From $10M to $100M: Strategies for eCommerce Growth With Kunle Campbell

Kunle Campbell is the Co-founder of Octillion Capital Partners, a value-driven, digital native consumer brand platform acquiring, operating, and growing an ecosystem of brands in the health, beauty, and food and beverage industries. As an outsourced e-commerce CMO and advisor for DTC product businesses, Kunle coaches retail teams to unlock growth through acquisition, CLV, and UX optimization. Kunle is also an international speaker, author, and the host of the 2X eCommerce podcast, where he has interviewed over 450 e-commerce leaders on industry insights.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Kunle Campbell shares how he found a passion for digital marketing — and the catalyst for Octillion Capital Partners
How habits impact daily rhythms
Kunle explains the six pillars of e-commerce growth highlighted in his book
Cultivating a narrative based on brand values and creating boundaries around company non-negotiables
What is data discipline, and how is it used to grow businesses?
Why consumer behavior is critical to business growth — and how to leverage human psychology
Kunle divulges an anecdote highlighting the necessity of marrying data and trust
How the onset of an autoimmune disease motivated Kunle to take control of his health
Kunle describes the impact music has on his life and his aspiration to become a music producer

In this episode…

One of the benefits of being a business owner is having the freedom to grow your brand using in-house resources — saving you money as the company gains traction. Maintaining momentum requires you to revisit your current business strategy and make calculated adjustments to achieve the next milestone. What actions can you take to scale your business today?

Businesses can only grow so much without outside reinforcement from marketing and brand specialists. E-commerce advisor Kunle Campbell wrote E-Commerce Growth Strategy to provide entrepreneurs with a resource to kickstart their growth journey. His emphasis on customer-centric strategies educates entrepreneurs on how creating a brand persona influences consumer behavior — which is quantifiable for data collection.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Kunle Campbell, Co-founder of Octillion Capital Partners, to discuss how to take your e-commerce business to the next level. Kunle provides a synopsis of the six core pillars highlighted in his book and dissects the three most critical to brand growth. Tune in to learn how to cultivate your company’s narrative, use data discipline to attract consumers, and leverage human psychology in your marketing strategy.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:16

Everybody, William Harris here, I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the D2C industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. My next guest today I'm really excited about he actually had me on his show, so if you haven't seen it, please go check out that episode on 2X eCommerce. But Kunle Campbell, Kunle is a Co-founder at Octillion Capital Partners and acquisition platform company and major consolidator of clean FMCG slash CPG. Digital First brands Kunle is the author of the soon to be released book, although when this podcast comes out, it might actually be officially out here, E-commerce Growth Strategy spelled with the hyphen in the e-commerce and I'll get back to that here in a second. He is an e-commerce advisor, international speaker and host of the 2X eCommerce podcast where he's interviewed over 450 commerce leaders who only really excited to have you here on the show.

Kunle Campbell 1:14

Thank you so very much. I'm not sure who is more excited yourself. For me. I am elated honored to be on your podcast.

William Harris 1:25

I appreciate that. I know that we've had a lot of good conversations over the years, I was trying to think back to how we originally met each other. And I think it may have just been through like Shopify Facebook group or something, you know, almost seems like a decade ago.

Kunle Campbell 1:39

Absolutely. Absolutely. I've met some people so back in the days when when I joined Twitter, in 2007, between 2007 and to 2009 and 2011 I had seen as an I had met some people that flown over to Oxford, and vice versa. Just to meet meet meet me in person. And yeah, these these things you never know we're here and you know, these connections just you never know where they take you to write.

William Harris 2:09

It's fun. I want to get into your backstory then there's I want to get into the three pillars for e-commerce growth that you guys outlined in your book. Before we do I want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800 million. We sold one to GoDaddy one actually recently IPO pretty excited about that. In we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com which is spelled e-l-u-m-y-n-t.com. That said enough of the boring stuff onto the good stuff, the stuff that we actually care to talk about here. Kunle tell me about the backstory you're obviously now at the top of your game. But what brought you to where you are today.

Kunle Campbell 3:06

Long story short story I get what would you like

William Harris 3:11

this could be you know if there's anything interesting that you you wanted to talk about, we can get into it. Otherwise, however long or short you want to go with this is fine with okay.

Kunle Campbell 3:20

Okay, so so if you don't know me already, I'm I live in in the UK, I live in Oxfordshire. It's a very, very education centered parts of the UK it has arguably the best university in the UK University of Oxford and Cambridge, depending on who you talk to. Should prior to all of this I grew up in Nigeria, in Lagos, pretty sheltered life to be to be frank. So both my parents are medical doctors. And essentially, my world was different. We didn't have we weren't wealthy, per se. But we I think I had a lot of values, like core values, values on behaving and turning up in the world, you know, core values, like one St. Doing, doing unto others the way you know, just doing unto others as you'd have them to do to you. That was like a core golden principle. Christian family. I, I by by grew up in, in kind of like a sheltered area. So imagine Lagos is a very porcelain Bosley, parts of Africa or the world. But we grew up like in a hospital compound because my mom worked in the hospital and he was eventually she was an ecology ecology of medicine. So all our neighbors, even though we lived in in apartments, you know, all our neighbors were doctors. So it was like a village so we knew Everybody worked in the same place. They lived in the same community was a very closed community. And it had a lot of perks. So there were like power failures all around, you know, Nigeria, and we didn't have power failures because they had to keep the hospital going. So fast forward anyway. As I grew up, I started to see the real world. I did my university in the University of Lagos, a, my first degree was in economics, finished it at 20. Finished my first degree was 20. And I went, I started school very early, I started school because my dad started school, my dad was University at 16 or 17. Um, but I wasn't like an A plus student, I was just average. So, back in the days, I thought I was going to get into IT, you know, so I, so I started to figure out like, you know, the.com, he was in the 90s. Right? So I heard a lot about, you know, the whole.com thing. So when I finished university, I had time. So I didn't, I didn't go into banking, I didn't go into investment. But I just went for some courses on how to program I learned how to program c plus Java. I learned a little bit about networking, you know, building computers out. And I didn't really like it what I learned it to the point where I could teach people. So I started teaching groups of people in the Institute I worked for, and then I didn't like it. I tried networking, I worked for a telecommunications company didn't like it either. I felt like it mechanicals when things broke, to fix it. I wasn't like in the network designer in this state to look outwards. Okay. Let me look for a course that merges everything together. So I go into e-commerce, e-business management or work University in the UK. And my first lecture I remember was with a professor called he's now a professor is called Dave Chaffee, or Dr. Rather, Dr. DE Chafee is that he's still a friend of mine. And he was mind blowing, it was mind blowing what you could do from a digital perspective. Sure. So that was my calling. Who was Mike wanting in 2004. So right after that, were meant to select dissertations, right? So I made it a point of duty to find dissertations related to that, first course, I don't know whether people know how masters work. When a master's program, you do an intense course over five days, Monday to Friday, and then you you're depending on what your timetable is, you're given a an assignment, which you're meant to submit six weeks after, and then you have breaks. So the first course, then followed the selection of our dissertation. So I looked for a company that was into looking for help, you're looking for help in search engine optimization. And I paired up and said, Look, I could potentially help you guys, you know, I'd be really up for it. I interviewed with two other people with many, many people, they selected three of us, probably due to my work experience. And I gave it all that I could, I made a distinction from that master's degree. And then I started working for that company eventually worked for that company for about four years. And then I went on my own as a consultant. And then I went on to run an agency who scored was one was a local Oxford SEO agency, I was doing good for walkability. But fast forward, in 2014, I really started to pay attention to like affiliate marketing. And I realized, like, there's a huge world beyond just lead generation as a huge world in e-commerce. So I set up 2X eCommerce, my podcast, and just to learn, I'm just trying to fast forward a lot of things to learn about e-commerce. And with e-commerce, I started out with essentially demand capture. So it was like, you know, um, what are people searching for these searching for, you know, a fan or your baby stroller, stroller, and then, you know, just make sure that my clients or, you know, my, my, my fly by night websites would rank for for those, you know, terms. And then, you know, hopefully, you know, wish for conversions. But I realized that this was just the is was just a tip of the iceberg, you know, in terms of what it really meant to grow an e-commerce business. And that put me into the world of demand creation, which is more ad social advertising, learnt about, you know, social advertising. I'm learning a ton about social advertising all through that with all my fly by night websites and actually been a digital marketing manager. I learned a lot about UX and UI, Vista High like water, UX and UI agencies. So I blended that into my experience and I go into CRO conversion rate optimization lead from from the greats from like, pet Blier. Many of them you know, so attended lots of conferences and not because I just wanted to bolster my understanding of e-commerce. So I'm more holistic, because the times when I promise customers, you will double your traffic and we will double their traffic. But the effect the same net effect in traffic double does not necessarily mean route, you see that in revenue. And that just got my, my, my head going. And so I I, you know, I started to look more into strategy into growth, I started working as a, as an outsourced CMO, for for a number of startups and an established e-commerce businesses. And I just made a decision a few years ago that I was going to go into private equity or read, I tend to read book before I get into something new, I tend to read three, maybe four books on on that particular concept, I read a book on that. They while I was in, there's no way I could, I could do it on my own. So I started looking for a co founder. And the interesting thing, this is serendipity. I was I was trying to write my book, actually. And I was trying to get, you know, my backstory on okay, what universities did I apply for, for my masters? Right? Remember what I told you about I did my masters. And I remember applying to University of Westminster in University of London birbeck. And until I typed University of London, birbeck e-commerce business manager, but just to get information to put into my book, I came across as profile. I was like, damn, as in this guy's doing exactly what I was, what I want to do is do some searches, he was more like a search, you call them, you call them. It was a search fund. So a search fund is a bit a unit, like you or me or a group of people who want to buy a one business and optimize it to the core. And just use that to be their job for life. Or flip it in 10 years. So he was looking at one, we synergize and we thought look, we could there's a lot of aggregators going out there, but what are our values, so we didn't sign any dotted lines till till about six, seven months of into spoken caught up in everything. So it looked as that values. I remember I fell ill in, in my, in my youth, I was 29 I fell ill like seriously ill. And that incident made me value life. And also made me value the importance of a good diet, one, and an active lifestyle. Because those are the things I really after the drugs, those are the things I really turned, you know, my perspective and my body might my strength might, you know, around and I was like, if I'm going to do anything is going to be good for you. So we decided to double down on CPG brands, you know, so So essentially things you eat. So consumer packaged foods, as well as, you know, health and beauty so what you put in your body and what you put on your skin. That's kind of like the space work we're at. But we're looking for like digital first e-commerce businesses. Vans, essentially, have the potential to be well beyond digital. The long term. Sure.

William Harris 13:19

It's, it's brilliant. And I like that you. You've obviously been through a lot seen a lot. And in your this this not I hate to say Jack of all trades, master of none. So I think you're a jack of all trades master of quite a lot. You're somebody who has poured yourself into all of the different facets of e-commerce along this, you know, growth trajectory. And, you know, something you said that I appreciated was how you poured everything into even your master's degree, right? You're like, okay, you've got this project, you pour you poured into this 100% and above and beyond 100%. And it reminds me of something that I saw, I believe, as Jason Pfeiffer, just call out this morning on LinkedIn. He's the editor in chief over at Entrepreneur Magazine. And he talks about how Barbara Corcoran just fell under a lot of fire for saying something along the lines of how interns who want to stand out should do 50% More than what's asked of them. Right, like go above and beyond. And she got into a lot of trouble for this. You know, there's a hustle culture. And the here's the thing, though, if you want to stand out, if you want to not just stand out for the purpose of a job, but you actually want to be great at something. That's what it takes. Nobody gets to the Olympics by saying I want a well balanced life doesn't happen. Nobody ends up in the NBA, or anywhere that is, you know, at the absolute most elite of whatever their field is by saying how can I do this the most balanced way possible. I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm not saying that you should be that type of person who says, I'm going to pour everything into this, because you'll be giving up a lot of other things. To do that you will give them a lot of balance, you will give up a lot of other things that are absolutely maybe even arguably more important than being the best at your field. But if you want to be the intern who gets noticed, if you want to be the person who says I'm going to be at the top of my field? That's kind of just what it takes. And I just I like seeing that hustle and that drive from you, that you outlined? That's something I feel like is an rare supply oftentimes.

Kunle Campbell 15:35

Thank you. Well, thank you, Will, just want to add that if you're intrinsically motivated, so if you're the reason your why comes from, from the inside, from a pain, from the fact that there's this stuff I shared, there's this post I shared on on on Instagram yesterday, which is like we they stopped the CIA actually studied, studied like high performance, they realize that they all high performers have a certain level of trauma that's not toxic enough to knock them over to substance abuse to mental health crisis, where it's a pain that they're trying to really resolve that gives them that push gives them that energy to push on. And it has to be intrinsic, it hasn't it shouldn't be all I'm trying to impress this person. Yes, that's part of the whole thing. But where are you going, where why some people do it for their children, you know, some people do it for the for rejection, you know, some people are trying to oh, that my girlfriend that that, that issue I had for my love life, I'm going to correct it. Some people saw pain as children, you know, they just didn't have enough and they push through. But you know, just coming to terms of that truth, your truth, knowing your truth will be white critical, whatever the situation, and however you define success,

William Harris 17:07

well, and what's interesting without going too, too much further on this because I want to get into some good stuff on your book here. But Alex, or mozzie says something along the lines of and I appreciated this, we want our children to, let's say, be patient, without having to go through the things that make them patient, we want them to be strong without having to go through the things that make them strong. And I think about that oftentimes, just even in my own life, how many times do I wish for the solution without having to go through the journey that gets to that situation where it's like you want to be successful at this or to be able to do you know, x, y, z? Like you were just saying what it's like some of these things, they may be somewhat painful, they may be even a bit traumatic, not saying that I wish any pain or trauma for anybody in life, but simply saying and acknowledging that some of those things were the necessary catalysts to create the change that was going to happen.

Kunle Campbell 18:04

Absolutely, you've got to muscles to grow muscles, right? So I'm, I'm more I'm a fitness guy. And I you know, the the first few days if you if you've not, you know been been to the gym or your north, it's yeah, the first few weeks, your first four weeks, determine if you're going to keep it a habit to nones, because there's going to be a lot of pain. And then you learn to live with the pain. And then you learn to love the pain, you don't even learn to love the pain, you just love it. You know, it's it's feedback, and then you you just grow. We could go on and on and on these concepts because I'm very, very, very passionate. Because I live by by a lot of these principles of pain or putting in the time of turning up on a daily basis is so important. You know, whether it's with your team, whether it's with the new with the new manager, whether it's with yourself, you know, just just habit. I was I wrote something this morning around habit, which is like, to be honest, right? Where we're like, programs, you know, so I remembered so I just in the gym, I had a flashback about Space Jam. And I remember when the origin I haven't seen the new space job, I've seen the old one. I've seen it, it saw it a few months ago. And, you know, when when they go into the bodies, and they're like, they lost all their skills as like you. Like, like our brains, right? Our brains are like computer programs, right? So with the habits you're writing, you're actually writing a program in your brain. Yes, it's like your right hand hold in your brain. And then when you need to play that software, you that's how you execute right? So in order for us to really be what we want to be we need to understand okay, what is the program how can we write it, which is repetition, you know, on a regular basis and grow And then you have skill.

William Harris 20:02

Yes. So speaking of writing, because I'm with you, 100%. And I go on that we could spend the whole rest of the podcast talking about how to write the right software for your brain. But speaking of writing, you came out with a book called E-commerce Growth Strategy. And I was gonna call out that you use the hyphen in there, because there's always such a debate about whether there's a hyphen or not. And we always spell it without the hyphen. I love that you always have. And I feel like even when we talked about guidelines back when I had, you wrote a blog post on the Celebrate blog for me years ago, before they were acquired by GoDaddy and same concept there, where it's like, you know, what's the guideline on? How do you write e-commerce? Is it lowercase E, capital C? So those who are listening, and you don't see the way that this is about it is e-commerce. So make sure that you look for it correctly. But you know, you know, I know my decision.

Kunle Campbell 20:51

Sorry, it's not your decision. Oh, no, it was it was a publisher. Spell it. I like to I just like little letter E with a capital letter C, I'm a commerce, you know, if you look at the e 2X eCommerce, it's that yeah, that's, you know, when you're working with partners, it is what it is, I think, you know, they have in their backup log, that's, that's, that's your namings convention. This is your thing about not not doing your thing, per se, is

William Harris 21:20

no, that gets I didn't even catch that, that it's like, yeah, it's your book, but at the same time, didn't get this built the way you wanted to. But so you identify three real main core pillars of e-commerce growth, and I wanted to run through those a little bit for each person, because a lot of what we're trying to talk about here is helping brands get from 10 million to 100 million. And in order to go from one to 10, I would say, there's some strategy that's involved. But a lot of this, a lot of one to 10 can be done almost by accident. And I hate to say it that way, because it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of thoughtfulness. But, you you, you can do it almost with coming up with your own ideas about the strategy without necessarily having to rely on everybody else's ideas for strategy, but to go from 10 to 100. It challenges a lot of founders, and this is where a lot of founders find themselves needing to completely change up what they're doing, sometimes undoing what they did, and doing a completely different growth plan. And I feel like that's where this comes into play. What are those three pillars that you identify in this book, and then I want to kind of run through each one of them a little bit.

Kunle Campbell 22:32

Okay, just to clarify, in the book, I had six critical pillars. However, the first, after the first two chapters, I dealt with the three most important Sure, the first was brand core, just just ensuring that whatever you're doing is brand led, and I speak to, to brand in personality to brand personality to to brand to brand. The second was customer data, particularly as it relates to above three levels. One is just data discipline, in terms of the data discipline, collecting data in a clean and an efficient way to is using people tools and systems to interpret the data into insights. And three is actually making decisions, how do you make the right decisions off the back of the data you talk about? And then the the, the big opportunity prior to that is is customer behavior? How do you sell How do you get people to take action is particularly repetitive action. So when my, my, my, my body cream is or my you know, my body cream is is depleted, what has been programmed in me, probably by brand and through habits, to get me to purchase that brand over and over again, you know, the key, the key reasons why I get that repetitive, you know, you know, experienced essentially repetitive behavior, with with commerce. So those are the like the three most important, but to give you the five ones customer centricity, which is like prioritize every single thing you do for your customers. Second is brand identity and storytelling. The third is data to meet you know, data driven decision making the fourth is cross functional strategy. The fifth is omni channel presence and adaptability, which is very critical for that 10 to 100, you know, growth perspective, and the sixth is continuous improvement, you know, an experimentation which starts out with a blitz, a B split testing on your UX, where you could actually a be split test your your, your supply chain, you know, packaging, suppliers, markets and channels. It's just like having that that that culture of experimentation across the board. So every chapter sort of revolves around all these six principles in some way, shape, or form. So if you look at customer centricity, the first three chapters actually speak to customer centricity, which is that brand identity, where you create this persona of a brand, that's almost like a being to to customers, customers perceive, you know, certain characteristics that certain behaviors from your brand certain traits from your brand and feel a certain way, if your brand doesn't make people feel a certain way, you know, then then you're doing it wrong. So great. So that's, again, very people centered, the second chapter, which is customer behaviors, people centered, centered, you know, for you to really get them to take action. And the third, which is customer data, is really quantifying customer behavior. So you then trigger them to carry out certain actions, whether it's to view ads, whether it's click through your ads, are you collecting the data and interpreting the data appropriately? And then after that, I just talked generally about, you know, things everybody talks about customer acquisition, retention, you know, and, and so many other things, affiliate marketing, I speak a lot about influencer marketing, you know, in the book, there are about 18 chapters in total.

William Harris 26:19

That's yeah, that's fantastic. I've been excited for this to come out. You sent me a little bit of the early manuscripts, but I'm excited to see the whole thing here. Now. Let's talk first about brand core of the three we listed brand core, customer data and customer behavior. When you talk about brand core, you know, one of the things you talked about is how this is, this is more than just about your logo. This isn't necessarily about your, you know, your color scheme. This is about just how do you show up in a person's mind? More or less? Right? What, what take me through brand core from what people need to understand if you're a $10 million business, and you want to get to $100 million dollars? What needs to change within your brand court? Or what's what do you need to change in your own thinking about your brand?

Kunle Campbell 27:14

So first things first, I have a very good question, by the way, first things first, I think you need to start out with your values, you know, as a brand. Yeah. So whittled it down to and I'm not talking about your personal values, I'm talking about values that that would help leave you, I'm hoping that people listening to this podcast, want to build businesses that they either eventually want to sell to, like, you know, people who would continue to run it to grow their legacy. Or they can hand over to the next generation. Right. So if you look at any, any business, you know, any, any business that any in those two categories, there are some core values, like if you look at Ben and Jerry's, for instance, he has clear brand core values, right? Not to say that, that is instrumental, that is the it's it's silver bullets, you know, to to success, but they know what they, they know what not to do, which is more important than knowing what to do on a regular basis. And I think when you get those values, right, sometimes it's if like, you have two co founders, it's a blend of certain values extrapolated from each of the founders, and then you find this like more like a Venn diagram. So Octillion, we did a brand value was a brand value extraction exercise, worked with a storyteller, and he was almost like, A, was almost like a, the shrink exercise would like a Shrink Session really with him, you went deep into my story. And I realized I had certain values I didn't even know that I was just acting on. And, and then he did the same, these are like private sessions with co founder with IO. And at the end of it, he came up with, with with a with a brand story. And and he came up with with, with, with our values with the values and then we sat down and we had a session a very long session on whether those values actually aligned and we took certain things, we kept most of what he extrapolated, put certain things aside, we came up with with a brand value. Now you're a consumer brand. And you need to, to also think about, you know, what impacts what are the bodies you want to sort of, you know, essentially amplify, right? And so that's where I'll start out from then then the next is, is really getting your story. Right, right. So a lot of people a lot of us will sort of hinge to a conversation or a memory through stories, you know, or through moments, you know, so it's also been Very important that you you get your your brand, you know story. Right? Right. So you get the brand story, right? And then you you get the the brand values rate, then I think you need to start to build like equity and understand like your positioning in the market, you need to really understand, okay, you know, where do we really fit in, in this market. Now, one of the things we do in Octillion, is when we acquire a brand, we work with the brand strategy agency. And these guys don't come up with colors and tones and logos and all of that stuff. They really look into the they look outwards in the market of what's going on. And they look inwards, they take all the values inwards, they look outwards, and they try and find a blue ocean strategy for our suits. So where can we fit in, in this quadrant. Now, I'm not an expert in this. But I'd say if you haven't already, if you're a $10 million brand, and you haven't gotten a brand strategy piece from a brand agency, where they extract, extract, your your, your your, your values, even the customer persona, defining who your customer, your customer persona is, and all of that good stuff, do it ASAP, because that is a fundamental, that will essentially drive your packaging information on your website content. You know, your the partners you choose to work with. So I like to think that some people, you know, some some some people running e-commerce businesses are B Corp. So one of the things about being a b2b company is, in order for you to actually get that accreditation, they look at your supply chain or us are you doing what you claim to be doing, you know, as a B Corp, you know, how are you selecting your partners, because it's not just about what you do is about, you know, what the other people who you associate associates, you know, with do, and then when you make decisions, because you have your values, right, because you have your values, you know, you're going to have fewer options. I was speaking I found it today. And we were talking about, you know, we need to do this and that and I said, Look, one of the values is, you know, this has been a lean operation, we need to do certain things. And then there was no more sort of argument, we realize, when we're so like, deliberating, we leaned back on our values. And, and that just enabled decision making to be easier for us internally. And, and that sort of soft selects people who are going to be attracted to your brand in the first place. Right, and the people you work with, it will determine the influence as you decide to work, those will be aligned with your values. Right, and how you talk how you turn up. And at the end of the day, you can run surveys every now and then to understand how is our brand making people feel? Not all of our customer service? Thing is just, when you see our brand out? How do you what are the first few things you know that that pop up in, in your mind, and you will also even guide your creatives, you know, if you have rock solid valleys, and that's why you tend to find a lot of like, eco friendly brands, I'm talking again in the food space, will will be brown, and then they'll be it's not because all the the agency chose brown. You see, most brown things look more natural. And they're likely going to be eco bays that normally brown and green. Right? Sure. But again, and within that space, you'd want to differentiate, right?

William Harris 33:48

Yeah. And so that reminds me of, you know, we've actually done a lot of the brand values for our selves, as well as an agency. And that, to your point of being able to make decisions. That's been very huge, because not only does it make, you know, us, me and my my partner, better able to make decisions. It enables everybody on the team to make better decisions, as far as does this align with what we're trying to do. And so I can see the value in that. But I think really where you went with this is that idea of, let's say everything up until that first 10 million, that is your MVP. And if you want to be a sustainable brand, though, now you have to just think about beyond whatever that hook or that catch was that was able to help you carve out a niche within the market. Now you have to establish what is that long term thing that you want people to always have like this, this, you know, rut carved into their brain that this is who you are and that's what creates sustainability. And that's what allows you to ride through economic downturns or whatever else takes place because there will be a lot of ups and downs but if you have carved that out in somebody's mind, they're able to overlook mistakes that you make as a brand. Because you will make mistakes as a brand for the same reason that you make mistakes as a human being. They're able to overlook a lot of those things, they're able to see you for who you are, you know, continuing to aspire to be. And I think that allows them to even sometimes say there was a quote by Jeffrey Gitomer that I appreciated where he said, All things being equal, people will do business with their friends, and then you flip the page, all things being not quite so equal, people will still do business with their friends. And so let's talk about this idea of, if you can carve in your mind, why they're friends with you, for whatever reason this might be but like, whatever that brand is, and why they've associated you as being this, you have the ability to charge maybe a little bit more than somebody else that's not in that same type of positioning statement. Because they say, but I, but you represent what I represent my values align with your values. And it's not just some platitude that you're saying, in order to get sales, they can see that this is a part of every single thing that you're doing within the company.

Kunle Campbell 36:06

You see, you couldn't have said it any any Clara, it's it's been that friend, being a friend with your customers, you know, it's yeah, it's critical. And the, in the book, I think I mentioned about eight just critical bits of brand, you know, of being a brand of your brand strategy. One was identity. The other was like the the architecture, you know, your brand family extensions, your vision, your culture, your environmental insights on, you know, strategic plan, which is, which is what you get an agency to, to execute upon. But the outputs, as you just said, is being a friend, you know, being that friend when we're not talking about being a platonic friend, but but just right, being that that friend been first top in mind when you know, when they're in buy mode?

William Harris 36:56

Yeah. So you talked about Okay, so first is that mission, the vision of the personas. And then I think the second part that you mentioned is the do's and the don'ts, right? Where you get into a little bit more than nitty gritty, you know, what do you mean by that? What are some of the do's what are some of the don'ts,

Kunle Campbell 37:13

the daughter, like a give you an example for for for one of our brands, Limca finlays, where were we started out with this, with this notion that whatever you put in your body, you know, should be clean, and the founder who sold it to us founded this company off the back of losing his father, to, to the degenerative disease that was caused by like, probably caused by like over overconsumption of glucose or sugar. So he came with this, you know, I'm going to sort of encourage a low carbohydrate diet, with all of the things that you know, I sell with all of the products I sell. So one of the don'ts in that businesses, sugar, you know, so we'll never sell anything sugary in that brand, we're only good for you. Right. So in my opinion, you need to define good, good good is from is all about perspective. You know, at the same time, you could, you know, come from, or, you know, I had a very, very horrible childhood, I never, you know, experienced anything, every time I had sugar, these kind of, you know, maybe retro sweets I really loved and this is why I'm creating this candy brand. Yeah, and that's good, that's a good you're putting in there, obviously, you need so regulate the overconsumption, as with anything, the danger of overconsumption, but you define that good. And everything outside that parameter of good or most of things outside of amateur of that good, is probably bad. Um, so it's really down to, to that, once you defined, you know, the good to your core values, you'd be able to figure out the don'ts. So might be very prized lead to, you know, in terms of value. So you could be like, you know, so you need to think about what are we leading with? And what goes counter to what we're leading with? And then that you sort of give you a final list of things that you just shouldn't, you know, the be doing, essentially?

William Harris 39:19

Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's good. I saw an ad. It was a roundup article or something of a bunch of old ads, and the ads that you almost couldn't even believe ever existed in the first place. And one of them talked about how something along the lines of You need to feed your kids candy sooner. It's good for them. It was really interesting, because now we think that's absolutely absurd. But at the time, if I remember correctly, there was a significant issue with children being too small, more or less they that they would send them to two fat camps basically to fatten them up. They They did not have enough calories. And so this is a big deal. And so, in that situation, they were under the idea that they were doing good, right. And the data that they had, they had good reasons for doing this, of trying to support that. We may have different reasons now. And like you said, so it's like, sometimes, there's a continuum for everything. And so anything that's good, there's a limit to that good as well, where there's an overconsumption. And part of your, what you should be doing as a brand is if you're bringing in good into the market, how do you also make sure that you prevent that good from becoming a bad as well? Yeah.

Kunle Campbell 40:32

Yeah. And it's a completely different parameters, if you're like, in luxury, so like, if you're trying to make people feel valued, you know, feel important, then it's a different that, that you're good in the world? Yeah, it will come from a place and you know, there are certain things you wouldn't do. So you'd be led by quality, by price by experience, to a very, very high level, you know, so the values of safety at are different from Rolls Royce, you know, so the Rolls Royce experience, you know, locks are the best quality material comfort and and that guidance your your do so you're not going to be sourcing from the same factory as Fiats or Ford or Pozo. Yeah, so so it's, it's really, what are we setting out to do? To change? Yeah. And what just goes against it completely? That's where I'll start from, and then, as you do you mature, you'd find other things to fall in and out to learn. And then there are ethics, right? The you need to define your ethics, you know, what is, you know, back in the days, when you're thinking, Oh, I just need to make that first 100,000, I just need to make that 1 million ethics, you're in fight or flight mode, you're you're not in, if you look at the Moscow, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're the base, right. So you're not seeking fulfillment in any way, shape, or form, you you're just trying to eat, you're trying to survive. And because of that, your values at that time, well, we could be just a bit blurred, bought it. And then as you get comfortable, you know, you start to really reflect on on values and what you could have done and what you can do look into the future. But there's some brands from the get go, have just been been been been or are just ethical in their in their core. But there's no right or wrong, it all depends. We're all going through different, you know, stories, different races at different paces. So it's just the way it is.

William Harris 42:36

One, what's beautiful about this is again, going back to this is not just fluffy, feel good stuff about branding this, if you're looking to build a brand, and you talk about the cost to acquire a customer, but then you talk about well, what's that LTV, and if you can increase that LTV over the given period of time now by a substantial amount. And one of the best ways to do that is to actually have a brand that stands for something, a brand that people can align with it. So doing these things can then make it so that way, each one of those new customers that you acquire, has a better lifetime value, you're more profitable. And so if you're talking about building a sustainable brand, not necessarily a quick drop shipping company, nothing wrong with that. But it's not going to be the same kind of sustainable brand that a brand that invests in these things. And so if you're wanting to go from 10 million to 100 million, you're going to need to start to align on what this brand core is. And I think that you've done a great job of outlining that. I want to keep us moving then on to the second part of this, which was customer data, and you use the term of data discipline, which I really liked. But take me through a little bit more about what data discipline means to you, and how brands can more effectively use that in growing their businesses.

Kunle Campbell 43:55

Yeah, so I remember I had someone on my podcast who was like, we have like a master sheet and his business, I think he was doing like 30 million or so in revenue. And his like every week. Leaders each, each person responsible for each key parts of the business, essentially reports in their bits. They own a part of that spreadsheet. And it's like, for the first year, they're like, there's just water some it was just bored. And some was just one extra thing they had to do every Friday. It was a Monday whenever they did, it was just, you know, but over time, the site to see patterns. So when like, they there's like the drop in sales will have your order volume. They just see patterns. Whether it's a UV dropping, they'll just see patterns off the back of verta and it will reflect across the organization. To me that that is data discipline. And for me data discipline is turning up every Single Day, right? And having data literacy. So making sure your leadership, your your team, understand how to collect and how to read data to an extent, and how to then take action off the back of that collection and reading, reading of data, when you read data, you get insights, you can validate those insights with your colleagues, if you're not sure about what the potential outcomes are. And because things are cross functional, you'd find with it in a cross functional environment, certain actions, or certain pieces of data affects others. So let's say there's a defect in in a product and you're seeing high return rates, and then their complaints, and then you're seeing low conversions, it all just leads on round and round. So if there's a shoot up in customer service, in ticketing, it might mean that that's going to affect conversions in a few weeks time. But if you're not tracking, yeah, it's going to be a longer feedback loop to to understanding what the problem is in the first place. So with centralization of like key metrics across the board, um, some you collect automatically, from an intimate that standpoint, or there's just old school manual and interest spreadsheets, and, you know, getting an express an Excel good to actually, you know, put some magic and so formulas in you, you will be on the right track, and I don't think any 10 million plus business that's not obsessed with data, we'll we'll make it to the next Basecamp whatever your next Basecamp is, whether it's 25, whether it's 50, whether it's, you know, 100, it's, it's just critical to have that discipline, which which is built into three layers. Collection, lean data collection, huh, yeah. You know, the second is really getting, you know, insights through people, the right experts who are going to, to to read that data. And then systematizing what's, you know, how that is translated with the right tools and people and systems? The third is that decision making, and sometimes you might need to experiment, you know, put in, you know, a be split test, you know, into into the mix, and, and then you actually come with something that's statistically significant and true, due to, you know, rigorous experimentation. But you can't experiment if you don't even have clean data. Right.

William Harris 47:34

Right. And you know, what's interesting, is, like you said, even to get to 10 million data, 2 million a year in revenue, you would think that most brands have already established these things as all just core parts of their business. But I'm always surprised by how little that's true. And one of the trends that I think I've seen for awhile is a lot of people that have outsourced so much of their data that they haven't actually owned a lot of that data. And so, you know, I will give a little plug here for a company that I like, and actually invested a little bit into their community around called fueled.io. The whole thought here is go ahead and use all of the other attribution tools use them, there's nothing wrong with them, there's a lot that you can learn and benefit from them. But you should still own your own data. Because five years from now, what's the new AI algorithm that's been updated, that can be plugged in to see what kind of insights you get from your data 10 years from now, if you don't own that data, now, starting collecting all of that, and at least aggregating it to a point, you're going to be behind in the future of this when those things are there available to you, and you don't have the data that you need. So start collecting it, start getting your information from your Google Analytics account, from your Shopify account, from your social media accounts, from your customer surveys from all of the different sources that you're getting it and at least are getting it all to a point where you're, you're owning that, whether that's you know, in, you know, an s3 bucket or whatever that might be, but, you know, using a tool to get that and start having that data, like you said, making sure that it's clean, and that you have the data there, even if you're not going to use it right now. Just start the collection of it and get it into a place where you you have that organized?

Kunle Campbell 49:20

Absolutely, absolutely. And I speak to, you know, judging people by what they do, not necessarily what they say. So that's where first party data actually comes, comes into play, you know, captures those on Site Actions, and then zero party data, but whether nectar is really email capture, SMS capture, you know, having access you know, and permission to to speaking directly with, with with whoever is entrusted with your audience, essentially, it's a way of overt audience audience building. Just so important they speak to you know, the In all four types of you know, you know, data levels, zero first, second and third party data. In fact, this particular chapter, this is just off, I've never said this in public was a very long chapter as an it was what I had to cut it short. It was a very, very, very intensive you know, chapter I went I went really deep in the origin and outputs it in the in the, in the Book Notes and the chapter notes, you know, for for those who actually purchased the book, so they could, you know, see those missing bits, you know, on on my website.

William Harris 50:37

Yeah, I, I can only imagine, there's just so much depth that you want to go into on this. And you can only include so much in a book if you want it to still be readable. And so you got to get to a point where you say, okay, great, if you want further reading, if you want further information, go here, in so jumping into the third part of this, I want to jump into the consumer behavior part 2x, I want to have a little bit of time there being one of the three key pillars that you mentioned, at least, if we were going to dial it down to three, consumer behavior being a factor, if you're going to get from 10 million to 100 million. It goes beyond just looking at just the data that you have, but now starting to understand your customers in a completely different way. Take me through you know, the importance that you see in why you consider consumer behavior being one of the top three.

Kunle Campbell 51:29

Okay, so we're trying to get humans to take a specific to take action, right? Whether it's first time action on, you know, which the first time purchase or regular purchase. And so, my, my thinking here was, let's understand how human beings are fundamentally wired. And so I started out with, with the brain, just talking about the mammalian brain, the reptilian brain and the the the more human brain, the neocortex. Looking at the mammalian brain, where most of the decision making is made, it's more emotional, it's more sociable, it's it's more love, is just driven by emotions, right? And then when the emotion is decided upon, and we rationalize with it with the neocortex most of the time, so understanding that and then obviously, with the reptilian brain, we don't know too, too too too much about it. But it's really for survival for regulating your temperature. It's, it's almost like a baseline program that just keeps running, you know, and keeps everything going. So it's my focus was out there a million green. Exactly. And the neocortex. So I moved on to like marshes, Marsh Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it was like, okay, you know, once we get our physiological needs, the next thing really is our safety needs. We speak to like love and belonging, and friendship, esteem and self actualization. And, and so, my thesis here was, okay, how do we sort of speak to the emotions, so I broke it down in in terms of like, the funnel of psychology. So I created a framework called your funnel of psychology. And it started it starts out with awareness moves into consideration, decision action. And it's essentially it's really at the awareness level, which everybody everybody is trying to get attention. Everybody's trying to get awareness. What are the things in your own? What are the tool sets, actually, you need psychological tool sets on neuroscience tools, tool sets, you need to get attention as a brand. I put it into like about five key categories. One was authority and obedience. And all of this data back from from from various studies, was heavily referenced the they wouldn't let me just put my opinion in the book. So it's really, you know, authority and obedience. How do you get it because the authority of obedience actually triggers, you know, you informing them about something? So this is how you work with an influencer, for instance, you're using their influence you're using their authority to inform people about you know, the product or brand that exists familiarity, your seating trust, so people, if people see you over and over and over and over again, remember bitumen hair or something else, if there's a, where everybody saw it on conditions, or there's so many influences that they they just, there's so much trust on there. And then I talk about amusement and shared interest. So just how it leads to creating relatability with people and I also talked about attraction, you know, just how to build attraction that would enable you know, you trigger like a brand recall. So getting people to remember you and over and over again and then storytelling, very important top of funnel which creates connection, you know, so, from there we moved on to like consideration, which is you trying to get people to say gait, I know, this brand should I buy from them, you know, so when they're in that psychological states, then you need to sort of amplify the pain, your, your, your, your, your, your, your your product is, is actually, you know, taken away, you need to stimulate pleasure. So sell them the future, you know, what is? What's the experience going to look like, after they have, you know, purchase from you, then you, you feel that you go into like social proof, which reinforces trust again, and then you you can offer them try and get them a dopamine, you know, short as quickly as possible. What do I mean? I mean things Yeah, next day delivery, you're going to get a getter instead, like a digital gift. So it's a really, really triggering that and Amazon does it really, really, really well in terms of the instant gratification as best as it can at least. And then decision and action, you know, I talk about okay, how do they how do you get them to buy which is a, they're ready to to purchase, they want to they're about to spill about stimulating pleasure, you know, social buzz bubbled again. So it's those principles, I went through in customer, you know, customer behavior, I spoke a lot about authority, trust relatability, you know, attraction and, and that was really the concept of like, I think the core thing to take away is, we're emotional beings, and you're trying to trigger emotions. When nobody knows about you, you're trying to trigger certain emotions, and there certain tools in your tool sets which you could reference in the book to help you gain or garner attention. And, you know, as as, as people get to know your brand, more and more, we need to push them further into the, you know, further closer to the to the finish line. That other toolkits, psychological toolkit you can use, I'm not just talking about in copy for InDesign, in UX and experience to get them, you know, over over over the board. So once you understand those fundamentals, whether you're a CEO, you're a first time Brand Builder, or, you know, your your veteran Brand Builder, you know, these these are, these are fundamentals with good references.

William Harris 57:23

Yeah, and I think that, you know, we talk about this a lot at our company at Elumynt, where, if you, let's just even say, you made a purchase as a customer. And the next thing that you get from that brand, is another ad asking you to buy more, you haven't received a shipping confirmation, you haven't received the product itself, you don't know, if you like it, you've received no other communication other than their immediately seeing another ad on Facebook to buy again, it doesn't do very good from a psychological perspective of getting that customer really ingratiate it to you and on your side and becoming your friend. And so we talked a lot about just romancing customers. And one of the best things that you can do then is, you know, let's say immediately after they make that purchase, what can you do to sweep them off of their feet, even before they receive the product that they've ordered, that they're excited about. And this could be more of like a video or an ad where they're going to see how the product is used. And they're already excited about but if they see the product being used, or they see the product being cherished and loved by someone else again, and they're like, Okay, I am really excited about this. Or it could be something that you're doing in the environment to help the world something that they care about as well. All of these things can be those moments where it's like, okay, I'm excited about the product. I don't have it yet. But you get to that, that dopamine hit, like you mentioned a little bit more than like, Wow, I love this brand. And now I don't even have the product, I can't wait to tell other people about it. And now when they see the ad to buy again, a little bit later, they're much more likely to take that action with joy instead of being annoyed that they're still seeing ads to purchase again.

Kunle Campbell 59:16

Yes, indeed. So it is really important that the what's the tactile experience, how people relate with your product, the unboxing experience the utility of the product really lives to that initial promise. So so it's full circle don't over promise don't blow up with exaggeration and and prior to them actually giving your your your products you know a goal. Don't blow blow it out of proportion. Sometimes. It does work with hypnosis. So if and, if not, is not really the word If it's good for celebrity big celebrity acts, it's good enough for me. And they're seeing that and they, they're just social where's your social animals? Right? So, so that influence has submitted them to compliance. So the socially Cheerwine but the end of the day good, do good stuff in the world and, you know, make good products, which all your listeners in the blue arrow, you know, podcast already, you know, I trust they're already doing that. It's really with that in place. Well, how do we tap into, you know, psychology, customer behavior to towards a, you know, a treatment further growth? Making customers happy? Up here?

William Harris 1:00:41

Yeah, yeah. When you called out even like the trust of influencers, and now it's good enough for them. This is tangential, but I believe that you mentioned that you had a brand that grew to $3 million based only on influencer relationships. Is that correct?

Kunle Campbell 1:00:58

Yeah, pretty much, pretty much we acquired a brand and stealth, it's a beauty brand. And they were doing we're undergoing a rebrand of this brand right now. So but but we're still we've, we run this company, and what they their two year old company, so it was two years, they already have 3 million in revenue. And essentially, they were working with a plethora of macro and mega influencers on a purely performance basis. And I had to serve on ball, my performance markets in expert self to really understand what was going on. And when I understood what was going on, I was like, This is freaking genius. You know, they, they utilize a number of, again, Psych, psychological, you know, toolkits, you know, so one of which is authority, book compliance from people they trust. So those are those people, they would initially send the product to those people, and those people have to trust the product, or they trust the product first. And they then obviously paid a fee, they represent the brand. And there's urgency in the mix. So what do I mean by urgency that they there's, there's a call to action, okay, there's a sale going on right now, I've partnered up with them, and you have only so much time to get this offer. And now, it's an offer, not, you know, too good to be too good to be missed. So they, it just gives them this sense of value. And the, the, the they go in and purchase. And these are like in the range of 100 to $200. You know, these these goods are in the range of 100 $200. By them, there's obviously guarantee a 90 day guarantee. So the funnel is really, really, really tight. But the one thing I took away from the business also is like sure to not be mesmerized by names. Right? So they go by metrics, by the metrics, you know, so whether it's views, lakes, they go by the metrics on on the platforms that they choose to pay to promote on. And it's just phenomenal how like, you know, we talk about like, Oh, we're going to increase conversion rates to me, sometimes conversion rates is a it's a construct. So what we found is some influencers with the same exact funnel and generates conversion rates as high as 7%. From their traffic, and others will generate conversion rates of like 2%. Right, so it's down to their brand equity as influencers and the last, I think, the tangible value from brand equity is trust. Right, people trust the brand. So they will use the brand, they will patronize the brand because the trust level is high. think trust is a very, very key marker to many, many things. And if they're in buy mode, because they trust the brand, whatever brand they have the highest trust in tends to win unless if they're price sensitive. So based with no price sensitivity, they'll go with a brand that they trust the breast. So with with this brand, it's also taught me that there's some influences, how do you measure? My challenge now is how do we measure trust in a brand beyond just numbers, right? Sometimes you could see it's the average click through rates, or there's not quite so but it's till you test till you experiment you, you do not know. So we value them on, like, what was on site conversion rate for this particular, you know, influenza, but it's hard to determine if like, you run it in a single day five influencers, so give you a shout out or, you know, talk about your offer. But But yeah, this this, this brand is very offer driven. And so there's that urgency. And there's a good, you know, discounts and people just patronize this. So I learned a lot off the back of how to run like performance driven influencer marketing campaigns, you know, and it's all about data. It's all about data. Well,

William Harris 1:05:56

now that's cool. Yeah, data and trust. Yeah, data and trail. So absolutely. I yeah, I want to, I want to dig in a little bit into who is currently Campbell then as well, because I think it's really fun to see the personal side of this. You already touched a little bit on what it was like for you growing up there in Nigeria. But you had also talked to me a little bit about some interesting health issues that you had gone through that kind of led up to even just like one of your core values. What happened? What was going on?

Kunle Campbell 1:06:35

Okay, so, I think I left a didn't respect myself in my 20s I just dinner, I didn't respect my body, you know, there's, and in most Abrahamic religions, you know, there's there's a term I believe it's an all three of them, which is like your, your body's a temple of God, you know, so whether you're Jewish, Christian or Muslim, like what is the temple of God, and it truly is, truly is. And I abused my body, really, I'm not saying I didn't have drugs or anything. I was just like, not, not exercising, eating what I wanted to eat, you know, and it didn't go well, you know, so I had an inflammatory disease at 29. I thought I was invisible. I was also just cocky really, with my, my buddy. So I had this, some of you may know it. It's so initially, you know, I just was weak, I had the swelling of my eyes, my eyes was swelling. The all swollen up my eye had joint pains all over. And, you know, the doctors didn't know what was going on, you know, they just didn't know. So I went for a scan an MRI scan, they wanted to scan my abdomen. And they thought I had an lymphoma, which is like cancer of the lymph nodes. But they then, you know, carried out further tests and they realized it was just not lymphoma, so they cancel that out. So I went to see an ophthalmologist for my eye. Despite my eyes, my eyes are swollen and then he was like, I know what this is. This is like a dosis apparently, it's like, you know, my my, my immune system was overreacting. And it just led to like an inflammatory response to those the must have been some sort of infection I suspected burrowed into the 1009 And for me, that was a close touch to death before I got the you know the medication which was like steroids it was like we was a shake loose shifted I couldn't I couldn't walk you know remember it was was a winter it was this happen of a winter so I couldn't I was scared to go out because I didn't want to slip so they're in their ultimate 29 year old body realize that I felt like like an ill 70 year old man she spent but I got to I got I got good treatment. And I got better but I was still taking the steroids and I think that's the only time I've been suicidal because I the pain got so much I was like what is the point? What really is the points you know, what is the point the only time in my life I've ever thought about tick tick in my my life so I'm a I got when I got my health back but with drugs on drugs on with prednisolone and any of these very harsh, you know, drugs. I just cherished it. So aside to lose bone density of the back of the steroids as you know some of you may know And I made a decision that I was just I just told the doctors because I was on a low dosage anyway, I said, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not taking any other drugs. And this time I was not coming from a, from a from a colicky, you know, perspective, I just thought, Look, my, I've lost about 20% of my bone density or what have you, 15 20% I don't want to lose any more because of these drugs. What can I do, and this is the power of community. So I was a member of the sarcoidosis community, which is predominantly in America, but was all over the world. And I spoke to other people who, you know, had gone off the drugs and what they were doing, and they're like, You got to lift weights, you know, you've got to be active again, you know, avoid answering anti inflammatory foods. And that's why I did I stopped to that. And I haven't looked back, I've been I think I'm strongest now, in my 40s, in my early 40s, then I'm 43 I'm, I'm stronger than strongest now than I, in most times in my life, you know, and I just stuck with it. And I believe in taking personal responsibility for your health. So if there's something wrong with me, I try and figure it out. Myself initially, you know, I measure my metrics, I have a whoop, and an Apple Watch. You know, I check my my blood pressure every now and then I go for my blood works. You know, and I'm always curious on my, you know, medical tech know, just out there, I want to take risk. I want to read my own metrics, right. But it has changed me just not personal responsibility and ownership for for life. And again, I've got kids now. So at the time, I didn't have kids, I've got kids and you want to be you know, they're, you know, it's a bit cliche, but you want to be there for them and their kids. So you gotta do what you got to do now?

William Harris 1:11:52

A lot? Yep. Yeah, it's a very powerful motivator. I've got kids so I don't start

Kunle Campbell 1:12:04

satirically before I start work by just have to do something physical, you know, it was before so I sort of serve my my body, but just ensuring that there's, you know, I've done something physical burst, before I get into anything gets electoral, more cognitive.

William Harris 1:12:31

I think that's really smart. That's really deep. And I appreciate you sharing that. Because I think that there's a lot of other people who listen to this, who likely are going through something similar, whether it's, you know, sarcoidosis, or just something of of needing to reflect and say, Is this in my treating my body, right? Because all of the other goals and visions and dreams that you have for yourself aren't going to be very effective if you can't live to get to them. And so we don't, we're not in charge of whether or not we live or die, but there are certain things that we can take into our own power that we do know to be healthier than not. And so taking that responsibility, I think is a big, huge first step in the right direction. So congrats to you, man. You also had mentioned to me you know, there's this idea of if you weren't doing this, if you weren't doing e-commerce, what else would you be doing because I feel like you're somebody who seems like you have dug into a lot of areas and you have a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things. I have to imagine there are some other things that you you could do but you've you've chosen to devote yourself right now to the e-commerce stuff what what else would you be doing if it wasn't e-commerce?

Kunle Campbell 1:13:57

That's a good one. Music probably be a producer. I'm probably crap at singing but like recently I've gotten into house music so it's actually progressive house or minimal house and I pair that up with like my running so the reason why I like house is it makes you emotional, but it's it's this this this minimal house and progressive house, but it it doesn't make you you it's balanced. It's a very balanced genre of music so I will make music Barbie DJ, you know to to loads of people to enjoy. You know, the serotonin but music just gives you if you if you opt to to to receive that blessing of music music is a blessing to me. It's a mood changer. It can I actually dictates my day if I listened to something grew up in odd, totally, you know, in some ways negative it could affect my throughput see when I'm working out so I started running I don't like running per se but I like how I feel after I finished a run. So I prefer to you know less emotional music and it's really verges towards instrumental classical is a bit too harsh. For those what what house music progressive house music is, I would make music and I just, I don't write music. I don't play an instrument might my kids do. But like, I, I just appreciate rhythm. I, I think my I also listened to layers. I listened to music in 3d, my head. So I know, like, Okay, this guy's using a synthesizer here on a piano. How did you use the strings here? I can relate to that is genius. So that's what I'm gonna be doing. And I want to I want to do it. I don't think there's anything really stopping besides the time. It's really the time, you know, but I would love music. Well, I would really love music to get into music.

William Harris 1:16:17

That may be a thing in the future. That's something that we share. I love music as well, I actually, my original plan was to go for degree in commercial music. So I completely respect that. That said, I feel the same way that you do that music can make or break a day and you know, good song can really make a moment. What is your what is your go to song then? Do you have a song that you're like, This is a song? If I'm having a rough day, this is a song that really just kind of shakes me out of it?

Kunle Campbell 1:16:49

Oh, no, not really. But I, I I like anything from from this musician, musician called, I'm tracking an artist called Amtrak. Am tra C do this is good is American, I thought it was European. It just it just makes you know, I started to listen to him, like two summers ago. And he just he just, he just lit that summer up, you know, for me. And so what I did in my Spotify is I just created a radio for Amtrak on Spotify has pretty good recommendations on similar music to him. He's like my fav of, of every progressives who have, you know, a house how some club artists, you know, out there. Yeah. I wish I just wish I was into Moby in the in the 90s Oh, yeah. Well, he kind of a kind of wore off me later, they later on. Yeah, as in just that genius of instrumental, you know, or just putting, and then what, and then what's even more genius is if you then use voice, you use your voice, however it's delivered as an instrument, you know, that blends in with your documents, you're very empathetic to to the harmony that's been established within yourself. And it just comes in as your, your blessing my ears, you know, I just, well, I'm track is the guy. So if we're long winded on to tip,

William Harris 1:18:32

I love it. I need to check out some of his stuff now. And you know, you mentioned Abrahamic religions. And so, I'm Christian. And one of the things that the Bible talks a lot about is that the that God spoke the world into existence. And I kind of think of that maybe not just so much speak, but maybe even saying, right, it doesn't say this thing. But I think why wouldn't he if he created all of the different pieces of this, and I've seen an image that I really appreciated, which shows the harmonic series, not I guess I should go this way, but shows the harmonic series, and then it shows almost like a cross section of a conch shell. And they look identical, like it's it's unbelievable how much they look like. And when you think about just that idea of it's like every little vibration. Maybe when he spoke the world into existence, or and even saying this that, then he used the very mathematical fundamentals of music, to create the structures and everything that we see here right now, too, which I think is a really interesting and cool way to think about just how much music resonates with us.

Kunle Campbell 1:19:43

It's incredible. It's incredible, you know? Yeah, those patterns. Yeah. Yeah. Patterns are very, very, yeah. They're very, very interesting, very insightful. And when you see patterns Yeah, that's what I'll say for No. Because I can Oh, good, no. And so

William Harris 1:20:04

in maybe we will on another one. So Kunle if, if people wanted to reach out to follow you connect with you by your book, what is the best way for them to get in touch?

Kunle Campbell 1:20:17

So they can just connect with me on LinkedIn. I try and post once a week on LinkedIn or Twitter, or just email me reach out to me on either Kunle@octillioncapitalpartners.com. Kunle@2xecommerce.com. To connect I my podcast is currently on a summer break at the moment. So we're doing replays at this point in time but But 2X eCommerce a good place to just, you know, appreciate some of my work. And some of the interviews, I'm been very mindful with the interviews I'm taking these days. And yeah, I'm fine. I'm on socials, 2X eCommerce, Octillion Capital Partners, you know, yeah, I'd love to say hi to, to audiences, to your friends or my friend. And if anybody, if anything resonated to you today, you know, you want to sort of take it a step further, let me know I don't do consulting. So we'll just have a chat. So Chitty chatter nice one.

William Harris 1:21:19

Yeah. And I encourage anybody to take him up on that there, especially, you know, check out the book. I'm excited to read it all the way through myself as well. But podcasts have been a big fan of you earned your podcast for a long time now as well. And so if you are in the e-commerce space, and you aren't currently following Kunle, you you need to be so I will, I will throw that behind there as well. Kunle thank you so much for coming out and chatting. With us sharing your time and your wisdom today.

Kunle Campbell 1:21:47

Appreciate a Will really, really appreciate thank you so much.

Outro 1:21:52

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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