Tabish Bhimani: Exeuctive Director of Mastrat and Girl Dad Co.

^{Joe Fox (00:00.639)}
Hey everyone, Joe Fox here for another episode of retain growth, thrive the grow web podcasts today. I'm joined by a very, very special partner of ours and a good friend of mine. Tavish now Tavish is a bit of a unique case here because he not only is a partner of ours owns an amazing agency that does incredible work, but he's also a founder of an e-commerce brand on Shopify plus called girl dad, which is very close to his heart.

So I'm very excited to announce my very, very close friend, Tabish, on here. Tabish, please give a little bit of a background on you, Mazstrad, what you're doing with Girl Dad, and who you are as a human being.

_{Tabish Bhimani (00:44.878)}
Yeah, man. Thanks, Joe, for having me on the podcast. I think that intro was fantastic already. I don't know how I can top that, but look, I started Mastered close to a decade ago. I had just left my family business, which was import export. I was constantly traveling, Vegas one day, Germany the other, China the next, Toronto, lots and lots of times. And, you know, did all that import export stuff, closed a lot of deals, found a lot of products that we just couldn't get exclusively in the market. And we made those deals.

especially with companies like Bic. You guys might recognize the lighters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, mean, like for, think close to 15, 16 years, we just couldn't get a deal with them going. And, you know, I was ready when the status quo changed with their distributors. And I said, hey, listen, where are your Huckleberry, right? So, then, know, traveling to the ends of earth, places that, you know, the owners had never traveled to to make deals and get merchandise.

^{Joe Fox (01:18.411)}
Big flutters? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (01:43.214)}
that really set us apart. I started Masterat on the tail end of that. I just got tired of all that traveling. It takes its toll on your body. People think, you're traveling. You're having this great time. You're seeing all these places. And all you really see is insides of hotel rooms and inside the content world. Yeah, so I was getting married. I said, you know what? Time for a change. I moved to Toronto, which is where my wife is from, which is where I am now. And I needed to start making money. My background...

^{Joe Fox (01:49.279)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (01:59.101)}
Absolutely. Absolutely.

_{Tabish Bhimani (02:11.342)}
academic background is in public relations and communications management and I have a master's in that. And I couldn't get a job because I was too experienced to start as an intern, but not experienced enough in PR and comms. So I said, okay, I to put food on the table, newly married, what do I have to show for myself? And so I started, you know what, I'm going to do lead gen for real estate, picked a niche, learned marketing really quickly. I had a good mentor to just, you help me with the mindset.

^{Joe Fox (02:20.82)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (02:38.099)}
Nice.

_{Tabish Bhimani (02:38.19)}
Started that with real estate, started white labeling for other agencies because our email marketing strategies, my email marketing strategies and approach to it in real estate was very applicable to e-commerce brands. And we were doing a lot of one-to-one personalization in real estate. And that was kind of missing in e-commerce almost like nine years ago, 10 years ago. It wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. COVID hit, you we were doing white labeling for other agencies, doing email marketing for other brands.

COVID hit, pivoted completely into e-commerce. so fundamentally, my first client was starting, started his business as a drop shipping business, selling, shaving machines. That became a huge unicorn, know, millions and millions of dollars in sale. you know, they had their own inventory. I really learned a lot during that time and executed a lot, broadened all the expertise from the real estate side of things and really provided a solid customer experience. And I realized this is what I'm really good at.

^{Joe Fox (03:16.968)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (03:37.772)}
And so what does MasterRat do today? MasterRat helps e-commerce brands in the food, health industry, ideally in subscription spaces to generate more than 30 % of the revenue through email and SMS. And that's kind of a narrow scope. What we really help clients do is activate and keep their customers and make sure that they're loyal. And we do this through a number of strategies. Most of it involves really deep diving into the customer psyche.

and looking at reviews, looking at what the customer is not saying, and then using that to talk to them. So that's what MasterRat does in a nutshell.

^{Joe Fox (04:14.346)}
That's awesome. That's awesome. And, you know, you've touched on a couple of things there that are passionate to you. And, you know, you know, you're very dedicated family man and everything like that. So I feel like that's a good, good way of talking a little bit about Girl Dad, you know, who I think the premise of this is just so awesome. And I love it a lot. And I know how much of a good dad you are. So, you know, touch us close to home on that front. But tell us a little bit about Girl Dad. And I guess

_{Tabish Bhimani (04:25.389)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (04:30.691)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (04:44.339)}
you know, can you elaborate on how, cause I know that you use Girl Dad like as a very good like testing platform and you're like, you know, stress test it, try different things. So, and I know that's on plus too. tell me a little bit more about, you know, Girl Dad, how that came about and where you see that fitting into the market.

_{Tabish Bhimani (04:52.076)}
Yeah

_{Tabish Bhimani (04:56.408)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (05:06.99)}
Yeah, so I always thought I'd be a better father and build on the shoulders and all the teachings of my parents. My parents were fantastic, supportive, really gave me the freedom to explore life. And so I said, I'm gonna be an even better father. And I wanted to do something to honor my daughter when she was born. And she's three and a half years old now. So for the first year, year and a half, I was thinking about, hey, what can I do?

to honor my daughter and show to her that she too can build something great if she just perseveres and has grit and determination. So Girl Dad was a culmination of all of those thoughts. And we're still dealing with the legality of it all, the trademark issues, different regions, and by we, I mean me, because it is just me. And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna create

^{Joe Fox (06:00.935)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (06:05.13)}
one of the best hats in the market. I have a 20 page document which tells the factories what not to do and what to do when it comes to quality. And so I said, I'm gonna best quality, best embroidery, amazing colors, doesn't look anything like a dad cap. It's gonna be something that you can style with your clothes, whether it's semi-formal clothes or casual clothes, you're gonna look like you're wearing a good quality hat.

^{Joe Fox (06:12.656)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (06:24.935)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (06:34.158)}
And I think mission accomplished because just today I received a message from a customer in the UK saying that the quality is just immaculate, right? And it seems to be the recurring theme. think I've done a good job. Now, Girl That is an amazing hack. And I think it's a great hack for agencies to have their own brand because they can really think like the brand owner, especially if they're working with smaller brands with one to five people operations.

I can really think about what my customer wants, extrapolate that, and then apply to messaging from my clients, customers. And one of the biggest things that I've noticed is it was really hard to gain momentum in the beginning, but slowly having conversations one-on-one, like I spent hours talking to people just to sell one hat, make $5 off of a hat. And today, like I've got reviews that...

^{Joe Fox (07:04.348)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:12.326)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:28.581)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (07:32.078)}
People are saying, I thought this was a scam, but I just ordered it and it's the best quality hat I've ever had or my husband loves it. Yeah, most wives will order it for their husbands when they're becoming a second girl, second time girl dad or a first time girl dad. then, the quality kind of helped get the reviews in. There were people that I was talking to that placed an order and canceled it because financial difficulties. As a new parent,

^{Joe Fox (07:39.484)}
I love that. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:46.875)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (08:00.48)}
It's really hard to juggle finances. And so one of the things I did is I received an order from somebody whose name I recognized. Cause I tend to write all Canadian orders. I tend to write handwritten thank you notes. And I have all the customer service conversations myself, right? Because I really want to learn about what my customer is thinking and who they are. And so I recognized the name and I said, this is their second order, but I don't think so.

^{Joe Fox (08:14.219)}
nice, that's a cool touch, yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (08:29.162)}
So I looked at their email chain that I had with them. then, so when I wrote the note, it was a very personalized note, hoping their daughter had a great birthday in November and I'm glad to see that she's back, sort of stuff like that, right? And that personal touch, I think really helps me understand my customer. And then I can go into my client's accounts and apply the same learnings. But it's such a hack. As an agency owner, having a brand,

^{Joe Fox (08:54.458)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (08:57.346)}
and then as a brand owner having an agency, right? Cause it goes both ways. So yeah, that's what Girl. is it's a way for me to honor my daughter and help her understand that she too can build something great.

^{Joe Fox (08:59.908)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:08.751)}
I love that, I love that. It's like a legacy component to it and a proper like, you know, early business lesson, which I think is amazing. And I'm sure she grows older, you know, she'll come to understand that more and respect that and love that. And as the brand grows too, I'm sure she's going to see people out in the wild with those hats on in public. And that's, that's going to be a really cool moment for you. I want to touch back on that point you made.

around that being a hack. I, you know, I, you know, have worked with hundreds of agencies over the years. You know, we've worked with a lot of agencies now at Grow Wave. And I think the thing that I really like about what you do at Maastrad is, you know, and some other partners do it, but I think you do it incredibly well as well. It's the, you know, when you make a decision on something it's

being well tested, well thought out, but then you execute very quickly. I think that's a really cool kind of thing. And I wonder if that is from having that kind of customer mindset too. It's like, okay, this is the decision that's been made to execute on something. Let's do it quickly and move quick because we know that this is going to work or we need to try it to see if it's going to work. And I think that's something I've noticed you do at Maastricht is it's very

Everything's very carefully considered, then executed very well. So it's, it's cool to see.

_{Tabish Bhimani (10:43.212)}
Yeah, I think when I started getting prospects right out the gate during COVID, our selling point quickly changed from us doing email marketing to the value that we brought. And one of our values was agility, because a lot of the people that I was talking to were working with big agencies.

And these are your top six, top seven agencies that do practically everything. So our pitch was, hey, we're a lot more agile because that was a complaint that the customer had, the clients had, that it's taking three, four weeks to send an email, especially if it's not planned. So the agility was a big selling point. And that's one of the reasons that we got customers on board. And then inertia is the biggest

^{Joe Fox (11:21.059)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (11:38.24)}
agency killer or a biggest deal killer, I would say. And so from day one, and I've learned this throughout my life, is every time I delay on something, I'm losing that deal, I'm losing that prospect, I'm losing that conversation, I'm losing that credibility. So our thing is never let inertia overcome momentum. And so when we plan on something, we tend to execute it relatively quickly.

^{Joe Fox (11:50.746)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (12:05.13)}
And if there's like last minute emails, hey, we've got all of that prepped part of our playbook. We're ready to go on all that stuff. And sometimes we test things with the hypothesis that this test will not make any difference, but let's be sure. And sometimes you run those tests just to make sure that you are not being biased, right? And I think you have to just look at data. And so some of the data from Girl That is reviews,

^{Joe Fox (12:21.218)}
Hmm

_{Tabish Bhimani (12:34.166)}
really drive momentum. And so our focus has to be on reviews, right? Especially to convert people that are just prospects, there's huge inertia there. And so we try to overcome that for Girl Dad, but also for all of our clients, we focus heavily on those reviews. And I think that they tend to convert a lot better for first time customers.

^{Joe Fox (12:36.377)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (12:45.922)}
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (12:57.913)}
Yeah, definitely. think there's something that's always, you know, the, when I first kind of moved into this SAS space and, and, know, particularly into the reviews space, I always kind of have thought of it not just as reviews, but it's really like, you know, it sounds cheesy, but it's your online word of mouth and word of mouth as we know is the quickest, fertilizer to help a business grow or, the quickest,

_{Tabish Bhimani (13:17.943)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (13:27.621)}
fertilizer for a business to get thrown in the trash, right? Like it's, it's, can make or break a business very easily. So I think, you know, focusing on that online reputation and word of mouth is really key. So I agree a hundred percent. there's a couple of points you mentioned there that I kind of want to circle back to in a second. I think it's really relevant. You know, we had this event recently in Toronto. That was when everyone was first learning.

you know, that we did with Klaviyo and we were first learning about what was happening with tariffs. And, you know, you could see the fear in people's eyes, literally. And obviously, you know, that's all kind of, who knows where that's at right now, right? Like it, you know, we've got this pause in place at the moment that people are going back and forth. It's causing a lot of chaos in general and just uncertainty. And we know that when people are uncertain, people are not really necessarily spending. They're focusing on building up.

the war chest and building up their savings and stuff. So I think I'd love to get your thoughts on, know, where we are right now. We're definitely going to be, you know, mentioning this again in the future, but I'd love to see where your thoughts are at just on the current Shopify e-commerce landscape as it stands like today. Like, what do you, what do you see?

happening? What do you think is the most important thing that merchants should be focusing on? And, you know, where do you think do you think we're heading into a bullish period or a bearish period? What are your thoughts?

_{Tabish Bhimani (15:10.764)}
Yeah, so that's a lot to unpack. When volatility strikes, which is what we've been dealing with, you know, past COVID, during COVID in the beginning, but then also past COVID and then now with the tariffs. so that's one thing, but the other thing is, you've got this North American border, so you've got Canada and US, the economies are inextricably linked. And then so you're contending with that, but then you're also contending with...

^{Joe Fox (15:32.963)}
Mm, yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (15:38.794)}
importing into Canada, importing into the US, from third parties or third party regions, such as China, obviously, you're dealing with a lot of that. then so the customer has two things, right? Either the customer goes in hordes, especially with items that are very important, like, you know, daily sanitary items, if you remember toilet paper games, right?

^{Joe Fox (16:03.297)}
Yes. my goodness. Sorry on that note, have you heard, have you seen the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode of it? you've got to, I'll send you a clip from it after this. It's hilarious.

_{Tabish Bhimani (16:10.046)}
No, I haven't.

I love to see it, I mean, see how comedy is a reflection of reality, right? And that's fundamentally, I think what you're referring to, but people like bought like skids of Lysol wipes and toilet paper and eggs, eggs is a big issue right now in the US. what ends up happening psychologically? The customer wants to make sure that their money goes far and they don't get a bad deal.

They don't get a bad value. And if you've as a brand laid the groundwork for trust and credibility, you're not gonna have much of an issue having your customer continue buying from you or buy from you the first time. But if you're already doing that, then you need to lean into those values even more. And if you're not doing that, you're focused on transactional relationship, right? Then you need to start thinking about, how do I activate this customer?

How do I find the shared values that I have with them? How do I give them comfort that their money is well spent with us and that they've made the right decision?

^{Joe Fox (17:23.584)}
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (17:25.74)}
Buyers remorse is a real thing, but now it's hard to even get to that point, right? And I'm saying this obviously with the temperance that it's not like black and white, right? There's different industries, different issues. There's different spending capacities. Like Harvard has an article about the four or five different types of spenders. There's the pained but patient, and there's one that completely stops their spending. There are one that's never gonna change their spending. So you really gotta know your audience.

^{Joe Fox (17:51.084)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (17:55.522)}
when you're trying to talk to somebody, right? And then depending on where your audience falls, you need to cater your messaging over there. What's happening with the Shopify landscape? I think Shopify is just dominating, right? But people are...

^{Joe Fox (18:07.708)}
yeah, it's, it's, it's sorry to that point. Like every time I open up something on LinkedIn and obviously we scroll through everyone's AI fluff and AI posts. The main sort of posts that I'm digesting at the moment are just all about how much the Shopify ecosystem is crushing it at the moment. So I just want to add to that point. It's like the, the momentum.

_{Tabish Bhimani (18:21.068)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (18:31.661)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (18:37.184)}
that that company has is absolutely insane. Obviously there's all this stuff that they're looking at doing, you know, with open AI. Like it's just, it's, it's insane. Absolutely insane.

_{Tabish Bhimani (18:51.974)}
I think we should talk about AI and how that's going to impact all of our jobs and what way it'll impact our jobs. But you're absolutely right. Shopify is dominating. It's a commodity. And even with Girl.co, we use Shopify. And I've learned to use Shopify in ways that I never did before because it wasn't my primary offering. And now we're able to roll it into our offering and then create value add for our customers. So Shopify is a fantastic example of this.

^{Joe Fox (19:10.625)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (19:21.166)}
or what contemporary e-commerce looks like. But then there's another player, Klaviyo. Klaviyo has commoditized e-commerce email marketing, SMS marketing, pop-ups. So it's bringing consolidation into its product offering, but then it's also by definition of being commoditized, going to hit, I guess, a peak for a lack of a better word, where they're going to have to start diversifying outside of just the Shopify ecosystem.

^{Joe Fox (19:29.59)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (19:50.796)}
And then so you've got a lot of brick and mortar stores. You've got other wholesale businesses. Some are using shop site. might have, you some of your users might not even have heard of it. You've got big commerce. Obviously you've got Vigento. Then you've got stuff that's more obscure like Rix, R-I-C-S. And we're seeing a lot of prospects coming in saying we want to integrate Rix with Klaviyo. And then so we're, you know, we're doing the API development work, but

You've got these centers of influence in the e-commerce space and the SMB space and primarily revolve around Shopify and Klaviyo. And then, you know, they obviously branch out into different tech partnerships. So there is shift. Some people are tired of costs and when volatility hits and costs or product goes up, the first thing they do is cut costs everywhere else.

^{Joe Fox (20:24.705)}
I'm

^{Joe Fox (20:48.193)}
Yeah. Yeah. That's where we're absolutely, I guess, no, I wouldn't say dominating, but we're, you know, we're not Shopify dominating, but we're gathering so much momentum in this space because our, you know, we're Shopify and Shopify plus only where our biggest integration sort of crossover is with Klaviyo 70 % of our 15,000 customers at GrowWave.

_{Tabish Bhimani (20:48.876)}
because without product you can't run a business.

^{Joe Fox (21:16.146)}
are using Klaviyo. We're doubling down on the quality of all of the integrations with that. We're consolidating a whole bunch of things that used to sit separately into one. And we're doing it for an absolute fraction of the cost of our competitors. And in my opinion, our customer service is better. You can attest to that, think, from a partnership side of things. it's kind of, I think, you know, as much as I look at this,

_{Tabish Bhimani (21:37.154)}
Yeah, I can. I can.

^{Joe Fox (21:45.237)}
As much as I look at what's happening with the economy and all of those sorts of things on an individual basis, you and I can only do the things that we mentioned earlier, like what you're doing with Girl Dad, creating a very positive and good environment and good impact on your daughter for the future, right? I can only impact and have a good positive impact based upon my immediate surrounding circumstances.

_{Tabish Bhimani (22:13.55)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:13.822)}
So I think when people go too deep onto this economy stuff, it's like, okay, cool, but what are you actually going to do about it? But in the case of what we're doing on a business front, I think we actually, can, you know, positively say based upon these things, we're doing a grow wave. We actually really are trying to help merchants get rid of that overhead, cut down on that costs. This cool calculator thing that we've made recently.

_{Tabish Bhimani (22:32.056)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:39.786)}
You know, which was before the tap, like we have this plan before the tariffs. it's kind of like these things are all falling into place, but you know, we've specifically created those tools to help merchants in this time to help our agency partners in this time. As you know, it's kind of like, not only a merchants now, like how can I leverage my existing customer base to, as you mentioned earlier, like bank on that loyalty. It's kind of also like.

I also need to severely reduce my overheads, right? Like I need to turn off any advertising that was an experiment and isn't working. I need to reduce my tech blow. I need everything to be more streamlined. And so as much as I think, you know, sometimes that can seem like a really daunting task for a merchant looking at their business. also think it can be a time to say, Hey,

all those little changes and things that I know I've needed to be doing, but haven't done yet. I'm going to work with my agency partners to do that now, or I'm going to work with our internal team to do that now. And that's kind of, guess, my point to where I see the current Shopify landscape is like, you know, you mentioned Shopify POS there, there's some incredible things happening in that space with this.

_{Tabish Bhimani (23:45.838)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (24:02.336)}
unified commerce that Harley and everyone at Shopify keeps talking about. I think that is such an important area that everyone needs to get really focused on is there is this mass consolidation play and the powerhouses like Shopify and Klaviyo and you know, are doing that incredibly well. And I think the plugins to that, that are operating leanly and effectively

_{Tabish Bhimani (24:17.409)}
Yep.

_{Tabish Bhimani (24:22.755)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (24:31.697)}
not bloated by VC, not charging a fortune to customers are going to be the ones that win in that space. Sorry for the rant, but I just think it's like, I'm hearing so much negativity around this and instead of using it as an opportunity to springboard it to positive change.

_{Tabish Bhimani (24:47.886)}
I think the key word here is consolidation. consolidation can be a double-edged sword, but there's different perspectives, right? So why do we work with GrowWave? Because we can manage everything, the whole suite, all in one login account. It reduces the amount of time we spend doing something for a client. And when a company like GrowWave

^{Joe Fox (25:14.303)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (25:16.762)}
you guys do a lot of product development, a lot of listening to your agency partners and iterating on the product, it helps us do a better job as agencies and then provide better value to the client. And the client says, this guy has influence and this will set apart a mediocre agency or a me too agency from a really solid agency like ours is that we have influence on the product that we use. And so our scope of influence,

goes beyond just using product and being proficient with that product. But proficiency is key. And the way you get to proficiency is reduce all the bloatware. You don't wanna be able to do 10,000 things. You wanna be able to do a few things really well, but also so well that it is entire ecosystem that's holistically contained, right? There was a time, and I won't name any names, but we were using a pop-up company, an app, which is fantastic.

We became really good at it. It became part of our proficiency, it became part of our tech stack, and we were doing a really good job. And then we had to switch to another pop-up because we thought that they're doing better product development. A few weeks later, they sold to another company and we could no longer use that product. And it was a big company, right? That makes us look silly in front of our clients because our clients look to us to be the voice of reason, to have our ears on the ground and be able to have a vision of where this is all headed.

^{Joe Fox (26:27.43)}
Mmm.

I know.

^{Joe Fox (26:38.098)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (26:42.54)}
So it's important for us to A, use, have partnerships that are meaningful, that we believe are not in it for like pump and dump or like to sell. And then you mentioned the VC stuff and being bloated by all of it. So we want as an agency to do a really good job in a very good amount of time. So time compression is really important to us because our margins are thin, contrary to what people believe. Like we're not.

^{Joe Fox (26:51.858)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (27:09.678)}
where you don't have 55, 65 % margins, right? And especially if we need to be agile, we need to do last minute stuff or additional stuff, those margins really eats into it. So we need to be agile. That means we need consolidation and also need influence on the product. And we need partners like you that listen. I've been around in this ecosystem for a lot longer than a lot of agencies. And I've seen the cycle of un-unified tech stack,

^{Joe Fox (27:12.54)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (27:38.928)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (27:39.072)}
So you've got an app for pop-up, you've got an app for reviews, you have an app for loyalty, you've got an app for email, you've got an app for SMS. This all gets consolidated slowly, know, modern age technological convergence happened with lead pages, lead pages and center, all of that kind of consolidated. And the problem ended up happening was that they couldn't support that product that they had created. And the tech integration started falling by the wayside. So all of that split back out, right? Then you had separate...

^{Joe Fox (27:54.321)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (28:08.046)}
products again. And all of that kind of also coincides with the tail end of the recession and this extended period of low spending that we had. And now we're coming back into technological convergence and everything kind of consolidating. But this time, it's a little different. It's not just an economical thing. It's also a customer experience thing, right? If you have all of your customer data points in one place, you can make better

^{Joe Fox (28:27.771)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (28:35.372)}
decisions about that customer and provide better service to that customer and reduce the amount of time you spend doing all of that. So that's why sweets like Grow Wave come into play, sweets like Klaviyo come into play, Shopify's ecosystem comes into play. I think that that consolidation now is happening for multiple reasons, but the primary reasons are sustainable. Both sustainable for agencies, sustainable for brands because they're not spending

^{Joe Fox (28:50.372)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (28:58.831)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (29:03.7)}
a lot of money for each of these technologies. Able to service the customer, so less money spent on customer service and where are my support tickets, where's my order tickets, all of that stuff really leads to solid customer experience. And you could just start bare bones. Solid customer experience is best business.

^{Joe Fox (29:05.969)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (29:20.209)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there's some incredible insights there. I don't really have too much to add to that because that was a very, very, very, very good way of summing everything up that's happening in the market. It's very interesting. And, you know, we're good friends, so we are lucky enough to talk about this a lot and we'll certainly be doing more of this. But I guess because we are kind of getting near time, you and I could chat forever, as I just said.

_{Tabish Bhimani (29:43.948)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (29:47.042)}
I kind of just there's there's two things that I kind of want to do. Before we jump into the last question. One is, you know, with all your knowledge from Girl Dad, from all of your knowledge in this space at MassDraft working across so many different verticals and so many cool up and coming brands globally. Is there anything

know, there's going to be a lot of you've given, I think a lot of good advice here to agencies into merchants. But is there anything you want to offer your ICP merchants who are who you know, watching this today?

_{Tabish Bhimani (30:26.382)}
Yeah, absolutely. So the last year and a half, especially, I've looked at a lot of accounts that fall within our ICP. Our ICP is any brand that does a $300,000 MRR to a million dollars MRR. We don't do anything below that just because there's just no value we can provide for the cost of our service and then the breadth of our service. So for that ICP, what I've noticed is every time we've audited an account,

You think they're a big account and they're spending all this money and they have all these resources and you go look at their email and SMS set up and their messaging and it's so rudimentary. And you don't know what you don't know. As a brand, it's really hard for you to know what you don't know, but as an agency, we see the whole horizon, right? We see the breadth of it all. We see really good setups.

^{Joe Fox (31:07.075)}
Mmm. Mmm.

^{Joe Fox (31:12.26)}
Yes.

_{Tabish Bhimani (31:23.938)}
really bad setups and because we work in that gamut, we're able to quickly and effectively identify lifecycle gaps and present that to the client and say, hey, here's gaps you can fill out either yourself or we can fill them for you. And it typically starts with a detailed audit of the customer lifecycle, but also the tech stack.

Typically we charge to $3,000 for this audit depends on how big the account is, if it's multiple regions, if it's multiple Cladio accounts, for example, but on average this falls at an $1,800 mark. And I'm more than happy to offer to your podcast listeners, Joe, Grow Waste Podcast listeners for 20 % off right out the gate, no questions. And the way we do this is we do a detailed analysis. We provide all of our recommendations. We don't hold anything back, okay?

^{Joe Fox (32:20.078)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Tabish Bhimani (32:20.706)}
this goes from the top to the very granular. Everything from like sending in domain reputation all the way to like flow filters and messaging. And you could go ahead and implement this yourself. Like if you're a brand in, you know, what $1,800 or whatever, you've just basically created 10, 15 % of more revenue in perpetuity. Or we can implement it for you. But fundamentally that $1,800 audit, we're happy to do 20 % off for any of your customers, Joe.

^{Joe Fox (32:44.738)}
Ahem.

^{Joe Fox (32:49.787)}
That's awesome. Thank you so much. That's incredibly kind of you. I think, you know, I having had the pleasure of, you know, being your friend and us partnering between grow wave and Maastricht. I kind of mentioned earlier on the pod is like that attention to detail is like so spot on and you know, you're 100 % right. If a merchant did want to implement that themselves and just check where they're at, that is an incredibly good value offer of being able to have.

a really good place to check exactly where you're at and if it's working effectively. So thank you for that Tavish. Last of all, I'd like to ask everyone this. I've had some very quirky answers over the episode so far. think I know what yours is gonna be, but just lastly, you spoke about travel and all the travel you've done over the years.

_{Tabish Bhimani (33:35.084)}
I'm scared now. Will he putting me on the spot?

^{Joe Fox (33:49.112)}
I know you do a little less now, but you still travel quite a bit, I would say, compared to a lot of people. What is one thing when you're traveling, when you're at home, when you're anywhere, what's the one thing you can't live without? And you can't say people, it's gotta be, it's gotta be an object.

_{Tabish Bhimani (34:08.334)}
Man, people is, I've realized I can live without people for the most part. And that's a very sad thing to say, but I was working from home before working from home was cool. I've been doing this for 10 years in my office or in my den. I'll tell you recently what I really, really enjoying is, is a coffee sitting in one of my rooms where there's sunlight coming directly in there.

^{Joe Fox (34:13.67)}
You

^{Joe Fox (34:19.097)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (34:31.896)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Tabish Bhimani (34:36.994)}
and reading Stanley Tucci's book, I Ate in One Year. It's a very light, very light read, very gustatory experience inside your head. It doesn't take a lot of energy. And I think the biggest thing for us agency people is our brains run at a thousand miles an hour and we need to slow it down. And that's what slows me down because if you have space in your mind, you can think creatively and think.

^{Joe Fox (34:41.111)}
Nice. Nice.

_{Tabish Bhimani (35:05.823)}
as a visionary as opposed to just as a tactician constantly trying to solve problems. So yeah.

^{Joe Fox (35:11.085)}
Be more proactive than reactive when you're in that head space. Absolutely. I hear you on that. It's interesting, the reading thing comes up so much, but in different kind of like ways and segments. And I say this all the time, but I am a very, very, very big believer in the fact that readers are leaders and leaders are readers. yeah, a hundred percent.

_{Tabish Bhimani (35:24.355)}
Yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (35:35.98)}
Yeah. I love podcasts. love reading industry related material, that doesn't decompress me. That runs my brain. So that and a little bit of coffee, sunlight, and a good book, it works universally, I think.

^{Joe Fox (35:46.389)}
No, absolutely, absolutely. Need that time.

^{Joe Fox (35:56.159)}
Absolutely, the simple things, 100%. Awesome, well, thank you so much, Tavish. Best place for people to connect with you, is that you want people to reach out on LinkedIn? We'll include the link, yeah.

_{Tabish Bhimani (36:06.514)}
Yeah, LinkedIn is easy. I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. I don't like Twitter because of the DTC bros. I called it out. It becomes an echo chamber. But yeah, LinkedIn is a great place that I've met a lot of people and I'm more than happy to meet people continuously. So yeah, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Let's have conversations.

^{Joe Fox (36:25.537)}
Absolutely. And we'll make sure that the links are in the show notes. Tarbish, as always, my friend, so great catching up. Thank you so much for the insights you shared with the audience. We really, really appreciate it here at Grow Wave. So yeah, thank you so much for being one of our early guests first and certainly not last time that you'll be on this, my friend. So thank you so much.

_{Tabish Bhimani (36:48.664)}
Thanks for having me. have lots to talk about, so I'm sure we'll be reconnecting again soon.

^{Joe Fox (36:52.745)}
Absolutely. Thank you so much, mate. I'll chat to you shortly. Thank you.

_{Tabish Bhimani (36:55.96)}
Cheers. Bye.