Episode 26: Rethink Everything
How fast are we humans at change? Turns out, pretty fast. Did you know that companies adopted technology twenty-five times faster during the recent pandemic vs before? That feat proves we can be nimble when pressed. Adapting to change is a great muscle to flex even during smooth sailing, ‘cause more change is goin’ come. If you’re an existing business owner this episode might just get you to rethink everything – to look at the world as it is today – to look at it like a startup founder.
Transcript
Glenn Suart 0:00
We had to react, and you rethink things and you make mistakes. Like, we’ve made lots of mistakes, and we will continue to make mistakes, but we’re still alive. And we’re moving into whole new territories now, because we’ve been able to rethink what we’re doing.
Doug Ross 0:28
Welcome to Conversations on Startups, a podcast brought to you by Douglas Ross, author of the book, Spark Click Go: How to Bring Your Creative Business Idea to Life, and Glenn Suart, of Today’s Great Idea, a radio series featuring over 300 origin stories of businesses, brands and inventions that have changed the culture. Welcome to today’s conversation.
Doug Ross 0:51
Hey, Glenn, good to see you. How ya doin’ today?
Glenn Suart 0:53
I am doing great, Doug, you?
Doug Ross 0:55
Yep, doing well. Back here in the US after popping into Canada for a very brief, 24 hour visit. So anyway, glad to be here with you. We are talking about a very small and focused subject today, rethinking everything,
Glenn Suart 1:15
I think that’s a great subject. The one good thing that came out of the pandemic is that [it] forced a lot of people in virtually every business around the world to rethink everything. If you run a business, you don’t usually have that kind of opportunity to go and figure these things out. That sort of mandated it. It’s really important to do that on a, I think, a regular basis. But when we say rethink everything, Doug, what do we mean by that? Is, is it quite literal?
Doug Ross 1:44
Well, it’s pretty open ended. If we think about most startups, they really start with a blank page. Who’s the customer? What’s maybe the problem, or the opportunity… the work to be done for that customer? What’s my solution? How am I going to deliver it? All of those basic kind[s] of questions, it connote[s] a blank page. So if you’re running a business, you are not starting from zero, but you could rethink things because so much has changed. Why not do that? You’ve got a lot of assumptions that you’ve made. You’ve seen your business certainly change in terms of the results one way or the other. Some companies in this last few years… anything that helped people go to a more remote type of work situation, certain delivery businesses or the deliverers themselves – the shippers – certain businesses really have seen an incredible upswing in their business and other people, it’s whoa, where did my customers go? [Yep] So, that’s what I was thinking.
Glenn Suart 2:57
It makes sense to me. And a word that comes to mind that a lot of people are using these days is pivoting, when something changes. Pivoting is more a reaction. Rethinking is being a bit more proactive, to think about, maybe I should find this new market, or maybe I should change the process about how we do this. It’s always worth the examination. And sometimes it’s forced upon you like when the pandemic happened, that you’re forced to rethink everything. Other times pressure is on.
Glenn Suart 3:27
I’m just taking actually a course right now, with Export Development Canada, which is helping companies sell the products in other countries like the United States. And it’s an intense two week course, to write your export plan. I write plans for living all the time, but I would never have gotten around to doing it unless I’d been forced into it because of this class. I wanted to take the class, but I’ve got a deadline and that’s putting focus on what I need to do. And it’s critical we actually do this export development plan for this company, and the only reason we’re doing it is because of this class. And that’s great, because it’s going to help us rethink how we do things as we go into the US.
Doug Ross 4:09
Yeah, so in that case, you’re really rethinking your market, and how to get there.
Glenn Suart 4:14
Absolutely. Everything. Wehave to think about human resources. Do we have the right people? How do we find people? Financial resources – do we have enough to make it work? Are there things we’re doing now that we shouldn’t be doing before going into the US? Things like that. So sometimes you elect to do it. And it’s a good thing.
Bridget 4:33
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, thanks for joining us. Let’s get back to the show.
Doug Ross 4:42
And most other times, you’re forced into it. So it is a good thing. I came across a stat, just earlier today, as a matter of fact on technology adoption, in this recent period that we’ve been through and the average figure for how quickly some technology was adopted by companies was 25 times faster. So for example, moving things into the cloud. Which says that we as companies, as people are capable of making these changes, if we want to, or if we are forced to, as you say. In good times you tend not to do that. And to make a change like that some sort of technological change, a process change, you’ve got just… it can take years, where really it should only be weeks. So we can be nimble. I think that’s important. And we are also highly adaptive, and we need to be if we are going to be a successful company with everything that’s changed. Well, has everything changed? I don’t know. A lot of things have changed. Let’s talk about some of the big things. I’ll name one, and I’ll challenge you to to name another big change. Okay, Glenn, how’s that sound?
Glenn Suart 5:59
Sounds good.
Doug Ross 5:59
So here’s one big change, we are now in an inflationary period. So could be an impact if you you’re a business, on cash flow. If you’re a direct to consumer business, this is impacting your customers as well. Inflation is a big change. I don’t know how long it went on? Ten, fifteen, twenty years where we really have had such a negligible amount of inflation, and everyone thought it was going to stay that way forever. So that’s my big change. What would you say would be another?
Glenn Suart 6:35
Well the one that I felt and I think most people have felt indirectly, as a contributor to inflation, is supply chain issues, in terms of getting products from where they’re supposed to be to where they supposed to go, they weren’t doing things in a short period of time. We’ve talked about this before. We had a container coming from China to Canada and now it took thirteen weeks to get here instead of four to five weeks, plus the cost quadrupled, to get it here. And all those factors impact our business. So by definition, we had to rethink our business because of the supply chain issues, because it impacted our cost structure, it impacted our delivery of quality products to our consumer, or customers – our retailers. And so yeah, these external events sometimes make you rethink what you’re doing. Have you got another one besides inflation?
Doug Ross 7:34
So I like the one you mentioned, and it is related – supply chain disruption. But it’s not just inflation, because your lead times as you just mentioned, are very different too. I have seen a rise in the need for companies of all sizes – startups, other sizes – to be more environmentally conscious, thinking about sustainability, building that in to their business models, and communicating that as well because their customers are looking for suppliers who are more sensible with respect to the environment. So that’s a… I think, another one that’s really… it’s not… it didn’t come up all of a sudden, but it’s being talked about a lot. Whereas it wasn’t previously.
Glenn Suart 8:23
Yep. People deal with environmental issues all the time now. Here in Canada, we are outlying individual plastic bags. And that won’t happen right away – it’s gonna happen in the next year or two. But it’s the kind of thing that oh, so what do you do to carry your groceries home? So is it paper bags, again, or not? You know, cloth bags? It’s going to be mandated…. and of course grocery stores are trying to deal with that in a big way. Another factor that I think a lot of people have been dealing with, especially in Canada, and I’m sure it’s the same with the U.S., is lack of labor. The job market is extremely tight. Jobs go unfulfilled because they can’t find the right people. Restaurants are closing early here in Calgary, because they can’t find enough staff. So that, again, they have to rethink their model. And not only do you have to pay people more – some… one of the major restaurant chains is actually now offering benefits to their more than four hundred employees that are full time. And it’s something that they wanted to do but now they were forced… sort of to do it, to keep and retain good staff. So again, forced upon you, but they rethought what they’re doing to make it work for them.
Doug Ross 9:38
Interesting. So I think these are pretty major changes that we’re talking about. If you took even one of those it would be a significant change for a lot of businesses but dealing with all of these at the same time is really incredible. So I’m curious, you said that you had that supply chain issue, and you had to rethink parts of your business. So what did it affect in terms of your business and your business model, and what kind of changes did you have to make? And I’m really curious too, what was the impact on customers, your customers?
Glenn Suart 10:19
Oh, it’s a very simple thing – it impacted everything. We started out in the cooler business – hard coolers. And because hard coolers are very bulky and large you only get a few of them relatively speaking into a container. So having them delayed, meaning… might not get them in time for the summer here in Canada. It also meant the… the cost per cooler went way up in terms of getting it here – the shipping was almost as much as the product itself. So what we had to do to react to that was rely less on coolers, we moved to drinkware, in a bigger way, didn’t abandon coolers, but we reduced our dependency on them because we were pricing ourselves out of the market a little bit. And this… the same thing happened to Yeti and other brands as well. The coolers became much more expensive here in Canada, because of shipping. And they also moved to drink where, because you can obviously get a lot more bottles and mugs into a container. So the costs could be borne a little bit more easily. It impacted how we move stuff around the warehouse, because we needed more labor now to deal with smaller units. It was really interesting. It impacted our cash flow, because of the changes in the costs and stuff being stuck on… on the wharves. We had to react, and you rethink things and you make mistakes. Like, we’ve made lots of mistakes, and we will continue to make mistakes, but we’re still alive. And we’re moving into whole new territories now, because we’ve been able to rethink what we’re doing. It’s just something you do every day, you know, essentially, it’s not like you do it once in a blue moon. But you really got to think about – can you do things better all the time. And that’s really what this is.
Doug Ross 12:08
Hey podcast listeners, we’re gonna take a short break now. If you’re enjoying the show, feel free to invite your friends, remember to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Each episode of Conversations on Startups focuses on a single topic. If you want to comment on something you’ve heard on the podcast, or suggest a topic for us to cover in a future episode, send an email to: go@todaysgreatidea.com or douglas@sparkclickgo.com. Glenn and I appreciate you and hope you find our uncut and unrehearsed stories, perspectives, and tips helpful. Speaking of helpful stuff-let’s pick up where we left off.
Doug Ross 12:53
Well, that forced a change in product line, you added a product or maybe shifted the emphasis there. You had to be more on top of your cash flow. So I don’t know how you did that maybe you looked at it weekly before and now you’re looking at it daily…
Glenn Suart 13:11
Hourly!
Doug Ross 13:12
Yeah. Yeah, that all makes sense. So… but it really does push you on the efficiency side of things. You’d mentioned how you were handling that inventory. I think if you were stepping back, you could also think – some of those things are fairly short term – you could bring in automation, as we’ve talked about before, that makes sense. On a longer term basis, you might look at things such as the materials you’re using. Obviously, where things are being manufactured if you’re manufacturing anything. I don’t know. Going to a premium segment perhaps where shipping prices can be absorbed more readily because they’re a smaller proportion of the end cost to the consumer. Just all of these sorts of things are open. And this is what we’re trying to encourage people to do in this particular conversation is to step back because human nature is a sort of a Woe is me. Wow, how do I deal with shipping costs that are four times what they used to be? And a growth mindset would say, Well, look, this is an opportunity, as you put it, Glenn to think… think about Are we in the right market? Do we have the right product? Do we have the right services? Are we recouping some of these costs in the right way? Maybe some of those costs can be recouped from your customer. You know, you add a surplus charge for shipping now – or something like that. You make it transparent and you bring that down if and when the world returns to normal.
Glenn Suart 14:52
It really is the world as you said the beginning is changing much faster. The adoption rate is… demanded of you is much more intense. I think any business owner has to be ready all the time for change, because it’s going to come at you very fast these days. And you have to be nimble enough to be able to react. So be ready for change I guess is the message, because it will come out if you don’t look for it yourself.
Doug Ross 15:21
[Yeah] … and then you’re in a reactive sort of position. So yeah, you can be ready, you can think about different possibilities and what you would do. Certainly, when it comes to supply, lots of businesses should be doing that and the ones that are providing true essentials really need to be doing that. What happens if my supply takes two months now, whereas it used to be two days. So all of this sort of thing is being forced upon folks. I agree with this concept that everything needs to be rethought – your terms, everything. Maybe you can find another supplier, that would be something. Talk to your banker, or whoever’s funding you on this cash flow situation, maybe you need a little higher line of credit, that kind of thing to manage that. What about things like marketing? Has that changed too? Or is that just like it’s always been.
Glenn Suart 16:14
Everything changes. Marketing changes all the time now too because you have to be an expert at everything – social media… you could be the greatest newspaper copy guy but now people don’t look at copy in newspapers as much so you got to be a social media person, or an influencer or whatever. Or you don’t have to be, but you got to be thinking about different marketing channels. and you didn’t… than you had to think about before. So very important to – if you don’t know – help… find somebody who can talk to you about these things. Because sticking your head in the sand, status quo wise, and just hoping it’s gonna get better is not necessarily the case anymore. Yes, you’re right marketing is a problem.
Doug Ross 16:57
Yeah, marketing too would change. Yeah, that sort of waiting it out type of attitude versus looking at it as a chance to experiment and or change over pretty quickly. As you know, I do some work in terms of leadership, and business strategy consulting, that kind of thing. All of the programs that we have run in the past were physical, virtually all of them. We would do some webinars, mostly promotional types of things, online. But we had to shift pretty quickly. How can we deliver all of this and do it online? So of course you got to look at the platform, Zoom, Teams, all of that kind of thing but what else does it do? Certain things you just… you have to do differently to try and create an experience that your clients still value and value quite highly. So it was an interesting experiment. Some things I actually thought were better, delivering them remotely. Travel being one of them.
Glenn Suart 17:56
Of course, but now you’re also… you’re actually competing with more people now. Because if you’re delivering your stuff, virtually, and everybody else is, customers can choose from a whole group of people that they may never have been able to choose before. [Ya, true] So it changes how you look at your business model, in terms of how do you differentiate yourself, not just from a couple other people but for thousands of other people now.
Doug Ross 18:20
Yeah, that’s an ongoing problem. We’ve talked about, ow do you differentiate? It’s easy to get yourself out there and a lot of ways but, How do you differentiate, remains a constant battle. So it’s a big subject. I think as well, I was studying Spanish, and I’m really not that good at it still, Glenn, but I found a school and they were in Guanajuato, Mexico and they did mostly in person types of training – you would travel down there, have the whole experience. And they had to shift. So I didn’t have to travel to Mexico. Not that I wouldn’t want to. I’d love to do that. But I was able to be a customer of an online experience, which was quite good. I really enjoyed it. So online learning is certainly here to stay. The other thing I think that happens is… personally if I’m delivering any of these sorts of things, I like the in-person. You and I just talked about it. I’m going to be visiting Technion actually tomorrow by zoom in Israel. And this is the third visit I’ve had with their entrepreneurial class. It’s an engineering group. It’s the third visit I’ve had. It’s the second virtual one and I did one in the spring of this year in person. It’s very different. You have to you have to change the way you do things if you’re doing it all online. And you also have to think of some of the benefits. If you’re online you can say Hey guys, if you have any questions, just put it in the chat. And you might miss that if you’re in-person with… with somebody.
Doug Ross 19:55
But I think the net effect now that we’re largely through this pandemic – knock… knock wood – is that you may end up doing things in a hybrid of these two, you know the before and after, which could be a good thing. Maybe you have to keep delivering things in a couple of different modes. Maybe you don’t, maybe you go back completely to the old way. Hopefully not and hopefully you keep this mindset of nimbleness and your ability to deliver your product or service in different ways. Because no question, other changes are going to come around and we want you to be positioned to take… take advantage of that.
Ben 20:37
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, thanks for joining us.
Glenn Suart 20:44
Always good to be, as we said, proactive about what you’re doing. Be ready for change. It’s coming at you. So get out in front of it when you can. But I think being in a constant state of rethink-everything allows you to succeed today. And that’s what lessons I think I’ve learned.
Doug Ross 21:06
Totally agree, Glenn. That’s a pretty good summary, I think, or at least it touches [yep] the main theme that we spoke of here, on rethinking everything. What about our next topic, Glenn? Do you have anything off the top of your head? I’m putting you on the spot here, I know – I did it last time too.
Glenn Suart 21:25
You are putting me on the spot. You always do this. And it’s like, oh, my gosh, there’s always something to talk about. I always like talking about other brands… sometimes. And because they’re always interesting. I know, we’ve talked about them before. But there’s always something there about success or failure. Those are my thoughts. What about you? What are you thinking?
Doug Ross 21:48
Well, yeah, no, I like that and we did one on great brands and one on bad brands [yep] and hopefully people have a chance to listen to that. How about we talk about the importance of creating community around your business? So the whole idea of… it’s not just enough to put your brand out there. Here’s our brand. Here’s our messaging, and a couple of advertisements. More so, How can you bring people into your whole sort of ecosystem as a way to grow? And by the way, really enjoy the business that you’re in?
Glenn Suart 22:24
That’s a good idea. I like that much better than my suggestion. Let’s do that.
Doug Ross 22:29
I liked your idea. It’s just we had done it.
Glenn Suart 22:32
I know, I know. We’ve done it. It’s a question of like, there’s always more to talk about. Like, there’s more brands that are interesting and stuff. But nevertheless, next week, that sounds like a great topic.
Doug Ross 22:42
I’m sure you can think of one or two that have done a good job in creating community. So that way we…
Glenn Suart 22:49
I know, a great one. And one of them is our competitor. Won’t preface it too much but they’ve done a very good job of building a brand that resonates with a certain clientele, and people gotta have it, so.
Doug Ross 23:02
Got it.
Glenn Suart 23:02
All right, I’m Glenn Suart in Calgary.
Doug Ross 23:04
I’m Doug Ross in the US. We will look forward to talking to you next time. Take care.
Doug Ross 23:19
Conversations on Startups is a production of Glenn Suart and Douglas Ross. We hope you’re having fun listening but mostly that you take action on your business idea. For more inspiration visit our websites: todaysgreatidea.com and sparkclickgo.com. Another episode of Conversations on Startups will drop soon, or is already available to binge. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe and invite your friends. See ya next time!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai