Why Didn't I Do This Earlier? The Importance of Customer Surveys

 In a previous post, I spoke about the importance of having a vision when establishing a business, and I explained why it was important. I said that it motivates you to stay the course when the going gets tough and serves as a reminder every day of why you have chosen the path you are on. 

But, a vision can also be a double edged sword, in the sense that it is very easy to assume that your views and attitudes match that of your customers, or to believe that your views are shared by most of the participants of the markertplace in which you are operating. Conversely, it is easy, when the going gets tough to pivot away from a solid idea because you have become convinced that the market is not interested in it, when in fact you were right to pursue your vision all along. 

I have always heard about the importance of surveying customers and explicitly asking for their feedback, and yet it is only just this week that I sent my first customer survey. So, why did it take me so long? More importantly, what have I learned so far? The answer to those two questions are the subject of this post.

One reason I didn't send a survey out was that I wasn't confident that customers would complete it. Another was that I didn't feel confident that I would craft the right questions to elicit the information I needed, and yet another was that I felt that because I had started a weekly auction, that the auction results and loyalty or attrition of customers would tell me how well I was serving their needs. My thinking was simple: if I was getting high realizations and doing well then I must be doing the right things. 

But I believe now that there was a much stronger reason behind my failure to survey my customers, if I am being 100% honest with myself: I was afraid that their answers would indicate that they wanted me to change what I was doing and to become more like my competitors, and that doing so would require me to abandon my vision, which had become my very reason for being in business, and I didn't want to change. A lot of us start businesses because we want to call the shots, want to do things our way. If we allow our customers to tell us how to run our businesses, then aren't we really working for them and not ourselves? I think that is a very natural way to view things and I'll bet that it is probably the true reason holding a lot of entrepreneurs from surveying their client base. 

In following my vision to offer weekly themed auctions, I have achieved some measure of success, but it has come at great cost:

• I often don't finish the week until 4:00am on Friday, which is really Saturday, and hence not sustainable, for a number of reasons.
• I have neglected most aspects of my business that do not have to do with the auction, and while the auction is imortant, so are all these other aspects of the business. 
• There are other potential money making ideas and ideas to solidify my presence as a leader in Canadian philately, such as producing my own catalogue or deluxe line of stamp albums, that are not moving forward.
• I am running out of higher value inventory and have to start buying more inventory.
• The retail section of the website is a mess, with old listings cluttering up the site and driving people away. 
• I wanted to start producing stamp videos for a Youtube channel that would discuss all manner of stamp related topics, but have had literally no time. 

So, it started to become apparent that running 2 themes a week for a 300 lot weekly auction is not sustainable, at least not unless we schedule some breaks in the schedule to allow us to catch up on other important tasks. Immediately, that realization set in motion a panic: what will my customers think? I can't scale back! I have an expectation that I must meet every week. Surely my customers have gotten used to my themes and will come to expect them. 

But all the above has made clear that for the business to survive and thrive and for me to find the right work-life balance, it would be essential to make some decisions around:

• Whether taking a break in the themes would be advisable.
• Whether or not to even have a retail section on the website.
• Whether or not to maintain the blogs, and other information resources.
• Whether or not to pursue the production of a catalogue or stamp albums. 
• Whether or not to produce videos. 
• Which inventory to buy. 

And so forth. 

Up until now I made all those decisions based on what I felt I knew about the market, and my customers. However doing that led me here. I pivoted away from retail after leaving E-bay because my retail inventory had so few sales, and the auction was the only way to jumpstart the business, engage the customers and make a level of sales that would make the business viable. I had started to conclude that maybe online retail just wasn't viable anymore. Maybe most collectors simply wanted to buy from e-Bay. I had assumed that my themes were what set me apart from my competition and that under no circumstances could I have minimum bids in my auctions, lest I drive all the customers away. Finally, because my sales have levelled off, I assumed that introducing higher value material was the only way to increase revenue.

I was also beginning to despair, because buying high value material is very expensive and highly competitive at auction these days and because of this, it is not really possible to buy at auction for say 10-15% of catlalogue, in bulk, anymore. COVID has increased demand for stamps so much that competition is pushing what used to be available for 10-15%, up to 25-35%. You can't buy at that percentage with a 20% buyer's premium and then put the material in an unreserved auction and expect to make money. For one thing, that 25-30% becomes 30-36% after the buyer's premium, 31-37% after adding shipping, and if it is a US auction, it becomes 40.3-48.1% after exchange. At this level, the bidding in an unreserved auction is unlikely to result in an overall profit, but instead a break-even on the purchase cost, in the best case scenario. Given other overhead, like wages and the like and you are looking at a financial loss overall. So, I started thinking that I wasn't going to be able to grow the auction once my better inventory ran out. 

But what if I was wrong?

Wasn't it time to go to my customers, the ones I have a relationship with and ask them? If they would all answer me honestly, then I could get definitive answers to some very key questions that would allow me to make the right decisions. Questions like:

• Do most of my customers actually prefer to buy their stamps at auction?
• Do they care about the information resources on the website and do they actually use them?
• If they do use the information resources are they happy with them?
• Are the themes really that important to customers? or just to me?
• Do customers only pay a fixed percentage of catalogue, or will they consider other factors?
• Do my customers actually want more high value material in the auction?

So, yesterday I sent an e-mail telling my most loyal, regular customers that I would be putting the themes on hold for 6 weeks in June and that I would be sending out a short survey and would offer them 10% off their next order if they would take the time to complete it. 

I went about designing a 16 question survey that was all multiple choice and tick the box style. I avoided any written questions, as I trust my loyal customers to not just pick random answers and to actually answer it honestly. But I wanted to respect their time and come up with something that a customer could complete in under 5 minutes. 

It took a couple of hours to design the right questions, but then I was done and I sent it out using my e-mail program as a live survey page. Within 15 minutes the results started to come in. As I write I have 35 responses out of the 70 names on my loyal customer list. Not bad at all. But what is most important are what the answers reveal and whether they comport with what I would have thought my customers would say:

• 90% use the website the most for the auction - no surprises there.
• 30% of respondents make regular use of the blog articles and other information resources - that is higher than what I thought.
• More than 50% of respondents named the selection of material as the thing they liked most about the auction, followed by another 20% that liked the lot descriptions best. Only 30% named price related considerations like a lack of reserves, $1 minimums and so forth as the thing they liked most - this was a huge surprise, as I had assumed that my no reserve $1 minimum bid was the key to keeping customers loyal.
• One third of the 70% above said that while it wasn't the most important thing, favourable bidding terms like no reserves and $1 increments were still important to them - this is not surprising.
• 65% of respondents were happy with the current size of the auction, with the remainder being evenly split between more lots and fewer lots. I didn't have any idea what to expect here. 
• 92% or respondents said that my current mix of high and low value material was perfect and did not need to be altered - this was a huge surprise, as I was convinced they were all wanting more high value material.
• Just under 50% of respondents said they wanted more pre-1950 VFNH Canada. The majority actually indicated they wanted to see more VF to superb used Canada. While twice as many wanted this material to be pre-1950, just under 20% of respondents want to see more VF used modern Canada.  - this was a surprise too as I would have expected VFNH to beat out VF used by a large margin and yet it used was in just as much demand as mint NH.
• 2/3rds of respondents want to see more Canada, but it doesn't matter what period it is from. In addition almost 50% want to see more pre-1952 British Commonwealth, and then about 1/3rd want to see more Western Europe and Elizabethan Commonwealth. These were massive surprises coming from a client base that I thought of as mostly experienced Canada collectors. First of all, they aren't wanting just earlier Canada, and secondly they have interests all over the world. Every region that I specified in the question was chosen by at least 2 people. This tells me that for many areas I will have to attract more bidders in order to have a successful auction, but that the potential market is there.
• Only 13% care strongly about the themes. The majority like them, but would still view the auction if there were no themes and almost a third don't care about them at all - this was a huge surprise again, as I could have sworn that the themes are a critical differentiating point. 
• Only 13% buy exclusively at auction. The remanider have indicated that they will buy at either auction or retail - another shock, as I had thought that retail for stamps was dead for any dealer that didn't already have a long-established customer base. 
• Only 23% determine a stamp's value based on a percentage of catalogue. The rest consider other factors, such as eye appeal, condition, budget etc. This was also a shock - I knew there were some collectors who considered other factors, but I honestly expected 80% to tell me that a percentage of catalogue was how they determined their bids. 
• 91% were happy with the depth of coverage in the blog articles and 65% would be happy with one article a month, with another 24% being fine with biweekly posts. This was not a surprise, in terms of the depth of coverage, but it was surprising that most were not expecting weekly articles.
• 75% didn't even know the community discussion forum exists, but those who did all found it useful. There wasn't a single respondent who said they didn't like the forum, or find it useful. Here I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought most had seen it and just didn't find it useful. I was wrong. 
• 81% are very likely or somewhat likely to watch stamp videos if we were to offer them. No surprises here. 
• 57% are completely happy with the albums they have and would not consider buying a better one. This was a surprise, as I expected this figure to be much lower. 
• Only 1/3rd are completely happy with Unitrade as a catalogue. The rest are either very willing, or at least open to the idea of buying an alternate catalogue to Unitrade. Not a surprise really, but I did think that the percentage happy with Unitrade would be higher, like 55% or 2/3rds, rather than just 1/3rd. 

So, while some responses yielded no surprises, and validated my vision, there were some genuine surprises, which will prove invaluable in helping shape my future business decisions. Of course, all this assumes that the customers possess perfect self-awareness - that is to say that their behavior actually does match their beliefs. 

So what does all this mean for my business? Several things:

• The auction clearly is the core of the business, but customers have indicated that they would like to see the retail section of the website developed further. So, it will be important for us to carve time out of our schedule to do this. 
• While bidders like the fact that the bidding starts at $1 and progresses in $1 increments, this is clearly not the most important factor to them, and so it paves the way for me to begin phasing in minimum bids and stepped increments on at least selected items, without too much danger of driving people away. 
• There is clear demand for us to publish our own catalogue, which when combined with the other responses indicating that the most valued aspect to the auction is the descriptions, indicates that our KNOWLEDGE about stamps, and the willingness to disseminate it IS our core product, and this is what people are willing to pay a premium for. Up until now, we have given it all away for free. But we need to look for ways to monetize our knowledge, while giving away some of it for free. 

There are other things that will emerge, but we now have a basis on which to follow up with questions to further probe our customer's interests. Also, we can share the overall findings with our customer base, which will further strengthen our community.

So, there you have it. The reason why surveying your customers is so critical. 

The Psychology of Auctions - Why This Model Was a Game Changer

 I wanted to spend some time today to talk about the psychology of auctions and why the entire auction model was such a game changer for my business.

When I started the business I wanted to avoid auctions as a model, largely because that is what literally EVERYONE in this industry was and is doing. It seems that the retail model of stamp dealing has almost died out. It is at the point where I was unable to source very attainable stamps for clients of mine from other stamp dealers, because they had completely abandoned the retail model in favour of auctions. I didn't like this, because for me it seemed that the idea of being in service to collectors was giving way to purely financial considerations. The auction model is popular with dealers because it is 100% turnover, that is immediate, when there are no reserves, and it allows them to make a profit that is often as much or more than they would make in retail without having to invest a dime in inventory. But, the problem that I saw with all dealers following this model is: who is going to educate new collectors? Who is going to make the hobby accessible to new collectors? Who is going to help collectors who need specific items grow their collections? The problem that I saw with most stamp auctions is that they present the elite end of the hobby as being the norm, and they eschew the common and less expensive material, relegating it to being sold in ridiculously large lots that only a dealer would really want. 

So, this was why I avoided auctions and focused on retail. What I didn't consider though, was that it was possible to do auctions in a unique way that is different from what most businesses are doing, and in a way that address most of the concerns I raised above. 

As I explained in a previous post, I got into auctions by accident. I was trying to find a way to attract traffic to my retail listings on my website. I had tried everything: paid Facebook ads, Google Shopping and Google Adwords. Nothing worked to any great degree: I was just pissing money away, and with online advertising that is very, very easy to do, as there is absolutely no transparency in terms of how your budget gets spent, and in terms of providing you with actual evidence that "X" number of people actually clicked on your ad. 

The whole online advertising world is built upon the what I think is the completely false idea that all you have to do is attract traffic and if you have a good product it will sell. Go online and you will see all kinds of stats being presented about conversion rates being 10% and such. I think most of it is bullshit. The problem is that little distinction is made between the different levels of quality in online traffic. For example, high quality traffic consists of people who are specifically looking on Google for a product or service and are both willing and able to buy. For this traffic, I think the conversion rates quoted are probably accurate. But, for people casually searching Google, or who are scrolling on Facebook, or any other social media site, it is a completely different story. This is very low quality traffic, in the sense that there is no intention to buy anything. Heck, I have people on Facebook who like every single blog article link or ad that I post to my stamp groups, who have never bought a thing from me and never even placed a single $1 bid in any of my auctions. I'm not slagging these people off - they serve a very important role in helping me build my brand, so the term "low quality" is perhaps undeserved. However, the label fits if you are looking to this traffic for quick and instant success. 

In actual reality, conversion rates for any traffic that is not looking to buy is very, very low. So, the only approach that really works is to use traffic to create brand awareness, rather than look for immediate conversions. Brand awareness leads to the willingness to sign up for your e-mail newsletters, and it is at that point, and that point only that a prospective customer enters your sales funnel. The average open rate on e-mails sent to a mailing list is around 15-20%, and of that percentage, only another 15-20% actually click on the links in the e-mail the e-mail. From there, only 10-20% will actually buy the item advertised, or will take the action in the call to action contained in the e-mail.

So, let's do some quick math assuming you have a mailing list of 1,000 people:

• 150-200 people will open your e-mail.
• 3-5 people will unsubscribe and most of those will say they never signed up when they clearly did.
• 0-2 people will report your e-mail as spam.
• 22-40 people will click on the link in the e-mail.
• 2-8 people will actually take the action, whether that is bidding or buying.

So, you need A LOT of names in order to build a following of 20-30 loyal customers, because those 2-8 customers will not all return, or if they do, they may not be regular customers. This is one of the main reasons why repeat business is so important to the long-term success of most businesses. 

To get those first 1,000 names is no easy task and it will cost you time and money in running Facebook Lead ads, blogging and other "work" on social media. I found that a $50 ad spend on Facebook might yield me 10 names, but 8 of those names would ultimately unsubscribe from my mailing list, so building up this many names is expensive.

After trying to attract traffic for a year or so, using the usual methods, I decided to try unreserved auctions with a limited amount of material. I knew that it meant that I would be giving most of my items away, as I had no loyal bidder base: everything would sell for $1 or very low prices. So, I had to consider the cost of these stamps to be an advertising expense. However, this form of advertising made a great deal of sense, for the following reasons:

• The irresistability factor is high: who doesn't want to buy a $20 stamp for $1 or a $150 item for $5? So, there is a high incentive to take the action of placing a bid.
• The auction becomes an experience as more people participate, and it is fun to bid and win the items.
• My actual cost is not as high as it may seem at first: if I pay 30% of catalogue for certain stamps and they bring 15% of catalogue at auction, my true cost is only 15%. So, for an auction with $5,000 worth of material, my cost at the beginning might be $1,500 and if the auction grosses $750, my true cost is $750 - high, but not bad when you consider that you can blow $300 on Facebook ads and get nothing. 
• If a bidder is successful in snagging a bargain, there is a very high liklihood that they will return, especially if they know that the auction is held regularly at the same time.
• If I am going to spend the money with Google or Facebook anyways, with no guarantee of any quality leads, why not spend that money on a customer lead that is very likely to come back and bid again? 
• Although prices will initially be low, due to weak competition among the bidders, they will rise as more bidders enter the fray and start to compete with one another. 
• However, my expectation was that unsuccessful bidders would go to my retail listings so as to not leave empty-handed.

It didn't quite go the way I planned: the last thing didn't really happen. Instead, what happened was that most bidders came back every week, and so fairly quickly the prices begain to rise. I lost money in the first 10 auctions or so, and from 11 to 20 I was breaking even. After the 20th auction I started to make a profit. I also begain getting new bidders, usually 1 new name every week or so. At first one or two bidders were carrying most of the auction, buying most of the lots, but over time this changed, and I started to find that when one bidder stepped back and reduced their bids or spending one week, another bidder would step forward and spend more. 

It dawned on me that this was actually a viable business model in its own right, even with my small lots, but I wanted to refine it and adapt it for the vision I had always had. So, I decded to pivot and de-emphasize the retail section of the website, and place all my focus on growing the auction.

I eventually decided to do auction themes, where most of my offerings each week would follow a particular theme that I would promote. This would have the advantage of being highly promotable, as opposed to a run-of-the-mill auction where there is no cohesive focus to the stamps being offered. 

Soon after I made the decision to focus on the auctions it became apparent that 40 lots a week was not going to cut it, and I would have to increase the number of lots if I wanted to grow weekly sales. The problem with leaving it at 40 lots as my customer base grew is that there would not be enough material to keep everyone interested and there would be few to no bargains to draw new bidders in. So, it became apparent that it was important to ensure that 10% of the lots sell for bargain prices. If the bargain percentage fell below this, it was time to increase the size of the auction. Of course, too many lots would result in prices that were too low as well. So, it is a fine balancing act, to grow the auction in lockstep with the bidder base. 

The main reason though why this was such a game changer for me is that it really forced me to focus on what works, in real time, and the auction results themselves do not lie. Now, one reality that has become apparent is that my bids will not be high the first time I run a theme, because I do not have enough of a base for that theme to generate sufficient competition to make it sucessful. Thus, the concept of investing in business development does come to the fore, and must be taken into account. Nevertheless, if a theme is run three or four times and it fails to make money, then it is time to seriously re-evaluate it, and the data to do that evaluation is freely available, and it is timely. I can analyze the bids, because I have people's maximums, and so if the prices are low, but maximums were high, then I know that there simply weren't enough bidders to make the auction a success. If, on the other hand, the maximums were also low, then I may be dealing with an area that is unpopular with my base of bidders, and therefore there may not be a viable way to continue offering it. 

With online retail, it is very difficult to do this, largely because the data available is open to interpretation and there are so many reasons why it could be the way it is. One of the problems is that there are simply not enough transactions to do any meaningful analysis compared to say 52 weeks of auctions where 300 items a week are selling. 

Now, when I speak of analyzing the results I'm not talking about spreadsheets or detailed analysis of individual bidder's bidding habits or anything like that. For one thing I don't have the time, and for another I don't want to misuse people's information, particularly when I have been entrusted with it. I want to make that very clear here. What I am talking about is a general sense that I get after running many weekly auctions back to back. After a while I will know if over all maximum bids were, say 20% or 30% higher than what the lots are selling for overall, that is enough detail to evaluate the auction. As a matter of fact, a 20-30% discrepancy is what you want in this case. You don't want bidders consistently paying their maximums - otherwise they won't feel they are getting bargains. But, if I were to find that the maximums are 50-60% higher than the realizations, then I know I need to attract more bidders if I want to narrow that spread to 20-30%. 

Another thing that is valauble about doing auctions is the information they teach you about buyer psychology. Retail is based on the idea of a motivated buyer who knows exactly what he or she wants and appreciates the opportunity to shop for those things. But that model is based on people having the time and the patience to actively browse, and then the motivation to complete the purchase. The reality today is that most of the time one of these things is missing. People these days are largely overwhelmed with the number of choices and options out there, which has made retail very difficult. The other thing is that auction sites and marktplaces like E-bay and Amazon have created a perception that no matter how good the price appears to be, there is always a better deal just around the corner. 

A good auction addresses these issues by providing an experience that is structured. People are far more open to find time for scheduled experiences that they enjoy, such as TV shows and nights out. A weekly auction can mimic that, and at the same time it can provide structure by narrowing down people's choices and still satisfy their desire to grow their collections and learn about stamps. So, in that sense, if it is run properly, it has the potential to build a captive audience of people who regularly return to the website, and in fact this is exactly what has happened. On any given week now, I usually have between 50 and 60 active bidders and about 40-45 of those bidders are successful. Most of these bidders - at least two-thirds of this number bid every week, or every second week. 

Auctions provide bidders with validation about their perception of value, because other people are willing to pay as much or more than they are. So, when there are other bidders competing with them, they can often feel more comfortable that they paid a fair price for the thing they are buying. In retail, buyers are forced to comparison shop to gain that comfort. 

Retail also has no time limits, and so many customers of online businesses will fill their shopping carts and never check out, or at least not do so for a long time. An auction, on the other hand, with a definite end date forces a decision: either bid, or not. Fear of missing out or FOMO can motivate a customer to bid in the auction, and quite often, they wind up paying more than I would have sold the item on a retail basis for. That has happened at least 4 times and I am not sure as to why. 

What I have noticed in the past 2 months is that retail sales from the website have now begun to pick up, and most of these sales are coming from, you guessed it, the bidders. So, what has become apparent is that retail can work when you have already built up a devoted following of customers from other means, of which the auction has proven to be a very cost-effective way to build a customer base that is loyal. But, to try and build a retail business from scatch, with no hook to draw customers in, is in my view, virtually impossible -  at least not without a massive investment in online advertising to create brand awareness and build a mailing list. But, as I have said before there is no guarantee that such an investment will bear fruit. 

So, this explains why things were so difficult for me in that first year after I left E-bay and how what started off as a marketing gimmick turned out to be the thing that saved my business from certain ruin. 

The Importance of Vision: Drawing Inspiration From Frank Lloyd Wright, the Great American Architect and Applying it to My Stamp Business

 "I wouldn't expect that the architectural establishment would treat me fairly. Why should they? My methods directly threatened everything they believed in back then. In circumstances such as this, one knows what usually happens. I had my position determined very early in life. I knew where my star was and so I had a choice to make: honest arrogance, or insincere humility. I chose honest arrogance."

- Frank Lloyd Wright, in a 1953 interview, when asked whether he thought that the architectural establishment treated him fairly. 

For the past year or so I have become fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright. I knew of him for many, many years, and I was vaguely aware of the innovative nature of his designs. What initially struck me were the glass houses and brick homes built in 1906 that looked like they could have been built in 1950. But beyond that I knew very little about him. Then, one evening while I was working on the auction, I began watching, or rather, listening to a documentary about him and his life's work on Youtube.

Wright was a master manipulator of light and proportion: many of his buildings look larger on the inside than they do on the outside. Many also make use of the natural features of the landscape they were built on, bringing the outside in. He referred to this as organic architecture. But let's look at some of his work:

Falling Water, considered one of Wright's masterpieces, built over a waterfall in 1937, with most of the house being cantilevered over the falls.

The inside of one of his many homes. Note the use of natural light. Does this look to you like something built in the 1930's or 40's?

The Neil's house in Minneapolis. Note the wedge shape and extensive use of windows wo make the space appear larger.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City. This was Wright's last building before he died in 1959. It's genius lies in it's continuous corkscrew design where you start at the bottom and work your way up. You always know what exhibits you have seen and what lies ahead. You won't miss any with this design, unlike many other museums. 

The great workroom in the SC Johnson Wax building. Lloyd tested the strength of those columns with twelve tons of material, and it actually took 60 tons before any cracks appeared in the test column. The genius with this design is that this expansive space had no walls, yet the columns create the same effect as a wall, the "lilypad" tops to the columns create the effect of a ceiling, and the space between them mimics a series of skylights, letting in a soft light. Would you believe that this building was built in the mid 1930's?

What is clear to me when I look at these images, is that this is a man who had a clear artistic vision. He was not merely content to design buildings that followed established conventions and norms. Rather, he wanted to express himself in his work. 

And so it is with what I do with my auction and my business. When I put together one of my themed auctions - a concept I will soon explain in another post, I am not merely putting a random group of stamps up for sale. I am attempting to inspire collectors by showing what a collector can do with a particular topic, or a particular period. A key consideration in this regard is to embrace the essence of the period whose stamps are being featured, and to not fight it. It is to work with what the period or topic offers, rather than comparing it to an earlier period, or an area where the material is scarce, expensive or rare. I firmly believe that this is a hobby that should be open to all, and not just the wealthy collectors, and so some of my themes work with material that is, by all accounts common and inexpensive. I treat this material with the same degree of seriousness as classic rarities. This, I also believe is essential for this great hobby to continue to thrive.

Like Wright, my beliefs about this hobby and its future do not square with what many of my contemporaries believe. Most of my fellow dealers believe that most all stamps issued after 1945 are only good for postage, and most of them will continue to use stamps from the 40's through the 80's on their mail, rather than studying and preserving this material for future collectors. Like Wright, I have chosen honest arrogance as well. I make no apologies for being different and for pursuing my vision. I know it is not for every collector, but I also know that for the small group of collectors who value what I do, it is an approach that they support. If I can make it my life's work to supply the needs of these collectors and to show the philatelic world an alternate way to view and interpret the stamps of various countries and periods, I will be truly fulfilled. 

I have talked before about the importance of having a vision, for it is your vision that underpins your brand. It is your vision that will keep you going and keep you motivated when the going gets tough. Now, of course you have to determine whether your vision is likely to yield some long-term success if you execute it. I am not suggesting that you cling stubbornly to a vision that nobody else will buy into. For example, if my auctions were unsuccessful for an extended period then I would know that it would be very difficult, if not impossible to justify continuing to pursue that vision. So, it is important to be realistic, but at the same time it is important to understand that it takes time, effort and repetition to influence established thought patterns and gain traction. So, to survive you find other ways to raise money to pay the bills while you pursue this vision. For me, it was doing accounting contract work that got us through to the point where it was clear that the vision could succeed. I say could, because many of my themes will not do well the first time I offer them. I know this. But I have prepared for it as well. 

So, this was one of my first lessons during these past 2 years: the importance of having a clear vision if one is to have any hope of building a loyal customer base. In my next post I will discuss the psychology of auctions and explain why the auction model was such a game-changer over retail, or at least why it was the perfect compliment to a retail model. 

It is Time to Revive This Blog! - I Now Have a Viable Business, After Nearly 6 Years.

 After almost 2 years of not writing new posts I felt inspired to revive this blog. When I started this blog over five years ago, I wanted to present a realistic picture of the trials and tribulations that an entrepreneur faces when starting and building a business.

In the beginning I wrote a lot of posts, largely because I could barely contain my excitement at this new lifestyle choice, but also because the rubber had not yet hit the road. What do I mean? Well, I had a bank account with my savings and so I was not under pressure to actually make money from month to month. I could afford to dream about all the possibilities and wonder that lay before me with my new business idea. 

As my posts have shown, the reality turned out to be very different from what I had imagined, and the last substantive posts I wrote 2 years ago chronicled my attempt to turn my business model around and develop a business that could actually sustain itself. 

Since then, I have been locked in a weekly routine where, a little over a year ago, I started a weekly stamp auction, and I have been steadily building that business into a business that can not only sustain Steph and I, but can also can provide a fulfilling job for a full-time employee. When I started the auction in August of 2019 I was selling 40 lots a week, for very low bids. My initial idea was to use the auction to attract traffic to my retail listings - as a form of cheap advertising, if you will. 

However, in the process of running the auction, I began to learn something about why starting an online retail business is so difficult: buyers are both fickle and cautious. Without FOMO to motivate them to act, there is very little beyond impulse to motivate someone to purchase something they do not have an immediate need for. So, businesses that sell novelties and fad-induced one-offs, like fidget spinners can do very well in the short-term. But if you are trying to build a business that fills a long-term niche and makes your vision a reality, it is a very different reality. This is especially so where you are trying to build a business where you are dependent on repeat business. 

Securing repeat business from a core group of people requires you to build a customer following. By customer, I do not mean merely a buyer. A customer is someone who identifies with your brand and actually prefers to buy your product or service, over your competitors. A buyer, on the other hand merely views your business as one of many suppiers, and they will buy from whomever offers the best value. It is very difficult to build a business on buyers, unless you have a very large product range and a massive amount of capital and the resources to be in a position to offer the best price. Of course, that is not the position that 99.99999999% of small businesses are in, so building a customer following is critical.

What I learned over the past six years though is that this is much easier said than done. You not only have to attract the attention of people, but you must stand out from the competition. 

So, I think it is now time for me to begin taking the time to explain how I went from 40 lots a week and struggling to make sales of $3,000 per month, to 300+ lots a week and sales of $12,000-$15,000 per month in just under 2 years. In these posts, I believe will be the real value of this blog, for what I will share with you are the lessons that only 6 years of experience and staying power could teach. I will also share what inspired me to keep going when it seemed all was lost. Finally, as successful as the business is, it is not guaranteed from week to week, and I still deal with anxiety regularly. I also have an impatient investor, who at the beginning of the pandemic demanded all his money back. So, virtually all of my profit is currently going to pay him, rather than being available to re-invest in the business. So, there is always a fear that I may not have enough inventory left once I finish paying him to sustain the business. But, one thing that I have learned is: a lot can happen in 3 or 6 months, especially when you have forward momentum. 

So, I hope you will join me as I resume my journey. If you are new to this blog, I would encourage you to go back and read some of my older posts, so that you can see for yourself what the process of starting a business and going through the initial struggles looks like - in real time. One of the things I vowed to do was write this blog as the events happen, so that the lack of posts for the past 2 years is itself indicative of an important reality: when you transition from survival mode to building mode, where you have some success and are now trying to meet the ongoing expectations of your customer group, you won't feel like you have time to write blog posts. Indeed, even now I don't feel like I have time, but I realize that I must make time. 

So, with this, I will sign off, with a renewed commitment to begin sharing what I have learned over the past two years.