The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Michael: It’s really super smart to talk to lawyers, but particularly accountants, small business accountants. In my experience, who’ve been around the block for a few decades, have seen a lot of things come and go, and they will have seen patterns and they can pass those patterns on to you.
[00:00:12]
[00:00:43]
[00:01:20] Jason: Some e-commerce business decisions have a big price to pay and worse. They’re not easily changed after you make them.
[00:01:28] One of the worst of these is called the latter trap. And in this episode, we’re going to discuss the concept, explain what it mean. How to avoid the nasty pernicious effects of stepping into the latter trap and how to really untangle it if you’ve made such mistakes. So, Michael, are you ready to jump into this fun topic today?
[00:01:48] I am.
[00:01:48] Michael: I, I like the mystery, so obviously I’ve got the benefit of having a talk to you about it, but tell us what the ladder trap is. What is this mysterious thing?
[00:01:56] Jason: Sure. Yeah. Well, we’ve all heard the phrase, before you climb a ladder, make sure it’s leaning against the right wall, that kind of idea or something along those lines.
[00:02:05] Usually that’s related to career climbing the ladder or something like that, but in business operations and e-commerce in particular, we can play with that metaphor and extended even further. And. So I want to do that. I want to take that metaphor and kind of, unpack it and apply it specifically to e-commerce, in a few specific areas.
[00:02:26] And so, so let me, let me just flesh it out for a moment. And then Michael, love your commentary on this as well. So just imagine that you, you climb a ladder in on each rung of that ladder. You have a positive outcome that increases with every step you go up. Therefore making it harder to climb down or abandoned that ladder.
[00:02:49] Or to reposition at somewhere else. The logical move in that case is to keep climbing the ladder. The problem with that is frequently. We can get in these situations where we’re four or five, six steps up a ladder, and we realize we don’t like. We, we, you know, we’re stuck, we’re trapped. This is not where we want to be in our business.
[00:03:09] Now that’s on the positive reinforcement side. Like we’re getting sort of this positive benefit, and it’s trapping us. The other angle on this is sometimes with ladder traps, you make a serious commitment or decision, and it has massive economic consequence to you and you’re stuck into it. And it’s like the first rung in the ladder is a bear.
[00:03:29] And it Springs closed on your foot and you’re on that ladder and you’re not getting off easily. And so these are the ideas that we can play with as it relates to our e-commerce business and understanding how to deal with these big decisions, and how to, how to make sure that we don’t get stuck in them.
[00:03:47] Unwisely.
[00:03:47] Michael: Definitely an important point. And I think this is sort of thing. If you’ve been in business for a few years, you’re really going to resonate with this. I think it’s certainly, as soon as you said that, I’m like, oh wow. Yes, this, this is actually really, really important in my own businesses of sending my clients businesses.
[00:04:02] I remember you said something like, be careful what you pick because you’re going to be in a long time. And I guess it relates to the habit, two of the seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. A really solid book in terms of leadership principles, I think, and he says, begin with the end in mind.
[00:04:15] And he says the difference between leadership and management in uses metaphors managements, how to move up the ladder, but leadership is making sure you positioned it gets the right tree in the first place. So that’s why the word leader, which is part of our podcast title, because we’re both passionate about it.
[00:04:28] It really is. I think. More important than you think it is on the, on the day-to-day. Cause it’s so easy to think, oh, I just need to buy, you know, get more product lines, whether that’s buying more as a reseller or developing more as a private label seller, develop more sales channels and that’s it.
[00:04:41] But actually that is really not necessarily true because as you say, if you’re on the wrong ladder, then the further you go, the more vigorously you go, the worse you make the situation. And that’s actually pretty frighteningly common. I think.
[00:04:54] Jason: Yeah, I hadn’t, I hadn’t remembered that, seven habits of highly effective people tie in, but that is actually a great connection point.
[00:05:01] And so it’s fun to kind of link this, I guess, to Stephen Covey’s work. So that’s interesting. Yeah, no, totally agree. It’s it’s a big deal. Yeah, it
[00:05:08] Michael: is an, and so how does it specifically show up in e-commerce businesses in your. Yeah.
[00:05:13] Jason: Well, I think that the it’s a decision making model that we want to apply to the, you know, many choices inside of our business.
[00:05:21] But I would just say there’s probably a priority list of decisions or our big choices that you make as a founder. And th they are, they’re like, Kind of the short list of big, big ladder traps, and the first, and I’ll just mention a few here and Michael, I’m sure you have some more as well, but, the first one I would say is your founding team or your any co-founder arrangement.
[00:05:43] You know, if you start a business with a partner you’ve made a massive decision and that decision is a big, big, you know, Ladder that you’re climbing up, you’re going in one direction with that decision. And it becomes increasingly difficult to climb down that ladder and reposition. So that’s one, the second one I would say is the niche or industry that you choose and choosing a niche or industry.
[00:06:06] If you’re a veteran in that industry, and then you launch a business into it, you go into it with the full knowledge of who the people are, what they’re like, the pros and cons of, you know, the, the customer. And, the industry, but if you launch a business in an industry that you don’t have any background or familiarity with, you’re really blind going into it with no idea whether the customers are cool people to you or not cool people to you, whether they’re ethical to you or not ethical to you, whether the PR, you know, Collaborators in your space are going to be cool to work with or not whether your competitors are going to be ethical and compete, kind of, you know, with, you know, kind of, I guess you, can you say gentleman’s or gentle people’s, you know, ethics or are they going to be totally deceptive and evil?
[00:06:54] And so these are, these are big choices related to your niche. You’re in receipt. You know, another big ladder trap would be the product line, you know, Launch a product line and have it fail. And you don’t have a ladder trap, but launch a product line and sell six or seven figures of that product. And you are stuck into that.
[00:07:13] So, you know, that’s the, that’s the, the challenge with products. It’s not, if they fail, that’s not hard, that’s, you know, that’s not a big deal, but yeah. Are successful, then you’re in a trap. Also financial choices, financing choices, taking out any big loan, can be a ladder trap, or really any long-term contract that you sign that has financial legal consequence to you.
[00:07:33] You could say is a, is a ladder trapping. What are your thoughts on it? You have others to add to the list there.
[00:07:39] Michael: Lots, I’ve fallen into a number, a lot of shots myself, and I’ve had clients that I see, you know, quite often. So this is actually a, yeah, there’s a lot to discuss it. I really think this is a huge value.
[00:07:50] It’s it sounds very negative, but seeing bad things coming and then choosing not to go down a path. It means that what is left is, is more likely to be a good path. I just think it’s worth being very mindful about this stuff. I would say a couple of thoughts, first of all, your founding team or co-founder arrangement business partnerships can be a huge trap.
[00:08:06] I mean, two basic charts. I’ve seen a lot, the first phrase I’ve heard from a business case, I can’t remember who it is. You said you can’t have a good partnership with a bad partner, and don’t assume the other partners, the bad partner I’ve been guilty of that I’ve been the less committed partner in an e-commerce partnership in the past.
[00:08:21] And that’s not a fun thing to admit that. I probably should have said, I’m not going to do this because I haven’t got the time and bandwidth to do it properly. And, and looking back, I was embarrassed. My business partner was a smart, hardworking guy. We will also under-capitalized other, various other things, but, you know, looking back, it would have been a better decision to not work in that particular way.
[00:08:40] The other trap is that I’ve done myself to a degree in that I see a lot is. The people work in a sort of pod. So they duplicate results, which is bad or even worse. You micromanage each decision and you see that in, in dysfunctional marriages to some degree. And we will have that with modern marriages. We don’t have these clean divisions that you used to have, and you’re discussing a lot of things.
[00:08:59] But if you do that in a business partnership, you crawl forward compared to a competition. I, I really think that’s it. Very easy trap to fall into particular. If your only model of a two person operation is a marriage, because that’s not a good plan to replicate that inefficient way of work.
[00:09:12] Jason: What do you mean by working a pod?
[00:09:15] Explain that phrase. What I mean is
[00:09:16] Michael: you kind of move on together. So you both work in product development for a bit, and then you both interfere with the design and then you both go and fuss about you get samples each and you both discuss it to the EDS degree. And then you both work on marketing and that’s just, I’m not saying you shouldn’t both be involved to a degree, but.
[00:09:32] One person needs to be in charge of a particular area. And I think the simple divisions that I’ve seen that work well to two very simple models to put forward to people, to consider and discuss with a business partner of his new number one is CEO and COO. You could both be equal owners of the business, but one is in charge of the overall business.
[00:09:47] And one is in charge of operations. Another one that works very well is somebody who’s more product and. Product development and sourcing, focusing the other one’s more marketing focused that can also work. I think very well, but as long as one person is in charge of a particular area, doesn’t mean the other person never gets involved, but they don’t make the final decision.
[00:10:04] Yeah. You move forward in my experience, if you don’t, that’s it
[00:10:08] Jason: that’s a whole podcast in and of itself working in pods, working in pods trap. I never heard of that before, but that’s true. Okay. What else is on your list of, mistakes, ladder trap mistakes. Just
[00:10:19] Michael: a couple. And just to reference what you were saying.
[00:10:21] You know, if something succeeding and you’ve got six product lines there, then, then you’re going to be trapped. I think sometimes this sort of media could just about surviving business can be the worst trap, cause it’s not bad enough that it fails completely. And it forces you to stop doing that and do something different, but it’s not really working.
[00:10:36] And I think that’s one thing you need to force things one way or the other. The other possible traps that I’ve seen are the business model you’re operating, particularly a source and model. If you start importing stuff from China and you’re private labeling the timescales, which you tie up your money for a really big.
[00:10:51] So that means it takes you a long time to, to move the oil tank around. If you decide to pivot. The second one is physical and digital products. Obviously you have a lot of experience of primarily digital product business, physical products can, if you’re not careful about it, have, characteristics that sort of trap you more easily.
[00:11:09] I think because the money is tied up for longer, the other one is products versus services. And, and that’s an interesting one that you can probably speak to more than me. Cause you guys have service side of the memberships and you have your digital products are delivered with the. Physically being present.
[00:11:22] And if you get that wrong services are not very easy to scale, and that can be a real trap for a lot of people. And the fourth one is the final thing is something I’ve got a lot of experience of content marketing, like what we’re doing. I love our conversations. I don’t always love having to sort of put together, interviews with, with, I enjoyed the interviews, but I don’t, I don’t enjoy having to put that whole machine together, produce content constantly every week.
[00:11:44] And a lot of types of marketing, like Instagram marketing, Twitter, it it’s here today and it’s gone tomorrow versus other forms of marketing where you create digital assets and then you run them on an automatic basis. So those are different forms of kind of activity trap. If you like.
[00:12:00] Jason: I hadn’t thought of that at all, but you’re totally right.
[00:12:02] I need kind of content marketing. I mean, we’re in a podcast. Yeah, just to do a podcast. So that’s content marketing traps. Yeah. That’s very interesting. And I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. They do to a lesser degree. They they’re traps. I would in rank order say that those are easy, more easily to just quit.
[00:12:18] You know, if you stop tweeting on Twitter and your Twitter followers are bummed out. So what, but, you know, so, but there’s rank order to these, but they’re all valid and there are things to consider.
[00:12:29] Michael: Yeah. I mean, I would say if your Twitter follows a bummed out, that’s one thing, but if it’s a driver of your business traffic, then that’s something you can’t so easily just take the foot off the gas off.
[00:12:38] And that’s where I would say if you’re big on Instagram and Pinterest pin posting, for example, and that requires a lot of manual work, then that would be an example of where that’s harder to get out of ready. Totally. So tell me about some contract let’s get personal about this and concrete example from your business.
[00:12:55] If something that felt like a latter chapter. Yeah.
[00:12:57] Jason: Okay. All right. Full confessional time here. I have two examples that come to my mind. One is positive. One is. I guess you could say. But both felt like traps to us. We recently made a decision to basically sign a contract that was two year term contract.
[00:13:13] That was basically a $36,000 a year. So someone would 78 grand over two years. And it was a contract. And after we did that, we were like, Hmm. I wonder if this was really a wise idea because that’s a lot of money to come right out of the net profit of our business. And when we debated back and forth, we realized it was a real bear trap or a ladder trap.
[00:13:36] We were into it. We signed, we, we made a commitment to a strategy and process and there was no going back. Without legal consequence. And so, so then we were stuck in and we were like, okay, now, now we have to kind of go down this path. And so that was one example that was just recent. And, you know, as I think about this, I’m like, yeah, that’s, that’s a, you know, a good, a good example.
[00:13:57] The other one, in, in our businesses, We had a physical product line that we did for years. It was a C for three years in particular, that was a six-figure product line to us. And, there were a lot of, negatives to it. You know, kind of hassles and dramas and, and the profit wasn’t there. It was revenue, but not profit so much.
[00:14:19] And so after three years of commitment to a specific product, we had the hard choice to make a, do we want to continue this? And we, you know, because it was, we had multiple streams of income in our business. We were able to. We’re done with this and in the way where we’re doing it. And so then, you know, we sh we shuttered it and we learned our lessons and we’ve, re-imagined how to do it differently.
[00:14:42] And we had real takeaways that we said to ourselves, okay. We could have learned or did learn, you know, through the school of hard knocks. But, that was not a, that was not a, fatal business decision, you know, neither, neither of these examples in my. Stories here are fake or fatal, but they’re painful.
[00:15:01] And so I think that’s the, you know, the question as it relates to these ladder traps is, you know, some of these can be terminal. You know, you, you start down some of these paths and you’re done. If you, you know, it because you can’t, you can’t, th they’re not retractable or, or, you know, fixable. And so I th I think that’s the thing to think through with the, you know, in our businesses.
[00:15:21] And so, anyway, those are a couple examples.
[00:15:22] Michael: Yeah, I like that. I think that retractable or fixable pieces is actually something worth deep diving into a bit now, but I should first return, you know, on a U with return of some, you know, Aronson, dirty washing. I would say a couple of plastic traps that I’ve been in.
[00:15:36] One them, I would say I’m in now. One is in the private label business products. I think that whole business model was not right for me on my own. Let’s put it that way because a lot of it. Implications of product development or I, the first thing is I did pure private label, which wasn’t even back in 2014, very defensible.
[00:15:52] So as a business model, I should have either gone further and gone for Presto custom products, or just done thinking simpler like wholesale arrangements, which given my business to business. Discussion skills. If I’d known about that model would have probably, probably suited me better. So I did, I learned a lot of skills which have stood me in good stead in sense of teaching others.
[00:16:10] Who’ve done a lot better with those than I have and a more comfortable with those like importing from China, but it was a business model that demanded a, a. The fundamental orientation that I don’t have towards product development. I’m just not that passionate about it. But the solution now is that I’m developing more sort of loose partnerships with people who are very passionate about that.
[00:16:28] The other one is podcasting content marketing is the lead source for the amazing FBA sort of side of things. Coaching and consulting. And my solution is I’m just trying to, you know, we must have off creating things, you know, in the daily and weekly view and trying to create some books and lead magnets and develop, funnels that allow the economics of paid advertising to work.
[00:16:46] Really. So, that’s really the, the thing that I’m trying to move to, which I guess brings me to the point of the question of how do we avoid ladder traps in the first place? Cause obviously you’ve talked about them being pretty painful. No need to go through that pain if we don’t have to. So it’s so how do we go?
[00:17:02] Jason: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the, you know, the, the, the lessons here. Turned into almost cliches and we don’t want them to be cliches, but, you know, the, the old cliche that comes to my mind is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so some of this thinking is just, you know, prior. You know, not stepping on a ladder trap, you know, step one, don’t step on a ladder trap, but, but, you know, that’s easier said than done.
[00:17:28] And we all, you know, make these choices and then realized that they were mistakes or errors or challenges or problems. So I think there, there are a set of, ideas that you can, implement in your business to really mitigate the risk. I would say the first one is test small and commit small. And I’m, you know, a big fan of thinking things through ahead of time.
[00:17:46] As much as possible to make sure that you’re really implementing something that you’re actually super excited about. And it’s, it’s gotta be one of those things where, you know, is it even rise to the level of a test in your business? And you’ve got to get better and better. The kind of discretion to say no to stuff.
[00:18:03] I think of Steve jobs, you know, he was at apple, the Mac computer was as big baby. It was a big flop at first and then he got fired. And then, but when he came back, apple was in the state of affairs that it had, I think hundreds or even more products. And he famously walked into the conference room and drew a four-quadrant grid on the board and said, these is, this is our product strategy.
[00:18:24] And it was like, you know, four, four machines and. And so I think that the test small commits small thing is, is a real challenge, but you’ve got to, you gotta have a mental discipline to say to yourself. I like this idea and I am entrepreneurial. And I like every idea I have, but this doesn’t rise to the occasion.
[00:18:40] So that’s one, the second thing is, never get involved in a land war in Asia. So just a little joke from princess bride there, but you know, some things. Notoriously bad business ideas. And, you know, I would put on that, that category for me personally, I would put, never get involved in a network marketing business or ML.
[00:19:01] So he knows that some of these choices are, you know, you, you just have to think through for yourself what looks like a complete and total bad idea to you. But then you know that the other, tip third tip more practically is whenever big money is on the. Seek real counsel from professionals and wise advice before you sign anything.
[00:19:19] and you know, that, that’s just a, I think of a Sage advice piece do not sign on to something, unless you’ve really got a multitude of counselors telling you. Yeah, this seems to make sense. This is a good idea, you know, and then my fifth tip would be, do not succumb to the market. Time pressure or scarcity tactics in their marketing.
[00:19:38] If it, if it’s anything like a service or a dealer or whatever, don’t succumb to high pressure tactics. And really think through objectively, is this something I really need? And, and is it something I’m going to install in my business, you know, for the longterm. And so those are my four tips for, you know, dealing with, how to avoid, you know, what are your thoughts.
[00:19:58] Michael: Yeah, I really like these, I think test small commits small is, is really wise, related to that some business models or product types will lend themselves to that. And some don’t, which says to me, if you don’t know what you’re doing, head start with something that will enable you to test it on a small scale, which rules out a lot of stuff, which is really helpful.
[00:20:16] If you have too much choice, then things that rule out. Most of them. Oh, very helpful filters, contrary to what you might expect. Having lots of options is not better for choice-making. It really isn’t. It feels like it should be. So for me, that would rule out private label as a first choice in e-commerce, even though a lot, lots of people I know have done incredibly well in it, but mostly because they started with retail arbitrage or laterally, quite a few of my clients are coming from wholesale deals, like doing a million dollars a year in wholesale, and then adding private label products.
[00:20:43] They have cashflow, they have expertise. So anything that doesn’t allow us. I assigned to be at least very mindful of,
[00:20:49] Jason: well, in that situation, if I can just speak into that situation for a moment, then what they started with was a niche or industry that end up with a business model. They could start small wholesale selling maybe with a minimum MOQ or something like that.
[00:21:01] And then they learn the niche or industry, and then they added a higher risk. So we’re seeing strategy or business model to what they already had complimentary going, which is very smart tactic. It’s like incrementally stepping your way into a niche with product strategies that are, you know, more complicated or harder to execute on, but you’ve got the background and expertise.
[00:21:22] Hopefully a list of customers and all that kind of thing. So I think there’s a lot of wisdom there, so, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but that’s a, it’s a good example of mitigating your risks going into, you know, making sure the ladder is leaned up against the right tree and then, then stepping up the rungs of it.
[00:21:36] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:36] Michael: Well, I guess that kind of implies part of the solution as well as the prevention thing, which is two sides of the same coin. Like, I mean, trying to avoid. Setting yourself up for failure in the first place, I guess, is what we’re discussing, but also you don’t necessarily know going in. So don’t make a massive commitment and talking of which are related, but not quite the same point.
[00:21:53] Seth Godin, I think, is a FA a big fan of setting a specific amount of money and, or specific timeframe, preferably both after which you make a no-go decision go or no, go no, go and kill the decision. But yes. In advance, which is so smart because psychologically you’re going to be, you’re going to be sunk in the sunk cost fallacy.
[00:22:11] By the time you get a year into something, if you’re private labeling something, or if you created a business that takes a lot of effort, like a Shopify store, you’ve got a lot of creativity going into it. You’ve worked so hard to get your traffic. Yeah. You need to have some hard numbers where you’ve discussed that in advance.
[00:22:25] Like, okay, where do we call this? If it isn’t profitable or isn’t making revenue or whatever it is by a certain point. Do you, do you have a point where you cut it off? There’s are not easy. Yeah, I
[00:22:35] Jason: totally agree. Sunk cost fallacy is a huge part of this. So you want to walk through a little bit of that because there’s two pieces in my mind.
[00:22:41] One is the, the, the money that you’ve spent, the other piece of it is your time is a sunk cost as well. And you have that around your head. You know, it’s like, it’s like, you know, whatever, it’s just a, the weight on your shoulders is how much time you’ve spent on some strategy. That you have to walk away from.
[00:22:59] So yeah, that’s a huge part of it. You’re right.
[00:23:00] Michael: Let let’s, let’s talk about that instance. You mentioning. I think the third part of sunk cost fallacy is, is really hard to get your head round and your pride is going to want to tell you that it doesn’t exist. If you’re a, you know, a straight male, which is emotional sunk costs.
[00:23:14] It’s hard to admit to yourself that what you’ve been doing for a year is just wrong, but it’s hard to admit yourself sometimes for me anyway, maybe I’m just undeveloped, but it’s hard to admit to yourself that it’s hard to admit to yourself. You think you’re like, oh, I’m a businessman. I’m, I’m a hunter gatherer.
[00:23:28] Alpha male. Driven by emotion. But of course the truth is of course I am. And I’m an artistic type. At least I’m going to fall back on that and go, well, of course I’m emotional. So I think that emotional Suncoast can sometimes be the worst, the willingness to go. I was wrong and I committed time and effort and made promises to my wife or family or whatever it is.
[00:23:45] And you’ve got to go, okay, I was wrong. And you got to say to other people, I’m sorry I was wrong, but. You know, adjust and iterate and work towards fixing it.
[00:23:55] Jason: Well, the motions that you’re talking about are pride ego. Yes. Also you have to, to walk away from something, you have to admit that you were wrong.
[00:24:05] So there’s a degree of humility there to say I messed up, especially if you have. A team around you. It’s one thing. If you’re a kitchen table, entrepreneur by yourself, it’s another thing. If you’ve got a team member or a larger team that. Rallied their enthusiasm in support of your idea. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve focused them and their energy and effort on an idea.
[00:24:32] And all of that is sunk cost. Then if you abandon the, the idea, and so that’s a huge part of this because your, your status as a leader and all of those elements go into that whole emotional equation, which is a, it’s a big. Problem. I mean, it’s a, it’s a big reason why people don’t step back off these ladders and untangled themselves out of them.
[00:24:52] Michael: It reminds me of the Stockdale paradox, which is one of the Jim Collins things that he mentioned in good to great, or one of his books, which I believe I’ve even got it written up here because I’m on a board here because I find it such a great go-to. He talks about the Stockdale paradox, which I believe Jim stock, there was an incorrect me, if I’m wrong, if you know different, he was a prisoner of war in, I think Vietnam, the Massachusetts farm was that the Americas of you could choose.
[00:25:14] And he survived by believing, by being brutally honest with himself, but also having faith that he would find his way out of the situation. And I think that that mentality mix is really hard, but that is really a hundred percent. What is what an entrepreneur needs is. You’ve got to have faith that your work your way out of it, but equally admit the truth.
[00:25:32] And some of the great business leaders are very obsessed with the, with truth at whatever that means. And, and Jeff bays us is for example, one of those,
[00:25:39] Jason: he was an optimistic, realist, not a delusional like pessimists. He was being very honest about his circumstance, but also had the hope of the future.
[00:25:51] Michael: I think so if that’s my understanding, I mean, obviously they’re probably very deep psychological studies that may disagree, but as a general principle, I think that that works the talking of which talking of stepping outside your own head.
[00:26:02] I think your idea of wise advice is really, really important. I mean, the thing is a lot of entrepreneurs seem to go via. I wanted to find my boss, why would ask anyone’s opinion and just following what the guru says. And neither I think is right. You have to have your own intuition instincts, and those will get better over time.
[00:26:19] You’ll get to learn from mistakes and that’s just the best way to learn, but it’s the most painful way to learn. However, It’s really super smart to talk to lawyers, but particularly accountants, small business accountants. In my experience, who’ve been around the block for a few decades, have seen a lot of things come and go, and they will have seen patterns and they can pass those patterns on to you.
[00:26:38] They’re by their nature, somewhat risk averse people. So they aren’t always going to be the people whose advice you slave actually follow, but at least getting a sense of that. I just think he’s incredibly good plan. And few of us talk to our accounts. It’s enough. I think.
[00:26:51] Wrapup: Hey folks, thank you for listening to another episode of the e-commerce leader. I hope you enjoyed thinking this one through as much as I did. I think it’s such a, it’s not an easy and emotionally easy or intellectually easy topic to talk about, I would say, but it’s really important because I see a lot of pain in businesses that I’ve run and that my clients are running right now that I feel can be avoided.
[00:27:14] Really massively reduced. And that’s the great, good news. I think once you recognize that you’re in what is sometimes called the activity trap that is working away, day-to-day once a month, even year to year managing people or doing tasks for yourself that don’t produce the outcome you want, then you can start to see, hang on.
[00:27:34] We’ve propped our ladder against the wrong wall to continue Jason’s metaphors. And I think this is really, really important stuff to think through and above all. I would say if you’re in operations in a business to answers that you are, to some extent Linnaean gets the wrong wall or going in the wrong direction are quite high, it’s worth revising.
[00:27:52] Whether you’re really getting out of your business, what you want and whether other people. You know, other stakeholders like investors or your family or your employees, or indeed your customers or clients, whether they’re getting out of the business, what you really would want them to have. And if not to have a good, hard look at the business, few things that you can look at that Jason’s facing.
[00:28:12] Your founding team or your co-founder arrangement, your niche, what industry, your product line, your financing choices, for example, loans or contractual arrangements or any long-term contracts worth revisiting any one of those things? I would also say think about the sourcing model. You’ve got the business model in particular product type, physical versus digital products versus services and your marketing approach.
[00:28:34] And particularly for me, for an example, content marketing, creating all the time versus ad driven or sort of more asset based. So a lot of people try to drive traffic through organic traffic, like SEO that requires a lot of work. Other people work on ad driven stuff, neither is right or wrong, but they could be ways of operating that have kind of locked you in.
[00:28:55] In a way that’s not helpful. So if that’s the case, then do go through and have a listen to the next episode where we focus a bit more on some solutions, how to avoid that, the traps a bit more. And also if you’re in one, what do you do to pivot your way out? And unfortunately, there are lots of sort of partial and even whole solutions to this stuff.
[00:29:13] But it’s worth taking a good, hard look. It requires a certain maturity, and I hope that you have the strength to do this. Maybe not in the middle of Q4, but a great time to do this would be after the key four, craziness has died down. If it’s a big time of year for you, as it is for many of us then January or February is a natural time to reflect on our learnings and what worked, what didn’t.
[00:29:35] And hopefully the sunk cost fallacy. If it’s come up in your business is something that you become aware of and that you then manage in the right way. The good news is on the other side of these hard choices and difficult actions at the sort of big picture level is a lot of big, big future wins. Jason’s an example of that with pixie Faire, and I think that’s the really heartening thing to take away from.
[00:30:00] As ever folks, if you have a listen to this and you think that Jason or myself could help you with your business. Jason works with Kyle Haimer, who I’ve personally worked with in the past at fantastic guy who Kyle focuses on the Amazon and Walmart side. Jason focuses on Shopify branding, marketing strategy.
[00:30:17] If you want to work with those guys, get to winning on shopify.com. They have one-to-one mentoring and these days it’s also a very cool small group, which I’ve had the honor of being a member of in the past and a really great discussion quality there, and an insight as you’d expect from Jason, if you want to work with me, perhaps you’ll over this side of the pond in the UK or Europe I’ve worked with people in America, but they generally tend to be UK Europe.
[00:30:41] The one-to-one mentoring I offer. You can find out it’s about amazing fba.com forward slash mentoring. And for the masterminds that I run if you want to join the 10 K collective mastermind, which if you’ve got 40 or $50,000 or pounds or euros per month revenue in your business, private label or wholesale type business, go to www dot the Amazon.
[00:31:04] Must mind.com. And if you want to check out the new six figure masterminds, I’m calling it for those doing at least six figures a year. So by $10,000 or euros or pounds per month, minimum revenue, then just email me. That’s about to kick off very soon where we’re gathering people as we [email protected].
[00:31:26] That’s Michael M I C H a E L. Amazing fba.com. If those weren’t enough calls to actions, that the final thing to say is the obvious thing for any podcast to, which is don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Spotify, apple, podcasts, Google, or all the other places we are. And if you like what we’re saying, A great way to reward us for that for absolutely free.
[00:31:47] It’s this go to apple podcasts. If you use that at all and just give us a rating out of five stars, you don’t even know to write anything, just, just hit the button on the ratings. And that really, really helps us to help future e-commerce leaders and get the message out to as many people as possible.
[00:32:02] Thank you so much for listening to the e-commerce leader show.
[00:32:06]