Matt: Hey, welcome to the E commerce podcast. My name is Matt, and it is great to be with you. Today. I am chatting with Selina Knight all the way from the other side of the world, from the land down under, as we would say in Britain. What in fact, Selena, let me ask you a question, what do you say about Brits? Do you are we the land, down, up? I don't know. I What? How do you refer to it?
Salena: Well, my husband's from the UK, and I think we just say from the UK. You know what it's kind of like? Can we I don't know. This is a great start. You know how you can edit this out if you're not happy with it. But you know how Americans, a lot of Americans have, like, I think it's like 90% of Americans have never left their country. Yeah, it's a really big number, yeah. And when you ask them, you know, there's those memes where you ask Americans to point out different countries and they can't find them. I feel like Australians are like that with anything that is remotely UK. Ish the UK, and it could be, it could be Scotland, it could be England, it could be, it could be Paris. But you know what? It's just the UK.
Matt: Just the UK. Yeah, yeah. No, Fair enough. Fair enough. That's brilliant. We just call it the UK. Why don't we just call it Australia? I don't know. Why do we have to call it the land down under? Who knows? Who knows? I'm sure there's some history buff somewhere that's gonna give me, you know, LinkedIn message telling me why, but that's gross. Great to see you on the show. Thanks for coming.
Salena: No problem. Thank you for having me.
Matt: I have to be honest with you. For those watching on YouTube, you'll notice that you actually have a really good microphone, so I have slight mic envy.
Salena: Oh, I love this microphone. Are we allowed to, like, digress this early in the absolutely, yeah, I may well have many microphones. But I went, Okay, we're talking about retail, and the experience like this is I'm just side barring and bringing this back in. When I first started podcasting, which was 11 years ago, I kind of remember I had some crappy microphone, and I remember somebody giving me, like a horrible review, saying, Oh, the audio is terrible, because back then, we didn't video, we just had audio, yeah. And so I remember thinking, Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go to, like, a microphone shop. Do they exist? And I'm going to see if I can find someone who will let me try a microphone, because I remember back in the day listening to people like Pat Flynn, and I'm just trying to think of who else there was, like, quite smooth, yeah, microphones. And so I did, I did all this research, and I found this store. It actually wasn't too far away. It was a music store, right? But they had a sound booth in there. And so you would go in and you're like, I would like to try a podcast. And I'm still, I still have literally no audio knowledge whatsoever, but they're like, Do you want a bright pod? Do you want a bright microphone? Or, I don't know all these other words of microphones, I just want to sound I want my voice to sound like husky and sexy.
Matt: I want the husky and sexy microphone. That's what I want.
Salena: Apparently, there are different microphones that can change. I mean, you may know more than me. And so he put all these microphones through, and I listened to this microphone, and I was like, this is the one. And it was a brand I'd never heard of. It is an SD 2200 Yep, and never heard of it. Didn't care. It was reasonably priced, I'm gonna say, like, $600 and you know those sign Howser microphones go for a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah. This is my third one of the exact same microphone. So one I may have dropped, one they did repair under warranty, and it just, it just started crackling. And so this is my third one, and I absolutely love it, and I'm yet to find somewhere else. But here's the thing, if we can bring this back to retail, and I know that the people who are listening are e commerce, it's how do you think about that customer experience like I will continuously go back to that store, and I have bought many microphones from that store, just because a, they know what they're talking about, and B, they could provide something that no one else could, which was I could go in and try the thing and find the thing I wanted. Now I appreciate you can't always translate that online, but I'm going to guarantee the people listening probably have a lot of experience in their field. And so my question would be, how are you translating that in store experience online? Because there are ways of doing it. That's my little story about the microphone, and I'm sorry I've just always wasted about always wasted about six or seven minutes talking about microphones.
Matt: No, no, no. It's fascinating. You're right on you, because what they did listening to you talk is it reminds me the Apple store, right? I have done this with with folks. I've I've taken them into the Apple Store. And just like made them stand there and just watch the sales people in apple. Because I remember the first time it was made aware to me how well they actually did was I remember going into the apple show I was looking at something. So, you know, I can't remember what it was, but I remember this, this old fella coming in the door, and the person greeted him at the door and said, How can we help you? And he was like, I need to get one of those eyes thing. What are they saucepans or something? I don't know. And the guy, do you mean an iPad? He says, I think so. I don't know what it is. I've just been told to come and get one. And he's like, What do you want to do with it? He says, Can't I do that thing where I where I call my granddaughter, but I see her on the screen, and the guy goes, Ah, FaceTime. Now, the granddad here has no idea what FaceTime is. It doesn't even know what the iPad is. He just knows what he wants, right? Like you. I want a microphone with the sexy and the Husky settings, please. That's what I want. What they did in Apple was they got him an iPad and they showed him how to do a FaceTime call. They didn't talk to him about screen resolution, they didn't talk to him about battery life, they didn't talk to him about the App Store, because I was listening to every single bit of it. All they did was talk to him about how to FaceTime, and they even showed him how easy it was by doing FaceTime calls across the Apple store. He was like, the guy was like, used to, used to you do this. I'm gonna go over the other side, hit the button, and let's see how it works. And of course, Granddad goes out with an iPad. I thought it was utter genius, the ability to quickly diagnose what it is they the customer wants in the language that the customer wants it, and deliver that, I think you're going to win every day.
Salena: And without overwhelming them. And so I think what we what I take away from that is I remember I've been in retail a really long time, and I remember back when we had our stores, like I was on I had an e commerce Store in 2007 now, that may not seem like a long time ago, but I like to reference it with guys in 2007 we had to push the number one button three times if we wanted the letter C. Okay. We did not have data on our phones. Just to put it into reference.
Matt: Yeah, we had dial up as well. I know. Do we have dial up in 2000.
Salena: Oh, I feel like we were just a little bit part. Little bit past dial up. We were here in Australia, so I had an e commerce Store then, and Flash was our favorite thing in the world. But besides that, I remember bringing in a, I don't know a system, because I'm gonna say I had a business degree. Told me nothing about running a business. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff they should teach you. So I remember people would come into my store and they would say, Oh, I'm looking for a gift. So to give you some reference, we sold eco baby products, like eco baby products and gifts, so wooden toys, as well as things like reusable nappies. Back when eco wasn't even a thing, as a lot of people exactly what you just said. They would come in and they're like, Oh, I'm shopping for my friend. And she's, like, a crunchy hippie person, and so I've got to find, like, You guys seem like you might have something for and I was like, Cool. Okay. And so here's we called it the three questions. And, gosh, I don't like, crash and burn here and forget what the three questions were. It was, and I give myself the ability to come back and rectify this if I if I remember correctly, but it was, Are you looking for? So when people would walk in, it would be, you know, Hi, have you been to the store before? And if they said yes, then we would have a little matrix, which was like, Okay, great. You know, it was something along the lines of, are you shopping for yourself or for a gift? So the idea was that you never had yes or no questions, and are you shopping for yourself or for a gift? I'm shopping for myself. And then it would be okay. What can I help you with today? Yeah. And then, if it was a gift, we had the three questions, which were, what? What was the, what was the what type of person are they? So? Are they a sporty person? Are they the crunchy hippie person? Are they the modern person who just wants to be a little bit eco? And then I guess the next question would be like, what sort of pain point do you want to fix? And so we would say something like, are they the kind of person who would like a candle, or are they the kind of person who would like antibacterial soap? Yeah. And so we would start to, like, get an idea of who this person was and what they would want. And then the last question was, what's the budget? And those three questions could usually mean that you could pinpoint what kind of like where to point somebody, especially if they were like your granddad, who, what not your granddad? The granddad, yeah, didn't quite know what they were looking for. And so what I've learned is that if you give someone more than three choices, they probably won't buy anything. That's true, yeah, because they want a high price thing, a low price thing and a mid price thing. And inevitably, I tend to find that they buy the high price thing, which is great. And so when we're thinking about like E commerce, one of the tips I always give people is you have the ability to structure how customers are going to see your products when they come to a category page. It doesn't have to be highest to lowest. It doesn't have to be alphabetical. You get to choose is canonical the right word? Yes, it's the right word. You get to choose the canonical structure of your page. And so one of my tips, and I only usually share this with like my really high paying clients, is when somebody comes to a category section, I will always have, at least assuming you have three across the page, two really high priced products, and then I'll have the product that you really want to sell. So like the best seller, and it's usually, you know, maybe 30% cheaper. But what we're doing now is price anchoring, and it's the same reason that when you go into some stores, and stores change the way they do their layout. Some will put discount stuff at the front, but some will put premium at the front, because the idea is the first number that we see, and this is behaviorally proven, is where we set our benchmark. So let's say we're selling jeans, and your average pair of jeans is $200 200 pounds, if we put the first pair that they see at 300 pounds. Yes, you may turn some people away, but you know what? They probably weren't going to buy anyway. But if they go to the next wall and all of those genes are 200 pounds, they're a bargain compared to the first ones that I saw, and our brain has benchmarked a 300 pounds. So now what we're seeing, in fact, we're not even putting them at 200 pounds, are we? We're putting that 199 Yeah, on from a three to a one, and instantly they're more valuable. Does that make sense?
Matt: No, totally. I think price anchoring is a really interesting strategy, and it's really interesting. I noticed this at the Savoy. I don't know if you've ever been to the Savoy. You don't need to go, but I we went to meet a supplier there, and the supply was buying me drinks, and I opened the menu, and the first I just have a gin and tonic. I don't need anything fancy. Give me a gin and good old fashioned gin and tonic. Open the menu, the gin and tonic was 16 pounds. Selina, I was I was apoplectic. I was like, this is a Gordon's Gin and Tonic. Why are you charging me so much money? And then I turned the page and saw the cocktails, and the cocktails were three or 400 pounds. I was like, that's just, not only is that nuts, it's immoral to spend 400 bucks on a cocktail. I turned the page and there was one cocktail, their super flagship cocktail for 12,000 pounds, right?
Salena: I think I've heard this story actually in marketing.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, Why? I asked the lady, I asked the lady, I said, to do you actually sell this 12,000 pound cocktail show? You'd be amazed how many we sell, right? The bankers that come and get their bonuses, they've just got million pound bonus they want. They're like, Yeah, I'm just gonna taste the 12,000 pound cocktail because I can. But what was happening? The reason I tell this story is same thing, and I recognize what was going on, and in my head, the first time I'm like, gin and tonic. 16 pounds is ridiculous. At that point, I'm having tap water. And then I saw a 400 pound cocktail and thought, well, maybe a 16 pound gin and tonic is not that bad. And then I saw a 12,000 pound cocktail and thought, 300 pound cocktails, not that bad. And the guy that was buying the drinks, the supplier, was like, Should we have a couple of cocktails? It we would never have had that conversation had we not seen the 12,000 pound cocktail, and it was all around price anchoring.
Salena: And can I say you're kind of person who had to hang out with because I would be like you, I'd be like you're paying, but 16 pound contact cocktail, just give me some water. I'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. That's just that's ridiculous. Can I ask you a question then about how when it comes to pricing, if we pull this back to E commerce, how do you tell people? How do you advise people to charge? Let's let's call in air quotes, ridiculous prices. What's your suggestion there? Oh, absolutely, you should do it. How? How do you can we? Can we talk about this? I just like railroad. I'm so sorry.
Matt: No, no, yeah, you take over time. You know what I do? The same when I go to other people's podcasts, it's like, well, let me ask. Yeah, question, it's like, no no, Matt, I'm the podcast host.
Salena: Where I'm going with this is what I saw last year. Now I'm sure it's the same in England. We've got some English customers, and I'm sure it's the same there, which was 2025 was a bit tight. It was some people saw growth, but we definitely saw a change in consumer spending. And so where I saw the people who did to either stay the same or did well, were people that were brands that would I what I would call premium, so not luxury, not Louis Vuittons, but they're charging above the average for things, yeah. And some of those are very niche, so they can charge what they want, but others would just and there's a company here in Australia that I always come back to because it is the most basic ghetto thing, and they charge more. So there's a company here in Australia called party people. They sell party supplies, paper plates, Tas Dora, the Explorer, pinatas, all that kind of stuff. Now you can buy a set of paper plates for, I'm just going to say dollars, because we're dollars here, you can ship it for $3 Pink, pink paper plates $3 however, they charge between five and $6 for the exact same place, right? Because, and I'm talking same brand, same everything, but their point of difference is that when you come to get your Dora the Explorer, and clearly, my kid has long since grown up, if I'm saying Dora the Explorer, you can have everything. You can have the pinata, you can have the plates, you can have the little paper bag. You can have everything. You don't have to go to that store for the bags and that store for the hat. You can get everything. So their whole point of difference was range and that you can shop for everything in the one place. And as a result, as the consumer, you're like, well, I'll pay $6 for the place, because if I go over there, I'm going to have to pay for shipping. And this is an online store, just FYI. If I go to that store, then I'm going to have to pay another $10 shipping, and then, and then, what if they don't come like at least, this all comes together in one thing. And so they can charge more, because they have a different point of difference for something that is very basic. But what I found in 2025 was the retailers that that that did well were people who were charging above the what everybody else was charging. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on what do you say to your clients, to your retailers, about you know what you're selling? The same product as Joe blogs over there, but I think you should charge more.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think it's, I mean, I do it. I have an E commerce site, and we, one of our sites is a supplement site. We sell vitamin C on that supplement site. You can get vitamin C for two pounds from the supermarket. We sell it. I'm never going to clean up selling vitamin C, but I the people that buy it are just like, we know the brand. You know, you guys are going to make a good product, and it's convenient, right? And so that, in itself, has value. The other thing I like, I remember talking to a lady who owned a restaurant. I appreciate. This is not E commerce, but this, this is this one story that springs to mind, they were struggling. They were burger restaurant. And they were like, We there was three of them on the street. I walked up and down the street, there was these three burger shops, and they're all selling burgers for 10 pounds. And she's like, what do we do? How do we get more people in the shop? Because they were just one of three. And at that point, when you're selling everything for the same price, you're there has to be a point of differentiation.
Salena: And there has to be, doesn't it? Like, see you say that to me, and my first thought was, charge 15.
Matt: Well, I told it double the price of the burgers. I said, don't sell a 10 pound burger. Sell a 20 pound burger. Don't just double the prices, but find a reason to sell it for 20 pounds. And she's like, well, no one will buy because there's 10 10 pounds down the road. I said they'll buy if you have a burger on your menu for 150 pounds, right?
Salena: Oh, look, it's like Kismet. We're back to the same conversation.
Matt: Right so this is how I think you do price anchoring. And like you say, if you online, go and find some we had a guy called norm. Come on the show. Norm was great. He his whole philosophy in life was, you take something from Amazon, like a knife. I think he used the example of a butcher's knife, Norm Ferrara, I think I can't remember his surname. It's really bad, sorry, norm, but he took a butcher's knife, took it out of the cardboard box and put it in a wooden box, charged four times the price for it, because his photos now had a wooden box and sold gazillions of them at much higher profit margins. And I'm like, for me, that's how you figure it out. You sell you figure out a reason as to why you become the most expensive. And I always think that's better than being the cheapest, because then you're just selling commodities, and you have to try and differentiate. And the way you differentiate is you just differentiate on price, which is rubbish, so I think, like you, I'm a fan of, how do I put the prices up? How do I do that in a way that demonstrates value to the client, where they feel like we're getting something here.
Salena: All right, I love this I love this conversation. I If we tie it back to as the business owner, if you are stuck, and I don't know about you, but I know that most of the people that we work with, the owners or the founders, are freaking amazing people. They will work themselves to the bone, and they've built this business because because of, like, a hard work, tenacity, this sheer doggedness of I was thinking this morning, why would anybody get into retail when you think about it, and I'm just side barring here is that Most retailers I know are very adverse to risk, yeah, oh, don't want to go into that new range or open another location, whatever. Then I sit back and think I was doing my hair this morning. I was like, how does it work that you, if you're that adverse to risk, that you decide to open a business where, literally, every decision you make is a gamble. It's a gamble that when you order the product, it's going to turn up. It's a gamble that anyone's going to buy it, and you are investing 10s, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars in inventory on this hope that someone is going to buy it and you will make some money. And that is one of the biggest gambles when it comes to business. It's not even like a service business where you go out and do the work. And do the work like that's pretty reliable. But retail, I'm like, how do you get into this? And so sometimes I do think, why don't we start retail businesses? And so with that, I my question to you, if the conversation we could have would be around when retailers are so you an E commerce. I'm just going to use the generic word retailer when we're so used to buying everything at wholesale price. How do we combat that idea of being affordable is the best place to hang out and that we we should be okay with telling our team that, you know, I'm gonna go back to norm. Like, imagine he has a team of people who take knives out and put them in the wooden boxes, and the team, potentially, are saying, Norm, this is unethical. How do we deal with that?
Matt: It's a great question. I this is why I take people to the Apple Store? Simply because they they're the most successful retailer out there per square foot. No one sells as much as Apple per square foot. At least they didn't. They have the fewest products you would expect to have in a store. And it's just like going, go and look right, go and see what is going on there, and figure out how you do that online. Because it's,
Salena: Well, they do it online.
Matt: Yeah, and they, they're magical with it in many ways, right? It's, I think it's a really interesting success story. How do you how do you do it?
Salena: I think there's a lot of things. But if we draw back to, if we draw back to what, let's go with Apple. What did they do? Well, do you know what their product from? What I hear the Google products and Android. You know, Android products can actually supersede apple, but they've built that cult status. And to be fair, once I change and I can copy and paste between phones and iPads and things, that was my that was my saving grace, I will never go back. And it's amazing how many people don't know how to do that. But if we take away so one, I think they have cult with cult status, and they've done that through things like pre selling and like really building up the heart. But the reality is it's sexy, like they made something very boring, very sexy, whereas, if I go to Google, they've made their phones fun. And I think that that, if you if we look at them, they're very different brands, and they attract very different people, but there is an exclusivity that comes with Apple products, and the people who buy them want other people to think that they, you know, they're cool, and I have good stuff, and when it comes back to translating that online and the unethicalness, I would say that what Apple have done well is have their team buy into the vision. Now I don't even know. What Apple's vision is, but what they've bought into is the brand, and if you can build that, you won't ever lose employees, and they won't question I think the problem becomes when the you hire people for the sake of hiring people, and you can fix this in the hiring process. And this is something I accidentally did very, very well, like I didn't know it at the time. I've been doing it for 20 years, and I still do it. I still tell my people to do it now, which is when I write a job description. I very rarely write it for the job. I write it for the culture. And I think there is a point in business where you can train someone to do anything, versus when you have to have the expertise, and you will hit that usually around seven figures, where you have to, you know, you can just train Sarah. She's gone from you're uploading products to now she's the E commerce manager, because she's just got the experience. But they get to a point where you you need expertise, regardless of which one of those stages you're at, if you're not really clear about where your business is heading and how customers value you and how you're going to turn up, is really difficult to get people to buy into that. So I know that even to this day, I start my I do a group interview to begin with, and even in store and online, I do a group interview, and I start that with talking about the business, but not talking about a business. So what I'll do is I'll be like our customers. Are these kinds of people, and what we love about them is this, and we're on a mission. Well, our mission in our company is we create solutions that make money for your store. And so if you're not okay with that, this is not the place for you, like, if you're not okay with helping people make money and to become rich in whatever way that looks like for them, this is not the place for you. And I have run into this problem before, where as the business grew, our business manager hit that point where she could not think to the next level, and she was just stuck in the like, I can't fathom what this business would look like at 20 million, 30 million, $40 million and that's okay, because who got you here won't get you there, And what got you here won't get you there. And so coming back to that conversation of, how do you make sure that your team are on board? This is a leadership thing. It's not even a hiring decision. It is. It is you as the founder, as the owner. If you don't even know where you're going, then how the heck do you get someone else to buy into that if you are so busy working in your business and micromanaging? I always say that you know you can always tell the businesses that are stuck, because the owner needs to know everything, everything, about everything. But if you need to be that person, you won't get to $20 million you probably might get to 10, but you won't get past that, because your business cannot be capped at how smart you are. And I will always say, I've literally just hired a new marketing manager, and I said, you're saying things I don't know, which is great, because you can't be as smart as me. You have to be smarter than me, because if this whole business is only as smart as me, we're screwed be smart in every single area of the business. I just need to be smart in this part of the business. You guys all need to be smarter than me, and you need to come back and tell me what we need to do, and I will make a decision. And so all of that comes back to it. Sometimes, well, I'm just again, sidebarring. My brain goes in like 700 different circles. But there is a point when you grow, where you what you wanted has now changed, and that is okay. And when you start making good money, I think it can become a difficult thing to go but why do I need to make more money and and here's my answer to that. If you make $100 million this year, one on an on a personal level, you have choices. You now don't have to you don't have to decide, do I get medicine or not? Do I get surgery or not? Do my kids go to the best school or not? So one, money gives us choices. Two, you get to choose what to do with that money every time you buy something, whether that is a Lamborghini or that is. A bottle of Coke or that is a $12,000 cocktail. Think about all those people that you're supporting by doing that. So you've got, you know, let's go with the $12,000 cocktail. You've got the waitress, you've got all of the bar staff. You've got the supplier who brought in the cocktails. Yes, you've got the massive conglomerate who owned the Savoy, but all those people work as well, and all those people get paid. And so I came from a very, very, very poor background, and this is how I have resolved that is okay making money, is that every time I spend money, and you know what, even if I don't spend it, if it sits in the bank and makes money, then all those banking Well, there's not many banking employees anymore, but there are a few banking employees who have jobs as a result of that. And so that is how I've resolved because I grew up with money, rich people are horrible and rich people are greedy, and I think the media portrays that as well, which is especially for women. Maybe it's different for men, but when you think about any movie you've ever watched, the female CEO or Executive, she's either a bitch, she's not very nice person, or she's doing it this at the expense of her family, or she's doing this at the expense of herself. And it's funny that men are not always portrayed like that, so I'm just taking from my bias, and what I have discovered is it doesn't need to be like that, but the more money you make, the more you have the ability to make the world the way that you might want to be. And that's your choice.
Matt: It's a really interesting point, isn't it, because I think people want to make, if you're, if you're in business, you want to make money, even if it's to fund your mission. And I think, I think conversations about wealth are quite fascinating. You know, we were talking about wealth earlier on, like, how you build wealth with us, with a group guys today, talking about building wealth. And you kind of like money without mission, I think is a waste of time. I think the people that struggle the most with wealth have no mission for their money, whatever that mission is, yeah, and you know, I've, I've, I've been fortunate enough to know some of the wealthiest people on the planet, you know, and I've been on their private jet. So I could tell you all kinds of stories, which I won't bore you with right now, but I wish most of them are unhappy and they and they get their self esteem from work, right? So they're not getting it at home from their family. They pour themselves into work because they've made more money at work, so therefore they can feel better about themselves, at least they're successful here. And so I think, I think you're right. I think you have to wrestle with this. What's the mission? What is success? To me? What does that look like? Because hopefully you're gonna get there, yeah, and actually finding that is helpful.
Salena: And if you sorry to cut in, but if you know that, how much easier is it to get people on board, yeah, and get them to buy in, rather than this is a job and you get paid, and they're just waiting for somebody else to pay them more. And I think that that is what I accidentally did. Well, yeah, I was so invested in what we were doing to change this. As I said, this was before eco was a thing. I came from a background. Well, I came from a job in sustainability. I was passionate about the planet. I was passionate about my kids skin and what she was going to grow up like, and where the world was going to be. And if you know that, and you can express it, you will bring the people in who want to be part of that. And I think that if we bring it all back full circle, I think that Apple does that well, whether it's the mission or whether it is the cult status, what they've done is put a group of people together who love the product so much. And you and you know that, like you said, every time you go into an Apple store, they know the product inside out that they're going to fix granddad's problem and then they're going to fix my problem completely differently. It's so much easier to get people to to stay and to help and to over deliver, and if someone over delivers, you can charge more if they're bought in.
Matt: That's so true. And I think they buy into if you're the leader, if it's your company, my experience is they, I've never had a member of staff sit down an interview with me. You know, potential member of staff sit down and interview with me. Cena, and go, How do I make you more money? Matt, I'm really my whole life's goal is to make you richer, right? It just has never, ever happened, and I understand why, because I don't think anybody that works for me ultimately, I don't think their goal is to make me richer. I think they'd like the consequence of my wealth growing, because they do better, right? They're the company. It's always better to be involved in a company that's growing, that's dynamic, and good things are going on, so they have got to buy into it, and it's got to be, I think what they buy into like, I don't, I don't think many people Apple buy into making Tim Cook richer. I just, I don't buy an iPhone to think, there you go, Tim, have that one on that pints on me, right? Doesn't happen. I could care less, in many ways. But like you say, they're bought into the brand, they're bought into the story, and they're bought into the mission of the company. And if the company makes a shed load of money, well, that's a consequence of the mission. That's a consequence of the vision being fulfilled. And so you you hear of companies like Patagonia doing really well because they just, people just love their story, and it's so unusual. The whole guy just gives his company back to the planet. I mean, how is that? I don't know, but
Salena: we call Patagonia Patagonia pedagogy.
Matt: That's a good name. Yeah, they should trademark that. They should definitely trademark that. But no, I think you're right. I think I think money has to have a mission. People like to be involved in something which is bigger than themselves. That has a mission, whether that's helping the planet, whether that's helping their kids, whether that's whatever it is that. Has to be a reason for them to be involved. They've got to feel like a member of a tribe, a community. And I think if you can do those things, then you'll you'll ultimately do well. The people that lose, I think in the end, are the people that are just no no when I'm not going to, I'm not going to have that on over there, because it will save 10 bucks, and that 10 bucks I want in my pocket. I mean, it's like, yeah, I think people feel things like that.
Salena: I think they do too. And I, what I would say there is when it comes to if, when it comes to you as the owner, as the founder, you said many, many rich people are not happy. And coming out of 2025 I can tell you that many retailers aren't happy now either. And I think that happens when we fall back into all of the doing, and we lose sight of that bigger picture. And so maybe, maybe this conversation is you just thinking, why do I do this? Yeah, and if the answer is, so that I can have a million dollars in the bank and I feel secure and I can send my kids to a good school, well, that's fine, but know that that may not be the same thing that your team buy into that, and if that's where you want to go, that's where you want to go. But I'm guessing that even if you want those things, the reason you did this was something else. Like, I just know that most of the people that I work with love their product, or they love their customer, or they love their niche. I would love to know about norm, though. Like, why did he do it.
Matt: He i i That would be a question for him. I mean, from what I know of norm, he's a great guy. I've been on his show a couple of times. He's been on this one a couple of times. I think he loves the hustle of it, and and the people around him, like, yeah, you know, this is, this is kind of cool. It's got that kind of hustle vibe about it, and it's dynamic. And they're growing, and they're making stuff work over here, and they can experiment, and they can do all these kind of different things, and they've got the capacity to do that, whereas, whereas, I think if norm just sold the same knives in the cardboard box, they wouldn't have the capacity to do that, because then it's just a volume game, isn't it? It's just like, I've just got to sell the same thing 10,000 times to, you know, buy a Mars bar or something. And so I think people like that. I think I'm curious to know why he is in it, though, I mean enormous people, so I hope there'll be something in that.
Salena: But what I think you have highlighted there is what I took away from that conversation, whether you mentioned or not, was your dream doesn't have to be this great big thing. Your your vision could just be, I like, want to find better ways to do stuff. And if we're talking about that example, it's kind of like their culture, from what you're telling me, would be like, almost like testing and measuring. So, you know, it's this constant test. It's constant AB test. What's this knife worth? What if we stick it in an aluminum box? What would happen? Versus a wooden box, versus a, I don't know, a stainless steel box, and that curiosity, so what they're fostering there is curiosity, curiosity. And you said hustle, but I'm thinking it's, you know, curiosity and innovation and the success that comes with testing. Yeah, experimentation, isn't it? That's a good word. Thank you very much. Yeah, and there are some people that are thrive in that those people are probably not going to be great people at the Apple Store, because the Apple Store is, I'm going to say it's formulaic in the sense that this is our product and we solve this problem, whereas that is a completely different environment to where you get to you get to take risks, and you get to think about things out outside of the box or inside of The box, whichever way you want to put it, and you're going to attract different people. And so I can imagine, without knowing, Norm, something along those lines. Is when he's hiring, it's kind of like, Hey, if you're the kind of person who you know used to stick forks in electrical outlets to see if you would get electrocuted, this is the job for you. Please
Matt: don't do that every young boy goes and applies for the job, because we've all done it. That's great. Great. It's, no, it's fascinating. What you say, Selena and I, and I love it. I think it's, it's if I don't know where you are listener in terms of your E comm journey, right? I don't know if you're just starting out. I don't know why you're doing what you're doing. I don't know if you're years into it, but I think it's good to tap into the reason why you're doing it, and to articulate that and to remind yourself of why you're doing it, to remind yourself of what it is you're trying to build and to also remember. About why your team are doing this, because like, like, you say, Selena, I don't there's two. Aren't always the same thing, but there has to be some congruency if you're going to keep people long term. And to think about that. And I was always told in leadership school that, how do you know when you've talked about the vision enough in your company? I think the answer was, well, when you're absolutely sick and tired of talking about it because you feel like you've done nothing but talk about it all the time, then you're probably just about starting to talk about it enough.
Salena: My My answer to that, I agree with that, but my answer would always be, if you have the kind of people who come in early and stay late and don't expect to get paid for it, I'm not advocating don't pay your team, but if they are, if they want to go the extra mile, I think you've done a really good job.
Matt: Yeah, finding those people is like finding unicorns teeth.
Salena: Oh yes, yes. Really donkeys and unicorns, we call them.
Matt: Yeah. It's just, it's remarkable. I think one of the biggest frustrations a lot of people have when it comes to hiring people, and maybe you've seen this as well, seeing but it's certainly the people that I talk to, is the people that they hire don't think like them. Now, they're not going to do that because they're not the founder, but founders and entrepreneurs think everybody should think like a founder and an entrepreneur. What do you mean? We're just going to work a 12 12, hour day here to solve this problem. What's wrong with you? Just get on it. I don't, I don't. I don't care if you've got a family, what's wrong? Where's your commitment and and there's a frustration which builds inside everybody. When people don't think about the business the same way that you or I maybe would think about it.
Salena: Are you saying more? Or can I talk to them?
Matt: You go right ahead.
Salena: Okay, I'm just I'm terrible at cutting people off because, let's be honest, most business owners have ADHD officer or on the spectrum of something, which is why we're doing exactly what you just said. We do. We're thinking about a million things where we can process a million different things, and I think we forget that neurotypical people don't work like that. And we need those people. We need those people to be focused on one thing and get that thing done. And yes, it's annoying, and yes, it's frustrating, but I've been through quite a bit of hiring through 2025 and I worked with Gary V's organizational psychologist. It's been a name drop, and one of the things that she said to me was that even though I thought I had written these position descriptions quite well, that I hadn't, and so one of the things she made me do was write down everything that annoys me. It's a really long list. It started off with people who talk slow, yeah, people who walk slow, yeah, people who send me very long emails instead of dot points. And I just, I just kept adding to that list, adding that list like therapy it was. And then when you ask people what they want, they can't usually tell you, but they can tell you what they don't want. Yes, they can. And so what I will say is, if you have a direct report, you need to be honest with yourself about what frustrates you. And of those things, which one is the one that your business actually needs. And even if it frustrates you, you're just going to have to put up with it, because there were some things that I wrote down that I realized that, like an operations manager, an operations manager, if you ever do Enneagram, it one like they are process driven, that everything has to be detailed and you need that any business owner needs one of those people, and They will frustrate the hell out of you, because they want all the information. I'm like, Well, I told you, I told this to you, at least I thought I mentioned it in my brain, and you couldn't read that. And so there are a few things there, if we break that down, which is one, I think a direct report. You need to understand how you communicate and the things that frustrate you, but also the things that you need to make a concession on and just deal. Yeah, the second one would be for your I mentioned before, we have donkeys and unicorns. So unicorns are the thinking people. Donkeys are doers. You need. You need donkeys in your business, like your bookkeeper needs to just do the job right. The job is not to think of great ideas, it's just to get the numbers done. And so understanding that as well, that when you're breaking down these roles, what do you realistically need this person to do? Not. Necessarily want, but I'm with you, like my operations manager was so frustrated because we tried to hire for four months in a CRM role, and she's like, can we not just hire somebody? I'm like, no, because we need someone who will think, I need someone who goes, Oh, this doesn't work. Like, like, you want it to do this. It doesn't do that. So here's the solution. It's not my job to know how the CRM works. And she would get we'd go through round after six into six people on an interview, six people on an interview, six and she's like, You have to hire someone soon. And I'm like, and what and what, you just get frustrated because that person can't think for themselves. And then we've spent all this time building something that doesn't work because that person just wants to take tasks off an Asana project, yeah, and we finally found somebody. It takes time and again. This is where it comes back to. You've got to have the patience, but you've got to be really clear about who it is you want. But sometimes you just need people, like sometimes you do just need a body. But you know the guy who's packing your pallets, maybe he doesn't need to be thinking outside the box, but I will put I will hands down, hand on heart, say that your sales associates or the person who is answering the chat on your E commerce site needs to know what they're talking about, because you and I both know that you get on that chat and it's in some offshore agency, and they go, please call back. Please call the store between nine and four, and you're like, Well, you just wasted my time. But now I'm angry. What was this live chat even? What were you even here for? So this is where I love AI.
Matt: Now I'm with you. The amount of the bad, the worst thing you can do is make customer angry. It's like, why would you want to do that? Why would you provoke that? It makes no sense. So, Selena, Listen, I I am. I'm engrossed in the conversation. I feel like we're just scratching the tip of the iceberg, but I'm also aware of time, and so if people want to reach you, if they want to find out more about you, get in touch. What's the best way to do that?
Salena: You can find me on the bringing business to retail podcast, or on all of the socials. I am the Salena Knight and Selena knight.com you can find me there and come and hang out with me and listen to me on my soapbox. I do tend to get on my soapbox. Thank you for allowing me to do that. And I feel like I I took the conversation away for you to do your little like sidebar. Remember to do that after we've recorded.
Matt: Yeah. No problem. That's great. Now we will, of course, put all the links to Selena in the show notes, which you can get along for free with the transcript at the website, ecommerce podcast.net, and of course, if you haven't subscribed to the newsletter, make sure you do. You can do that at the same website, ecommerce podcast.net, and all of these things will Wang their way straight to your inbox every week without any drama, so you'll just get them all automatically, which is a beautiful thing. Selena, thank you so much for coming on the show. Genuinely loved the conversation and getting carried away with it and going down all these little side streets. Love those kind of conversations. It's been an absolute joy and privilege to just chat and hang out with you.
Salena: Thank you. Thank you. I have one last question for you, if that's okay, you knock yourself out. We finished up, but I had a conversation that I wrote down. We kind of talked about it, but not I would love, really, answers that you can put into action, so answers that you can put into action in a reasonably short period of time, if that's okay. So how do you I'm gonna say deal, but I don't mean, how do you manage a key leadership person on your team? So maybe that's a store manager or E commerce manager who struggles with pricing when you are a premium brand. So we kind of talked about this on in terms of vision and whatnot, but I would love some real life advice. So yes, go back and understand what your vision is and communicate that to the team. But if you are a premium store with your average order value is $250 and your econ manager, or whoever is managing your inventory, every time a shipment comes in, they're like, oh, look, cost of goods have gone up. And like, I think we should just keep the price the same, though, because they they come from, like me, a background where money was tight and they don't understand that people will pay for those things, and clearly they do, because the business is in business and doing really well. But I would love to know some really actionable tips of how the founder This is obviously a real life scenario, how the founder can address this. Is that okay for me to ask as.
Matt: Entirely fine. I think it's a very good question. And I tell you what I'm going to do is we have the section called question for Matt, where I go and answer the questions on social media. So I'm going to answer that question on social media. I'll give all my practical knowledge that I can possibly think of. It take about 20 seconds, but no, we will do that on social media. So thank you for that. That's good. Save to me the question for Matt.
Salena: Well, I wanted to ask it, and I realized we're out of time. But if you could do that, and you could share it with your people, and please tag me, I would love to hear the answers, because I've just shared what I think. But I think like tomorrow when the founder turns up at work, what does the conversation look like? Because redoing your, you know, your vision and whatnot, that's not a something we do overnight. But what are some real life things that this person could implement to help with that obstacle?
Matt: Fantastic, fantastic, that is going to be answered shortly. So watch this space. Come follow me on LinkedIn if you want to find out. Want to find out how I'm going to answer that question. But Selina, genuinely, I feel like it's gonna keep going. Four hours later we'll be going. This was great conversation, but it was it was lovely. It was great to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Well, there you go. Another great conversation, all wrapped up on the E commerce podcast. Thank you so much for joining us this week. Make sure you like follow and subscribe and do all that good stuff, because we've got yet more great conversations lined up, and I don't want you to miss any of them. And of course, if no one's told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you've got to bear. Selena's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. But that's it from me. That's it from Selena. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great time wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.

Matt Edmundson is an eCommerce entrepreneur, speaker, and host of the eCommerce Podcast, where he interviews some of the world’s leading experts on online business growth. With over two decades of experience building and scaling multiple eCommerce brands, Matt is known for simplifying complex strategies into practical, actionable insights. He’s passionate about helping business owners grow profitable, sustainable companies without unnecessary complexity.

Learn more at: www.mattedmundson.com