Marcus Ohanesian: Founder and Founder of Perfect Evolution

^{Joe Fox (00:02.633)}
Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain grow thrive, the grow wave podcast. I'm your host, Joe Fox, president at grow wave. And today I'm joined by a really good friend of mine, a very good human being and someone in this industry that I have a lot of time for. so I'm going to introduce Marcus now Marcus has a very strong, background in partnerships in agency as well as tech. but he also manages to do a lot of.

partnerships consulting, well as manage his own and grow his own agency, Perfect Evolution. So Marcus, thank you so much for joining us.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (00:40.47)}
Yeah, thanks Joe. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

^{Joe Fox (00:43.025)}
Absolutely. So just for the audience, we have a mix of merchants, other agency partners, tech partners and the like. Are you able to give a little bit of a detail around your background and then dive into perfect evolution and what you guys do on a day to day?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (01:02.99)}
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'm CEO and founder of Perfect Evolution. I personally come from a design background. So I went to school for graphic design. I started doing freelance design in my senior year of high school. So I was playing in bands. I played drums. I was playing in bands and doing stuff for bands. And that's sort of what Perfect Evolution came out of. So now we're a small but mighty team helping Shopify merchants scale. We do everything from design development and CRO. And we tend to keep it focused on that. We used to do branding. We used to do some other services, but

We tend to keep it super hyper focused on that type of stuff.

^{Joe Fox (01:37.045)}
Yeah, absolutely, Marcus. And I guess being a creative, it's hard for you to not jump into some of that branding stuff. I mean, you know, my background being agency as well, before I kind of moved into the tech space. You know, I always found that, you know, Alibaba was a great example when we worked with them in Asia Pacific and while we were helping them with their, you know, kind of launch into ANZ.

Uh, one of the things that we found was like, okay, so we're paid to do the creative assets, like landing pages and email templates and, uh, digital advertising across, you know, Meta and Google. But one thing that we're not paid for is kind of like the brand identity. And because they really wanted us to, to focus on what was going to kind of move in the market, we really had to address some of those key critical braining points.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (02:19.427)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (02:34.942)}
that are different from their kind of traditional audience being directly China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. So it was very interesting process, but my business partner, Phil, at the time was so similar to you, he's amazing at design and everything like that. So he found it really hard to not dive all into the branding. So I'm sure you have the same issue of perfect evolution.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (02:42.679)}
What?

^{Marcus Ohanesian (02:55.574)}
Okay.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (03:01.152)}
Yeah, it's been a struggle even just to be like a business owner and think about the non creative stuff. It's been a struggle because that's one side of your brain, right? And then the other side is all like the spreadsheet and non creatives type of stuff. But as a business owner, you have to be well rounded. You have to have a understanding of all that stuff. Your numbers, your profit margin, all that sort of stuff. Never would have thought I would be in this position or role. Obviously, I love what I do. But yeah, I still tend to dabble in some of the design stuff like on the sidelines just for friends and

^{Joe Fox (03:13.587)}
Yes.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (03:30.23)}
make fun t-shirt designs and stupid stuff like that just to keep my chops up.

^{Joe Fox (03:33.178)}
Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's cool. And I think it's like, it's one of those things where you need to constantly use that side of the brain and stay creative. fortunately, a lot of as we get older, we don't necessarily do that as much as we probably should. But I think it's one of the keys to staying youthful and energetic and excited is really explore exploring that creative side of the brain. Okay, cool. So

_{Marcus Ohanesian (03:57.805)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (03:59.762)}
Tell me a little bit more about Perfect Evolution. Who is your ICP? What's a recent project that you've worked on to help merchants grow? What is some of the things that you're doing at the moment?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (04:09.87)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Marcus Ohanesian (04:16.278)}
Yeah, so we tend to work with a lot of Shopify merchants more on the SMB side of things. So less of the mid-market and definitely less enterprise just because of our capacity and size. We know what we're good at, so we like to lean into that more. So some of our Shopify merchants are starting at zero dollars, startup basically, all the way up to maybe two to five million on online revenue. So definitely on the smaller side as far as Shopify ecosystem goes. But where we come in is we provide a solid structure.

and foundation for them to grow and build on. So we look at that in a few different areas. One of them is most importantly is the user experience, which is a lot of bunch of stuff all combined into one thing, but it's mainly around conversion focused user experience, which is, know, the UX UI, CRO, other areas that all touch upon the user experience and how we can basically set them up for success. If they're a new brand, like I said, if they're a startup or if they're

in that sort of growth phase where they have that foundation and they're looking to kind of take that next step up, sort of like hypercharge their sales. And we always start with an audit and kind of get a lay of the land and understand where they're at and what they've done and where they want to be basically. So we can help kind of predict and plan and create a blueprint of what that may look like.

^{Joe Fox (05:31.527)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that size of business is, is, well, two things here to unpack. One, I think it's like really rewarding. Like I can, I can imagine from your side, you know, and your team side, it's like so amazing when you take a merchant and really hold their hand and get them from zero revenue up to, you know, a million and beyond. mean, I think that's such a rewarding.

experience and I know that from my agency days that that was actually what drove a lot of our team members and our staff was seeing that progression for smaller merchants and brands really getting that awesome growth and helping them realize their dreams. So I take my hat off to you for that. I guess kind of second of all, what are some of the things that you see as being consistent across the board?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (06:07.822)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (06:16.963)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (06:29.431)}
are with these smaller brands that you're consistently doing, whether they're at zero revenue, whether they're at 3 million revenue, like what are some of the key things in the Shopify space you're seeing as being incredibly important?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (06:44.238)}
think the biggest thing that we always tend to see is over complication. And what I mean by that is too many apps installed on the Shopify store, too much going on on their homepage, their PDPs, their cart, whatever it is, they're overthinking the process. So we always come in and like I said, we audit everything. We look under the hood, sort of speak of their theme. We do an app audit. We look at what types of apps they're using and what they're costing you most importantly to see if we can consolidate or.

you know, do something custom one time. So you pay us for a couple hours of dev work or something, and then you're saving a couple thousand bucks a month. And really, you know, taking away and detracting from the robust experience that they've created. And when I say robust, I don't mean successfully robust. It's bloat basically. So a lot of merchants tend to get that like shiny object syndrome and start going crazy with installing apps. And obviously that's boggling down your site with speed and performance.

which is where it kind of grow away and a lot of tools out there come in of consolidating your stack basically to not only save money, but also make your site faster from a speeding performance lens. So I think it's a lot of over complication. So we tend to really come in as a neutral set of eyes and audit their stuff and come to them with a real honest opinion and say, really need to improve sections ABC here because of our audits.

^{Joe Fox (07:53.894)}
Definitely.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (08:08.236)}
That's sort of we kind of come to the table with the roadmap of like what we're going to be doing for their monthly retainers if they're if they already exist on Shopify, you know.

^{Joe Fox (08:15.942)}
Yeah, no, I think that's super important. It's like, you know, starting with a really solid base, like there's no point in, in, you know, giving yourself a disadvantage from the beginning by, you know, things like tech blow and slowing down your site. But even also like, you know, I find more so at, that SMB level probably is, you know, more so than enterprise. It's like, you really have to focus.

on where you're allocating those budgets and what is going to be the first lot of activity that you dedicate resource and budget to. I think that's crucial. And unfortunately, you know, sometimes with larger agencies, not all the time, not any partners of ours, but I just know this from being in the industry is that they don't necessarily have that, you know,

_{Marcus Ohanesian (08:51.106)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:07.589)}
very core focus of what's going to move the needle. It's like they want to offer everything so they can get the hours and billables for everything versus in your position and a lot of our other partners where it's like, we're really going to like focus on what moves the needle today. And then we can look at some of those other services. yeah, I think that's really critical. Marcus, tell me a little bit more, you know,

_{Marcus Ohanesian (09:15.182)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (09:35.301)}
Two things I want to dive into here. One is I want to hear about, you know, a recent win or kind of like a particular merchant that stands out to you in your portfolio. I know you work with a variety of verticals, but you know, a particular merchant that stands out to you on a, on a success front. And then also I'd love to, after that, let's dive into your general partnerships kind of background and your focus on partnerships consultation as well.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (09:55.054)}
Hmph.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (10:05.76)}
Yeah, for sure. One client of ours that definitely sticks out that she's been with us for at least a couple years now is unwilted. unwilted.com if you want to check her out. She does paper mache flowers. So flowers that that will last forever. Basically, they won't die. So she comes from a florist background and she started doing these like paper flowers in their gorgeous bouquets. So obviously Mother's Day and, you know, holidays like that Valentine's Day are super popular for her. So there's spikes as well there with her sales volume.

First of all, she's the nicest human being. So it's great to just work with people that are nice and that you enjoy working with. Second was, and this is a pattern that we've seen being our size agency and where we sit within the Shopify ecosystem. We see a lot of merchants come to us, coming to us from the upwork from the Fiverr world or working with like solo freelancers and they just haven't seen any success or haven't been happy with them. So it's a lot of like reactive behavior.

for us initially, then it turns proactive. So we're fixing a lot of issues. We're putting Band-Aids on things because things may be broken. It's the worst case scenario. Not all of them are like this, but in this case, we're unwielded. She was just frustrated. We kind of came in, got some quick wins under our belt, build that trust and rapport with her. She's been a client for years, and now we've audited her tech stack. We've saved her thousands of dollars because we've consolidated some of her tools.

She was using a very outdated like inventory management tool. So this is obviously the unsexy backend operational stuff of Shopify. it's inevitable you have to kind of talk about it and you have to have an understanding of that stuff too besides the cool front end stuff. So she was using an outdated inventory planning software. We got her going with Katana actually, which is a great inventory system for Shopify merchants. And yeah, she's been super happy with our recommendations.

^{Joe Fox (11:39.983)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (12:02.388)}
And I guess that's sort of a good segue into the partnership side of things is having some background in the e-commerce partnership space. You know, obviously like I can look at their site and do a lot of UX, UI, CRO stuff, but understanding which tools may fit well based on who the size of the merchant is and what the rest of the tech stack looks like. That's super important. And I'd see that as sort of one of our angles. Of course, there's tons of other agencies that have a really strong partnership team and partnership department, but I kind of see this.

tell that to a lot of merchants or even sales leads that are in our sales pipeline of, know, you're coming to us for some of the stuff that we'll fix for sure, like you came to us about, but we also have this other kind of extra value out of a really robust partnerships system and program in place. So, you know, I always kind of like to get a lay of the land of what their entire business looks like, not just like what are you using in your Shopify store, but what are all the things you're using in your warehouse fulfillment ERP, OMS, like all the

e-commerce acronyms you can think of, like what are all those things? And basically building a profile for this merchant to say, all right, we have unwielded, she's using ABCDE for all these tools. Now we can start to bring in some strategy to her and say, okay, well, you're using this tool, you could be using this other tool and replacing that. And it's a better experience and they'll integrate better with this other tool that you're using and really start to like add in that like more strategic.

more robust value to them that they're not aware of, right? They're merchants. They come to us because we're the experts.

^{Joe Fox (13:35.119)}
Absolutely. And I think you've touched on a really good point there. It's like, these merchants only know what they know, right? So it's like, you know, they do a quick Google, they quickly implement something or they've came from, as you said, their previous providers being Fiverr or a freelancer who may not have that extensive knowledge and network as such as someone yourself. So it's like, they've put all these kind of band aids in place and then

You're going through ripping off the band aids and actually, you know, fixing things properly. So, yeah, I really liked that approach and I think it's, critical. segue into that, as you said, the partnerships kind of ecosystem, you've been in that ecosystem for a minute. and I know that what's, what are the kind of core things that you like about that? Obviously it really helps with perfect evolution, being able to say, you know, I know the person at this company and

_{Marcus Ohanesian (14:28.28)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (14:30.892)}
you know, sometimes we can do things like, hey, here's an extended trial and things like that, that, you know, help you out. But what are some of the other core sort of things that you really love about that partnership ecosystem?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (14:35.982)}
Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (14:45.142)}
Yeah, personally, I love the sense of community. So there's sort of two angles that I look at it. One is what I personally like out of it and why I'm passionate about it why I've been in this world for whatever five, six years at this point now. And the other side of it is what I'm telling leads and merchants that I talk to because like I said, it's an extra value add. So I personally enjoy the sense of community. I've made some really good friends in this e-commerce partnership world. So whenever we go to events and conferences, we bump into them, have some beers and tacos, whatever, and hang out.

You know, your work can also be fun and you can also build non-work relationships from work. And I don't tend to typically take that approach, but in this partnership world, it's such a small world. Once you're in it, you you start to see all the same names and people at these events and you start to build relationships, you know, know, from going to and it's, it's, it's been great because again, it's, it's all building this stronger community of, of partnerships and it's helping each other, you know? So even when I was in the agency space, I was friends with

^{Joe Fox (15:29.985)}
Yes.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (15:44.62)}
other people at other agencies, competitive agencies. But that's one side of it. The second side of it is that from a client side is, I always say that because we have this really robust partnership program, we can give you this white glove treatment. We'll roll out the red carpet for you basically. And that falls in a couple of different areas. One is we can potentially get you better pricing so we can negotiate on your behalf to the tech partner and say, hey, they're going to sign a contract for whatever length or.

You know, because we're a partner, we can negotiate for you. But like you said, extended free trials are also really helpful. And also, you know, escalated support tickets. So God forbid if something happens, instead of them reaching out to their, you know, chat bot on the site or in the admin or whatever, we can reach out to our partner manager, get that ticket number escalated, whatever it may be. So there's definitely different value adds. And a lot of merchants, our size at least, that we talk to aren't familiar with like the partnership.

ecosystem that we have here. And that's like I said, that's another value add as an agency versus just, okay, we can't, have Shopify developers, we can do your development thing. It's very transactional in that sense. Whereas now we're building long-term relationship with you, you know.

^{Joe Fox (16:53.623)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (16:57.387)}
Yeah. And you're adding more value. Like that's the, that's the thing I like to think of with, with partnerships is it's like, if you're, you're adding more value to whoever it is that you're working with because of your extensive partner network. And I think that is something that's really hard to necessarily quantify in like a dollar value, but in terms of like the value that that brings it's, it's immense. And sometimes it's priceless in my opinion. think, know,

_{Marcus Ohanesian (17:02.477)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (17:12.29)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (17:27.697)}
I've found it as, you know, particularly with GrowWave being a company that, you know, comes from central Asia that doesn't have a huge U S presence. leverage, being able to leverage my network and utilizing my network in Asia Pacific and the U S I've really been able to leverage that to a degree that I think is almost priceless for GrowWave because

_{Marcus Ohanesian (17:39.662)}
No.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (17:48.62)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (17:55.197)}
I have the connections and I know the people and I have that partner network. So I think it works very much in our agency and very much in a tech capacity as well. But to your point, to your point at the end of the day, the connections that you make or that you have, that your merchants are benefiting from that directly and your clients and same with Grow Wave. It's like, I'm able to cut through.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (17:59.726)}
Yep.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (18:06.584)}
Yeah

^{Joe Fox (18:22.784)}
with the Clavio team a little bit quicker than if we want a traditional route, which in turn makes the product better for our customers. So it's really a win-win. It's a win-win for everyone, but in particular the merchants and the customers. yeah, I really liked that. You framed that very well. Cool. And, you know, to that point you spoke about the tacos and the travel. I really like to dive into this with all of our guests because

_{Marcus Ohanesian (18:30.542)}
Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (18:36.75)}
Absolutely.

^{Joe Fox (18:52.46)}
I mean, you know, as well as I do, Marcus, we've seen each other probably what three times this year or three in very different locations. All of them centered around, you know, partnerships and things that are going on in, in the e-comm and in our space. Um, what are the, what are the, you know, kind of, well, I've got two questions. I've started asking. There's one that I've asked since the inception of the podcast. Um, I think we're up to like, we've recorded about 30 of these.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (19:00.078)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (19:07.16)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (19:20.81)}
But I've also started introducing a new question in the last couple of episodes I've recorded. So my first one is what is one thing that you can't travel without? And I'll use mine as an example, just to fuel the conversation. But this is like a travel battery for laptop, phone, everything. A lot of people are like, it's clear we can't live without our phones and our laptops, particularly in our space.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (19:41.901)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (19:48.896)}
And I've tried probably, I think this would be my 10th one, like, well, 10th different battery over the years, just because it's something I've always traveled with, whether it be for work or personal travel. But this is by far the best one I've found. It's called Outdoor Battery. It's like waterproof. It's been really, really good to me. I think it's like held its battery life the longest so far.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (19:52.974)}
Cheers.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (20:16.622)}
Hmm.

^{Joe Fox (20:17.161)}
So they're doing something different than their competition. But it's also, I feel, in a shape where I'm not going to lose it, right? Like it's not a real square little slim thing that I might lose. This, I know when I've got it, it's relatively heavy and robust. But that's my thing. I personally can't travel without, whether it's personal or business. But what's yours, Marcus?

_{Marcus Ohanesian (20:29.922)}
Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (20:40.814)}
I like that. It looked like a pair of binoculars when you were showing me. And I thought that was going to be your item. You can't leave the house without your binoculars. The obvious answer here, I was thinking about this, was my 11-month-old daughter is the obvious answer. Like, I can't live without her, right? But I think you mean an item. So I'll say that. Yeah. So my trusty espresso machine that I have upstairs that I use every morning, I'd say I can't live without that.

^{Joe Fox (20:43.603)}
Yeah, a little bit.

^{Joe Fox (20:58.736)}
I, yeah, am not person, yep.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (21:09.48)}
I I can't obviously, it's a nice thing to have, it's a nice luxury to have, and I use it every day. And it's valuable tool that contributes to my success every day.

^{Joe Fox (21:20.752)}
Absolutely. Yeah. Your merchants or your clients should be sponsoring that for you because espresso is the key to success. No, I love that. My wife recently bought this fancy espresso machine, but it does like nitro cold brews and nitro espressos. I don't even want to think about how much it was, but it's really cool.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (21:25.998)}
For sure.

Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (21:39.502)}
Mmm.

^{Joe Fox (21:46.589)}
I piggyback off that. So I've become responsible for purchasing the pods because I have about three of them a day versus her having one in the morning. So, but yeah, I agree. I'm a big coffee fan. I've fought, especially coming from Australia, we have such good coffee over there. So it's nice to know that the U.S. is finally caught up. I used to struggle coming here, you know, 10 years.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (21:48.717)}
Nice.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (21:56.258)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (22:06.498)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:13.962)}
15 years ago when it wasn't as good as what it is now, that's for sure.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (22:17.846)}
Yeah, yeah, that's great.

^{Joe Fox (22:20.394)}
Awesome man. look, really great, you know, conversation here today. I think the audience would have got a lot of value out of that. Really understanding everything about you and what you do at Perfect Evolution. But I would love to, you know, ensure that the audience can stay connected with you, Marcus, and follow your journey. And if there's, we have a lot of SMB merchants that are probably a really good ICP fit for you.

so I would encourage them to certainly be in contact with you, but what's the best way, you know, is there something you want to offer the audience or what's the best way for people to connect with you, Marcus? And I'll make sure that's all included in the show notes.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (22:49.09)}
Yeah.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (23:04.174)}
Well, yeah, there's two ways you can go to perfectevolution.com, hit up the contact form. I see those emails that come in. I'll reply to you there or hit me up on LinkedIn. If you want to find me, can search my name. I won't try to spell it out. If you respond to me, if you reach out and you say, I heard you on the Grow Wave podcast, I'll give you a complimentary Shopify website audit. It's going to be very high level, but we'll produce a report. Just send me your website URL. That's all you got to do.

and give me a couple days to a week or whatever we'll get back to you. And I guarantee you there'll be stuff in there that I can pinpoint and I can call out and it'll be a good agenda for the conversation that we can have and how we can help you.

^{Joe Fox (23:44.777)}
Amazing, amazing. That's very kind of you Marcus. I appreciate that. And as I mentioned, I'll make sure your LinkedIn profile, Perfect Evolutions website and your contact email address are all included in the show notes. But yeah, looking, look, I very much value our partnership. I very much value what you do for your clients. I definitely love your partnership insights. I think you, you know, you continue to add a lot of value and contribute to that space.

so yeah, once again, thank you so much for your partnership, Marcus. And we hope to continue to do a lot of work together. And I hope next year in 12 months time, we can talk about some of the things that we're working on together and, dive into them a little bit deeper, I'm wishing you nothing, but more success, my friend.

_{Marcus Ohanesian (24:31.662)}
Action.

Thank you. Appreciate it, Joe.

^{Joe Fox (24:36.431)}
Awesome. Thanks, Marcus. Audience, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain growth thrive. As promised, I'll make sure that all of the show notes, sorry, the show notes include Marcus's contact details, you can reach him at perfectevolution.com as well as follow him on LinkedIn. So that'll all be in the show notes. But thank you again, audience for tuning into another episode. We love having you here.

If there's anything any particular guests that you would love to see come on the show Please comment below or send me through an email Joe dot Fox at grow wave dot IO Try and respond to every single email I get unless it's consistent spam Anyway, thank you so much for having me and thank you so much again for tuning in and I'll talk to you very shortly