Rebecca Michals, eBay Director of Community and Engagement

I love episodes where I learn the most. And this time I guarantee you that is true.

I may have to agree with you this one time. Normally I would battle back and forth like, no, no, I totally learned the most. It's the whole reason I do this show. Of course.

That's right.

But yeah, I'm really excited to learn more and, well, and talk a lot about ebay today and their support for resellers. And Rebecca Michaels, you know, the head of community. It's going to be a great show. When I saw this on the calendar a month or so ago, I was like, oh, this is awesome. And then I was surprised because did I book that because I'm the ebay guy?

No, I'm the one that booked that.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is going to be so great. And I happen to know Rebecca because I've spoken at a bunch of ebay events and talked with her and it's going to be a great show. And if you think that ebay isn't applicable to your business, I would really encourage you to listen.

So I'm going to say the same thing. And I'm going to say it probably might hit harder coming from me because I don't run an ebay business. I never have. Right. But I will say take the next 25 minutes here and listen to this with us because I learned a ton, you'll hear, but it totally eye opening, so you got to check it out. And thankfully it's right here. You're already here, so just keep on going.

And ebay is much, much more than just a marketplace to sell. It's also a network of like minded people and resellers and other business owners that can impact your life dramatically. And as I mentioned to you, Dave, you know, the people I've met on ebay have dramatically helped my businesses grow and increased my own wealth and charmed life. So Give yourself another 20 minutes or so and listen in.

Well, he is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 327 of the Small business show. You know, Shannon, as listeners know, ebay is a super important marketplace for all kinds of small businesses. And we've used it ourselves quite a bit here. Especially you, Shannon. Right. It's true. Absolutely. Yeah. And ebay knows this. Right? Right. And they have entire teams dedicated to focusing on the success of small businesses on the ebay platform. And today we're joined by a leader of one of those teams, Rebecca Michaels, ebay's director of seller, community and engagement. Rebecca, thank you so much. For joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you.

Awesome. Awesome. So, okay, so tell us, what exactly does the director of seller community and engagement do over there at ebay? What parts of your job are focused on helping small business owners like us succeed?

Well, let me set the stage a little bit. Sure. Lead a team. Great. I lead a team that's responsible for key channels where we connect with sellers and help sellers connect with each other. That includes the seller events that we have in person usually, but you know, virtual this year, of course, the community forums where sellers can share information and support with each other online. Plus the ebay for business branded channels like on facebook or our own podcast. And there's seller meetups that sellers lead, but we enable. So these are all the ways in which sellers connect with each other. The main audience.

No, I was going to say that. Okay, so you're actually there to help sellers learn from other sellers, which is kind of something that you've participated in, right, Shannon?

I have, yeah. I mean, this is one of the beauties of ebay and part of their secret sauce is this outreach. And I've been selling on ebay for almost 20 years in one form or another with various businesses. And there were definitely times when I think sellers felt like second class citizens as ebay, maybe had some growing pains and went through some different stuff. But now, especially in the last four or five years, they've really embraced the power of this seller community and giving us more tools. And I just love it because there's just not other companies, especially other marketplaces out there doing this kind of engagement. They do a great job at it.

Shannon, you're so right about that. Sellers are core to who we are at ebay. Your success as a seller is our success. And so the main audience for the work that my team does is those really active small and medium sized businesses. We call them SMBs. And our role is to educate them, help them succeed on ebay, grow and sustain their businesses, and motivate and inspire them, hopefully. And we are so here all about being the voice of the seller, advocating for sellers on ebay. And we do our very best to know sellers and understand sellers and have empathy for the successes and the struggles and then advocate for sellers inside of ebay.

Yeah, it's huge. I mean, you provide just a great launching pad for so many different kinds of businesses. Let me put you on the spot with this quick question. Who's more important to the platform, Sellers or buyers?

Our customers are the most important.

I love that. That's brilliant. That's true. Because it's like the chicken and egg thing, right? I always ask myself, okay, if. Well, if the sellers aren't there, the buyers aren't going to come, but obviously if you don't have buyers, then good. So customers is just perfect.

And that like we say on the show all the time, we say every business is the customer service business. And I believe that to be true. In fact, I, you know, my whole life has been organized around exactly that. But customers can be different groups of people for your business and here at ebay for you, especially Rebecca and your team, the sellers and the buyers are both your customers. They have different needs, but they are both your customers. It makes sense.

Yeah.

And it's absolutely true. And I really try to emphasize with my team and with other folks at ebay that I talk to that we really have to show up for that full customer. So many of our sellers are buyers. Many buyers are sellers as well. And so it's really how we show up around, as I said, the whole customer that matters.

Yeah, that's brilliant. I think it's great. So you also host this ebay for Business podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about that? You guys have already done about 150 episodes. What type of content are you featuring on the show?

I'm so proud of being on the podcast and I have a great time with my co host Griff, and so to go give a little history. The podcast actually evolved from our previous audio channel, ebay radio, which was hosted by Grif for many, many years. And that was a weekly, twice weekly, live Internet radio show that existed for about 15 years, but now we have a podcast because that's where the energy is. Podcasting. Here we are today, right? And we love podcasts. And the goal of the podcast is to be a weekly moment in the seller's time for inspiration information that they need to start, grow, run their business on ebay. It's very similar to all of the other work we do. It all rolls up into the same concept of information, inspiration, education.

Is this the first podcast you've ever been a part of or have in terms of as a host, or have you done this before?

No, this is my first time. I mean, the ebay for business podcast is my first time hosting. And I have to tell you, it is the funnest part of my job. Don't tell anyone I said that, but it's my favorite part of my job because it's a great chance to Answer real life questions that Sellers have. It helps me get on the hood a little bit and really dig into some of the topics that are most important to Sellers. And it's a fun. It's a fun experience. I love having a different format and a different medium to connect with Sellers with.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And you're a natural on it. I've listened to a couple episodes as we were prepping for this, and it was like. Oh, like that. Which is why I asked. I thought maybe you had done this kind of thing before, so.

Yeah, how do you tell you're having a good time?

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, you're a natural for sure. How do you.

Thank you so much.

How do you promote the show? What? Like, this is always a thing, right? Podcasting is no longer that medium where if you build it or if you release it, they will listen. You know, there's lots of work that goes into ensuring people know about the show and find out about it and engage every week. And so I'm curious, as a podcaster, but also on behalf of our audience, which a lot of whom are podcasters and small business owners, what are some of your tricks for getting the show into people's sort of minds, if you will?

You know, I think the most important thing is, and I alluded to this earlier, is making sure that the podcast is one piece of a whole story that you're telling across the multiple touch points that you have to your customer, to your audience. So we align the content that we produce on the podcast to the other various seller engagement channels that I mentioned at the top of the show. And the goal is to make sure that our audience is hearing complimentary messages. So wherever they engage with our brand, they're hearing something that makes sense and the puzzle pieces fit together. But I mean, that said, you have to make sure that you're delivering nuanced, correct content for the particular format. You know, you can't just rubber stamp from social to podcast to emails. You have to have the right content, the right moment for the right audience, but keeping all the content fresh, informative, and relevant to the audience. Like the fun part. I really love it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, no, yeah, you're right. The promotion of it. I like to say when. When you're doing all this stuff, you have to speak the right. The native language of the. The platform that you're talking to. So if. If you're doing stuff on social, you can't just take what you would normally say on the podcast and put it out there. You have to sort of package it in a way that makes sense on Instagram and a different way that makes sense on, say, Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

100% agree.

So, you know, I'm a big cheerleader for ebay and I always talk about their seller support and we were chatting about that before we started the show. One of the things that I love is back in the fall, you know, we were all, you know, I think going, getting ready to head and do another shutdown due to the pandemic. You guys launched this up and coming or up and running grants program with hello Alice. You know, half a million dollars in grant packages for sellers that small business owners to help them succeed on ebay. And, you know, it's fantastic. I promoted that to, you know, my followers. So you're about six months into it. I'd love to hear, one, the impetus for starting the program and your partnership with hello Alice. And two, how's it going? Where is the program at right now?

I mean, you're so right. The pandemic was a really challenging time for small businesses. And at ebay, we're here. I mean, we're all about small businesses. We're the home of small business. But the pandemic actually ended up opening up a new pathway to success for small business through e commerce. The grants were actually the second phase of our overall up and running program. So let me take take a step back and give you a little background on that wider program. First, so early last year, as we saw the pandemic happening, the up and running initiative was all about helping small businesses seize that moment and move online. So it was about helping main street get up and running on our platform so that they could keep their businesses open. And at least that one piece of the pandemic was maybe less of a worry for those sellers. And so through the program, the sellers received fees, discounts, guidance, and resources to run their business on ebay. Exclusive marketing and merchandising tools, and discounted shipping supplies, all sorts of things. And we saw like tens of thousands of small businesses, each one of those representing main streets across America, registering with up and running and opening up their virtual doors. In fact, if I can quote a stat, we saw a 54% year over year increase in new business registrations in 2020 in the U.S. that's awesome. We're really proud of that. And just this morning, Fast Company announced that up and running was selected as an honorable mention. And we'll take that as an honorable ment in the pandemic response category for its 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. And we're excited about that. Not only world changing, but we hope that we're, like, changing lives one by one for these small business.

Absolutely.

Owners. And so it's really been exciting work.

That's great.

It's very cool. That's awesome. Are there any success stories from this that you can share? It's been up and running about six months now. Is there, you know, any company that comes to mind that kind of really took this and saw huge jumps from it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, or as we mentioned, that enablement piece of it was the first part. And then secondly, we expanded the program to existing sellers with the launch of the grants program in partnership, as you said, with hello, Alice. And the goal was to give sellers funding education resources to help grow their online business. And through that program, we awarded more than $500,000 in grant packages, education resources, which was a very wonderful experience, reading the 13,000 plus applications and helping to understand the need for funding for small businesses and then playing a role in that. And some of the success stories. I mean, let's see. Can I pick this one? Okay, so there is.

You can pick two if you had to.

Sure.

Okay. There's a seller named Victor, and Victor was laid off from his regular job. I mean, this is a story we saw all through the pandemic. He was laid off from his regular job, decided to follow his passion and start his own business on ebay, selling sports trading cards. And we've all heard that trading cards, I mean, if we've been reading the news, trading cards are a big thing at this moment right now. He was a longtime ebay shopper, and he's seen huge success with his business, and he's really committed to helping others in his community for flourish. And we're really excited and proud of helping to enable Victor's business. I believe he was able to invest in a warehouse and other things that helped him scale one of our favorite success stories.

Wow. That's awesome.

That's killer.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if it's okay, and if it's not, we won't do it. But if it's okay, we'd love to share Victor's link in the show notes here for our listeners so that they can. They can find his business, too. That's great. I want to take a minute here and talk about our sponsor for this episode. All right. You know, when we're running our businesses, HR issues can actually kill the business. Right? Like things like wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations. Answering those questions, you know, how do I handle an employee that doesn't show up to work? I want to terminate an employee. What do I need to do? Can I dock an exempt employee's pay? What documents do new hires have to complete? Like, these are real questions that I've found myself asking, and I know you're asking them too. And here's the thing. Bambi, spelled B A M B E E was created specifically for small businesses. Do you know that an HR manager, like, their salaries aren't cheap. They average 70 grand a year. Well, you can get a dedicated HR manager, craft your HR policy and maintain your compliance, all for just $99 a month. Because with Bambi, you change HR from your biggest liability to your biggest strength. And your dedicated HR manager is available by phone, email, or real time chat for all these things. Onboarding, terminations. They can customize your policies to fit your business and help manage your employees day to day for just $99 a month. It's month to month, no hidden fees. Cancel any time. So go to Bambi.comsmall right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.comsmall spelled BAM to the B.comsmall and our thanks to Bambi for sponsoring this episode. All right, so, Rebecca, listening to your podcast, I know how much of a fan you are of checklists. We call them to did lists here, where we actually go, you do something during the day. It wasn't on your to do list. We put it on our to did list so that we can check it off. What's either your most recent thing that you've put on your to did list or your favorite thing that you've put recently on your to did list?

Well, it's true. I love a good checklist. We end every one of the podcasts, the ebay for business podcast, with a checklist. And I'm a checklist person. I love the sense of satisfaction that you get from checking something off.

Absolutely.

My challenge, if I can be totally transparent, is which one am I working from? Is it the one on my phone? The one in my notebook? The mental one in my head? Somehow I pull it all together, though. But what I like to do is when there are books that I want to read, and I love to read the book, and then add that to my checklist and check it off, it somehow sort of closes the loop on getting that book read.

That's. Yeah. Because we think of these as Brain hacks, right? Like, if I'm putting. If I'm checking something off, it's because I want to check it off. And by doing that, I'm hacking my brain so that I actually want to do the thing that gets me to the point where it checks it off, like reading the book or whatever, and then that means I'm spending less discipline energy on it, and that's a good thing. So I like this putting books on the to did list. I've never done that before. Shannon. I'm going to do it. Yeah.

So one of the things, you know, I'm pretty involved in the reseller community on ebay and other marketplaces. I hear lots of questions about things. What do you think that there's. Is there one thing you think small business owners kind of misunderstand about ebay? You know, that the people that don't sell, when they're thinking about maybe expanding your business, why ebay wouldn't pop up to them?

You know, I think that, you know, it's so important to ebay to be a partner with our sellers. And I think that's one of the key differentiators that we have against other marketplaces. You know, sellers on ebay, and Shannon, you know this, we have so much engagement and conversations, moments where we check in with sellers through formal and informal ways. We are deeply invested in wanting to know what sellers think about ebay, how we can partner with them. And it's really, you know, the first thing I think about in the morning and the last at night when I'm thinking about work is how can I show up even better for sellers and help enable them? And I think that's what's different about ebay. And what I hope every seller knows is that at ebay, we see sellers and all our customers, our sellers, as individual people, and we are here to be partners with you.

Yeah, that's a really good point. One of the people I interviewed for my book ebay unlocked, Alex Cohen from chronostore, who's a watch reseller on ebay. I asked him what his biggest mistake he'd made about ebay, and he said that. He said, I didn't realize how much help ebay could be to me when I first got started, and that it. They really did want to connect and help me and guide me. And once he embraced that, you know, his business has grown tremendously on the platform. So I'm really glad you pointed that out. It's great.

Great. And I mean, as you know, we're celebrating small business Week, this week. And one of the ways that we show up for sellers this week and all weeks is with seller school, which is, it's a. It's this amazing learning management system that we launched in the last year that helps educate sellers and helps them understand all of the great tools and capabilities, policies, best practices that will help them succeed here at ebay. And we do that because we're really invested in the success of the sellers on ebay.

Yeah, seller school's unbelievable. And now it is. It's great. It really helps me because it's the first place I always send people that want to learn more about ebay. And I think ebay has more of a steep learning curve maybe than some of the other. Well, I think of some of the other kind of app based marketplaces that have gone out for that. It's quick, it's simple, you don't even have to think, you know. But that may be true. But once you start, if you really want to build a business on a powerful marketplace, you know, the amount of data that ebay gives you and the amount of resources that are at your fingertips, yes, it can take a little longer to learn, but man, the upside is, is huge. And so seller school is just, it's a great place to start now for anyone that just needs to dive in and wants to learn how to do things. So I think it's fantastic that you guys put that out there.

And I should emphasize it's totally free to anybody who wants to use it. And you're right. I mean, there are some spots in ebay where, you know, it does take some learning and some practice. Seller school makes it a lot easier. But you know, what that also means is we have put the power in the seller's hands to make choices about how they want to show up, what tools they want to use, how they want their listings to appear. And so, yes, you do have to learn something, but there's so much that you can make your own choices about. So we figure it's worth the trade off and we do everything we can to help make it as clear and simple and easy to use as possible.

Yeah, I think it's just a great jumping off point. So let me ask you another question I want to talk about for a moment. The ebay concierge customer service part. I have that level of customer service when I call in, man, I feel like people are ebay employees are jumping to get to the phone as fast as possible to help me, which is awesome. And there's no other customer service like it because I sell on lots of different platforms and stuff. Is your goal to roll out that concierge services to all ebay sellers eventually? Or do you think it's going to be reserved to a specific group like the top rated sellers or something like that?

Well, I have to confess that that program is, you know, with another team.

Okay, sure.

Yeah. What I can tell you is that my team is very focused on getting as much information and support into the hands of as many sellers as possible. And again, we do that by having events that are open to every business seller, every SMB online on eBay. And you can come to these events and see demos from actual ebay product leaders. You can hear about our marketing plans. We'd love to have even more sellers attend that. Shannon, I know that you've come to those sometimes.

Yeah, for sure.

And then we also have customer support active every single day in the ebay community, answering individual questions on the board, available for the help and support that sellers need, as well as sellers helping each other with those tips and tricks and hints that we know that sellers love to learn from each other.

Yeah, that's really. I don't think you can put too fine a point on that. And it also goes hand in hand with the seller school is the community forums. It's just a massive treasure trove of data. And I really focus on people that are selling the marketplaces to try to make data driven decisions. You know, not like, well, I think it's this, I think it's that, but really using that data and like, you guys just came out with a new ebay listing report that, you know, I got this email, hey, come check out the quality of your listings compared to these best practices and everything. So it's a constant evolution to, you know, provide more data to sellers and then getting involved in those community forums while you're learning the platform is. It's powerful. I think it's great. I want to ask you a question about action because we really believe in taking action here on the small business show. We like to tell people that the term small business really is a verb because it's all about taking action to be successful. Is there one action item that you could recommend to our listeners? It could be related to ebay or just related to small business, something that they could do today to make a difference in their business.

Absolutely. My recommendation to anyone running a business is to join a professional organization and take advantage of everything they have to offer, whether it's events or subscribing to newsletters. Join Their online communities take advantage of all the great content and information that professional organizations have. Network and then learn, learn, learn. There's so much great information that small businesses can take advantage of. And you don't have to fly alone. You can find out trends, what the future may hold, planning for growth, planning for uncertainty. And so that's my recommendation, is join something that relates to the business that you're in your category, something that's relevant and then just soak it all up.

I think that's a great advice.

It's so easy as an entrepreneur to think that you have to do it alone because in some ways you sort of do, right? I mean, if you're starting alone, you don't have anybody else that can do the work for you. But that doesn't mean that you can't ask other people for guidance and share stories. And like you said, just joining a professional organization so that you've got some group of people to commiserate with, if nothing else. Right. But really like that, like that's super helpful so that you're not just holed up in your, you know, your home or your office or your basement or wherever it is. That's good advice. I wish somebody had kind of told me that and then forced me to do it because there's two different things. Early, early on in my career I probably would have moved a little faster with things if, if I had had that. So yeah, that's good advice.

Yeah. And certainly, and I can tell you from firsthand experience, if, if you're looking to connect with a community of like minded people and get support, there's just nothing like the ebay community. It's, you know, Dave and I are both Mac guys. You know, we love the platform and all the people around it. Ebay has a very similar feel. You know, there, there's lots of other places you can do business with that are just massive data robots that just will grind you under their heel. That doesn't happen at ebay. You know, really is a person behind everything and it's a support system unlike any other support system. And I would encourage you whether you sell products, services, anything, I have sold it all on that platform and I would encourage you to get involved with the marketplace. And Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on and talking about ebay with us today. It's great.

This has been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we love it. And we'll put all these links in the show notes and you know, from time to time come back and check in with us and send some other small business folks our way. We'd love to chat with them.

I certainly will. I'd love to come back. Just let me know.

Thank you.

Interesting stuff. You know, I certainly have sold on ebay before, but I've never considered myself as someone who. Running a business on ebay. But this like they, it's. I did so I had no idea that like this department even existed like that. You know, my experience with ebay was always just as a sort of one off seller and they don't really reach out to engage with one off sellers because if they did, they'd be, you know, they'd have to hire like thousands of people. Yeah, doesn't make sense. And I didn't expect them to. But knowing that this is there, that's really interesting. And I think that's the lesson for all of us that are not currently ebay business runners, you know, if you will, or ebay marketplace business owners, is that that does exist. Because if you're just selling like your old iPhone or whatever every now and then on ebay, I mean it works great. But. But that's not the experience that you have on ebay when you're selling your stuff because you've got a business relationship with them and they're open. Not only open to that, they are like open arms for that. This is great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, I know a lot of people that just did this casual selling that got started, you know, I know, I know a guy, you know, that people that I've worked with and met at ebay. You know, one person that sells orchids, you know, on ebay at tens of thousands of orchids we're talking about now, that started out well as a hobby. Another person that just sells shoelaces, I mean all kinds of crazy stuff. And there is no other platform that you can do a b testing to see if a product will sell, you know, and to try different ways to do it. And, and the support is, it's, it's just unmatched. And I highly encourage anybody to experiment on ebay. You'll learn a lot. Customer service, great place to learn customer service on a. An area you can kind of ramp up slowly. And it's great. I love having her on the show. And yeah, more about ebay.

This is this, like I said, this was eye opening for me because I like, it's almost like you were. We were talking about a different company than the one that I've interacted with. Again, not that my interactions with ebay have been bad, but it's just like I use it as a platform and like people with eBay.com email addresses are never in involved in my scenario. You know, I list my thing, somebody buys my thing. It's a great platform because they're all there and I'm there. But that's, that's the extent of my, my leveraging of what ebay has done and there's so much more. So this was, this was enlightening. Yeah, it was good.

Yeah, it's great. And, and you know, kudos to them. As I mentioned on the show, I've been through a number of cycles, met a number of CEOs, different philosophies, different things. And they have really changed the way they work with resellers and small business owners to build that up on the platform. And I think they've, they've really come up with a great system to help all of us succeed on ebay. And it's great.

I love it. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks for listening, folks. Make sure you send in your questions to us or even your thoughts, like, did you have a reaction like I did did to this episode? Let us know feedback@businessshow.co. we love to hear from you. Make sure to check out our sponsor, Bambi. All the links for those are in the show notes to make your life Easy. That's at businessshow.co. keep on living that charmed life.