What Are You Taking From 2020 into 2021 (Part 1)

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular
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Introduction to the episode
well hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson this is a show
all about how to grow your online business and every week i get to speak to some
really amazing people from the world of e-commerce i get to ask them all kinds of questions
about what they know and how it's going to help us develop online now historically
we've had one guest per show but being as this is the end of and the start
hopefully of a very different we have been doing something a little bit different
what we have done is we've contacted our guests from the last months we have invited them back to talk about
what lessons they have learned from that they are taking into
and trying to figure out how that can help us uh with our own businesses both in running the business being an
entrepreneur being business people but also growing our business online
into and in today's show we have part one of some great tips from
people like chloe thomas we've got paulie walsh we've got ian moyes we have nancy badil
we have merrick de zuza and we have neil roberts oh yes this is a jam-packed episode for you
uh that we have got in store so you are definitely going to want to pay attention to all of this now if you have a notebook get it ready
but if you're in the car driving or for whatever reason you can't take notes right now you'll be pleased to know that all of
the notes from today's show will be available as a free download with links to all of the guests and what
they're up to uh all you've got to do is head on over to the website the just head over to the website
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash because we're on episode so just ecommerce podcast dot
net forward slash and it will take you straight to this page
now without further ado shall we jump in i think we should let's get started with our very first
guest today chloe thomas who if you're a regular to the show you'll know she is a regular to the show
if you get what i mean uh chloe is the host of the optimizing keep optimizing podcast
and she is always super generous with her expertise and knowledge so here is an excerpt from my
conversation with chloe what are you taking from into
Chloe Thomas, Globally recognised eCommerce Marketing Problem Solver
that's a cracking question so i think i think what i'm taking from into
she says buying time to get the answer right is
that um i think everything that the pandemic has thrown
at us in the world of e-commerce especially the world of e-commerce smart actually the whole of the world of e-commerce i think has made us
better at our jobs i think we've been forced to analyze better to work out you
know whether your sales have gone through the roof or they've plummeted it's really forced you to take a look at
the results and work out what to do more of and what to stop doing it's really forced us to look at our
systems and go oh dick oh that's horrendous you know you hear about the high street guys who've survived the best through
this and it has been because they already have the systems in place that enable them to dispatch from store
that enabled them to re-route customer service queries to the store staff so they could keep as the web was going
crazy they could redeploy one of you know for a high street business probably your second
biggest outlay is your team and you could redeploy the team onto doing something which quite frankly
can only be good for team morale let alone the bottom line of the company so i think it's it's made us
better in many many ways in this industry and as you know business owners and
marketers and i hope we will continue that and continue improving on that
as we go into whatever next year brings us so we are able to move more flexibly
able to react better with less pain points and less issues and you know able to be in a position
where we can treat our customers and our staff better because we've got those systems in place which of course will make it
all a lot better in the long run and i think one of the the big themes which has come out across
all of that for me is the the needing to get to understand the customer better
you know it seems like there's people spending a lot more time on content and on social and on personas
because they're trying to make sure they're appealing to the right customers or you know if they've got massive sales
they're trying to work out how do we appeal to the right people because we can't market to everybody because we haven't got the stock or on
the flip side of that if the sales have gone down it's how do we really get to understand our customers so we can start recovery
and i think that is that's what i'm taking to is a it's kind of a sense of hope and um kind
of loving the industry we're in because i think we've really grown this year and i think we're moving um you know the future's looking really
bright for e-commerce um and i think bright for retail overall but
yeah so people shoot me for saying that one but but i think you know this is just an acceleration of
a rebalancing that was happening anyway and the retailers who can create the great experiences and
and so forth will survive there's still a place for for the high street here yeah no it's brilliant chloe thank you
very much as usual you've been an absolute legend my pleasure always always good to talk to you indeed
well big thanks again to chloe and if you haven't done so already check out chloe's new podcast it is called keep
optimizing and in that show she talks about all things ecommerce with some great guests
even if i do say so myself yes i have been a guest on that show okay so
links to chloe and her show will be in today's show notes uh that you can get for free just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash and you'll be able to get those no problem now next up is porig walsh
who is our resident uh behavioral psychologist uh porig has been on the show a number
of times including actually uh just in the last few weeks as he shared his expertise and uh
insight and knowledge and all wonderful things so let's carry on that conversation here are some more tips and expertise
from pory um if if you think about uh i i know some of us don't want to
Padraig Walsh, Behavioural Psychologist
but you know if we think about what what have you learned what are some of the big things that you're taking
through into uh i suppose one of the things matt is
this fear of the unknown that i suppose for me what astounded me
was if we were sitting here uh in in october november
and you outlined me all of the things that were going to happen to humanity to you know globally
that there's no little island you can go to and escape all of this really uh it's
going to have some impact that flights are going to be grounded that shops are going to be closed that people are going to die people are
going to get sick schools are going to close for six months of the year p you know carnation street isn't going
to be filming for three months you know heaven forbid forbid
that you know the us presidential elections will have drive through rallies and that they were it would be
absolutely dominated by this i would say god i i think we're going the whole world is
going to go into meltdown you remember the volcanic uh ash uh do you remember that that a few years ago
where their flights were grounded for two weeks yeah yeah worst thing that happened we were going what why can't we cope with this
yet i would i could count on on one hand the number of people i know who have moved
who have flown been in an airplane this year who have flown to a different place
you just haven't been able to do that yeah yet at the same time we're resilient and
the the i suppose human resilience human adaptability uh
has been the thing that has struck me most about so it's actually it's a positive in one sense when i was
a teenager i was like i always i knew something had to happen in my lifetime you know
there's been bad that happens yeah um and we've had i hope i
really really hope that this is the the the major event of our time i really really do
that this was the the major event uh was a global pandemic yet for the most part uh on a day-to-day
basis you see people adapting being resilient being civil being friendly with each other
helping each other out there's always going to be elements of society that don't do that
um but for the most part what i've been astounded with in is our ability to adapt to stay cheerful to be resilient
and to have flexibility to cope with massive changes in a very very short
space of time now that's a brilliant answer and i've loved it i've loved the i mean i've not
loved the pandemic doing me wrong but i i have loved how the majority of
of humans have responded yeah and and just put their hearts out there and
just started to care and help people i've it's been fantastic actually to see yeah uh super big thanks to porig
as always uh you get lots of stuff out of it don't you and of course you can find all of that
on the show notes and links to the conversation uh with him on our website at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
you i think we'll be learning this url by now if you've stuck with us this far
and if you have stay with us because we have another great guest lined up so let's check in
with ian moyes who is a technical sales leader and social influencer always loved my conversations
with ian and this one is no exception um what lessons are you taking from
Ian Moyse, Tech Sales Leader and Social Influencer
into what are the what are the sort of the key things that you think actually i'm i'm this is really cool i'm taking this
forward i think some really basic things to be honest don't take things for granted
um be prepared to be agile and accept change i mean how many people plan to change
plan to do something differently and never get around to it and think about how you can develop
yourself something i've said during this and we we may have spoken about what i've spoke before is
if you're you know if you're in work and working fully now you'll have to do
things differently accept change except that you're at home that's a big change
if you're not and you've either looking for a role or you've been furloughed
don't just sit on your laurels i think it's far too easy for people to sit back and go well i
have to wait it through or put a little bit of effort in put full effort and you've still got look at all the time you've been handed
you've been given a you know look on the positive you've been given all this time you know yes look for another role and
don't be despondent that there's no rules out there pivot pivot yourself what else can you do i wouldn't suggest necessarily from
what i've heard using the government site that recommends a new role because it's providing some interesting alternatives
for people but think about okay you've got skills no matter what you've been doing you've
got skills and experience that are transposable yeah and if you're a hard worker and committed people are going to see that
so make an effort you know continue to every day because at some point
someone's going to interview you and you want to better say well what were you doing well every day i spent three hours
proactively looking for new roles and applying it at least you've got a story to tell it's positive
and learn something learn a new skill yeah you know i've gone through i'm pretty sure we'd have spoken but i
found that in the salesforce area for example there's a free education thing you can go through called trailblazer so i've i've
achieved you get to a ranger status the highest badge i've done that three times i'm triple ranger during covert and i've
been working but you know i've been thinking what do you want to come out of this saying in that period if anyone asks you what
do you want to say well i don't have a good answer or do you want to say no i did this i learned a new language
or i did whatever i developed myself that you've got a fantastic positive story to come out of it and you'll feel
better through it right because every day rather than watch netflix which is easy to fall into yeah no it is it is
very very good very wise what advice would you give to somebody who um knows they need to change
uh but like a lot of people struggle to change what what i mean you go through this process of
change you obviously are going to be like the rest of us and struggle with change what what what do you do
differently small bite-sized chunks i think people try and bite off more than they can chew
and that's the problem right and i'll give give an easy example and i'm the same
procrastination is easy when there's a big job to do and you know that is going to be a huge
thing to climb you never want to start it because you think well when i start i've now got to deal with this rather
than breaking it down so for example i have to write blogs etc you sit there with a white piece of paper and it's a
wait oh i'll do it tomorrow tomorrow um is write down this notes in it right
don't start writing the blog thinking oh i'll start paragraph one just think of ideas bang id just throw stuff onto the page go and find a stat
go and find exact and and so you've got stuff on a page it doesn't make sense it's not in a constructed order it's not how you want
it to be but you haven't got a blank page anymore then you start formulating well actually
i could start to say this at the beginning so it's that nudging forward a little bit at a time rather than treating something as a big job because
if you want to change whatever it is and it's just this huge job you never get around to starting it it's the mountain
climb right if you don't take the first step you'll never climb the mountain because just keep looking at it every day one
day i'll climb that and you never do take a step that's one now take another step
no another it's breaking it down into chunks and things you can do because i always find whatever it looks like a big thing don't
we all put it off okay we'll get to that later i'll do the easy thing now i'll do these ten easy jobs but the big
one i'll do later and when you get to it starting i think very good breaking down into smaller
things yeah the power of the small step yeah very good love that the power of small steps ian's
great isn't he well of course he is we get great guests on the show just for you so you know a course is going to be good
but you can of course find out the notes from our conversation and the links to ian if you want to connect with him all in our show notes
which you know by now ecommercepodcast.net forward slash just head on over there
now to bring on my next guest is nancy badil or bedillo uh
depending on how you want to pronounce it now nancy was a recent guest actually she was only with us in episode
where we had an absolutely fantastic conversation talking about pinterest and etsy and i learned a whole bunch of
stuff let me tell you i love that show love talking with nancy so for you who
are like me and love nancy here is some more nancy um the question is really simple what are
Nancy Badillo, Digital Marketing Specialist
you taking from into
okay so what i think i'm taking from to is that you have to put
yourself out there i think for many years i wasn't brave enough to be in front of
the camera i wasn't brainy enough to do especially now with the technology
everything like tick tock when it comes to reals when it comes to video webinars you have to make sure
that you are present all the time in your business and just doing behind the scenes is not
enough to grow a business so for me what i'm taking for is that i'm going to do more podcasts
i'm going to put myself out there more i'm going to do more live webinars i'm going to do facebook lives
instagram lives anything and everything that is going to potentially reach more people
and in the future what i really want is to be on the tech talk um and share my story in my journey so i
know that the way to reach the masses is to get out there in front of a lot of people so
that's what i'm taking in fantastic that's great thank you very much okay i love that i love the drive
i'm just going to be i'm going to do a ted talk why not go for it have at it it's um can't barely speak english but i'm
gonna do it thanks nancy now if you listen to
episode you will know that nancy at the time was just about to release her course on etsy
which she has done now and i signed up for it and i've actually been working through it with my year old daughter
oh yes we've been having a great time doing that it is honestly a great course so comprehensive i have never
ever seen anyone update their course as much as nancy does she is continually bring in huge amounts of
value so do check it out and if you want to know more about that course if you want to know more about nancy
of course as always the links will be in today's show notes uh just head on over to say with me
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now before we bring on the next guest let me just take a
minute to thank this show's sponsor
Kurious Digital (Sponsor)
let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors curious digital you know what i love its flexibility it's such a great
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that does all of that so if you're in the market for a new e-commerce platform make sure you follow the links from matt
edmondson.com take advantage of the offers that they've got for you and let me know what you think
[Music]
okay big thanks to uh curious digital for sponsoring today's show uh we will of course put a link to
curious digital in the show notes so you can find out more about that on our website
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now let's bring on our next guest
which is gonna be merrick d'souza who was featured on the show way back
in episode where we talked about the weapons of influence and how to apply them to our
own e-commerce business i have to be honest i love this show it was a great show and it was great to speak to merrick again
and ketchup so without further ado here's an excerpt from our conversation
Digital Marketing Expert, Meyrick D’Souza
what are you carrying forward to next year what are you what do you think next year is
is is you know what are some of the keys i think uh for you for
what are we carrying forward um so obviously i'm not working right now
so i haven't you know been working over the lockdown period i think
i think there are a couple of big changes that we're seeing um
so obviously we've we've seen a a rise in the
amount of uh the amount of focus on on digital but i think that
there's a growing trust in um in automated
um activities and the use of bots and things like that because that's
the only way that um organizations are able to scale
to meet the to to to have met the kind of growing demand that's happened so for example
um because so many more people have been calling amazon or whatever other
e-commerce site they've been using um there's been a lot there's been a greater demand for e-commerce for um
for customer support and a lot of these companies have been able to do that by manning phones
so they're actually using automated features for um for uh for managing issues
um and that i think has created a great acceptance
of automation as a means of engaging people and um
driving customer experience and so i think that'll be one of the things we see in is
a greater reliance and greater acceptance of um
of chat bots and and more automated um activity as a way of
as a way of engaging people i think a lot of people actually prefer
sometimes using chat bots as a as a quicker way to find out what they
uh to find the solution that they need as long as what they as long as their
problem isn't completely outlandish or they actually need to talk to somebody um if it's something that's um
a kind of regular issue then you expect it to be solved more easily and you don't necessarily
want to talk to somebody to explain it yes that's very true and i think you're
right i think actually that's a really good observation that um there is a growing acceptance now amongst users that
actually talking to a machine is fine and in most cases works very very well
and so machine learning you know ai the sort of the new
trends which are hitting the world and e-commerce uh is
is certainly involved in that actually how that integrates and how that works with your online business i think is
quite fascinating isn't it and and so you're right i think we will see a growing trend in it i was talking to a friend of mine the
other day he was telling me um about something i think tesla did whereby they've got some ai
um project going on uh maybe it wasn't i can't remember who it was anyway in effect the whole purpose of this per
this piece of ai was to write content you know like blog posts and stuff where we we kind of spend hours researching
and we spend uh money on copywriters and so on and so forth to write blog posts
well now um a machine did it and i think it was they they put a post on something like the huffington post or
some kind of well-known well-established site and no one guessed it was ai everyone thought it was a genuine you know
published article one of those pieces on twitter i've got quite a bit of engagement and and this article written by
that basically said you know this is written by a bot but you would never guess it and i think the guardian wrote about it
as well yeah um i i think you know the philosophy for many years
when it comes to customer service was to limit um how many people actually you had to
talk to whether through faqs or through um
you know phone systems where you have to select different options but i think now businesses are realizing
that they don't need to limit um how many people they talk to they can
actually scale more easily and actually that's a better that's a better um
strategy yeah so hoping to see that has been a big as a being a big change
um and the fact that and the fact that um of course um you don't need to be in
amazon to be able to scale easily
using technology i think yes you're seeing a lot more companies realize that
yeah and benefit from that yeah no i totally agree i totally agree that's fantastic so what
else do you see for well the other thing that i'm hoping for is um
is that organizations will understand the need they need the need to humanize the brand
so i think a lot of people want to feel
that the organizations they rely on feel their pain and they treat them in a
way that's more human and less
corporate um that's a growing need i think that's an opportunity
for organizations to really change how they communicate
and to use less corporate speak and to be more uh more human and more real
and more empathetic with their customers um so i'm looking for that as a i'm
looking for that as being as being a bigger change in terms of seeing some signs of that in some organizations
that are paying attention how do you see that how do you see that being outworked
being outworked yeah how do you mean as in if you're going to humanize if if
if we're going to start to see people um humanize the brand more and more what are some of the ways you think
people could or should do that um well um well i think firstly it can just
be tough tone of voice
and i think um we are you your your engagement strategy
right i mean just think about it less in terms of
saving money and trying to get rid of people or solve problems as
quickly as possible and actually building loyalty building relationships with people and
seeing the opportunity of doing uh you know for doing that but also realizing that
being more human is becoming more of a necessary activity that you lose
business if you if you don't so i think the main way that expressed is through
your tone of voice but also the kind of words you use the language you're using the imagery you're using
[Music] as well as thinking about how you engage with your
customers and also thinking about how you use your employees better
so i think part of part of the strategy is not just thinking about engagement of customers but engagement
of employees as well because they they often your your front lines uh your front line staff so how you
actually engage them and make them feel uh
more able to talk to customers and feel more purposeful in what they're
doing then the more likely
people will feel that your brand your your company's being authentic so authenticity is what you know is what
you then bring so looking for ways to be more authentic with customers
so do you think then uh bringing it back to what you said at the start because i like the sound of this you
know you humanize your brand um it's worked very well for jersey my beauty company you know and it's um it's it i i agree with you people buy
and people connect with authentic voices they they connect with authentic companies very well
so do you see that there's a tension um that arises between uh humanize the brain but also this rise
in um chat bots and machine learning which are clearly not human machines trying to mimic
humanity i suppose in some respects so do you see there's a is there a tension there or can that be managed
it can be managed i mean obviously um
authenticity is important so you don't pretend the chatbot is real human being um
but the way that the chatbot responds to people and the kind of language it uses can be can mimic human interactions
um and actually a certain amount of uh
humanity in your chat bots important but not too much because that becomes really creepy
yeah so that's one thing they found not just with chat bots but robotics as well so um
you're aware or you've heard of the robots or so for example the robot dogs that
are used to work with elderly people
for companionship some of the research they've shown is that if the dog is too empathetic it actually comes off
badly it feels really creepy so getting the right balance is important
that's really interesting yeah yeah um but at the end of the day it's how
people feel at the end of the interaction
right and that's that's how you that's how you're humanizing around and thinking about the
emotions that you're eliciting so it's not necessarily it's not just about having a human face
it's making sure that you're sensitive to the emotions that you're creating in people and doing that in an authentic and
deliberate way so when you have when you're using a
chat bot be be authentic tell people that this is a chat bot make sure they understand that if they
need to escalate it to a human being they can so they understand the process they're
going to go through at the beginning [Music]
and not try to obfuscate or to make life more difficult for people make
it easier for people to get what they uh to get what they need
rather than trying to hide and you know deal with
issues the most efficient way so thinking really about effectiveness rather than just
efficiency okay effectiveness through using time you have available to engage
people to actually delight them and win their loyalty and seeing the longer
term impact of that so um yeah it's great
uh wonderful um can i ask you maybe one more question on this um what do you think
right it's interesting like we've we've just come through or are coming through the the pandemic and it's been the most
incredible and unusual year um what is
i guess what are some of the key lessons that you've learned in the midst of all of this in the midst of this pandemic and what
is taught you
oh goodness me i think i mean there's so much that we won't
understand what we need to learn from for a while i think it will take a long time for it to
reveal itself [Music]
we'll have to we'll have to see how
people's work habits change you know will we go back
to the previous way of living and working and the expectation that we will always
travel to work every day or will people actually want to spend more time
at home and work from home [Music]
i mean specific industries are going to change um so we've got to understand
that i mean we know for example that uh a lot of
retail business and restaurant businesses have been hurting especially the ones in
city centers because people aren't traveling there anymore so how will that
you know how will that change the high street in big urban areas um
you know i think that's that's still to um to on to reveal itself
um but you know certain industries have benefited a lot
of tech industries have benefited a lot of gaming industries have have um
have benefited but what's the long-term impact going to be for
travel and the full ecosystem of businesses that revolve evolve around travel i think
that's going to be um that's going to be huge um [Music]
will we see a return to people taking holidays in their own country so one of the
things that's been happening over the last sort of years has been that tourism has almost become
too much you know there were a lot of places that a lot of famous tourist destinations
like venice and um you know rio and places like that were saying we
have too many tourists we don't tourists um
so will we will that kind of flatten out and will tourism tourist destinations
spread more evenly um
and that has a lot of implications as well for other businesses um within the truck sort of travel
ecosystem um you know airbnb i don't know how
how they will evolve you know um so everyone wants to know really
what's uh everyone wants to know what lessons they've got for for i i feel that no one can really tell
you know you might have some specific insights into your industry um a lot of people like mark ritzen
if you know mark ritzen um sort of saying that uh nothing will change and and some
extent he's right um the bigger picture
things will things think things won't necessarily change but people's habits
will change and that will impact you know some industries but i think the
the full understanding of those changes we won't see for maybe
two three years i don't think that we'll see some big changes in i think the
changes that we will see will happen in the longer term yeah i'm not exactly asking you a question but
no no it's fascinating isn't it and um i i think it's interesting everybody i've asked this question to
talks about will work return back to normal it's one of the big things one of the big
questions what's going to happen to work will we go back to being in an office nine to five and what's going to happen
to travel and tourism uh is is another popular question we just don't know
um i think everyone's agreed that digital seems to be a good way forward
you know that's one of the big things that we've learned is actually digital i think has been accelerated in
a lot of people's minds and a lot of businesses so the move to digital the desire to do
digital better um has been been one of the big trends i think
i think i think one thing that we have to understand is that the volatility of the market
i don't you know i think that won't necessarily settle down and i think people have to anticipate
more volatility which means you need to be able to respond quickly and that means that traditional
awareness of marketing which takes longer to plan and to change will be
hit and the advantage of one of the advantage of digital which is being able to
monitor things in real time and change things in real time we will be seen as an as a as a place to
play but also as a result of that people thinking about their data strategy
will put data more at the forefront so people need to be paying more attention to the data strategy how
they're collecting it and making sure that they have able to put the right insights into the right hands
in a timely way so that people can um adjust more quickly so i'm hoping
that you'll see i've always been a big fan of data and i'm hoping you'll see more companies realize that they need to
have um a better data strategy from thinking in terms of how they
capture it how they store it and how they make it available and the kind of insights they drive from it
um to make it more fit for purpose and think less about big data and about
more about the right data um but that you know that's that's gonna
that i think is a imperative now and hopefully more businesses
will see that so companies that can help or consultants and suppliers that can
help companies solve that problem i think will will do well another thing i think is
that people will start looking at side gigs much more i mean that's obviously
sidekicks oh side gigs so that's been a growing trend but i think that'll grow
even more and you'll see people maybe opt out of doing the normal nine-to-five
and instead rely on rely on having a number of different
side gigs to to make ends meet that's a really
interesting observation i think you're right i think um people are just very very wary of putting all their eggs in one basket
aren't they at the moment exactly exactly yeah there's status implications for
social policy as well it's not just you know sort of business um but it has implications for
you know like the insurance business for um for travel i mean
for for um commuting for example yeah and
i mean i said before for uh um for the restaurant and retail business
so yeah um and then also will people
want to move away from cities more that has been a trend over the last few years but will that increase
where you know i think there's a lot less centralization in big cities and that
that's been a move for the last few years i think that'll probably accelerate yeah no interesting very very
interesting thanks merrick thanks again for being on the show always good to have you back
always good to reconnect and if you want to know more about merrick uh all of his info etc you know it by now is going to be in
the show notes at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now it's time for our
final guest of the show and you could argue we've been saving the
best for last i wouldn't because all of our guests are fantastic but i could appreciate why you might argue that uh this is
neil roberts now i spoke to neil back in episode where we talked about customer focus
and at the time neil worked for moo that's right the huge company mood.com uh but he has since moved on to bigger
and better things so it was i was super keen to catch up with neil so here's
our conversation not a lot there's not a lot that i necessarily
Neil Roberts, CPO at Papier
want to take um i think probably more an attitude that actually you can deal with
with the unexpected um you know so from my point of view you know i'm now in a different business
and working with a different set of individuals um a great team and there
as a business has uh are selling a slight a fairly different range of
products than they were at the beginning of the year and growth is coming from a very different place for them and even
with with the company that worked at before they they're actually you know they've had to make some very
difficult decisions but they're going to be in a good place again so i think it's a sense of um
resilience a sense of you know actually we can deal with this kind of stuff and this kind of change
um so i think that's probably probably a renewed attitude towards
change more willing to just get stuck in rather than i think there's there's always a tendency you sit there and mope around
for a bit um so more it's like okay this is what it is let's deal with it what can we do
about it so i think that's probably the attitude i'll take take forward um and that's probably it i
think from just leave the rest in yeah i
think you know it's the past you can't change it you got to move forward haven't you well there yeah there is that what's
that that verse that says forgetting those things which are passed i press on towards the prize of the upward call or
something like that it's um it's very much about forgetting the pastors and striving towards the future
that's a good answer that's a very good answer so what are you most excited about for next year
um i think it's just the you know i've joined uh a great business
um which just had a huge amount of opportunity so that in itself is really exciting and working with a really really nice
bunch um so i think it's just realizing that opportunity so you can go in there
because i've worked in businesses you know earlier in my career that was sort of you know people so i've kind of
seen the stage before papia and then i spent probably the last or years
in businesses of where they in terms of the size where they aspire to be so i kind of have the before and after
and then it's how can i help them uh along that journey which is is really exciting because i i can
hopefully help them avoid a lot of the problems that i've spent
a big part of the last years trying to deal with but again don't do that
in this but i feel a little bit like while there's always a lot of uncertainty with certain elements
there's i've got a sort of a secret crystal ball of right actually if you if you do this and you do that i
can see predict that you know you you'll have some issues here so hopefully uh being able to get in in a
business at this stage of growth and and help that growth happen much faster
without some of the i suppose the the challenges that can present when you're doing it for the
first time yeah that's a really good answer that's a really good answer so i mean it sounds
um i mean it sounds ideal in some respects you're in a fast-growing company there's a lot going on you've
got a lot to bring an offer to that company and it's it's doing some good stuff so it's a fun place to be
isn't it and i think i think that this is a common theme that i hear amongst digital
uh digital folks is actually life at the moment because it's busy
because we've got kobed actually for them can be a lot of fun because of the opportunity and the scope of stuff that
they're dealing with i'm in the midst of the turmoil that you know every the the country is facing
i'm having fun i feel a little bit guilty i'm not gonna lie but it's kind of like this is this is
this is quite extraordinary isn't it they're quite extraordinary times i think they are i mean i've worked in a
number of businesses where they've you know gone through periods of not having fun times and um you know trading difficulties or
just you know how to get through to profitability and they aren't fun places to be there's no
denying um but you do learn a lot when you're there
um and you do get a sense of resilience out of doing it so yeah it's really nice
to be in a business where you don't have to worry so much about that because
um it just feels that much easier if that makes sense um so i think
you know going through growth gives you even even more opportunities to explore and experiment um because you get a lot less risk of
earth than in businesses i've been in in the past um so yeah it's exciting
um yeah that sounds really sweet and you're right there's a result i think when you're in the tough times when it's
hard and you grind it out that's when resilience you you develop a resilience don't you so when it is grown when things are
easier actually you become much better equipped to deal with that
yeah i think so i think this is kind of it's almost sounds almost to this statistic to say
but you kind of i think it makes a stronger person so i almost wish that you you go through that at some
point and i'm and i pretty much everybody will whether it's through a personal or or a business kind of things they'll go
through those tough times and they're miserable um but yeah you do come out the other side when you come out the other side
and it does give you a sort of confidence to deal with with change generally um and a sort of a steadiness and
calmness when things aren't looking so great because you have a reference point and you have the
confidence that actually you did or that business did come through that um so there's that that light at the end
of the tunnel which i think gives people people hope and i think there's a lot of people that um
when they come back and reflect on this period it sounds quite trite actually um but you know i've had periods where
i've been out of work for quite extended periods and when you're in it it's utterly miserable yeah but
i look back at it now um and i'm not sure i would change it which sounds very odd to say um you know
because i've been there on the kitchen table phoning up trying to get through to recruiters to get jobs for months on end
uh and not really getting anywhere and being you know a kind of a month away from defaulting on the mortgage um and yeah
and and it's and it's miserable there ain't no lying about that um but yeah you you kind of i think get
a new perspective having been through you know looking for job again recently is you take a lot of it less personally
i think the second or third time round um and you realize that actually there's a lot of businesses that are
just making decisions to try and survive um because if they don't then even more people are going to be impacted
um and you know i'm not sure i would necessarily end up in the place i am
with the career i am without having gone through all of that so um yeah i'm sure it's not fun for a lot of
people but i think there is there's opportunity on the other side um i think staying in business is first
thing is is stay in business and then and then you can grow and you can profit so i think for a lot of people it's
it's just see this period through yeah it is no it's brilliant and thank you for sharing that that's very kind of you and
i'm sure that'll help a lot of people who are struggling uh because as you know on one hand some of
us are doing okay and on the other hand some of us are not doing okay right now um and there's winners and there's losers but
um i i appreciate what you said because ultimately have you ever heard of a guy called um
admiral stockdale james stockdale he was mentioned in the book uh by jim collins good to great if you've
ever read that book i have it on my shelf over my right shoulder i obviously wasn't paying attention
obviously it's a great book is he the submarine guy he's the guy that was um admiral stocked
out he was the guy that was captured during the vietnam war and he was um i think it was a vietnam
war and he was imprisoned i think for about eight years tortured over times
and he saw people in prison you know kind of some of them coped with uh prison and let me tell you
prison during a war is no fun i mean prison's not great anyway but can you imagine you know
there's no human rights there's nothing right it's horrific and he he talked to jim collins about
this and jim said to him how did you how did you survive something that was so horrific and he
said well fundamentally i had the faith that ultimately i would prevail and that not only i
would prevail but this would be the defining event of my life for which i i would not change jeremy
and that's that's kind of that's a bit like you mentioned it's a bit sadistic it's like but actually this is this is going to
change my life in in ways which are so much better and that's how we got through prison and so then colin says to him well who
are the people that didn't survive in prison that well and he said oh that's easy it's the
optimists which i just find the most extraordinary statement it's the people that would just say
oh we're going to be out by christmas then christmas would come and go and they wouldn't be out i will be out by next christmas and they would come and
go and they would wouldn't be out and it clearly wouldn't it didn't mean they they they weren't dealing with the situation
that was in front of them and so stockdale would often go around to the prisoner saying listen you are not going to be out by
christmas deal with it and so he said there's this real tension between having the faith that you will ultimately prevail
but the ability and strength to confront the brutal facts as they appear today and deal with those head-on and
it's like these two things enabled him to deal with prison i thought i i've been thinking about this a lot
recently you know the stockdale paradox uh these two things the faith that you're going to prevail
the strength to confront the brutal facts yeah and i think i mean mine was no vietnam war but yeah i can
still remember it the the realization that um no one was going to find a job for me so i had to
you know go in and confront confront my demons and kind of do the things that i absolutely dread
like cold calling people and going out and and networking with friends of friends of colleagues of friends
which is you know i i absolutely hate that kind of stuff it's like the and the sort of the initial small
talk but you know to to humble myself to go out and and and see if i could could find work you know
um so yeah i i have a lot of i suppose empathy for that because
yeah you i think you do need a bit of optimism but i think you you that's not enough you need to put
the graft in uh to turn it around and you need to i think that's probably the thing is it
does give you the strength to go yes i do have that anxiety in my in my stomach i don't feel comfortable
about this but it forces you to push beyond that um and i think you do grow as a result
yeah and then when you feel that feeling again you're kind of all right i'll remember
this but i can actually you know push past it um so i think it yeah i i have to have a
re-read now though just read that little few pages it's
fine the rest of just a few pages but i think you quoted it perfectly it sounded like you you've read that a lot
well funnily enough i was um i've been doing a lot of research recently on how to overcome adversity we've been doing a
lot of stuff around that and um and so yeah some research went into the stockdale products so that's
why it's all fresh in my thinking well big thanks to neil always love catching up with neil he's such a dude
isn't he i i just i always enjoy my conversations with him i always get like a million ideas when i
speak to neil that is for sure so a huge thanks to neil and of course a huge thanks to all of my guests from
Close
today's show it was brilliant to catch up with each and every one of you we must do it again at some point now
you know what my aim whenever i speak to guests is to always find some real practical nuggets that i
can use on my own e-commerce websites because like you i run my own e-commerce business and i
would say we did that today definitely can check that off my to-do list and so i
i hope you got some great stuff out of it too if you did then i would totally appreciate it
if you could rate the show on itunes and even share it out so we can connect with more folks around the world
and grow what we are doing now as i said at the start and as i've said many times during the
show uh all of the notes links and transcripts to today's show uh are online and you can get them for free
just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash to get them thanks for
listening and come back next time as we get to interview some more great guests we're
going to get into part two of this discussion uh all about you know what are we taking from into
so thanks for being with us my name is matt edmondson and we will be back again very very soon
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