce since 2001. I'm also the founder of EcommerceTrainingAcademy.com. We offer a growth coaching program designed to help brands sell more products online.

If you're the founder, executive or someone who's in charge of growing a brand online, this show is for you. You'll enjoy listening to engaging conversations, insightful content and actionable ideas on how to sell more, grow faster and scale profitably with e-commerce. Don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast and for show notes, visit MillionDollarEcommerce.Com. There are lots of individuals who obsess about growth. I want to sell more products. I want to drive more sales. [00:01:00] So let's start off by asking the question. What happens if you stop growing an e-commerce business? I have a list of five things that would happen. Number one. If a business stops growing, it will reach a point of stagnation. You'll be less motivated and that could harm the longterm health of the business.

Number two. If your business stops growing your risk losing market share to competitors who are continuing to grow and innovate. Number three. Stopping growth means missing out on new opportunities and markets that could provide significant benefits to your business. Number four. As your competition grows, they may start to capture more of your target market, leading to decreased revenue and obviously, lower profits. And finally, number five. Without the drive to grow and expand, you may stop investing in innovation, which is critical for staying relevant and competitive in the longterm. [00:02:00] So you can see from these five points, there are negatives.

There will have a negative impact on the business. So now you know what happens if you stop growing, the question that I have for you is, are you ready for growth? Are you ready to handle the extra volume in terms of more customers, more orders, and all these things associated with growth challenges.

Because as you know, more traffic means you're dealing with more website issues. You're dealing with increase in marketing budgets. You're dealing with more customer issues. More orders means you're going to deal with fulfillment issues, delivery issues, and more customer service questions. And when you start selling more items, this means you're going to deal with more product issues. You're going to deal with inventory issues. Not having enough inventory available to meet the demand.

And then one of the biggest challenges is product selection. As you start selling more and more products to customers, [00:03:00] your selection has to expand, but you're limited with choices. So before you start obsessing about growth, ask yourself, can you even handle it? We have to ask ourselves, all right.

What is it that we want from growth? As a business, why does an e-commerce business want to grow? We're not talking about you yet. We're talking about the business. One reason might be to attract talent. They want to attract more customers. It's a long-term survival game. They want to take advantage of new opportunities.

They want to meet market demand. They want to increase profits, drive performance. They want to acquire assets. They want to fund investments. Keep in mind that growth will have an impact on you as well, your team and the people around you. What I just described now are reasons why a business wants to grow.

And the more I talk about e-commerce growth with friends, with colleagues, I realized that a lot of times [00:04:00] we obsess over it, as founders as executives, without realizing that it might impact our lives negatively as well as positively. So then I want you to kind of sit down, spend some time thinking about the next question.

And you have to be honest with yourself. Why do you want to grow the e-commerce business? Is it because you want more freedom? Is it because you want to sell the business, you're the owner and you want to get out of this eventually. Is it because you want more stability? Are you tired of paying bills constantly? Are you tired of worrying about, you know, paying the payroll at the end of the month and you just want to make sure that there's always growth in place so that you can just have some stability in the business overall. Do you want to hire people so you can have more free time for yourself and your family?

Do you want to have an impact on society? There's a purpose behind it. [00:05:00] You want to donate some of your profits to a, an organization of some sort. Or is it because you want to fund your lifestyle? Big house. Big lifestyle, expensive car. You want to travel trips buy the latest fashion, latest brands.

Nothing wrong with that, but is that the reason why you want to grow or if you are an executive, someone who's working for the brand, do you want to grow because you want to advance in your career? Now, all these reasons why you want to grow, there's nothing wrong with them, but you just have to be honest with yourself.

Because sometimes this growth can potentially impact you. And it will. As long as there's purpose behind this growth. You can keep going. But if you're just doing it to sell more, just to sell, increase sales and there was no real purpose behind it, you realize at a [00:06:00] certain point that, you lose the excitement.

You become bored. You may impact your health negatively. Impacts your relationships. And sometimes people just want to sell more just to show that I did this and I did that. It's for their personal ego. They want to accomplish this in their life. That's fine. But be honest with yourself as to why you're doing it.

Because when you are facing challenges certain days, you will face challenges. When you go back to your, why. It will push you. And allow you not to quit. But if you have not defined the true why behind this growth, the purpose, you may quit at a certain point. Without realizing it, you might be burnt out. Without realizing it. And eventually might be too late for you to save your health. Your relationships. And the business itself. So spend some time. Growth is fun. I have personally experienced it for years and years, I've taken companies, small [00:07:00] businesses. Six-figure to seven from seven to eight, from eight, 10 million plus 20,000,030 million.

Some of them are hitting 50 million. Some of them are over a hundred million. Trust me, it will never stop. You'll still want more. You're going to want to hit some new targets. Some new records. Great. Great accomplishment. But does that align with your, why? Are you moving in the right direction?

And that's the only thing I want you to think about, and you have to be honest with yourself. And if you are. Keep pushing. And if the purpose does not match. What you're trying to achieve, then, you know what? It's time to sit down and really think about it.

I want to leave you with a quote by Stephen Covey. Begin with the end in mind. He says to begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now. And so that the steps you take [00:08:00] are always in the right direction.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. So your next time.

That's it for this episode of Million Dollar E-Commerce Podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful. If you can share it with friends and colleagues, even better, I'll be happier knowing you subscribed, and if you really want to help, leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening.

The Million Dollar E-Commerce podcast is brought to you by e-commerce training academy.com.