Are you prepared to supercharge your ecommerce business with insights from Andy Rooke, the founder of Grey Matters Advisory?
Strap in as we navigate the fascinating terrain of business strategy, discussing everything from the power of hiring for attitude over skill, to the importance of timing in business growth. Andy's wealth of experience with companies around the globe offers a unique, real-world perspective, complementing our deep-dive into effective business scaling.
We take a detour to reflect on the human side of business.
From the loneliness often experienced by business owners to the under-discussed importance of creating safe spaces, we touch on aspects often left unexplored.
Andy offers tips on how to sidestep common pitfalls and emphasises the necessity of a clear purpose and vision.
He further draws upon his experiences to illustrate how to articulate your market positioning and success strategy.
Towards the end, our conversation circles back to the symbiotic relationship between business strategy and personal growth.
We shed light on developing a clear pricing plan and the significance of keeping a pulse on market fluctuations. Andy echoes the courage needed to face the numbers, test the market before taking the plunge, and the power of resilience.
This episode is more than just a guide; it's a master-class for those looking to better understand the challenges of scaling and the impact of human elements on business.
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Are you prepared to supercharge your ecommerce business with insights from Andy Rooke, the founder of Grey Matters Advisory?
Strap in as we navigate the fascinating terrain of business strategy, discussing everything from the power of hiring for attitude over skill, to the importance of timing in business growth. Andy's wealth of experience with companies around the globe offers a unique, real-world perspective, complementing our deep-dive into effective business scaling.
We take a detour to reflect on the human side of business.
From the loneliness often experienced by business owners to the under-discussed importance of creating safe spaces, we touch on aspects often left unexplored.
Andy offers tips on how to sidestep common pitfalls and emphasises the necessity of a clear purpose and vision.
He further draws upon his experiences to illustrate how to articulate your market positioning and success strategy.
Towards the end, our conversation circles back to the symbiotic relationship between business strategy and personal growth.
We shed light on developing a clear pricing plan and the significance of keeping a pulse on market fluctuations. Andy echoes the courage needed to face the numbers, test the market before taking the plunge, and the power of resilience.
This episode is more than just a guide; it's a master-class for those looking to better understand the challenges of scaling and the impact of human elements on business.
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia Podcast. Welcome to Ecommerce Australia. I'm your host, ryan Martin, founder of Remarkable Digital. This podcast is aimed at those who have their own online business, e-commerce professionals looking to keep current on the trends, and for anyone interested in learning more about the world of Ecom. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses.
Speaker 1:I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. So welcome to another episode of Ecommerce Australia.
Speaker 1:It's great to have not only a good mate and a fellow Sincilda supporter, but also a very successful business person in his own right. Join us today in Andy Rook. I've asked Andy to jump on this podcast because someone of his expertise and experience can really help business owners implement strategy and systems to ensure they scale and grow, and it's a question I get quite a bit in my DMs over the last couple of years, so I've been searching for someone with this sort of background. Andy is the founder of Grey Matters Advisory, which forms advisory boards bringing together the wisdom, experience and knowledge of semi-retired and former business professionals to help private business owners accelerate their growth and success. Andy has also coached over 500 senior executives and leaders worldwide, working with companies such as BHP and Xero all over the globe. So a big Ecommerce Australia. Welcome to Andy Rook, thanks very much, ryan.
Speaker 2:It's always humbling when you hear those things read back. You provide some details and you hear it back and you think oh well, maybe I have done some good stuff along the journey 100%, mate.
Speaker 1:Well, now's not the time to be humble after that introduction. But no, look, it's something we've spoke about for a while, that as Ecommerce businesses, you start from the bedroom and then you start using a 3PL or sort of going out into that warehouse facility and your business continues to grow. But sometimes Ecommerce leaders or Ecommerce businesses, they're good in one area it might be product development, it might be marketing, it might be sales but we could all do with the business strategy and advice. So, yeah, looking forward to asking you a few hard-hitting questions. Well, hopefully I'm up for the challenge, mate. A little bit of background before we get into it. So I mentioned Grey Matters Advisory, but what's a sort of typical week look like for?
Speaker 2:you. The beauty in it suits my personality, ryan is that no week is typical. I sit on the boards of nine or 10 private businesses. We have some of them quarterly, some of them monthly, a coach, a number of senior executives here in Australia and New Zealand and one or two in Singapore. So there's different ends of the day, different time zones, a lot of different businesses all going through different challenges, some around the sort of the macro situation that's happening economically and also with resources. Others are more specific. I have the beauty of, and the humble privilege of, being invited in to work with these senior individuals and businesses and business owners to help them sort of and partner with them from a thinking point of view. And so there is no standard day, standard week. They're all interesting. That's what really fuels and fuel my desire to set this business up and be a founder of something and hopefully build it, as a lot of your listeners are into something that could be really really rewarding and making a difference to a lot of people's lives. Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Mate, let's get into the first question I've got. So this is probably a hard one to answer, but I thought you're up for the challenge. An ideal business what would that business structure look like and what sort of people do we need on the bus? Let's say, if I can give you an example, where we're a furniture company and we're doing five million a year, we're looking to expand and grow, who do we need on that journey with us? You know when do we hire? Actually, I'll stop there.
Speaker 2:There's no ideal structure, as I'm sure you and everyone listening probably knows. There's not one sort of template that says this is the right structure. I mean, most businesses are going to have a finance section, they're going to have an operation section, they're going to have a sales section and then you know, depending on the size, they might have an IT, a tech, an HR. But the only two that really for me, in terms of structure, can't be outsourced normally sales and normally operations are the two things that are really difficult to outsource and they're the two critical ones.
Speaker 2:You can usually these days you can outsource a lot of your bookkeeping and your finance. You can outsource your IT support. You can outsource your HR support. I mean, there's so many industries now that have grown up specialising in supporting smaller businesses, so it's not a structure. But I think the other part to the question for me is that it's actually getting the right people, the right people on the bus in the right seats, which is a fairly hackneyed, well used phrase. But that's the critical part, because usually people now are much more malleable and we can move them within roles. But getting the right people in the door in your building and setting them up for success is probably more of a key than actually being really definitive about the right structure straight up.
Speaker 1:Yep, do you subscribe to the theory to sort of hire for for attitude and skills?
Speaker 2:can be learned Totally. I look like in my background and career, both as a sort of you know, running some very, very large businesses and senior roles. I mean I've always found that's the, that's the key to success with recruitment and hiring. It's not always easy because if you're really desperate you just want someone to come in and you tend to take the people based on the skills and you often end up with a bitterness and disappointment sometimes of rushing in and doing that. But I get it at this stage. It's really hard to find people for organisations and sometimes it's a haven't got the ability to dig in and show and invest time into sort of really finding values aligned people, because I know it's going to take much more training when they get in and they haven't got the time. So, yeah, if you can get that alignment straight up, you're far better placed than just going straight for someone who's seems to have a direct match of skills from their region May.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, with all your leadership and advisory boards that you sit on and then, you know, with a further extension to the great, great matters advisory team as well. Yeah, what are some common kind of questions that come up? One thing in particular is around like trying to get people back to the office. Is that a conversation that's been going on at board level? How do they get their staff more engaged and how to get people back into the office and feeling like part of a team again?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably one of the most pressing current problems for leaders in organisations at the moment is how to balance out the demand for the hybrid workplace coming from employees predominantly, but how to then balance out the needs of the organisation, and it's a really interesting paradigm. So if you just think about it for a minute is before whenever I'm signed up for a job. Before COVID they were signed up to go five days a week and that's what it was and that's how it worked and that's how businesses worked. What we learned through COVID is that there's a lot of really poor managers out there who couldn't validate performance based on output, but could only really validate performance based on what we call presenteism someone sitting in a seat in front of them. Covid challenged that notion really strongly and made a lot of managers very anxious.
Speaker 2:And then COVID ended, and now that that anxiety to some extent, with managers and leaders of businesses still there and still wanting to get people back and employees are resisting on two counts.
Speaker 2:One is that it was a hard one battle to get this flexibility in their time and they don't want to give it up.
Speaker 2:And also the predominantly proven results show that productivity during COVID was as high, if not in some cases higher than when they're actually in the office, and people worked own experience and mine and a lot of other people's people actually worked a lot harder during COVID and they were probably glued to a screen and doing a lot more work for fear of being accused of lagging off or not being committed, and that's been a really interesting paradigm.
Speaker 2:But the other thing we do know now and you said I do do a lot of work in the area of leadership as well is that teams are suffering from people not getting together, collaboration suffering. More junior people in the office are suffering I use this word suffering lightly because they're not getting access to the more experienced mentorship that happens and that flow down trickle effect of knowledge in a business, and so there are really good reasons for businesses to want to get people back, and employees accept some of those. But the trade off now between I can get up, don't have to maybe spend an hour traveling to and from work, I can sit in my pajamas, I can still do my work. So the complexity is still with us and it's going to take a lot more time for each business to work through it, and I suggest hybrid's here to stay though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fair enough. I think that's. It's always good to be able to have the best of both worlds, ideally the flexibility to do what you want to do when you want to do it. I think that's the best way to retain and attract the best talent on the market. Certainly in my industry there is a shortage on talent coming through, so you've got to be a little bit flexible around that. But you also want those A-grade, those A-players that understand that sometimes you do have to get into the office and work together as a team, like we did pre-pandemic. How do we know when the right time to hire is? It's another question that I'm considering at the moment. So sometimes you hire before you're ready. Sometimes you know, to one of your points earlier, it's too late to hire, and then you're scrambling to find that staff and perhaps take someone that you probably might not have. So I think getting the timing right to hiring and scaling is probably something that I'd love to get your thoughts on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Look, I think you've almost given an insight there into what most businesses face.
Speaker 2:Ideally, it's just before you need the person you know.
Speaker 2:Often hiring for businesses and I guess a lot of the audience that are listening today are probably a lot of them are smaller businesses and your jack of all trades doing everything and often it's you're overwhelmed, you're frustrated, you're worn down and you've lost a bit of love for the business and that's when you start hiring, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2:But I guess your ability to predict the business and your ability to get ahead of the curve is critical to understand when the right time is to put resources on, because there's not that many around at the moment in just about every industry. I can't think of an industry where I've heard that there's a surfeit of people you know, suppliers out, underperforming demand for jobs, yep, and so let's say it's going to take three to four months being able to sort of predict ahead and say, right, let's start now so we can actually do it right, as opposed to, as we referenced earlier, the more rushed process and get someone in who isn't right and that can then be a lot of wasted and negative energy and managing them and even managing them out, and then you're back to square one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's always a little bit of timing. Life's about timing, really, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:it is, and I said there's no magical formula. But look for most people. When I'm coaching and working with people, I think what I try and say is you know, try and get back or stay in love with what, why you initially set the business up and try and divest yourself of the things that are getting in the way of that. If you know and we talked about support services for businesses a bit earlier on and you know instinctively the areas that don't give you the energy and the areas that drag you down, try and hire, for you know people who can pick that up from you, but also look to outsource those things as well. So you get to as much as you can. Stay in love with the business and why you initially got into it in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point, actually makes that make sense. But sometimes you know, when you're in the day to day of it all, you sort of forget about that, of why you actually started. So it's always a good, you know good thing to come back to With. You know, obviously, what an e-commerce podcast here and we got a lot of e-commerce businesses. You know how do you scale an e-commerce business. You know, as I sort of spoke about that journey, you start out in the, in the bedroom, and then you know you start to get too many. You start to take up two rooms and three rooms and then you move to a, an outsource sort of 3PL. You know, in terms of a business viewpoint, how do we scale those e-commerce businesses so we can keep ahead and make sure that we are structured correctly?
Speaker 2:Look at, you know it's again. It's another really interesting question and a tough one to generalise around. I listened to not the last one, I think the previous podcast, brendan Gillan. I thought Brendan was fantastic. I mean his energy and everything was incredible. I've seen some of the other work he's done and some of his promotional pieces and you know I'm sure he's an e-commerce expert.
Speaker 2:I'm more of a business generalist across a number of industries. But the thing for me is it's about systemising a business. So I'm a founder of a business and I'm in that stage as I'm going through and looking at putting more people on and all of the people who work for me are, all you know, consult to me or they've got their own businesses. But I'm now looking at having to put some other people on to help me with a lot of the back office stuff. But it's having systems is the big thing for me.
Speaker 2:If you can't systemise a business, it's really hard to scale it. You you're always reacting to the latest crisis when you're running around and patching things up with band aids. So it's trying to sort of say what's our business processes, what's our systems, and then you can bring other people in and they can help you Because you can be really, you can articulate and really explain how they fit in and how they can help you. Yep, the corollary to that is if you just bring other people in and you're trying to scale and you haven't got the system, you lose a lot of the productivity improvements you're hoping or seeking to gain by the outsourcing or bringing people into to work with you. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, and so so with Gray Manors advisory, that's one of the things that you help with is sort of implementing systems based on your experience Of understanding where things can go wrong and and bringing it back to a systemised approach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not telling them the system they need. What we do is we're thinking partners effectively with business owners, so we're not so Arring it or rude to think we've got the answers and every bit of advice that comes out of our mouth is like tailored goal. But it's just trying to ask the right questions, as as you are with me today, and getting people to think differently maybe, but we're appropriate Blending in our background and our experience, because the people I've got aren't professional consultants. The people I've got a former business owners who just want to leave a legacy and want to help out now. And that's the beauty about it, I suppose, is they've suffered and succeeded across all those years in business and they've got, you know, amazingly enough, crystallises around similar ideas and I'm sure if I ask Any of them, you know what was the scalability challenge, what's the systemisation process, investment that was allowed, able them to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, mate. I'll change chapter a little bit. Should we have a board in business? When should I get a board? And personal question at what stage do you need to look at having a board and what are the benefits of having one?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So obviously I'm gonna be really positive about this because it's you know, it's my passion, it's my business. Look, boards and advisory board particulars. Advisory board is just to quickly define it. So an advisory board is A board that doesn't make decisions and doesn't have a corporate responsibility as such in this realm, when we're working with private businesses.
Speaker 2:So People have unofficial boards already. Usually you have, you know, people have their accountant, they have their lawyer, maybe they have their mates there, but they're their life partner, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever and and they're all sources of advice. As such, the purpose of having a foot more formalized advisory board is to try and bring some governance and structure to businesses without crushing or quashing the entrepreneurial spirit of it. And if I contrast that with a board you hear about in the media and the newspapers and things all the time, of which are more listed boards, they are there to represent the shareholders of the board and to and to navigate and steer the business through for the benefit of the shareholders, which are vast and broad and many, yeah, and they have a corporate responsibility that they can be challenged and prosecuted for and doing it, and they are making decisions, yeah, so that's the difference between advisory and corporate.
Speaker 2:The thing about, and the feedback we get from all of our clients is it's a safe space to talk about things when you're a business owner because it can be quite lonely at the top and you know I have my own advisory board because as much as I'm, you know, almost neck deep in it, you can still lose perspective and it's the ability to get other people unimotively to question what you're doing. It's a safe space to unravel and deal with some of the issues that are going on in your head and get other people to help get some clarity for you, and part of the the naming behind gray matters is one of the things we came up with is it's turning your gray areas into black and white. It's by helping you decide on what to do and, importantly also what not to do. If you use the black and white analogy before, it'll stop and go, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I thought gray matters was more around the gray hairs. Well it is.
Speaker 2:There's three parts to it. The other one's about the gray hair and the wisdom and the knowledge, and the third one is about we're using our brain only. We're not out there lifting stuff and moving things around warehouses and tinkering with cables and things like that. So yes, that is three parts, but that's one of the three.
Speaker 1:I like it. No, it's actually really clever when you think about it in terms of there isn't a lot of black and white in business, so it is a lot of gray.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. People need help with that and there's a really great book called Big Potential by a guy called Sean Aker, and Sean Aker has really crystallized that. He said you know, small potential is where people think they can get by on their own and do it, and sometimes they can, but it's a hell of a battle. Big potential is where you put your ego aside and you know that to be successful you've got to invite other people on the journey and if you embrace that concept, it's much, much easier to forge a path through all the challenges to get to success and to deliver on your dream. That it is trying to do it on your own and thinking that no one else can help you and no one else is any better than you and no one else would know anything more about your business or how to do things.
Speaker 2:And you know I've read the book many years ago Big Potential. I give it to all my clients and we talk about it and people have got that mindset and very will be successful. And the people who hold this you know the singular mindset of you know small potential again doesn't mean they're not successful, but it can be a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be. Yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's sort of quite fascinating that I think a lot of the our listening audience are trying to do things on their own, or you know our very, very small team. So that book's a great recommendation. I've not heard of it before, but I'll definitely go and purchase it and read it myself. But let's touch on that loneliness of a business, because it's quite topical for myself at the minute. So how do we you know if you are feeling that way in the business and you need a few people to chat to? Is something like setting up an advisory board, something worth looking at? And then what are the costs associated and how do they go about getting that set?
Speaker 2:up. Yeah, economically, if you're on your own, you probably don't need an advisory board straight away, unless you know, from a turnover point of view if you're quite a small operation but you can engage with a business. I mean, like I said, I do a lot of business coaching and some of my boards it's just me at the moment with the business owners sort of thing, and so there's other ways, you know, and other support mechanisms around it. But it's, the beauty of it is when you get that safe space where you feel unencumbered by ego and status and it's safe to sort of say, hey, look, guess what? I just don't know what I'm doing here, I just don't know what the next steps are. Or look, I think I might have screwed this up. And when you can do that, that's the first step to being able to really have some breakthroughs.
Speaker 2:And so it's finding people and, again, because I come from a coaching, you know qualified coaching background and everything, obviously I always sort of recommend that you get people who have had some formalized background and training in it, because the thing that often happens when you ask for advice is people are all too willing to give it to you and then you, but they don't know enough about you and the advice is.
Speaker 2:There's a great saying in giving advice it's 100% valued by the person giving it, but it's far less valued usually by the person receiving it, because the person giving it really can't know everything about you, your emotions, your business and everything else. So it's much better to be able to lead with really insightful questions and start with the premise that the answer lies within the person who's asking the questions usually and where it doesn't then ask or offer permission to sort of maybe make some suggestions. Because all too freely, if we ask for people for advice, it's just an avalanche of ideas based on their background, their experience, their life lived, and that's only one opinion, and sometimes it's really valuable, but often it's not as valuable as it may be at first seems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, interesting mate. That's very deep, but I love it. What are some of the common business mistakes that you see? Obviously? Now, with that question or that answer it's probably a little bit sort of yeah, basically what you were saying before around. You know it's one person's opinion, but you know more holistically what are some things that business owners, as we scale our businesses, we need to be wary of.
Speaker 2:It's a really great question and again, I just want to preface my response by saying this is my experience and this is a. You know I do get to deal with a lot of business, I have run a lot of businesses and things. But For me and I've done a model of this ratio with clients you've got to have a clear purpose and the purpose isn't to make money. If the purpose is to make money, that's fine for you, but if you want to bring other people on, the purpose is really gotta be Maybe a little bit more intrinsically valuable, you know, to how we're going to make a difference to our clients, customers, people we get to interact with. I'm not talking about changing the world here, but but doing that and then building on that, then having a vision that says in two years time we want to be a business dealing with, maybe in this area or this geographic area, with this matter, with this type of product I am into, have a turn over of this and potentially, you know, margin or profit of this. But and the vision doesn't have to go for you doesn't have to be a ten year vision, that really just you know, one, two, three years with this. You know this volatile, changeable world we've got at the moment and for me that's the two you talk about your business mistakes will people who haven't got that ability to articulate that Usually stumble around in the dark of it. But I don't really know why they exist and I don't know where they're going. Now, if you can get those things down on paper and I'm not saying they're easy to do, but if you can get real clarity on those.
Speaker 2:The third thing, then, is building a strategy to say where am I now and what do I see? Is the key steps to get to where I want to go with my vision, which is, effectively, where am I going to play and how am I going to win? And that's the simplest it's got to be. Where am I going to play? You know it's a market, products whatever and how am I going to win that we're going to be the lowest price, we're going to be the highest price, we're going to be the smartest, brightest, shiniest, etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:And then then you've got a strategy. And then after that, then you've got actions that come underneath that and then, when you start to expand your structure, that your organizational structure we talked, touched on recruitment and bringing people in, then you can actually consciously and strategically add people into the organization because it fits around a strategy in a plan. And then there's a whole lot of stuff that goes behind aligning people and position descriptions and things and that's probably getting a bit too far into it. But the top three is purpose, vision and a strategy about you know where we're going to play and how we're going to win. If you get those three, you're not bulletproof, but certainly it. That allows everyone else to help you and allows you to remain focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant, I like those three, three kind of areas or buckets. Do you question without notice, mate, but do you have any of? Do you have any templates or any kind of Things that people might be able to download that I could include on the show notes here, just sort of one pages to help you know. They could just fill them out.
Speaker 2:I've got a model I can share with you. That sort of it's the thinking piece around that, because I didn't touch on culture and values and things, because that's you know. There's that saying that probably a lot of people have heard that you know culture, each strategy for breakfast, and particularly when you've got other people, you know in your organization you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you haven't got a high performance or a respective collaborative culture, it doesn't matter what strategy you've got, people can't work together. You're never going to deliver it. So after I flick you the model and look some of the questions I can actually do as an addendum, because they're the questions that I actually ask my clients.
Speaker 2:You know, why do you exist? Yeah, it's a deep question, but when you can answer it becomes, you bring a lot of clarity to a lot of songs. I'm talking about your business. I'm talking about you as a human, but I'm in a business sense. Why do you exist and what's your dream? What a success look like when you get there and that's sort of. Then I take you get your articulate, your vision piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect to think if there was something that we could give our listening audience to download or jump on and fill it out might just help a few people Getting a little bit clearer on what they want to do. So we've pretty much covered most of the questions. The last question I had was what advice would you give to a business wanting to grow? You pretty much answered it, but is there anything you'd like to expand on around that?
Speaker 2:I read a really fascinating article earlier this week and it was about launching products. It's a study in the latest edition of Harvard Business Review that they quoted and the authors expanded upon, and they talked about when is the most successful time to launch products. And interestingly, they said products that were launched during a recession survive 14% longer, more successfully, which is interesting. And so when you read a bit deeper into that, you say why is that the case? Before I read the answer, I think I couldn't quite think of why that would be. But they said what happens is there's less noise in the marketplace. Competitors and companies are often scaling back, so that gives you a bit more clear air to market your stuff. Cost of promotions is usually a bit cheaper because not everyone's hammering on the same sources, so you can probably get a better deal. And the final one, which is a really interesting one, is when people see companies that are promoting through a downtime, they go gee, they must have a really strong corporate health or business health, because, look, they're forging ahead in the face of all this bad news. So it sends a signal out about that. You're a robust, strong business, and so it was quite an interesting sort of insight for me, as you're talking to more of my other clients around different things. Now a couple of things about that. They said products that are launched later in a recession fair better than those launched early on, and that probably makes sense in the sense that it's a longer game and you've probably got to invest a lot more resources and probably a bit more tenuous as opposed to later on.
Speaker 2:Now the trick is timing the recession the timing of when is the recession and when is to do it, and that's always in hindsight. We always know. But in forecasting out but some people in different industries who are listening today, I'm sure would see there's dips and spikes in their various industries and I guess being brave enough to go against the flow is sometimes the key to success, not doing what everyone else is doing. Yeah, so that's probably the only growth thing is being confident. Do your numbers back yourself in, test the market out. And again, a lot of your other previous guests have talked a lot about this, and this is the beauty of e-commerce you can do this really quickly. You can wind up and you can pull back quite quickly because the infrastructure is moderately cheap to put in place to service the e-commerce, particularly when you're starting out. So trial experiment, but if you try and go against the general mood of what's happening, can actually work for you better than just going with the flow of everyone else, because then you kind of get whatever else is getting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really an advice, mate. I haven't read that. I'll have to have a look at that and I'll include a link, if I can find it, into the show notes as well around that. But yeah, you're right, it does make sense and potentially I'm a little bit like that myself, just the way my nature is in terms of doing the opposite of what the mainstream of people are doing generally.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it does make a whole lot of sense and I think it's fair to say that businesses and products that are launching now and, as you say, doing the opposite and going against the grain and investing and we always find that, even from a digital marketing point of view, whether it's B2B or B2C, businesses that let's take COVID as an example in the pandemic, businesses that continue to market through that have bounced back a lot quicker than ones that have pulled back. Yeah, and some businesses just aren't in a position to be able to do that. So no judgment, but certainly the ones that have their house set up correctly in good order and sort of know their numbers and they're established, they could market through that have seen a much better sort of bounce back mentality. So, yeah, it's interesting. I always think kind of this year feels just as hard as it has been in COVID. I'm not sure whether you found that as well.
Speaker 2:You know, I had a number of clients during COVID. Some boomed and almost broke they were so busy and some almost went out the back door. And so every business and every industry is doing it differently. And at the moment, you know, I've got a couple of clients and even just associates who run pubs and restaurants and things. And they are, they are also in the same field, but a lot of restaurants at the moment are really struggling because the interest rate rises have taken that disposable fun spending money away from people and so restaurants, all of a sudden, you know, are going some nights with no people and then maybe on other nights having really good nights, and it's incredibly difficult for them to plan staffing and to plan. You know, they consume their food, that goes into all their, their servings, because they just don't know who's going to come through the door. And and that's, you know, everyone involved in e-commerce. We're hitting upon different markets and I know there's a lot of big e-commerce in the back end of the year with the Black Friday sales and Christmas and Boxing Day and some of the other things.
Speaker 2:Singles, singles day.
Speaker 1:Singles day yeah, you're always different.
Speaker 2:Monday yeah, all these different events that are created to do that, and I'd be very surprised if they're going to get the same responses that they have in previous years. And again, listening to Brandon Gillentalk, you know, when he was on a couple of weeks ago, you know, yes, everyone's going to be doing it, but I think that the numbers that are coming out of Harvey Norman, the numbers that are coming out of JB Hi-Fi you know who I again, corporate wise, I sort of I read the papers and follow the trend. Indisposable income and things is going to be that people will be spending less, probably, yeah, and the higher priced items are going to struggle more because it's just a disposable income, with interest rates going up, has been eaten away and 70% of the Australian population has a mortgage. So, and the other 30%, I think, of flying business class overseas at the moment, it seems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Interesting as well.
Speaker 1:Just on that point to Shopify released, you know, an annual study and it looks like you know the biggest area of the market who was spending, seeking value, so not necessarily decreasing their spend but wanting a lot more value for their money.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think as we get into this last quarter, you know discounting is it seems to be the way that you know the majority go but to backing over your point around, kind of zicking when others are zagging. And you know, I don't know whether discounting is the best for your brand, but I think trying to add value where you can and when it comes to e-commerce, it's then really understanding your customers the best. So what you might perceive is good value, it might not be what they perceive as good value. So the more you can understand your customer, the more you ask questions to those customers and get to know them. It's really important to understand what they see is good value. So it's going to be a really interesting time to see how aggressive brands go in discounting to kind of move through volume and take a hit on margin to get people back in purchasing a second time. So it's a fascinating kind of quarter coming up. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things play out and seeing how brands position themselves 100%.
Speaker 2:Look, you know, part of my background was I was the CEO of the largest group of my 10 stores in New South Wales that were privately owned and when I was in it for a couple of years they're three or four years in retailing and the adage was you know, people who come to you on price leave you on price. And so you know I think that's again listening to some of your other podcast guests it's building a longer term relationship with your client for value, because someone's always going to undercut you on price, so there's got to be a deeper, more valued offering. And, yeah, easy to like all these things. They're simple to talk about, not so easy to put into practice. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:I've got a saying which is with me every day it's the money's in the execution. So, boss, we can sit here and talk. You know ideals and best practices. It's all about the execution of that. So thank you for that. That's all we've got time for. I'm going to kick down this room, but I think there's been I think I know there's been a lot of great insights in here from a business point of view understanding strategy and just getting really clear on why you exist, as well from a personal point of view, but a business point of view as well. And then how do you stand out and just breaking that down into those? You know three buckets and I really like what you just said around the. You know the pricing. You know customers that come to you on price will leave you on price, that's. It's quite simple, yet quite powerful. So I appreciate you sharing those insights with us and made a hope. You have a great rest of the year and here's to a successful sales campaign in 2024.
Speaker 2:Gee, we've only said that for the last 40 years, haven't we Ryan, every September as we watch everyone else play? Thanks for having me on. Really enjoyed it, humble by the fact you saw me worthy to be a guest, and hopefully everyone listening got something out of it. I will definitely follow up. I'll give you some of those questions in the next 48 hours for you to be able to sort of you know, make available to your database and if people want anything else, they'll be able to track me down through the gray matters promotions I'm doing at LinkedIn and Instagram and everything, yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:Made a. Put all your, all your particulars, all your LinkedIn and all that in the in the post. If anyone wants to contact you directly, I'll recommend it. And yeah, thanks again.