Davie Fogarty: Lady Gaga had it on a bed behind her. I was pretty annoyed that she didn't actually wear it. There seems to be this natural kind of competition now to bring creators to the platform and they're now starting to try to reward that content more rather than just using all of those impressions paid. So I think it's a really good time to be a creator. The truth is my cortisol would have just been through the roof and I would have been actually in a very, very bad place physically and mentally, but I've just normalized it.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello everyone and welcome back to ADD to cart. I feel like I've been on a little royal tour of the Australian east coast over the last couple of weeks. It was brilliant to have our e commerce socials in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne three nights in a row. That was just the most ridiculous idea. But it was so good to catch up with everyone who came along. We got around 50 people along to each social event which was awesome. Great size, good chats, beer or two along the way, but just so nice to have everyone back in person and being able to share those moments and have those casual chats. So thank you if you came along. Thank you if you introduced yourself. Few people I didn't get to talk to, but please make sure you keep an eye out on E Suite's socials because we are definitely, definitely going to have more events coming up throughout the year and maybe to some more regional locations outside of the big metros. If you've got suggestions, make sure you hit me up. Tell us where you want us to have our e commerce socials. We'd love to make sure that we have events for people who can't normally get to events as well anywhere there's an e commerce community. All right, onto this week's guest. This week's guest was actually a bit of an enigma to me because most of the guests that I have on, I've talked to them before online or in person or know through the industry. I actually didn't have any, any connections to this week's guest so I really didn't know a lot going into the chat, apart from everything that I saw in the news because you will Know them. This person is a self made millionaire who taught himself e commerce. His first business became a major trend when it hit the market in 2018. And thanks to his hard work, it hasn't really gone away. Davey Fogarty is the founder of the Ooty. Now, be embarrassed. You might have one, you obviously have seen one, you know about them, but put your hand up if you own one. They are the original oversized wearable blanket that turned Davey's last $500 into a $250 million business and now sits inside the Davey Group alongside other brands he's developed such as pupnaps, zoetech, Australian Furniture Warehouse and and more. Davey is one of Australia's youngest, most successful entrepreneurs and he is so generous with his knowledge. He shares today how he's made the Ootie to become a fad to ride the wave, but also turn it into a brand that means it stuck around. He also shares what he sees as the biggest threats to your E commerce business. Lots around that. And why he's a little bit disappointed in Lady Gaga. Got nothing to do with A Star Is Born. That movie is perfection. Davey blew me away with how knowledgeable
Nathan Bush: and in depth he was able to
Nathan Bush: get with all facets of E commerce, but especially product selection. And if you've seen his YouTube or TikTok videos, you might might have a preconceived notion that he's a bit of a know it all, maybe a bit arrogant. But I can tell you that it cannot be further from the truth. I found Davey just so incredibly generous and humble and I'm really, really glad that I got to meet him and have this chat. So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet. Here's our conversation with Davy Fogarty, founder of the Ooty. Davey, thank you for joining us on Add to cart.
Davie Fogarty: Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: I've got some very excited community members. When I said I've got Davey joining us, does anyone have any questions? I actually didn't have people asking questions. I had people sharing their Ooty stories.
Davie Fogarty: Oh, that's very good. Yeah, there's some, some pretty crazy Woody stories coming out. A lot of people are wearing them pretty much as normal clothes down the street during winter and whatnot at the moment. So it's kind of. It's not decided whether it's a crime against fashion or fashionable yet. So Jerry's still out on that one.
Nathan Bush: Are you aware in public?
Davie Fogarty: I am not aware in public, no. I think, I think there'll be something egotistical about wearing your product so shamelessly in public. So I'm not aware of that. I do wear the loungewear and some other products though, because they are quite great.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, fantastic. So we're going to dive into the Oodie and the success that you've had there. But first I thought we'd set the scene if we can. The Oodie is one of your ventures under the Davey Group. Can you share with us what the Davey Group looks like and how that's set up?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah. So the Davey Group is a holding company that I set up. It initially was really three major E commerce brands which was Oodie, pubmaps and Carbon Clinkers, all of which I started through. You know, we'd never raised funding and we were quite. Because all of them grew so quickly in the early stages, we ended up having to make some pretty strong decisions about where to focus on and the audience just kept growing and growing and growing so quickly. So while we've also got another brand that does about 20 million top line revenue called Outdoor Play, which is based in the States outdoor equipment, like water sports equipment. But the truth is in terms of the value, the Woody is just so, so big a part of the holding company. But all of these other brands that we've got cooking and a couple of other startups that I've got as well, kind of the seeds for the future and Oodies, kind of the main company within the group that provides the most profits.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And can you give us an idea on how big the Oodie is today?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, so about 170 million top line, 10, 15% EBITDA.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. When you first came up with the idea, did you ever imagine it could be that big?
Davie Fogarty: Look, it's an interesting one. No, to be frank, I think E Commerce can just grow so quickly. As everyone knows, we had a couple of lucky breaks. There's no doubt about that as well. Covid accelerated the E commerce industry is overall. But yeah, we executed really well. We focused on global diversification, product diversification, got our kind of product, flywheel cooking. So yeah. But no, we feel very blessed, feel very lucky that it grew to the size that it did.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And there's obviously some real smarts and process behind what you're doing there. With such a diverse range of brands, when you say that they grew early and grew quickly, what do you put that success down to? Because a lot of founders, especially when focusing on one brand, they grind for a long time before having that moment. Sounds like you've got a bit of
Davie Fogarty: a formula There, Yeah, it all comes down to product selection and it's down to where the product is or the trend is in the lifespan. So people are generally solution or product aware, but they just might not be brand aware yet. So launching a brand at that time is really ideal. And especially when use the platforms that you plan to be advertising through, such as Facebook ads, to guide that decision making around the product selection. Because if there's already product channel fit as well as, you know, product market fit, it can just grow really quickly through Facebook, which is undoubtedly the most powerful advertising tool to have ever existed. So that was my framework initially. I think we, you know, and I'm trying to build software at the moment to create that entire process from trend selection. But I think one thing that I underappreciated is how hard these businesses are. Like getting sales in the early stages doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a long sustainable business. You're going to have to grow a team, you're going to have to build a brand so that you can continually create new products and reinvigorate the audience. That level of execution is something that I underappreciated. So while these brands were doing almost $10 million in their first year, they needed a lot of execution over many, many years. So that's something that we're getting very good at now. Probably underappreciated how hard it was in the early stages.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, because I bet you had your fair share of people saying to you that the Oodie was a fad or a trend and it wouldn't be a long term business.
Davie Fogarty: It is hard when so many people say that and sillier things have died out earlier. I'm not one of these people that can predict trend longevity very well. I'm not one of those people that thinks that I know what consumers want before they ask for it. But yeah, it was very difficult with lots and lots of people saying this is gonna, you should sell this business because it's gonna go. And you know, I looked at doing that, but nobody would touch it because, you know, even for 5, 10 million we ended up getting some offers a bit over that mark. But yeah, people wouldn't even touch it because they thought it was going to be a fad as well. And it's just grown and grown and grown. I think there's. What was unpredicted was that it was going to become a category within itself. So there's the wearable blanket category, but I think you wouldn't put the dressing down as A wearable blanket category. And I think like that hoodie block is so perfect. Just like hoodies are perfect in themselves and are timeless in themselves. And I think that's what everyone underappreciated and me included. So it'll be interesting to see if that block now becomes really just kind of universal in nature and sticks around similar to the dressing gown of which, you know, being synonymous with that block will be quite valuable in itself.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And then obviously the idea that the Oodie is the Kleenex or the Dyson of that category. You mentioned some of the different products there categories. We've got pets, we've got loungewear, we've got outdoor gear. And you mentioned that you use Facebook as a key channel and I'm assuming a lot of your research before you decide to go into a category is around what's happening on Facebook. Do you use any other tools to do your research on what product categories might be fit?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, the problem with product research I find for people that are new to business is that there's so many tools out there, there's so many data points, you know, where one business might be a great business to launch or one product for one person, it doesn't take into account that it might be better. Maybe it's a more search based intent product that relies on SEO and you're starting a new business and you're a good writer and you know SEO that does it. Woody wouldn't be that product because it's more about creating desire through visual Facebook ads. So you want to be more of a content creator. So I think your acquisition method needs to come into your product research process. So my app tools, you know, it goes from everything from trends newsletters to going onto Facebook ads library, using ad spy tools, looking at website traffic through something like search similar web than breaking down the unit economics because you need to understand how much gross margin you have to acquire customers. You can't just create a cheaper product that costs you more because your competitor is just going to be out of out spend you. So this is what I'm trying to do through Trendrocket and it's taking longer than I thought it would, but it's always how it is. But it's just a piece of SaaS that is going to break down all of these metrics and more importantly the global network of competitors that are actually selling a similar trend because localization is actually one of the most important parts when coming to sell because of competition. So you have two cafes and one strip. It could halve the business. So and it is really similar to that in that Facebook is an option so trying to really kind of give new business owners, drop shippers or like really solidified brands that level of insight just in a couple of clicks and then hopefully doing some modeling. So we can kind of predict what what are going to be massive trends before they kind of happen.
Nathan Bush: We know that customers are going to be more price conscious in 2023, but it doesn't mean that they've lost their soul. Shopify conducted a global survey to understand customer trends and found that Australian customers are actually the most passionate about buying locally to reduce their carbon footprint. And while price pressure won't go away, the research showed that the majority of Australian customers will wait longer for delivery and recommend a product that is sustainable at its core.
Nathan Bush: We're such a good bunch here, aren't we?
Nathan Bush: So to view more resources to help with your 2023 planning and see how Shopify can take your E commerce business to the next level, visit shopify.com au today.
Nathan Bush: What's your reasoning for creating Trendrocket? Rather than keeping all these secrets to yourself and just creating more brands, I
Davie Fogarty: think commercializing a tool and bringing it to market allows you to invest more into the tool because there's a direct revenue source through. So that would be my main reasoning at this stage. I don't think, to be candid, I don't think Trendrocket is like I can't just use Trendrocket and find trends. Like I still need to rely on these other tools. But the day that I don't need those other tools is probably the day that I'll throw a fair bit of money at advertising Trendrocket and getting behind it and yeah, getting people excited to it. But at the moment a lot of my time is still really around kind of the oodie and making sure that that team there is doing a great job and enjoying it as well. So that's where my main focus is. I only spend a few hours on Trendrocker and a few hours on YouTube a week.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes total sense. Going back to products and selecting products. Do you have any hard and fast rules around ruling something in versus ruling something out when you're either at a category level or at a product level?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, I mentioned one before, but I will definitely mention again is gross margin. Making sure that you have enough money to acquire customers on a platform. If you don't have over $20 gross margin, it's going to be very, very difficult unless the product is on fire and Then eventually it's going to catch up to you. So you want to be able to spend more because Facebook wants more money. If not, you want to have a really unique method of acquiring customers. Perhaps that's through. There's a good business called Mini Katana which is created a YouTube channel that because they can't actually advertise on Facebook, they're basically created a little anime series and doing YouTube content through that. So they build a community that way. So you'd need a. Yeah, a unique acquisition source or enough money to spend on Facebook.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, but you kind of behind the eight ball if you're below that $20 mark from the get go.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, 100%. It's probably even more than that at this stage. And that's like, that's just a general rule. Like some people will obviously edge cases will prove that wrong, but most of most people don't have edge cases. So. And then, yeah, I think competition's a big one. I think IP is an interesting one in that if you can create IP through patents, registered designs, or even just differentiate through like the Oodie for example, with patents, that is a huge win. It is absolutely enormous win because if it works, you can then go into retail stores and, and stock that. And sometimes it's easier for people to just stop you rather than rip your product off. But department stores, because the biggest threat to E commerce is always going to be one drop shippers, so people approaching onto your digital real estate and then two is these big department chains that get your product and remove the courier costs from it and then strip down product quality and then sell it for half the price. And they don't need to advertise because the news will advertise for them. They would basically say Woody's for $2 and then just advertise that like crazy. So they're two massive competitors and the only real protection from that is IP and brand. And getting the IP brand is very ambiguous sometimes and. But IP is, is very tangible and you can be litigious about it and prevent them from ripping your idea off.
Nathan Bush: Is there any IP on the Oodie itself?
Davie Fogarty: No, we don't really have any IP to be completely honest. We've got all of our characters are trademarked and registered. So that does definitely help us. And that has been something that was a happy accident in that, you know people, when you buy a fake avocado Woody, it's quite obvious that it's not an Oodie like just our characters. So that was definitely something that's Kind of protected us and protected our brand.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Nice. And do you spend much time thinking about rip offs or people who can take it off or do you just kind of put your head down and
Davie Fogarty: go there definitely is like, I don't have any animosity towards it in that this is the game, it's how it's played, it's business. Like it's economic so that consumers can consume things for cheap. So I don't have animosity around a. The thing that annoys me is when there's literal counterfeit and they're. There's counterfeit factories in China that we've tried to shut down with police and whatnot. But they, yeah, are literally selling out the back door and they're really, really bad quality which hurts our brand as well. They're selling it in like markets. So when they've copied our exact product, but if they're copying our block and completely redesigning it and not infringing on our trademarked, trademarked characters and logos. Our trademark logos, then yeah, as long as they're not doing that, I'm okay. I'm just head down and focusing on what I can do.
Nathan Bush: Do you ever have success in shutting those factories down?
Davie Fogarty: No, not at this stage. Not at this stage. We've had success in other ways. We have like a full legal team, not legal team, but like a full team focusing on taking these down from listings. So we do thousands of reports on all platforms. So Facebook, Google, Amazon to get these counterfeits down and these impersonating brands as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Nice. One of the rules that I heard you talk about on your YouTube channel, which we'll get to because it's a fantastic resource, was your rule around buying products that fit a certain weight for postage. Can you share that with our listeners?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah. So as I touched on before, dropshippers are one of the biggest risks. So if you don't have IP ads, chances are your product is going to be. And they weren't just what I was talking about before as well. Like they weren't just grab your product from a different factory and shoot it in a different way. They will download your Facebook ads, they will download your website, they'll set up what's called an agency account. So Facebook kind of has these back doors of selling accounts in certain countries that prevent them from kind of getting shut down or banned. So you report them and they don't get banned and then they'll just download your ads and run your ads and just completely sell it for cheaper. So that is one of the biggest risks. But what happened as another somewhat happy accident is ODI Calming Blankets and a couple of our other brands were so big 3kg volumetric that dropshippers couldn't approach on that because they just couldn't make money shipping it directly from China. And I don't have a heap against drop shipping. Like it's a great way for young business owners to start learning how to arbitrage traffic and get into that industry. But they're so lazy and that they wouldn't even bother setting up a 3B L shooting their own content even if they saw just these tremendous results, which they should have done, you know, with any of our products. So it's an interesting form of a moat there because they're. They're so lazy.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I didn't realize the links that they go to around duplicating websites and Facebook ads and the rest. Do you have anything, any software set up to kind of automatically detect that or do you rely on picking it up or your customers picking it up?
Davie Fogarty: We've used software in the past. I think what I it was much more effective me just getting outsourced agents and just giving them a sop, a framework to how to find them because it was much easier. Sometimes the software can find these really random places where it is popping up, but those random places, nobody else is going there except bots. So it's probably not necessary to get software. Just chain an agent.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice.
Nathan Bush: Now, going back to your start, it
Nathan Bush: must seem like a long time ago, but I read that one of your breakthrough skills was growth hacking Instagram and obviously the world's changed a lot since then. Customer acquisition cost is a, is a hot topic at the moment, especially for Facebook and Insta. Do you see social being as powerful for e commerce brands now as what
Nathan Bush: it was back then?
Davie Fogarty: I think Mr. Beast tweeted this just the other day. It's. You can go viral on every single social media platform at this time. And when I started Instagrams it wasn't necessarily about virality, it was to some degree, but it was just about follower growth and that followed growth and impressions would, would definitely translate into sales over time. But now you, you can just have like a thousand follower account and hit viral things on every single platform and it's just a really exciting time. It's a little bit interesting how that happened though because I was under the assumption that paid is where it's at. They were just going to keep killing organic reach and increasing and paid. But there seems to be this natural kind of Competition now to bring creators to the platform and they're now starting to try to reward that content more rather than just using all of those impressions of paid. So I think it's a really good time to be a creator. I think more than ever, I think that there's ways to get starting a business without having to pay for ads. But I do. There's nothing that I enjoy more than the set and forget nature of buying Facebook ads and just setting up a budget and manipulating that budget over time to get the best possible profit for the business. So I think if I had to do anything, I'll probably learn paid again before I learn organic. But you can learn both at the same time. They lend each other's wealth. Yeah, lend each other very well to each other.
Nathan Bush: I think a lot of our listeners will be, you know, have that little moment of joy hearing that there's still life in organic reach on social. From your experience, what do you see in terms of that creative content really cutting through free commerce at the moment.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah. So I think the easiest one is the TikTok Reels format. Yeah. So TikTok and Instagram Reels where you're really kind of just utilizing the product in its most purest form. And that's why I talked about it before, like product market, product channel fit as well. If there is some kind of, you know, paint that or like soap that works super, super well. I went viral on YouTube. I showed how easy it was to go viral on TikTok with a cleaning pace and you know, that sold a fair few units as well. So I think, yeah, selecting your product, making sure that it lends it itself well to that. And then the other, I guess on the other side of it as well, education in the more text format. So Twitter and LinkedIn both have the same format and the tweet format works really well on Instagram as well, where you're just tweeting out education and talking about the subject at hand or you know, similar subjects and yeah. Posting them on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram reels.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So really just offering value to. And a bit of surprise.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Great.
Nathan Bush: And then when you translate that to listing products online. Cause I had a look at the oody site and you've got some really nice product pages there. What's your secrets to a fantastic product page?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, I think just super easily digestible. If you don't have good product images, you're going to be dead. You just need to make sure it's super crisp. I think the best path is to survey your customers, realize what their main questions are and then just put them in the bullets as high as possible. So one good example is like with the Oodie people like I don't know if it fits us and we had one size fits all 40 times on the page. So we ended up putting that as the number one bullet in big bold letters and it's like one size fits all. So don't assume that people are reading the landing page at all. You can use images within images. So you could use for example you've got a photo of the Audi. You could use a little circle to show where it's a real close up of the Sherpa fleece inside. Say like super soft or you know, that could be the one size fits all image so that because people are actually going to look at the product images. So it's a good way to cut through the noise. Study some copywriting principles, go to your competitors, just kind of break those down and just make sure it's really really fast as well make sure you're not clogging up your entire website with lots of different apps.
Nathan Bush: Ever scrolled through an E commerce packaging website for fun? Nah, me neither. Until today. Paclio is putting the joy into the packaging game. So let's play a game old tell you the name of the Paclio product and you have to try and guess what kind of product they are. Fairy Floss Compostable Mailer Queen Bee Honeycomb Padded mailer.
Nathan Bush: Here we go.
Nathan Bush: Gummy Shark Water activated tape. Now if my jaded self thinks that this packaging is fun, imagine what your customers will think. Paclio is also eco friendly Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. Now that's pure joy for everyone. Check out the Paclio range of E commerce packaging options@paclio.com that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com
Davie Fogarty: do
Nathan Bush: you give much thought to SEO copy for those product pages?
Davie Fogarty: If you're trying to get SEO traffic, worry about your SEO. If you're not worrying about SEO traffic, which UDI doesn't, don't worry about it. Look at conversion. So you should be setting up Google Optimize and running some split tests on certain pieces of copy or format to understand what is increasing your conversion rate. But yeah, it is annoying when you have to focus on SEO and direct response conversion. But it's not not impossible. It's good that if you only need a focus on one, that's for sure.
Nathan Bush: Did you see that Google are shutting down Google Optimize.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, that notification actually hit yesterday and I didn't get time to look at it. I think you're still going to be able to do it through GA4, so I've been looking at that. But I would not be surprised if Shopify doesn't roll out something native. And that's probably why they're doing it because all of these platforms should have those inbuilt features within them, not relying on Google. There's no point passing that data to Google when Shopify could just have it all.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And I got a feeling that GA4, as we said today, is a long way from what it'll look like in 12 months time once everyone's on it. Are you struggling with it too? Because I think a lot of people will be like happy that you're struggling with it.
Davie Fogarty: I don't even go on it to be honest. I just do that kind of stuff. I'm like they'll figure it out first and then someone can teach me.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. I was surprised when you said around fitment being one of the key bits of feedback because you look at it and you go honestly if anyone any product was easy from a fitment perspective, it would be the oodi. What are your key communication channels with customers and the types of queries that you get.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah. So on that I think the assuming is the main reason why you need a survey. I think that's just so important a main communication. We use Gorgias for customer service. I just did a recent YouTube video on Gorgias to go and break down why we use it. We do use live chat when things aren't super busy. I'm not a big fan of live chat and it just not even being a live chat. So they ask a question and then 12 hours later someone responds. That's what most smaller brands do. So if you're going to commit to live chat, I me personally, I love live chat. It's surprising though that there's just not this conclusive data around how much people love live chat because I swear it just increases a ton of conversion rate and whatnot but probably more qualitatively feeling around that. And then you need to reply to every single comment on every single Facebook ad or like the most of them but at least you know, address every single complaint on all review platforms or Facebook comments as well as much as possible just because that's where customers are seeing you and they're an open dialogue. So more people are seeing that. So you need to put staff on, on that as a primary objective.
Nathan Bush: I think that's a really good point because we see a lot of businesses putting so much time and investment into creating content for social and then ignoring the power of responding and interacting. Do you split your teams up between the two or is it all just all one team in for social it's
Davie Fogarty: split between social media and then emails. Generally people that are emailing in very, very frustrated because someone has done something bad. And 95% of the time it's the couriers, the other 4% of the time it's the warehouse and then 1% we probably stuff up. So it's, it's just about diffusing that and trying to get people want a human response in a robotic timeframe nowadays. And I think that's what we try to do via email. Whereas on digital maybe it is more about just creating a bit of dialogue and engaging a customer and having some fun as well.
Nathan Bush: Using any AI to get those robotic responses out.
Davie Fogarty: No, I think it will happen this year. It will need to be, in my opinion, I believe it'll simply be adapted by three. One of these models, some of that Gorgeous. Like if you're with a really small provider, my assumption would be that they're going to struggle to get the models adapted as quickly and someone like Gorgeous or Zendesk are going to work with one of these players and it's going to be, it's going to be game changing. I 100% conceive that happening within this year as well. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Especially if it frees you up to actually engage on the stuff that's a little bit different or interesting or that will move the needle in terms of
Davie Fogarty: word of mouth, it's just going to drop the cost center for businesses and allow them to charge less. But for certain brands and I think that's very similar across multiple, multiple fields. But I think you would want to be on one of these platforms earliest because the models, they'll actually go through and read all of your historic stuff. So if you're going to have to migrate from someone, a small player to someone like Gorgeous and then build up the model, it's going to be a bit annoying. So you probably want to migrate sooner rather than later.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. As a brand that would be one of the leaders on platforms like Shopify and Gorgeous, do you get any special access, first look or opinions on what's coming down the line in terms of features?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, it's hard to know. I don't know the level of access that other people get, to be honest. Shopify. I have a good relationship with Shopify. Like every time that I have a problem they respond really quickly. So I'm super appreciative of that. But I haven't just worked with them in a, in a standard capacity as well. You know, I've spoke to their Australian based team as well, had some calls with them and they're really awesome people. So I have a lot of respect for the team there. No hidden gems though, I don't think, unless I could try to predict some of them just based on how the market's going. But I'm not going to try to do that live on air right now.
Nathan Bush: It's a bit hard now that they're a public company.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, that's true actually. Yeah, they would be able to build
Nathan Bush: too much, but they are great sponsors and friends of the show so we love working with them as well. Yeah. Now you personally, I'm just curious in terms of what your day looks like and what drives you. One of the things that I read when doing a little bit of research is that you work 12 hour days, six days a week.
Nathan Bush: Is that still true?
Nathan Bush: Accurate?
Davie Fogarty: That's not, not true anymore. And I might go back to that. But I think after I stepped down as CEO for Oodie, I definitely had a point of reflection and I never worked that many hours because I was like, seriously, seriously just like needed to. It's because I enjoyed it and that's shifting a little bit. I'm getting way into more into my fitness. I'm enjoying some other things as well. I'm enjoying just researching and just reading a lot. So that's now kind of shifting just based out of marginal utility? I guess so, yeah. Definitely not hustling that much anymore. Kind of focusing on more my happiness more than anything.
Nathan Bush: Was there a moment that made you go, I've got to step back and get a bit more balance?
Davie Fogarty: I guess not directly. It definitely got to a point where I was just so anxious all the time and I was just like, this is not how one should live your life. So it's a slippery kind of slope there to mental health issues. So that's kind of what I when I realized that I needed to pull my head in a little bit because
Nathan Bush: I could imagine there's a huge amount of adrenaline running through when you've got so many brands growing at such a fast ride across so many channels.
Davie Fogarty: 100%. I think Andrew Huberman does a really good episode on Stress on his podcast and it talks about how short bouts of stress is really Beneficial because it helps us get the task done. And then medium amounts of stress can also be good. But long term stress is really, really bad and can cause lots of issues. And that's what happened to me over four years. It was just constant long term stress. And by the end of the fourth year, I was like, we had a huge crisis hit us and I was completely under control, sleeping absolutely fine. And just, you know, from all accounts, if you asked me, I'd be like, this is just it, like. But the truth is my cortisol would have just been through the roof and I would have been actually in a very, very bad place physically and mentally. But I've just normalized it. So. And you could only see that when you take a step back. So that's what, what happened there. And yeah, now I'm starting to realize that I can do those, those stressful moments and get through crisis because there always, always is going to be issues. But you need to have a nice baseline to kind of revert back to because, yeah, it's important.
Nathan Bush: What was the first habit you broke to get back to that baseline?
Davie Fogarty: That's an interesting one. I think it was just scheduling 12 hours of meetings a day in my system. I just went, I just started canceling a lot of those meetings and started to, you know, have Tuesday, like blocking out, you know, reading times and whatnot.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I've done a very similar thing this year. My schedule's nowhere nearly as busy as yours, but I've started using a tool called Reclaim AI and it integrates with Google Calendar. And basically you set up habits and go, okay, I want between one and two hours of thinking time every day. And it kind of looks ahead in your calendar. And as soon as your calendar starts getting busy, it starts going, all right, shit, I've got to block this out for Nathan so that he's at least got some time to think. And it's really changed. It's changed how I view my diary and how I've got a little bit of space in a day now.
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that.
Nathan Bush: And so one of the other things I read is that you had 12
Nathan Bush: failed businesses before this, and I don't think that's unique to you. I think a lot of successful founders are successful because of what's come before them. What was the key lesson that you learned from those to develop what you have today?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, it's interesting how you ask anyone that doesn't do business and they would assume that 12 failed businesses is unique. So I think it's very disheartening for people that have one failed business to instantly assume that it's all over and they're not smart enough. But I think the one main lesson, it's a very subjective lesson simply because the way that I was approaching business was wrong in that i1, I wasn't researching anything, but I was more trying to focus on building an audience in any way possible. And audiences aren't all made equal audiences. For example, if I scraped, if I bought an email list or like created a hacky giveaway on Facebook and got all of those emails and then tried to sell them something that is basically permissionless marketing and it's. It just doesn't work. So I think really focusing on building a quality audience in terms of how relative they are to the product itself and then also, you know, how engaged they are. I think that they're two major lessons.
Nathan Bush: Fantastic. And what about personally? We've got founders listening to this to think, all right, I've got to put some upskilling on my agenda. Personal upskilling on my agenda for 2023. Where do you think most e commerce founders need to upskill themselves?
Davie Fogarty: It's a good question. I think it's such a personal thing, like you need to do more work than listen to me and go and jump into that. I think the one thing that I always struggled with and wish I did it depends on where you are in the entrepreneurial journey. I think I should have gone much harder at learning how to lead and hire people after hitting that initial success. I think we could be much, much bigger if I put a CEO in place a lot earlier or hired better senior execs a lot earlier. So hiring is one of the highest forms of leverage that you have. So if you are profitable and you're going quite well and you are hiring one or two or even three people a year, you should be studying it quite aggressively. And then also how to manage them as well through an OKR system, KPI, smart goals. It doesn't really matter as long as you're getting the best out of the person. And yeah, learning a lot more about that.
Nathan Bush: Do you do anything different in your hiring process to qualify someone as someone who would be great?
Davie Fogarty: For the Davey Group, we do psychometric tests for senior staff and I think that that is important. There is so many different things you can do. You can do so many like exams. You can do type tests for customer service. I think my main lesson is that the best employees generally aren't the ones employ applying via LinkedIn because they're not looking for work, because they're so happy, because they're so good at what they do, their managers will go after them. So you need to get out there and really kind of aggressively pursue people or just network with people. And when the time fits for both of both of you, extend a good job offer and increase their salary onto what they're on. So that's a positive sum for everyone. So, yeah, that's my main thing is don't be afraid to poach, especially from an earlier age.
Nathan Bush: You speak in my language. As a recruiter. Best people that you know them over years, you know them for a long time, you understand what motivates them, they understand your story, they understand what your brand stands for. And when the time comes and it's right for both parties, it comes together beautifully.
Davie Fogarty: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: So at the moment we mentioned that you've got the YouTube channel, that you're
Nathan Bush: pumping out content, that you've got the software play, and obviously you are taking what you've got and what you've learned over the years and trying to help other E Commerce founders be successful. Why is that important to you?
Davie Fogarty: I think initially, when I started the YouTube, I. I'm a massive introvert. I actually don't. Haven't really like. I don't like getting out there and telling my story too much because I feel like I'm talking about myself way too much because I've just spent an hour on a podcast talking about myself. But it's ironic. It's been awesome.
Nathan Bush: Thank you.
Davie Fogarty: But I think it just creates such amazing opportunities for not just myself, but other people as well. Just learning the journey. I wish that I had YouTube. You know, YouTube existed when I started, but probably not to the extent that it is now in terms of tutorials and stuff. So I also don't like the predatory nature of a lot of the courses out there. You know, people kind of selling repackaged PDFs to entrepreneurs that have $500 in their bank, charging them all $500, and then they could have used that for ads. So I don't like that. It's not all selfless reasons. Like, I wanted to create deal flow, I wanted to create employee flow for the group. And yeah, I wanted to meet new, cool new people so I can learn from them as well. So all of those perks from YouTube, in terms of monetizing it, it's really not a priority in any. In any way at this stage, but eventually it could be a big business. But I want to make sure that What I'm selling is relatively unique and big for the world as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah fantastic. There's some really great guides in there from how to use Shopify to copywriting for products running Facebook campaigns. So we'll put a link in the show notes if anyone wants to follow that and have a look.
Nathan Bush: We're coming to the end of our
Nathan Bush: interview and it's been so good. I feel like we've crammed so much into a short amount of time. So thank you and thank you for talking about yourself because it actually is actually use have been lost without it. What product categories have you got on the top of your mind? What do you think is going to boom post Covid 2023?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, I think people are going. It's already happening. People are getting out of their house which is exciting. So I think those categories will begin to grow, you know formal where those kind of things will start to grow again. I think mindfulness is going to be continually growing category over the next five or so years happiness and really focusing on on that because of the mental health issues that the recent two years has created. It has created a lot of problems. I think the solo gig entrepreneurial space will continue to grow as well. I don't think that that's done. Even though the Shopify share prices as reverted I still think that there's going to be is it going to be a huge gig in creator economy over the next couple of years as well. So I'm excited about that and then I think AI is just going to cause a ton of disruption. So as everyone has now realized through the power of the journey and stable diffusion and chat GPT3 I think that there's going to be some interesting things there. So right now I'm. I'm actually kind of sitting on the sideline in a lot of ways. There's a few companies that are coming to me to invest and whatnot but I'm just kind of a little bit tentative of what's going to happen over the next six months. So just focusing on my core businesses that I have a lot of information about and investing in them at this stage.
Nathan Bush: That's really interesting kind of and we're seeing a lot of that in market is just make sure everything's pumping through as per normal hitting targets without overextending. That kind of feels like it's a theme at the moment. Personal question one that always interest to me. Who's your favorite celebrity that you've seen wearing an Oodie?
Davie Fogarty: Lady Gaga had it on a bed behind Her. I was pretty annoyed that she didn't actually wear it. But, yeah, there's not actually that many celebrities that I've seen wearing them. I think we need to. I think we need to push it more. Yeah. I wanted to get Rebel Wilson for a commercial with it. I think she just embody it so well, just make it really, really funny and do a big commercial with her. But I struggled to get through to our agent and kind of gave up. But maybe on the cards this year.
Nathan Bush: So good.
Nathan Bush: David, you have shared so much.
Nathan Bush: Thank you for being so generous with your lessons and your knowledge. What's next? What's on your radar for the next 12 months for yourself and the Davey Group?
Davie Fogarty: Yeah, I might move up to Noosa for a year. I think it's pretty nice here at the moment. So move up from Adelaide and relax. Focus on YouTube. I'll probably launch one or two brands and. But just. Yeah, as I said, keeping my head down and focusing on my existing brands, I might acquire a couple of brands as well.
Nathan Bush: I love that. I might just, like, chill out in Noosa. I might start a brand or two, acquire a couple, but I'll chill out for a bit.
Davie Fogarty: I'll do it while chilled in Noosa.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Now, Davey, if people have heard this
Nathan Bush: and either want to see your content, get in touch.
Nathan Bush: What's the best way for them to do so?
Davie Fogarty: YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. Just Davey Fogarty. And yeah, happy to help in any way I can. Here to help.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. We'll put all those links in the show notes.
Nathan Bush: Davey, thank you for joining us on Add to Cart.
Davie Fogarty: Thanks, mate.
Nathan Bush: I hope you enjoyed that one as much as I did. I had no preconceived notions going in. I was a little unsure if I was honest, but I was blown away by that chat and really could have gone on for a lot longer. Who would have thought that wearable blankets would turn into that? But I guess you can see where it all comes from once you meet Davey and understand how he thinks.
Davie Fogarty: All right.
Nathan Bush: Three things that I got out of that chat with David. Really hard to narrow them down, but number one, product selection criteria. You can tell that Davey was so passionate about this and I loved that he shared some of the detail around how to select products and the categories
Nathan Bush: that he goes up after.
Nathan Bush: Everything from SEO viability to the ability to make a brand out of a product and even things like postage weight, which I thought was fascinating. And the insight that he had around having products that can't be ripped off by the big end of town like the department stores and also not being able to be ripped off by smaller dropship businesses was an interesting conundrum. If you're interested in the tool that Davey mentioned, it was Trendrocket, which can be found at TrendRocket IO with subscriptions starting from $39 per month. Number two change the way you work to avoid long term stress. Canceling meetings and blocking out reading time was one of Davey's key tips and he said he got to a point where he was just so anxious all the time and realized that this is not the way that he should live. And I've recently had a very similar experience moving into 2023 and I've taken the time to make sure that I schedule in email breaks, thinking time and God forbid, even some lunchtime. And for me what I've learned is you don't just have to schedule that time. Whether it's reading lunch, thinking, you need to protect and prioritize it. It's so easy to give it away when someone else asks for it, but it is just as important and your meetings will be so much better if you get a little bit of your own time in balance with time for everyone else. All right, number three don't be afraid to poach good people. Davey was singing a tune very close to my heart when he said this and he said that the best employees aren't the ones that are applying via LinkedIn. You need to get out there and put aggressively pursue people and don't be afraid to poach. And I think he is 99% right there is that the best people aren't cruising seek. The best people are head down, bum up doing their job and really kicking goals. But I think the thing there is you don't actually have to be aggressive about it. Poaching doesn't have to be dirty and I think you've got to think of it as a long term game rather than just when you're in a bind and you need someone straight away. If you don't do the groundwork in genuinely getting to know people and developing genuine relationships, you never know when that will pay off and people will want to work for you whenever that opportunity arises. So always be recruiting to get the highlights of today's episode. Head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter. Each Tuesday we will send Monday's episode episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and visit us at E Suite. We're a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free e Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce Job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cartoon.
