Starting a new Small Business using Social Media – SBS 75

The Small business show at businessshow co episode number 75 for Wednesday, July 13, 2016 greetings folks and welcome to to the Small Business Show. The show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California.

I am Shannon Jean. How are you, sir?

I'm good, I'm good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right on.

Keeping it all together.

Yeah, that's important.

That's, I think so.

Juggling and managing all the things that it takes to, you know, run various businesses and still lead your charmed life.

Right. That's the key. I really, I have tried so many different systems because I'm an efficiency guy. Right. So I try all kinds of different things over the years. I haven't really experimented a lot lately, but I've tried lots of different things. And really the thing that works for me is a very, very simple to do list. What am I going to do today? And I can pile a bunch of stuff up on tomorrow, you know, and then either at the end of today or the beginning of tomorrow kind of. And this is kind of what John Moran from Via Island.

Yeah, I was just going to say that.

Yeah, yeah. This, that just starting the day either with a list or by organizing my list makes me. It reduces my stress level by half.

Yeah, that's good.

Because in fact, not just. And because I know that I'm gonna be productive about these things. Cause I look at the list and I'm realistic about it. Here's the things I know I can do today. Great. I set my, you know, I'm good to go. Sometimes I don't even get through them. Whatever. You know, you have to reprioritize throughout the day. It's fine. But it's like, ok, yeah, I see what I need to do. Awesome. And then, you know, throughout the day I might. Oh, I want to try that. I want to do this. Okay, great. Add it to the list. And I. Sometimes I'm a little OCD about it. I'll add something to the list that I've already done and check it off. I don't do that all the time. But you know, if I'm having a kind of.

Your success. Yeah, your success list.

It is the success list. That's correct.

Yeah. Exactly what you got done. And you're kind of patting yourself on the back a little bit because most small, small business owners don't get patted on the back by anybody.

Nobody else patting you. That's right.

No, it's usually the results of your business that is Kind of how you get patted on the back. Yeah.

But you've got to take a moment to. To. To recognize those.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. And when times are challenging and, you know, you feel like everybody's beaten down on you, that is really, when you need that. Pull that success list out of your pocket.

Yeah.

And go, oh, okay. I'm not a complete loser.

No, I can. I can get away with this.

I've done all this kind of stuff, so.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. So, hey, you know, I've always made the comment the. You know, that I'm learning the most out of doing the show. You know, we've had such great people on, and I'm just sitting here, and if I didn't have to keep track and make sure I asked my questions, I would just be like, oh, that's great. You know, I mean, all the great stuff that everybody comes on. Yeah. And I love it. It's fantastic. And so one of the things that has really been standing out to me since we've been interviewing some of these folks that have been running their businesses, really, via social channels. Right. Social media and things, is that, you know, we use social media and art in my businesses, but I do. We do not or did not, I should say, have a business that was strictly focused on social media as a. As the main vehicle to grow it. So I've really been intrigued, and I've been looking around. Sure. You know, not like I don't have enough on my plate, but I've been kind of trying to think, okay, how could we do this? What resources do we have at our disposal? And so we started a new business, and it's looking at how do we build this thing with the primary focus on social sites, especially like Instagram and things like that. And so we've reached out to a number of our resources and started bringing in a few products, and primarily with something I have no. Nothing I know nothing about, which is fashion, which all my friends could tell you, that's for sure. So I know nothing about things, you know, dad, fashion. Dad, fashion.

That's right. I'm an expert of that. Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's correct. That's correct. So we started buying some product and primarily looking at, okay, where. Where's the price point we want to be in? And. And where's the amount of work that you have to do? Because, you know, often you. Same amount of work to make $10 that you do to make a hundred.

Oh, you got to write. You got to have the Right. Business. Yeah. Because you want to be, you want to do the same amount of work and make a thousand.

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Whatever you're chasing, if you're chasing, if, if you know your, your concept is massive volume to chase dollar bills or $10 bills, that's great. Or if you're going to chase $100 bills, whatever it is, you got to look at it. So we, we've got that kind of range with a couple different product lines. High end handbags and shoes. Yeah, sure.

And both things that people are absolutely insane about and make logic does not factor into the choice as to whether or not they buy it. It's 100% emotion.

I sound like I'm talking to myself. That's really good. And you're right.

The other thing is I started to sound like Jack Nicholson in that movie. As Good as It Gets, but I didn't go quite that far, which is good.

But it's true. An emotional attachment. And my other businesses are very commodity based. This is a. Do this. I'm going to get this. I'm going to do that. Very transactional. And, and this is not. It's very emotional. I, I'm falling in love with this thing.

And emotional from both sides.

Yeah. And it's a good deal. Right. So we, we know. The thing I know the most about is a good. How to get a good deal.

You do.

And we've, we've talked about it here. You know, whether it's good deals on your travel because you're using your, you know, your affinity points and all that kind of stuff, or using my.

I have, I have an aside for people, if I can remember it, I posted it.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, I saw that. If you've got a Starwood card, a Starwood business card, which is the one that Shannon and I both recommend all the time, the Star, The Starwood AMEX card. Right. Business or personal, it doesn't matter. You get free access to Boingo hotspots. I had no idea that this benefit came along with these cards.

Me neither. Yeah. And that's nationwide access for a single account worldwide.

Yeah. You can have, I think, three devices for your account. So you got your, you know, your laptop and the laptop's the big one because your phone always, you know, it's got access. You might have to pay for the data or whatever, but you've got access. Your laptop, that's the big one to me. So your laptop, your iPad and your phone and you're good to go.

Yeah.

And that's True. For each of your employees, if you have a business card, they each get a separate account.

Yeah, that's really, it's killer.

So I didn't, I'm sorry to initialize this, but.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was really excited about that one.

We will, we're going to mention it in the, the, in the show notes as well. Up on the, for, for this week, we. It's up on the Facebook page@facebook.com Business Show Co as well.

That's right.

You can click that link and you know, it's just something we post. We're not, we don't get any kickbacks or anything like that. We're just sharing. We should, though, you know, that'd be nice.

Fix that. Yeah, I bet we could. In fact.

Yeah, okay, we'll take a look at it. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah. So the other thing that's really nice about this, these, those two product lines that we're working with right now on this, this business, is that they're small and they're easy to ship and they're not anything related to electronics. Let me say that again. They're not related to electronic stuff at all. And that's. I built my whole life around those kinds of things. Right. And, you know, researching this product line, I was just really pushed myself that, you know, I don't want to sell anything with this new social business that can break or the possibility that we bought it broken. Because lots of the things that we buy and relationships that we buy are for return products or what they call a shelf pole that may have been on the shelf for a while. And so when you buy electronics, inevitably there's going to be a lot of that product that doesn't work.

Of course.

Right. And that's fine. And we have a company that deals with those things and that's it. But this one wasn't. And so I've learned a lot about. And I mentioned shelf pulls and, you know, most of the large, you know, retailers in the country, they don't want to have one last thing on their shelf.

Right, right, right.

It doesn't work for them. So there's a great opportunity to buy that kind of product. Whatever industry or business that you're in, if you're looking to source product, there are companies out there that specialize in taking, you know, if you're buying product, let's say, from, I don't know, anywhere in anything you want, Macy's, let's say, and they have, you know, shelf pulls from their stores all over the country. Well, I guarantee you they have truckloads of shelf pulls that are in new condition that they would like to sell to you. And you know, so moving into this thing, so we've decided that we're going to do everything completely different than I've done before. We're not going to worry about building this big, you know, e commerce website and all this kind of stuff. We're, we're going to sell in totally different platforms. You know, we're going to grow, focus on, on growing the social followers organically and really seeing how challenging it's going to be to build a profitable business that way. So I'm going to keep you, you know, up to date as we, as we do this over the coming months and year. We'll see how long it, it takes to get it up and running. Yeah, but we're selling now.

And so what's the name of the. How do I find the business?

I mean so it's, yeah, it's, we sell under our, our rebound trading or rebound fashion. Okay, I'll post, I'll post some links in the, in the thing we, we sell on a, the first site we've started selling on, it's really an app. Really. It's called Poshmark.

Okay.

You know, P O S H M A R K. And you know, it is like a stripped down, ultra focused fashion app where people buy and sell, you know, whether it's used or new fashion stuff at, you know, at deeply discounted prices. Our tagline is really, you know, helping you live a high end life without the high prices. Right.

I like that. That's good. Yeah.

We're trying to, you know, go in and you want to buy a, you know, a Kate Spade purse. Dave, I know way too much about handbags than you do. Would like me to know now.

Well, but you can just blame, now you can blame it on the fact that you have a business that sells this stuff. So good.

Not that I like that sparkly, you know, little thing there. Yeah, you're right.

I just bought a sparkly drum set. It's totally fine.

I saw that. That was awesome.

I like it. It sounds great.

Yeah, that's killer. Yeah. So you know, you know, focusing on the sites and like in the case of Poshmark, what I've really been impressed with is the ramp up is quick and the, the onboarding process is, it's a little clunky because they want to do everything via your app on your phone and so which is fine and for the most part but sometimes getting the Listings out and I'm used to having a lot more room. You know, they only want like four photos and I'm used to being able to do, you know, 12 and you know, close ups and this kind of thing. So you have to kind of work out ways to do that up there and, and combine photos and stuff. But they really encourage you this, the process of finding followers, which is where everybody on this, on Poshmark is always looking for followers and building how to build up your followers and then how to share your content with them. And man, immediately when we started posting, and we've only been up there for a few days, we started building up our followers doing things that, that the Poshmark help guide recommended and it totally works. I mean, we've, you know, we're building up hundreds and hundreds of followers every day by following Mark's tips and going out and finding other people to follow and sharing their content with our followers. And it's just this really pretty empowering little ecosystem which I've been, I've real impressed with. It's been great. Wow. It's real nice that, that's a good thing. The, the, the, you know, that's the pros. The cons are Poshmark takes 20% of everything you sell. So you have to be really careful. You may not be able to put everything, you know, you've got up there. If you're selling fashion products primarily to women, the other. But you know, they take care of the credit card fees, they take care of the shipping costs, you know, as well. They send you a label and deal with all that. So it's kind of cool and it's really nice and, and I think that I have a, A, I wouldn't say unfair advantage, but having my name be Shannon helps me to, you know, I posted a picture up there of Renee and I. And I'm sure they don't know who they're dealing with.

I found, I found this picture. Yeah. And I had seen you posted this picture to Facebook recently.

Yes, I did.

It looks like he took a selfie of himself and his wife in his house after they got dressed up.

That's correct.

I'm wondering why did he get dressed up?

It wasn't to start this business, but we were headed event and I actually had to wear, you know, a tie. And then.

Oh, I think I lost you. Shannon, are you back? Huh? Well, dang. We'll get him back, but before we head on. We got you back. We got you back. Okay, so. So we're back. We, we Lost you Right as we were finishing talking about your picture that you took with your wife, you had to go somewhere and now.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So we. That's right. And so we use that. And so that, you know, makes everybody comfortable who you're dealing with. I've also up on poshma posted some of our feedback in from other channels. Even though it may not be related to fashion stuff, it's great that they can see you have 100% feedback on eBay or Amazon, despite what you're selling, you're reliable and those kinds of things. And so we're working on that, growing that. We have some other platforms that we're moving into to sell onto. There's a whole ecosystem Buy, sell in the fashion world out there that you can find. And I'll just kind of touch base, you know, from time to time, and we'll talk about how things are going and what's working and what's not.

So have you. Have you made your first sale yet?

Yes.

Okay. That's awesome.

Yeah, we have made our first sale. And, you know, we have a very small inventory. We're growing it. You know, I have this philosophy, and I've said it here, I know numerous times, but, you know, if you can make a hundred dollars, there's no way you can't make $1,000. And if you. And if you can make a thousand bucks, you can make 10,000. And if you can make 10,000, you can make 100,000. And so we're really infancy of this thing. But I already see.

That's right. I see you sold, at least on the site, it shows that you sold the Kate spade handbag for 125 bucks.

So, yeah, and that's fantastic. And I was totally happy. And you can see that there's lots of comments and the following and sharing, and it's a really great concept. I've been really impressed with it, and I think it can have some traction. And if it doesn't, it'll be a great learning experience. You know, we share through our Instagram account and we're growing our followers and I'm learning a lot more about that, but it's stuff that it really intrigues me. And as I've been sitting here listening to folks talk about it for the last, you know, during the last year in the small business show, I was like, gosh, you know, I've got to be able to get involved in this and be authentic about it. So where, you know, you're not always trying to sell something you're saying hey, that's pretty cool. And this is kind of neat. You go look at this and once in a while you make a connection with somebody that actually does want to buy something.

That's awesome. That's fun.

Yeah, it's a good time. It's a good time. So hey, and if, you know, if we have time, we do have time. That's awesome. That's good. So I posted up in our we keep a Slack channel for the small business show. For those of you who've heard us talk about Slack but haven't jumped into it yet, you really yell with yourself to do that. But this was, there's a website, small biz with a z smallbizlabs.com and they're talking about a study. Let's see who did the study. Babson Colleges State of small business in 2016 study. And I thought it was pretty interesting. The first thing that caught my attention was, you know, thousands of small business owners that have responded to this study. Sure. And one of the things that, you know, they have a comment here. You know, most people think of the average small business owner as a 20 something techie who needs a shower. I thought that was kind of cool. But this, I'm not 20 something. That's correct. You may need a shower. I mean you do too. But then they show really the medium American small business owner is a bit over 50 years old. I thought that was fascinating. I would not have guessed. But then when you dig a little deeper, it turns out that as the size of the business drops as you get smaller, the demographic starts changing a bit more. One of the things that they talk about is that is women owners. As you get down to a smaller size, you see that women become the majority of small business owners, especially in the kind of here it looks like the 1 to 4 employee range, which I thought's awesome.

Huh. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, yeah.

There are more solopreneur women than men according to this chart.

Yeah. And I wonder is it because maybe in the last decade if there's been more opportunities and now they're kind of catching up and going, you know, pushing into the majority and we'll continue to do that. You know, I don't know the reasoning and I have not read this report. It's like a 40 page. Yeah, 40 page report. But we will link it up on the small business show website at businessshow Co. So you can kind of dig, dig down into it. But I think there's some great data in there and I love the Fact that I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm older now, but, you know, I always love.

When they say it's better than the alternative. That's right.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I love the fact when, you know, these kind of older guys or women are celebrated and for, you know, running these small companies that are producing, you know, or supporting most of the middle class in the United States, I think it's great.

Yeah. They're old guys like us or old people like us, I should say. Guys. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. You know, they talk about.

Yeah, it's 55. I mean, this is the. Like you said that the fact that there's more women than men on the small side owning businesses is surprising to me. It's just surprising to learn. Not surprising. And yep, in general, it's 55% men, but it's not like 85% men that run businesses. That's fascinating. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, it shows here that, you know, most small businesses are still relying on banks primarily as a sort of, you know, their funding. You know, most businesses are looking for about $100,000, but usually they only get about 40% of what they ask for.

Isn't that interesting? So triple what you're asking for. Yeah. And you'll get it. You know, you go, so you really.

Should ask for 200,000. Right.

You know, it's true that that project that I was working on for the last couple of years, this startup, we were pulling in money and we got, I would say, just shy of half of what we asked for, but it was enough to get things off the ground. So. Yeah, that's. Huh. Isn't that interesting?

It is, it is. And another, you know, I'm not a huge fan of banks primarily because, you know, paperwork and regulations and, and how slow things happen. But you know, as well, you know, here talks about nearly 60% of the respondents have difficulty understanding and managing government regulation and laws and.

No kidding, huh?

Yeah. Imagine that. Huh? And.

And go listen to show 74 so they can learn exactly how to deal with banks.

Look at that. That's good. That's good. Didn't we. We did an IRS show too.

We did, we did two of them. We're that foolish.

They were very popular. Very, very popular.

Very popular.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very cool. And we did a technology show here. You know, 80% of respondents to the study recognize the importance of technology to the growth of their business.

Yeah. I'm curious what the other 20% do. Because here you are running a new business that has nothing to do with technology. And yet it has everything to do with technology.

Yeah.

Right. I mean, you're just not selling a technology product, but your business doesn't exist like you're. That, that new business you started does not exist 10 years ago. Probably not even five years ago.

Yeah, probably not five years ago. Right. I mean, because where, you know, you can run the whole business for the most part on your phone that's in your pocket. Like, you know, I'm getting ready to head up to, you know, Lake Tahoe here for a few days and. Well, maybe by the time they listen to this, I'll be back. Sure. You know, being out of the office, so to speak, is not nearly as critical as it used to be able to.

It's different. I mean, I know, you know, you're you, you and I've been running businesses for, even together for a long time. Right. But you know, when we start. Even when you and I started together, which was 14, almost 15 years ago. Has it really been that long? Holy crap.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I was like 10 years old, I think.

Yeah. Oh, I was much younger than that, I'm sure.

Yeah, that's right.

But wow. Anyway, you know, we were certainly, you know, our first business together was a website called Deals on the web that if you go there, it still exists, but it's a, it's sort of a shadow of what it, what it once was. We actually made some good money at that time.

It was a great business.

Yep. And, but, and so it was certainly a technology reliant business in every way, shape and form. But the, the concept of running it from our phones was not, I mean it just didn't. Fifteen years ago.

Ridiculous.

That's just ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Yeah. And now we actually could. In fact, we recently rolled a Mac observer, which is the online business that I've had the longest from. We started it with a content management system that I built literally by hand from scratch. Then we moved to a third party one that was okay for a little while called Expression Engine and that sort of faded away on us and so we recently moved it to WordPress. And with WordPress, I could post articles entirely from my phone, start to finish, no problem. No problem.

And businesses like Poshmark, not only is it like, oh, the app is kind of a bolted on with the website, you can't do, you cannot sell unless you use the app.

Wow.

It's not, it's not, it's not possible. And so. Yeah. And it really pushes you to do it. And, you know, even the new ebay app is. I mean, listing. There's. There's a couple of holes they have to fill in there, but. But they're getting better and better. But it's awesome, you know? Yeah. I mean, you can go start to finish and, you know, do 90% of what you need to do, especially if you're just a small seller. You know, volume stuff is a little tougher. But so, yeah, I was.

I was impressed. I sold. We had a bunch of extra tivos or something around the house. And, like, you know, like, you. I like to sell stuff on ebay. It's fun.

Sure.

Yeah. And so I was like, all right, I gotta sell these three different tivos, totally separate things. And I always go and find, you know, the people, the three people that, you know, have sold recently at the price that I like, and I look at their listings, and then I say, sell one like this, and it starts to copy their listing. And so you get to start with what worked two days ago or yesterday or an hour ago, whatever, you know, And. And I was doing this from my laptop, and then it was like, all right, you need to, you know, upload a picture of the thing. I'm like, okay, great. You know, so I'm thinking I gotta go and take the picture with my lap, My phone, and copy it to my laptop. And, you know, I know how to do that. Fine. No problem. It's like, you just want to upload it straight from your phone. It's like, well, yeah. And I hit the thing, and on my phone, it's like, awesome. Pick which picture you want or take one. And I did, and it automatically appeared on my ebay screen in the list. It was like, dude, these people know who. They know how to make this easy.

Yeah, that's correct.

Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, it works really well.

And it works really well.

Yeah, I mean, it was.

That was the most recent, like, magical moment that I've had with technology. And it takes a lot for me to have a magical moment, because I know how this stuff works in at least a general sense and sometimes in a very deep sense. And the web. I know. In a very deep sense, you know, so to be able to ping my phone without leaving the page. Right. To be able to ping my phone, make it take or offer to have it take a picture, take the picture, select a picture, and then magically appear on the page without having to do any reloading or anything. Totally possible. Because it does it. But it's awesome. It's a feat of engineering to get that right. Yeah, that was really, for sure. Well done. Sorry.

No, no, it's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's great. So, I mean, it certainly it, you know, talks to using that. That tech, you know, technology in your business and, you know, just embracing it and looking at, you know, new ways to do things. And that to me, you know, with this, this new business could be the best thing that happens is just really kind of getting you out of your comfort level, especially when you've done things that have worked very well. I always get paranoid about becoming too reliant on something, and the minute I start to have some success in some area, I start thinking about, okay, when is this going to end? And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I always think it. I mean, I always think I'm crazy for, like, thinking about the negative, but I can't help it. It's like, all right, well, this gravy train won't last forever.

Correct. Correct. And so prepared you for that, I guess.

Yeah.

And, you know, so I'm already learning, you know, so much stuff and that truly, it's priceless, and you just don't know where it will lead, whether you have success with something you're working on now or. And, you know, I'm a big proponent of not talking about new things that you're trying until you get. Until you start to have some success. And. And I. I'm just going to keep it between us here, us and the thousands of listeners out there. But, you know, I'm not talk. I don't talk about it. You know, not very. My friends probably listen to this show, but, you know, we just kind of have to. We'll roll through it and we'll touch base from time to time and see what works and. And see what doesn't, so.

Very cool. I like it. This is great, man.

Should be fun.

Very cool.

Yeah, excellent. And so, you know, if you're challenging yourself and coming up with a new business that you'd like us to talk about on the show, we would certainly love to hear from you. Send a text to 401-472-4249 or feedbackusinessshow.co.

You got that phone number finally memorized?

Bright red, man.

Thank you so much, folks, and have a great week. We'll talk to you in, well, in about seven days, I guess.

You got it. Take care, everybody.