Two very different brands, survival gear and premium meat, used the same playbook to build massive subscription businesses: obsessive focus on quality, ruthless clarity on their ideal customer, and relentless work on retention. In this episode, they unpack the real levers behind 60k+ subscribers, multi‑million dollar recurring revenue, and long-term loyalty that survives rising costs and shifting ad platforms.
In this episode, Nick Trueman, Ben Spell (Good Ranchers CEO), and John Roman (Battlbox CEO) discuss:
- Launching and evolving subscription-first business models
- Quality is the foundation for retention and LTV
- Finding and focusing on the right customer persona
- Churn prevention, win-back strategies, and feedback loops
- Tech stack choices, A/B testing, and subscription infrastructure
Key Takeaways:
- Starting with a single, subscription-only product can force clarity on positioning and economics before expanding into one-time purchases and new channels.
- When the product quality is truly superior, retention marketing becomes far more effective than discount-driven tactics.
- Treat subscription platforms as revenue enablers, not just expenses.
- Proactive churn management, through timing, outreach, and listening to cancellation reasons, can be more powerful than pouring budget into acquisition.
- Clearly defined customer personas drive better ad choices, partnership strategies, and a healthier lifetime value.
“You can trick people into buying things, but if you don't have a quality product, they're not going to subscribe, and they're not going to keep buying.” -Ben Spell
About Ben Spell and Good Ranchers: Founded by Ben and Corley Spell to connect people to honest, quality food. By sourcing all meat from local, independent U.S. farms, they bring remarkable quality and real community back to the American table.
About John Roman and BattlBox: John Roman is an experienced D2C and B2B strategist currently serving as CEO at BattlBox. Battlbox is your monthly subscription for hand-picked outdoor, survival, EDC, and cool gear chosen for you to carry, use, or add to your emergency stash.
About SubSummit: SubSummit brings together thousands of subscription, membership, and recurring revenue enterprises, direct-to-consumer startups, and active investors. Leading brands leverage SubSummit to remain catalysts in consumer engagement and product experiences.
Transcript from video:
0:02 Welcome to the SubSummit podcast. Real conversations with the operators scaling subscription, membership, and recurring revenue in today's commerce landscape.
0:20 So, hello and welcome to another episode of the Winning with Shopify podcast. And hello to our live audience. I hope you guys are well. I'm from the UK, which is why I sound quite funny. Um, I've got two absolute titans of e-commerce and subscriptions here with me. We've got
0:33 John from Battlbox. John, welcome to the show. Good to have you back. Third time, is it now? Third time. Yeah.
0:38 Amazing. And I've got a very, very big question for you in a second. We've also got Ben. First time we've met. Ben from Good Ranchers, CEO there as well and founder. So, uh, yeah, super excited to have you guys on. I'm going to dive
0:48 straight in. We always start with big questions. So, John, I'm going to start with a big question for you. How have you guys at Battlbox built such a big multi-million dollar business that is 70% customer subscriptions? That's that's a great great question.
1:02 It's uh tell me everything. Yeah. Well, when we started uh in 2015, we only had uh we were talking earlier about that single skew single product. We just had one product and it was subscription only. We didn't offer
1:15 anything on a one type capacity. We we also naivity we had launched on a very niche platform. We're on Shopify now, but we were on this platform called Crate Joy, and they just didn't have the technical capabilities to even have
1:28 one-time products. So, it was the business rules. Oh, I can hear myself now. Yeah, there we are. The the business rules of that platform set the rules that we only had one product. It was subscription only. Um, it wasn't until we wanted to scale and
1:42 grow further that we brought the one time in into the mix. Amazing. And we're going to cover some of those regrets of expansion you were telling me a minute ago. We'll cover those in a few minutes as well. But I mean, Ben, you guys have got such an amazing business. How have you guys built a 63 plus thousand subscriber base
1:58 of customers in such a short space of time? I like to say it this way. If I could do it, anybody can. Um, I mean, we had no I had no e-commerce experience, no industry experience. We're an online meat company and um and uh you know, we
2:14 just we we had to get scrappy and figure it out. But we did know this. Um the trick isn't to get them to buy one time. It's how do you get the repeat purchase? Sure. So um so for us we actually I mean you know everybody says subscription subscription subscription. Um and the good thing about meat is people eat it every day.
2:36 Um, and uh, so we we knew that uh, for us it really came down to the product has to be better than what they can get at the grocery store because it's a it's a commodity. Um, and with something so simple, yes, convenience is one factor. Um, but we knew from the beginning that
2:58 um that our quality had to be better so when they get that first purchase, they eat it and they go, "Oh, yeah. I want to I want to keep doing that. I want to get that." Sure. And so, um, John Lacader, the Pixar creator, he wrote in his book, Quality is Our Business Plan. And, uh, the the book's Creativity Inc., amazing book for any founder
3:24 uh I mean really for anybody u but he wrote that at the very beginning quality is our business plan and we really took that into the business of you know we you can trick people into buying things but if you don't have a quality product they're not going to subscribe and
3:41 they're not going to keep buying and I feel so many brands rely I as someone who's in the tech space and agency space they rely so heavily on tech to try and give that nudge, that extra email, that 20% off first. So, it
3:53 becomes a no-brainer. But I love the fact you guys have gone actually let's in a way almost ignore all of that. If it's a good product, they'll want it again. And as you say, the products it runs out. You know, it either goes out of date or you've eaten it. You need
4:04 more after that, which I think. I think it's just the sustainability of of your brand and product because that's how you're building it. You're making it about superior product. Yep. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um and John,
4:16 let's go back to the early days. So you guys one product on subscription you've expanded a lot and we were talking about the pros and cons of this a minute ago. Why don't you share with us what's that journey like? Why did you expand and what are some of the lessons you guys
4:29 have learned over that time? Sure. So yeah so in 2017 2018 we we migrated to Shopify to then have the one-time capacity. Welcome to the call club. Yeah. uh we finally joined the the issue was and not even an issue we've never really allowed the the curated kits the
4:48 subscription box to ever be available in a onetime capacity. So we've continued to kind of own the narrative on supply and demand and and membership. So it's only been one-time capacity products that make up a kit that that we've offered. And you know as we've kind of matured and we've
5:06 said okay the membership is is great. the membership is the core business. Um the membership's the lion share of the revenue. It's past the point of exponential growth, right? We're we're still growing a couple points um you
5:22 know, month over month. It's it's still nice. It's still great, but it's not the exponential days are are done, right?
5:28 We've hit a certain saturation unless we change fundamentally the the membership offering. So, at that point, how do we still have that exponential growth? How do we still scale significant revenue and and the answer is is additional channels whether it's um uh you
5:46 marketplaces or marketplace live shopping like whatnot. You know right now we have we're we're doing demos. We're live selling on whatnot on the uh other side of this this uh convention. So cool and you guys whenever I talk to
5:59 you there's always something fun exciting but as a CEO you're making sure it's also feeding the bottom line and revenue is going up profit's going up. So yeah, if anyone who's here hasn't seen, they are literally running, as John says, live shopping right now on
6:11 whatnot, which is awesome. Um, some of the stats I've got here, Ben, about your business, I think, are incredible. 55% of subscribers are still active at one year, 40% are still active at over two years. How do you beyond just the great product you mentioned, how do you build that loyalty, that trust, that commitment from those customers? Because
6:31 those stats are phenomenal. I'm going to give more to this answer, but I am going to go back to the quality has to be there. Sure. And um and and and again that's been that was our whole messaging was uh better than the grocery store. Ditch the grocery store. Um and um it and honestly
6:50 like we I mean we grew gosh we grew really fast when we when we launched online. Didn't start online. We actually started uh I started sell the company selling meat out of the back of a truck in a parking lot like wow and uh
7:03 and then went from one truck to two trucks to five to 10 and then um over by year three we had about 20 trucks going around the country doing these like pop-up shops. COVID happened and uh uh we realized we've got to get online. So, yeah. Yeah, we uh we we figured out how to
7:24 shipping perishable items is very hard. Um and I I told you this before before the show, had I known how hard it was, I probably would have never done it. But we reached a point where we were we were just too far in and uh there was we either, you know, make it or we don't.
7:40 Um but uh we we knew how to sell meat and we knew how to do it in person with those pop-up shops. Um you know it was a 180 degree turn launching online. Um and so we actually came to uh the Subsummit the very first year that we were we had
8:01 our toe in the water trying to ship but we were still doing all the trucks and the trucks were making money online was just losing money. Um and so we came to subsummit that first year and learned so much about subscription. Again, we
8:14 didn't know anything about e-commerce. We didn't know anything about subscription. And uh so this this conference really has a special place for in my heart and for uh our business because uh at the time I think we
8:28 brought our almost our whole staff which was like seven people and we all like we just all came like and and learned so much and took it back. But the biggest thing we took took back was the importance of subscription, the
8:40 importance of getting that recurring revenue uh and and and not just getting the sale but continuing to um nurture the relationship, you know, because once you get them to buy um too many too many brands get the sale and then just move on. Yeah. And uh you know we it is a
9:00 relationship and they're you know they're they're our customers and they could easily be a competitor's customer.
9:06 So you know we want to we have to provide value like I said the the product quality has to be there but we have to find value beyond just the product. Um and we do that through uh through education, through recipes, through um industry news uh and uh and
9:26 you know have a a regular cadence of giving giving more than just the meat in the box. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I you've touched on something that's really close to my heart as well, which is the um the
9:37 fact that so many brands focus bear we're an acquisition agency. Our clients focus so much on acquiring customers and then we look at their P&L and sort of split it by recurring orders or existing customers versus new ones and we're like what the heck are you guys doing? And one bit of advice I'd give to any brand at the moment is like set an LTV metric
9:56 and make sure you beat it whatever it is. It's like we need to have this many repeat orders, this much revenue per customer per year. And suddenly our job becomes easier. We can scale faster now because we know acquiring a customer and
10:07 I mean you guys are phenomenal at this as well. Yeah. So something something else that Ben said that I think is very very important and I I want to bring it back to that because it's something that we do as well and it's it's paramount is
10:20 providing the value outside of just the physical product. So you know Ben was saying that through education through content um we we do the same thing like that is a major focus. We want to make that relationship so much more than just the product.
10:37 Having a good product obviously matters, but taking to the next level when you have that relationship. I mean, you guys took it to an absolute extreme, didn't you? Phone Netflix and we're like, "Can we have a show?" And tell us about the tell us about the show and how that engages outside of
10:50 everything else. It's Yeah. So, we had a a Netflix show uh premiere July 4th weekend in 2020.
10:56 It's uh somehow green lit. It's uh the entire season, all eight episodes is basically a commercial for us testing gear to determine if it's cool. I've watched I've watched a couple of episodes now. It's really
11:08 good. Um, and it's it's performed well enough where they've kept it. They've kept it on there, you know, six six seven years later. It's uh it's still post-purchase survey still calls out five six% of our uh net new comes
11:22 comes from the the the season. So good. So I mean how many brands imagine they could have their own network? I wish it's not like you can replicate that. Yeah. How I'm not the host,
11:33 but how did that come to be? Uh, did you pursue it or was it just happen stance? So, High Noon Entertainment, they were um the feather in their caps, uh, Fixer Upper. Okay. And, uh, Cake Boss. Yep. So, they they reached out to us, pitched
11:47 us, hey, we have this concept. We have some money from History Channel. We want to film and we'll outdate myself here, a sizzle reel, which you would do before a pilot, like doesn't even exist anymore.
11:59 And they did a sizzle reel, History Channel. Sat on it for six months, passed on it. We took it to they took it to Discovery. Discovery sat on it for six, seven months, passed on it. They met with Netflix and Netflix said, "Uh,
12:11 yeah, we'll do it." And we want right of refusal of seven seasons and this is a Netflix original. We want to start, uh, filming in two months. Whoa. Um, and then we got a 120 page legal
12:23 agreement with Netflix. We're like, our normal lawyer is this isn't a fit for them. We found an entertainment lawyer. God, if only Claude would have been around. Seriously. Um, yeah, did not was not a
12:35 thing. And, uh, we we spent an embarrassing amount with that lawyer, redlinined the whole thing, sent it back to Netflix. Couple weeks later, Netflix replied back 15 minutes later saying, "We apologize if we like missed any expectations. There's no there's no red lining. There's no
12:52 Yeah, this is this is the agreement. Take it or leave it." Uh, so we signed it. But yeah, it was it was when the lawyers ruin the fund. That's what And the finance director, those are the annoying things in life, I think. Um, but I mean it's amazing you guys have done that. I mean, in your
13:04 business, Ben, what what do you guys do outside of product, outside of marketing? Do do you guys give people advice on what else to cook with the products you send? And, um, do you do collaborations with other brands, that
13:15 kind of stuff? Uh, yeah. I mean, there's like playbook 101 uh, things of, you know, collaborating with influencers, collaborating with, um, mom influencers in, you know, and in in our space. um the it it's just the way it is still in the US. About 70% of the of the shopping still comes from the female even though
13:39 you know early on we thought we would have uh much more of a male demographic because you know meat and grilling and you know stuff. Uh but um but you know we we we quickly learned that uh men like to eat but it's more women that are still buying. Um and which uh my point here is
14:03 this as soon as you can learn who your target audience is. Yeah. And um and it is uh most brands uh your audience is not everyone even in a category like ours which is meat. So you would think oh it's anyone who eats meat. Still not true. There's a there's a absolute
14:24 target audience. And for for us it's 35 to 48 year old um moms. like that's like that's like our you know sweet spot biggest persona um that we see when we go after that when we find um audiences and so uh when we started we actually went we we really grew the business um I mean exponentially
14:53 uh in 22 when we started online fully um we we 22 23 and 4. I'm about to blow your mind. We had no meta ads at all. And to build an e-commerce business without uh no meta, no Google, unheard of. It's unheard of. Um it's amazing. And uh yeah, so we really leaned in to podcasts and um
15:22 yeah, podcasts and in influencers with podcasts. Uh and and and what we found is especially when you're a new brand, you know, you you don't no one knows you. Like right now we have I think 25,000 uh Trust Pilot reviews u like uh with an average of 4.8 which is uh I mean well done. Like that's that's not easily achieved. Yeah.
15:47 Thank you. Uh we were talking about it on the plane here. I was like you know we should put that stat on our website. I could share we work very closely with Trust. I could share some case studies that would convince you to do it tomorrow. Yeah. Oh, no. I know. Well, yeah. And and you know, our largest competitor, which is number one in the space, um they have 1,800
16:05 and so so that's a I mean that's a huge deal for us. But um where was I? What was the question? Where was I going with that?
16:11 Retaining customers, talking about the things that aren't the normal products, I think was the question. I lost my train of thought talking about Trustpilot reviews not being on the website. It's impressive though the amount of the amount of reviews you have on Trustpilot. Ah, we went a convent a different route. Um, again, getting people to buy meat online is not the norm. Yeah. Co helped a lot, but it's still a a
16:35 pretty big barrier to entry there because it's perishable and it's just not super as well, which you would in a supermarket. And so, um, we borrowed the influence of podcasters, influencers, um, and I, I'll keep saying
16:52 influencers with podcasts like, um, and, uh, and, uh, because and and not the really really big ones, honestly, like they get kind of tuned out, but it's like that the the, you know, big enough to move the needle, but not so big that they're crazy expensive. Um, and the people that
17:13 are listening to those influencers, those podcasters, they believe anything they say. That's why they're listening. And you know, they're And so when they say, "Hey, good good ranchers just shipped me a huge box of meat and it's amazing. You could have it, too." Like we we you even though they they don't the brand, they don't know us as a brand, but we get immediate trust through that through
17:38 those voices. So that's how we absolutely built the business from, you know, zero zero subscribers to uh the 63,000 monthly that we have now. Um and uh I mean we just started like having Meta and Google be any like significant portion toward the end of
18:01 last year um for the for like literally the first time. Yeah. Yeah. And I love the contrast between both the brands actually where you guys have gone like how do we get this message out to as many people as possible as fast as possible and just
18:12 let's just do some big stuff. Let's take a risk and see what happens. You guys have gone grassroots and kind of like work our way up. It's it's just so interesting seeing how you both created such successful subscription businesses. Um on the same thing that Ben's talking
18:24 about with knowing your customer and talking to customer and nailing down that target group. How have you guys achieved that specifically in the subscription space like nailing who subscribes versus the ones that don't? Yeah. So it's it's I would have guessed
18:37 before chatting today that we had a very similar demographic, but it's not. Okay. Um so we're you know sweet spot is is 35 to 55 male. Um household income 120 to 130. It's uh 90% of our purchases are men.
18:53 And so out of that 10% that are female purchases, 50% of them are purchasing it for a male in their life. Um, so it's it's a wildly wildly different number, but it it matters, right? You want to target the right people. Um, I was actually on a call um earlier earlier today. Uh, just a a video call and um
19:16 we're we're shopping some new banking partners um like full service and uh watch out some might be here.
19:22 Yeah, sorry. There's a back door if you but they they were asking some questions to better understand the business and they were like hey if we asked you know how would you if if we wanted to double membership by the end of the year like what would that look like? And I I told them you know
19:41 respectfully it's that's wouldn't be the move because we're hyperfocused on our demographic and we start kind of going a little open and getting people that maybe aren't part of it. the LTV is not going to be the same. Uh the CAC might look might look the same, but at the end of the day, if the LTV isn't there, it changes the economics. So, and I think it's so important playing that long game. I mean, you both been in
20:04 business long enough now to go, actually, I'm looking five to 10 years ahead now, not just how do we pay the bills tomorrow, right?
20:10 And I think so many businesses sometimes get stuck in that loop then of like we need to do a sale to get enough orders in to pay the bills, but then we know we've lowered our margins. That's creating a tomorrow problem with our bank balance. and taking that long approach again going down the route of quality and really understanding that that target group I think so important.
20:26 Um, back to you Ben, now you know who your target audience is. How do you cater marketing and the way you position the subscription model, how do you communicate that to your audience based on who they are? Yeah. So, um unlike you guys and we had
20:45 we really thought um about when when we when we first started about being subscription only um but we went the approach of um we want them to subscribe but we'll give them the one-time option but you know we we want to put some friction between there and so we we uh we charged um $25 more for one time purchase.
21:07 Nice. Um, and we're like, we would rather they subscribe, but if they pay the extra $25, fine, that's, you know, better margin. Yeah, we're not going to say no, right? And especially, you know, in in our in our in our in our business, you have to give first-time discounts. Um, and so, so we
21:27 kind of saw it as like a as kind of a a net positive of if they do the one time, uh, again, we know they're going to love it and and and if they're willing to pay more for it, okay. U, but and so we went out that way and then and and just by happen stance, 80% of uh of our new, you
21:48 know, of our customers just subscribed um right out the gate. Um and so uh but now we're uh we've started um you know implementing more uh we're actually running an AB test right now on um the the $25 you know disc delta between
22:09 onetime purchase. Um some people on our team keep saying maybe we should just test running subscription only. That's that's the only offer. I've I've not green lit that yet. Um, but what we're doing right now is we're running an AB test on um 15% increase for subscription for onetime purchase and a 20% increase versus the
22:33 $25. Yeah. Yeah. Um, see how much more they're willing to pay to not subscribe. I like it. Yeah. Which I think is smart. I The thing that drives me mad sometimes when working with brands is when they just go like, "We've changed that." And it's like, "Why?" And it's like, "Well, we should offer 10% off for subscribe and save." And it's like, and the whole It's what I've just written in my notes. the the fact that you guys sat down and
22:51 thought about it. You were like, "We've got a clear goal and it's subscription. So offering just like a random five 10% off the subscription clearly from your point of it devalues the subscription. It and we're just making it up." Whereas actually we don't want them to do that. So let's just make it so stupid not to. Yeah. That this is the value you're getting.
23:09 So the subscription itself is not discounted as the customer sees it. It's so simple and so smart. You guys obviously thought this through. Yeah. Well, and then and then also the reason we did $25 versus 10% because it comes about our our our AOV um is 200 is like 200 on the nose. Okay.
23:25 So, um but we realized $25 sounds like more than 10% to a lot of people. Um cuz you know 25 is bigger than 10. Um but um again that was that was years ago and uh you know like I said we're running that test now. Um I I I'd be remiss if I didn't say this.
23:48 We a lesson we learned the very hard way is we looked at um subscription management platforms as an expense and thought right that's it's so expensive and as we continue to grow and scale it only like they're going to be we're going to be paying them a million dollars a year like and u that was one of the biggest
24:14 mistakes we made by seeing that as an expense not as a value driver. Uh so we tried to build it ourselves. You know, one of our developers is like, I can write a code that it's just a script and you know, and I see where this is going. And we yeah, we we we missed a lot of recurring revenue um those first that first 18 months. Uh and when we finally
24:42 realized what was going on, the beautiful thing is we were getting so many new customers, it was masking it. Um but when we uh when we realized we were we were I mean we were getting 80% subscribing but we were only processing like 45%. I know because of bugs and issues. Again, maybe if you're a better developer than my team, you can do it yourself. But,
25:08 uh, I would say anybody starting out, don't look at subscription management soft. There's a there's a lot of there's a lot of really great ones. Um, and you can't look at that as an expense. It's absolutely it's a value.
25:21 Yeah. Yeah. And getting that wrong knock on effect on revenue could be massive and the platform you're on as well. You know, we u uh just like you guys when we started, Shopify was not what it is
25:33 today, right? and and you know even though we were small we were like we had ambition to be big. Uh so we're like ah no we need something better than Shopify. Um we're on Shopify. We went through the same thing. We we thought we were going to build our own and we quickly realized that was not not the answer and went to Shopify and and
25:51 Recharge. I mean we still see it now when we we walk into brands that are like using Magento or something and they're like this is our development team. I'm like team you got a development team. I was like have you heard of Claude? like
26:02 Claude is your development team and he can write code for you and you put it straight in Shopify and bang it's done. Yeah. And they were like yeah we're migrating from Magento one to Magento 2 was the classic and it's just I I think let's not go too far down the tech road
26:13 because we could talk about that loads. One thing I do want to ask both of you I'm going to start with you John is obviously we're talking about growing a subscriber base and that's fantastic. How do you deal with churn both? How do you prevent it and what do you do after
26:24 the churn's happened? And and I think you and I chatted about this on on an episode possibly. So, so we we care obviously a lot about churn retention way we we were caring about it before it was even cool right like pre precoid where uh everyone was only focused on acquisition so we do a lot it's just part of our our business rules
26:47 um and how the business was built. So, just so many touches, constantly testing stuff. Um, because it's it's so much easier to keep a customer than than than get a new one. I mean, spoiler alert, Meta is uh their their uh CPM and CAT costs are are not going to go down next year. News news flash, it is going to be Meta is going to charge you more than they did this year. Yep. So, I I think it I think it's huge. I think spending time and and testing
27:17 stuff and and and and just coming to the realiz real realization that you've gotten this customer, you've gotten the hard part. Now, if you have a good product and and and a good experience, like spend the effort on
27:29 that because they're going to stick around. When you do lose a customer, which is a very sad day, do you guys reach out and talk to them? Do you try and do some sort of win back afterwards to go, even though we've lost them, if we can find
27:40 out why, there might be something we can change or Yeah. So, so this is super wild to say that we have this um because we're, you know, pretty much just a traditional DTOC company. So, we have a full-time um guy, his name is Patrick. He literally his full-time job is calling um churned
27:58 customers. Uh we did a lot of testing. The sweet spot is 90 to 120 days after they leave, which was not my theory. My theory was first couple of weeks. We tried from immediate all the way through a year and 90 to 120 days was the sweet spot. He calls them um you know I I'll say it here. The truth is it starts off
28:18 as a customer service call better understanding and he's documenting the reasons they left what their experience was. Now it has to pay for itself. So it uh based on what they say, it then turns into a sales call where he's positioning a a offer to them to bring them back to reactivate them live while he's talking
28:37 to them. That's so smart. Um yeah, it's wild to think that we have a full-time phone sales win back. Plus, you don't have to do the whole sales journey again. They've been a subscriber, been a customer. They know it. You just need to work out what what was the issue? Let me fix it. And and you're
28:49 back here. It's amazing. And Ben, how do you guys deal with churn? Avoid churn in the first place. The easiest thing is to this sounds revvelatory uh but to to stop it before it happens you know it's like a I mean because at that point it's a it's a sever and and again you know we we don't have a nobody
29:10 has a 100% you know success rate at that but if you can you know if you can uh predict before it happens and so uh again part of our uh so we use Shopify and recharge. And and Recharge has a really great feature, a a lot of great features for churn. And um and you know,
29:31 once you learn um once you learn, okay, where where are people most likely to churn? Um and you know, again, for us, it's food that they're ordering that they're buying, and you know, what are the reasons they're turnurning or what are the reasons they're cancelelling? Um and um and you know, uh yeah, what's the
29:51 what's the number one reason? And for us, we looked about two years ago and the number one reason was lack of customization. So, um because we had curated boxes and we we had a lot of different curated boxes,
30:03 but they wanted to make their own like their own components. Yeah. And you know, so we, you know, we listened to our customer loud and clear and and uh which uh you know, and got got that going, you know, um if you know, is it uh is you know, is it is it price? It's it's it's never, you know,
30:20 it's never quality. I can't say it's never quality. It's rarely quality. Um, but, you know, for us it was lack of customization and um, and price. Those were our two biggest ones. Can't do much about price because, you know, the price of meat has gone up exponentially over the last three years, over the last five years really.
30:40 Um, and it just keeps going up. So, I mean, it's expensive everywhere. Um, uh, but we were like, we can do something about the customization part. So you know our team you know diligently worked and um and we got that you know as an option now. Um but so it's listening you know you don't if you you don't know
30:59 what to solve if you if you don't ask the question. So it's you know surveying our customers surveying uh we you know we we do we have a regular cadence of uh surveying our current customers not the whole list but you know a subset and and past customers. Why'd you leave? And um
31:16 uh we're not at we I I I looked at our customer service manager who's in the back right there um listening when you said the calling every person who's turned um and I I made Are we doing that? Oh, we're doing that. Okay. I was
31:34 because I was looking at you like if we're not doing that, we need to be doing that. I love doing these live. We're all learning. This is great. That's great. Yeah. No, that's that's amazing. Um but so we realized that um our biggest drop
31:46 off of ch if we can get if we can get our customers uh if we if we can get them to their third order like that's this like we got them. It's getting them to their third order. So we started putting more check-ins uh between order one and order two uh because our biggest drop off is between order one and order two. Cool. And so we
32:07 started for us it was identifying that and okay what can we do difference and then we also realized that we were actually giving too much meat and it wasn't it wasn't the money it wasn't the u or or the value it was the they had too much you know and so that's why they were cancel or pause or just
32:29 push push push. Yeah. And uh and so we actually uh this was two and a half years ago when we realized that we stripped away, you know, we we took our average order value down cuz like I said, it's $200 right now. When we first started, our average
32:46 order value was 250. But what we realized is our also our average subscription was every eight weeks. 60% were on eight weeks because the box was so big. And so uh we want them you know the name of subscription is to have recurring monthly revenue uh not bimonthly you know and so um so again
33:08 listening to the customer watching the data and what does it you know it the data tells you something and um we have a saying in our in our in our company data doesn't make decisions people do.
33:21 Yeah. And you can be swimming in data but what decisions are you making with that data?
33:26 But if you if you study the numbers, if you look at it, it's telling you a story and you just have to respond. Yeah, absolutely. I think I think having feedback loops is so so key. But to your point, you have to actually listen to it and actually act on it, right? People love to think that they have the their product is already perfect and doesn't need anything. And if you just listen to your customers, they're they're going to they're going to tell you, right, you're
33:50 sending me too much meat. Let me give you more money. Like, send me less and my OTV is going to grow. Um, I think that's huge. We I mean we had a brand The reason is laughing is we had a brand years ago and we kept saying to them we don't feel
34:02 like you know why people buy. We can see the analytics. It tells us what's happened. It tells us how it happened but it doesn't say why. And then we also did we had a massive they they sold furniture and lighting. Massive LTV problem. No one came back. Not an
34:14 obvious subscription model. And also if no one's coming back don't try and offer a subscription. That's just not going to work. And um we did this feedback survey and the uh and we started showing the graphs back to the business and said we
34:25 sent it out a week ago. We got the results in. Let's have a look at the graphs together and start let's get some ideas as to what exactly is what we're going to do. And it was like people don't like how long your product descriptions are. They think they could be shorter and quicker to understand.
34:37 And she's like but I like those. I wrote those myself. And I was like oh no this is going to be a long afternoon.
34:43 This is the millennial marketer versus the ginzy marketer. Yeah. Well they so they were distributing products. COVID hits. they had to go direct to consumer and she just didn't understand. She knew what the distribution channels wanted, which was loads of information about the
34:55 products. We buying the best we can at the right price. That's not what the consumers want. They're like, I like red. Red's cool, isn't it? I'm going to buy that. The because the image the image sold it. But there was these massive long descriptions yet to get through before the add to cart button.
35:07 So, we're like, let's run an AB test. And she sort of went, "No, no, no. Let's just leave it as it is or let's just change it." It's like, "But if we AB test, we know is it 5% important? Is it 80% important?" We get those kind of stats. just that's why I was laughing. I
35:18 just remember having this meeting. It's a long day. Um but I'm we're going to take questions in in a minute. I got one more question for you guys. Um so think of any good questions to ask these two. Not me. Um as challenging as you want as well. Um I
35:32 want to ask about background. I'm going to start with you Ben because I saw a clip of you on another podcast and thought, "Wow, that's it's quite a story of where you were before as to how you got into um starting the business and founding it where you are today." Give
35:43 us give us a quick version of um of the story like where did you start? what led you into it and how were you running what you are? Yeah, I said at the beginning I had no industry knowledge, no um you know
35:54 whether it was business or meat. Um I was a worship pastor at a large church in Houston and I did music full full-time from the time I when I was 19 um till my till probably 34. Um, and that's what I was really good at it. And and uh, but um, yeah, my my story and
36:19 you know what whatever your personal beliefs are, but my story is God told me to start a meat company and I heard it loud and clear and I went I was working full-time at the church and I came we just had our first baby boy. He was maybe six weeks old and I
36:35 walked out of the it was a Sunday morning. I walked out of the the the bathroom. I was getting ready and I went to my wife. She was holding her baby and
36:41 I said, "I think God just told me to start a meat company." And it couldn't have been more left field. And um thinking she was going to go, "We don't have any money. We just had a baby. We don't know anything about running a business." Um but she looked back at me and said, "If you heard God, then I trust you."
36:58 And so we went. Wow. And here we are. I I am a worship leader at my church as well, which is why it resonated with me. I was like when I heard it, I was like, "This is amazing." Yeah. Um, but John, how did you fall into Battlebox as well? How did you get involved? I can't go after that. I feel like I feel set up here. Um,
37:17 what do you believe, Jordan? Come on. Open everything. I was in B2B uh sales, technology, SAS. Cool. Yeah. Um, I was Yeah. I was was investing in companies and I like reoccurring. I know you weren't enough to set you up. This is fun. Um, so yeah, not as not as a cool story. Thanks, man. That's all right. We've got a Netflix show, which is cool. But yeah, sure. All right. Well, can we give them a round of applause? It's amazing taking time out and sharing stuff. Yeah. I I have to make one correction. I
37:47 said CX manager. She is our CX director as of a month ago. Is that recently promoted or is that Yes. Love it. You've obviously done well, so well done. Very proud of you. She walked into the office with Who Runs the World by Beyonce the next day. True. True story. Does anyone love it? Does anyone have any questions for these guys at all?
38:11 Or I'll make another one. Oh, come on. There we go. Yes. So, I'll just repeat it because the people listening won't know what the question was. Yeah. What what AB what AB testing tools you using? What software are you doing stuff differently? You want to go first? Yeah, I'll I'll go. Um we we're actually testing uh a new one called testing a testing tool visually. We're we're we've onboarded a
38:41 week ago and we're testing it right now. We've used quite a few. Um so we'll see. We'll see how it goes with with that one. Nice. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that and I was I'm looking in the audience. I was trying to find Michael McCarter. Where are you? He would know. Um
38:59 yes. Yeah. Yeah. I do know ours is a Shopify. I mean, there's there's so many that's the beauty of Shopify is there's so much plugandplay out the box. Another mistake we made was trying to uh even when we uh migrated over to Shopify, we we didn't um go head it. Uh we we were still headless, meaning we were there's still a good amount of development that
39:26 we were in charge of. And about seven, eight months ago, we went, why are we doing this? Like, you know, just let them so exciting for a while, wasn't it? Like 99 page speed and stuff, but Shopify's
39:38 improved enough now. You don't need to. Shopify's the expert. Let them be the expert. Yeah. Amazing. Have we got any more questions for our amazing guests at all? We good. Sweet. Well, give them a round of applause. Thanks for joining us,
39:51 everybody. And for everyone watching, thank you for tuning in. Join us again next time. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you.
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