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Clayton Bates – Shopify Expert
On Achieving Victory in Business: “So it’s sort of like if we help them win, we win. And then if we keep helping them win, we win. Everyone wins.“
Shopify has grown to be dominant force in the e-commerce world. Holding about 20% of the market share of e-Commerce platforms, it allows sellers to get up and running quickly. But how do you take your Shopify store from existence to actually making sales?
Clayton Bates is a Shopify Expert. He helps Shopify store owners build their stores and get them known to customers that buy. One of only a few certified Shopify Experts, Clayton has seen it all and shares his insights.
In this episode, we dive deep into the strategies that have made Clayton a sought-after consultant, from leveraging personalized Loom videos to building rapport by offering free value upfront. We’ll explore the significance of Shopify 2.0, the growing trend of businesses migrating to Shopify, and the importance of a simple, user-friendly website structure for maximizing conversions.
Clayton also discusses the vital role of social media in driving traffic to Shopify stores and how businesses are using unique approaches to grow their customer base. Plus, we uncover five common mistakes Shopify store owners make and the essential factors that influence success in the competitive world of e-commerce.
Listen as Clayton explains his steps to help grow Shopify businesses and how you can grow your Shopify business as well.
Enjoy!
Visit Clayton at: https://www.inspiresmallbusiness.com/
Podcast Overview:
00:00 Analytics show low conversion, high potential profit.
04:53 Chose to learn and build, gained agency.
08:42 Became Shopify expert, handled surge in leads.
10:45 Previous employees struggled, eventually found skilled coder.
12:54 Insecurity and growth in freelance quoting experience.
16:19 Free software advice, grabs attention, builds rapport.
22:23 Scanning and adding trading cards to website.
24:23 Shopify Expert hiring process changed 6 months ago.
28:17 Shopify prioritized country, mostly Australia, few clients.
31:11 Using images and headings can improve readability.
35:59 “Time is finite, use it wisely. Conversion rates?”
37:04 Good images, structure, and user experience important.
43:16 Experienced consultant helps businesses optimize conversion rates.
46:04 Focus on building relationships, not just websites.
47:17 Help clients grow and we succeed together.
Podcast Transcription:
Clayton Bates [00:00:00]:
It’ll tell you, like, conversion rate is 1%. Average order value is $50. Returning customer Bates 15%. The traffic is coming from here. People landing on the home page this many times, this many traffic. So it’s got basically everything sort of thing. So, yeah, I’m very good at, like, just looking at analytics and being like, oh, how are you not making $10,000 extra a month? And then we rebuild the website. They make 10,000 extra sort of thing.
Clayton Bates [00:00:26]:
So it’s sort of like I can’t explain how my brain actually can do it probably, but normally, if I say, like, 5,000, I’ll make 10,000 extra. So I normally lowball myself. So
James Kademan [00:00:40]:
You have found Authentic business adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at drawincustomerscom. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, and today, we are welcoming slash preparing to learn from Clayton Bates, the founder of Inspire Small Business, a Shopify expert. So, Clayton, how is it going today?
Clayton Bates [00:01:06]:
Yeah. Good. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
James Kademan [00:01:08]:
Yeah. Thanks for being on here. So let’s for the people, I’m gonna say more or less like me, tell us, just broadly speaking, what is Shopify?
Clayton Bates [00:01:17]:
So, basically, Shopify is a platform where you can build a website. Most people that use Shopify are in ecommerce, so they sell physical products. So, yeah, it’s basically a website builder for for physical products to sell.
James Kademan [00:01:34]:
And is it does Shopify take care of payment processing and helping with shipping, sales tax, all that kind of stuff?
Clayton Bates [00:01:40]:
Yeah. They can do all that or they can connect connect, like, your PayPal to the, website, things like that. So, yeah, yeah, they do all that.
James Kademan [00:01:49]:
Alright. I
Clayton Bates [00:01:49]:
didn’t Shopify doesn’t have a solution. Someone’s probably made a app or a plug in to solve the solution. So
James Kademan [00:01:55]:
Okay. So it does allow add ons and stuff like that, plug ins or apps, whatever. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And how user friendly would you consider it?
Clayton Bates [00:02:07]:
I think sometimes it’s too user friendly.
James Kademan [00:02:10]:
Too user? Okay. Okay. Easy to break. I suppose.
Clayton Bates [00:02:14]:
That’s actually an issue sometimes because, like, when it Shopify is trying to make it super simple for someone, so they don’t really break their website. But then if you wanna go outside of that, sometimes it can be a little bit challenging sort of thing. So that’s why a lot of people hire people like me to build websites and stuff.
James Kademan [00:02:33]:
Alright.
Clayton Bates [00:02:34]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:02:35]:
Tell me so you’re a Shopify expert. And if I read that correctly, that’s an actual it’s not just saying, like, hey. I’m really good at Shopify. That’s an actual designation that Shopify has given you. Is that correct?
Clayton Bates [00:02:47]:
Yeah. So I think at the moment, there’s only about 50 Shopify expert in Australia and then about 500 in the whole world. Wow. It’s actually super hard to become a Shopify expert. So I I if it’s still the same as when I was a show become a Shopify expert, Shopify has to pick you. You can’t even apply for it.
James Kademan [00:03:09]:
Oh, you don’t go to them. They go to you.
Clayton Bates [00:03:11]:
Yeah. I think Wow. When I become a Shopify expert, they closed down the program for 1 year, and they never let anyone in. So they’re doing, like, a bit of a cleanup because they let a lot of, like, rogue agencies in and stuff. So they’re all very picky on, like, who can be an expert and stuff. So, yeah, it’s like if a lot of people say they’re Shopify expert, but I’m actually authenticated Shopify expert by Shopify. So
James Kademan [00:03:36]:
Alright. Once you get that designation, is that a lifetime thing, or do you have to keep I don’t know. They’re continuing to add a
Clayton Bates [00:03:42]:
You can get booted you can get booted out. So one thing why people used to get booted out before is if they got really bad reviews on the platform, all different things like that. They keep changing, like, the rules and stuff. So it’s hard to always know a 100% why they kick people out or or stuff like that. So yeah.
James Kademan [00:04:04]:
This seems to be the the MO of most tech companies or software based companies to just keep the mystery alive and change the rules of the game without necessarily knowing or tell I should say, without necessarily telling the players or letting them know. Yeah. So it how did you land in in Shopify?
Clayton Bates [00:04:25]:
I I wanted to I I’ve actually had my own store before. So I in 2,000 14, I went to I was selling products myself. I used to sell trading cards. So, a lot of people don’t know I’ve sold 100 of 1,000 of dollars worth of trading cards, like little cardboard sort of thing.
James Kademan [00:04:44]:
You’re talking like baseball cards or management or something like that?
Clayton Bates [00:04:48]:
Yeah. Like Australian sports, so like rugby league and cricket and stuff like that.
James Kademan [00:04:52]:
Oh, nice.
Clayton Bates [00:04:53]:
And and I, yeah, I went to build a website myself. I I discovered Shopify. I started to build the site myself. I I realized that I couldn’t do it myself. So I contacted agencies and stuff, and a lot of them had sent over, like, really large quotes and stuff. And I was like, do I pay the agency, or do I learn how to do it myself and buy more stock? So I decided to learn how to do it myself. What I’ve learned now is if I hired one of those agencies, I probably would have made 2 or $300,000 expert, but then I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now. So me going and learning how to build a website, really, like, ended up being how I ended up having an agency building websites.
Clayton Bates [00:05:42]:
Because I’d I’d done that business for a while. I I was a bit burnt out from it, and, I was having a bit of a crisis in my life. I had a good job, had a business on the side, and I was like, I’m not happy. What do I enjoy? And the only thing I could think of is that how much I lacked building the website. And I thought, and I started an agency building websites, and that’s how it sort of started nearly 6 years ago now.
James Kademan [00:06:07]:
Oh, nice. So you at what time at what point, I should say, did you decide to leave the the regular job, the w two well, maybe it’s not w twos in Australia. The regular paid job before and actually flipping the switch to be exclusively on your own.
Clayton Bates [00:06:25]:
I basically sat down at my work computer, wrote race the nation, gave it to him while I cried. Bates hate to admit that I cried, but it just had got me down so much sort of thing that it sort of broke me a little bit at the end. And then I had no plan. I still had my my card business on the side. Had no plan. The 1st year in business, I hardly made any money. Like, I nearly went bankrupt the 1st year. I can’t move in about a week of going bankrupt.
Clayton Bates [00:06:58]:
Because I don’t really recommend just quitting a good job and just going for it sometimes. Like, sometimes it’s good to have some a backup plan. But, yeah, I got within a week of, going bankrupt, and I sort of put this plan together. And I was like, you know what? I don’t care if I lose my house or or everything I’ve ever worked for. I’m gonna make this business work. And, like, literally that night, I’ve got the best client I’d ever got. The next day, I’ve got a better client than that client. And then not long after that, Shopify made me an expert.
Clayton Bates [00:07:33]:
Not long after that, people left video reviews of my work, so that really helped as well. And then not long after that, COVID hit. And when COVID hit, I know a lot of people struggled through COVID, but I was getting, like, 5,000 plus leads away a a month when COVID hit. Like
James Kademan [00:07:50]:
5,000 leads?
Clayton Bates [00:07:52]:
Yeah. A month.
James Kademan [00:07:53]:
Holy cow. That’s impressive.
Clayton Bates [00:07:56]:
Yeah. I think that was a time I got over 5,000 in a month. Because you think about when the pandemic hit, how many people didn’t have a job or were trying to start businesses and stuff like that. It was actually, like, super crazy sort of thing. And, yeah, it’s just crazy. I nearly gave up. I come within the day I’ve given up, and then 5 years on, nearly from there, we’ve worked with 600 businesses, helped generate tens of 1,000,000 of extra revenue for our clients. Like, yeah, we have staff, you know, like, all the things that have happened since then, it’s pretty crazy.
James Kademan [00:08:32]:
That is cool. That is super cool. So tell me at the point when you have all these leads coming in, initially, did you have staff at all, or was it you were an army of 1 kind of thing?
Clayton Bates [00:08:42]:
Yeah. When I when I become a Shopify expert, it was only me. So when the pandemic hit, before that, I was getting about a 100 leads a week, and then when the pandemic hit, I was getting over a1000. I actually become an expert in knowing how to decline, leads fast. You know, I got I got really quick really good at, like, how to identify if I was gonna work with a person in, like, 5 seconds or if I was gonna message them or decline it. So yeah. It was actually pretty daunting for a few years to all the leads that I got. Because even after, like, it slowed down the pandemic, I was still getting, like, a thousand a month or something like that.
Clayton Bates [00:09:26]:
Right? So and then the rankings in Shopify Experts, how you rank high in Shopify Experts and because I was I was the number one ranked Shopify expert in Australia for, like, 3 or 4 years. I was actually, at one point, I got to number 5 or 6 in the whole world. So I was on the 1st page of Shopify Experts.
James Kademan [00:09:46]:
Okay.
Clayton Bates [00:09:47]:
And and, like, how you rank is, like, how quickly you apply, how many good reviews you get, how many jobs you do. So, like, imagine thousands of leads coming and, like, it really matters for your ranking. So every time I dropped below the first page of the whole world, I’d get, like, heaps less leads and stuff like that. So I was really crazy about, like, I’ve gotta reply fast and stuff, so it was a bit stressful back then.
James Kademan [00:10:11]:
So I bet. Yeah. I bet. So when did you flip the switch to actually add an employee? And when you did decide that, how were you able to take a breath to actually find that employee, train that employee, and all that?
Clayton Bates [00:10:24]:
I think 4 years ago, I hired the first person. I didn’t wanna code no more. Like, I I didn’t wanna do hard coding or anything like that. I just wanna do a simple code. So I hired someone. I actually hired and fired 30 people before I found that one person. Wow. And then yeah.
Clayton Bates [00:10:45]:
They worked for me for 2 years, and then I hired and fired about 30 more people to find another person who was really good at coding. He still works with me now. Then we’ve got some other people that do other stuff and design and things like that. But it was very hard. The first person I ever hired was very hard to, like, let go a little bit. I I think I struggle to let go of things sometimes. So when it’s a really big pain point, that’s when I’m like, alright. I’m not doing it anymore.
Clayton Bates [00:11:14]:
Someone else can do it sort of thing. So, yeah, sometimes it’s hard, I feel like, to hire people to let go a little bit.
James Kademan [00:11:22]:
Oh my gosh. Extreme. Yeah. So did you I guess you I don’t wanna say fell into this business, but you you stumbled it on it more or less, and I’m intentionally getting into the Shopify world and still use until you started to use it for your own stuff. And then one thing led to never another.
Clayton Bates [00:11:39]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:11:40]:
But I imagine at some point when you say, hey. I gotta hire someone. And at that point, you’ve never hired or interviewed or did any of that. So did you get help or go to classes, or did you just wing it more or less?
Clayton Bates [00:11:53]:
Well, my old job, I used to be, like, a team leader. I don’t know if you know Schneider Electric. So
James Kademan [00:12:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Clayton Bates [00:12:02]:
Yeah. I used to be, like, in charge of, like, distribution of, like, $100,000,000 worth of, stock, like a year. So I I think we, like, hired and fired, like, 100 people in the few years that I did that. So
James Kademan [00:12:16]:
Gotcha. So you had experience.
Clayton Bates [00:12:18]:
Yeah. So I sort of but it’s also different when it’s your own business sort of thing. Very. So yeah. But I sorta had a pretty good idea sort of thing. I did a lot of courses when I started out. I struggled with other things like selling to people and things like that. That was a big issue with me.
Clayton Bates [00:12:38]:
Like, even quotes, like, sending people, like, quotes and stuff used to really mess with my mind a lot. So
James Kademan [00:12:47]:
because what was the big concern that they wouldn’t say yes or that they would say no? Or
Clayton Bates [00:12:54]:
I don’t know. I think when I’ve tried to think about, like, how my brain worked and like things, I think it comes back to a lot of childhood stuff, which probably happens to a lot of people. But when I when I started out, I think the first the first quote I ever sent was, like, a $100 for a website, and I was, like, freaking out. And then I did a few for, like, 200. I think I did one for 300, and then I sent someone a quote for $400, and I laid under my desk until the guy replied, like, 3 hours later. Like, my mind was, like, a mess when it come to, like, quotes and stuff, like, what do you do? And everything was really bad. And, like, last year, we sent the biggest quote I’ve ever sent, and it was basically, like, sent, yeah, whatever. Get back to my job doing work and stuff like that.
Clayton Bates [00:13:43]:
So I think I’ve come a long way, like, just trying to work out mindset things and stuff. That’s fair. I think a lot of it’s just visible. Like, always said, oh, that’s too that’s a rip off. That’s too expensive, like, when I was a kid and growing up and stuff like that. So I think a lot of that sort of stuff, that’s why I had so much problems at the start.
James Kademan [00:14:04]:
Interesting. You know, it’s funny how your skin thickens up as you’re an entrepreneur and as you grow your business and expert. And where the nose individually because there weren’t that many even requests or proposals, whatever, that the percentage of one no is a big deal. But over the course of time, as you grow, when a potential client says no, you kinda think, you know what? That’s your loss rather than mine, and you just move on with your life.
Clayton Bates [00:14:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve I’ve seen some videos on, like, Instagram or something where someone’s, like, trying to give free gold out, and everyone’s like, no. No. Like, leave me alone. It’s like he’s basically saying it’s their loss. Feels like it’s gold that he would’ve given them, but they
James Kademan [00:14:48]:
Oh, funny.
Clayton Bates [00:14:49]:
Yeah. So I I think of it that way as well. Like, there’s been times I’ve logged into someone’s website. I’m very analytical, and I normally can get it very right how much money we’re gonna make someone. And it’s like logged into someone’s website and it’s like, easily, we’ll make them an extra $1,000,000 if they rebuild the website. They didn’t go through with it. So it’s sort of like a I look at it like that. Like, it’s it’s their loss, not not my loss sort of thing.
James Kademan [00:15:17]:
Yeah. So when you from a sales process, everybody kinda seems to have their own different way of doing things.
Clayton Bates [00:15:24]:
Yep.
James Kademan [00:15:25]:
In the Shopify world, is are you ever actually talking over Zoom or anything like that to the person, or is it all over email or chat on Shopify’s website or something like that?
Clayton Bates [00:15:35]:
So I’m super different to a lot of people, I think. So one thing I learned early on is that I used to put requests through and contact other Shopify experts and Shopify agencies and stuff and and worked out what they what they do. So I used to have my old store, so I used to use that as like, hey, get quotes and stuff. Right? And so many people just send these big expert sort of messages and techie sort of wording and stuff. And early on, I realized, like, you can’t sound techie in the messages. So what I do, I actually record a a Loom video. So I actually go through their website, give them tips and stuff for 10, 20 minutes, like, how they can fix stuff. I’ve actually done 2,000 of them.
Clayton Bates [00:16:19]:
I do them completely free. And it basically just goes through, tells them all all the software they can improve on that. So you think imagine if 50 people are messaging you and 49 a text and then one’s a video. So it gets people’s attention sort of things. And then they it builds, like, a little bit of rapport sort of thing. And then when they contact me, I’ll send them a video, like, a link to book a a call so they can either do, like, a phone call or Zoom or or whatever. And then what normally happens a lot of the time before I even get on the Zoom call or phone call, people have actually checked me out. Like, a lot of people will say, oh, I watched your about video.
Clayton Bates [00:17:00]:
It was really inspiring or something. Or I watched a podcast that you’re on. So it’s by the time I send a quote, like, when I’m on the Zoom call, there’s no real selling. I’m just learning about their business. I’m asking them some questions. I don’t pressure them. I don’t even send a quote, on the call. I just wait until after it go through.
Clayton Bates [00:17:22]:
I’ll send them a Loom going Loomvia going over their quote and stuff like that. So you think by the time they know the price, I’ve I’ve already, like, sent them a free Loom video about their website. I’ve have been on a call. They’ve watched podcasts about videos on me and stuff like that. So I’m really about, like, you know, building a connection and stuff like that with people, building rapport and stuff. So I think that’s really important.
James Kademan [00:17:48]:
Yeah. That’s super cool. And you gave them essentially, this is a runway that we’re gonna take off from and essentially giving them enough information. It sounds like they could do it on their own if they really wanted to. But in most people’s world, I guess, speaking from experience, you’re too busy to do that. So it’s easier just to find the right person to outsource it to or right company, I should say, to outsource to.
Clayton Bates [00:18:11]:
Yeah. I’ve always believed in giving value for free without expecting nothing in return. That’s actually one of the reasons I am a Shopify expert because I went on to the Shopify community forum, and I did I think it was 950 posts giving people feedback for free on their websites. And one of the bosses at shop I did it that in a year. And one of the bosses at Shopify seen me do all those posts. And they’re like, oh, we gotta contact this guy and see if he can if he wants to be an expert. So you’re
James Kademan [00:18:42]:
like That’s cool.
Clayton Bates [00:18:44]:
You think, like, I put all that that good energy out for a year, and then one of the bosses at Shopify noticed. So that’s why I always believe and give give, value and not expert anything in return.
James Kademan [00:18:57]:
That’s awesome. Do we is there any number of how many Shopify stores are active right now worldwide?
Clayton Bates [00:19:05]:
I used to look at stuff like that, but, I can’t remember now. It’s been, like, probably 3 or 4 years since I looked at stuff like that.
James Kademan [00:19:12]:
Okay. Are we talking 1,000, tens of 1,000, millions?
Clayton Bates [00:19:15]:
There’s heaps. Yeah. There’s heaps. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:19:18]:
Okay.
Clayton Bates [00:19:18]:
Yeah. There’s probably, like, lots of stuff you don’t even realize is on Shopify.
James Kademan [00:19:22]:
I imagine there’s an incredible amount.
Clayton Bates [00:19:25]:
Yeah. I reckon probably it’s gotta be, like, 50, 60, 70 percent in that range of ecommerce websites at Shopify.
James Kademan [00:19:34]:
Is it really?
Clayton Bates [00:19:35]:
Like, super high. Yeah. I reckon it’d be higher.
James Kademan [00:19:38]:
Okay. So something like Shopify versus WordPress with WooCommerce, does Shopify have a bigger market share? Are they pretty equal? Or where’s that at?
Clayton Bates [00:19:48]:
Yeah. Again, I haven’t looked for a few years, but
James Kademan [00:19:50]:
Okay.
Clayton Bates [00:19:51]:
I I get 1,000 and thousands of leads, tens of thousands of leads in life. Even not even through Shopify Expert, and you think hardly any of those people have other platforms. I think 2023, 2024, more and more people have been coming over to Shopify. Okay. Then Shopify did a big update, Shopify 2.0. I’ve noticed a lot of more people are going to Shopify and transferring all their data over to Shopify.
James Kademan [00:20:20]:
Oh, that’s cool.
Clayton Bates [00:20:21]:
So, yeah, I think it’s pretty high. Yeah. But without knowing off top of my head. So
James Kademan [00:20:27]:
Sure. Yeah. It’s more, I guess, a curiosity thing. Yeah. When I I look at websites and stuff like that, you look at the back end, whether it’s WordPress or Shopify or I don’t know what any of the other ones are. There’s really not I don’t know. I don’t see too many plain HTML. Like, somebody actually manually coded it like we used to in the nineties anymore.
Clayton Bates [00:20:52]:
I don’t know
James Kademan [00:20:52]:
if that’s even a thing.
Clayton Bates [00:20:54]:
Really large companies would have, like, custom built websites, like that. So even there’s a big company here in Australia, JB Hi Fi, that’s on Shopify. That’s like a really big, like, electronics website, like, store sort of thing. So even some of the biggest companies in Australia and the world use use Shopify. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:21:16]:
Oh, interesting.
Clayton Bates [00:21:18]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:21:19]:
So most of your clients, can you describe just ballpark? Do they have 100 of items for sale or a couple dozen, or is it thousands of items for sale?
Clayton Bates [00:21:30]:
Anywhere from one product to a 100000.
James Kademan [00:21:34]:
Oh, wow. Okay. That’s a range.
Clayton Bates [00:21:36]:
So So we’ve we’ve worked on a website with a 100,000, and we’ve worked on one with 70,000. And my old store had 10,000. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. So pretty big range.
James Kademan [00:21:48]:
Yeah. So I mentioned when you were talking about the trading cards, one of the things that struck me as interesting is that’s a I mean, you have a trading card of this whatever famous rugby player that gets sold, that product thing is now off your store. So that means every time you get a card to sell, that’s a onetime thing versus, hey. I wanna sell whatever. Whatever. I wanna sell this pen. I throw it on Shopify, and I have 5,000,000 of these pens to sell. Just rinse, repeat kinda thing.
James Kademan [00:22:15]:
Is it tough to put a product up there, or it must be pretty quick in order to do it for one time items like that?
Clayton Bates [00:22:23]:
Trading cards is probably one of the worst, Bates you have to scan all the trading cards and then upload them into the website and stuff like that. But a lot of trading cards, like, things that are like 5, $10, you probably have, like, 20, 30 of the same thing. It’s only really the expensive ones that are, like, one time sort of thing. It’s not that that hard to add products sort of thing. I’ll I’ll say, normally, it’s real when people are, like, wanting to build a website, Bates such a daunting task to do everything. So normally when we build a website and they only focus on the products, it’s a lot easier. Over time, Shopify has made it easier to add products to. So 10 years ago, it was a lot harder to add products than it is now.
Clayton Bates [00:23:06]:
One of the big issues with Shopify until recently is that, like, bulk editing stuff, you couldn’t bulk edit a lot of things, like, very fast. So for example, product descriptions and things like that. So now they’re slowly integrating more things to make it easier for you sort of thing. So over the last probably 2 years, they’ve made it a lot easier to, add products and bulk edit products and things like that.
James Kademan [00:23:32]:
Oh, that’s cool. That’s very
Clayton Bates [00:23:34]:
cool. I think the founder is really focused on trying to make it as good as it possibly can be. But the founder used to have a snowboard website. So the reason Shopify exists is because he couldn’t find a solution to build an e commerce website, so he made Shopify. So he
James Kademan [00:23:55]:
sorry. When how old is Shopify?
Clayton Bates [00:24:00]:
It’s what is it 12 years? I’m not sure. It’s at least 10 years. I’ve been using it since 2014, so it’s at least 10.
James Kademan [00:24:07]:
So relatively speaking, it’s a young company?
Clayton Bates [00:24:11]:
Yeah. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:24:11]:
Okay. Got it. Interesting. And do you when you get the leads, are the majority of them coming through Shopify or people finding you with all the content in your own website and stuff like that?
Clayton Bates [00:24:23]:
So until about 6 months ago, it was it was like Clayton% for Shopify Experts. So about 6 months ago, they changed how Shopify Expert work. So in the back end of your website, of your Shopify website, there’s a button that says hire an expert. And what used to happen is that people would fill fill out a request and press submit, and it would go to all the experts. And then they changed it to prioritize the country you’re in, so it would go to, like so someone from Australia filled it out, it’d prioritize to all the strange experts. And then about 6 months ago, they changed it where you can’t submit a request anymore. What you have to do, you have to pick the Shopify expert. So when you go through, you actually have to go through a list and pick someone a message.
Clayton Bates [00:25:13]:
So my my leads have went down quite a lot in the last 6 months. Oh. So I’ve been I’ve been work so it went from, like, minimum a 100, like, to, like, 500 plus to, like, 10 a week. So a pretty big dip.
James Kademan [00:25:30]:
That’s a drop? Oh, Joe.
Clayton Bates [00:25:32]:
Yeah. But the thing about that as well is the people that message me now are like, they picked me. Like, do you know what I mean? So they’re like, I like this guy. I’m gonna message him. Where before, if you think about a 100 people randomly doing a request compared to 10 people that picked you is like it it’s actually a lot better. It’s better than you think. But then I’ve been working out other strategies and stuff to get clients and stuff. I always knew something like this would happen.
Clayton Bates [00:26:06]:
So I’ve been preparing for this for like a lot of years where I knew that this couldn’t last forever. You couldn’t get thousands of leads for free forever. So I’ve been preparing and thinking about things like this. I tested a lot of things last year, and then basically, I think it all worked out. Like, it was it was all good timing. I’d already worked certain things out. So I’ve been doing a lot of networking and stuff like that and building good relationships with other agencies and and different things like that.
James Kademan [00:26:35]:
Alright. You raise a very interesting point. If you’re getting thousands of leads, that means that essentially you have to respond to those leads super fast. That’s gonna take a lot of time. But if you say if you’re closing, I don’t know, whatever, 1%, 10% versus getting a smaller group, but those are you can close 90% of them. It’s less time. It’s more productive. So it’s probably win.
Clayton Bates [00:26:59]:
It is. Yeah. I think it’s a win sort of thing. Because, if I got a 1,000, I’ll decline 900 of them because I’d know, like, 900 is it wasn’t a good fit sort of thing. So you think imagine declining 900 of them. Like, that’s pretty time consuming. Do you know what I mean?
James Kademan [00:27:16]:
Usually time consuming.
Clayton Bates [00:27:18]:
Yeah. Even if it Bates, like, 5, 10 seconds each one. Right. Yeah. It’s still pretty time consuming.
James Kademan [00:27:24]:
900 is a big multiplier.
Clayton Bates [00:27:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. So they’ve sent me probably, like, 50,000 leads or something. I don’t know. Some more than that probably. So I imagine I probably declined 40,000 leads. So if you times that by 10 seconds, Bates quite a lot of time. Yeah.
Clayton Bates [00:27:42]:
Yeah. But it’s it’s all good. Like, I I reckon it’s a lot better this way.
James Kademan [00:27:46]:
Alright. Very cool. And are you working with websites worldwide?
Clayton Bates [00:27:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. Everywhere. So mostly Australia, US. It’s actually funny. 1 of the first few years in business, 80% of my clients were from the US because the way Shopify Expert used to work, I used to rank higher on the whole world. So a lot of the US people were messaging me all the time. So for the 1st 2 or 3 years, 80% of my clients were US.
Clayton Bates [00:28:17]:
And then when Shopify flipped it to prioritize the country you live in, then then it went to 80% Australia. But we’ve worked with people, Australia, US, Canada, UK. The the one that’s really weird is that we’ve worked with hardly anyone in New Zealand. And you think we’re just, like, New Zealand’s so close to Australia. You think we would’ve had a lot of New Zealand clients, but we haven’t. And then we’re finally just we’re working with someone in Dubai at the moment. Oh, nice. That’s pretty cool.
Clayton Bates [00:28:49]:
Yeah. That was, like, really cool when that that that one come through. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:28:53]:
Is there a language barrier at all?
Clayton Bates [00:28:56]:
Slightly. But I I think, some things like Australian say, like, especially the US, sometimes people laugh and they’ll they’ll like, I don’t know what that means or like, we say no worries or no dramas or what sort of thing. So, yeah, I think sometimes it’s just little things like that or, maybe people take it the wrong way, but, like, I mean well and stuff like that. So Mhmm. Yeah. It’s all good. We’re a bit more laid back, I think, in Australia, sort of thing.
James Kademan [00:29:24]:
Well, I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. Yeah. Sometimes we’re too uptight, so I get it. Tell me, when you’re working with clients that have Shopify store, what are some of the mistakes that you commonly see that they have made? I’m gonna say mistakes as a word, like, maybe they didn’t it wasn’t intentional. It was just one of those things that they didn’t know. Right?
Clayton Bates [00:29:43]:
There’s always 5. Like, people don’t understand how to structure their home page, their product page. Basically, like, you have to have all the information about the product, build trust, benefits if you can, and you have to organize it well. The third one, site navigation. So the more products you have, the more important site navigation is. So, for example, if you have a 100,000 products, like site navigation is critical sort of thing. The forefront is the checkout. So a lot of people, they forget to add their logo and the colors into the checkout.
Clayton Bates [00:30:19]:
One of the reasons why I think that happens is because in the back end of Shopify, you have a color section, and then the checkout color section is separate. So you have, like, a section of all the colors, and then there’s another section for checkout, and then there’s colors in there. So I think a lot of people miss that, especially, like, new people. Or if they do a rebrand, a lot of people do, forget that as well. So you’ll go through their checkout, their old logos in there. And you don’t wanna have a disconnect when you’re about to pay for something. Like so that really hurts. And then the 5th one is mobile friendly.
Clayton Bates [00:30:54]:
So 50 to 90% of the traffic’s mobile, so you really have to optimize the site to work well on a mobile.
James Kademan [00:31:02]:
Does Shopify help with the mobile thing? Is that more or less automatic, or is that something you have to really consider picture sizes and stuff like that?
Clayton Bates [00:31:11]:
Yeah. A lot of Bates like an auto resize a thing and stuff like that. But a a lot of people mess it up still anyway. Like, so imagine this is one big thing that people mess up on a mobile, for example. Right? They will have 20 paragraphs of text and, like, no headings, no images or something. So imagine on your phone, you’re like endlessly scrolling like through 20 pages on your thing. So one really good tip on a mobile is if you can break it up with images and stuff and headings, so a lot of people skim a website as well. So if you have like if you go, like, image heading expert, image heading text, if someone’s skimming it, they might say cool heading that they’re like, oh, that that’s something interesting.
Clayton Bates [00:31:58]:
So I’ll read that. So they’re like little tips on how to, like, break things up sometimes. Yeah. We try to do that. A lot of people put too much text and stuff. It looks okay on desktop. So I have a theory that a lot of people, they build their website on a desktop, and they’re like, oh, yeah. It looks alright.
Clayton Bates [00:32:17]:
But they don’t really test it properly on a phone or go through their site and realize, like, oh, I’m just scrolling forever, like, through all this tech sort of thing. So, yeah, Bates one.
James Kademan [00:32:29]:
Nice. When it comes to Shopify stores, is there an SEO component of it?
Clayton Bates [00:32:36]:
Yeah. There’s SEO. Yep. I I would say SEO agencies might hate me for this one, but most of our clients don’t make heaps of money like SEO. Like most people that we work with have built a brand on social media, especially Instagram. A lot of people, their products are competitive. Like, there’s imagine being a small business and you’re going up against, like, Walmart, Amazon, like, all these listings, like, people spending tens of 1,000 of dollars a month on SEO. Like, it’s real it’s really hard to compete in some niches for SEO.
Clayton Bates [00:33:17]:
Just for example, my my trading card website, I ranked page number 1, result number 1 for a 1000 searches over a 1000 searches. Right? But then you think about I’m in a niche where no one cares about SEO. There’s thousands of products. I’m the only one caring about SEO. So it’s like heaps easier to rank page number 1, result number 1. But if you sell a lot and there’s, like, a 1000 people and, like, there’s certain niches where everyone cares about SEO a lot. So when you’re up against them, it’s it’s pretty hard sometimes. So, yeah, I I don’t know.
Clayton Bates [00:33:54]:
Most people I say they build a brand on social media. So yeah.
James Kademan [00:33:58]:
Okay. I suppose, you know, you raise an interesting point because I guess in my mind, I’m thinking of this like an Amazon or something like that. But in the end, each store is selling their their niche product, whatever that is. It’s Bates of yarn or frames or baseball cards or whatever. So I see what you’re saying there. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense.
Clayton Bates [00:34:19]:
Yeah. When
James Kademan [00:34:20]:
people when people come to you, is their Shopify store more or less their livelihood, or is it side hustle type thing?
Clayton Bates [00:34:30]:
Both. So I think there’s, like, 3 categories of people that come to me. So people that are either they’re they’re brand new or basically brand new. So those types of people. Then some people will come to me that it’s their full time job. They’re doing every all their all their money, their rent, and everything is getting paid for because of their store. And then the 3rd category of people is, like, 10,000,000 plus. So it’s like they’re getting paid.
Clayton Bates [00:35:00]:
They’ve got staff. It’s like full full full blown sort of thing. So, yeah, that that’s probably the 3 different categories of people that come. There’s a very big difference from some from from someone starting out to someone making over $10,000,000 a year through their store.
James Kademan [00:35:17]:
I bet.
Clayton Bates [00:35:19]:
It’s actually weird because I was thinking about the difference, and normally the big difference is that when people are starting out, they care more about money. But But when people are making over $10,000,000 a year, they they they care more about their time. They don’t care about the money. They don’t care about the money so much. They care more about the time. Like, they basically wanna you here. Do it. We trust you to do it.
Clayton Bates [00:35:43]:
We we don’t wanna spend too much time on it. Like, we know you could do a good job sort of thing. They care a lot more about time.
James Kademan [00:35:50]:
Yeah. I get that. I definitely get that. Time is a a commodity you can’t get back where money is something that you can always figure out a way to make money.
Clayton Bates [00:35:59]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:35:59]:
But, yeah, time is you have a finite amount. You have no idea what that finite amount is, and you better spend it wisely. So totally understand that. Tell me about conversion rates because that’s a that’s a term that we hear a lot, and I imagine you get people ending up on your store or ending up on a client store. And your goal is to get that person to click that buy button, throw their money at them, and everybody’s happy. But I imagine there’s a lot of times where people go to a store and for whatever reason, they don’t actually convert. So can you tell us about that and some of the the things that you do to help people with their websites actually convert?
Clayton Bates [00:36:38]:
Yeah. Well, those 5 things that I was talking about, they really help the conversion. At a higher level, it’s like hundreds of little thing like, 50, a 100 little things, like, mainly consistency. But I always like to think of it in 3 areas. So the one the 3 real key key areas to it. One, the traffic has to be right. The right type of traffic has to be going to the website. Otherwise, it’s not gonna convert.
Clayton Bates [00:37:04]:
The second one is the images and the content. If they’re good, that will help as well. Just to give you an idea, one of our clients spends about 50 to a $100,000 a year on images for their website, like photo shoots and stuff. And if you can I could build the same website 10 times exactly the same? There’s a very big difference from their website to everyone else’s website. So that’s like sometimes that’s super important. And then the third one is just like the structure and flow of the website. So, sometimes simple is is better. So if you just make it a lot more simple, easier to use, user experience, stuff like that, that sort of works really well.
James Kademan [00:37:48]:
Alright. I get it. Yeah. Confused customers don’t buy. So Yeah. Keep it as simple as possible and as easy. Release the barriers to prevent the customer from being able to buy. I get that.
Clayton Bates [00:37:59]:
Yep. 100%.
James Kademan [00:38:00]:
Very cool. Tell me about the traffic. When people are getting traffic mainly from Instagram or social media, are they paying, or can you pay on Shopify to for your store to show up somewhere, or is that more you’re advertising another place’s social media or search engines or something like that?
Clayton Bates [00:38:19]:
Yeah. Just be the same. Like, you can run ads on Facebook and Instagram and stuff like everyone else sort of does. Yeah. To get them to the website. Or if they follow you, they can just go to your bio and then click over to the website sort of thing. So a lot of people just have their link in their bio or for Facebook and Instagram. Is that what you sort them in?
James Kademan [00:38:39]:
Yeah. I’m trying to figure out how if I have a whatever. I have a Shopify store, and I sell pens or microphones, maybe something more niche. I don’t know. Yeah. Just I’m trying to think of some, I guess, I’m a motorcycle guy. So let’s just say I sell gears for motorcycles that are specific. I got my little niche, but I have 2 problems.
James Kademan [00:39:03]:
One problem is that most of the world doesn’t know that I exist. And the other problem is that possibly the world that would use my product doesn’t even know that the product itself exists. So how do I get in front of the right audience and get them to my store to actually pay me?
Clayton Bates [00:39:22]:
Well, first of all, I’d love to do a motorbike website. I’ve I’ve because I ride a motorbike myself as well.
James Kademan [00:39:29]:
Nice. You just got cooler.
Clayton Bates [00:39:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s one of the best things I ever did was buy a motorbike.
James Kademan [00:39:35]:
Best therapy in the world. Right?
Clayton Bates [00:39:37]:
Yeah. Like, when you’re stressed out, just go for a ride and stuff like that.
James Kademan [00:39:41]:
So I love it.
Clayton Bates [00:39:42]:
I’m very much looking forward to building a motorbike black accessories website or something like that. Very cool. We we don’t really deal with, like, getting the people to the website and stuff like that. But I’ll give you a good example, of someone who had a brand new product that no one had ever made before, new invention and stuff. They just did cool stuff on their Instagram. Some cool stuff that people in their niche resonated with really built their business up. So they they probably did better than nearly any of it. Like, they’re they’re they’ve done really well.
Clayton Bates [00:40:20]:
They’re like 150,000 followers on Instagram, I think. Like, 2 to 300,000 on TikTok just from doing cool stuff in their niche, and they have a product that no one in the world has has ever made. So that was pretty cool. And then another person, they have a real bogey. Do you know what bogan means?
James Kademan [00:40:39]:
I do not.
Clayton Bates [00:40:42]:
Maybe it’s a strange slang sort of thing. So it’s almost like, well, now I’m on the under pressure now. It’s almost like wear songs and have a beer in your hand and a singlet and shorts and stuff and
James Kademan [00:40:56]:
Alright.
Clayton Bates [00:40:57]:
All black. Hey. How’s it going? And all this sort of stuff like that.
James Kademan [00:41:01]:
Okay.
Clayton Bates [00:41:02]:
Anyway so they had, like, a product that, now all those Australians are gonna hate me now, but anyway so they had a a product where a lot of the videos they’re posting on their Instagram was, like, all bogan y sort of content. It wasn’t actually really about their product, and they they blew up their Instagram, and they make, like, 1,000,000 of dollars selling this product that they have.
James Kademan [00:41:26]:
Oh, nice.
Clayton Bates [00:41:27]:
Yeah. Bates basically just around, like, being cool to be a bogan, like, in Australia sort of thing.
James Kademan [00:41:33]:
Alright. Bogan. I’ll have to check that out. Is that a good thing?
Clayton Bates [00:41:38]:
I don’t know. All the comments are gonna be like, oh, you let us down in a show.
James Kademan [00:41:45]:
The entire country. Clayton, how could you do that? Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. So tell me about analytics. Does Shopify give access to analytics about people visiting a store and where they’re coming from? What are they doing? What pages are they going to? Do they give you information that is helpful that way?
Clayton Bates [00:42:05]:
Yeah. They do all this. This is one of my strengths is my brain is very analytical sort of thing. So I can log in to someone’s store, look at their analytics, and basically know how much money we’re gonna make them straight away. I nearly never get it wrong. I always, at least, I always lowball it and always pretty much always get it right. Alright. Bates, basically, it’ll tell you, like, conversion Bates is 1%, average order value is $50, returning customer Bates 15%.
Clayton Bates [00:42:33]:
The traffic is coming from here. People landing on the home page this many times, this many traffic. So it’s got basically everything sort of thing. So, yeah, I’m very good at, like, just looking at analytics and being like, oh, how are you not making $10,000 extra a month? And then we rebuild the website. I make 10,000 extra sort of thing. So it’s sort of like I can’t explain how my brain actually can do it probably, but normally, if I say, like, 5,000, I’ll make 10,000 extra. So I normally lowball myself sort of thing. So Oh, interesting.
Clayton Bates [00:43:05]:
Estimates. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:43:06]:
I was just gonna ask you, what are you looking at in analytics to figure that out? Is it Yeah. Is it, number of visitors, or do you know what you’re looking at?
Clayton Bates [00:43:16]:
One One of the things is I’ve worked with 600 businesses now, and I’ve probably talked to, like, I don’t know, like, I’ve done 2,003 audits. Right? So I’ve looked at a lot of stores. Right? So let’s just say someone’s in fashion niche and their and their conversion Bates 1%. And you look at their website and it’s like, oh, you’ve got good images. You’ve got a following on social media. Why is it 1%? Your most of your products are like $50. Why is the average order value 60? And then you look at the website and it’s like, it doesn’t flow very well and stuff like that. And then you think, alright.
Clayton Bates [00:43:52]:
They’re making 10,000 a month. Conversion Bates, 1%. If we can increase it to 2%, which is realistic, and then if we can get the average order value up $10 or something like that. Like, that’s how I my brain is sort of thinking. It’s probably comparing it to all previous people I’ve worked with sort of thing. Got it. Think about it. So yeah.
Clayton Bates [00:44:14]:
Normally, at a very high level, like, when people are making 1,000,000 of dollars a year, right, if you can increase their average order value, sorry, their conversion rate by half a percent, It’s like Oh
James Kademan [00:44:25]:
my gosh.
Clayton Bates [00:44:26]:
The amounts of money. Yeah. Like, even, like, average order value, $10. This is one other big mistake a lot of people make now that it’s it’s making me think about it is someone will pay someone to build their website, say, a year ago. Right? And they’ll really hold on to I paid for that website a year ago. Right? But the thing is, if they keep looking at things change over a year or 6 months or 2 years. Right. A lot of people hold on to I paid that person a few $1,000 like a year ago.
Clayton Bates [00:45:00]:
Right? But if you pay that money again to someone, it’s 100 of 1,000 of dollars that you could be making expert. Sometimes 1,000,000 of dollars. Like, we worked with someone, £1,000,000 a year they’re making. They had their their website rebuilt a year before us. Right? They’re making £1,000,000 a year. We rebuilt the website. It went to £3,000,000 the next in the next year. Probably £1,000,000 was because of the website we built.
Clayton Bates [00:45:31]:
So it’s like imagine if they kept holding on to that that they paid the money for that year. That that’s like £1,000,000. Yeah. So it’s like not not little amounts of money. You know what I mean?
James Kademan [00:45:44]:
Yeah. You know Bates interesting segue because I was wondering if people are paying you a onetime thing, you fix their stuff, and they move on with their life, or is this a a routine? You fix their stuff, but then there’s a maintenance, so to speak, as things change and Bates change and webs, the Internet changes, stuff like that?
Clayton Bates [00:46:04]:
So we try to build really good relationships with people. So I I could probably cut out, like, building brand new websites. Right? And just focus on people making 1,000,000 of dollars. But the way I look at it is and this really helped my agency a lot last year, by the way. If I help these people at the start at the beginning, if I if I give them enough to make sales, like, not the full blown custom build website, Just something really good, help them out, make training videos, stuff like that. So, basically, we’ll send them a quote. They don’t have to pay anymore. We will honor the the price.
Clayton Bates [00:46:45]:
Only, like, 6 times we’ve had to charge someone extra. So it’ll be a one time fee until the website’s built, then we’ll do a couple of weeks support. We’ll give them more training videos, like teaching them how to update their website, stuff like that. Then normally, people go 3 ways. They’ll pay us to do everything forever. So some people have been doing that for 4 or 5 years. The other person will use all the training videos and just update stuff themselves. The 3rd type of person where most people this is what most people do.
Clayton Bates [00:47:17]:
They’ll learn how to update their banner, their announcement, but add a product sort of thing, and then they’ll hire us to do everything else like a hybrid thing. And then we try to have that really good relationship because if they win, we win. So if they start out and they’re not making anything and we help them along the journey and they get to, like, 500,000, a lot of these people, they come back and they’re like, hey, you helped me a lot at the start, let’s custom build the whole website. So it’s sort of like if we help them win, we win. And then if we keep helping them win, we win. Everyone wins. Nothing. So we even had someone where they they started from completely nothing.
Clayton Bates [00:48:01]:
We, like, I helped the guy so much. Multi $1,000,000 company and now a custom built website. So it’s like it’s a really big project. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s really big. So and you think, like, over the years, like, everyone’s just won. So I just try to focus on good relationships, everyone winning. And, work. If they win, we win.
Clayton Bates [00:48:23]:
Every my staff win because I can hire them. Yeah. Everyone just wins. So that’s our goal sort of thing.
James Kademan [00:48:28]:
I like it. You build upon success or they can build upon the success that you’ve helped them get.
Clayton Bates [00:48:33]:
Yeah. That’s cool. The one the one thing that really upsets me is that Shopify added this new feature into the into the partner portal, where you get an email when someone shuts down their website. And, like, if I get that email and it says, this person shut down their website, it’s, like, really depressing. Like, I don’t I don’t want that to happen. I want people to do well. Because obviously, like, out of 600 people, not everyone’s succeeded. You know what I mean?
James Kademan [00:49:01]:
Right.
Clayton Bates [00:49:02]:
It was really depressing to get that email because, like everyone I come in contact with, whether they work with us or not, I want them to do well, I mean, well sort of things. So I just want to put on the the wind.
James Kademan [00:49:12]:
I suppose there’s certain things out of your control. Right? If you’re the best you sell the best typewriter ribbon, eventually, that goes away or something like that. Or Yeah. People’s lives change, their Bates change. Maybe they won the lottery or moved to Guam or something like that. Like Yeah. I imagine there’s lots of reasons even if they had a successful store why they would walk away from it. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:49:35]:
Clayton, but I imagine a few.
Clayton Bates [00:49:37]:
Yeah. A 100%. Even, like, my trading card business was going alright, and I I walked away from it. One of our clients a couple of years ago, they were making about 500,000 a year for their website, and they walked away from it. I don’t know why. I think mostly stressed oh, too stressed out. The margins were low. So even if though though it’s higher, there’s, like, a million things why people would sort of thing.
Clayton Bates [00:50:01]:
But
James Kademan [00:50:02]:
Mhmm.
Clayton Bates [00:50:02]:
Yeah. I probably gotta not take it to hardest notch, I think. So
James Kademan [00:50:06]:
No. I get it. I think that comes down to the thick skin of the entrepreneur. How you just you control what you can control and the things that are out of your control. Because we’ve had clients with my call answering service that have closed up shop. I even heard of businesses that were very successful, weren’t clients of ours, where the people just retired. And instead of selling the business, they just closed the door one day.
Clayton Bates [00:50:31]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:50:31]:
And from my point of view, I’m like, are you crazy? You had a gold mine there that somebody would’ve paid you for.
Clayton Bates [00:50:37]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:50:38]:
But I think I don’t know this for sure, but some people, I think after years, they just kind of get tired of it. They have enough money to do whatever it is that they wanna do. And even the time to find a buyer is of no interest to them. Like you’re saying, where time is very valuable.
Clayton Bates [00:50:55]:
And
James Kademan [00:50:55]:
they’re like, we got enough money. You know what? We’ll just shut the door, click the lights, and move on with their life.
Clayton Bates [00:51:02]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:51:02]:
So I get it. I get it. I don’t know. I think it’s the best decision in the world, but who am I to judge? Right?
Clayton Bates [00:51:08]:
Yeah. As long as people are happy, that that’s all you can hope for. So
James Kademan [00:51:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess in the end, no business is forever.
Clayton Bates [00:51:17]:
So Every everything goes to 0 eventually.
James Kademan [00:51:20]:
Yeah. Right. Whether we want it or not.
Clayton Bates [00:51:23]:
Yeah. On a long enough time period, everything goes to 0.
James Kademan [00:51:27]:
Yeah. Fair. Very fair. Clayton, how can people find you?
Clayton Bates [00:51:33]:
They can Google Inspire Small Business. I’ll be page number 1 result number 1 on Google. Inspiresmallbusiness.com. Instagram’s Inspiresmallbusiness. And YouTube is Clayton Bates Shopify expert. So there’s lots of free tutorials and stuff like that.
James Kademan [00:51:51]:
Very cool.
Clayton Bates [00:51:52]:
And stuff. So, YouTube helped me a lot in 2014. So it’s a very big passion of mine to give back to YouTube because it helped me a lot. I wouldn’t be here without YouTube.
James Kademan [00:52:04]:
That is incredible. I mean, 10 years ago, that was that was big move. I mean, YouTube was was popular then, but it wasn’t on the scale that it is now.
Clayton Bates [00:52:15]:
YouTube, 10 years ago, the the big difference when you’re trying to find something now on YouTube is 10 years ago, if you wanted a very specific thing, it was a lot easier to find really niche narrow things. But now when you try to find niche narrow things, all the generic stuff comes up. So it’s actually harder to find, like, really narrow things. Back 10 years ago, if you wanted to find some random thing, someone had probably made a video about it. So it was a lot easier to find stuff.
James Kademan [00:52:46]:
Yeah. You could almost argue universally that that’s the the same with YouTube and a lot of the search engines that we have. I feel like the search engines have gone backwards from they used to be really good, and now they’re not as good Yeah. In my opinion.
Clayton Bates [00:53:01]:
A 100%. No. I think so too.
James Kademan [00:53:03]:
Yeah. Hopefully well, maybe they’re going to 0. Who knows? There’ll be something else during the next.
Clayton Bates [00:53:08]:
It will eventually. In a 1000 years, it’s probably not gonna be around.
James Kademan [00:53:12]:
Yeah. Right? Something’s gonna happen. All good. Clayton, I appreciate you being on the show.
Clayton Bates [00:53:17]:
Yeah. No worries. I really appreciate it. Thanks, everyone. Everyone that listened this far, thank you. I really appreciate it. And, give a like and subscribe or everything to this this podcast has been awesome.
James Kademan [00:53:29]:
Right on. Right on. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, just like Clayton said, give it the big old thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those that either have a Shopify store or those that maybe are considering having a Shopify store. Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls on Call, offering call answering and reception services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncallcom, as well as the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Clayton Bates, founder of Inspire Small Business. Clayton, can you tell us that website one more time?
Clayton Bates [00:54:22]:
Inspire small business dot com.
James Kademan [00:54:25]:
It doesn’t get easier than that. I love it when they do that. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.