A Christmas Thank You to Every Digital David

Matt Edmundson (00:04.334)
Merry Christmas, especially if you're listening to this on Christmas Day, which is when it is coming out. Yes, welcome to the e-commerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson and a very, very Merry Christmas to you. Now, you, if you are listening to this on Christmas Day, maybe you're escaping the in-laws for five minutes for no reason whatsoever. Maybe you're on a walk with the dog while the turkey does its thing in your stomach. Maybe you're driving somewhere and needs something in your ears other than the standard Christmas rhetoric. I don't know. Whatever brought you here.

Can I just say very Merry Christmas to you. Now, full disclosure, this isn't what I would call a proper episode. Proper episode. However we define that, right? Whatever that means, there's no framework, there's no experts, there's no downloads, there's no four steps, just me, a cup of tea and a huge, massive thank you to you. Now, given that it is Christmas and we've been going through the season of Christmas, I'm wearing the Christmas jumper.

I've got about 15, I think I've mentioned this before on the show, about 15 Christmas jumpers. I love it. Me and my daughter, we wear different Christmas jumpers every day. We've maybe got a problem. I'm not gonna lie. But I've been thinking about Advent recently, mainly because of the Christmas jumpers, but also because I'm now involved in a company that creates Advent-style gift experiences, right? We've just recently taken that over.

It's a sort of this idea of seven gifts on over sort of seven days leading up to a birthday or an anniversary or a special occasion. And of course Christmas, right? And so, yeah, I've been thinking about this because we were working on some email messaging recently for the company. We're like, right, let's get a hold of the email messaging. It's one of the first things that we did. And shout out to George Bryant, who's a friend of the show, who's been on before. We just literally copied his Apple email.

sequence ideas. We were just like, how does this work for Advent style gift company? And so we started exploring that and we looked at that and we looked at this idea of Advent and what Advent actually means because I didn't really know. And it took me back in time when I started going down this memory lane, if you like, to when I was a kid. I don't know if you remember being a kid at Christmas for me, Christmas was magical. You know, that feeling when

Matt Edmundson (02:25.282)
December finally arrives and you get the advent calendar, which counts down the sleeps to the next sort of big adventure of Christmas day, doesn't it? And it's brilliant. And you can't wait to open the next door on the advent calendar. And it just builds this anticipation and it becomes so thick that as a kid, you can sort of barely stand it really. And it wasn't just about the chocolate, although obviously the chocolate actually helped.

It was about knowing something wonderful was coming. know, the waiting in effect, the anticipation was the magic, wasn't it? And I wonder, I wonder when most of us lost that feeling, that sort of sense as we climbed through our teenage years into our early twenties. And if you're like me, maybe you discovered it again when you started having your own kids. And that's just a whole new level of wonderfulness, isn't it?

Now the word Advent, I've discovered, comes from the Latin Adventus. I'm not a Latin scholar. The internet had to tell me this. But it comes from the Latin word Adventus. Now Adventus means the arrival of something wonderful. And whilst the majority of the world uses it for December, which I appreciate and think is a good thing, I also now think, understanding that if it's the arrival of something wonderful, that can happen anywhere, can't it? With a birthday.

with an anniversary, even on random Tuesdays, you know, where someone needs reminding that they are special and that they are loved. Now, I know that not everyone, right, has these sort of warm, fuzzy Christmas memories. For some of you, this season is complicated and possibly even painful. And if that's you, I am sorry. God bless you. This is not meant to...

gloss over that in any way. But I was fortunate, very fortunate as a kid. I have really good memories of Christmas growing up. And this year, like I say, thinking about Advent, those memories did come flooding back in the best way. So in this spirit of Christmas, and because I just really can't help myself, if I'm honest, I started to think, well, how does e-commerce connect with the Nativity story? Now, listen.

Matt Edmundson (04:47.022)
I am personally a man of faith. So this isn't me poking fun at something sacred. Definitely not that, right? But there are some genuinely interesting parallels between the Christmas story and running an e-commerce business. Now stay with me because these interesting parallels are, well, they're tenuous. Let's be real. But that's okay because it's Christmas.

Right? And so I think we're allowed to be slightly tenuous on Christmas. So let's get into it, shall we? I thought this would just be, you know, a warm sort of way to do a Christmas day podcast. That's a bit of fun. That's not as long, but this brings a nice Christmas sort of feel to the e-commerce podcast. So bear with me. First we have the Shepherds. Okay. Now the Shepherds were...

Well, they were humble workers out in the field watching their flocks at night. Now we used to sing as kids, they washed their socks at night. because, you know, that was funny and it still is, but let's be, you know, whether they wash their socks or watch their flocks, they're not exactly the right target demographic for an announcement for a royal birth. Right?

So if you're thinking about doing a big product launch, you're like, you identify who your niche market is, who are the best people to announce that, who are the influences in that sector that we could use? Yet you wouldn't have picked the shepherds, right, for this because, well, they were society's undesirables. Let's just put it that way. Yet they were chosen. And it's interesting because they became the first evangelist to this whole affair. They find the baby Jesus, they see what has happened and they're so moved by it and so connected to it.

They immediately started telling everyone what they had seen and the Bible story, let me get that right, politics aside, tells us that all who heard marveled at what the shepherds told them. People were marveling at both the message and the fact that shepherds were telling it. And so I wonder if, right, your early customers are a bit like mine in the sense that

Matt Edmundson (06:59.16)
They might not be the best influencers, but they're the ones who discovered you before you were polished, before you had fancy branding and proper email sequences. They found something genuine about you and they couldn't stop talking about it. And these early adopters, your shepherds, if you like, they're not the fancy influencers with the high follow account, but the ones who

authentically spread your story in a way that no marketing budget could ever buy. I remember at Jersey, we had one of these ladies who wrote blogs just about her experience. It bought in tens of thousands of pounds worth of sales every month. And this was just a small little beautiful lady who was blogging in another country. And they're out there right now telling people about your business whilst you're eating Christmas dinner.

They're not out there demanding free samples, free products, know, and media rights and all that sort of stuff we get with influencers. They are genuinely connected to your brand. And I think they are worth remembering today and just being grateful for them, you know. Now, that's the Shepherds. What about the manger? Again, tenuous, I get it, but hopefully you're sticking with me.

Jesus, as we know in the story, was laid in a manger, a feeding trough, something that fed the animals. He was wrapped in a cloth and it's not exactly the expected birthplace for a king. You know, I'm sure we could do better than that guys. Yeah, what happened was the wise men still bought their finest gifts, didn't they? They recognized the true worth beyond the humble circumstances. And what's this got to do with?

the story, man. What's this got to do with e-commerce? Well, your e-commerce business might not look impressive compared to say your well-funded competitors. You know, your tech stack might be held together with, I don't know, hope and Zapier. I love laughing at my own jokes. Now, your warehouse might be your garage. I don't know, but excellence isn't about having the fanciest infrastructure.

Matt Edmundson (09:11.648)
It is about faithfully serving your mission with whatever resources you have. Now the manger was definitely sufficient for its purpose, right? It held the baby. So is your scrappy bootstrap operation, you know, as long as you're genuinely serving your customers well, I don't think we, I think we give too much credence to it sometimes. It's sufficient for now. Let's see what the next year brings, right? And third, and perhaps,

My favorite part of the Christmas story is in fact, Joseph. He is probably my hero actually in the nativity. He barely gets any lines, doesn't he, in the school play and almost no dialogue in the Bible itself. But watch what he does, right? He responds to, as the story would tell us, angelic direction. He takes Mary as his wife when it would have been easier not to. He travels to Bethlehem for the census.

and he flees to Egypt when he is warned and he returns when he is told that it is safe. So what's this got to do with your e-commerce business? Well, each decision with Joseph required faith and pretty immediate action, if I'm honest with you. There's no fanfare, no real recognition, just quiet, faithful execution of what was asked of him really. And in e-commerce, I think we all need to be a bit more like Joseph because

Execution trumps intention every single time. You can have brilliant strategies and beautiful brand guidelines and ambitious growth plans. 2026 is coming up. Man, we're going to kill it. But without disciplined follow through, know, fulfilling orders accurately, responding to customers properly, showing up consistently day in, day out. I think your business stalls. And Joe's reliability in doing what was asked, even when difficult.

or inconvenient, think model something that we can all learn from. A man of quiet faithfulness, just doing the work without needing the spotlight. So why am I telling you all of this? Partly because it's Christmas and I can and it's just a great story, but mostly because I just wanted to say thank you and just encourage you this Christmas. Thank you for being part of this community here at EP.

Matt Edmundson (11:32.61)
Whether you've been listening since the beginning, as I know a lot of you have, or you stumbled onto this particular episode and it's your first time with us. Whether you've implemented everything we've ever talked about on all the shows, if you have, I really want to hear from you, or whether you're just like having something in your ears while you pack your orders, I don't know, you're here. And that definitely means something to me. So, you know, let me just encourage you because running an e-commerce business, I think can be lonely.

The algorithm changes don't care that you were up at two o'clock in the morning with a sick child. The suppliers don't know about your cashflow stress. The customers don't even see the 17 problems that you solved before breakfast. But I think in this community, we all get it. We are all digital Davids in our own way. We are all running at giants, figuring out as we go, trying to build something meaningful with the resources that we have.

and I'm genuinely grateful you've let me be a part of your journey this year. So as you get back to whatever your Christmas day looks like, the food, the family, the chaos, the quiet, I hope today has at least had a moment of that Adventous feeling that something wonderful is coming. And I hope for you that it is because you're building it, right? One order, one customer, one small improvement at a time.

So keep going and Merry Christmas.