Colin Dougherty: Director of Partnerships at Cart Convert

^{Joe Fox (00:01.385)}
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. Today I'm joined by a partnerships legend. He's a young up and comer, but he's kicking well above his stride. Joined by Colin Dougherty, who is heading up partnerships over at Cart Convert at the moment. But he's also working on quite a few other other projects and has experience across a range of things. So I'm super excited to have Colin here today. Colin, welcome aboard the Retain Growth Thrive podcast. My friend, how are you?

_{Colin Dougherty (00:30.464)}
Amazing. Thank you for having me, Joe. I really appreciate it.

^{Joe Fox (00:33.619)}
Of course, of course. So for the audience, I've kind of framed it a little bit around your partnerships expertise, but I know you have a lot of like expertise beyond that. I really enjoy the generalized e-commerce content and content that you put out there around what's happening in the startup world, in AI, in particular big things in business. But yeah, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you ended up?

you know, at car convert at the moment heading up partnerships.

_{Colin Dougherty (01:05.207)}
For sure. Yeah. I started my e-commerce journey a while back. I lost my job and I was like, okay, I think I'm going to start an e-commerce brand out of Charleston, South Carolina. And this was like right before COVID. So it was a wonderful time to start an e-commerce brand. And I ran that for three and a half years and eventually exited that to a holding company. And through that, I've met all these incredible people.

^{Joe Fox (01:24.22)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (01:34.92)}
in the e-commerce world, people that I text every single day, people on the brand side, people on the SaaS side. And I just completely fell in love with the industry. And so now I had this opportunity to join the CarConvert team where it's like, it's a no-brainer product where I see a value add and I can see a difference in the revenue that we're making for brands. And so that gets me fired up a ton.

^{Joe Fox (02:02.748)}
Yeah, absolutely. mean, coming from that brain side and then being able to see how much of an impact, you know, certain SaaS has is an amazing combination in my opinion. And I think it often helps on a partnerships front because it's kind of like, you know, you can sit there and actually relate to their end customer from a agency partnership perspective, as well as obviously,

you know, what agency, SAS, what all of us are trying to do, right, is make sure that the customer and the merchant are getting as much benefit as possible. So I think being able to cover those areas is really cool. So Colin, tell me a little bit more about what CartConvert does, who your ICP is, what problems you're solving for a merchant.

_{Colin Dougherty (02:52.79)}
Yeah, for sure. The concept is really simple. It's basically customers go onto a brand's website. They don't opt into the traditional marketing tech stack of your Klaviyo, your 10 of your PostScript. We will then text those customers, start a real conversation with them, and basically answer any of their questions they have about that product. And so we're walking them through that customer journey, which allows them to be more comfortable. And then at the end of the day, they're going to actually make that purchase for the brand.

^{Joe Fox (03:22.364)}
Nice, nice. And so do you have any particular verticals that you found this works really, really well for? I I know a lot of us with SAS were like, this works with everyone. And typically it does. But is there any particular kind of like niche verticals where you've been like, my goodness, car convert was installed and it just blew all expectations?

_{Colin Dougherty (03:35.488)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (03:42.541)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (03:47.246)}
Yeah, anything with an AOV above 250, we are absolutely cooking for. And when you think about it, it makes total sense. Above 250, it starts to not be an impulse purchase. It starts to, I have a lot of questions about this. And as you start to go up that chain of like, okay, this is a $500 purchase. This is a $1,000 purchase. We have one company that sells $3,000 concrete mixers to

^{Joe Fox (03:51.045)}
Yeah. Okay.

^{Joe Fox (04:14.759)}
Wow. Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (04:16.322)}
construction guys and they just love having like construction conversations with the agents about like everything, but it's a $3,000 purchase. Like they want to have all of these answers and we've crushed it for them. Like they have been, cause you know, you just have to get a couple of those and then it's like, okay, well that's already $9,000. All right, that's 15. All right, that's 30. Like it stacks up quick.

^{Joe Fox (04:39.077)}
Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. mean, yeah, those big, those big AOV products, like you typically see that on like a, you know, conversion funnel, right? It's like, you can see that impulse purchase, let's say under 200, under 250. It doesn't take as much thought or research or understanding to be like, Hey, that looks cool. I want it right now. So it's like, boom, let's go. But

_{Colin Dougherty (04:53.293)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (05:07.236)}
I think with those larger purchases, absolutely. mean, you know, we work with, you know, some larger brands like logitech and Sony and everything like that. And you can see that there's a lot of like really quick purchase pathways for, you know, sub 200 sub 150 products. but anything above it's like, you'll typically see this longer cycle. And then it's kind of like, they've got to research and they've got to, you know, really find out like.

You know, you'll often see they visit the warranty pages afterwards, or they keep coming back to the product page to view the description. So I really liked that idea of what car convert does where it's like, Hey, I'm interested in this instead of me having to go and, know, get word of mouth research or dig through Reddit or watch 5 million YouTube videos to get 50 different opinions. Why don't, why doesn't the brand tell me, you know, why I should purchase this? Why doesn't the brand tell me.

about the warranty and it sounds like you guys are solving a real issue there, which is awesome. And I like the B2B example you've made there because that is B2B, right? It's like contractors, construction, they're a business, they're purchasing these super large ticket items. And it's like, I think B2B is often, you know, my, my good friend and mentor who I believe you, one of my mentors that you probably know, Jason Greenwood.

_{Colin Dougherty (06:15.491)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (06:33.384)}
who's like super well known in that B2B space. I definitely think you guys should connect because I think he'd be a great partner because you know, he, in our podcasts and in our conversations, he's kind of dove into the fact that there's so many amazing sass, out there for D2C for, you know, B2C, but sometimes often the B2B isn't as sexy or doesn't appear to be as sexy, but there's so much opportunity. mean, you just explained it then it's like, if you're

_{Colin Dougherty (06:53.08)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:03.093)}
increasing sales by 50 % or probably larger based upon what you've said then for those high ticket, high AOV items. That is a huge, huge, huge impact. Like we're not talking, you know, we're not talking, you know, a couple of thousand dollars. We're talking like a couple of thousand dollars every single purchase. and, and that's where it gets really cool. I think so. Yeah, that's awesome.

_{Colin Dougherty (07:14.049)}
Huge.

Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:31.376)}
We, we, yeah, I'm not sure if you've spoken to Jason about car, you too should definitely connect at some point. feel like that'd be a really, really great conversation and something he'd be interested in. So make sure you remind me to do that after this. Yeah. So, so, sorry. You go.

_{Colin Dougherty (07:46.606)}
No, for sure.

No, I was just gonna say, I had a conversation with an agency like two weeks ago and like half of their book is basically HVAC companies and electricians. he was like, dude, if you can make an integration with these guys, because we're trying to win like $15,000 HVAC contracts, we'll cut you a big piece of that. Cause like that is a whole different ball game.

^{Joe Fox (08:01.966)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (08:13.688)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (08:18.7)}
where like what happens when you start to multi-thousand dollar HVAC contracts or electrical contracts or cement contracts or stuff like that where it's like, this is pretty monumentally large sums of money that are exchanging hands. yeah.

^{Joe Fox (08:19.011)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (08:34.693)}
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's where I think, you know, I think as much as we refer to e-commerce at the moment, there's, you know, obviously a very large focus on that, you know, being B2C and D2C. I really think with everything that's happening and, you know, the utilization of AI and agents and all of these things, I think that, you know, we're going to see more of a broad

_{Colin Dougherty (08:48.789)}
yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:04.878)}
kind of opening of all SaaS and all agency to more B2B kind of experiences. think, you know, B2B is maybe, you know, kind of, as I said earlier, like being a little bit neglected, but I think now it's becoming more and more prevalent. And I think we're going to end up in this age where it's not called e-commerce. It's just commerce, right? And all of the SaaS tools are going to evolve to have different functionality. I know

_{Colin Dougherty (09:18.328)}
for sure.

^{Joe Fox (09:33.483)}
Even at Grow Wave, we're working very closely with Shopify on some B2B stuff around, you know, loyalty and reviews and everything like that. That's very specialist to cater to that B2B space. And I think it's a fascinating space that's going to grow. I mean, selfishly from an agency side of things, when I had my agency in Australia, we worked with a ton, we had an equal split of sort of like, D2C customers and Ecom, and then a very large.

a B2B practice. And I always felt that the monumental outcomes to your point, like that you can make for B2B businesses are huge and they last so long versus with D2C. You know, you're focusing on so many more metrics. You're trying to lower cost per acquisition. You're trying to increase LTV. You're trying to increase AOV. It's this constant grind of things that you have to focus on.

And I think it's a really exciting time for, know, Carcamba, all of us in that South space that are kind of leaning into this, this B2B a little bit more. So super exciting. Anyway, strike for the tangent.

_{Colin Dougherty (10:42.606)}
No, all good. I totally agree. And I think part of the big shift for B2B that they are slowly realizing is they need to migrate off of the hosting platforms they have like kind of built this whole thing on. Like you see guys and you stumble onto guys that are like, Hey man, I'm running like Magento or like I'm running a fully custom build. Like I ran into that four weeks ago. I was like, yeah, what's your build on? Like I'd love to integrate with you guys and we can...

we can mess with you at car convert. It's a great product. Like he was like, the website's fully custom code. I was like, what? No, he was like, no, I have a developer literally keystroke every single line of the website. I'm like, I'm like, dude, you got to migrate off of that. And like, first you need to be on a better hosted website. So you have more access to like app accessibility and like things that'll actually help your business instead of being siloed into like,

^{Joe Fox (11:18.221)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (11:24.737)}
Wild. Wild.

Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (11:41.012)}
a WordPress custom build headless website. Like no shade to WordPress, but like it's not the best type of, you know, platform for what you're trying to do with, with the online. So.

^{Joe Fox (11:44.854)}
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (11:54.839)}
Definitely. And I think to that point, Colin, it's kind of like, that's why the Shopify ecosystem is so thriving is because it's like, well, what is the problem you're trying to solve? Here's the plethora of SAS that can solve that problem. It's literally the easiest thing. There isn't much that's difficult to stand up.

_{Colin Dougherty (12:01.516)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (12:11.694)}
plug.

^{Joe Fox (12:18.659)}
on an apps, like on a Shopify app store perspective, right? Like you can at least get things moving, you know, in a short period of time and you can start testing and ensuring that it's a good fit. There's free trials. Like it's just, it's such a like environment that's built for like entrepreneurs and, and, businesses to succeed. So I agree with you a hundred percent. It's like, I know that there are some use cases where it's like, you know,

and very few, but like brands where they've got a very, very, very complicated logistical side or thousands of skew. And they've been operating in this environment where they've had a custom site for like 20 years. And to change that would be detrimental to like the entire business, but it's very rare, right? Like we're talking about the one in a hundred.

_{Colin Dougherty (12:53.676)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (13:03.406)}
Yeah.

my gosh, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (13:11.788)}
versus the 99 out of the 100 that are a great fit for platforms like Shopify that can just get in, get things moving, get that revenue happening, simplify your processes and move forward and use tools like CartConvert to help you do that and to communicate with your customers. So I agree 100%. So look, we've covered a couple of things so far. What I'd really love to do, Colin,

because I really like your philosophy on partnerships and your expertise in this space. I would love to hear from you. You you're new at CartConvert, relatively new, building out, you know, the partnerships process for them and everything like that. What are some of the key things that you focus on from a partnerships perspective? Like what's your ethos and your approach to partnerships?

_{Colin Dougherty (14:04.182)}
Yeah, it is basically over communication and making sure comms are established very well. So like all the partners that I have established and looped into CarConvert, I will have weekly check-ins with every single one of them. If that's a blast directly to their partner, entire channel, or that's a personal DM to them directly, just checking in and being like, Hey, what's up? And really like you have to get to know them and then like,

^{Joe Fox (14:19.562)}
Nice.

_{Colin Dougherty (14:34.018)}
this takes real tangible hours and work where it's like, what's going on? How's everything going with the business? What can we help with? Is there anything you guys are looking for? Is there anything you guys are hiring for right now? Like it's more than just, hey, we're gonna pass you referrals. Like, and a great example too is one of the agencies that I'm working with three weeks ago, they made a huge push into acquisitions and they were like, we wanna scoop up as many brands and agencies as possible. And I'm like, great.

I will push you over all those intros for all those deals going on. And so it's just being top of mind about like, what does that partner need at that time? And then what are the key metrics that they actually want to push forward with the business and then aligning yourself with that.

^{Joe Fox (15:17.697)}
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a really good point, Colin. It's like, that has nothing typically to do with car convert, right? Like, like I'm going to introduce you to a whole bunch of agency partners. Absolutely nothing to do with that. mean, I've done things like going as far as like babysitting for, for partners in the past to help out. Not even kidding. Um, not in this role, previous roles, but you know, I think

_{Colin Dougherty (15:25.966)}
100%. No.

Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (15:38.712)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (15:45.151)}
that it's like going above and beyond and consistently being there for people, matter what their requirements are. you know, understanding what that looks like, right? Like I have a couple of partners who, you know, who have been through some incredibly stressful times of late with tariffs and just business is not booming like it used to be and being available and being able to have a conversation there and.

_{Colin Dougherty (15:47.086)}
100%.

^{Joe Fox (16:11.156)}
You know, my two cents probably isn't as relevant because it was in Australia and it was, you know, my goodness, like I'm nearly 10 years ago now. So it's kind of like that isn't as relevant. you know, to, to these people, however, being there and being a good friend and offering advice and listening when it's required, is a testament to not just being a good partner, but I think.

a testament to this ecosystem. And I don't know too many other ecosystems where there are these great support networks and there are these great, you know, kind of things. think to your point earlier, you made about falling in love with this industry. think there's so many great people in this industry and we all really genuinely actually care about each other. even if

Even if you know, it's competing companies, there's still a level of care there. I mean, there's a lot of competition. If you don't like your competitors, you can't be in this space because there's a, there's a lot of competitors in our space, but it's, you know, to your point, I think like actually being there and actually caring about their success, no matter what it looks like is, is really key. So I love that. and, cool. And so the other thing I'd love to know is like,

_{Colin Dougherty (17:04.877)}

Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (17:31.731)}
You you, you spoke then about communication and like over communicating and, and always being there. I find that I often am even sending text messages to partners and stuff like that, even though that, you know, a lot of people maybe don't have that level of relationship, but what tools do you find, you know, that, that really helped you manage your partnerships program?

_{Colin Dougherty (17:35.053)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (17:53.742)}
For sure. I'm a big guy on Slack. I love Slack so much. Ideally, you have all your partners lined up in Slack with organized channels, organized by category. You can reach out to everybody there. You also can keep tabs on every single person. Slack is like the gold standard for how you should communicate with partners. And then on top of that, you can have basically a newsletter blast out. On top of all of that, that goes out to customers and partners.

^{Joe Fox (18:14.708)}
Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (18:23.104)}
And then ideally, if you're getting really close with a partner, also a phone number too, just for like, comms that you really want to talk about or something like really emergency, you hit them up right away. I had great example. had a partner hit me up at 6 30 this morning and was like, Hey, Hey dude, can you get on with this company? They have a question about their account. And I was like, sweet. I'll set it up right now. And so there's like certain levels where, you know, if partners really want my phone number, they can have it. And I say,

^{Joe Fox (18:39.007)}
Poof.

_{Colin Dougherty (18:52.726)}
You can text me at any time you need. don't have any friends, so I'm probably going to respond to you pretty quickly. So please shoot me a text.

^{Joe Fox (18:57.246)}
I love that. Yeah, no, I think that's, that's a really, really good point that it comes back to, you know, just having that, having that closeness of relationship. think we're really lucky in our, in our space to be able to do that. cool. And so, but if people want to check out CartConvert, what, what, like, what's the best way for them to do that? How can they connect with you?

_{Colin Dougherty (19:11.852)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (19:27.015)}
to is, is there, you know, do you direct them straight to the website? Do you want them to reach out to you on LinkedIn? I mean, we have, our audiences, obviously a lot of partners and a lot of our own customers grow waves, customers watch this. So, I feel like this is definitely a valuable tool. So what's the best way for them to reach you and, check out car convert.

_{Colin Dougherty (19:50.04)}
For sure, yeah, if you wanna hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter, anything like that, reach out directly. I'll respond to you within that day, probably within that six hour window, but I will respond to you and get back to you and we will figure out something to make sure you're taken care of, for sure.

^{Joe Fox (20:06.495)}
Absolutely. And I'll make sure those links are in the show notes for sure. And Colin, I always liked doing this with our guests because you and I met in Austin. I know you recently relocated. I know you've traveled quite a bit, but in our industry, one of the other great things, sometimes not so great, is that we all travel a lot, right? So it's like we're all constantly traveling, going to conferences, hosting events, running around like crazy.

_{Colin Dougherty (20:17.782)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (20:35.824)}
I always like to ask everyone, I don't have it next to me today, but what it is that you can't live without when you're traveling and you cannot say a person because everyone wants to say a person, but what's the thing that you can't live without when you're traveling?

_{Colin Dougherty (20:47.81)}
yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (20:51.626)}
Easy, melatonin. Easy. Adjust to time zones because it's going to be miserable. I had to do a cross-country trip like four weeks ago and that was, that had me seeing ghosts for the first day because it was like, I was up till 12 with the partner, but it was really like 3.30 my time and I had been traveling that whole day.

^{Joe Fox (20:53.808)}
yeah, to adjust the time zones.

^{Joe Fox (21:16.082)}
Yeah.

Yes.

_{Colin Dougherty (21:21.728)}
And so getting that melatonin in to make sure that I'm actually going to sleep and knocking out and getting a good sleep to then adjust to wherever I'm going to, especially if you're not in your own bed or own house.

^{Joe Fox (21:22.29)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (21:35.326)}
Yes, yes. Yeah. You're fighting against all of the sleep routine components. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a great one. Um, I, I have a love hate relationship with melatonin. I take it sparingly, but I think that that is a, is a, is a good move. I, there was an app that came out quite some time ago. Uh, cause I, know, when I was in Australia and then I worked for a Scandinavian company and then I'd have to go to Singapore as part of that role.

_{Colin Dougherty (21:38.189)}
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (21:47.916)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:04.465)}
So it was just this perpetual, like, you know, I won't swear, but cluster of travel. And so there was an app where it would tell me, you know, depending on what time zone I was coming up to, what time I should go to bed in preparation for, and I could enter my flight details and it would say, this is, you know, either sleep on the flight, don't sleep on this flight. It'll mess you up. All of those sorts of things. But thankfully, you know, I don't.

_{Colin Dougherty (22:10.348)}
Yeah
‍

^{Joe Fox (22:33.626)}
Most of my travel at the moment is, you know, stateside, occasional Europe, the Europe, US, you know, time zone isn't as bad. But if you go from that Australia to Europe, time zone change, nightmare material. usually end, nightmare material. Yeah. Sea ghosts. Yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (22:49.906)}
nightmare. You're walking around. You're like, look at you're like, is it six p.m. I supposed to have dinner right now, but it's like, it's like 5am.

^{Joe Fox (22:58.289)}
Yeah, it's horrible. It's horrible. And you, end up for the first at least 48 hours, just really, yeah. The first 48 hours are just, you're either not eating and not sleeping or you're overeating and you're oversleeping. So it's like, it's really difficult to win that battle. So I think when I go back to Australia at some point to visit next year.

_{Colin Dougherty (23:06.478)}
48, yeah.

_{Colin Dougherty (23:12.428)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

^{Joe Fox (23:25.181)}
I will definitely take your advice and take some melatonin, because that sounds like a good one. So I appreciate the advice.

_{Colin Dougherty (23:31.274)}
Yeah, melatonin extended release. That is the key. Because not the instant release, so it stays the whole night through. I changed it up. I'm a little bit of a sleep fiend. And then I also take with that taurine if you want to get crazy with it, which actually calms your nervous system down. So I'll take both those in combo to basically just chill out.

^{Joe Fox (23:37.218)}
Okay, okay.

^{Joe Fox (23:51.046)}
Okay.

^{Joe Fox (23:56.089)}
Nice, nice. I like that. like that. And Colin, look, I'd love to do a second one of these, you know, within the next 12 months. And I think on that one, because I know that you and I have spoken about this privately is like the whole, I wouldn't say body hacking, but like body optimization, nutrition, blood tests, blood work. I think that's, that'd be something I'd love to, for us to dive in, you know, on a future podcast for sure. Because I think,

_{Colin Dougherty (24:02.904)}
For sure.

^{Joe Fox (24:24.652)}
As we discussed, think that's something that, you know, our industry could probably do a little bit better in is just some of that awareness. And I'd love to be able to talk to you about that. Cause I know we share an interest in that space. but all in all, we can't, we can't, I mean, we could riff forever, but we can't because of time constraints, but look, thank you so much for, you know, coming on board. really, really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure our audience got a lot.

out of this. Guys, I'll make sure that all of Colin's LinkedIn links, his ex slash Twitter link is in there, as well as a link to the CartConvert website. Please reach out to Colin. Highly recommend you checking out CartConvert. You heard for yourself what those numbers look like and what those results can look like for businesses. So I think it's a no brainer.

and I'm sure if you reach out to Colin and mentioned that you saw this podcast, he'll take care of you. Colin, thank you so much for coming on my friend. Really appreciate it. And, look to look forward to having you back on within the next kind of 12 months. And I hope your sleep patterns are getting back to normal after the cross country adventure.

_{Colin Dougherty (25:38.712)}
Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. And it was awesome having on, jumping on this. And yeah, I'll see you end of this month in Boston in person.

^{Joe Fox (25:46.073)}
Yes. Yes. So, well, might have to take some melatonin there. Although it's only an hour jump, it's no jump for you. Correct. So that, yeah, easy, easy. And it'll be cold though. So I will sleep no matter what. I sleep very well in the cold. So I'll be fine. Awesome. Thank you so much, Colin. Really appreciate it, man. And I'll connect with you shortly. And audience, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain grow thrive.

_{Colin Dougherty (25:52.842)}
Easy. Easy.

_{Colin Dougherty (25:58.83)}
Nice. There we go. I love it.

_{Colin Dougherty (26:08.856)}
Sounds good.

^{Joe Fox (26:14.224)}
The Growave podcast. I'm your host, Joe Fox, president at Growave. Once again, please check out the links in the show notes. I think the car converter is an absolute no brainer, super easy install. Colin will take care of you. It's definitely worth trying because we all know that we all need as many conversions as we can get at the moment. And please stay tuned for the next episode. Thank you so much.

for being supporters of this channel and of this podcast. And if you have any guests that you'd like me to interview, please mention them below wherever you get your podcasts and I'll do my best to get them on. Thank you so much.