What Success Really Means

I got to share my journey in business so far, the power of teams and my definition of success on Lee Houghton’s podcast - Business Problems Solved.

We talked about:

• Recognising when big opportunities come by and taking full advantage

• Teams are the building blocks of any good business. You can achieve far more by leveraging talent and working towards a shared purpose.

• The many forms of success.

• Finding the right people for your organisation is not just about qualifications, but more importantly there must be an alignment of values.

Find the show on Apple Podcasts

Show Notes

What’s your story, Matt?

The short version is I run a whole bunch of eCommerce businesses and I've done so since 2002. It's wonderful; I totally love it and totally enjoy it. How we got here is a more interesting story. I’m married, with three kids, living in Liverpool. Big Liverpool Football Club fan. Life is very, very good. And I'm still the other side of 50; I've not made it through that barrier yet so I still feel young as well.

So 19 years in eCommerce. How did you get into it? And why have you stayed doing it?

It was totally by accident, as a lot of these things are. I saw an opportunity and I took it. In 1998, I was working for a friend of mine called Simon, but I was looking to set up my own company on the side. A friend of mine came to me one day and asked if I knew anyone who could build a website for the Church he was part of. Back then, I only knew of one company that could have made a website for his Church, and they were 3 friends of mine who would spend all day writing web code. Because they used to take so long to build, the quotes you would get for a custom website were crazy, especially if you were a Church so I offered to build the website myself if he purchased the necessary software. To this day, I don’t know why I made that offer, I just thought it would be interesting to learn how to make websites. That’s how my journey into eCommerce began.

A few years later in 2002, I launched my first eCommerce business. A mate of mine in Leeds was a wholesaler of tanning products, and I asked if I could sell his stuff online and buy stock as and when it was ordered. He agreed. The website took off, and I sold it to the guy I was buying product off six months later.

Before building the website, what were you doing?

I was working for Simon’s company “Seven Leisure” where we designed and installed health spas. Up until 2001, I installed saunas and steam rooms for a living. Eventually, Simon sold the business and moved over to New Zealand; we’re still good friends to this day. After he left, I went into web stuff full time.

What would you say you do best?

Building teams. I enjoy being around people and adding value to a conversation, even in a digital age. When I was designing saunas and steam rooms, I loved working with a client to turn a blank page or an empty room into something extraordinary and its that desire to learn from people, that desire to help them find and use their strengths, it’s that that I do best.

Do you see yourself as successful?

It depends on how you view success. Several years back, I was interviewing for a role on the board of a fair-trade company based in the UK called TradeCraft. I remember my interviewer asking me questions about eCommerce and about my business. At the time, I ran a company that sold beauty products online and I remember the lady interviewing me asking whether it was ethical to sell face creams for upwards of £100. For her and the organisation she worked for, success was viewed different to how many others viewed it. On the flip side, a friend of mine, who’s walking in the Himalayas at the moment, has two McLarens. Why he needs two, I don’t know, but he has two. He also views success in a different way. My wife works with refugees and asylum seekers and if you look through their eyes, I’m one of wealthiest men in the world. Success depends on who’s eyes you look through.

If we look through my eyes, I would say I’m successful but not because of my business. I’m successful because I’ve been married for 23 years and because I have 3 kids all of whom I think still like me. I don’t live in the biggest house and I don’t drive a McLaren; I drive a van. I would say I’m successful not because of my business but because of many other things.

You seem to know what it is you value. Has that always been the case?

I think it has to be, doesn’t it? Even if we’re not consciously aware of what they are, they factor in to who we are as people and how we make decisions as a company. When we interview people, for our company or when consulting for another, there are two questions we ask. The first is what’s the interviewee’s level of skill - how good are they at the actual job? To find this out, I can read their CV, I can look at their appraisals, and so on. The second question we ask is how aligned is the interviewee with the company’s values - are they going in the same direction as us? It doesn’t matter how good a potential employee is - if they don’t match the company culture, they’re not going to be great for you. Your values are your compass; being aware of them will help you make the right decisions for you company.

Knowing what you do know, what advice would you give to the Matt just starting his first eCommerce venture?

I’d say to him, it’s gonna be alright. Enjoy the journey. Looking back, I’ve got no issue with the things I’ve done well, like family and marriage. I would tell my past self to stay away from property as I’ve discovered it’s not one of my skill sets, and I would recommend being wildly cautious with business partnerships. I think business partnerships are unbelievably good, but whenever you enter into one, there are two things you need: an end date and a contract. Having a contract is particularly important if you go into business with a mate; it’s crucial to know what the expectations are of both of you.

When setting up a business with a partner, do you set it up with an end date for the business in mind or for the partnership?

Well, there are two different questions there: one around business partners and the other around business. Let’s first look at the business question.

When I was just starting my business journey, I read Michael Gerber’s book “The E Myth”. In that book, Gerber stays that you should build a business to sell it. If you don’t sell it to somebody else, you are the person buying it - you’re paying your time, your sweat, your hours, and your energy for that business. It’s a lesson that’s always stayed with me. With every business I’ve every started, I’ve know I’m going to end it either because it’s failed or because I’ve sold it, to myself or someone else.

When it comes to business partners, there are few that I’ve met who have had good longevity. Business partnerships, when they start, are great - they’re synergistic and bring immense value. Life however, has a habit of happening. Relationships change over the years, and different needs begin to come out of the woodwork over time and so it’s well worth having a conversation with your partner at the start of your journey were you figure out how you’re going to end things in however many years time. There will come a point were you both want to go in separate directions and for the sake of the friendship you should end the partnership. Having a conversation before it gets to the point will save you being caught by surprise.

How would you coach someone looking to sell something online? What is the secret to success in eCommerce?

The first thing to realise is there’s no sliver bullet. The bottom line is, for an eCommerce business to work, you need to sell products that people want to buy. I know that sounds blindingly obvious but I would say 99% of eCommerce businesses that I've seen fail do so because they've got products that nobody wants to buy. They've got products that they want to buy, or they sell products that maybe their mum would buy just because they're related to them, but nobody else on the planet could care. A classic example of this would be the pre-pandemic sunglasses boom. There were more people trying to buy sunglasses than I could count. All that happened was everybody just went to AliExpress and were like, I can buy sunglasses there for a quid, but I can throw them on a website and sell them for 20 quid. The problem is you've then got a product that no one's willing to pay 20 quid for because they're a £1 pair of sunglasses.

One of the biggest complaints you hear with eCommerce is getting website traffic that doesn’t lead to sales. No one's buying on your site because your website's either rubbish, or because your product is presented so badly and so poorly that no one cares. The key to selling online is to have a good quality product that people want to buy, know that product better than anyone else, and present it in a way that is compelling online. Treat your customers like real people. Good customer service will have people shouting out about their experience with you. If you can’t do these things, you’re going to struggle.

How do you get the first bit of traffic to your website?

Traffic's an interesting one, because I could go out today and , as long as I've got enough money, I can get traffic to my website. I can go and buy Facebook ads, I can do Google ads, and I can get people to my website. I might not make any money on that first sale, which is fine if I've got good upsells, or good cross sells, or I'm going to sell to them on a repeat customer basis. You've got to get good at paid media, you've got to get good at Facebook ads, you've got to get good at Google traffic. But again, I come back to this: is the problem traffic, is the problem the product, or is the problem the way the website talks about the product. We had a client came to us with a website turning over somewhere in the ball-park of £700,000 but his competitor was turning over 10 times that. He and his board wanted to throw £100,000 into advertising to generate more traffic because he thought his problem was a traffic problem. Before he went and spent that 100 grand on advertising, I did some research for him and found the issue wasn’t his traffic but something we call his conversion rate. For every 100 people that came to his website, only one person purchased his product, but when I looked at his competitors’ websites, one in 10 people was buying. It wasn't a traffic issue at all; the issue was their website was just not converting as well as his competitors websites. So I said to the client, “If you took that same money, and invested that on your site to get the conversion rate of your website to that of your competitors, you'll have the multi-million in turnover.”

The default assumption is always a lack of sales is due to a lack of traffic. I think you don't need an awful lot of traffic to actually start picking up momentum online. Sure, you’ve got to do the baseline advertising with your Facebook ads, and so on and so forth. But if you've got a product that people want to buy, you sell it in a great way, and you've got a great customer experience, your customers will keep buying from you. Not only that, they’ll tell three or four other people to buy from you. The websites that we've done, and the websites that have been successful, have been successful not necessarily because of traffic, but because of one interesting statistic: after a few years, the majority of their income came from returning customers. That's what made our online businesses successful. You generally don’t make profit when running ad campaigns to get people to your website. If you can break even with an ad campaign, I think you’re doing well, but if you can get first-time customers to buy a second time and the third time and the fourth time, that’s when you’re going to start making a profit.

What would you do if there was no internet?

I would I would be selling something somewhere to somebody. I would find a problem that people had, I'd find a solution, and I'd sell them the solution. There's no doubt about it. It’s same thing online, right? You find a great product that solves a problem and present it well, whatever that looks like for you.

When we did saunas and spas, I quickly realised that if I came to your premises and sat down and talked to you, I'd have maybe half an hour of your attention before you were interrupted, and that’s not factoring in anything that might have happened in your day up to that point. But if I could get you out of your office and say, “Lee, let's go to Germany, because Germany has got some of the best health spas in the world. We're gonna go to Germany, I'm gonna take you around three or four health spas, it's gonna take about two or three days, I want you to come and have a look and tell me what you think.” I knew my sale was not the sauna or the steam room, my sale getting you to Germany, because if I could get you to Germany there was a 98% chance you would buy a health spa from us. The tangible experience of going to Germany and seeing first hand what you could have got people hooked on an idea, and it turned out high-conversion rates. Then what we did at the end of it was, after you’d had this health spa installed your house, we’d present you with a coffee-table book documenting the journey of your health spa. We'd send a professional photographer to go and photograph the journey from the initial design all the way to the final installation, and we’d tell that story in the pages of that coffee books. These, books weren’t cheap - they cost a couple hundred quid. But you'd give it to the client and guess where they would leave it? In the health bar. So when their friends would come around, they'd see the health spa and they’d see the story behind it. What that was doing was telling those those other potential customers about us. They’d see our process and how it all works and then they would call us up, wanting to talk about getting their own health spa installed.

And so that's exactly what I'd be doing. I'd find a problem, find a product for that, and then sell it in a creative way by creating a memorable experience, whether online or offline.

One of my favourite quotes, from Maya Angelou, is, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” When you’re talking about creating a product narrative, would it be fair to say it’s all about getting a client to feel what it would be like that product?

Yeah, totally. I think you've nailed it. How you make people feel is so so critical, isn't it? You know, in the end, how you get people to think about something is super critical. It's an important lesson.

When you were talking about the sales process, you lit up. Is the sales process what you love most about your work?

I love meeting new people. I love helping people. It’s like what you said to me at the start: what do you want to get out of this podcast stuff? For me, as long as I come away feeling that I've added value to whoever's listening to the show, then that’s a win. That’s what drives me. Zig Ziglar said that sales is just telling the truth attractively. If I can see the problem and I can see the solution then my skill set lies in helping you see how the solution is going to work for you but in a non-manipulative kind of way. I'm just telling the truth attractively in a way that's going to connect your problem and the solution together. As long as I'm personally convinced that whatever the solution is that I'm selling you is actually genuine and authentic and real, then I love showing you that solution.

Do you remember the days when people would knock on your door and try to sell you double glazing? In my heart felt for them; it's a hard job to have this sort of knocking on the door thing. I've done it. I didn't enjoy it. So I made the decision to invite in anybody who knocked on my door to sell me double glazing so long as they could meet one condition. I would invited them in, listen to their sales pitch, and I seriously consider their product if they could just meet that one criteria. Here's what the criteria was: Lee, you're knocking on the door. “Matt, I’ve come to sell you double glazing.” I'd be like, “Lee, that's awesome. Listen, before we carry on with this conversation, let me tell you how it's gonna go. You're going to tell me that I'm never going to get as good a deal as you offering me and the product is never going to be as good as what you’ve got. You, hands down, beat the competition. You've got all the latest innovations, you've got all the awards - which is great for you, I really appreciate that - so before we carry this on, I need you to do me one thing first; I want you to call your company right now and have them email me a copy of your personal order for these windows. Because if these windows are as good as you say they are my friend, you will have them in your house. If you don't have them in your house because you still live with your mum, then she's definitely going to have them so I'll have a look at your mom's order. Do you know how many people I invited into my house with just this one condition? None. Not a single person. For me, that's just bad sales.

You have to sell products in a way that is authentic and genuine and real. You have to believe in the products you have. You have to know about them. You have to love them and enjoy them. If you don't, you're just trying to manipulate me so you can get paid. The best salespeople aren't salespeople - they're just totally convinced that their product is actually genuine and authentic and is going to help you and bless you. Steve Jobs is a classic example. I'm not necessarily a massive fan of Steve Jobs, but from a sales position from a sales point of view, he was so passionate about those products. He was so invested in them. He was so convinced that they was the best they could possibly be at that point in time. And that came across in every single presentation he did. No wonder people got caught up in it.

The question that popped into my mind now is, when you created the site for Tan Mad, were you using their products?

At the time, I was doing health spas and we installed a lot of sunbeds in the health spas. That's how I knew the guys who sold the tanning product. I appreciate the people listening to the show can't actually see ME but I'm very pale. When I see the sun I go very very red. I definitely used the tanning products that stopped me going so red. But this is part of the reason why I stopped being a part of Tan Mad; I got out of it because my values weren't aligned to it. I was the guy on the doorstep trying to sell you double glazing that I'd never used. I mean, it was just me experimenting at the time. And it was fine for a short run thing. But there's never going to be any longevity to it, because there was never any passion to it. And so I used one or two of their products to stop myself burning up in the sun, but that was about it.

What is next for Matt Edmundson?

Great question. We have just sold one of our main eCommerce businesses, which was one heck of a learning curve let me tell you, but now time is a little freer. I've gotten involved with a company called Vegetology - a group that makes vegan certified supplements like vitamins, minerals, and omega three. They’re amazing guys. I love the product and I love the story. So I've sort of got involved with that and I’ve taken over that a little bit, which has been great. l’m loving that and still getting my head around the whole thing. I’m also carrying on with coaching, carrying on with consulting, and just trying to help people - making a go at this whole thing called life.

If you had to summarise you life so far in a just a few words, what words would you use?

Faith-filled would be the two words I’d use to describe it because you you have to have faith on the journey - faith in the sense that I don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring, right? I was talking to a lady earlier on who’s had some major tragedy in her life. Sometimes tragedy hits. Sometimes circumstances worsen. You just don't know what's around the corner. But that shouldn't stop you going for it and having faith. Faith in yourself, faith in your family, faith in your wife, faith in your abilities, and faith in your Creator. Whatever it takes, you know, to get you to go for it today, irrespective of what tomorrow does or doesn't have - that’s what you have to do.