The E-commerce Leader

We are Michael Veazey in London, England,

Jason miles in Seattle, Washington.

More importantly, you are the owner of a thriving online business. And you want to become the best ecommerce leader you can be. We’re here to get you there. Let’s jump in.

Michael, how are you doing, man? I’m doing well. Thanks. Yes, over COVID-19 or maybe it was just common or garden flew. And the sun is shining here in London and I’ve just cycled through London today to go and deal with something and it’s it’s actually really quite nice because no traffic on the roads. I really like it is facing this. Hey,

you’re a bike around London type guy, right? Because when I met last summer, yeah, it was such a blast. My wife and I were over there for a big show at NBC, which is a big trade show in Birmingham and we met up you bike to

meet us. I think I did. Yes, the way to get around London and especially Now Yeah, so not the getting around London we’re supposed to be doing very much so you know if anyone hears this I didn’t do it. But yeah,

you were legal. Okay. All right legal shelter in place. Anyway, all right, let’s jump in. Man, let’s jump in we I think we got a great topic for today. Yeah, this is when we’ve we’ve we’ve mentioned it just a tiny bit when we talked about our initial, what’s the show gonna be about like episode zero or whatever you call it, you know, in our first conversation and, and I want to just dig in a little bit to this idea, which is pivoting, changing your business or, you know, aspects of your business. from one thing to the next. And of course, under great stress, culturally, socially, everybody through this whole COVID thing is going, you know, a lot of stress. It’s a time for pivots. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s a time for people to do things that maybe they buy either being forced, or, you know, maybe they’re, they’re just looking for opportunities. I think it’s a time for people to consider this idea. So what what are your thoughts on it at generally And then let’s dig in.

Yeah, so I just want to give a bit of feedback on the reality of of some very good Amazon sellers, but not huge, doing 50 million a year or something. But the the take a collective beating had a meeting. mastermind had a meeting a couple of days ago on zoom. And it was actually just as packed and just as hard to run as in person. You know, it’s like, it’s like herding cats working with entrepreneurs, but I love the energy and actually, same kind of thing. I mean, instead of having a whiteboard at the front, I shared the screen and I was busy typing notes on my massive note taker for some reason. And it’s busy and the energy is there. But yeah, people have it’s a game of two halves. So a lot of people are finding that their sales have gone down, right and 80% and a couple of people who do say 80, or 80% 88, zero and, and some people are finding that the sales have tripled, and but there’s not much in between, it’s quite extreme. So those who have got the sales down are obviously having to do a number of things, some of which I wouldn’t classify as pivoting. It’s like pulling their horns in. And maybe Well, one thing, actually, that they’re saying is that some people are repurposing their stuff, which is an instinct for and pivot, but they’re, they’re either gonna get rid of them, or get them to do nothing or get to do different stuff, which is interesting. So for Amazon sellers right now, not just because COVID shut down various channels, but specifically Amazon is tending to make it very hard to fulfill most stuff that it isn’t perceived as, quote, essential, which includes some odd things that aren’t really essential. It’s it’s really, really top of mind for Amazon sellers right now. So and even if it isn’t, I would say you should be top of mind if you’re on Amazon, because I still think you have a very high percentage chance of getting suspended for three months at some point if you’re a really big seller, because I know if you have like, and that’s super painful, and so I think it’s forcing Amazon sellers to do what they should have been doing anyway, which is reconsider the business.

So that’s interesting on it. Yeah, no, yeah. It’s interesting. You mentioned that our coaching clients that are big in Amazon have been largely positive. I don’t we don’t have any clients that have been negatively hurt in this, you know, last set whatever it is four weeks, six weeks, whatever. But but many of them are, are up nicely. And but yeah, absolutely time for pivot for people in those situations. And you know, in fact, it’s funny you mentioned the up being, you know up that much. We have some clients who are up as well. And one of their concerns is their sourcing, you know that the pivot to them, the successful sellers that we’re helping them through is sourcing strategies to ensure that they have quantity available, because you know, you get kind of in these patterns, this plateau of what you think Amazon will kind of absorb. And then if it really radically changes, you’re like, wait, wait, wait, I’m not ready. I’m not sourced, yeah, adequately for this. And so that’s a whole different pivot points. Two is do you go from one manufacturer to a collection? You go from China based manufacturing to US based etc, etc.

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is that I was being talking to various guests for the podcast. And one issue is, for example, getting freight from America to the US, sorry, America to the USA, from China to the USA. And basically the cost of effort, it’s doubled and the speed of it has gone down a lot. So most people are being pushed towards sea freight. So that’s one logistical issue. China is in theory back open but I would be very wary of whether they get a secondary infection and you know, sort of surge and shut down again to a degree. I think the labor’s their raw raw materials have gone up so costs are going to be up. What else was the summary from that? And then of course fulfillment in the US. Yeah, FDA is very challenged. A lot of fulfilling fbm so fulfilled by merchants. So third party warehouses aren’t take on new people are very expensive. So there’s a lot of logistical challenges is not just haven’t got enough stock. It’s like how much is going to cost me? How am I going to get it to a warehouse? I’m going to deliver it to the end consumer. Yeah, I would point out as well at the time of recording, which is like sort of early April, US has got off the charts in faction increase a day by day as well. So I think, enable situation either. So yeah, there’s there’s a lot to consider when it comes to to that situation right now.

Well, let’s do a couple things in the show. Let’s define what we’re what we mean by

You’re right, we should define our terms. Define your terms. So what is this emulator which you speak?

Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing let’s get into is a type of device because it’s not just for Amazon sellers. Of course, it’s for many, many areas. Yes. In different genres of topics. Absolutely. Okay. So what’s your what’s your let’s define the term here. What do you think?

We can do? Traditional say pivots. I’m trying to think I can’t remember what the original use for for Twitter was supposed to be something completely different. And then they realized that this You know, this thing where people were sending short messages seemed to be very popular. So they pivoted to make the whole business about that. Another example of a pivot is I believe that the early phone companies used SMS messaging was a way to get engineers just to tell each other stuff easily and quickly. And it’s absolutely huge. Now I communicate nearly all by message rather than phone calls, because I find phone calls pretty intrusive and inconvenient most of the time unless it’s been arranged. And so that those I suppose what I would call a pivot is you going in one direction, and then you stop and turn on a pivot and then go in a new direction? Because you perceive that that’s going to be more successful or it turns out to be more successful? Or more basic? Yeah, okay. Yeah. How

about you? What’s your take on the word pivot?

Yeah, I would add, the rationale for pivot is some it’s it’s pain or gain. It’s, it’s if something’s not working, and it’s broken and you realize it, you wake up and think This is just not working, you know? Or you wake up and think, Oh my gosh, if I only did this I could make this happen or, you know, you see the the Greenfield or the big opportunity, the moonshot potential and, and so you’re drawn to a change. And then and obviously the pivot is the point of change.

And I think what you just articulated the position that a lot of people that I know it’s not just for Amazon sellers, but the people I personally know, a normally one or either camp right now. They’re not just neutral that that neutral grounds been removed by this gated situation. And actually, if you dug deeper, you’d probably find that structurally that was, you know, maybe going to happen on a basis of a different crisis, but some kind of crisis would have made people realize that

Yeah, can I just speak to that though for a minute because I think it’s fascinating so people are in what you just said is people are polarized right now either really opportunistic like, Hey, I can this is gonna be great or really like, this is horrible. I you know, big problems. Yeah, I not to go on a tangent, but I was a training manager at a police department for a year as a contractor and it was a generally I just didn’t like it at all. But

that is a very different from what you do now. Right? I know,

it was a long time ago, I was really young, and I wasn’t, I didn’t train the cops or anything. I just coordinated. You know, like the SWAT team guys would bring their, you know, dogs in and canine training, all that kind of stuff. And I would I would just book the meeting rooms and you know, stuff like that. Well, one of the times I am I was working there. I rolled up just on the freeway behind a big wreck, just coincidentally, and, and I got out of the car. I was like the third car behind this big three car disaster. And I was paralyzed with fear, not fear. I just didn’t know what to do. I guess I was afraid to do the wrong thing. And I just stood there literally. I mean, I was just, I guess I was in shock. I just didn’t know how to I didn’t know if that touched people or what to do. No clue. And so I just did nothing. And, um, and then I went to work the next day and my boss was this crusty old police lieutenant. And I told him a story. And he said, Jason, were you trained to know what to do? And I was like, No. He said, Well, why would you assume you would know what to do in a situation like that? And I think the lesson for all of us right now is we’re in this weird. We are we in the Great Depression, you know, right now, we don’t know, we’re in this weird new thing. And I think a lot of us are going to like these extremes. Super exciting, super horrible. And I think the trained mind, the disciplined mind, is to say, Wait, I gotta slow down, I gotta get my emotions in check. I’ve got to think logically, and not make, you know, not be paralyzed by fear, but also not act rationally. And I mean, it’s really a moment for all of us to say, you know, is my mind leading me astray? with either misinformation or fear or, you know, Whatever. So anyway, that goes into pivots. I think a lot is the background psychology.

I think you’re right. And actually, I mean, you Okay, I’m not a doctor, as you would say. I would say, I’d hope that what we can offer in this podcast because I think pivots can be one of our very central themes we’ve consciously know, fleshed out quite a few things. And I do think that, as you said, you know, not a doctor, but we can offer some trait, not exactly training, but at least thought through, you know, conversations that lead people to be able to for themselves, think about it rationally, and then come out in the end with a robust, thoughtful response. And that was one of your favorite words thoughtful, and it’s a very good word, because it’s not a word. Many entrepreneurs talk about action. And I think if you’re very action oriented, and you go from emotion to action right now, it’s going to lead you astray. And I think that the thought in the middle is the bit that I hope we can provide, you know,

well, let’s make it personal a little bit and we want to talk through types of pivots and maybe even what the the challenge winches with pivots are but what? in your life and your business career, you have any big pivots that have really shaped your destiny at all or changed your life?

My test, what I’ve suddenly pivoted a lot in my career and my CV is very varied of I would say. I think ultimately, I’ve pivoted several times and what a lot of it comes down to something that there’s a common thread which is communication. So I started off I went to university to study languages and ended up pivoting to music because I just got passionate about it somehow. But it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I went to university something to do with language, I’m very verbal and and then after pivoting out of music teaching into online selling, and that was from a pivoting out of being trained to be a coach and being I think a good music coach, but not being good at marketing myself there. I then got pivoted into the e commerce world through Amazon. And I suppose the biggest pivot is In a way, as always, it’s mostly is partly a pivot of attention and focus for sure. But it’s also an addition rather than just instead of is out of the actual ecommerce selling to pretty quickly decided to run the podcast and then out of that the consulting and then the masterminds, which it took about three or four iterations to get to where the masterminds are now, and, and what I feel is that if I look back at this messy looking trajectory, there is a common thread which is communication and bringing people together, whether it’s an orchestra or a bunch of mastermind members, there is something about running the dynamic of a room and coordination and stuff that fascinates me. And that’s why we have we’re having a podcast conversation right now because I just find it intriguing. And I think in the end, I used to give myself a hard time about this because I should be like a pure physical product seller but what I realized is, if you add value to the system somewhere at some point, people will pay you and that will be proof that you’re adding value. And that’s it. All you got to do is add value and then monetize And it’s called business. Right? So I guess that’s that’s my vertical kind of wacky answer. But I pivoted a few times. Yeah.

And I think the lesson than what you just described is really important, which is, you know, the people always say, follow your passion or don’t follow your passion. I don’t. And I think that’s so simplistic. I think the real question is, you’re on a journey. And you just continuously have to say, Do I go left here? Do I go right here, which do I feel best about? What am I most energized by? And sometimes you’re just like, you know, I can see an opportunity here, wherever it is, conceptually, but I just have zero energy for it. Yeah, right. He did. For me, literally, I you know, I’m the guy frequently that I’ll speak at conferences about Shopify, like at the Amazon conferences. And you know, I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to me afterwards, and they clearly haven’t listened to anything I said, and their only response to me is, you should really be selling on Amazon, man. You don’t even sell on Amazon. I’m like, didn’t you just hear me talk about you know, Shopify, it’s, it’s by design and in You know, it’s so hilarious that people, you know, they want me to do something that for me new energy. Yeah, I want to know, I just not what I want to do. And I think that part of our journey, all of us is just leaning into things that we have energy and excitement for. and ignore the rest. You know,

I think you’re right. And I think actually giving yourself permission. It’s weird. Like if you’re well educated, quote, unquote, my mom and my grandmother were teachers. And my dad was a lawyer. So you know, he’s retired now but he so I could be forgiven for being a bit too rule following and giving myself all the time and I’m British, anyway, give a tradition of that, you know, we all must celebrate failure. It’s like the one guy in the 10 k collective meeting the other day whose sales tripled, kind of like looked embarrassed because the other guys their sales, equated to like a fifth or something and a couple of cases, not at all, a lot of them are sort of, you know, in the middle, but it’s strange because you’re right. In the end, there are things that energize in things that don’t like I’ve been offered, you know, some there’s a guys that have almost been chasing me, and I’m making And also fortunate here because by the time this is published, you may have said, I’m not interested in going away, but somehow with literally potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest in working with you on Amazon, but I’ve been, he’s wanting me to kind of create the business from scratch. In the sense, he has no particular affinity for a particular type of product. And I’m just not drawn to doing that. I mean, like, that’s so not attractive. Somehow, I’m finding it really hard to motivate myself. And the other things like you got in touch, I’m like, Yes, that will be great, because there is such a richness in what we can explore here. And who knows where it leads, it leads to doing a course as it leads to me implementing this stuff with my inbound ecommerce business myself. I don’t know. But I think you’re right. You’ve got to give yourself permission to follow your instincts a lot of the time, I mean, but having said that, though, let’s let’s discuss this is weirdly going in a different direction for unexpected but let’s follow this because we guess we’re talking about mindset. And I guess that’s not a wrong thing. When it comes to pivots because it’s as you intended, what’s your motivation? Is it desperation or inspiration as opposed to pleasure or pain? So how Then we square that thing of you said, Don’t just follow your passion. Are you implying that think rationally. But on the other hand, you’ve got to trust this sort of intuition that we both talked about. How do you think that we square those two things?

Well, I mean, obviously, we’re all capitalists, I think I mean, this is like the great game isn’t it is making money online? And yeah, you know, a lot of a lot of stuff we can want to do. And then the question is, is it ringing the cash register? Yeah. So to me the great equalizer is was that profitable? And that’s the reality. That’s the hard cold, you know, hard, cold cash is the reality. Was this a profitable venture? And if it’s not think through that, because honestly, because we started our charity, my wife and I in 2010, and we happily spend a ton of time on our charity, we take no money out of it. It’s not for personal gain at all. It’s a labor of true hard work effort of love. And, but we know it’s that You know what I mean? Like, we tried to be deliberate that it’s charitable, it’s not in any way going to be helpful to us. It’s the opposite of that. And, but so to me, I mean, I think the big question is, are these pivots moving you towards? You know, a bottom line reality, that’s positive outcome. And that’s the goal. That’s the okay.

So let me just reframe a question that’s similar to that one, then why do you think people struggle with pivots because people often do hang on to stuff that is a really bad situation. Anyone from the outside like as a business coach, you must have seen this, I see this so often people come to me and I want to cry. And then I don’t know what to do, like literally my first ever coaching session, like in 2016. with somebody in Amazon business. He was a couple of man, a woman and my wife and the woman literally cried in the session. Thank God has never happened since but I just didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’ve got to deliver the bad news. So why do people not pivot? Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a great question, isn’t it? I mean, I you probably have a million answers. to that question yourself, I mean, the the thing that I see people do the mistake mental mistake I see people make frequently is just the what, you know what psychologists call the sunk cost fallacy. And, and so, you know, like, if you’ve invested a lot of time into whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, your willingness to move off of that thing onto something else feels in particular, like mentally and emotionally painful because of all the time you’ve previously spent. Which is that’s referred to as a sunk cost fallacy. And the reality is, if you just walked away and stopped, because if it’s not working, then you know, why have that emotional mental commitment to something well, we just it’s a mental hang up we all get into so I think that’s a big one. I think the other one that comes to my mind I’ll mention another one and then I’d love to hear your your thoughts to another one that comes to my mind is people are just overwhelmed with their own ability. To execute, sometimes I say as an Amazon seller, for example, if you’re if your side hustle and an Amazon business and you’re trying to make a go, but and you’re staying up till one two in the morning, you know, sending boxes out or you know, doing whatever. You just don’t have time. And you don’t have the mental bandwidth to think through a new plan, you know, the idea of changing to something else is appealing, but you don’t have the, the, you know, burn the ships, I have to change this has to stop right now I have to find a new thing by you know, Monday morning pressure, because you’re kind of in it and it’s consuming all your time. And you can just sort of get in this sort of mental groove. There’s a funny old American phrase that if, you know people will say, which is pick your up carefully. You’ll be in it for the next 20 miles. And and it will be true. I mean, you know, you said people who are selling on ebay that started 25 years ago. They don’t Want to be on eBay? But they’re just not?

Yeah, you’re right. Right. Pick your up carefully. There’s some scary statistic about the rate of people that change their current account with their bank or checking account, I guess you call it in the states is is lower than the divorce rate, isn’t it? People are more committed to the bank or rather, they just think it’s going to be so painful

to her. That’s

Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know quite what it means. But it means something. I’m just putting her out there.

We’re all nuts. Well, what have you seen? I mean, what are your thoughts on it? I mean,

yeah, why’d you like that? first couple. I think, um, invest. I think the sunk cost fallacy I think is really very, very big. I think you put your finger on it. I think investing a lot of time or money. Investing emotion, and hope is really big. Oh, yeah. I would say which is like, for example, this lady did put a lot of time and energy and just kind of hope into it’s a dream. It’s a dream. Yeah. You’re not letting go of a load of widgets. Whereas you know, frankly, I got, you know, Got a problem, I got approached with a cease and desist letter for some some widgets on Amazon A while ago. And I had the opposite problem, which is like, I didn’t care enough about it, they weren’t that unique or differentiated, I just thought, I just want to let go these eyes want had enough of it. And I’m going to be giving them away to some charities. So I’m because I have no big emotional attachment to them. But even so I was attached to the idea of the money for a while. So I guess we’ll get emotional about money. And we’ve got to be honest about that. The other thing that strikes me is though, especially with Amazon, it depends how you approach things. I would say that how you start a relationship with anything or anybody sets a sort of unconscious, but really powerful set of rules for yourself. How do you how do you mean, like, what I mean is that if you’re sold into Amazon app, as a sort of magical subconscious, yeah, that can be very because you you can spend, you know my case, I spent like three and a half thousand dollars on some training and I’m not saying it wasn’t good or at the time, it was a bigger opportunity than it was now and it’s easier than it is now. And I know some people who’ve taken the time accent reading at the same time and, and I’ve made millions I haven’t but I felt like for quite a long time It felt he made some kind of religious commitment that would be overstating it but some kind of commitment to a concept or an idea. And ideas are very powerful things when people die for ideas people die for the idea of being a Marxist or Yeah, of course a jihad is Muslim in in a lot of Africa, right East Asia, and people die for the idea of Amiga, an American or a Brit in the army. Yeah, you know, it sounds like a weird thing to say. But I mean, these sound like far fetched I’m not talking about religious, or, you know, don’t feel country level. But there is something weirdly strong about that. Do you know what I mean? Like I’m a shy person. I’m an Amazon seller, I’m an X. Somebody, I guess,

you know, the other thing that I’ve seen like that, as people get committed to Facebook advertising in almost a cult, like really, I

haven’t come across that.

There are people there are people who are convinced that’s the solution. And you know, we’ll get coaching clients who come minimum. That’s the first thing you want to do. And like, do you have a brand? No. Do you have a product strategy? No. Well, then let’s back the train up a little bit and talk sir. But they’re just convinced that Facebook ads or you know can it comes down to salesmanship, they’ve heard some course or webinar or seen the, you know, the, whatever, whatever, you know, online presentation and, and so, yeah, I take your point, though, people get committed to these concepts. Really the depth of the concept, yes, is an important part of the journey of transformation.

And I think what you put your finger on something which in a way I I’m kind of hoping that nobody who sells Amazon courses is listening before Facebook, because actually what what you’ve what I’ve just realized in myself as well, I’m really ever quite articulated. This is like the usual therapy type session here but is that you really have to say sup very hard on an idea, in order to part with some money and then a lot of time and energy and stuff. It is a kind of part of sunk costs, but I think it’s different from money, time, effort. Or even emotional attachment to your business, I think isn’t attached with the idea. So I think yeah, there’s a lot that you’ve got to let go of to pivot man. No wonder nobody ever does it.

Sure. Not true. Shall Dini is great on the influence triggers, of course, if you’re not familiar with his work, Robert Cialdini, and one of them is commitment and consistency. So one of the psychological triggers that is, is just in reality, part of our mental frameworks is commitment to prior, you know, thoughts and ideas, and we, so so that, and that’s good or bad depending on your salesman, you can use that to your advantage or whatever, but it’s a part of reality. And so I think, yeah, that’s the that’s the takeaway is you’ve got a commitment mentally to a concept and, and to pivot means to be willing to break with that and to look at new alternatives. And yeah, that’s a key key part of it.

So okay, now we’ve examined why nobody normally pivots in normal times. We also just kind of look quickly. Well actually, what I haven’t done is asked you about Because we don’t have to rush on this topic, because we’re devoting many different episodes to this, because it’s so critical. And so timely, I think I mean, it doesn’t matter if people are listening in 2021 I think it’s still going to be relevant, but it’s particularly timely in the mid mid 2020. So what’s the biggest pivot that you’ve ever had to do in your business? Because you’ve asked me about that. And I’d be fascinated to know by that, actually.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m an old guy at this point my life so I’ve had a lot of pivots. So career wise, and that kind of thing had different career journeys. But for our e commerce business, there’s one point that was really, really critical. And we started on eBay. And where we started was we needed money. It was a great recession 2007 2008 and my wife was insanely good at making doll clothes and you know, the story of you know, I’ve been on your podcast before and so she could make this stuff it looked like little Dior outfits or little you know the name and name of top designer she could make a doll sized version and and I was the market So I wouldn’t do the auctions and when they were auctioned, and, and I, you know, we created a little brand and a logo and we would write descriptions and do good photography and the auction started going for, you know, first one was $39 and $79 and $99. And they got up the highest auction ending price we ever had for one of our outputs was 570 $500 and 75 cents, that was our high watermark. And over the course of about 18 months, it got easy for me, I would just hit realist or just, you know, just cut and paste the content and you know, change things. But for her she was so until midnight making this stuff she It’s been three weeks on on one of these outfits. And so the money just didn’t make sense. I mean, if it if it was sold for three, four or $500 there was no money in it in terms of profit, and she was killing herself doing this and so she after 18 months, she was totally burned out. I was super super hyped about online selling because I felt Like, we had gotten ourselves into the world of e commerce, and I was so excited, I was just like, this is like this is go time. But I had this critical partner, I mean, my business partner, I was really her business, I was just the marketer. And she was done with that. And so for the summer of 2009, we took the summer off. And we just really, really had a lot of conversations and, and thought through and I read stuff and searched. And that was the summer that we thought through the pivot to physically prop that moving away from the physical product and moving towards the digitally downloadable, so in patterns.

So what I find fascinating about that story is what you’ve mentioned, because we’ve talked about it before on one of the previous episodes, but the nuance there is we took some time off, and we thought we were talking about at the beginning where we about the difference between where your emotions are at and then action and and, you know, I think that that Thinking gap is something that as entrepreneurs, I mean, like a lot of people just think forever. And that’s called research, aka fear. People were addressing, you know, your clients and their 10 k collective members. And my, you know, most of my coaching clients now, actually are in the weeds and doing the thing. And as you say, they’re packing boxes, or 1am, or whatever it is, they’re doing updates in a listing or whatever. And actually, for those people, I think the timeout is critical, and I think enforced timeout like you’re having

now. And it could be that during that many great

time. I mean, my wife’s been running around London, playing the piano and teaching like crazy and actually has, you know, 100% of her playing work is stopped for the moment, and she’s actually got some time to reflect and thinking useful, actually, I think it’s essentially it’s actually come at a really good time for her. I’m not wishing this thing on anybody, but I think people underestimate the value of thinking time sometimes. I totally agree. Yeah, so that was our that was our big move. 2009 the fall. We started with just a handful Have sewing patterns. And now we have close to 3000.

And our site is one of the top Shopify sites. Pixi. fair.com is the site, you can go check it out, we have a, just a huge catalogue of digitally downloadable sewing patterns, online classes and a membership site. Those are the three elements that really make our you know, make our business and we’ve sold millions and millions and millions of dollars of that, and it’s really changed our life. The rest is history, I guess, as they say. But um, yeah, I mean, that was our biggest pivot. So, okay, so let’s, let’s circle back to this if it’s okay, let’s, let’s describe a few other pivots. I mean, I described mine, which, which I would call that a product strategy pivot. Yeah, really. And it was also a platform pivot because eBay didn’t. You couldn’t sell a digitally downloaded file on eBay. And so so we had to change platforms to our own website. So but other side other pivots, other pivots, one would be from side hustle.

to full full time

you know, ecommerce person, you know, like it’s your full time occupation. Yeah. I mean, there’s there’s many I mean, you know, I mean, lots of lots of pivots. What are your thoughts on those? I mean, what are Top of Mind pivots for you that you’re

Yeah, I think

I think ecommerce business models are really important.

I think the retail arbitrage or thing or online arbitrage is Yeah, I think sort of stepping on to, you know, some solid ground from very shaky ground. Yeah, one month to the next. Yeah, I think solopreneur to manager is really big. And sometimes people define business size by top line revenue. And on Amazon. It’s not that hard. I mean, it’s hard, but it’s not very hard to get to, you know, million dollar run rate and I’ve got a member the mastermind who’s beyond $3 million run rate right now, but he’s got no staff, no vas, no nothing and he’s sitting on a monster opportunity. There. To expand, but he’s gonna have to get used to the idea of getting out of the business. And by the way, he’s beautifully placed because he was so bored recently, he was considering selling his business and we looked at it and went, well, why don’t you actually replace the boring bits? And then just keep the income stream? Just saying, Oh, yeah, he’s a very interesting guy. He’s suit. He’s about 25 or something. He’s very chilled, but also very, very sharp. He’s kind of a real mixture, very sharp and very lazy. And that’s like, really very good. That’s good to have running a business. You know, Bill Gates used to say he wants to employ lazy because they’re smart. You know, lazy is not a fair thing to say he works. He goes, he goes and does stuff be scheduled manner. Yeah. So that’s like, for me, that’s the number one person I can think of who’s sitting on the opportunity and the pivot theme is going to be one to two people in his business. That’s going to be a big leap for him. Yeah,

yeah. I think another one for me that I we get a lot of clients that are platform. You know, they have a successful Amazon or eBay business. They know what they’re selling. They know know how it works, they know their customer, they have a brand, and they need to expand to Walmart calm or expand to Shopify. And yeah, that’s the journey they’re on with us. You know, I mean, it’s and that’s a big pivot. It’s really actually in a way, it’s not a pivot as much to say it’s a layering on of new sales channel, you know, so it’s, I guess, technically a pivot of sorts, but it’s, it’s expanding the sales channels, you know, deliberately.

Yeah. And I guess the other thing is, it kind of is mentally a pivot. But the other thing is adding on other traffic of that channel that we try that again, traffic channels, sorry, I’m trying to put channels and strategies together, maybe that’s a new word, which we talked about in the last episode, and and I think for Amazon sellers, even though it’s kind of not a pivot because most of the business is going to reside on Amazon, they’ll do the fulfillment, they did the selling a lot of the traffic, but even the idea that you can get traffic from elsewhere. Yeah, is a big change. Once you get outside of that, then the rest is addition not pivoting. But I really think that is still mentally a big pivot for a lot of Amazon sellers.

Yeah, sure. I’m, well, I should make I think as well. I tell you another one, and we could go on and on probably all day on this and with these all the episodes maybe in the future, but one of them my wife and I are really, really struggling with right now to be completely candid, is, um, we have an office downtown on Main Street. It was an old travel agency that we in 2015, we took over and it’s a great, it’s a great office, tons of storage and stuff. But we work from home most the time. And so we’re in this weird Limbo of, can we, you know, do we have an office where we’re there nine to five and we have our employees show up, or do we not? Do we run from home? And is it a virtual team? So for us the there’s no question about having a team we have a big team actually. But we’ve gone back and forth between having them be, you know, sort of work from home and their own context to work from an office with us, and we vacillate back and forth, one day We’ll talk about it and we’ll be like, yes, we need it. We want to be like, you know, Google, if it should look like a we workspace and be awesome. And we have, you know, teams running around. And then the next day, we’re like, Man, it’s so nice to work from our back deck, and just work from home. And it’s just, we just, we’re pivoting back and forth in our mind. And at this point, we’re just confused. And these are hard. They’re hard choice

choices. I mean, the admin there is one of the members of 10 k collectors is de su like about 100,000 pounds a month. I don’t know what that is. I mean, $30,000, depending on exchange rate, part time, on top of the day job now, presumably, the day job is, you know, I don’t know he’s able to work from home probably at the moment. But one of the reasons that he’s not going full time in terms of business, because when he does it, he wants to have a physical office and a physical team. He’s very clear about that. Because he really likes running a team and he’s very good at it. He’s a super sharp guy. And that’s very interesting. A lot People go sell the Amazon slash Shopify slash whatever Facebook marketing dream as sit at the beach in Bali with your laptop, which is obviously a terrible idea because the internet is probably non existent, you get sun in your laptop, but but for him, it’s the opposite. He wants the structure. He wants the team, he wants the physical interaction. And right now, a lot of people that are isolated in the same way as the guy and the laptop on the beach, are probably wishing for the same thing. So this is, as you say, it’s an interesting one that there’s not a universal answer that one

No, it’s really a personal preference, knowing yourself deciding what type of work environment really suits you. Well, and yeah, you know, that’s it. That’s an important one and one that we should this pros and cons both ways. Maybe we can do an episode where we really hash that out because I’m conflicted on that one. Yeah, but let’s work through your let’s work through your issue in there may be helpful for the other people out there thinking the same thing. I mean, I like the fact that you have that you’re just kind of blindly working that through and I’m presumably right now you have no choice anyway. Right? Right. No, we literally I had to go down the other There’s a corresponding COVID lock down right now. I had to go rescue my plants from my office. So we have plants everywhere. And I yeah, we’re locked out at this point. I can’t go down there. So we’re going to check the mail every few days. And, but, but you know, I mean it, but it has forced us to work from home, but it’s made us realize we don’t want to work from home all the time.

Yeah. And I think you’re probably not the only person to do that right now. Even Yeah, I mean, working from home does bring a host of issues. I’m like, yeah, working from home versus office. I’ve been seeing discussion nice.

So. So let’s bring the ship home here or whatever the metaphor is. I think that we’ve got a lot of podcast episodes in the making here. And my hope would be, we can dive into these and really bring solutions, suggestions, best practices, ideas for people to think about, and obviously on the facilities issue, work from home versus work from an office. Wouldn’t be of no help, like the blind leading the blind on that one. But um, but on other topics, I think there are a lot of resources and tips and suggestions that we can really dig into with people to help them work through these tough business challenges. So that would be my hope, I guess, for this topic in general moving forward.

Yeah. And what I really think is interesting about this topic, is it. They say the confused mind does nothing, maybe that’s your case with the Office versus human working or or maybe you should do both, but we’ll work it through. But the point is, it’s not just an intellectual exercise, there needs to be clarity, that is great enough for somebody who’s listening to go, actually, I could do that. And then they can get into action because you have to overcome that emotional resistance that we’ve identified. Actually, I often think identifying the sunk cost fallacy and realizing you’re in it isn’t just a massive first step. So I’m really glad you mentioned that I think it’s huge and then, click a click path, I think those two things combined, then you’re actually got a fighting chance of really pivoting into something which can become a completely life changer in a few years time. And I totally Yeah, that would be my hope is to transform people’s lives just, you know, aiming low here. But I do think that sometimes, you know, we both do business business coaching, and I think sometimes compensation in the right way can actually unlock the gates there. And I really would hope that so yeah, I’m excited about this topic. I’m very passionate about it. So I’m really glad we’ve we’ve broken the skin on this one. Yeah. Yeah.

I love it. No, I think we’re into it, man. So this is great. All right. Well, let’s wrap it here. And then we’ll see everybody in the next episode. And I should just say, as a takeaway, if you haven’t checked out the resources on the e commerce leader calm yet, then you sure to go check that site. We’ve got resources for you, and, you know, other episodes and all that kind of goody goody stuff.

Was the e commerce leader podcast with Michael Veazey in London, England.

miles in Seattle, Washington. Jason’s

Transcribed by https://otter.ai