The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] JM: But you’ve gotta trust that process. And that’s a very different kind of mindset. It’s different. And then I’ll just do it all myself, and everybody tells me I’m great. All these things. It’s just different and until someone goes through it.
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[00:01:08] well, ladies in jealous spoons, we are back with the e-commerce leader expert panel. Um, Chris Green, Carl Hamer, Jason Miles, and myself, Michael Vizi. Most of them are in the States. I’m over here in London, England, increasingly freezing here. And we are gonna talk about what’s on our minds. So, um, Carl, kick us off.
[00:01:29] I think you’ve got something called the S-Curve. Absolutely. Something about the.
[00:01:32] KH: Yeah, no. Uh, the, so the S-curve has been around for a long time in sort of business thinking, project management and, uh, even math. Um, it’s essentially, uh, something you can graph, but it looks literally like an asset kind of starts out with slow growth and it has sort of this exponential growth, uh, curve in the middle and then starts to slow down in terms of its growth at the top.
[00:01:50] Um, and flatten out. And the interesting thing about it is it, it’s a fractal, meaning that it applies both at large scales and small scales, in my opinion. Meaning like, think about it as a niche, a niches, um, start out with a little bit of, uh, you know, early adopters and then it kind of gets to mask. You know, grow, grow.
[00:02:09] The, uh, past early adopters is sort of the, uh, the second stage and then you get sort of mass adoption and then it sort of design maturity. And so I would say niches are like that. I’d say products also go through that same cycle. Um, and so what got me thinking about it was I saw this stat that said that 65 to 75, it’s 65 to 75% cheaper to duplicate a product.
[00:02:29] Than it is to generate one from scratch, like to develop one, to create one, to kind of innovate. And so it kind of got me thinking about that s-curve and sort of business and product development and, uh, and really picking the niche that you want to be in. If you, if you’re not already in one or you’re gonna expand your business into a new one.
[00:02:46] Where is it best to sort of enter that ES curve? Is it better to be at the beginning where you can potentially have some early mover advantage? Um, which there’s disadvantage in pros and cons to that? Or is it better to be sort of in the growth phase when you’re going to scale and you’re stepping in front of demand?
[00:03:04] You know, it’s like, is it better to be in front of demand or before demand to establish and really, you know, build your brand? And competent. So that’s really, it’s up for my discussion. I’m just gonna putting it out there for people. I think it’d be an interesting conversation. You one.
[00:03:20] CG: Opinions on what, what
[00:03:21] KH: is best?
[00:03:22] Yeah. I want the feedback from the wisdom of the crowd. Okay.
[00:03:26] CG: I’ll give you my 2 cents. I think it depends on your personality type. I think some people are CLRs. Yeah. You know, like in Star Wars, just they can clone the, the, the stormtroopers. Uh, and some people are really good at that. You know, they’ll see a, a gin one or gin two product, and they’ll just see how they can make it prettier, shinier, happier, better, newer.
[00:03:47] Um, and they’ll take a whack at that level of it, but they could never, ever in a million years come up with generation one of it. Yep. But there are other people who are more on, I would say, say the artistic, you know, open side to creativity that are the originalists and they’re their best work is gonna be done coming up with something new improv.
[00:04:11] Um, I didn’t, uh, you know, I wanted to sell online for 10 years and I couldn’t figure out a product, but then Cinnamon came up with a product, and then I just was the helper. I was just the marketer, you know? Um, and when I reflect back on that 10, it was a whole decade, literally 98 to 2008. Um, it wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas, it just, I just couldn’t execute at that V1 or G one.
[00:04:31] Mm-hmm. Position. And, um, so I think it depends on your personality, I guess is my, my response. No, that, that’s good.
[00:04:39] JM: Yeah. Jason, I was gonna say the exact same thing. There you go. You, you have to know yourself. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, in the sense of like, what you like doing. Like, for me personally, like if I had to go back in time, I probably couldn’t describe this, but looking back now, I can be like, oh, I definitely, like, I, I enjoy the first mover advantage.
[00:04:55] I like finding new things that I personally get excited about, and the fact that we have social media where I can share my personal excitement about something. Guys, have you heard of this F b A thing? Like, like, you know how fun it was to be like the first guy to be talking about F B A and like how amazing it was to be like, dude, all our inventory is now prime eligible.
[00:05:15] Like, You get how big of a deal that is. And a lot of people are like, no, that’s, I can shit myself and all this stuff. And then merch by Amazon and self-publishing and all these things. I’m very excited about those things. Uh, you know, when they come out once they’re mature and it’s like, oh, right, here’s how you can use this mature platform to do these, you know, standard practices and do all this things, sorry, boring for me to tear.
[00:05:35] And not just personally boring, but like, that’s just not what I would say my personal strengths are. So I’m not looking for something to go in and be like, oh, I can do, you know, some standard operating procedures around this topic. Yeah, I guess I can, but like, it’s not as interesting or as fun or as attractive as like, wait a minute guys, Kyle, have you seen this?
[00:05:51] You’re an original, this and this. No one’s done that before and it’s a massive opportunity and now you’re excited. Right now you’re, you’re invested. Now you’re like, I would do this for free kind of thing. The fact we can make money on it is, um, Bonus versus, Hey Kyle, there’s this big opportunity in this established market and it’s gonna take this much cap.
[00:06:10] Like, oh my God, kill me. Like I don’t, I just don’t care how big that opportunity is, right? Because it doesn’t align with what I want to do. And like that’s like the, you know, business versus personal kind of take on it. But if, if you are actually excited about it, you’re gonna have so much more success.
[00:06:26] KH: Yeah.
[00:06:26] MV: That. I think you guys would bang on with that. What I’m interested in is, I suppose because I’m a person that loves to theorize about stuff like, like I get excited about ideas and abstract concepts and how they collide with reality and sometimes make sense of reality. And in this case, the star principles, the thing that brings to mind, which is that if you can somehow get involved, In a business that is in the early stages of something that is about to go up that S curve.
[00:06:49] So in you, an early adopter, um, then, you know, it’s a start of business. It’s a Boston consulting route, goes back to the sixties. It’s not new thinking, but it’s still underused by people in some ways now to interact, to cross that over with what you guys were saying, Jason and Chris, I think you’re right that personality is critical.
[00:07:05] What Richard Kosh did, he’s the guy who wrote the Star principle, um, and applied it to make himself very, very rich. He’s not. An entrepreneur so much as an investor. So he was not the person getting excited about creating Betfair, for example, and nerding out about it. He was a person who spotted somebody else’s talent and ability.
[00:07:22] So he was a kind of a version of a gen two to, to use your phrase, Jason. Um, so that’s interesting to me that, you know, sometimes the market dynamics of this s-curve and your personality, um, can interact in interesting ways. In other words, you can be taking advantage of the early mover thing. Even if it’s not your natural creative personality type type, as long as you hook up with the right personality, who is that kind of person?
[00:07:46] So I like, you know, I would definitely invest in whatever Chris Green’s having, uh, any, you know, getting assessed about next. Cuz you are very, very good at spotting these trends. And I’ve had you on the podcast talking about various things like the merch by Amazon, um, when it was new. And so if you can find the right partners, it enables you to participate in that, even if it’s not your natural, you’re not a first generation person if you like.
[00:08:06] CG: Yeah, totally agree. I think the thing that irritates me, uh, to some degree as I watch people’s market behavior is when they’re CLRs. Mm-hmm. But they act like they’re the originalist. Mm-hmm. That to me is such a just like, come on man, that’s absolutely turn off. And, you know, it’s funny because a lot of ’em think that they’re duping newbies or something like that, or they just, they just maybe, I don’t know.
[00:08:26] In their brain they, they kind of were. Their, their egoic need forces them to say that they’re the first, the best, the original, the what they, you know, and then you just like, no, come on. Don’t do, why, why do that as a positioning statement if you know you’re a clr? Uh, don’t lean into being, you know, the, the creator of something, all that.
[00:08:48] So, yeah, I, to me that’s kind of always funny and cuz then there are people who, like, you know, Chris obviously. Created the phrase arbitrage in the e-commerce context. Mm-hmm. And, and you know, he, but he won’t be out there nowadays, basically, like in the position of trying to be the gin five gen six [00:09:10] marketer with the big, huge company.
[00:09:11] Other people will have taken that spot. But anyway, so it’s just kind of funny to observe people’s behavior in it all and kind of what their ego does in the process and all that.
[00:09:23] MV: There’s this weird menu in the world to be creative. Now I get this as a person that’s naturally creative. My response to a a problem is to create more stuff.
[00:09:30] But that’s not necessarily a wise response or a business like in all cases. And so I think people should own being good at operations and at scaling. Like I know, to your point, Chris, the flip side of being excited about retail arbitrage as a first mover or merch by Amazon and the other things that I’ve, I’ve seen you, you’ve infused me about over the years.
[00:09:49] Is that maybe somebody else gets to, to your point, Kyle gets to be at the top of the S curve and make the big money. And if you can partner as a sort of first generation creative, you know, leading edge type person with somebody who’s a bit more plotty and willing to do this stuff, that makes you wanna poke your eyes out there, Chris, with the SOS and stuff.
[00:10:07] That could be a beautiful thing if it can be engineered because then you will get to benefit for longer and financially bigger than if you’re just constantly creating and then letting somebody else Monet. Yeah,
[00:10:18] KH: well, I mean, you think about the, probably the greatest, uh, first mover advantage company out there in terms of innovation and, uh, expanding into multiple different, uh, niches.
[00:10:28] And that’s Amazon, right? Like first online bookstore. What if Amazon said, Hey, you know what? We got this bookstore thing, lockdown. Let’s just stick here. Right. Like they’re, we we’re early, let’s just make this our, our business model. But that’s not what they did. Right? Like they went from a bookstore to the everything store, then really built out the tech piece to support that.
[00:10:47] And they’re like, Hey, we could actually sell this as aws and now they power, you know, like a third of the internet or more. Um, So I think it, it’s interesting, so they’re literally stacking other new niches and things that they’ve seen, you know, and adding more things while, while they’re still growing and sort of taking those products to maturity.
[00:11:04] But they’re also quick to kill things, right? Like, if it’s not working, like, you know, they’re, they’re done with it and they’re, there’s, they’ve killed off plenty of programs. So I think having sort of the early creative. Energy in your business, no matter what scale you’re at, no matter what niche is really, really important.
[00:11:20] Um, whether that’s you as the person’s doing that, or somebody on your team that’s helping to drive that, I think it’s, it’s important to have that level of energy in your business because if it’s not, you’re gonna, I think, wither on the vine and die eventually. It
[00:11:34] JM: goes back to me frequently about just knowing who you are and not trying to like fit yourself in and be like, oh, I saw Jeff Bezos do this, or I saw a famous person.
[00:11:43] Do I want to? Who cares, you know? And I think of examples where like, very successful, like if you follow the entrepreneur space, like entrepreneur type, celebrity, kinda, kinda, people, they start a business, it’s successful and then they leave. And I frequently, like my first reaction is like, well why did they leave?
[00:11:58] They like built this big. Mm-hmm. Oh, it’s cause they didn’t wanna run a company. They wanted to build a company, they wanted to innovate. They saw, uh, It’s that challenge that they’re attracted to and they’re happy to hand it off to someone who’s like, please, please let me run this because I am good at running things.
[00:12:13] I would love to run it. I know how to run it. And, and it’s just such a different personality type. And it’s not that one is right or wrong, it’s just like you have to know who you are, what you’re good at, what your goals are, and there’re gonna be bigger financial incentives for some opportunities than for others.
[00:12:27] And often being the first mover is not the biggest financial. Right. Like from, in my experience, it’s certainly not, uh, but it’s, to me it’s much more rewarding. It’s more, you know, it has potentially more upside down the road. Um, but you can be a lot happier doing something that you actually like and enjoy.
[00:12:42] And I would make the case that you can use the internet and social media to, uh, help a ton of people and make money along the way where you’re like, this is like the, this is great. Uh, but when people, I see people chase the bigger opportunities, so there’s more money I can make this much money. It’s like, You can make more money.
[00:12:57] But from all the, like the wealthy people that I know, the money is not the happiness thing now, the money, yeah. Don’t get me wrong, money will solve your money problems. Okay. So if you have money problems, yes, money will solve those problems. Other types of problems, the money’s not gonna solve that. So make enough money to where you don’t have money problems and then figure out what you wanna do.
[00:13:14] It’s money’s
[00:13:16] CG: go after it. Yeah. It’s a huge presumption that a V1 founder could actually take it to maturity. Yeah. I mean, I always remember the story of Rob Callen, who founded Etsy. Um, and the, at the point, and he was an artist, I mean, you know, artistic and he, he made an, an environment for artists to be profitable and made something that was really, really, like, who knew Etsy would, would last and become, think it was like a craft site, you know?
[00:13:40] Mm-hmm. But by the time it went public, he owned nothing, like less than 1% or so, like some literal, nothing rounding error amount because he, over time, like he wasn’t the. He wasn’t the, you know, like Darth Vader type not to mm-hmm. Pick a billionaire at the moment, but just, he wasn’t the guy who, you know, he was an artist.
[00:14:02] He wasn’t the business guy who was gonna control it until it was a billion dollar, trillion dollar, whatever, whatever, you know. Um, so it’s a huge presumption to think an artist Yeah. Could get themselves there anyway. Yeah. Um, cuz frequently they’ll, they won’t, they’ll just quit out of frustration. They’ll give it away.
[00:14:16] Mm-hmm. They’ll get tired and move. Their entrepreneurial interests will kick in and you know, they’ll, they’ll want out. It
[00:14:23] KH: reminds me of, uh, Sergei Bran and Larry Page from Google. Like they were early on, you know, the coast CEOs and it was all very much like, yeah, we’re gonna grow this thing and then, You know, they brought in Eric Schmidt, who was a mm-hmm.
[00:14:35] A, uh, adult. Yeah. Adult. He was like, he was, but he was also an experienced Silicon Valley ceo, right? Yeah. To really put in all the business processes that they need, and they built off of those business processes, what Google is today. Right. And yeah. You know, that that’s exactly how that point.
[00:14:52] JM: I see too many people that don’t want to give up control.
[00:14:54] And I, I know what that feels like, right? So if you start something that it’s kinda like your baby, like you’re a hundred percent owner. Cause you can certainly start a company just by yourself these days. And then it’s like, well, you can give up control or, or you can make money. Right? But like it’s, you’re not gonna be able to do both.
[00:15:08] And my co-founder at, at Scam Power, like he told me that very early on, look, you can have money or, or you can, you can own the company or, or you can, I forget what I’m trying to say. You can have control or you can grow kinda thing. Yeah. You can’t really. Um, and you gotta be okay with that. And I think so many times, you know, it’s hard for, especially kind of the early, the entrepreneur, the solopreneur, uh, like the first mover to be like, yeah, I’m gonna give up control.
[00:15:28] I’m gonna trust someone else can mm-hmm. Can do this. Mm-hmm. Maybe someone else actually has this vision that. That I have, and it’s when you internalize it, it’s like, no, only I can do this. Only I can write this book. Only I can make this happen. Only I can do this webinar. It’s like no other, someone else can.
[00:15:43] But you’ve gotta trust that process. And that’s a very different kind of mindset. It’s different. And then I’ll just do it all myself, and everybody tells me I’m great. All these things. It’s just different and until someone goes through it. Themselves. It’s really hard to, to be like, okay, I’m just gonna take Jason Miles advice.
[00:15:58] Like, no, it’s gonna be hard to take someone else’s advice, but once you go through it, you’re like, oh yeah, Jason was right. Yeah. And that’s okay. If that’s how you have to learn the lesson, that’s how you have
[00:16:05] KH: to learn the lesson. For sure. There was a, uh, I, there was a, an interview that I heard or was a podcast.
[00:16:11] It was basically this guy. Multi multimillionaire, they couldn’t have been, have been a billionaire. And they’re asking him sort of like, what was the biggest breakthrough moments, you know, in your career, in what you did in building your businesses? And he’s like, well, honestly, the biggest one is when I actually brought in a new c e o.
[00:16:28] And uh, and that was the biggest thing. He’s like, but here’s the thing is like the business took off and grew, but they’ve made decisions that I didn’t agree. But I still trusted them to, you know, do what they’re gonna do and they turned out to be right. I would’ve been wrong. And he is like, that was the biggest breakthrough in terms of their growth of the business was the following with that, the c e o that I put in place.
[00:16:47] So, yeah, I think it’s, it’s, uh, it’s super interesting. You gotta know who you are.
[00:16:54] MV: Right. Well, I’m gonna violently change topic here. Um, except it’s kind of about control, I guess, that the world gave up control for making stuff to China quite a long time ago. In some ways, and certainly Jeff Bezos and and Amazon have been instrumental in bringing a lot of goods direct out of the, or fairly directly, sometimes via third party sellers, um, from China to us.
[00:17:13] But what strikes me more and more. A few bits of news and a few statistics around which seem to be pointing to some kind of crisis to me, which is that number one, uh, there’s never been so many exports from China. It’s kind of moving on from covid now, so the factories are starting to hum again. But number two, us, uh, policy is very, very clearly trending.
[00:17:34] Trending in one direction, and I don’t think it matters who you voted for in the next general, um, next election for president, you’re gonna get a China Hawk of some description. And so TikTok is, for example, in the crosshairs right now, I believe that the TikTok, TikTok CEO O, is about to be corners Congress.
[00:17:49] In late March. Uh, so, you know, a couple of weeks at the time recording and they may actually ban TikTok in the us which would be huge news for anyone who’s built a platform on that. So that implies concentration risk is a, an overarching theme here. And then the other one is that, you know, if China supplies lethal aids to the Russians and the Ukraine war, which looks quite likely cuz they’ve got, they’ve lost.
[00:18:11] Any kind of judgment at the top of the Chinese leadership by the looks of it, then it’s quite possible that US will sanction China, which will basically change the entire world [00:18:20] economy. Not least if you import from China, which you probably do if you import, um, into the US or into Europe. So these are big movements, but I think they’re coming to a head pretty much now.
[00:18:29] So I’m interested to know what everyone thinks we should do about this and, you know, am I about, about right here? And if so, what should we even begin to do about this stuff?
[00:18:40] CG: Deep water. You want me to go first? Um, yeah, so I listened to the All In podcast and they were just talking about TikTok, Shama Papilla, uh, was talking about it.
[00:18:48] And then Brad Gerner is, was their bestie Guestie this last week. And he’s a, um, Shareholder, original kind of investor in TikTok or Bite Dance. And um, the interesting piece they pointed out was if it was banned in the US it would represent I think 3 billion out of like a hundred billion dollars of their revenues.
[00:19:08] So from the corporate point of view, it wouldn’t actually. I mean, obviously that’s a bad thing. It, you know, cuts off the US market, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic per se. Their advice was nonetheless liquidate your position in the company if you’re an investor. But, um, but I think what you’re describing to me is a version of the future that could play out.
[00:19:30] I’m not sure it will. I’m not sure we’ll get a Hawk, China Hawk as a next president. We could get someone who’s backed by, uh, corporatists. At the highest level, and they would prefer to have not a war, but a financial relationship and keep the wheels of commerce going. But, um, I, I would just say this, if that version of the future played out the way you’re describing, then I think you would end up in the same position you have had in the early month of Covid or the early months of.
[00:20:03] Which was, it was like, I described it to my friend Ron, who ran a, he runs a Dairy Queen, uh, restaurant. He owns it and sat it for 30 years. I said a million bullets were fired at the US economy. And the one that hit you was a silver bullet or like, like a good bullet, like not a bad bullet, cuz his drive through traffic went through like insane.
[00:20:23] And he, you know, he made like way more money cuz drive through. And, but many businesses were wiped out. Many restaurants were wiped out, but others really benefited. And I think if that type of decoupling did happen with the China economy, you would see a ton of unfortunate business closures. And people, for example, like you mentioned, who have made a platform on TikTok and have monetized it, they would be vaporized in that kind of thing.
[00:20:51] But you’d see other people’s businesses who would. The, you know, happy days are here. Again, my revenues just doubled because mm-hmm. You know, some of my competitors got eliminated and I’m the only game in town in my niche or whatever. So I think it’ll create a real divergence of winners and losers if that happened.
[00:21:09] And, uh, and it’d be interesting to see, uh, supply chain from China would be a bad mm-hmm. operating thesis if that did happen. Um, you know, so yeah, that’s my 2 cents. I think it will create, but I do think it’ll create winner. As well, you know? Yep. It
[00:21:23] KH: would definitely drive up costs, right. Inflation would continue to expand cuz we have benefited from the long term cheap manufacturing that comes outta China In terms of, of price, um, I don’t know, like the, the couple things that you layered in there.
[00:21:39] Right. One was, you know, what politically does that look like? You know who’s gonna be in there? I think. Everybody is sort of seen China as a political competitor, um, depending on how far they want to take it. You know, do they see it as China as an enemy? Um, hopefully that’s not gonna be the case and they can look at it as a, as a competitor.
[00:21:59] Um, geopolitically the other thing that I think is interesting, as you said is, you know, does China offer lethal aid? You know, uh, Russia in the Ukraine war, if that occurs, I think Europe for sure is going to, uh, sanction, but I don’t it, it may not be the same level of sanctions that you saw. You know, the west applied to Russia, or it’s across the board.
[00:22:23] Um, it would probably be much more strategic and surgical in terms of the sanctions that were, uh, applied. But any sanctions would be escalatory and you’d probably see going back and forth across the board, across the Pacific, you know, they’re gonna sanction other things and all. And you know, that’s how it works.
[00:22:42] So, yeah, I mean, it’d be really interesting to see how that played out, but it definitely could have a, a negative short-term impact on the economy. But long-term, um, I think what you’re gonna continue to see is more of a, of a, a shift to move manufacturing to different countries, uh, maybe more geopolitical friendly countries.
[00:23:00] It could be a big win for India, honestly. Um, India has sort of walked this neutral line. Uh, between the US and China and Russia, and they kind of wanna see themselves there. But, um, I think that if you ask them specifically, they would probably like to lean more, uh, in their relationship with the us. Um, but that’s even a more tenuous thing.
[00:23:19] But they have a lot of production capacity and it’s untapped. They’re kind of like China was, you know, a few years ago. So I think they might end up being, uh, an interesting winner if, if manufacturing does shift out of.
[00:23:33] Well,
[00:23:33] JM: I’m just gonna try and be optimistic cuz I am not a geopolitical, international government, any of that stuff. Uh, but from what I’ve seen, people generally end up working things out and getting along, um, supply and demand. I, I remind people this constantly, supply and demand is constant, right? So if supply dries up somewhere, that demand isn’t.
[00:23:52] It’s still there and it’ll be filled with supply from somewhere else and price prices will go up, prices will go down. Uh, but in general, uh, you know, buyers and sellers don’t really care about a lot of this stuff. And the people who wanna sell, including the sellers in China, shipping out containers, they want to sell, they want to ship containers.
[00:24:08] They don’t care what the government’s doing, they don’t care what our government’s doing. They just wanna sell stuff. And people over here just wanna buy stuff. And you know, I would. Optimistic confidence that that’s just gonna kind of work itself out. Uh, it kind of worked itself out through covid, through, you know, obstacles and complications and all these things and yeah, prices went up, prices came down, you know, things were sold out, things were hard to get.
[00:24:28] Uh, but I don’t recall, and maybe I’m, I got a different version of history in my head, like it wasn’t that bad to where like, Oh my gosh, we haven’t had this in years. Or the price on this is 1000 times what it used to be. Uh, cuz when it gets to that point, no one’s, no one’s gonna buy it. Like the, the market will adjust and shift and instead of buying something for a hundred, you know, a thousand times, they’re gonna buy something and.
[00:24:49] I don’t know it, the history serves it. My memory serves it correctly. It all kind of worked out without, all of a sudden everybody hates a complete entire country and the government hands people and all this stuff. Like, I think people should also separate the government from people. Sure. Uh, I, I know a lot of people in Russia.
[00:25:06] Who are not thrilled with what’s going on, but they don’t have a lot of options. Sure. And it was, you know, short anecdotal story. Uh, one of my Russian programmers messaged me after the Russian War started. He said, Hey, do you still wanna work with me? And I’m like, why wouldn’t I wanna work with you? He’s like, well, because my country is doing this.
[00:25:20] Uh, he wouldn’t wanna do it. You know, he, he was completely against it. Um, but he thought just because he was Russian that all of a sudden I want nothing personally to. Anything Russian and I had to explain to ’em, no, that’s not the case. We’re able to separate the people from the government and you know, there’s a lot of big stuff going on, but the people who are in charge, people with the power, I don’t believe are evil.
[00:25:40] I don’t believe only have personal self-interest in mind. I do believe they want some best for, for everybody, and hopefully, hopefully it plays out. I will help.
[00:25:49] MV: Yeah, it’s interesting. Uh, I think that you’re right that business people just wanna make money and, um, ordinary people don’t necessarily endorse the views of their governments.
[00:25:57] And, uh, yeah, that’s certainly, I, I know London is absolutely ton of, of Russians here, and I think they’re kind of keeping their heads down. I, I don’t know, it’s not a thing for me, but I’m just thinking that at a certain point, politics starts to reenter the business fray. If it becomes, for example, the tariffs that got imposed in whatever it was, 2016.
[00:26:14] Um, and onwards with goods coming from China to us that’s not sending anyone who’s saying selling or buying has any control over. That’s simply imposed from above. And I think that we’re getting back to the era where that may happen. You may be right. I mean, maybe you’re more pessimistic than you guys.
[00:26:28] Um, the other interesting thing, of course, uh, and I’m kind of the outsider here on the other side of the pond, is that I think the other alternative supplier is America. Apparently America already has the cheapest electricity in the world, um, thanks to the Shell Gas revolution and. Oil and gas. You have, you know, so much gas there that you were burning it off as waste products until five minutes ago, apparently, in many places.
[00:26:47] And, um, the labor costs in America aren’t going down, but, and they’re shooting up in China because they have really demographic issues. You know, I don’t have no young people, so, um, I would be amazed if. If America doesn’t become the preferred supplier for a lot of American goods. And then of course there’s Mexico.
[00:27:04] I dunno if anyone has an experience in Mexico. I’ve got one client who did a bit of sourcing in Mexico and said it was pretty difficult to work around the corruption and the um, you know, the policy control issues. But it’s interesting that there, as you say, Chris, there’s demand they will be supply. The question that interests me partly is where is that supply coming from?
[00:27:27] JM: Know, people will buy stuff. Price sells stuff, you [00:27:30] know, country of origin. In my experience as you know, former sales rep, uh, it’s really hard to sell country of origin, even at the same, um, if it’s a dollar cheaper, they don’t care if it’s made in Mexico or China or India. It’s a dollar cheaper and they’re gonna buy it.
[00:27:43] It’s really, there are people who will go outta their way and pay more to buy something made in America. And if the quality’s there like to, to justify an increased price, but an apples to apple. In my experience, um, it’s very common to talk the talk of wanting to buy American. It’s really, really hard, right?
[00:28:02] Yeah. Unless the American one is also cheaper.
[00:28:06] CG: Yes. Um,
[00:28:06] JM: yeah, no question. Things can change. We can promote buying American and the benefits of buying American and I, I don’t think it’s a.
[00:28:14] MV: Sorry, I, I don’t think it’s gonna be led so much by the fact that people want to buy American and willing to pay them more, a dollar more, because on Amazon, like almost certainly they have to, it’s the biggest price, price comparison site.
[00:28:24] But I think because I have to exactly cuz if China’s being banned from importing stuff, which sounds like a nuclear thing, but if you’d said to me in 2014 or 2013, Britain’s gonna exit the European Union and uh, Trump is, or any American president is going to impose a 45% tariff rate on south for China.
[00:28:41] I don’t think they would’ve been a very serious, uh, audience for either of those being a true prediction. But it was two, just two years later. So, I dunno. I hope you’re right and I hope that I’m not seeing stuff coming. I hope I’m, I’m wrong. But, uh, you know, let’s see. It will emerge over the next
[00:28:56]
[00:29:44] CG: while pessimist versus, it’s a different point that you’ve made optimist.
[00:29:48] JM: Uh, you know, if if there is no Chinese alternative or internationally made alternative, then yes, people will buy American. But they’re not buying Americans. They wanna buy American. They’re buying American. Cause it’s the only one on the
[00:29:56] KH: shelf. Exactly. Yeah. So there’s, there’s that,
[00:29:59] JM: and like, if that’s the case and it’s an affordable price, it’s a quality product.
[00:30:02] I don’t think people care because in my experience, people don’t really care where it comes from. As long as it works, it’s not gonna give my child cancer and I can afford it. Right. Like absolutely. We’re really not that big. We’re really not scrolling down looking for a country of origin on. Yeah,
[00:30:17] CG: no, that’s the reality is that the reality is that, um, demand creates, uh, supply.
[00:30:23] Mm-hmm. And as soon as something’s not available from China, there’s gonna be a Vietnamese or Korean mm-hmm. Or Indian supplier that’s like, I can fill that, you know? Mm-hmm. That need that demand. Uh, alternates and substitutes are a part of a huge economy, and I don’t, even if America becomes more. I isolationist in, in a way.
[00:30:46] We’re still, we have still huge trade partners with South Korea and Vietnam, and there’s, you know, India, there’s tons of supply sources. Uh, Mexico’s problematic for the reasons you mentioned, but it’s obviously so close to home. Uh, But you know, there, I mean there’s alternatives and those will emerge. I entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism is such a fast-paced environment these days.
[00:31:10] Mm-hmm. Just, it amazes me how quickly people can monetize. Now you just, you don’t see opportunities languishing around very often. Right. You know, as soon as you see something that’s obvious, pretty soon you see somebody who’s figured out how to beautifully present. And here it is. It’s the, the, the cool thing.
[00:31:28] And just when you thought, hey, this is a thing, somebody’s already been six months or a year ahead of you. Yeah. In getting it ready, you know? So
[00:31:35] KH: For sure. I think to me, the biggest takeaway from this conversation as a someone who imports from China is you need to have a business continuity plan. Like what is the plan of.
[00:31:47] If something happens to your supply chain in China, are you thinking about, you know, locate, do you know how to locate suppliers outside of China? Like, that’s a skillset that you should be developing. You know, that’s a network that you should be working on, is make sure you have, um, uh, a plan of action in place.
[00:32:05] JM: You, you know what, you know what we should do? Only make digital product. Oh, of course for, of course, print on the man. Of course, I was gonna say it’s
[00:32:14] KH: only digital products,
[00:32:16] JM: but Kyle, if I, honestly, if I were you, I would easily, I would get ahead of this with some blog articles, some LinkedIn articles, and putting something out there to be like, Hey, just in case your primary supplier dries up China or otherwise, Uh, what, you know, what can you do to preemptively be ready in case that happens and just market it under business preparedness?
[00:32:34] And all of a sudden if something like this happens, you’re gonna have content that’s been out there for months and all of a sudden they’re gonna come to you and you’ll be like, yes, I can help you with that. Here, I’ve got some pre-recorded material. I do have a, a, a mastermind type group, or like, whatever it might be, whether you wanna monetize it or not.
[00:32:47] Uh, but if that many people are gonna potentially go down that road, have something, they’re ready. Yeah. Yeah, because yeah, it’s good. It’s gonna
[00:32:54] KH: affect a lot of people. It’s the, it’s the business prepper niche. It is. Absolutely. That’s a great name for it. Yeah. Yeah, I like that.
[00:33:01] MV: And that’s cause
[00:33:03] JM: I came on Tage.
[00:33:04] Preppers. Prepers.
[00:33:08] CG: No, the neighbor.
[00:33:11] MV: So I came on your, um, one of your many challenge, um, type things, uh, ages ago. Karl, I remember talking to you, did a presentation on this very tiny topic, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there is definitely. You sound like a, you know, pessimistic old guy until suddenly it hits and actually say he could look like a bit of a predictive genius if it does, but we ought to move on.
[00:33:29] So, um, let’s see. What’s cooking in the mind of Jason today? What’s going on with you?
[00:33:35] CG: Man, I got so many irons in the fire. What do you wanna talk about guys? I’ll tell you a few topics that are top of mind for me. Uh, Tesla’s investor day was huge. Uh, that’s my number one, you know, kind. Um, stock that I like.
[00:33:47] Um, AI is literally like a game changer in so many ways. I, that’s a topic number two. Um, I also, we got an offer that had a very interesting phrase in it to somebody who wanted to buy Pixie Fair off of us, and the phrase is, you’re a founder of a top 1% Shopify store that will now receive a cash bonus on top of your offer price at.
[00:34:09] That caught my attention. I was like, that’s interesting. I’m the founder of a top 1% Shopify store. Um, so what do you guys wanna talk about? I don’t care. Is it, is it ai? Is that the thing we have to talk about?
[00:34:20] MV: Because let’s talk about Pixie fair cuz it feels like AI is being talked about by everyone so much that since you and I actually did a relatively early deep dive on that relative to what was out there, Jason, and then suddenly everything I’ve had any e-commerce podcast since has been about ai.
[00:34:34] So yeah, personally I’d be interested to hearing about your.
[00:34:38] JM: AI’s too big. We’ll talk about that another day. Excellent. Yeah.
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