DTC POD: 8 Simple Frameworks to Grow a Massively Profitable Consumer Brand with Sabir Semerkant

 In this episode of DTC Pod, we’re joined by Sabir Semerkant, from GROWTH by SABIR and creator of the Eight Dimensions Framework.

He has worked with people like Gary Vee, Shark Tank Entrepreneur and he even helped Amazon grow into the e-commerce behemoth they are today..

Join us as we talk about how he prioritizes quick problem-solving, the biggest mistake new businesses make, and the eight dimensions’ core principles.

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3 Big Lessons from Sabir

Lesson #1: Prioritizing in Problem-Solving

The analogy used by Sabir is a sick body. When you have a cold, for example, your body will have a fever, a stuffed nose, etc; but it won’t have a stomachache.

In the same vein, although your business can be perfectly fine in the marketing department, logistics might be having some issues.

So how do you decide which programs to tackle first? Measurement.

Measurement is the diagnostic in this analogy. Every test, every conversion, every change gets measured. And not just by something like Google Analytics, you need to diagnose every aspect to see which one has the capacity or capability it needs.

From there you can decide to work on the problems that need to be worked on. Not with a long and tedious 3-month plan; with a very quick “few day program” that will help get things moving in the right direction again before moving onto the next issue.

Sabir mentions that in 2024 it’s very easy to do things at the speed of light, and you should take advantage of that. And realize early what’s important to do in-house, versus what can be out-sourced and managed.

Lesson #2: The biggest mistake most new businesses make.

After spending time diagnosing the innumerable amount of businesses that Sabir has been able to look at he’s noticed three big mistakes most businesses make.

But the biggest one by far is an overreliance on ad spend. And he blames this on the “gurus” that are selling courses.

Essentially, you’ll set up an online store with something like Shopify or even an Amazon listing, and then you’ll go into what he calls “the Meta Ad slot machine,” where you’ll end up becoming addicted to buying ads and buying transactions.

That last one is important, you’re not building a business, you’re simply buying transactions.

There’s an argument to be made for when you’re just getting an adoption cycle going. But if you’re still doing the same thing years later, it’s simply an “addiction” and no longer the launch or pilot program you once thought it was.

This means your organic channels, like email or SMS capture, end up falling by the wayside. And if something like the IOS 14 update happens again, your business collapses because you didn’t build a brand or develop channels other than Meta or Google Ads.

If you want to hear the other two mistakes, you’re going to have to take a look at the podcast 😉.

Lesson #3: The core principles of the 8D growth method.

The 8D method was developed by Samir as a way to grow faster and more effectively. And they can be described as:

1. Marketing: And not the paid kind, the organic one. A good idea of this is “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook,” by Gary Vee. You create free content about your product that can help with engagement. Whether it’s talking to clients, behind the scenes of building your product, or anything else that could be free.

2. Performance Optimization: People come to your site and expect to be able to make decisions in ~2 seconds or less. So you need to make sure that your site loads at least that fast. The #1 thing you can do to help this is compressing your images with something like tinyjpg.com, and making your images PNGs.

3. Product Positioning: Nowadays, consumers care about who you are and what your company believes in almost as much (if not more than) your product. Whether you’re sustainable, locally sourced, or another myriad of things, consumers care about these.

4. Customer-centric UX: Your customer is your universe, without them you have no business to begin with. So you should always ask yourself, how could we help them? Do they have enough information? Do they know everything the product can do other than its “basic use case?” 

5. Pricing: If you’ve invested in the four previous dimensions, you can charge more than your competition instead of participating in the race to the bottom; and still have a thriving business to work with. But if you haven’t worked on these, you’ll be burning money.

6. Platform: Speaking of burning money, the platform you’ve built your site on needs to be fast. You need a system that will allow you to make changes throughout the day, not weeks.

7. Logistics: This has to do with your suppliers, order fulfillment partners, your shipping couriers, even customer service. This is probably one of the most important parts, because it’s the part that mainly happens after people give you their money. Which means they expect speed and high-quality service more than ever.

8. The Team: The last, and possibly most important, dimension is your team. The team that worked with you in the beginning, sadly, doesn't mean they’re the right answer at this growth level. You have to think about, do you have the right team? And are they the right people handling these things for you? And if not, it can turn into a deep and tough conversation, but one that needs to be had.

This is a quick summary of what Sabir explained as the Eight Dimensions and I highly recommend you tune into the episode to hear the rest.

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That wraps up this week’s newsletter!

As always, reply any time with thoughts, questions, reactions, or ideas for future issues. And don’t forget to follow us on Linkedin to unlock new episodes of DTC Pod each week!