“E-Commerce Designed Specifically For Marketers” with Greg Silvano of Buyist

Nathan (0s):
Welcome back Radio Entrepreneurs, listeners, and fans. I’m producer Nathan Gobes excited to be back with another guest as well as a cohost that you may have seen before. Craig James of Vistage welcome, Craig.

Craig (14s):
I used to be here again, Nathan.

Nathan (16s):
Thanks. Always great to see you at my side. And you’ve brought a wonderful guest with you. We have Greg Silvano of CEO of Buyist welcome, Greg.

Greg (28s):
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Nathan (31s):
Thanks for joining us. Why don’t you start by giving us a little overview of Buyist and that’s B U Y I S T for all of our listeners and viewers that may not be aware.

Greg (42s):
Sure. Simplest way to describe it as we are an e-commerce platform. So the clients have bias to use our platform to build out websites so they can sell their products.

Nathan (52s):
Great. What kind of clients are you usually working with, or maybe what some of the clients you’ve worked with in the past?

Greg (59s):
That’s actually, our biggest differentiator is as a platform itself, you know, e-commerce is largely e-commerce right? And it’s it’s building sites and buying things. The, the focus of our platform is actually it’s because of the audience, the people that, that use it is marketers. So w we’re heavily focused on, right? We, we care mostly about marketers, people who are paying for media and they’re driving people to a website, they need that traffic to convert. So the, the people who use us are ones, you know, actually TV campaigns are pretty big, were actually used by four out of the I’m sorry, five out of the top six now, five out of the top six direct response product advertisers on TB. So people who are paying for ads, whether that’s on TV or radio or Facebook or YouTube or Google, they’re paying for ads, they driving people to a site.

Greg (1m 44s):
They need that traffic to convert. A lot of times that’s being run on our platform.

Nathan (1m 49s):
Makes sense. And maybe tell us a little bit about how users can interact with the platform. I think I understand that it’s, it’s fairly easy to use. Is that correct?

Greg (2m 0s):
It is. And actually, that’s, that’s all still part of what we focus on, right? So typically you think about e-commerce, it’s a very technical thing. You’re dealing with credit card processing and dealing with, you know, credit card compliance you’re dealing with with browsers and mobile devices and servers and things like that. So usually an e-commerce platform is, is heavily focused on the technical side of things. It’s focused on developers, right? It’s to focus on the people who are building the websites and they know HTML code, maybe they’re server network type people, but certainly technical, right? That’s a pretty much any e-commerce platform is gonna be, you know, their focuses on technical people. If it’s not technical, a lot of times are going to be focused on the creative people, right? It’s the people who are doing the graphic design and they’re, they’re making the site look beautiful with us.

Greg (2m 43s):
It’s right back to marketers, right? I’m, I’ll be a broken record on this. Where for us, the leader of the band, right? The person who is, should be front and center should never be the developers. And I say this as a developer myself, you know, if you’re looking to do things on the site, you can’t rely on developers execute every whim that you’re coming up with, right? So you can’t, you can’t have this be a developer focused environment. You can’t have it be a creative focused environment, right? It’s not always about the most beautiful thing out there. It’s not always about the shiny object. It’s about whether or not the product sells. And that comes down into the hands of the marketers, right? They are the ones that care about things like our conversion rate and the average order value.

Greg (3m 24s):
And what’s the, what’s the story of the website and why, what are the unique selling points and things like that. So the people who are using our platform, they’re, they’re using it because they’re marketers and they are there. They have the ability on Buyist to do the things they need to do without having to rely on the developers without having to rely on a graphic designer for everything that needs to be done. So, you know, it’s a similar stuff as everything else, right. In terms of e-commerce and that side of things. But it’s just, if you kind of twist it a little bit and say, all right, put the marketer in charge and let the market, or do all the things that the marketer wants to do themselves. Right? So an analogy I give I’ll, I’ll wrap this up quick.

Greg (4m 4s):
I promise analogy. I always give us, do you check emails on your phone? Of course, everybody says, yes. I say, why don’t you check it on your phone? They say, I want to stay in touch. I want to be in contact with people. And that’s actually not the answer. Why you check emails on your phone all the time. If it took you two minutes to check your email on your phone, every time you checked it, you would not do it very often, right? You do it because it’s so easy to do, right? You swipe a button and you’re looking at your emails and it’s right there. So for us, we built a platform where marketers can do everything they want to do easily. You want to run an AB test, take 60 seconds or less. You want to change your checkout funnel and move around. Some things, maybe if you move, rush processing over to the beginning, somebody will more likely to take it, take you 30 seconds.

Greg (4m 46s):
So the idea that a marketer can go in and do all these things that they’ve been dying to do very easily without technical expertise, without asking for developers to do all of it, it just means he going to do it more often. And if you’re doing it more often, you’re going to have better results on your site.

Nathan (5m 2s):
That’s good. That makes sense. You know, I think usually there’s this almost wall between marketers and, and the websites that they, you know, they have several, maybe even several different groups of people they have to go to in order to make any changes, to do anything, to get anything done between them,

Greg (5m 21s):
The website and the, what I explained to people is it’s you can’t have developers running the show, just like you can’t have your lawyers running the show, right. It needs to be vetted by them. They need to make sure that it checks all their boxes and that’s fine. Right? Developers have a say, they have a seat at the table. There’s no question. Just like lawyers have a seat at the table. You can’t make claims that are illegal. You can’t have copyright infringement. You can’t use images that are not yours to use. Right? I mean, there are plenty of things that you need lawyers involved in. And there are plenty of things that you need. The developers involved in the problem for most marketers is that the developers are running the show. If you want something done and it is not on their roadmap and they have other priorities.

Greg (6m 2s):
And they’re just trying to keep the lights on or all these different things. And you just want to run this stupid little AB test in their eyes. It’s not going to be a priority. And you know those at the end of the day, this is why I love our message, right? At the end of the day, if the marketers can’t do what they’re supposed to do, everybody’s out of a job. The site has to sell the product has to sell, or there are no developers and no graphic designers. So, you know, to, to empower them, to do the things they need to do, is it helps everybody.

Nathan (6m 32s):
Yeah. Marketers often when it comes to the website, ended up in a bit of an armchair general sort of position where they’re thinking of what they want to do. And then they hand it off to the people that actually get it done. But

Greg (6m 43s):
Exactly what it sounds like with your platform.

Nathan (6m 45s):
They, they get right at the front,

Greg (6m 47s):
Right? They are, they are in 100% control. And it’s funny because as we’ll do demos and show people, we have to be careful with our messaging. If it’s a room full of developers, you know, you can’t sit here and say, oh, you know, developers are marginalized here, but in reality, they are largely marginalized. So it’s, it’s, it’s a different way of doing it. There’s no doubt.

Nathan (7m 6s):
Yeah. Great. Well, and I understand that you guys have been undergoing some transformation recently. So I wanted to maybe ask if you, if you had any, wanted to comment on that and then I’ll kick it over to Craig after that.

Greg (7m 19s):
Sure. We’re actually going through a lot. So we’re in this direct response industry that we’ve been in. So direct response to types of advertising. It could be brand advertising where you’re thinking of Clydesdale galloping through the fields, and you might buy about Budweiser, you know, six months later or direct response. And a great example is Geico actually, you know, 15 call now 15 minutes may save you 15% or more. It’s a call to action at the end of it. So infomercials are a great example of a direct response campaign. They want you to go buy the product right now. So we are very big in that direct response industry, as I said earlier, and where we’re moving beyond that. Right. So it’s not, we’re not getting out of it because I D I think what they do is so awesome, right?

Greg (7m 59s):
Just the, their ability to do marketing and to compel people, to get out of their seat and actually go buy a product at that moment is just brilliant, brilliant marketing. And they’re so metric driven. They’re so focused on the things that matter if you’re, if you’re a marketer. And certainly if you’re an e-commerce that where the goal is to take all these lessons that we’ve learned over the years and be doing this for 10 years, I mean, a billion dollars in e-commerce sales, just through that, to take those kinds of lessons that we’ve learned by watching these guys do what they do and apply them outside of the direct respond TV, direct response industry. So we’re growing as a company to take this, this metric first, very mobile first e-commerce message in a way of doing marketing and how to get these things to really sell and work and make it more of a mass consumer type product.

Greg (8m 45s):
Right. So that I genuinely believe anybody can, should be doing marketing the way these guys do marketing. So we’re rebuilding rebranding as a company, and that’s the Buyist name. And we’re also just expanding just the, the offering of the platform to support the more general use cases. Right.

Nathan (9m 4s):
Craig. Do you have any questions?

Craig (9m 7s):
Yeah, just a couple for Greg. So Greg you’ve clearly been successful as an entrepreneur starting Buyist and even in your previous venture, but success often comes at a price. What’s the biggest sacrifice you’ve had to make to achieve the success you have?

Greg (9m 26s):
Ooh, that’s a deep philosophical question. I mean, at the end of the day, I say this off, I actually said it this morning. I have first world problems. Right. So, you know, my problems I’ve always had a roof over my head. I’ve never had to choose between gas in the car or food on the plate. Right. I mean, every problem I have is a, is a first-world problem. The, the main thing, I think anybody sacrifices as an entrepreneur is time, right? There’s only so many hours in a day and it’s going to come away, come be taken away from your time with your family time with your friends and most easily the time from yourself. And that’s, that’s one of the biggest problems that I’ve had is that it’s, you know, it’s, it’s always been business business business, and then I’m a father, and then I’m a husband.

Greg (10m 10s):
And at the end of it is me and the, you know, whether it’s you taken away from your sleep or, or, you know, just being able to go to the gym and take care of yourself. No question. It would be the only thing I would say I’ve sacrificed his time.

Craig (10m 25s):
Hmm. And what is it that led you to, or motivated you to join a vestige group Greg?

Greg (10m 32s):
Actually, a lot of what I just said. So I’m, I genuinely believe you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Right? So there’s no question it’s, you know, you, you spend your time with excellent people and you become a more excellent person, you know, certainly because of COVID. And honestly, even before that, I, you know, I spend my time with my kids and with a couple dogs and my wife, and it’s like, you know, it’s like you don’t, I don’t rub elbows with, with CEOs. So as we’re growing as a company and we’re pivoting considerably as a company, I mean, we’re, we’ve already doubled our staff and we will continue doubling the staff over and over and over. So we’re, we’re going for a big leagues and I need, I need help.

Greg (11m 14s):
Right. I don’t, I’m not, I’m not a Wharton grad, you know, I’m not a guy that’s gone through a lot of education for, for running a business and you feel like you’re winging it. And it’s, you know, I think, I think I’ve done a good job, but I don’t know what I don’t know. And I, you know, the belief is, is that if I, if I spend time with other CEOs that, you know, you become a better CEO from it, it also back to the time thing, it gives me time to focus on being a CEO, which you just don’t do naturally. Right. You’re putting out fires, you’re in the weeds, you’re dealing with things. And, and what I, what I say, if Buyist goes, I own it for my company, right. So nobody’s, I get challenged. That’s cool. And I, and I seek out opinions, but at the end of the day, nobody’s really going to challenge me.

Greg (11m 58s):
Right. It’s just not going to happen. So to be in an environment where, where I get that, as soon as I believed it to be valuable before I came in, I was like, that’s why I want to do it.

Nathan (12m 8s):
And I’ve heard it said that there’s a major difference between working on your company and working in your company. And I think, you know, joining a Vistage group is a great way to get perspective on those kinds of things. Totally great. Great. Anything else? Great.

Craig (12m 23s):
No, I think that’s it.

Nathan (12m 25s):
Well, Greg, we really appreciated having you on the show, hearing more about Buyist. We’d love to have you return in the future. Talk to us about developments or if anything, new rolls out. But in the meantime, if listeners or viewers want to get in touch with you, or more importantly, maybe learn how they can utilize your platform, what’s the best way for them to do so.

Greg (12m 45s):
Buyist dot com B U Y I S t.com.

Nathan (12m 49s):
Great. And Craig, if any of our listeners or viewers are interested in Vistige, maybe you want to join a group, just get your opinion on things. How can they reach you?

Craig (12m 59s):
Yeah, I’m a very simple person. Name dot last name, Craig James at Vistage chair. So it’s a Vistage chair, not Vistage, but Vistage chair.com.

Nathan (13m 10s):
Great. Well, thank you both for joining. This was a Greg Silvano CEO of Buyist and Craig, James of Vistige really appreciate you both being on the show and joining Radio Entrepreneurs.

Greg (13m 24s):
Appreciate it.

Nathan (13m 24s):
Thanks where you can find more segments on Radio Entrepreneurs dot com as well as Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, LinkedIn. We’re on so many platforms. If you take a look, I’m sure we’re there. Be sure to follow us and subscribe so you can see more content after this. We’ll be back with more on Radio Entrepreneurs.