How I Became a Consultant

I've been getting asked more often lately by clients and friends about how I got started in the ecommerce / digital marketing world.

"Is THIS what you planned all along?" (Embarking on a career as a full-time consultant).

The short answer: there isn't one. It's both a yes and a no.

In the back of my mind I always wanted to be my own boss, but that didn't just become a thing overnight. It's something that unfolded after taking advantage of opportunity after opportunity--one at a time.

My first ecommerce experience was starting my own business, Brooktide Sunglasses, a brand which I was fortunate to sell 2 years ago. At the time in 2013, it was store # ~41,000 or so on Shopify. The platform had been around for a few years so I can't exactly say I was an early adopter, but it was before Shopify's rapid growth and innovation phase. Today there are well over 1 million merchants.

Starting Brooktide was the first "domino." From there I started to build a portfolio of clients--first friends that needed help starting a website, then companies that I connected with in my earlier days as in Shopify Partners and as a Shopify Expert and then (skipping a few steps here) to now where I am now a Shopify Plus Consulting Partner.

At the same time, I spent 5.5 years at Steiner Sports, where I first honed in on crafting a marketing strategy in the context of social media. What was a 50,000 cumulative following across all brand properties when I started rapidly grew to over 2.5 million after my first few years and my role expanded into overseeing email marketing, paid advertising and eventually all ecommerce operations, including a replatforming to Shopify Plus.

I use the word fortunate a lot because that's what I am--truly fortunate that I have had the opportunities to work with some amazing clients that I am proud of--Mariano Rivera, Bleacher Report, Art of Play, Marchesa, the Dan Patrick Show and so many others. But, back to the idea of opportunity--I wouldn't be doing the things I am today without the experience of what I did yesterday and the day before that, and so on...

Here are some numbers. This is not meant to be a "wow, look what I did" thing, but rather, the point I am trying to make--just as I mentioned before--is that nothing just happens overnight:

• While at Steiner Sports, I authored over 30,000 tweets, 8,000 Instagram posts and 6,000 Facebook posts. I also recorded over 1,000 hours of live video and over 150 podcasts and other content.
• I have worked with over 175 Shopify-based business across a number of areas--optimizing websites, running email marketing, enhancing SEO, placing advertising and advising on social content strategy.
• As part of Shopify's Experts program, I have responded to over 1,000 inquiries from merchants in Experts Marketplace.
• I have spent (an estimated) 750 hours just in the last 3 years talking with potential clients on the phone.

So, when the time came last year when Fanatics bought Steiner Sports, I had to make a decision. Was I going to look for a different job, or was I going to dive completely into the one I already had? I chose the latter, never looked back and have never been happier.