In this Prime Talk Podcast Sponsored by GETIDA – Matt Edmundson - CEO & Founder of Aurion Group talks about taking offline businesses into e-commerce, also more information about his life's journey. #mattedmundson #AurionGroup
About Matt Edmundson of Aurion Group - Matt is an eCommerce entrepreneur and coach, a digital business guy who has had more failures than successes; it is just that his successes far outweigh his failures. More importantly, he has had a great team that makes magic happen. He says that he has got a bit of a loudmouth (in a good way!), and is always bouncing new ideas around. He is someone who likes to challenge the 'norm' (He calls this idea undefault). He gets a kick out of developing teams so that capabilities match the company culture. He knows that 'culture' is the most important thing for him to focus on so that work stands for something more than just a paycheck.
Yoni Mazor [00:06]
[Intro]: Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Prime Talk today. I have a special guest I'm having Matt Edmonson. Matt is the CEO and founder of Aurion Group, which is an e-commerce sales and operations management group, but he's also a host of a popular podcast show called that eCommerce podcast.
Yoni Mazor [00:22]
So Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Edmundson [00:23]
Thanks for having me great to be here. Yeah. Great to be here. Pleasure. Really.
Yoni Mazor [00:27]
Our pleasure. So today, is going to be the episode of you right the story of Matt Edmondson. So, you're going to share with us, who are you, where are you from?
Where were you born? How'd you begin your professional career and where you are today with the world of e-commerce. So, I guess without further ado, let's jump right into it.
Matt Edmundson [00:44]
So, let’s go for it. Brilliant. Well, like I say, thanks for having me on the show. Hopefully I won't bore you too much with the story here.
So, as you can probably tell from my accent, I live in the UK. I'm proudly British and I was born in a place called Derby, which if you were to put a drawing pen right in the middle of England, that would be Derby, right? It's quintessentially the most boring town on the planet. Yeah. It really is.
Yoni Mazor [01:10]
Yeah. But if it's in the center of the UK, the United Kingdom, it's pretty much it's the center of the world. No?
Matt Edmundson [01:15]
No, definitely not Derby no. [laughter] Yeah. Something like that. So, I grew up in Derby. I did school and Derby and then I moved to North Carolina. So, then I lived in North Carolina for a while.
Yoni Mazor [01:30]
So, North Carolina, United States. Yeah. How old were you when you made the move?
Matt Edmundson [01:36]
I was 18, so yeah, I'd finished school here, high school, done college moved over to the states.
Yoni Mazor [01:46]
And you move by yourself or with our family or what was the trigger?
Matt Edmundson [01:47]
Oh no just me. At school, we did this thing where, once you finish what we call 8 levels, which is the end of your education and when you're 18, you could go straight off to university to do your degree.
Actually, I didn't want to do that. And one of the things they encouraged us to do at the school I went to was to take some time out before going off to college or university.
And just to sort of think about, you know, life a little bit more. So, I got a volunteer position at a children's home in North Carolina.
I was supposed to go teach English as a foreign language in China. I really wanted to go live in China for a little bit.
Because you know, all the Kung Fu movies, and that, that kind of all fell through last minute. So, the organization, I was where they said, listen, we've got this sort of vacancy at a children's home called Nazareth Children's Home in North Carolina. Would you be up for doing that?
Yoni Mazor [02:37]
Was that in Nazareth the children’s home?
Matt Edmundson [02:39]
Yeah, Nazareth's children's home. It's in a place called Rockwell, which is near Salisbury. I said, well, sure, why not? You know, what have I got to lose? So, 18 years old jumped onto a plane and met a very beautiful lady who became like my American mum or should I say mom. My American mom called Gwen at the airport. She picked me up in a Chrysler that had the biggest, we call them bonnet [inaudible 03:06] call them hoods. It was the biggest hood on a car I'd ever seen. She drove me to the children's same where I stayed for many, many, many happy months and worked there and volunteered there.
Yoni Mazor [03:17]
What year that? Let's slap a year on this when you moved to Atlanta?
Matt Edmundson [03:22]
I left in 91 because no, no 92: So, I left there in 1992 and I went there in 91: So, 91 to 92, I think it was because I started university straight as I got back, which was 1992: So, a while ago.
Yoni Mazor [03:40]
So yeah, not too well, not too long ago actually in my work, but I'm going to go. So, 91 to 92 North Carolina, I guess what was the next station? What was the next station you stayed in the United States?
Matt Edmundson [03:51]
So [pause] No, I made it back to the UK and came to a town, which you've probably heard of called Liverpool.
It's very well-known town. I came here to do my studies, which was 30 years ago, and I've stayed here since met my wife here.
My kids are all Scousers, which is, you know, what we call people born in Liverpool. I would say I'm a Scousers.
Yoni Mazor [04:11]
What do you call them one more time?
Matt Edmundson [04:12]
Yeah. Scouser.
Yoni Mazor [04:14]
So how do you pronounce that?
Matt Edmundson [04:15]
So, S C O U S E R Scouser.
That's what you call someone born and bred Liverpool.
Yoni Mazor [04:23]
Scouser, wow and so I got it.
Matt Edmundson [04:25]
Yeah. Liverpool's great. The very strong accent here makes you feel instantly at home. Very similar, actually it's North Carolina and a lot of respects, you know, they've got a very different accent, but a very strong accent playing in the south.
Yoni Mazor [04:36]
Yeah. They got the twang in the south.
Matt Edmundson [04:37]
Yeah. Yeah. Here, you know, very much, something very, very twangy. I love the accent and yeah, I've been here 30 years. Love Liverpool, very vibrant, very entrepreneurial, very get up and go Northern city, in the UK measure for right.
Yoni Mazor [04:57]
Is it still a major port? Yeah.
Matt Edmundson [04:59]
Yeah, it is still a major port. Yeah, and actually, a lot of the buildings in Liverpool, if you have a visit along the waterfront built off the back of the slave trade. So very strong links like with Richmond in the states and the shipping of slaves and yeah, I mean, it's not got a brilliant history. But you know…
Yoni Mazor [05:14]
Yeah, in a way the connecting United States south, Liverpool gets shipped what slaves into the south end of the United States back in the day. Was that a kind of a route?
Matt Edmundson [05:23]
Yeah, they came, they came from Africa via ports, like Liverpool before heading over to the states. And so, yeah, it's got strong links with the slave trade, so it's got a very murky dark past. In a lot of respects and a lot of its wealth was built then, but after the slave trade crumbled, you know, where the likes of will force and all those sorts of ghosts. It became quite a poor city. So, when I was here 30 years ago it was quite a poor city, Liverpool.
Yoni Mazor [05:56]
Liverpool in 92: Same time you got back From a North Carolina. Got it.
Matt Edmundson [05:59]
Pretty much straight ahead to Liverpool. It was like a month. I was here.
Yoni Mazor [06:04]
Yeah. So, when you got there 92, give us a snapshot. How does it feel to look like?
Matt Edmundson [06:08]
So, like I say, Liverpool was quite a poor city, very working class. We'd had a lot of riots in the 1980s here. There was a lot of poverty.
Yoni Mazor [06:17]
When you say riots, who was rioting? I guess who and for what reason?
I find it odd in the United Kingdom, there are riots against something.
Matt Edmundson [06:24]
Yeah. There were riots against, basically against the government. The government and Margaret Thatcher at the time was probably the least most popular person in Liverpool. She and Liverpool did not get along at all in any way. I think we had corrupt local government here and a lot of wealth was squandered, and plunge the city into a lot of debt, which has taken it a lot. I mean, now it's chalk and cheese. 30 years later, you know, the, the leaders of the city have done a remarkable job, turned it around us. Now it’s one of the most desirable places in the UK to live, the real estate market is doing very well here. It's very buoyant. There's a lot of people coming in, a lot of jobs being created here. It feels like Liverpool is sort of a bit more of a metropolis than it once was. When I moved to Liverpool you would rarely hear international voices. You would hear a lot of local accent and dialect. Whereas now it is much more cosmopolitan, much more international. You know, you can walk down the street and talk to 20 different nationalities.
Yoni Mazor [07:26]
I think also the football team is very popular on a global level. I do believe LeBron, James, he's an arsenal, right? Who's the owners of Liverpool right now?
Matt Edmundson [07:36]
The guys that own it are the guys from Fenway sports.
They own the Boston red Sox.
Yoni Mazor [07:37]
Oh yeah.
Matt Edmundson [07:38]
And so, Liverpool actually is worth more than the Boston red Sox think as their most valuable asset.
Yoni Mazor [07:48]
Yeah. It's a popular global, you know, football slash soccer team.
Matt Edmundson [07:53]
Yeah. It is. It's the reason I moved here. It was a real, I chose.
Yeah. It wasn't because of the school. The school was okay. I went to the university of Liverpool, stood there. Great. You know, university, if you're ever thinking about the university,
Yoni Mazor [08:02]
Remind me who was playing in the nineties with Liverpool. Remember the names again.
Matt Edmundson [08:06]
Oh, so you had all kinds of people throughout the years. You've had Ian Rush. You've had Michael Owen. You've had Robbie Fowler. You had Stevie Gerards you know.
Yoni Mazor [08:16]
So, I know all four names; I take pride in that it's pretty good. Oh, Well done.
Matt Edmundson [08:19]
Good on you. Do you watch football or soccer?
Yoni Mazor [08:23]
So, what I did, when I was in, high school. I did a kind of a whole project about the premier league and I it's all the time. So, I got up like a plus, my teacher was from London, so she was, she was very fond of about the fact that it's all premier league in England and the whole thing. So, I was able to learn about the teams, the teammates, and also the, the British geography because of that Lester and Dorfman and all these more because of the teams.
Matt Edmundson [08:51]
Yeah. So, that was always one of the things that surprised me about North Carolina, actually, when I lived was the amount of people who didn't know where England was or have any kind of concept of the geography of England.
Yoni Mazor [09:05]
Because America is the only place on earth in America. That it's pretty big. It's pretty vast.
Matt Edmundson [09:10]
Yeah. I would say, I would say yes back then, maybe not so much now because of the internet, I remember having a conversation with, the cook, the children's home. She was lovely lady actually. She said to me, are you going back home for the holidays as coming back home for Christmas? And I said, yeah, sure. I'm flying into London. And then she was like, “are you going to fly to England after that?” I was like they're the same thing. It's a sort of [inaudible 09:35] conversation. One person asked me once, which I'll never forget what language we spoke in England, which tickled me silly. I really, really appreciate that question.
Yoni Mazor [09:49]
Speak English in England. Yeah. It’s kind of in the word, but all right. So, let's take this a bit on the highway, right. So, you went to move to Liverpool. You studied. what'd you study?
Matt Edmundson [09:59]
Accounting and law and accounting.
Yoni Mazor [10:01]
Okay. So, you, what year did you graduate? Graduate? 95: And If I asked about three or four years. Okay. And what was your first station after college?
Matt Edmundson [10:11]
So, as soon as I finished school, got my degree, I went and volunteered for a year, with my local church. I worked for them for a year.
Yoni Mazor [10:23]
The second year you volunteer, one North Carolina and one in Liverpool.
Matt Edmundson [10:26]
Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of it. Like my son is now 19 and I've got a son who's 17, who's thinking about university. Actually, my oldest son didn't, he went straight to UNI. But I'm a big fan of taking some time out before going to university or college, just to figure yourself out a little bit. You know, just take a break from education, understand who you are as a person and what you stand for. Because actually that's quite hard to figure out in school. Because there's so much going on around you and you can get sucked in to so much.
I was a big fan of doing the voluntary work. During that a year before university and a year after made a lot of sense to me.
Then after I'd done my voluntary work, I ended up working for a friend of mine who was an entrepreneur, was running a business. I really wanted to remain in business. I always had run my own businesses back in school. I thought I'm going to go work for him because he can mentor me in what it means to be an entrepreneur. I really respected him and really liked him as a business.
Yoni Mazor [11:31]
What kind of industry?
Matt Edmundson [11:32]
So, this was in the health spa industry. We installed, saunas and steam rooms and all those kinds of things. It was an emerging market in the UK at the time. We imported the men from Germany and, you know, installed them here in the UK. The business just absolutely took off. I mean, not just because I was part of it, but it was a great business to get into it.
Yoni Mazor [11:58]
Is it a brand-new business, is he established your friend? Was it already there and then you kind of tagged along?
Matt Edmundson [12:04]
He had been in business for a number of years, but when I joined the sauna thing, it just really got started. It was kind of a new venture for him. And so, yeah, when, when I joined it was, it was, that was quite new. Then that took off because the, the reason it was different, not because saunas were new to the UK, they weren't at all. The reason it was different was because everybody was used to spending like $3,000 or $4,000 on a sauna if that, you know. They were just a simple wooden box; you'd put by a swimming pool or whatever. We were coming in and say, no, you don't want to spend 4,000 pounds on a sauna. You want to spend 40,000 on a sauna. You know what I mean? These, these were beautiful, high-end bespoke type units. We just had a big time and I worked with Simon for like five years and absolutely loved it. There was one year I'll never forget it. We have something in the UK called the times, top 10 rich list. It comes out every year. The times is one of our newspapers here and it prints a list. It names like the top. I think it's the top 100 richest people in the country. And you can see, you know, who's moving up and down the rich list in the UK or the times top 10 rich list in one year. Most of those guys, I had them in my mobile phone because I was working with them on some projects somewhere. I'd flown on their private jet. So, I'd stayed in that ski chalets, you know, in Kosovo. There are all kinds of things that I had done at this point in my life.
Yoni Mazor [13:35]
What was your role and in the company? What was your evolution in the combo? Where'd you start and then five years?
Matt Edmundson [13:42]
I started just working with Simon, doing whatever we needed to do, and I ended up being the director of the business. I mainly did sales and health spa design. I designed a lot of health spas. I oversaw the installation, a kid in my early twenties to me, and I'm enjoying the ride. It was phenomenal.
Yoni Mazor [14:01]
Really Nice. Any of these wealthy people, owners of football teams at all?
Matt Edmundson [14:05]
No. Although there is a funny story actually, I can't name names obviously, but one of the guys, I was having a conversation with him in Germany. I'll never forget it. He is incredibly wealthy. He was a big Manchester United fan, and yeah, that's a problem for a Liverpool fan. There's massive rivalry between the two clubs. We sat there, just joking. I'm giving him a bit of stick because he's a MU fan he's given me stick because I'm a Liverpool fan and you know; the conversation is great. I just said to him jokingly, one day, why would you not buy Manchester United football club? Because, you know, the Glazers had bought it at this point, I think, and they weren't doing, they weren't testing.
Yoni Mazor [14:41]
They were fledgling in the late nineties and early 2000’s.
Matt Edmundson [14:44]
Yeah. They're just not, you know, the fans don't like them.
I said, well, why don't you buy the club?
Yoni Mazor [14:51]
There are not actually doing great. I'm sorry, my bad. I thought Manchester the city.
Matt Edmundson [14:56]
Manchester United. Yeah, they did well as a club, but they got bought out by some people who weren't well received by the fans. Glazer. I just remember having this very surreal conversation with this guy about why he should maybe think about buying Manchester United football club. Actually, he could have done it and he thought about it.
He just said to me at the end, do you know what the reason I'm not going to do that is because I just like my money too much. I just thought was a very fascinating comment, but I'd never really had a conversation before with someone that could actually buy a football club.
Yoni Mazor [15:35]
I mentioned the Manchester net is a series a gig because it's also, I believe a public company that's traded on, on the stock market, at least in England or something.
Matt Edmundson [15:41]
Right.
Yoni Mazor [15:42]
That was a serious move. Okay. So, five years into the mix, while you're in the [inaudible 15:49] for and move to the next station.
Matt Edmundson [15:50]
So, in 2001 Simon sold the business. I parted ways with the new owners is probably a polite way to put what happened. We did not see eye to eye. So, at this point I then started my internet business. I'd been doing internet stuff part time to sort of like a side hustle as we now use the phrase. I'd started programming websites in 1998 just to see if I could do it. And I would work during the day and then spend hours at night, figuring out websites. In 2002 we started the internet business. That was the year I did my first ever e-commerce website.
Yoni Mazor [16:36]
There you go. Welcome to the world of e-commerce. So, what was your first step stone in the industry? What are you doing?
Matt Edmundson [16:41]
So, the first website we did was a website called Tenmat, which I won't go into the etymology of the name. But we started this website Tenmat it was quite a fascinating business, because one of the things that we did with the health bar installations was a lot of that included sunbeds, right? You could get us some bed in a room.
There still is a company here in the UK, which sold a lot of some beds supplies. I was friends with those guys. We supplied them products, which we import them from the states. We knew them. I just said to them, listen, can I sell your products on a website? I want to try this online selling thing. I don't really have anything to sell, so let me sell your stuff. And then I'll just buy off you as, and when I sell it, is that okay, made this really loose agreement with them and they were great guys. They said, Matt, just do whatever you want to do. We'll figure it out and we're like, cool. We set up this website, Tenmat, and very quickly it started to take off, which was great. I rewrote the website, made it much more appealing.
Yoni Mazor [17:47]
What did you write it on?
Matt Edmundson [17:51]
So, the first site was in a piece of software called Actinic, which I think is still around actually. Then the second site, I actually wrote all the code from scratch using PHP.
Yoni Mazor [18:03]
Yep. You wrote it all yourself or with a team back then?
Matt Edmundson [18:04]
No. I was doing all this myself by then. I was figuring it all out.
Yoni Mazor [18:03]
How are you driving traffic into, in those early days into your website?
Matt Edmundson [18:13]
This was back in the day when you could say I'll build it and they'll come because we were the only really one of the only places on the planet. You could buy something.
Yoni Mazor [18:20]
Nothing, fancy, nothing sophisticated, you scrapped it all together. And traffic was just coming in and buying like magic.
Matt Edmundson [18:25]
Absolutely. You can go to, I think it's, what's it called way back machine or way back into net or something like that. You can see early iterations of the site, Tenmat.com and it was great. Six months later after we built it, we sold it to the guys who I was in effect buying the product from. They bought it from us, and they took it on.
Yoni Mazor [18:45]
It was the brand. The brand eventually bought the website. That was kind of something good. That's interesting. All right. What was the next station after that?
Matt Edmundson [18:53]
Oh, geez. So, then we just get into more and more websites.
We get into more and more stuff online. We try various different things and then nothing really of any significant way.
Yoni Mazor [19:02]
When you say we it sounds like there's already a team behind you.
Matt Edmundson [19:03]
Yeah. So, there is me and my then business partner. We hired our first ever guys fresh out of UNI, a guy called Mark. Mark actually still works with me today.
He's now the head of technical. It's funny, isn't it, how these things come about. When he joined us, he looked 12: Today he still looks 12: He's just one of these guys that sort of never ages.
Yoni Mazor [19:27]
Was he tanning in those machines? [laughter]
Matt Edmundson [19:30] [laughter]
Yeah. He went into the sun as the spas. So, Mark, came out of UNI with his electronics degree and in effect. I taught him how to write code. I don't do this anymore because he is way more advanced than I am way. He's taken it to a whole new level.
But I told him matzoh to write the code and he got into the basics of that. We started to develop websites and businesses at the same time. Bizarrely, the company that we sold soreness for, and the German company got back in touch and said, listen, it's not working with the new buyers. How about we have a conversation that contract's coming to an end. I now run into businesses.
I go back into the house by business and I'm also running the internet business.
Yoni Mazor [20:17]
There’re two threads of the past came into the future, right? The company you were in supplying stuff for tanning, right? So, you have that relationship, you build on that, and you made ecommerce website and you sold it to them. Then the actually German company of those saunas, they reached out back to you and you, went into the business that you were running before that, but this is true. This is offline business. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson [20:39]
It started off as offline. Yeah. One of the ways that we actually grew that business was because we had the web design. We were like, right for that, our strategy is going to be simple. We're going to have the best website, out of all our competitors, we're going to have our best of the best website.
Yoni Mazor [20:54]
The website is just going to showcase the catalog, the designs and Bush orders. So, so you get, ordered any sort of custom, you got to come in and really customize it to the facility of a client.
Matt Edmundson [21:05]
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We understood who the target market was with our website. It wasn't actually the end client; the target market was architects. We promoted that, knowing what we know about digital marketing, using Google ad words and all that sort of stuff was that was then starting to take off to architects. For the longest time, that was our strategy. We'll just have the best digital experience and that in effect what got our foot through so many doors and how many people found us.
Yoni Mazor [21:37]
Is that offline business merged into your online track? Then in the online tracking of that route and which other tracks or categories are you selling in?
Matt Edmundson [21:46]
So, what happened was in 2006, a friend of mine who I got to know through the health spa game a guy called Andy. Andy was involved in a chain of health clubs here in the UK with a business partner and then they split the business up.
So, the business partner took all the UK sites and Andy took two health club sites on an island called Jersey. Jersey is just a small island off the north coast of France. It's kind of a beautiful place as 45 square miles. It's sort of independently British it's English. Everyone speaks English.
Everyone is English. They're covered by the English military, and it has its own parliament. It has its own sort of set of rules and the way it does things. Jersey is a lovely place.
Yoni Mazor [22:40]
Is it like a tax Haven of some kind or no?
Matt Edmundson [22:41]
Yeah, yes. More so than he more so it used to be more so than it is now. Andy said to me, in 2006, Matt we've got to start creating some income, what's you reckon. I was like, Andy, you really need to be selling products online. Right. Because you're in Jersey. Jersey at the time had a VAT or tax sales tax advantage that no one else enjoyed.
I'm like, we, you know, let's throw something together on online, up or the website you've got the products. He was like, yeah, sure, okay, let's do that. Started this website called Jersey Beauty Company, just literally off the back of a conversation like that. We launched it August 2006: We did a little bit of research as much as we could do back then. We were like, okay.
So, we think between now and the end of 2006: The next four months we should be able to sell about $10,000 worth of product. Right.
Yoni Mazor [23:38]
What are the categories of these products?
Matt Edmundson [23:41]
They were beauty products. Andy and his health club had a few beauty treatment rooms. They sold these sorts of moisturizers and cleansers and toners and things like that. They sold those through the beauty rooms, and they did okay. I don't know how much they sold $20,000 - $30,000 a year, but he did. All right. We were like let's just put those online. Let's sell those and see what happens. We thought let's same for $10,000 in the first four months. Well, by December 2006 they had not sold 10,000 pounds worth of products on this website, in fact, 400,000 pounds worth of products have been sold. So, 40 times what we were expecting, and it was chaos, you know what I mean? It was an unbelievable problem to solve, both from the website of things, the technology side of things, but also from the practical side of things. How do you ship these things out? How do you, how do you pick and pack the boxes so quick? Because by the time
Yoni Mazor [24:42]
So, you have to pick it, pack it in Jersey island and ship it to the mainland.
Matt Edmundson [24:46]
Yeah. That's what they have to do. It was complex and the tax laws were complex, and it caused all kinds of different scenarios that we had to try and resolve.
And we learned very early on that actually, there was nothing you couldn't really sell with a bit of ingenuity from a technology point of view. If you just sat and thought about something long enough, there was a solution to most problems with one exception. That problem was the stupidness of humanity. You can't resolve that with technology, but you fundamentally can change and deal with most things. They were some phenomenal years, and the business grew rapidly.
Yoni Mazor [25:30]
Was that like an earth-shattering moment to you personally and professionally? I guess, entrepreneurially realizing this has great power here in this e-commerce space we're building. We expect to 10,000 and we got 400,000 and you thought I'm good. I'm set. Or was your it more like, what's the next peak? Or what was the next stage?
Matt Edmundson [24:46]
Yeah. Our mind then became all about growth. How can we grow and how can we grow and how do we develop this and how do we take this forward?
How do we? No one was sitting on their laurels. At the same time, we weren't crazy.
A lot of businesses were running that a lot of e-commerce businesses at the time were making massive losses for customer acquisition. We never did that. We never followed that strategy.
Yoni Mazor [26:13]
I would assume you were profitable from the get-go.
Matt Edmundson [26:16]
Yeah, absolutely. Whatever we sold on the website, we always pre-bought. I wouldn't order stuff from a supplier and take an invoice and then try and pay that invoice 30 days later. We just didn't do that. We always had this policy, which said, whatever we need, we buy. Cause then at least everything on the shelves is ours. If it all goes a bit wrong. And that was a policy we took, early on the decision, Andy actually made very early on in the process. I think in hindsight that was one of the things that saved us.
Yoni Mazor [26:51]
Hold on. So, the strategy was to set up some sort of market research and understand where the demand will be, and you buy that, and you own that. Was that the strategy?
Matt Edmundson [27:01]
Yeah, we kind of, we very quickly, we could start to predict what people wanted.
Yoni Mazor [27:06]
How did you do that? What was the mechanism or what was the date?
Matt Edmundson [27:09]
So just looking at the data. By the time you've sold a hundred thousand pounds worth of product with inside of a few weeks, you know, what your popular products are, you know, the main things that people want. 80% of your sales are going to come from just 20% of your products, the 80-20 rule, right? So, you can, you can figure out what those four or five bestsellers are going to be quite quickly. We just stocked up on those and it just became that whole thing. The profits in the first few years were just all about buying stock, buying stock and building up the stock holding.
Yoni Mazor [27:43]
I guess there's two packages. Again, the growth strategy was okay, I can buy a portfolio of products and let the market do its thing, recognize where the power is and then keep compounding on that. That was kind of it.
Matt Edmundson [27:56]
Yeah, totally. It was all organic. There was no outside investment. There was no, like I say, invoicing, there was no running to the banks. There was no borrowing money. That decision made earlier on this whole thing needed to be organic. It needed to be, whilst I'm an entrepreneur and I don't mind taking risks. I think Andy would say the same. What no one ever wanted was to close tomorrow because we've not got enough cash to pay the suppliers.
Even though we've got the brand. If we did have to close the business everyone just wanted to be able to walk away and go. That was a brilliant journey, but not lose any sleep because I owed the tax man a hundred grand or I owe a supplier, a hundred grand or, any of that sort of stuff. So, so it's a real, it was really fascinating to me how the business grew, you know, and that, that organic growth, I don't know how easy it would be to do these days. I have to be honest with you. In 2006, the world was very different place,
Yoni Mazor [28:56]
The land and grab almost in that domain today. It's a much more sophisticated it's elevated. You can always make it. There's always a niche, always like those, unicorns back then but a lot of them were a lot of unicorns because it's such a land grab.
Matt Edmundson [29:12]
I mean, we were lucky. We were definitely lucky with the timing. We were lucky with the fact that we could distribute from Jersey. We were lucky with the tax laws at the time we did milk them. We did take advantage of them as much as we could and conversely, you know, we grew very, very rapidly.
Yoni Mazor [29:30]
Did this become a thing, having some sort of a Jersey presence and doing online business in the UK? Was that a thing that already just, you got to your little corner or your little cave, there was just kind of working out and that's where it stayed on the higher level.
Like a look, was this a bigger thing that's happening in Jersey? Or this is something a little bit.
Matt Edmundson [29:48]
Yeah, because what the tax laws on Jersey meant that a bunch of companies suddenly dive into Jersey because they know if they distribute from Jersey, they don't have to pay VAT.
Yoni Mazor [30:02]
Yeah. That is about 20%.
Matt Edmundson [30:06]
That's right. Our sales tax is 20% in the UK. Right. If you can send something and you had to send something, I think the value was like 22 pounds. I can't remember the exact figure.
Yoni Mazor [30:16]
That was the threshold. Meaning anything above that there is VAT that's a VAT assigned to it. Anything under that that's VAT free.
Matt Edmundson [30:22]
That's correct. Yeah. Totally. Right. When you're shipping products under 22 pounds, if you think about what was exploding back 2006, you had CDs and you had DVDs, right? This was before streaming services. Both of those things retailed under 20 pounds. So, what happened was there was a big rush for this type of products. The under 20-pound products to ship from Jersey because all of a sudden you could be 20% cheaper, but still make the same profits as everybody else. The guys in the UK could not compete with this and there was a big backlash. The government has since closed this tax law, with Jersey.
Yoni Mazor [31:08]
What year was that when they basically patch this hole so to speak?
Matt Edmundson [30:10]
2012 somewhere around there. When we hit 2012 Jersey Beach company was no longer distributed from Jersey. We were distributed from the UK.
Yoni Mazor [31:24]
So, let's talk about that company for a moment. Establish around 2006: Is it still active today?
Matt Edmundson [31:29]
It is running. It is still active today. I still run that business. It now operates from the UK. We have a distribution center here in Liverpool and we don't distribute from Jersey anymore. We kind of saw the writing on the wall a little bit, but the tax advantage, and the UK had one massive advantage over Jersey that the Jersey didn't have, and that was the fulfillment. And with the rise of Amazon customers were expecting parcels next day. You could never do that from Jersey because, you know, there's a big chunk of ocean between the two. You are frequently caught out because the ships couldn't get through because the seas were too rough.
So shipping wasn't great from Jersey. We moved it to the UK, everything then becomes the next day delivery. It was part of the overhaul we did of Jersey beach company about four years, five years after it started.
Yoni Mazor [32:22]
Was that about 2010 or 2011? Even before the tax laws were patched up.
Matt Edmundson [32:26]
Yeah. So, to your January 2011 was when we started shipping from the UK. The whole company was in effect, moved from Jersey to the UK 2000 and end of 2010, early 2011:
Yoni Mazor [32:42]
All right. So first of all, Congratulations being 15 years in this e-commerce space and still running., That's like being 500 or 5,000 years in regular conventional business because it's very dynamic, constantly changing, never a dull moment, so to speak.
So that was one track, I guess you had with the Jersey Beauty, and the past 50 past 15 years.
So, it sounds like you've matured a lot. I guess, on the data side technology side fulfillment side, the capital side, you guys were very, I guess, disciplined on that. I assume you are still today, but were there other tracks that were developing, or you were involved with, or, or that was the main center of gravity for you all these years?
Matt Edmundson [33:18]
Yeah. That's why since 2010, since we moved Jersey from Jersey to the UK, when that happened, I sold my shares in the health spa business. I focused 100% in on the internet side of things, because it was just insane.
Yoni Mazor [33:37]
You are no longer involved with our company or the goods, a German brand where you get orders, and you install it. So that was playing until 2010, since 2000:
Matt Edmundson [33:46]
That's still going now, the guys that bought the business is still running it,
Yoni Mazor [33:50]
Your position was basically your cashed out.
Matt Edmundson [33:53]
My position was closed. Yeah. 2011:
Yoni Mazor [33:57]
You were able for several years mix between the offline and online, even though you merged, the online offline components into online by offering it out. But it means you did have a responsibility, a responsibility to install and create this whole experience for whoever is placing the order. That's serious business. This is like installation and services which is quite interesting. But as you kind of mentioned, when you were able to cash out, you were able to compound your focus on the e-commerce and the technology aspects of things.
Matt Edmundson [34:28]
Yeah, totally. When we moved Jersey over to the UK, we took a lot of learning actually from the health spa business. Like how do you create a business that can sell a sauna? The most expensive sauna I ever sold was $120,000: Right. A sauna is a wooden box. How do you take that principle? How do you take that understanding and apply those to the online aspects? Do you what I mean? Yes, you can bring online into the offline, but you can also bring offline into the online. You can learn from those principles, and you can put them in there and you can go geez we can do a lot here.
Yoni Mazor [35:06]
If you can give us a few lessons on this because it's fascinating to me how it's such a high-level type of a thing to purchase. What are the lessons learned? I guess they implemented.
Matt Edmundson [35:15]
Yeah. One of the key things that we learned was, from a friend of mine, actually. He drew on a napkin for me, a triangle. If you can kind of picture a triangle in your head, right? So, triangles obviously got three points and in one corner he wrote the word price, another corner he wrote the word quality, and, in another corner, he wrote the word service.
He said to me, Matt, you have to pick two because you can't be all three. In other words, price, low price. Can I offer a quality product at a low price? Oh yes, I can. But then my service is probably not going to be great, right. Something out of those three has got to give, and Jersey Beauty Company at that point in time was a business built on a high-quality product at a low price, but the customer service was okay. It just wasn't, you would never write a book about the customer service at Jersey Beauty. It was, it was functional. Let's just call it functional. and so, so what happened was when we moved it to the UK, because we couldn't take advantage of those tax rules anymore. We made a very clear distinction in our thinking. We said, right, I want to move this business to be more like the sauna business and the sauna business was a quality product, but an incredible customer service. Do you see what I mean? And it was, it wasn't the price that became the issue. We needed to focus on high service, high quality.
Yoni Mazor [36:40]
We buy a high-quality product, high level of quality. I would add slash experience the price almost doesn't matter anymore to, I guess, a certain demography or a certain consumer base level where they're very comfortable, with the price, regardless, it can be a sticker shock or not. They don't get shocked because they, they are in the demography or, financial abilities. It's in their belt. They really are interested into making sure that the quality is superior, you know, to their likings, but the experience in the service around it is just it's all encompassing, and they just feel very comfortable with the purchase. Was that kind of the fundamentals you were able to capitalize on? Pretty much it right there.
Matt Edmundson [37:19]
Yeah. It's very much that case, high-quality products, high level of customer service. It's not the price doesn't matter. Value does matter. But you don't have to be the cheapest at this point.
Yoni Mazor [37:32]
Yeah. It's that race to the bottom. It just has to be equitable. You don't have to obviously overprice anything and be outrageous because he's just going to die out. But as long as it's competitive, but not the cheapest. It doesn't have to be the cheapest.
Matt Edmundson [37:42]
Exactly, so how do you do that? So online we went through this transition, when we moved to the UK. We became much more focused on customer service. That was a much bigger emphasis on this, and it took us about a year.
Yoni Mazor [37:58]
This is very at interesting and sorry to cut you off there. Jersey Beauty was the products were as far as on service at the early beginning, we're under 22 pounds. So, what kind of services needed for these kinds of products?
Matt Edmundson [38:09]
Well, not all of the products were under 22 pounds and the average order value at that point was probably about 50 pounds. What was starting to happen was the products that we were selling were getting more and more expensive. So, you were asking people to go from spending 20 pounds to 30 pounds to 40 pounds to 50 pounds just on moisturizer.
I don't know if you're familiar with moisturizers, but you can buy a moisturizer for a couple of at the local drugstore. Right. So why would I spend 50 bucks on a moisturizer? It's the same principle? Why would I spend a hundred grand on this sauna when I can buy one online for 1200 bucks? Right. There's got to be a compelling reason.
We understood that with the saunas, for example, the more expensive the sauna, the more expectation there was on the service that went with that. Right. And so, the more you had to think about everything else, like design and presentation and Germany, and we started doing simple things like creating coffee table books for clients showing the journey of the installations. They could show that to their friends.
Yoni Mazor [39:24]
Yeah. Experience. It was just these little things that just, they cost, It's a classical culture in a culture. That's a culture almost experienced. I mean, listen, at least with the sauna, I was like, you haven't to tell, but you can always show it around. That's pretty unique.
Matt Edmundson [39:33]
It was great. It actually was a very good sales lead generation tool because you know, your friends would come around and gas. So, when they'd sit down and go, let me show you the book. They'd take them through the journey.
Yoni Mazor [39:45]
It's not like about, I just want a sauna. I was like, I want my own book, but the promise, the reason you get the sauna.
Matt Edmundson [39:53]
Yeah. I want to be able to check people this book. And so, it was understanding, I guess, in the e-commerce world, those things, what actually was the equivalent of that book, because that's where we were starting to, when I say that the first year we moved to this sort of quality service model, our sales dipped. Sales actually went down for the first time. In six years, we had a dip in sales, and I was, I was actually panicking model X. I thought if I screwed this up royally, but then the following year, 2012 man alive, we experienced like 25% growth just in the, I mean it was just, you know, skyrocketing. It took about a year for these changes to actually have an impact on our customers. When it did, when they got used to that new model of sales just went ballistic. There was a lot of learning that I could bring from that Saundra industry into, you know, a digital world that really, really helped us.
Yoni Mazor [40:56]
Fascinating I love it. But another side question on this. So, giving it's, you know, health and beauty, there’s a sense of repeat business, correct. It, we expect them to keep on coming back, which is great. You can build a real client base, it's loyal to you and the brands are what you guys represent and the experience and you grow with that along the years. So that was that the fundamentals of the business?
Matt Edmundson [41:16]
Yeah, absolutely. And this was, again, one of the reasons why shifting to a price, a service model made a lot of sense because one of the, one of the things that we noticed was yes, people, the people that will really interest in low prices stopped shopping with us. Here's the interesting thing. The people that are always interested in super low, they're the most problematic customers you have, right? They cause you the most grief. So actually, what we found was as those drifted from us, we lost a lot of the headaches that we were actually getting. We could focus on building a good customer experience and a good customer service. What that meant was over the coming years, our repeat customer purchases accounted for a bigger and bigger chunk of our business every year. So new customer acquisition was in effect taking less and less budget. I'd say that's actually part of the reason why we've been around 15, 16 years is because of the high repeat rate that we have from our customer basis. I would say it's way above industry average. I'm really thankful for that and number I'm, you know, super, super grateful.
Yoni Mazor [42:25]
Yeah. I think it's a fascinating evolution and the whole trajectory, how you, ended up in this. I want to touch two more points here. One is you know, obviously you're an e-commerce and you have your own website is doing well over the years. You're building your own clientele and repeat business, but where does Amazon fit in all this? Where are you guys active on Amazon not active? What was your, I guess, Amazon status?
Matt Edmundson [42:45]
That's a great question for a number of years, we weren't active on Amazon. It's not because we didn't want to be. It's because the brands that we were selling online would not let us trade on Amazon. That was part of the terms and conditions which is becoming, I think more and more common that a lot of people are going, you cannot sell. You can sell online, but you cannot sell on Amazon because the law in England. You couldn't necessarily restrict people selling online, but you could definitely restrict people selling on third-party platforms, which they wanted to do. We didn't really do much with Amazon, but then after a few years, we made an agreement with one of the brands. We would actually connect them and Amazon. We became like this middle guy, and we connected with them. We became a vendor on Amazon. We sold products direct to Amazon and Amazon then sold those beauty products on their website. We had a lot of experience with Vendor Central, and for the first, I'd say 18 months, two years, it worked really well.
Yoni Mazor [42:25]
When did you guys started with Amazon Vendor central?
Matt Edmundson [43:46]
Oh, that's really good question. But say it's probably 2015-2016, maybe somewhere around there, maybe 2016-2017: We started with them Vendor Central and its very early doors for Vendor Central where beauty products were concerned. They were just, I think we were the second brand maybe that they dealt with. I can't remember where we were by Amazon.
Yoni Mazor [44:08]
UK. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson [44:10]
Yeah. Amazon UK at amazon.co.uk. It was great that the guys that they had to help build this beauty brands thing for them on Vendor Central were great. They were wonderful people. Actually. I know a lot of time and for those guys, very, very helpful. We were getting along well. We were building this business. My experience with them was great until those people left. Then it just went downhill as fast as we grew in the early days.
That's how fast our relationship with Amazon kind of deteriorated. It was just the most frustrating company, because we were buying the products off the supplier and supplying those to Amazon. Then obviously the supplier would put, they would annually, they'd put the prices up, right. It's what brands do. The prices are going to go up to 3% a year. But we couldn't put the prices up on Amazon. They kept refusing them because it was a computer somewhere, I guess it was programmed not to accept the computer. The price rises and try as you may, because the people that left you couldn't get through to anybody, you couldn't talk to anybody.
Yoni Mazor [45:24]
I think this is the machine view versus Amazon machine.
Matt Edmundson [45:25]
Yeah.
Yoni Mazor [45:26]
The humans are the beginning to fit into the mold and make it streamline. But once they are kind of out of the picture, it's you versus the machine it's impossible.
Matt Edmundson [45:34]
Yeah. It was never going to work. We just said we're not supplying you anymore. They then put the prices out to try and get the supply back because they were doing very well out of those products. I was any person that they could buy them from.
I was in a unique position I suppose. But it didn't really repair it. After a while, I'm just like, this is not working whenever we want to change something, I have to cut off supply and it's a ridiculous way to do things. I think we've not supplied Amazon bender now probably for about six months, I think.
Yoni Mazor [46:05]
Did you guys’ pivot into a third party selling at some point, or it was also just about the Vendor Central side
Matt Edmundson [46:10]
For us it was always about the Vendor Central side. Now it's having this conversation earlier on actually. We've created our own skincare products. There's a new product, which we've got coming out. Which is a serum mixed with a multivitamin mixed with a kind of a vegan collagen which is a very, they're very exciting products to bring together some great stuff coming out. Actually, one of the things that I will do is put those as a third-party seller on Amazon. So, it's not like my relationship with Amazon is completely bankrupt. Although I do have major issues with Amazon from an ethical moral point of view. But neither am I stupid enough to ignore the fact that they control 50% of the online market.
Yoni Mazor [46:52]
Yeah, you have to be pragmatic if this is another funnel for you to reach consumers, that you're not reaching right now. If you have a good product with a good price and a good experience to offer. You got to order to your business.
Matt Edmundson [47:03]
We do, we own emotions aside. We want to build that with that client base and get those customers. Then obviously my strategy is going to get whatever Amazon customers buy off Amazon into to try and come into our funnel. It's not going to work most of the time, but some of the time it will. We're going to try that, and we'll see how it goes. So, I've not been totally burned by the experience. But Vendor Central was that whole experience for me was [inaudible 47:32]
Yoni Mazor [47:33]
Your experience is pretty actor accurate because even Amazon themselves admitted that the Vendor Central side is just pretty much a shrinking segment. Well, the third-party sellers are rocking it, they're growing in such a great rate and speed because they're just more efficient. They do everything the right way. While Amazon is kind of a scrambling to get their act together as a retailer. So, the power I do believe is, is really located on the third-party selling side of third-party sellers. I think worldwide is about 6 million of those.
You know, all these people and organizations are hungry entrepreneurs. I really want to bring out the best of the best and, it’s hard to compete with that. So that's a great vibrant, marketplace that the global marketplace that they created, and it does open up a lot of opportunity.
Okay. So, in 2016, you enter into the Amazon domain first on the Vendor Central, and as you launch your own brand or new brand, you'll take it to the third party selling, would be interesting to see how the trajectory goes. I wish you a good luck with that. I guess another point I wanted to touch on now is your podcast. Share with us a little bit what happened, how'd you create it?
What was the reason for creating it? What's it about? So, we'll give it a little bit of a corner there.
Matt Edmundson [48:41]
Yeah. I appreciate it. And so, what happened was, I'd say probably from about 2013, more and more people started to reach out to me and say, listen can you come help me with our e-commerce business, you know? Right. You've experienced this at your company. As soon as you start to get successful at something and certainly have the appearance of success. A lot of people then reach out to you say, hey, listen, can you help me? And then out of that, a whole new business is born, right? Or a whole new concept, or a whole new idea is born. And so, we started doing e-commerce coaching services from about 2013-2014: Over the years, that's kind of morphed into many things. But out of that about two years ago, we thought, you know what, we're getting so many inquiries now and so many questions around e-commerce. We did a podcast for the Jersey Beauty Company, and it worked unbelievably well as a medium and I thought we should just do a podcast, you know? So, we did, we started we're now in our sixth season, just we're just closing out actually our sixth season.
We started the podcast just as a way to help people grow in e-commerce and the first season is all for don't go and listen to the first season.
Yoni Mazor [50:04]
That's a reason that episode is like a whole season, it's like a pilot episode orientation.
Matt Edmundson [50:12]
It's figuring it out on you. The first season was basically me just chatting about what I knew about e-commerce. Even, I got bored of the sound of my own voice. And so, from season two, onward was we started having guests on the show. Season two season and season three, we were scrambling to try and find guests through LinkedIn and all kinds of stuff. Then the show grew and now we have a waiting list of guests that want to come on the show. It's got its own momentum. I absolutely love it principally because I think I learned more than anybody else on the show. I get sit down like you, I have guests on the show, it's an interview, it's very conversational, but like this. I just get to ask the guys in front of me, questions that I want to know the answer to. So, it's amazing. You're like, what do we, what do we not really know much about that we really should know about right now? You could pick a topic let's say live streaming, okay. Who's a good well-known guy in this, in this sort of phase, in this area of live streaming, let's go get him on the show. Then I get to spend like an hour an hour and a half with these people just picking their brains. They're happy to tell me the answers.
We record the podcast every Thursday and then every Friday, it's kind of like right team. What have we learned from that? How can we implement that in our business? And so, from my point of view, it's been not only is it built the awareness, I guess that the coaching business, which is what I wanted it to do. Right. There has to be some kind of profit element in there somewhere it's not totally altruistic. The biggest benefit for me outside of that is actually the learning that we've been able to take and grow and using our own e-commerce businesses. Because as much as I think I know stuff now, you know, I could talk about most things I think with e-commerce the reality is there's a lot more people out there who are smarter than me, and I can always learn something more and learn something new, especially as technology is constantly evolving. Yeah, that's the podcast, the e-commerce podcast. It's a weekly show. I get to talk to amazing people, and I love it. I genuinely love it. I look forward to it every week.
Yoni Mazor [52:21]
That was great. I think it's an appropriate name for an appropriate, authentic experience, you know, on your end. That's pretty great. All right. So, before I kind of a body up the episode and summarize it. So, your focus today, of course, tell me if I'm missing anything. You're involved in e-commerce, you resell brands, you have your own brands, you're going to put an arm and another into the Amazon space again, plus you have your podcast show.
Am I missing anything or there's other businesses or other tracks to involved with on a business entrepreneur service side?
Matt Edmundson [52:53]
Yeah. I mean I don't want to bore you with everything that we do, but what is tangible? Yeah. What tends to happen is, like I said, as you grow in something, people come and ask you for help. So, we now manage and grow other people's e-commerce businesses for them, especially if it's not their main business or the main pilot.
Yoni Mazor [53:11]
Essentially an agency. You have an agency component. So, if you want to put your products out there, they can partner with your organization as an agency kind of model, and you run their show.
Matt Edmundson [53:22]
Yeah, we do. We do the fulfillment and the whole lot really. We do fulfillment for a lot of different companies now, which is great distribute from Liverpool and all over the world. Yeah, it's fun. So, it's not just me and my little business now, there's we get to play in a whole bunch of different arenas. So, my knowledge is continually growing, which is why I need to do the podcast really. Cause I need to stay on top of my game.
Yoni Mazor [53:47]
Yeah, it was great. Yeah. You keep your commitment to your clients and your partners and all these ventures on how to really scale it up and keep perfecting things.
Learning new things and implementing them. That's, a great compounding experience that I think that does wonders for this industry are beautiful. Okay. So, thank you so much for sharing everything so far, I'm going to try to package it all together and go to the last station in this episode.
So, you were born in Derby. In 1991 spent a year in North Carolina back in the UK in 1992 where you went to school. Then, you get your degree in law and accounting. In 1996, you took a year off in between. You were with the church and then I think 96, you began working with the company that does those installations for this high-end spa units and saunas up to 2001: Then the company sold. Then you spread your wings. You started your own website, based on the relationship you have with this company that supplied products for tanning. It did pretty well in a few months and basically sold that company to that same company that the supplier. Then you got an opportunity to actually sell those same saunas with the company from Germany.
Then you were able to transition that into the online arena. Then 2006 Jersey opens up where you're selling online, online, health and beauty products out of New Jersey. There's a tax loophole where we're taking in a great advantage and you, you know, you launch it, and you expect to do 10,000: It blows up to 400,000: Then you know, the company still runs all the way to today which was to give you a lot of infrastructure to do all the other activities you you're doing. If it's Amazon for the central logistics and agency side. Around 2016, you touched on Amazon a little bit. We discussed that. Then around the same time you started your own podcast show. It's a great show for as dedicated to the community, but also helps a lot to your own compounding and growing interest in needs. I'm not sure that I mentioned the thing or was that kind of the right elements?
Matt Edmundson [55:49]
That was a remarkably good summary. Well, done. Extraordinary memory.
Yoni Mazor [55:55]
Yeah. That's my little part of the show here to do. All right. So, thanks so much for that. I actually learned a few interesting things, so I appreciate it. All right. So, the last two things I want to touch on is the first thing will be, if somebody wants to reach out and connect, where can they find you? The last thing will be is, what is your message of hope and inspiration for entrepreneurs listening out there?
Matt Edmundson [56:13]
Ah, okay. So sure. If you want to connect with me, love to do so. My website is just MattEdmundson.com. So MattEdmundson.com, E D M U N D S O N.
Just head on over to that. And on there, you'll find also the links to everything, social media, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I'm very, very occasionally on Twitter or LinkedIn, connect with me in any one of those ways, be great to meet with you.
I'm just more than happy to do that in terms of inspiration and hope entrepreneurs. I would say this, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie, the empire strikes back, right? Star Wars. Yeah. The Star Wars movie, the empire strikes back. There's a scene in the movie where Yoda and Luke Skywalker and our swamp, right. Yoda is like teaching him how to lift rocks with the force. I don't know if you remember this scene and it's like, his ship is X wing fighter looks excellent. Fighter is in the swamp. Yoda's like lift that out and Luke's like, there's no way lifting stones. There's one thing left in this massive thing is something else. Yoda gives them a bit of a pep talk. Luke makes this comment. He says, “okay, I will try”. Yoda turns around him and says, “no, do or do not”. There is no tried. Now this clip has always stood in my head, and I've quoted this many, many a time. Let me tell you, there is no tray. Actually, every time I've quoted that I've been entirely wrong. Because I think for entrepreneurs, there's nothing, but try right. Have a go.
You don't always need to know the end from the beginning. It's just about if I look at my story, right. What I never did was sit down with the careers advisor in high school and say, I want to be the king of beauty. I just never would have entered my head. Right. If I was planning out my ten-year life goals that never would have been on that list, what happened was there was a chance conversation, an opportunity in front of me. I've just had the conversation, not really thinking about where it went. And we tried a whole bunch of different things. Here I am in 2021 telling you the story. I think sometimes we get so bogged down in the details. So concerned about the end result. So concerned about, is this a smart goal? Is this a big, hairy, audacious goal? Is it, this is it that actually, sometimes you just need to have a go and that's okay? It's okay. If it doesn't work out, it's okay. If it fails because you just learn domain and you adapt and you change and you go, ah, it's a bit like driving a car across town. You know, you could be one of these people that has to get the map out and understand every single turn and where every single traffic light is. You could just be like an entrepreneur who just gets into cost, which is on the engine. It goes from kind of go in that way. Let's see where we get to and just start striving, enjoys the journey. That would be my message. Just enjoy the journey, have a go and see what happen.
Yoni Mazor [59:27]
[Outro:] Yeah. Start up the engines, you know, go for the ride. Have a go and don't be afraid to fail. Yeah. Beautiful stuff, man. Thank you so much. I know much success. I wish you and your future endeavors. I hope everybody enjoyed this and thank you for listening. Stay safe, healthy the next time. Thanks a lot.
