How to build a billion-dollar digital business – from scratch.

It’s not every day you get to sit with one of Australia’s most successful digital entrepreneurs and pick their brain as to how and why they’ve been so successful.  And when I say ‘successful’, I mean exiting-their-business-for-a-billion-dollars successful.  

I had the good fortune to be chosen by Gabby and Hezi Leibovich to be the ghost writer for their new business book. It’s called Catch of the Decade. It was released on November 5 and within 3 days of release, has rocketed to #1 on the Booktopia Bestseller list for business.  

Like to find out more about how Gabby Leibovich built, launched and sold iconic brands such as Catch of the Day, Scoopon and Menulog?

Read on.

What was one of the biggest challenges you faced when building Catch of the Day?

Getting the big, prestigious brands to sell to us.  Believe it or not, they’d say, ‘We can’t sell to you because you don’t have a bricks and mortar presence.’ In other words, we didn’t have a door!  Can you believe how stupid that was! The reality was, they just didn’t understand what online business was. Very few did when we started. We were ahead of the curve.

Was there a moment in your business journey when everything changed?

Yes, it was when the computer industry saw sense and decided that they would let us sell their products on our Catch of the Day website.

What did you do to convince them?

There was a big supplier expo event being held by Ingram Micro, a powerful industry distributor. We weren’t invited but I decided to go anyway. I brought with me a hundred A4 fliers about Catch of the Day to hand out to everyone.  I wore my suit (I never wear suits, but I had to look the part!), got in, and went to work, handing out my flier to all the suppliers.  It worked like magic. The next day we were inundated with calls from big brands like Toshiba, Asus, Canon and others saying, ‘please sell our products’.  After that, we never had any difficulty getting quality brands to sell to us.

What did you learn from this experience?

That there’s always a way.  Our dad had a saying: “If the front door and the back door are closed, try another door. There’s always a third door.’

Where did you learn how to be an entrepreneur?

At the dinner table. We talked about business a lot as a family.  Our motto was ‘don’t focus on saving money. Learn how to make money’.  We loved trying new things, seeing if they worked. In the early days, we were like kids with a new toy, just playing around on the computer and seeing what we could do.  It wasn’t work to us. It was fun.  When we saw that people loved what we were selling, it just gave us inspiration to keep on doing it.  And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. Giving people what they want.

What tips would you offer to entrepreneurs just starting out?
 
Act fast. Decide quickly. We had a motto, “Idea by midnight.  Execute by midday.” Hezi and I would come up with some ideas and we would implement them the next day.  We were up against the big boys of retail – Myer, David Jones and the rest – so all we had in our favour was speed and agility. That was our secret weapon and this ability to move fast enabled us to find new solutions to existing problems and keep innovating.

What’s the secret to innovation?

We weren’t that innovative! We were just really good at seeing what was already being done, and then improving on that!  Catch of the Day was based on an American website called Woot.  They offered a deal of the day that launched at midnight. We tried that but after a few weeks of staying up until 4am to process orders, we just changed the deal to start at noon, and we never looked back. And we got some sleep.

Any final words Gabby?

Buy the book, buy it here. 

Want more?  

I will be joined by and interviewing Gabby live at the upcoming online Venture Melton Business Network exclusive event on the evening of Wednesday 18 November.  

This is an exclusive event for Venture Melton Business Network Members only. The first 150 members to register and attend will also receive a coupon to redeem a free copy of Gabby's new book, Catch of the Decade.

Numbers are limited so don’t miss out. Bookings essential.

Not yet a member? Join free until July 2021.

Bernadette Schwerdt
Founder of the Australian School of Copywriting (and ghost-writer of Gabby’s Leibovich new book Catch of the Decade)