Hello! I’m Clifford, Product Manager at Coplex
I enjoy solving problems, learning, and helping others. Over the years, I’ve had a passion for building a number of “hobby” startups, which took me on a path that led to the Startup Studio, Coplex. Now, I’m a Product Manager doing what I love most: working with startups to dissect and solve problems in all sorts of industries.
Where It All Began
I’ve always had a knack for finding solutions when it comes to business. It all started in 2002 when I started as employee #133 at GoDaddy.com. I started at the bottom in customer service and as the company grew in headcount I moved up the ranks due to seniority. I was sales oriented and good at solving customer problems so the Director of Customer Service promoted me to manage my own team within 3 months. 3 months after that, GoDaddy needed to start a Customer Retention department, and they asked me to head it up.
Innovation at GoDaddy
My Customer Retention team did really well selling domains, but GoDaddy could only bill once a year for a domain name, as opposed to twelve times a year for hosting. The money was clearly in hosting, so I started searching our customer hosting database for accounts related to businesses. With these lists, I had my team reach out and sell annual hosting packages (or a decade of hosting if they could) to ensure a customer’s site wouldn’t go down due to a billing error. Generating these lists resulted in hundreds of years of hosting and domains sold per day. They made my small team incredible profit for GoDaddy. That was a lot of fun.
Since I was handy with formulating revenue generation tactics, I moved over to the Billing Department. As the Billing Manager, I turned it into a profit center by training billing reps to convert refund requests into larger sales. I headed up a few more departments at GoDaddy before managing the WebSite Tonight product and other web-building applications at the company in 2005. It was an amazing experience where we helped countless customers be a part of the creation side of the Internet instead of just looking at it as an Internet surfer.
Trying on the Customer’s Shoes
In 2006, I wanted to more thoroughly understand our customer’s struggle of building an eCommerce site, so I built one. Within 3 months, it was earning me more money than my GoDaddy job. (Didn’t see that one coming!)
Having two incomes was nice, but I was at a crossroads 7 months later. GoDaddy asked that I work on building a system to automatically create site content for new hosting customers and thereby decrease cancellations. I could either solve more problems for GoDaddy or solve my own problems in growing my own business so I made the decision to leave GoDaddy and begin my adventure as an entrepreneur.
Livin’ the Entrepreneur Life
Shortly after leaving GoDaddy I created clearbrafilms.com, a directory that later morphed into a lead generation tool for installers of clear paint protection film on cars. I originally wanted to create an eCommerce site for my friend who was an installer but he changed his business so I gathered the contact information for several hundred similar businesses across the country and put them all on a map. I’ll share more about this lead generation business in another post.
In 2008, a local Chinese leader thought I would be a good candidate to visit government officials in China. They thought so too, so the Chinese government invited me to tour their Olympic venues, the Great Wall, visit growing cities, meet other overseas-born Chinese involved in business, and meet government officials to hear their long-term plans for economic growth. With the US economy doing poorly, having seen the economic growth in China, and keen on finding products to market online, I vowed to spend more than half of 2010 in Hong Kong and China.
The Next Bright Idea
In 2009, I needed to prepare my eCommerce business to function without me. I changed the product line of my eCommerce site to focus on industrial products and slimmed down the number of SKUs from 65 to 10. Since my product line was much simpler, I was able to outsource answering the phones to a company on the East coast (they’re the first ones in the US to wake up) and moved the inventory from my garage to a 3rd party fulfillment company.
Cool side story: When photographing products for an eCommerce site, it’s important to take photos that exemplify the best aspects of the product and it’s ability to do whatever it does. If it’s a toothbrush, you show how great it can be at removing the not-so-yummy stuff from teeth. If it’s a light, you show how great it is at lighting things up in the dark. My site sold lighting and my lightbulb moment (hehe — pun intended) was when I found an unlocked John Deere Grader. Opportunities like that don’t come around often, so you have to pounce on them when they do! I used it to take example photos of how bright my lights were compared to the factory lights.
Five Years in China & Invaluable Experiences
The view from my 28th story studio in Guangzhou, China.
Once I removed myself from my day-to-day duties with the eCommerce business, I started 2010 experimenting as an absentee business owner by traveling to Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and Florida. When I was convinced the business could function without me, I booked a ticket and secured an apartment in Guangzhou, China.
I enjoy bringing people together and thought there might be other expats in Guangzhou so I created a MeetUp group for other Expats in Guangzhou that now has over 1,200 members.
Between 2010 and 2015, I spent the majority of my time in China and Hong Kong attending trade shows for all kinds of industries to find more products to market online at the Canton Fair in the Pazhou complex. I met factory reps, visited factories, tested product samples, and learned the wholesale cost of glasses, luggage, clothing, tea, commercial grade printers the size of Honda Accords, and other products.
Startups on Startup on Startups
In 2011, while still in Hong Kong, I started monetizing clearbrafilms.com. I created a directory but I wanted to really see if site visitors were using it to find service providers so I put an online form on every page to collect job requests and in the first weekend I had 100+ e-mails. Signing up shops to receive these inquiries as soon as they came in was easy when I was able to show them $1,000-$2,000 worth of business coming their way each month.
In 2012, I launched company-histories.com, a great resource for learning how big companies got started. This is also when I co-created Feltistry which sold thousands of pouches to hotels around the US. Later that year, I was also written up on Vice.com, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, CNET, and other sites for a half-ton wine rack in the shape of a transformer that I brought home from a trip to China in 2009. That was neat. And random, I know.
In 2013 while in Hong Kong, I wanted to get more familiar with the coding side of a startup, so I took General Assemb.ly’s Back-End Web Development course based on Ruby on Rails. That coding course introduced me to the startup community in Hong Kong, where I product managed an iOS app that used bluetooth beacons to trigger reminders based on a User’s proximity to certain areas. In the US, you rarely get a chance to meet the manufacturer for a tech product but since most are made in China I was fortunate enough to meet the founder of RedBear.net, a manufacturer of BLE (bluetooth low-energy) Bluetooth Beacons.
In 2015 I returned to the US and joined Coplex, a company that helps entrepreneurs build businesses with a methodical approach of experimenting their way to product-market fit. The Coplex team is made up of fellow entrepreneurs, designers, and developers who have had their own adventures in building businesses.
Overall, I enjoy making stuff and learning from experiences so I can bring more to the table wherever I go. Whether it be an online business, a brand, or tinkering with new products, my internal compass always guides me to learning new things and sharing that with others. In fact, all of us at Coplex enjoy learning new things and sharing with others so feel free to reach out with any questions.
