Grow Your eCommerce Business by Stealing These 7 Secrets From the Military

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music]
hi and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson all of
this week's notes and links can be found at our website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
now the military has been around for centuries and in that time they have
learned one or two secrets for success yes they have so in today's show you're
gonna learn seven of their best tips on how to grow your business that's right
the army have an opinion on this matter and we appreciate that you know an army
soldier and a full-time entrepreneur can be two quite different entities but you know what there is much that we
can learn from the military that is going to help us grow our e-commerce and online businesses so don't go anywhere
hey there are you a business owner here at orion digital we know firsthand that running an ecommerce business can be
really hard work as the online space gets more competitive it is becoming even more challenging to stay ahead of
the curve we totally get it so we want to help you succeed by offering a wide range of services from fulfillment
marketing customer service and even coaching and consulting just so that you can do what matters most save yourself
the time and the money and let us handle the day-to-day tasks this way you can run your business without having to
worry about the boring stuff so what do you say are we a good fit for each other come check us out at oriondigital.com
and let us know what you think
thanks for joining us on the ecommerce podcast it's great that you are here now
whether you are just starting out or if like me you've been around for a wee while uh our goal on this show is simple
and that's to help you grow your e-commerce and digital businesses and to do that every week we bring you great
show sponsors who are going to help you but we also bring you amazing guests
experts in their own field with stories and insights and principles that we can
use to help us start adapt and grow our own online businesses
so this week is no exception to the rule that's right with over years of
experience uh in the corporate world stuart has a wealth of knowledge and
expertise in consulting leadership management and strategy he's an
innovator and a visionary i feel like we need a drum roll behind that uh stuart is the founder and ceo of
waymaker dot io an intelligent business management platform that helps leaders build a better business in just days
with waymaker io stuart is on a mission a mission to help
as many people as possible achieve success in their lives and businesses stuart loves sharing practical advice
strategic chips strategic chips as well as strategic tips apparently those two words aren't
easy for me to say he has been he loves sharing everything basically
including his business expertise with others his personal approach makes learning powerful lessons from his
business and personal life easy and enjoyable for all listeners so whether you're a business owner with a team of
one or a thousand stuart's insights are definitely going to inspire you and
appeal to you today couple that whole thing with the fact that steward is just
a great bloke to talk to you are going to want to grab your notebooks grab your pens
because this is going to be fun it's going to be interesting so without further ado here is my conversation with
stuart leah so stuart welcome to the show you are dialing in from
well a dark australia i would imagine right now i mean the time zones are completely poles apart it's very early in the morning for me i imagine it's
fairly it's evening time for you right it's uh it's yes it's um it's fish and sauvignon blanc time um
it's dark it's it's um uh that's that's posh fish and chips right
there uh yeah yeah yeah it's uh yeah evening time my time it's a pleasure to be with you um uh wonderful matt thanks
for having me on the show oh mate it's great to have you i've been looking forward to this conversation because uh if you're a regular listener to the show
or a regular watcher of the show you will know that um i do pre-calls with all our guests and we have conversations
about the things that we're going to talk about and um you know what we're going to have
what we're going to cover in the podcast just so i know just so it's obvious to me because you know i'm not the brightest tool in the box so
uh our pre-call was fab and i i took lots of notes and i thought this is going to be a great show so i've been looking forward to this one wouldn't it
be amazing wouldn't it be amazing if our pre-call was actually better than the show and just you and i got to experience
the magic of the prequel and everybody's like oh that was pretty normal like what's he talking about and we just had
this magic experience that anyway matt sorry i'm destroying your show go on
but it's good to have an aussie on and i'm glad we've made this work you know the different time zones and so um
so yeah thank you for being here thanks for making the efforts to it it's awesome it is it's a privilege privilege for us my pleasure we're we're
just coming out of our our covered uh times and it's just it's wonderful to be getting back into
business and growing businesses again yeah it is it is the whole world sort of feels like it's well certainly in the uk
it feels like we're coming out of something despite the alarming numbers that we've had with the omicron version
but i think we've technically gone from a pandemic to an endemic is that that's what they call it these days that's good
okay yeah i don't i don't actually know what the differences are but that's what they're saying so so i mean you know we could wax lyrical
about these kind of things all day um you uh obviously work in australia like
in our pre-call one of the things that um you mentioned to me is you you actually lived in the uk for a little while um yes
and you you're you're backing us so what are you doing over in the land of oz right now well um
to that reference of living in the uk feels like a lifetime ago it was um in fact it was um it was last a century so
um let me just fess up on my age um so thank thanks for bringing that up man
yeah that's right yeah the s back when queen victoria was on the throne
um no i i did the classic um you know there's something about every young australian that
feels this call to the motherland um i don't know if it's an internal angst
to go and create anarchy on the streets for sending the convicts out to australia or something but you know that
we pack a backpack we hop on a plane with bucks in our pocket and um
land in london and uh you know try and change the world or at least um drink london drive i don't know either one of
those two options um so i you know i did that um yeah sometimes both
so look i did that towards the very end of last century that i won't say any more details and had a wonderful time
university of life traveling backpacking working in some cool places in um london
oxford shropshire shrewsbury shrewsbury i think uh yeah yeah yeah that's that i'm a local
um yeah well done and uh you know i just england united kingdom it's just a very
special place and um uh so now being where we are now for about
years um obviously travel back and forth around the world at different times but um
where we are now we live in a place um called the gold coast just south of brisbane which is kind of like
kind of like yeah yeah it's beautiful it's it's um kilometers of golden beaches um
we all look like chris hemsworth and um you know it's i need to go just step off the plane and
that's it yeah that's right correct yeah it's awesome yeah it's worth the price i'm not going to stand up but you can
see that i clearly don't um uh you know it's sort of the the temperature of california and the
culture of florida if if you want to put it like that so it's almost one of those perfect places to live to build a
digital business um you know go to the beach enjoy the great outdoors and we're just blessed to be
here and whilst i moved there i moved here um odd years ago
uh and and throughout my corporate life you often pulled to the big cities um
in england it would be london in australia at sydney or melbourne and always just resisted that urge you
know there's always there must be a better way i don't want to end up in a in a two-bedroom townhouse that costs a
couple of million dollars and still got to travel two hours to work every day you know that that um that's
soul-destroying and and i think um many of us had those kinds of ideas and
dreams and um by the time i was jumping out and starting my own business um
years ago leaving corporate life the world was starting to turn and digital was moving and you kind of could
start in these um smaller more regional locations and now
today everyone's leaving the big cities and and um and and out here so you know we feel
very blessed that hey um trend setting years ago um to do that no it's great and of course everyone
moving in property prices are just going to go up well yes um uh yes yes having
just recently purchased property in in the latest zoom boom um i uh i'm quite
happy in the bench now yeah i'm quite happy that's the reason you're on the podcast right
we've got to get out there correct correct correct yeah so you've been uh living in the gold
coast um for you know in this idyllic location and you've set up this business waymaker
um and you go around and you you in effect um you help other people grow their
businesses um how long have you been doing that and guess what start
what kick-started that process for you how did you get into that so um
the platform's called waymaker it's an intelligent business management platform
and the primary purpose of the platform is to help an organization have great clarity on where they are in
in their growth journey identify through some really smart algorithms and analytics the skills and
systems they need to improve and then translate that into strategic planning goals and cascade those goals
down to users we want to build a platform that is a single source of truth for your
strategic actions we believe that's actually missing in most organizations
the reason why we built it is we were a consulting company for
odd years and we were working with many organizations and
a number of threads emerged through that but one of the most important was organizations would come to us and we
worked in strategy and brand when i say brand less design more strategic thinking
sales and marketing and martech and sales tech and organizations would come to us and say
oh we we need a new crm or we need a new website or we need a something and
it's great sometimes you just go and do it but actually often what what they were saying was this
function in our business is broken we've heard about the latest band-aid
um let's go get a band-aid and and so we learned that um what people were
asking for was perhaps not always the root cause of the problem then if we could identify the root cause of the problem we could solve the problem or
help them solve the problem and accelerate their growth and and so not unusual most most coaches
consultants experience that problem but we we decided to build some diagnostic
tools and software to do that and um [Music] and at the same time that we were
playing around with that diagnostic tool we came across a really interesting
story from actually your part of the world the um from military to story yeah from from
the british military and um and i think this probably encapsulates sort of um why waymaker and
how we kind of got here the when the british military were moving um from the th century to the st
century from a cold war environment to a hot war environment the challenge was that the in the th
century they had a well-known enemy a traditional enemy whether that be
enemies of state or cold war environments but you could point a
point a barrel at an enemy and you knew who they were they were uniform they had structure they had hierarchy they had traditional modes of
operation um generally applied by geneva conventions
and as the cold war was winding down there was a there was a not even today
you'd call it a hot war but but the emergence of a different kind of war the the middle east and it was a war of
ideology really versus state it was um and the
the strategic decision-making processes used um for a hundred plus years in a
cold war environment no longer worked in this hot war environment where
you didn't have the traditional enemy you didn't have traditional structures you didn't have uniforms you didn't have
armies you you it was it was all agile it was very different and
and and so the military really struggled to make effective decisions quickly to
design battle plans and achieve the most valuable course of action in the battlefield and that's a real problem if
you're the you're the empire and a world leader and you're seeing the capacity to
win um move and disappear and the way the british military solved
it is fascinating you don't make complicated things more complex you must make complicated things
simpler and that's a good principle right there i mean you could just do a whole show
on that principle we could couldn't stop there
yeah you can't make complicated things more complex you must make complicated things um simple in order for them to to
work again and so the british military did something really smart they they put over the very complicated
planning instruments and processes um seven questions just a small number of questions and said if you ask and answer
these questions um consistently then you'll develop the highest value course of action on the
battlefield and and that's i mean that's a powerful statement can you ask just seven
questions um and can you consistently ask those seven questions in any type of environment see land intelligence and
any type of battle and always get the most and best
highest value course of action to take and that's kind of a real key to strategic thinking
and they did and it transformed operations in the british military
um developed highly agile strategic decision making and it did a couple of things one it meant you had this
malleable or flexible strategic decision-making process you could ask and answer the seven
questions hunker down taking fire behind some humvees in the desert so to speak and and
answer in minutes minutes you know really get get value in a short amount of time
or you could go back to hq and drag it out for a day or two or more and develop
really detailed planning and so it's quite flexible the second thing was that it involved it was collaborative it was
involving team members and so as you were executing in the battlefield as you
were leading in the battlefield people around you were learning the art of leadership this is how we lead this is the
questions we ask this is how we bring information to the table and so you were by nature developing the next set of leaders very powerful
and the third thing is that it was a consistent language you could you could change teams you could
teams is the wrong word i'm clearly not military you could um you could troops you could change battalions you
could move to the different company you could you could be seconded from army into wherever and um
and you still knew the seven questions it was a language you could take and at this point in my life when i was
reading these case studies and seeing the success of this i'm like that's amazing i was coming out of corporate life um
where you know seeing things like flying around the country here in australia big country and having conversations around
strategy and branding and positioning and and quite quickly you realize that a conversation you could have in one part
of the country using the same words could actually be a different conversation in another part of the country because people understood these
terms differently there wasn't there wasn't a language a consistent objective language around how to how to think well
together and so the big idea was could we bring that language into a business boardroom could
we could we pull off the same stunt and and so we were building this diagnostic
this software tool we were looking at what the british military had done the british military's seven questions are
amazing they're fantastic if you want to blow something up they're not so effective if you want to
build something up and and so we you know all our references to british military kind of stopped there
we were like okay we you know what would these questions look like if we wrote them for business could you
put a startup a small business a leadership team so really it took four five six seven years of writing
those questions designing this diagnostic and getting to the point where if you consistently asked and
answered um what we call waymaker's seven questions uh not the british militaries but waymakers seven questions
and by the way we tried to avoid seven questions because we didn't want to copy the military um there were five and then
there were six and they're not eight and you know but seven is is a is a very um
it's almost like the perfect number they tell us isn't it yeah it's typical it's i mean there's so many good things about
the number seven if you're going to rest on a number rest on seven so at the end of the day i was like let's just go with the seven questions let's
just tell this story a million times and people will get it and and kind of like um the military
when you're asking and answering those seven questions you've got some software in your hands some plans in your hands so you can actually power through those
questions more effectively we thought wouldn't it be cool if you could have some software as a business and so
so what we've built is kind of a a central source of truth on strategy
and um and a methodology around that and um so if you ask and answer these seven
questions um consistently and regularly do question seven which is one of the one or two
or three things that will if delivered shift the needle on the organization
design those goals execute on those goals come back rinse and repeat you're going to build
a competency and a capability you're going to build the skills and systems of the organization
in the order that is most valuable for you to achieve
and we spent number of years in r d working out what our diagnosis
diagnostic would do which skills which systems in which disciplines and and so now and a business this is a
very long answer i apologize our viewers are still with us otherwise we'll have to go back to talking about scotch
um we'll just play the prequel that's right yeah um so
now waymaker can do in five to minutes for a business what a management consultant used to do for
four weeks and tens of thousands of dollars and and we want to give that power to small teams to go where are we
what skills and systems have we got to build um in what order who's going to own these projects and
actions and outcomes where are they at what have we got to do so that ultimately every business knows
what success looks like every person's individual contribution to it where they're adding it and what
needs to be done and if we can do that we can build clarity you know we can build clarity we can build alignment we can build alignment
somehow strangely the results just happen to come so much easier so so that's waymaker and that's kind of why
we got there clients we were working with were struggling to really identify root cause
we saw some interesting stuff happening out there in military land and thought that's really cool can we put those two
things together and boom it created this little baby called waymaker
and so here we are and so here all these years later that's great so we've got these seven questions which we are gonna
get into um sure it's gonna take us through these seven questions and how they work for our own uh businesses
whether big or small uh but before we get into them we're just gonna take a few seconds to hear from the sweet show
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[Music] hi there are you a business owner here at orion digital we know firsthand that
running an ecommerce business can be really hard work as the online space gets more competitive it is becoming even more
challenging to stay ahead of the curve we totally get it so we want to help you succeed by offering a wide range of
services from fulfillment marketing customer service and even coaching and consulting just so that you can do what
matters most save yourself the time and the money and let us handle the day-to-day tasks this way you can run
your business without having to worry about the boring stuff so what do you say are we a good fit for each other
come check us out at oreodigital.com and let us know what you think
okay so stuart seven questions can we go through them um i mean you've
done you've done a great intro with the military i'm sold now i'm like i'm in what are the seven questions and how do
they apply for me in my business right so um yeah yeah good question question number one let's start with question
number one what would that be well um before i even get into number one there i'll leave you hanging right there i'll
i'll talk about the seven broad topics um okay because one of the things that you want to do
whether you're running a startup you know grabbing a shopify template and building an e-commerce store or designing the next new digital app or
business you need to be able to think clearly for what's going on inside your business and
you need to be able to think clearly on what's going on outside your business out in the marketplaces
and so the first thing to say is businesses whether they be teams of one person or one thousand people
they're a system there are there are a group of things happening at once um
and our job as um leaders from from startup small business to big
business is to enable growth in that system and and technically they're a system of
systems whilst maintaining some kind of order and stability
so we talk about seven broad areas they're the seven questions clarity of vision
clarity and understanding of market and who your ideal customer is clarity of strategy and your positioning and your
growth powers clarity of the business model the value proposition the key metrics and the practices that sustain
that clarity of the customer experience and the personality you bring into sales and marketing and service and clarity of
the employee experience the core principles the employee journey the culture you're building and lastly
clarity of the goals the business needs to achieve and what each individual needs to achieve and so they're the broad seven areas and
any business [Music] might have a number of different departments but at the end of the day
you could put every department or function of a business in one of those seven areas is that making sense so far
yeah yeah yeah i've got it yeah and if you think about a human this is not a bad analogy
as a human grows up you you're growing you're maturing you're
hopeful yeah i have a year old and a five-year-old and sometimes i'm not sure
you know who knows [Music] so the as you but as you're maturing
um in fact we've all become good little biologists through the pandemic uh you might have heard of this term called homeostasis in the body oh yeah yep um
and actually homeostasis is the is the function in the body that actually is constantly managing
systems and trillions of cells and that's that's
a pretty good job um and what they're doing is they're keeping our systems in balance while the
body is growing so you know for example um homeostasis will
if if you get hot what happens to your body
well you start to sweat yep great i'm so glad you said that um uh i thought this was a trick question
yeah it was it wasn't a trick question in a little while since our bodies in the uk i've got hot okay i forgot i forgot i was talking to somebody in the
uk yeah um so yeah if you get hot your body sweats and it's kind of inbuilt air conditioning system and cools you down
if if you cut your finger then um your blood coagulates and it tries to reduce
the blood flow um uh if a virus um enters your bloodstream
then you have and now i'm totally totally talking about my pay grade but t cells and antigens and
white cells that go on attack um and and these are systems inside the body managed by homeostasis but most
businesses don't have a system in place to manage their systems and retain some kind of balance as the organization
grows you know often we just call that the board meeting or the team meeting and and so what if you could what if you
could do that and and the reason why it's important is because some organizations are really good at
some parts of what they do we've probably all come across um the amazing
sales organization they're just guns at sales and they just you look at them you're
like man i wish we could be like that but often they're guns at sales
but they've underdeveloped maybe service and operational delivery and so they sell a lot but actually not
many come back or the product falls flat or the service falls flat and it's a bit a bit like a bodybuilder going to a gym
and just constantly you know working out the upper body and the walk down the street and you kind of have a chuckle
because you see little chicken legs and it's um you know it's this it happens more than you think yeah
yeah and so organization that's why everybody skips leg day um i've been skipping leg day and have a
body day for too long now um so it's skipping gym that's right that's right
um it's covered it's covered when covered goes away i'll go back so you know organizations end up like
that some of our listeners are probably going yeah i'm really good at my digital marketing but i'm maybe not good at
my hr or i'm you know and and if we don't at some point
if we don't address that area that will be the most valuable area to
address in our business in terms of growth in skills and systems and it just becomes a little hand
grenade sitting there until at some point it blows up and if you let it go too long it can it can have a
catastrophic example so part of the science that's what leadership's about right yeah
you know you sort of identify these seven areas a leader or leadership is about understanding
it is this balance it is about homeostasis it is about making sure that we're doing well
in all seven areas and being aware of those not just the bits that we like correct yeah and and that's that's leadership
exactly right there it's the it's the capacity to maintain stability while exercising growth
and um and and so which is really hard because as we all know if you want to exercise
growth you've got to create stress and strain and and and in order to get that stress and
strain you've got to push you've got to pull you've got you've got to and and we've got to do that while listening to what's going on inside our
inside our organization and what's going on outside our organization and that's that's that's a lesson from the british
military if you're going to develop a battle plan you've got to know what's going on inside your team and inside the existing area but you've also
got to know what's going on outside the area what's kind of what's going to come over that hill what what choppers could
come in that way you know that what intelligence do we have around that and so this is a long way of getting these seven questions
but it's really important to understand that um this big idea of as we grow
let's understand what's going on inside us what's going on so it's going on around us situational aware
and that's what these seven questions are doing so what are these seven questions question one is um is in the
area of vision and it's simple what is our vision is it driven by our purpose and what roadblocks are holding us back
and um and i'll say that again what is our vision is it driven by our purpose
and what roadblocks are holding us back from reaching that vision by the way if i shameless promo here if you want a
copy of these seven questions jump onto waymaker.io go to the learn tab
second or third option down we'll say waymaker's leadership curve click on that that's the first image um you can
grab it there and download it um and and so the art of asking that
question um if i said this to you matt matt um uh
for the e-commerce podcast um you know what's your vision is that vision drop driven by
um the business's purpose what are the roadblocks holding you back okay it's a simple but big question um now what the
would you um how would you because again this i can just imagine um people going well
vision and purpose they they're very business defined terms i think and if you're
say if you're a corporate you'll have heard these terms if you're starting out you'll be like well my i
guess my vision is not to go bankrupt in the next day which i mean and almost sort of be a little bit um jovial about
it or just dismissive about this idea so how would you how do we define vision
and purpose how do we make them accessible if that makes sense yeah yeah that's a really good question so
in fact i'll use a couple of organizers in fact i'll use facebook as an organization we all know facebook um
purpose and this gets confused so often in business where we see some organizations trying
to attach another purpose to their business but the purpose of any organization is
simply to solve the problem their customers have does that make sense
so if that business solves that customer's problem then
they're achieving their purpose if that customer's problem is solved
then something in that customer's world changes and so we should think about purpose as
the problem we solve and we should think about vision as the change we create in the world for
our customers when we consistently solve that problem okay
that's really good i like that so going back to your um statement about the ecommerce podcast and put you on the
spot a little bit if you if the roles were reversed how would you what purpose would the e-commerce podcast have so
what problem are we solving for the listener we're helping educate people about e-commerce we're helping people learn about e-commerce
yeah and to grow we always say we're here to help you grow your e-commerce business yeah so is would it be as
simple as that exactly yeah it can be in fact um one of the
biggest digital businesses in the world facebook has the simplest purpose statement and the simplest vision
statement um uh i'm not dodging your your question there but i'll use facebook maybe to
answer it um yeah a much better example no i don't think so actually they're not as valuable as the ecommerce podcast
i hope you've got stock options um facebook facebook would say their purpose is
simply to connect people and and to connect to to share the memories that you have with friends and
family their vision is to see the world connected through facebook
now let's see how simple that is the reason we exist as facebook is to
simply connect people um our vision is to connect the world so it
you know would have been a couple of years ago facebook announced um their their first
billion dollar log in on a monday so a billion billion dollar that probably was a billion
dollar a billion person login on a monday so a billion people had all logged in on a monday
morning and and why was that special for them because what was their what was their what's their reason for existence to to
connect people and to allow them to share the memories the photos the videos the stories with their friends and
family wherever they are in the world so their vision is to connect the world they were one seventh of their journey
towards their vision is that making sense yeah it is yeah but because their problem
so what was question one what is our vision is it driven by our purpose
and what are the roadblacks roadblocks holding us back so if if your vision isn't driven by your
purpose then the reason of why you do what you do in your organization has a dissonance
to where you're going does that make sense which will create disalignment
so every day people in facebook come in and go today i'm here to connect people
every product they make every app they make every app they buy is to connect people
why because that's solving the problem that that connection problem
every time they connect somebody every time you share a photo on facebook or instagram
chat with somebody on whatsapp you're you're delivering on that purpose
they're delivering on their purpose they've created that connection and and because that's a problem that
they've created the easiest way to share and chat and post um because they're
solving that problem for us that purpose that problem is scaling up into a vision into a change world now
you could argue is that a builder world or not but at the end of the day their purpose leads towards their vision if
their vision was to be the most eco-sustainable technology company in the world
then can you see the dissonance yeah yeah exactly and and so what happens is we should think about
and we've gone totally deep into question one without talking about the others but that's okay we should think about purpose as
something we can achieve daily and we should think about vision as something that we see in the future because of
what we achieve daily does that make sense yeah it does it does and i like how
you've sort of started with this question because i think it's one of those things that people so often take for granted and they've not really
thought about it do i mean when certainly in e-commerce the easiest thing to do is throw it on a website throw some products on there and just
hope it works right yep yep but what probably what you're doing here i was gonna say what problem
is that e-commerce business solving for the customer yeah exactly
and and if you're solving a real problem if you're you know if a
friend of mine an older gentleman a mentor of mine he runs a little tool shop you know rare tools for woodworkers
um oh give me his name and number okay see see see what just happened there why why were you excited because
you're like oh man i'm i'm like it's so hard to get those things um
and and so he's niched he's found a problem with a distinct audience and
and if you go on if you're into woodworking and lathes and making
stuff um clearly i'm not um yeah you're way out
of your comfort zone i am right you can educate me um that problem resonates because you can't
just go down to walmart or sainsbury's or tesco's and buy that tool or bunnings
here in australia you've got to find that is this making sense he's found a problem and he's solved it by going out and and
talking to or wholesalers around the world finding those products and bringing them to one place so people who love
woodworking can go there and get it and and that's a problem that's a really good he hasn't
just chucked products up on the internet and said i hope they sell um so i think that's the point i'm trying
to make here yeah no it's such a good point such a good point and i i've i've maintained for years
when people come to me and say well why is my business not working first and foremost it comes down to this
what problem are you solving uh for your customer and not understanding that because the product you're offering
is crap right and uh you know forgive my bluntness but nine times out of ten it's just
rubbish and we've not we've just thought oh it's a low-priced product i can make profit on it rather than i'm finding a
problem i'm finding the best solution to that problem and therefore i've got a marketing story and so on so forth
and i think in e-commerce particularly in retail um it's it's easy to find quick wins um you
know i read this wonderful story in the newspapers um digital newspapers here in australia recently over the summer break
about a college student who would go to walmart
in the u.s and he'd buy the like the end of the line discounts so you know like an air fryer for
bucks or something in a heavily discounted and then he would go and list it on his
amazon store at registered retail price and pick up the difference and well that's actually a pretty clever idea and
he put himself through college like that and now kind of a few years later it's a million dollar business um that's
really impressive like gosh my hat tip we're all like him one day now he solved a problem um he didn't
have to go and invent a product he he's still solving a problem there but often in
retail we can find a quirky little product and we we can make a quick win and we think that we're solving a
problem but sometimes we're not we've just found a a train of
trend um that might last two weeks three weeks or a year is that making sense and
so we feel like we're getting there but we've got to step back and we've got to think more deeply about the business and
go okay the products i'm selling the solutions i'm offering is that solving a real problem i could talk for hours on
this stuff but it was more to get into yeah let's move on to question two before i ask you get more questions around question one and realize we've
been talking for two hours uh so question number two question number two we're moving into the context of market
not marketing but market and question two is what is our market who is our ideal customer
what do they value and what perceptions do we need to build i'll say that again what is our market who is our ideal customer what do they
value and what perceptions do we need to build and really what we're digging in here um and
if you've noticed um something in the questions they all start with what is what is our vision what is our market what is our strategy and then they
take the the the answer e on some some deeper layers
so what is our market if if we use the the the
the tool guy the um the unique tools that do woodworking what's his market okay it's it's um it's
tools it's woodworking tools home craft tools um the next part of the question uh who's
our ideal customer okay now we're we're taking something broad down narrow
our ideal customer is actually you know a craftsman or craftsperson
who loves making fine timber um things at home they're not necessarily the professional
but they're the the pro am they love it it's their hobby this making sense yeah
yeah what do they do i i'm not gonna lie to me that's the great example so so what do you value in
those tools what do you value oh me uh
i want tools at work um i want tools that are actually quite beautiful uh
ironically yep um yep because you appreciate it yeah
yeah they get a high quality last they look good because you actually value design and they're going to work they've
got to do the job and and so okay what do they they value those three big things
okay so if that's what you value then what perceptions do we need to
build into our market as as a business and we're now we're starting to
get into the world of branding building thoughts and ideas in the mind of the market so that business has got to turn around
and say we need people to think of and i can't remember his business name but let's call it fancytools.com
um when people think of fancy tools they've got to think that they're high quality they last a
long time and they get the job oh sorry they're high quality and they look good
well designed um they're going to last a long time and and they get the job done and if that's what the customer values
they've got they've got to take those beliefs and values and we're going to build that back into the e-commerce brand does that make
sense um yeah it is totally and so the question is saying what is our market who is our ideal customer
what do they value therefore what perceptions do we need to build and that's the action question we're
throwing those value drivers back to us as a business and saying now what have i got to build what
perceptions and beliefs in my business you know what do people value in in e-commerce they value fast and cheap in
some areas okay what does amazon stand for fast and cheap um you see how amazon has taken
that value from the customer what what do i value put it back into the beliefs of their brand
and therefore people first choice if i want it fast and cheap or go to amazon does that make sense
yeah certainly that's a great one and actually a friend of mine um i like how you use the word
perception a really good friend of mine rich rising who's a marketing genius he says that marketing is the management
of perception that's his whole definition for marketing yeah i think i think um
it's it's it's that so yeah yeah i like that how do we how do we
create how do we manage those perceptions and clients how do they think about us what do they think yeah yeah i get it yeah and so the questions
you'd be asking yourself would be well if we've got to build these perceptions what
behaviors product features actions service environments sales tactics
messages have we got to change in order to build on those beliefs and so there's a real reaction so if and so these seven
questions sit over our diagnostic and every diagnostic there's a there's a corresponding
leadership curve or maturity curve of the skills and systems you've got to build to build the depth of clarity and
alignment of market in your business depth and clarity of vision depth and clarity of strategy is that making sense
yeah no totally tight entirely mate um i like your accent okay uh question
number three oh okay question number three so question number three we're moving did you have a little drink of order though yeah if you're watching it
you would have seen that's correct yeah yeah it's um yeah my it's my um evening scotch you know hidden inside
it's not it's not it's not it's not um questions um are we going to go through all seven um uh have we got time for all seven
should i fire up the speed on this i think if let's see what we'll do let's fly through the questions three through
seven and then i'll pick out one or two questions from them and we'll go deep dive into those okay here we go so question three context is strategy what
is our strategy where is our growth focused and how do we improve our positioning that's question three
question four context is business model what is our business model is it creating value
what metrics tell us this and what practices improve our value proposition
question five is customer experience what is our customers experience how do we acquire retain and grow our customers
through our personality and what improvements need to be made employee experience what is our
employees experience how do we acquire retain and grow our talent through our principles and values and what
improvements need to be made and so obviously that's uh the employee journey the culture the principles and question
seven which is the question of action if you answer all six questions you'll
have things you could do in your business
but the worst thing you can do is try and do lots of things and so question seven is the question of
actions about goals and prioritization what one two or three things that if
delivered are you delivered in your business they're working in your business over the next quarter or half
will shift the needle on the business what are the one two or three things that if delivered over the next quarter or a half will shift the needle on the
business do that and that's the art of homeostasis inside the business
don't do things don't don't try and build muscle whilst losing weight whilst going on a fast while
sweating while cooling well you get what i'm saying it's you'll blow the business up and
yeah um pwc in a recent report their state of strategy i think was end of or end of
more than of all executives say that they have too many priorities to be effective in their
strategy um we're in a pandemic of priorities right now that's quite extraordinary statistic
yeah that's horrendous yes from a business leadership point of view you know you're going to look at then go
oh my goodness yes and this is why i love startups and smaller businesses
i love big business because you can play with big budgets and do big things but you know what they try and do too much
there's too much ego at play around the boardroom table start-ups and small business and yeah they can fall into the same habit but by
necessity of survival you have to focus on the one or two things three things that matter and you've got to do them
yeah and and so it's that art of learning to go okay there's things i could do this
quarter or half but i actually just need to park eight of them i'll still be here i'll survive we'll
still be here let's do two and do them amazing build those skills and systems get to that next layer in that area
be able to step back because we've invested and delivered and now go and work on the others and and that's a
that's the art of leadership because you must say no and that's really hard that's such a good statement right there
the art of leadership learning how to say no isn't it because there's so many good things to do yes and understanding
um you know what's important to do uh i think is great i mean
going through the questions that you know uh about strategy business model um we talk actually a lot about
this model on the ecommerce podcast um because my experience is interesting because one of the things that you said
there how do we retain and grow customers through our personality and i
this sentence struck out stuck out to me in my i've got it in my notes this is one of the ones i underlined because i
i underline the things which i think are important let's just be real good that's a good practice so
yeah yeah good practice so i think this is important and i think this is one thing that has been missed by so many people right so you a question we often
get asked is how do i compete with amazon they're bigger they're better they're faster and the answer is amazon aren't you
that's right they're they're they're bigger better faster but they're corporate they're undescript you're a
person you're a personality that's right and people buy from people at the end of the day and so your strength your usp
is yes your product yes you know your marketing but fundamentally that has to be based around you and what you stand for your
values your personality your sense of humor or lack thereof yes do you mean but it's like am i right in saying that
it's just something that i've been thought thinking for a few years and i i was curious as to why you put that in there yeah you are um
matt you you're yeah i would die in a ditch with you over that in in um in
the battle of thinking in strategy and leadership um uh
so the and here's the thing you can compete against amazon
uh everybody has weak spots and and everybody has them and the
bigger you are the more weak spots there actually are so um
and and often we um and there's probably listeners right now thinking about i've always dreamt of
starting an e-commerce store but you look at amazon or you look at you know some of these others and how could
i ever do that and and the reality is you've got to go back to those first principles okay well what
what aren't they doing well um what could i do that they can't do
and lots of things by the way and and then you've got to solve the problem
by doing that you've got to find your place you know the great is it the art of war
the you know you've got it you've got a niche you've got a you've got to focus in on those small points
as you do that as you build your business and your brand you're going to build your personality you're going to build
how you sit and fit within the marketplace and
and we would say through our model that finding a market fit which if you
haven't heard that term it's about that moment when suddenly the business just sort of flies and
customers just coming to and you've got more money in the bank than staff you can hire and it's just working
it's some kind of combination of purpose um perceptions positioning
practices and proposition personality and the principles of how you act um
they're all p's i noticed yes very cleverly they're all thank you for that observation um and you'll notice that
those six p words live inside each of those questions um yeah so that as you
ask and answer those seven questions you're like ah you see now i can see it so yeah very good yeah you got the little it's
almost like you've thought these questions through to a crazy level uh stuart yeah yeah there's there's been an
awful lot of scotch drunk to get to this point uh late at night um yeah the every
word in these seven questions has taken years people will laugh at me for saying this but literally they've been written
and rewritten so many times because they're interconnected and and sitting behind it is this so sort of
weird data model in our diagnostic diagnostic that's actually interrelated to these questions so yeah it's like a
rubik's cube of ideas business ideas personality um when we look at that
question what is our customer experience how do we acquire retain and grow our customers through our personality what
we're saying is well customer experience is the process of acquiring a customer
retaining the customer and growing a customer so acquiring getting them to first sale
retaining them holding the loyalty and the advocacy ready for the next sale and growing
designing and developing more products and services to grow that customer and does that make sense
but how you do that is through your brand's personality through your business's personality so
um the way amazon does that it's cutthroat it's fast it's cheap it's packaged up with prime it's free
shipping it's you know they've got all these competitive advantages they can build but what if i like my
my shaving products to come in a beautiful timber box um wrapped up in
in tissue paper with a beautiful experience well that's not fast that's not cheap but what if i'm prepared to wait a week
for that because actually i love that um does that make sense um yeah it does totally so so when we think about our
personality we can't fall into the trap that we must do everything exactly the way everybody
else does it um we've got to ask the question how does our customer how does our ideal customer
want to experience and receive this and and and if you've found a niche and if
you've found an ideal customer that you can solve a problem for then they will have
an experience a personality i want wrapped around that that that you can build you can shape to the market is
that answering your question yeah it is totally no it's it's it's it's very good and i i the reason i drew
it out and you advanced it very well it's a question we get asked a lot how can i take on how can i i call people
digital david's like taking on goliath yeah um and david had five stones i
don't know if you've ever read malcolm gladwell's book david versus david and goliath phenomenal but um
go on and it and in that he you know the story of david he has these five stones and in effect it's the stones which
undoubtedly it's david doing it his way in a way that doesn't he's not trying to fight goliath on goliath's terms he's
doing it on his terms yes yes um it's such a old story it's very powerful story yeah and and and it ties hence the
reason i call people digital david i love that idea of thinking you've got to have you know absolutely i love that idea and and you know what was um if i
remember my uh my biblical theology um from my philosophy degrees and my learnings over the years what was what
was david's competitive advantage he was a shepherd boy he grew up out in the fields you know he knew how to use that
what was it called a sling or whatever it was that that slingshot um that would swing the stones
so but he couldn't if i remember right he couldn't pick up the sword he couldn't wear the armor he couldn't take
he couldn't take goliath on on goliath terms he worked out how to
how to take the giant on on his own terms and um and so his competitive advantage that
was his personality his experience and so we've got to look at you know
i don't know pick a business that somebody's starting producing children's products or organic vegetables delivered to your
door or something you know what's how can you do that in a way that your customers will love and experience it
doesn't have to be the way google says or the way amazon says absolutely not and
i i just think we're we are still in the infancy of this st century where
digital business is exploding and there has never been a better time to start and build a business
it is it is just wonderful and and and and we've got to look at the
giants out there and we've got to stare them down and go yep you're big
you're wealthy you're a bit ugly and you're a bit smelly and where you're ugly and where you smelly
we're going to be better looking and better smelling and so forks to you let's go compete and you
can yeah and and you could be a mum in a garage in downtown london right now thinking
about that and all credit to you go forth and conquer yeah absolutely so well said
so well stead um and it's probably a good place to end there although i feel like i could go on
further and further and i i do want to just actually make reference to question number seven what one or two i know you've touched on it
but it's worth circling back to that for the third time and just say listen leadership is about prioritizing their
efficiency it's about learning what to say yes to and what to say no to yeah and um and doing that process
stuart listen honestly it's been an absolute treat uh to have you on the show if people want
to reach out to you people want to connect with you what's the best way to do that you can hunt me down on linkedin
and connect with me there and i'll answer messages and chat and connect with you in every way shape or
form and we give everybody a day free trial on waymaker.io so
hey put your business in take a short diagnostic in our consulting days we sold this
diagnostic for tens of thousands of dollars to clients dear old clients please don't hear that um
but uh so i guarantee you i'm not a verse to blackmail i just want to point that out
um you know run your business through the diagnostic it'll take you to minutes
you'll get some insights heck you don't even have to go on and subscribe but
if we can give you some value doing that great if you're a business coach or consultant then
use our tools they're built for you to help go out and coach and consult digital business and grow
um so waymaker dot io waymaker dot ia and i guess one question
uh studex i can about waymaker is it you've kind of alluded to it so i think
i know the answer will it work for the mum in the garage in london as much as it'll work for the
ceo in the boardroom on the th floor yes if you're the mum in the garage um
jumping onto waymaker.io um choose what we call the essentials licence type
we've taken the diagnostic that we'll diagnose a publicly listed organization and find
the gaps in minutes across hundreds of skills and systems and data points
and we've taken the big rocks and we've put those best big rocks on
one leadership curve with the top to things
and choose that it's called the essentials license so if you're the mom in the garage choose the essentials license and it simplifies
hundreds hundreds of things you can do in business down to about and if you
follow that and build maturity in those to things then i look forward to
having a drink on the back of your super yacht one day you in fact invite us
that's right and i think if you've got a super yacht you can pay for our air flight
come on yeah so we're still and i'll be there drinking scotch and we'll park it next to bezos and we'll we'll
say naughty words that's right exactly that goliath correct yeah yeah sync sync
[Laughter] i think we're about to get like shut down is the internet gonna get turned
off on us or something yeah i'm probably gonna get investigated now
matt thanks so much for having me it's been a real pleasure ah it's been great thanks so much for joining us stuart and um yeah do get in
touch with stuart we'll put a link to stuart uh it's linkedin profile and awaymaker course in the show notes
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash stuart thank you so much
well a huge thanks to my very special guest stuart what did you think what did you think to stewart's advice
all good stuff eh now of course you can get all of the links the notes and the
transcript from today's show at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash we've totally got you covered there
they're all free you don't even need an email to access them but they're all there so do jump in
and grab those and just go over those seven lessons again super super insightful stuff and i you know quite
often as entrepreneurs especially in the world of digital we're always looking for that silver bullet aren't we we're always
looking for that very special secret source and yet
quite often it's doing the basic principles the fundamental principles really well that
bring us success and so i really enjoyed that conversation with stuart just made me think again about some of those
lessons and if of course that conversation with stuart is not enough well
in our next session we get to talk to kenny gray now
we are going to talk about what does e-commerce marketing look like in
that sounds interesting doesn't it what does e-commerce marketing look like in guess what here's an excerpt for
you but it's always a little different so
instead of just trying to hope they stop on your feed and interrupt their entertainment scrolling
we're going right into their inboxes or writing to their text messages so we have like a direct line to them like hey
you already signed up for this we have something that you want it's on sale so those performed really well but yeah you
want to be building throughout the whole year some people might be breaking even every month and then you're going to
make all of your net profit there in qjust depending on what you sell and what if you have your back end dialed in and
what products you're offering um so it all kind of works together so it's not like you can focus just on one piece and
or just rely on one channel or one product so you know you want to kind of diversify
you want to kind of offer a variety [Music]
yes i am looking forward to that one absolutely now let me tell you
next time we get kenny on it is episode now if you are keen eared uh then
you will have noticed this is episode -the next one is episode we have in fact this time closed out season
eight it has gone by so quick let me tell you so a big thanks and shout out to all the
great guests that we've had on over season eight i really enjoyed it it's been my favorite so far not gonna lie
loved that season met some phenomenal people and you'll be you'll be pleased stoked to know that
season nine is full of amazing people like kenny coming up yes we've got some fab guests talking about some great
topics uh on season nine of the podcast so do make sure you like and subscribe and stay connected with us so that when
we put the next episode out there which will be in just a few short weeks it's
going to arrive auto magically down on your phone your computer your tablet wherever you watch listen to and consume
your podcast it will just appear there so you can get into that but if you're intrigued about what e-commerce
marketing looks like in amongst all the other topics we've got going on stay connected of course and you know
whilst you're doing that whole subscribe thing why not give us a rating on itunes or wherever you get your podcast from
and of course share it out because when you do we get to connect with more folks around
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the whole circle goes round and round you know what i'm talking about it's a win-win so uh appreciate you giving us
that rate in that review and sharing what we're doing so as i said at the start all of the notes links and
transcripts to today's show are online and you can get them for free at ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash that's it from me thanks for listening uh and like i say uh make sure you come
back for the start of season nine as we are going to get to interview some more fab guests to help you grow your own online
business i for one can't wait i'll see you in season nine
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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