Chad Maghielse Shares His Secrets on Scaling Your Business into a Seven Figure Brand

—An eCommerce Money Map interview by Shawheen Amirkhizi and Salim Omar.

"The success of others is evidence of your future success." Are you an eCommerce business owner looking to scale your business into a seven figure brand? Investor, consultant and entrepreneur, Chad Maghielse shares his journey on how he created a multimillion dollar eCommerce business that has allowed him to semi-retire, while helping the world become a better place.

Spotlight on Chad Maghielse 

Chad Maghielse has been featured on The Prosper Show, The Seven Figure Seller Summit, Capitalism.com and more. He owes his success to his dogs Brock and Beast. They are the inspiration that led Maghielse to build an eCommerce pet supplies company with just $3,000 in his pocket. Within 12 months the business had skyrocketed with a sales run rate of a million dollars. Maghielse donates a portion of the sales to funding surgeries for pets with cancer which was a key factor to his success. He sold his business for seven figures in two and a half years. Maghielse currently does group coaching for Capitalsm.com—a large and influential ecommerce training company. If you have more questions or want to know more about growing your business, you can reach Maghielse on Facebook or LinkedIn. 

How does an eCommerce Business Breaking into the Pet Industry Stand out from Competitors?

Maghielse uses basic principles for his foundations:

• Branding

A focus on his charity mission helped differentiate his brand from 

generic brands.

• Investing in the right product

"On a product level, it is important to find a difference in the product. A cohesive brand of complementary products are stronger than a mix of unrelated "hot selling" products." One of Maghielses' key points was offering pet dental care products. The factor that set his brand apart was using a special ingredient. He sourced a grain free product that did not affect pets negatively—his oatmeal itch free pet shampoos and other niche pet products focused on the type of pet owner who really cared for their pets 

• Marketing that is aimed at your target group.

Know your buyer persona. When Maghielse sold his company, his dog shampoo was at the top of Amazon's rankings. "It is important to target a specific person and focus on their needs. If you do this they will bring the rest of the market with them. You really need to care, the person you are selling to matters more than the product." 

An eCommerce owner needs to have a strong audience that they can utilize to launch products. This helps get recurring revenue.

What Are the Financial Data Statistics an eCommerce Owner Should Look At When Building a Brand?

According to Maghielse, it is important to cover all the basics. These include—

• Cost to acquire a customer. 
• Cost to acquire the lifetime value of a customer. 
• Profit margin for direct sale—their are different profit margins per marketplace, it is not all the same. "Your Shopify store will have a different margin than your Amazon store or a third party store for the niche you're in."
• Know that your profit margin for cash flow and your profit margin for exit are different.
• Shipping- this can fluctuate drastically depending on the times.

You want to build a business that you can sell—even if you do not plan to sell. Having the option to sell makes all the difference. This gears you towards improving your organization and business strategy.

"Work on your business, not in your business." According to Maghielse, this old adage stands true. "Cast the vision for your business, and choose the right people to help put that into place. This is the sweet spot. Invest back in the business for real growth." Lastly, Maghielse advises that business owners should delay paying themselves—"Rather slowly transition into it. This makes better business sense."

Specific Strategies to Implement when Going from a Six to Seven Figure Brand.

Build and utilize your audience.

• Release products to your audience.
• Have a mission—an honest charity mission that you truly care about will resonate with your audience.
• Use keyword relevancy—this will help with creating organic sales.
• Be consistent in your delivery.

What eCommerce Owners Can do to Improve Their Strategy?

• Do not be afraid to hire an email marketer or outsource a copywriter. "If I could go back, that's something I would have definitely done differently."

• The 80/20 rule— learn that 20% of what you do will bring 80% of your results. Do not allow yourself to get distracted by trying to do everything at once. 

"The path to success lies in defining your persona, building an audience of those people, and creating a strong product with a differentiating factor. Launch that product to the audience—Rinse and repeat with the next product until you reach seven figures-it really is that simple." As Maghielse puts it, "It's not easy, but it is a simple plan to follow."

To learn more exciting eCommerce tips from the experts visit our blog at www.esenshi.com/blog, and listen to the full interview at eCommerce Money Map Podcast . We offer professional and affordable bookkeeping, accounting and virtual CFO services to help grow your eCommerce business.