The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: market conditions have changed, you’ve gotten profitable and you know you’re on okay, ground revenue wise, maybe growth is out the window, but you’re still gonna be able to make money.
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[00:01:10] Michael: The economy is turning so very quickly. Inflation is at all time. Record highs and access to cheap money is over. It’s time to reexamine the e-commerce methods for thriving in hard financial times. So Jason, let’s drive into this vital topic. Strikes me that the only people who are feeling pain or worried will click on this episode and listen.
[00:01:31] So that’s a bit of a sad start, but let’s try and serve them well. What are your initial thoughts?
[00:01:35] Jason: Yeah, I, I’ve just been listening to some podcasts in the last few days talking about the tech industry as a whole and how it’s, really been impacted. Everyone in Silicon Valley, which is here, in northern California with me, is.
[00:01:49] Going through the exercises associated with really getting lean, mean and focused, and lots of riffs, as they call it, reduction in force exercises are happening in, in the tech company, tech industries. And, I’m concerned that e-commerce operators are going to be, faced with, of course, the same exact headwinds, that are, impacting many parts of the economy.
[00:02:10] So I felt this might be a. Perfect time to really speak into people’s lives and businesses and, speak some encouragement, and also some truth to, the scenarios associated with this economy turning so sour. So I do think this is a vital topic for today. If you’re listening to this episode and.
[00:02:30] A few years and it’s good times and great thrilled for you. But if you’re listening and you’re in the midst of, really challenging business decisions, then hopefully this will be some encouragement to you and get you some clarity and an action plan for how to move forward, systematically.
[00:02:46] Michael: Yes, absolutely. And I just wanted to say one, I think not just a chin of, you know what A wood, every cloud has a silver lining. I think this is more like the gold at the end of the rainbow. I want to encourage people to think very positively about this. I was speaking to a guest of mine, Called Ken Burke, who found an e-commerce company in the mid nineties.
[00:03:03] Went through two horrendous recessions, particularly obviously the.com burst, bubble burst in 2000, 2001. And what he said is that after the massive cutback in that particular sector, wasn’t just an economic recession across the whole economy, it was absolutely focused in that, tech space.
[00:03:19] And he said, They survived those couple of years and they were tough. But on the other end of it, the years two, 2002, 3, 4, 5, were their best years ever. And I think that’s one of the reasons why he had a 10 figure exit in 2016. So the good times, the best times in your business life, I believe, are on the other side of this.
[00:03:37] So there’s a pot gold at the end of the rainbow to, to get us through the bad times because we’ve gotta deal with some unpalatable throughs, haven’t we? Yeah. Any other thoughts on that before we plan into how to deal? No,
[00:03:47] Jason: I think it’s interesting, point of view. I reflect back on our own business.
[00:03:51] We started in 2007, 2008, really in the, worst, financial, period since the Great Depression, which was of course the big housing collapse, and crisis in the us and that’s when we started, our business. We started cuz we needed money and it taught us, how to build a business in lean.
[00:04:10] And so in a lot of ways I look at the really amazing bountiful times, I guess you could say, of the last, I don’t know, eight years or so, and, in a lot of ways that there are businesses that actually do better in down times. And it’s not all negative in a down economy or a stress economy.
[00:04:29] There are businesses that flourish, and it’s because the products they offer resonate with that time and cycle. And people’s, pocket books and, Household budgets and that kind of thing. So I, I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom to your point. And there is absolutely a silver lining or, an positive outcome, but there can also be positive success right in the midst of it.
[00:04:47] And I think that’s an important thing to, to realize. And that’s really how I’ve framed the conversation today. We’ve got. I think six, action steps that we’d recommend that we’re gonna go through here today. And really, hope they serve you well, in, in, in this, conversation.
[00:05:00] Michael: Yes. So great, let’s plunge into this sense. So what’s the first thing we gotta do in to, survive and thrive in hard times?
[00:05:08] Jason: Yeah. The first thing is really a mindset principle and the encouragement here, the first thing is take massive action.
[00:05:15] The. The initial response sometimes when we’re, seeing trauma, or drama or concern is to be, shocked into a non-action. And that’s a very human, response. And all of us can think about times in our life when we’ve been a part of accidents or, whatever it is, and we.
[00:05:32] And, so the mental discipline of the senior leader of any business, one of the things you have to do is have to have clarity about taking massive action. You’re the one that will take the 3, 4, 5 steps in your business to sort things out and make sure all as well for your team and for your long-term success.
[00:05:50] And that starts with you saying, I’m not gonna just not do anything. I have to have a battle. And as Mike Tyson famously said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. But the reality is the leader of your business, your revenue, for your company, you have to have a plan for getting punched in the face and what to do after you get punched in the face and go through that process of saying, I’m gonna step forward, I’m gonna take action, I’m gonna be.
[00:06:16] Bold and decisive. I’m gonna think clearly and not allow myself to get frozen into, analysis paralysis or, just, stuck in what we’re doing and just put our head down, put our head in the sand, and not take any specific actions to deal with the market conditions changing. And so I think that’s the first thing.
[00:06:35] I think it’s the most important thing. The actions you take might be. But if you’re willing to take action and to learn, get in that feedback loop really quickly and pivot, then good things are gonna come from that. Even if your first or second, decision or thinking step, isn’t clear, you’ll get clarity and, move more effectively forward as you take action.
[00:06:57] And it’s gotta be bold and decisive and massive. In my view many times. And the longer you’ve waited and the more you’ve ignored things, the more you have to clean up stuff. And that’s just the reality.
[00:07:07] Michael: I like this. It’s, I was gonna say tough love, but it’s not really, it’s the right sort of thinking for an entrepreneur anyway, it’s leadership thinking, right?
[00:07:13] And I guess that it’s easy to feel like a leader and I, I’m no better or different, so I get it, but when everything’s going well, you feel like a leader.
[00:07:20] Jason: You know what happens in, in stressful economic times is, what we realize is, There are things that we’ve ignored or neglected that we need to set right. And it doesn’t have to be the economy turning sour. It could just be your business turning sour.
[00:07:33] And, when I work with my coaching clients, sometimes if they’re experiencing negative set of conditions, I’ll ask some very basic things. And as it frequently happens, they won’t have dealt with some obvious, issues or items. I would recommend that you audit your situation and auditing your situation means, really taking a hard look at your income and your expenses and getting clarity on your p and l. And, to, to my point a moment ago when I worked with clients who are struggling, one of the first things I’ll always ask is, what’s your most recent p and l telling you?
[00:08:07] They will tell me that their most recent p and l, they can’t remember when they did their p and l. And then they’ll him and haw and say something like, I’ll have to get that finished. And my commentary, back to them is that is the starting point that you have. Can you get it done today?
[00:08:20] Can you get it done in the next hours? And we’re like, I haven’t entered my credit card info for four months, or, whatever it is. And so the reality is you have to audit your situation and really understand what your revenue looking like and. Expense lines looking like the p and l is the form to do that with and to really understand, okay, what’s the current state of my business?
[00:08:41] And what I find is that when people have neglected that hard times can fall on you. And when they haven’t neglected that, when they’re. Up to date every month, every quarter, every prior, year period. They know their numbers. They won’t be surprised, in these kinds of situations. And that’s true to just general business level.
[00:08:59] And it’s also true when the economy changes.
[00:09:01] Michael: Indeed. , yes. I agree with all of this stuff. I think a couple of things. They say bad habits growing good times, and that’s true for most people in eCommerce.
[00:09:10] Therefore, for most of eCommerce history, cuz most of it has happened since 2000 8, 9 10. And therefore, you’re right, we get into bad habits and the solution is get back into the habits we should have had all along, be decisive, have a plan. And to the Mike Tyson point, it’s rather harsh, but it’s true.
[00:09:25] I guess that one of the reasons boxes have to get fit. I’m not a fan of the beautiful game as they call it, but I guess one of the reasons have to get fit is that their muscles will absorb the blows that would kill anybody else. And I guess that one of the things we need to do to get fit enough to cope with.
[00:09:40] The body blows that may come from the market over the next, 18 months, 24 months. And to your point, getting financially knowledgeable and financially in a good position is part of that, and it’s incredibly easy. I think there, there’s a sort of almost, you have moments of choice when you feel the emotion of the pressure of, A perception of recession, whether it’s right or not in your particular market at a particular point or you see your sales numbers go down, which always is an alarming thing.
[00:10:05] You have a choice right there to either start freezing or to immediately go into action. I don’t think you have them a choice to be very neutral anymore, cuz I think it pushes you one way or the other. That’s been my experience. Yeah. Or do you think is that an exaggerated point or is it more or less come to that sort of thing?
[00:10:19] Jason: No, I think the worst condition to be in is to be. Buy stuff now that, that’s the worst thing is what? I didn’t realize we were spending $4,000 a month on Facebook still that hasn’t worked for seven months. Oh, oops. That’s a lot of money, and that’s the worst, absolute worst thing is to be surprised.
[00:10:36] In, in, the data or the, revenue or the expense lines. And so you’ve gotta be able to just say, look, what’s the situation? And then respond rationally and respond appropriately. So we’ve got some more tips here. The, the third thing, if I can go onto that one, is once you know your numbers and once you’re ready and committed to taking massive action, first thing I would do would be to cut non-performing products.
[00:11:02] Marketing strategies, and this is, hardcore, but you’ve gotta become realist when you’re facing difficult times. If you can say to yourself, look, I know I was trying to make something happen with this product, and it just has gone nowhere and here I am, nothing good has happened. If it’s non-performing and you don’t see it serving you in the.
[00:11:22] And I’ll have a little asterisk and I’ll come back to this point in a few minutes, but if it’s not performing, cut it. Same thing’s true for advertising strategies. There are many advertising strategies that we invest money into. It’s shiny object syndrome sometimes, oh, seo, yeah, I haven’t done that.
[00:11:37] Maybe that’s what I should invest in. Oh, marketing TikTok ads, that’s my new thing I’m gonna invest into. And we understand that many of these are. For gaining audience and customers. And many times they’re, ex expeditionary dollars, they’re, we’re sending them out into the world and can you find me some gold somewhere?
[00:11:56] I’ll see you later. You’re going to TikTok, or whatever to use the, old missions or expeditionary, thinking, and, can you come back with anything productive and good. In, sour market conditions, those are the first things you wanna say. Okay, that was fun. We’re gonna pick that up again in another couple years.
[00:12:13] When we have capacity right now, what we’re gonna do is take all of our dollars and invest into what we absolutely know is our best products and our best tactics and strategies for serving our customers well, or finding new customers. The absolute best is what survives in these conditions and the speculative stuff.
[00:12:33] And I think that’s just a, it’s a harsh reality. That means you sometimes have to break vendor relationships or in them, I’m not saying break, legal contracts or anything like that, but you want to end, those kind of vendor relationships. You want. It could even be staffing or virtual assistance.
[00:12:47] Maybe you have to re. Reassign or re reallocate time and energy, but you wanna get to the point where you’re only focused on your absolute best products and your best, strategies for your serving and finding customers.
[00:13:01] Michael: Yeah, I’ll mentor that. And again, this is a conversation I’ve had so many times now in the last few years with people with big catalogs.
[00:13:08] They’ve got quite a few in the Mastermind and. When somebody’s got a catalog of several hundred products or even a thousand or 2001 case, they’re almost bound to have, I would say the 80 20 rule tells you that they’re almost bound to have 20% of them, so maybe a hundred or 200 that are actively losing the money.
[00:13:22] And if they just stopped selling them, they would make more profit. End of, and then there’s gonna be a bunch of mediocre ones. And then inevitably, best sellers always go outta stock because they’re the best selling. So that means they’re the least stocked. And people always complaining about lack of cash to grow.
[00:13:36] And the truth is allocation of that cash whilst, there can be other sources of cash needed. The allocation of the cash is normally suboptimal, to say the least. And that can be the difference in the good times between growing it, 50% a year versus 30%. It can be that big difference, but of course, in bad times, it could be the difference between surviving and not surviving.
[00:13:52] So again, it’s a question of good habits and bad habits. Allocating capital where it’s gonna get the best return is always the right thing as well.
[00:14:01] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. The definition of an economist or definition of entrepreneur, I should have looked this up earlier, is someone who allocates money.
[00:14:09] From lower yield activities to higher yield. Is that the definition of economist, I think, or entrepreneur? I can. As
[00:14:15] Michael: entrepreneur. I believe that entrepreneur’s the definition of entrepreneur. Exactly. Yeah. So they literally take the money from a low yield to a high yield. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:14:21] That’s what we should be doing in theory. That’s what we don’t do in practice though.
[00:14:26] Jason: Absolutely. And that’s our job. And you know that when we can either approach us by, because we’re. We’re fearing something that’s gonna happen or something’s happening negatively in our business.
[00:14:34] Either way, it’s good activity to do, reallocate capital from lower level productivity to higher level.
[00:14:40] Michael: Yeah. Just one final point on that. Revenue is always, vanity and cash is always sanity or cash is king, in fact. But it’s especially true right now. So if you are saying, oh, I’m gonna lose revenue because you can’t, you know x percent of your products, that’s true.
[00:14:55] And that doesn’t matter. The revenue was never gonna even hit your bank account if you’re selling on Amazon anyway, it was never yours. It was never, ever even near your bank account. . So you have to just get over that recession with profit, revenue rather, and not even worry about profit for the short term.
[00:15:06] It’s. Cash. Cash, cash all the way. In my
[00:15:09] Jason: opinion, it was never yours. O that is
[00:15:13] Michael: never yours. If you sell on Amazon, it never enters your bank account doesn’t even come near it. It just doesn’t, does it? You get your payout minus the Amazon costs, which is maybe 50% of revenue. That’s all we ever get. That’s really the true top line.
[00:15:24] I would say. That’s another discussion, but . If you sell on Amazon, a lot of your revenue numbers are just a silly top line to even use, in my opinion. There you go. But that’s theory. The practice is, if it’s not turning into cash, it’s just not even real right now. ,
[00:15:37] Jason: so that’s like the number one reason to not go to Amazon seller conferences or be a part of Amazon seller groups cuz they just bait you to talk about your top line revenue.
[00:15:47] That’s all they want to talk about. Yeah. We have a bit more of
[00:15:50] Michael: a rule about that non profit. We are starting to really get harsh on that in the Mastermind. We’ve gradually, it’s a culture shock for people. So gradually persuading people say, okay, and what is your gross margin on that?
[00:16:02] And normally people don’t know. I say, okay, would you, would it make sense to go find out? And normally they’re bright enough guys to be embarrassed at this point cause they know they should know. To your point about knowing our numbers, Anyway, enough said, but you get the idea. revenue’s meaningless folks, but it’s really dangerous to obsess about it now as opposed to meaning, meaning this and I, the sermon.
[00:16:19] Jason: Yeah. Let me mention, idea number four. I broached the subject a moment ago, but I’ll just say that the fourth thing you need to do is reduce team size to essential team members. Only and really focused on your largest expenses, which your largest expenses in any e-commerce operation are going to be your there.
[00:16:39] If there would be three, there’d be cost of goods. If you want to, lump that into the expense side of the thinking. And then there’s going to be, team, staffing and your own, and if your LLC tax structured as a S corp, your own W2 monies come outta that. And then, your owners draw our discretionary, additional income.
[00:16:55] You think through that. Those are the two biggest. Third one would be advertising. So you wanna look at each of these three and the team member componentry of this is the most obvious place to say, do we have the right people on the. And Jack Welch was famous in the olden days at GE for saying, every year you should be eliminating 10% of your workforce.
[00:17:16] Now, if you’re kitchen table entrepreneur, you’ve got three or four people helping you with your business. Those are really tough, words to hear and bitter pill to swallow. But the reality is this, and this is really harsh to say, but the reality is, if you personally bankrupt.
[00:17:35] Serving your team members and keeping them employed. They will not be employed at the end of that process. And so it’s almost, in a way, and it’s almost, it’s just sad to say this, but you have to preserve your role in the business or you won’t have a business. And that is brutal logic to employ to any kind of right sizing or reduction in force.
[00:17:58] Convers. But small business owners can get so sympathetic and so invested into the idea of them being the employer for their people and love their people so much that they can actually do a massive disservice to the collective, group because they won’t make the hard decisions. And I was in human resources for 20 years in my non-profit, management career, and I.
[00:18:25] Reduction in forced exercises and reorganization and terminations and all of the ugly underbelly side of human resources. And I can tell you it’s brutally difficult on tenderhearted managers who really care about their people. But at the end of the day, somebody’s gotta say, we either bail out weight on this ship, or the whole ship goes.
[00:18:47] And, you have to be in a mental and emotional place to be able to do that work. And I don’t pretend that it’s easy because I know it’s not. Sometimes it’s easy if you’re unhappy with, somebody’s productivity or work and you’re like, there’s a reason now that I really can push forward with what I should have done, before.
[00:19:03] But most commonly we end up with a team that we like and it’s very. To consider reducing the size of the team, and the group we’re working with, but in hard times. Those are very important things to think through, and the emotional fortitude to work through that is really, something to focus on and think about.
[00:19:23] Yeah, it’s
[00:19:24] Michael: grim business. As you say though, if it comes to everybody going down, I just a few thoughts that could take the edge off that or help that are real rather than just avoiding the problem. My, my guess Ken Bur was very helpful on this cuz he went through a couple of big rounds of reductions in 2001, 2008 and he said one thing we managed to do in 2008 is that Sego Capital, the biggest venture.
[00:19:44] Company in the world, I think was then, said, there’s no more funding from us for two years, so whatever you got, you’re gonna make it work. And they had to cut the team by about 10%, I think. But he said what we did to reduce the pain was, would we offered people to take care of 15% salary cut. And he said they actually were able, because they re-expand so fast afterwards to pay people back, they kept track of that number.
[00:20:03] That’s not gonna work for everyone, but it’s a possibility to explore. The other thing you said, if you cut early and do one round of cuts, it’s horrendous for everybody, of course. But then if you do that and you communicate that to your staff, assuming you’ve done your numbers and that’s realistic to survive on that, then you don’t have it hanging over everybody else who’s left.
[00:20:22] Like it’s done now. We rebuild on whatever salary cut, whatever it is. The worst is now over and then the best is in front of us. Yeah. So those are really important disciplines, I think too, which I’m sure you will have been in your UN role in HR of letting people go. But those are really important when it’s your business to keep it af flows.
[00:20:40] The final thing I’d add is just one little exit point, which is right now unemployment in the UK and the US is at a 50 or 40 year low. That is definitely not gonna continue if there’s a recession. So if you want to look after the interest of your staff, the early you let them go, the quicker they’re gonna be able to find new jobs.
[00:20:56] If you wait till the debts of the recession, first of all, as you say, the whole sim ship is gonna sink. And secondly, if you do care about your staff, which I totally get, I’m the same, then give them a chance to find a job. In which case now is a good time to look, not into years’ time.
[00:21:09] Jason: Yeah. So many good points there, man.
[00:21:11] The thing related to the cutting deep once and not having to do it again is really important. That advice was just mentioned this week in the, all-In podcast, which I like to listen to. David Sax is the operator who, helped co-found, or was a Chief operating officer at PayPal. He’s helping Elon Musk right now in Twitter.
[00:21:30] Sort things out. It’s a whole different conversation, but the reality of it is, their commentary in Silicon Valley and what they’ve heard from the venture people over and over is cut deep and hard once. And then you’ve got a team that understands they’re secure in their roles, they’re good operators inside your business and they can move forward to help you, make sure the business is succeeding.
[00:21:52] That’s very. Different than if you have to cut and then people are looking around and they’re, it’s horrible actually, if you have, forced, layoffs, especially for morale. If people sit at the end of it and say to themselves, I know so and so over, there’s not a good worker.
[00:22:11] And they’re still here. That creates a real sense of foreboding. Okay, we obviously didn’t cut deep enough, or those people are here because they’re somehow protected, or somehow there’s some kind of weird culture thing. And the people who aren’t good operators or aren’t good workers are still here and some good people got, cut all of those horrible, corporate in insider scenarios start to emerge in times like this, stress cuz people get very focused on fairness.
[00:22:42] And very focused on, I guess you could say judging, what’s happening in times where their personal livelihood is threatened as they should. And so it is very challenging to do. I would just say, if there are people who, are not performing, then obviously they should have already.
[00:22:58] Dealt with. And if you find yourself needing to do this, then they need to be dealt with. And you really have to think about the psychological and the social, activities of the people who remain and whether you’re gonna rally their enthusiasm to help you build, or whether you’re gonna start a downward cycle in everyone’s motivat.
[00:23:18] And their, interest in helping the business and tho those are really important times, which is why this has to be managed very well. Yeah,
[00:23:26] Michael: absolutely. Yeah, I’ll mentor all of that. The final thing to mention that is very quickly, if you buy a business, you’re probably gonna have to cut some staff.
[00:23:34] So you’re gonna end up with all of this joy all over again, because one of my members is doing that right now. I’m gonna say that’s probably a whole other conversation, but it’s a skill you’ve gotta get used to. So that’s, I I think what number four point number four in surviving and thriving in this session.
[00:23:46] So what’s the, what’s the fifth sort of strategy?
[00:23:50] Jason: Yep. The fifth one is get profitable then. And so this is really where you turn the corner, where you know if the market conditions have changed, you’ve gotten profitable and you know you’re on okay, ground revenue wise, maybe growth is out the window, but you’re still gonna be able to make money.
[00:24:06] And that’s a really important milestone to achieve. And you do that again by just aggressively looking at your p and l statement, knowing what your income is looking. And, the associated, actual profits. And I think that’s an important milestone to achieve. If you can stabilize yourself in a down economy, then you’ve really got a strong footing because many options.
[00:24:27] Begin to unfold for you, or the doors open for you if you’re profitable in a down economy. And you just mentioned, buying a company absolutely can buy a company. You can also launch new products. And I, I said there was an ascars asterisk associated with, killing, unprofitable products.
[00:24:43] And here’s the, second side of that conversation, if you’re profit. And you’re residing in a down economy, you have the opportunity to launch market appropriate products. And what do I mean by that? Maybe it’s a lower priced, product. Maybe you launch a new brand and it’s lower priced.
[00:24:59] Maybe you buy a company that has, a really relevant, product line for, a. A recessionary economy, and, me looking for opportunities to make sense out of where people are at their household level and the budgets. You maybe focus on things that are, not once, but needs, and maybe.
[00:25:15] Package things as, for example, better service. Maybe it’s a recurring, subscription to something, that saves them money. The subscribe and save model. Really lean into that. Those kinds of ideas, I think all open to you if you’re residing in a down economy, but you’re doing it profitably.
[00:25:33] And then the other thing that I’ll just say is you can also look around and see all the people who may have gotten laid. And who may have been brilliant operators and or their business went outta business and through no fault of their own, they, they don’t have employment. And, you really do have an opportunity to work with amazing people.
[00:25:51] That was what happened to us in 2000 7, 8, 9, and it totally radically transformed our business. We hired somebody who had been a senior designer at Nord. For 13 years who was unemployed and she worked with us for five years and it totally revolutionized our business. And so these opportunities really do, open unto you if you’re sitting there ready, willing, and able to look at the market conditions.
[00:26:14] Michael: Yeah, it’s just a, another, again, a reflection, a very positive thing. If you like, the power that comes from running a tight ship is actually, there’s so many positives even in, during a recession, as you say, let alone afterwards. And, yeah, the power of cash. If you’ve got cash and other people haven’t, you’re an incredible, powerful position.
[00:26:32] And people forget that they obsess about revenue or product lines, all sorts of numbers, which just. Very defensible . Have you got all your stock, money tied up in, in stock and it isn’t moving? It’s not of any value to anyone . The stock value is only in your mind half the time because what was worth, $5 a unit last year might be worth nothing now.
[00:26:51] So again, it’s cash, cash all the way and loads of fantastic things you said. And I didn’t know about your designer at Norstrom. That’s really cool story. Yeah, very concrete
[00:26:58] Jason: example. Yeah, her name was Karen and she liked what we were doing, and she was ready to find a new opportunity and she, came to us and said, I promised myself, I was gonna take a break.
[00:27:10] After leaving Nordstrom and then, I was gonna look at whatever really attracted my attention and energy and enthusiasm I was gonna jump into. And it was our business, it was our Cinnamon’s work. And that was, an just an incredible blessing. And so similar things can happen, in the next year or two as.
[00:27:29] If the economy does, continue to go where people are looking for it to, to head, which is really tough times those employment opportunities will be, just flourishing for businesses that can add people. And and that’s, as you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, the gold.
[00:27:45] At the end of the, the pain here. It, that, that would be one of the things I would say could be an absolute game changer is if you’re viable, thriving business in the down economy and you can start to find people and network into relationships where really amazing people are available, man, it could just absolutely, change your business.
[00:28:05] And
[00:28:05] Michael: also it strikes me that’s a beautiful and very human form of that whole taking, resources from low yield and putting ’em in high yield. If a person’s unemployed, then they’re not using their skills at all. Whereas if you take them into a business and you have a thriving business and they make it even better as you’ve experienced, then that’s pro, that’s true.
[00:28:22] Entrepreneurship in that sense that you mentioned earlier. I’ve just got one sort of bonus thing, which doesn’t fit neatly into one of your categories, which will, by the way, fantastic advice. That is this. If you are based in the UK or Europe and you’ve been focused on selling into UK or Europe and you’ve dabbled in the us I would so encourage you to really focus on the US because I think there’s a difference between the US having a, maybe a slowdown, maybe some kind of recession, and what happens on the other side of it.
[00:28:45] This is what we’re looking at in the UK and Europe because, The gas price thing is huge. I don’t think it’s completely gonna go away as an energy issue because Russia has been behind a lot of the economics of Europe in the last, since the fall of the Berlin War really. And that’s going away.
[00:29:00] And I don’t see that coming back and not being. Too bearish about Europe. There are many things that are possible here, but why not consider going where the growth is much more probable. And, you’re gonna have to get used to the fact that there are big, aggressive markets, much more competitive than if you are used to, European sized markets.
[00:29:15] But I think, if you’re gonna home your game, the guess time to, to get a piece of a market is when it’s smaller, not when it’s bigger. So if America shrinks for a while , it’s a great time to go in there. Frankly, I think you need that hedge against the European and UK economy. One thought for the Europeans listening as well,
[00:29:31] Jason: add a bonus as well.
[00:29:32] The reality is, if you do these steps, and this is another, gold at the end of the pain type, observation, you do these steps, you might be surprised who amongst your competitors, Go bankrupt and shut down. And the reality is there’s something in mutual funds called survivorship bias, and that’s it.
[00:29:49] They look at the data only of the companies that exist in the moment. They’re, they’re looking at data and they say, oh, what are the averages for these companies? They don’t look at all of the ones that went bankrupt. And so the reality is you might feel like you’re in second or third or fourth slot right now, as the competitor in your.
[00:30:06] Go through a real lean market and you’ll find out, as Warren Buffet said, who’s been swimming naked. And the reality is your competitors might have been really focused on growth and really focused on top line revenue and really unprofitable, and that will turn sour real fast. And then there you’ll be amongst a different set of competitors.
[00:30:27] And so I really do encourage people go through the. Taking massive action, getting really, clear on your situation, getting aggressive. Cutting non-performing products, reduce your team size as needed, get profitable, and then consider launching new products. That would be the summary, and I really do believe that good businesses are forged in the furnace of difficulty.
[00:30:52] They’re refined in the fire of problems, concerns, drama, and they get better when they survive it. Your lump of. Really could turn into a diamond if you weather the storms and survive. And that would be the number one goal for, working through these hard times. So I just encourage everybody who’s listening to this double down on your belief in your own business, your ability to serve people well and your ability to.
[00:31:20] Make a difference in the world through your products and do everything you have to do to make that reality manifest, and you’re gonna end up with a stronger, better business because of it. So there you have it. That’s my recap.
[00:31:34] Michael: Fantastic. Thanks man. This has been a really uplifting conversation, just a quick reminder to everyone to go and listen to the show and don’t forget to subscribe Spotify and Apple seems to be the main places, but whichever, podcast player of choice you use and don’t get to binge listen to our prior episodes.
[00:31:48] We talked about defensive business strategies a lot and that’s cuz it’s super important to go and absorb that. There’s tons of stuff out there that hopefully will be applicable to a wide variety of e-commerce businesses and. Yeah. Thanks everyone for the conversation, man. Great stuff.
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