Jason Greenwood: Holy shit. They literally, their eyes light up and they burst with excitement because they go, I had no idea this is where commerce had got to over the last decade. Kiwis are more risk averse just by nature. They are more number eight wire, they are more do it yourself. And that translates even into budgets for discretionary income and retail purchases. It's a double edged sword. You know, some people absolutely love that and they gravitate towards it and other people hate it and, and you know, that's what the block button is for.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of
Nathan Bush: Add to Cart and director at e
Nathan Bush: commerce talent agency E Suite. Today's guest joins us from across the ditch and describes himself as a digital native, a futurist from way back and a consultant obsessed with helping businesses do E commerce.
Nathan Bush: Right.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like my kind of person. Jason Greenwood runs Greenwood Consulting out of Auckland, New Zealand and he helps businesses in both the B2B and D2C space across Australia and New Zealand reimagine themselves
Nathan Bush: for the digital age.
Nathan Bush: In this episode, we deep dive with Jason into the state of online commerce in New Zealand and we get some tips for Australian businesses who are looking to expand into the New Zealand market. We also cover why he thinks headless is not a smart strategy for most e commerce businesses, the implications of Amazon entering the New Zealand market and his recommendations for how to stand out on LinkedIn. And he certainly does that. But before we get into it, be warned that there is a little bit
Nathan Bush: of swearing in the episode.
Nathan Bush: So if you've got some precious little Kiwi fruits with you, you might want
Nathan Bush: to be a little bit careful.
Nathan Bush: So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Jason
Nathan Bush: Greenwood from Greenwood Consulting. Jason Greenwood, welcome to ADD to cart.
Jason Greenwood: Mate, it is so good to be here. You know, I've been watching you from afar. I'm a big fan and love what you're doing for the industry. And you know, we've known each other, obviously not like close, but you know, we've known, I guess of each other and about each other for many years and you know, I've seen you speak at a couple of conferences and yeah, big fan, big fan.
Nathan Bush: Thank you, man. Likewise. I had a look before we got on. We've got 1100 shared connections. That's either we know the same people or we are on LinkedIn way too much. And I probably think it's the latter.
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, I'd like to think it's a mix of both, but I think, I suspect you're probably right.
Nathan Bush: Now, you are based in New Zealand, is that right?
Jason Greenwood: Yes, I'm based in Auckland, that's correct.
Nathan Bush: Lovely. And how is New Zealand coping in a post Covid world from a retail perspective?
Jason Greenwood: Oh, look, I think, you know, it's similar to other parts of the world that are sort of starting to wind back up again and physical retail is just as crazy as it's ever been, I suppose, to a degree. And, you know, judging by the motorway that I just came off of, rushing home to be on this podcast, you know, you'd think that we were 100% back to normal and the motorways are just as insane as they. You know, clearly Aucklanders have not got the memo. We're working from home. And so, yeah, look, we're in a pretty good place and yeah, extremely thankful to be based here in Auckland and be here, based here in New Zealand.
Nathan Bush: That's a beautiful spot. And we're going to just drill down, I think, for the sake of our Australian listeners, to a little bit more around the New Zealand market and what's happening there, because we've seen a lot of headlines recently around Australian businesses expanding into New Zealand, especially as the rest of the world kind of makes it harder to expand into. So if you wouldn't mind, let's drill into that for a little bit. But what have you noticed that has changed in New Zealand, especially from an E commerce retail perspective? Post Covid anything different to the rest of the world?
Jason Greenwood: Look, I think it's probably. There's some things that are similar and some things that are a little bit different. The things that are similar are the race or digital skills and expertise. It is just mental in the market. You know, wages are on the rise, demand is on the rise. We have limited people with sufficient gray hair in this space like you and me. Well, I don't have too much gray hair yet, but it's definitely getting there. Look, you know, E commerce as a practice and omnichannel commerce as a practice is still relatively young. You know, we're talking less than 20 years. And so the reality is is that there just hasn't been a massive. The industry has not had A chance to build up enough depth of bench to be able to meet the demands of all the merchants that are trying to get e commerce or omnichannel commerce enabled. That's the reality. So I guess in that sense we're similar to the rest of the world. But where I think we differ is the absolutely pathetic pre Covid uptake of e commerce in this country even versus Australia. Pre Covid we were sitting at around 9% of all retail being E commerce in New Zealand, Australia was sitting at about 15%, UK 25 to 30% and America hovering somewhere around that 20% mark. So when we look at western nations, New Zealand is a backwater in terms of e commerce adoption. Therefore we had. I guess when you think of jumping the shark, so to speak, you go to this place where all of a sudden, overnight you have entire businesses needing to be re engineered at scale for digital and omnichannel commerce. That was a really bitter pill to swallow for a lot of Kiwi businesses who really hadn't thought about that old holy commerce thing very much. If they had, they had an E commerce solution that was maybe 5 to 10 years old and they really just hadn't paid a lot of love or attention to it. Then when you look at the logistical capabilities of businesses to fulfill 100% of their revenue through e commerce channels and distribution centers, again absolute nightmare for businesses to especially omnichannel businesses where maybe historically 80% of their business or 85% of their business has been done through a store state, 10 to 15% of their business was done through E comm and through a dc Then literally overnight the light switch gets flipped and now they got to do 100% through their DC and they're realizing shit, we are just not architected. Both from a people process system technology perspective. None of it is engineered for this. You had businesses trying to stand up e commerce solutions very rapidly where you had traditional, more monolithic projects that might need to go live in six to 12 months. Now people are saying look, no, I need to have something live in three months or less. Of course you have to reeducate people about budgetary expectations as well. If they haven't done an E commerce build in a decade, well, they've gone from an E commerce build maybe costing ten grand a decade ago to where a comprehensive omnichannel solution is 100 grand or more. Especially when you talk about the full stack of the solution, back end and front end and customer experiential parts of that. It gets very expensive very fast. So resetting expectations around MVP functionality to get someone up and transacting quickly. Resetting expectations about budget, resetting expectations around the need for digital capability to drive this machine. There was a whole lot of education that had to happen in a pretty short period of time. But the one thing I will say is that businesses, they had the resources to pour into digital unlike ever before and they realized, shit, this is a pretty systemic change. Sure, when things open up, we're going to go back to some semblance of normalcy, but a lot of these new online customers, they are going to be sticky to a large degree. Therefore, the fundamental nature of our business and the channel mix has changed forever.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, some great points in there. It's really interesting that you mentioned how New Zealand was slow and how your perception of it and you got so some great numbers in there. About 9% of retail being online pre Covid when New Zealand is traditionally a really creative country. So if you look at film, if you look at tv, if you look at advertising, New Zealand's held right up there in creativity and risk taking. Why do you think from an E commerce perspective they were so far behind?
Jason Greenwood: I think one of the reasons is because the traditional sort of advertising and creative industries, they serve an international clientele oftentimes. So we've got local agencies serving global clients and they're punching way, way, way above their weight globally. So you look at somebody like a Young and Chan for example, or somebody like that who is just. They've got a massive global client roster, right? I don't know what their split is between domestic and international clients, but I would say international makes up a big, big percentage of their client roster. You're right. I think that there's a bifurcation that's happened whereby a lot of businesses in New Zealand, they actually target international markets with their capabilities because that's where the market is. And they've just written New Zealand off in many respects and they just don't go after it because New Zealanders are known for a number eight wire mentality. Being able to do a lot of things themselves. You know, being able to run small businesses on their own, being able to sort of pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and you know, be pretty self sufficient. You know, we're down here in the bottom of the world and have had to be self sufficient for a long time. And so a lot of small business owners in particular, they have this mentality that I just will not pay anyone to do anything that I can do myself, even if it, even if it's more efficient, even if it's better, even if it's faster. If I can do it myself, I'm going to bloody do it myself. And because I just can't see spending money on it and, and that mentality is still pretty pervasive. It's slowly changing. And I'm an expat. I mean, I've been in New Zealand over 25 years, so I know New Zealand very well. I'm a dual citizen. But that is one of the key differences, I guess when I moved from the States to New Zealand that was really obvious and apparent is that Kiwis love to do shit themselves. And that's never really changed very much.
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Nathan Bush: So how does that work with your consultancy? Because you work across a number of B2B and D2C organizations who have probably, I imagine, call you up and go, jase, we need drastic change. We've been doing this ourselves for so long, all of a sudden we realize that we've been left behind. And you mentioned before, around the budgets not being where they are, the capabilities not being where they are. Where do you start?
Jason Greenwood: That is a very, very good question. And you're right, that is the question I usually get. Fortunately, I tend to focus on merchants that are doing, say, whether they're B2B, D2C, B2C doesn't really matter. But where I can start pulling some pretty big levers for them and helping them make sustainable systemic change across their whole organization. People process technology, brand and data and making sure that those are all harmonized and aligned for growth. Where I can pull big levers within a business is when they're doing about 5 million or more a year in revenue across all channels. It's even better if they're sort of already doing maybe 5 million a year through digital channels. But really it's only at that point and over maybe a little less, maybe 3 million. But realistically, I'm not targeting in the SMB space. I'm targeting medium enterprises and larger. I'm not targeting small businesses because the reality is that businesses that are smaller than that most of the time, they can go out, they can establish a Shopify store, they can get a hundred dollar theme, they can install 10 apps and they can go selling, they can run some Google Ads, Facebook ads. And if the popcorn pops and they grow and they can figure out how to rise above the noise and rise above the competition and break through, then that's where I can add some significant value to their business. But I'm not there primarily to hold their hand from 0 to 3 or 5 mil. I'm there to take them from 5 to 100 or 200 or 300 mil. That's where my experience really shines for me. You're right. Fortunately, I'm working with brands that have at least sufficient financial resources to sustain significant change over the medium to long term. That's the only way that I've been able to do it actually and have a business that's sustainable for me. Now where I support businesses of zero to say 3 to 5 million dollars of revenue is through all my free content. So free content, I put out my podcast, I put out content on LinkedIn. I've got a very inexpensive paid newsletter. So I try to cater at scale to those smaller businesses by putting out content that can hold their hand to, to help them pop as a piece of popcorn.
Speaker E: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Very generous with your content. Some great stuff out there. I can really recommend having a listen to at the Coal Face and the newsletter and go sign up to Jason's LinkedIn, have a look and you don't hold back on your opinions, which I love.
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, it's a double edged sword. Some people absolutely love that and they gravitate towards it and other people hate it. And that's what the block button's for. So that's cool. I don't set out to be offensive or I don't set out to be divisive. I guess just when you have strong opinions on something, that's the. Sometimes the outcome that's just kind of where the cookie crumbles, I guess.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So if you're going into a business and it's that 5 million plus and they say, Joyce, we need help, we need to transform, what would be your first question?
Jason Greenwood: I say show me your data. So the first thing that I will usually get them to show me is the state of their product, product data and the state of their customer data. That's the first thing. And then I'll beyond that, I will then start to unpick the systems they already have in place. So do they have an ERP or don't they? What does that look like? How old is it? How mature is it, how complete is it? How well implemented is it? I look at do they have a CRM, don't they? Do they have a marketing automation platform or don't they? Do they have a CDP or not? Do they have a PIM or not? What is the channel mix that is currently doing well for them? How are they attacking those channels? How are they doing in those channels and how are they servicing those channels both independently as well as collectively? I really look at what is the current state of where their business is at. To be honest, probably 80 to 90% of the time we have to fix data issues before we can do anything else. Oftentimes their data, particularly product data, is just not in a fit state for digital channels, it's just not ready. It's maybe particularly in B2B and maybe DTC channels where they historically have used BDMs or account managers or sales reps, field reps, whatever to sell their product. They've used almost pause or ERP level data to do that. And their data is an absolute debacle when it comes to anything you'd want to show to an end consumer through a self service channel. That's where we start.
Nathan Bush: Is it organizing the data or is it creating the data?
Jason Greenwood: It's both. Usually I'm working with a client right now who I went in and they had about three or four different product data models that they were running in their erp. We needed to first of all make the data model consistent across all their products. We then had to set about making the attributes and the attribute model consistent across all products. Then we had to really pull out what are the commonalities across products that we then can surface in a meaningful way to the customer on the front end journey to support the buying process. And it's an ongoing process. We're not 100% there yet, but we're probably 80, 90% of the way there yet. And even their parent child relationship between products in their ERP was not consistent. And I said, well, we can't surface this in a meaningful way to the customer until we have this data in a good place. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And what's the quickest win that you usually find when you go into an Organization. Is there something that consistently comes up that you go, look, this is a quick win. Let's get on with it and we'll get this win and then we'll move on to the bigger stuff?
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, look, I think one of the things that is a big win, particularly in B2B environments, is that all the progress we've made in B2C e commerce over the last decade in terms of systems and technologies that bring along with them embedded processes and embedded organizational design allow B2B businesses to adopt these technologies quickly and at scale and transform their business. Because we've gone through the pain of this over the last 10 years of B2C. I'm thinking of things like personalization. I'm thinking of things like search and merge. I'm thinking of things like loyalty. I'm thinking of things like CDPs and PIMs that are coming into their own, particularly in a B2C space. And even marketing automation and a whole lot of other things. Customer service is another one. Omnichannel customer service systems. Things like gorgeous, things like hero, things that are were originally designed primarily for B2C merchants. But those systems bring with them such amazing abilities to transform the customer experience just by turning it on. And it's relatively inexpensive to turn that tooling on. When you go in there and you talk to these businesses about all the changes that have happened over the last decade in commerce and they go, holy shit, they didn't even know. They literally, their eyes light up and they burst with excitement because they go, I had no idea this is where commerce had got to over the last decade.
Nathan Bush: That makes sense and I love the whole issue. We're definitely taking that as a grab for the intro of the show. Thank you for that.
Jason Greenwood: Sound bites are good, right?
Nathan Bush: Sound bites are brilliant. If we bring it back to Australian businesses looking to enter New Zealand because we obviously have a great relationship there and we've worked with a fair few businesses who are looking to expand into New Zealand. What do you find? That businesses entering New Zealand are often
Jason Greenwood: surprised by price sensitivity of Kiwi customers. That's probably the single biggest one. Australians we find are less risk averse. They're willing to take bigger chances. They have bigger budgets for everything, including technology. They've been really fast adopters of things like buy now, pay later and really fast adopters of of new commerce technologies, new channels, marketplaces. Australia, I think, is probably the most advanced market in the world right now. Around the sheer scale of marketplace business in Australia, it feels like a new marketplace opens up every week in Australia. It's like I have a sort of a saying around this is just another marketplace. Whenever I hear a new announcement out of Australia about a new marketplace. Okay, Jan, Just another marketplace. So it's just so funny how Australia has really carved out its place in the world, on the world stage from a technology and a marketing and channel mix perspective. And New Zealand is still a little bit behind. And as a result of that, Kiwis are more risk averse just by nature. They are more number eight wire, they are more do it yourself. And that translates even into budgets for discretionary income and, you know, retail purchases. So what brands oftentimes find when they come into Australia is they have to create a subset of their catalog that is really market suitable for the, for the New Zealand market. And they won't necessarily send all their catalog into the New Zealand market because it just won't sell as well. And then the other thing is weather. So Australians have fucking amazing weather for the most part. New Kiwis don't. We have shit weather for the most part. And so that is a massive difference when if you're a fast fashion brand, for example, and you're going to try to bring Gold coast type clothing into New Zealand, you're going to struggle. That's why brands like Mac Pac and Kathmandu have done so well in New Zealand because they've really tailored their product range for the Kiwi market. In the outdoors, the rugged outdoor space, the mountainous space, we have a different buying demographic, we have different personalities, it's a different culture. And as a result of that, and even different preferred payment methods like in Australia, PayPal is massive. It's one of the top payment methods in the whole country. PayPal. Fucking kiwis don't use paypal hardly ever. They just don't use it, you know. And with Buy now, pay Later, Kiwis is starting to, you know, get into the buy now, pay later space. But nothing like the Aussies. The adoption rate has been glacial compared to the Aussies and those are some of the really big differences. And I guess there's less competition particularly amongst the logistics space in New Zealand. Particularly if you're coming from Aussie into New Zealand and you're doing cross border commerce into New Zealand, 99% of the time you're going to be using New Zealand Post because that's what can get to every destination in the country via courier as well as standard postal mail. And there's fewer options, there's less competition here. And so yeah, those are some of the probably the biggest differences when you're looking at coming into the New Zealand market is we just have a different mindset, different market, different weather.
Nathan Bush: Those are the keys and there's also the whole. And this might not even be a big thing, but there's the whole address thing.
Speaker E: Right.
Nathan Bush: The whole address format is so totally different to Australia.
Jason Greenwood: Yes. And even phone number format is completely different. So. Yeah, absolutely. So that's why I usually recommend something like a locate or one of those third party services instead of using Google Maps. Because even in Australia Google Maps is pretty shit when it comes to addressing and quality of addressing or using a service like qas or something like that that can embed, whether it be through an app or a custom integration into your website so that you can have that address auto suggest and auto complete that's actually based on the local postal services address database. When you do that, it means that the likelihood of unsuccessful deliveries and therefore returns decreases markedly. So while there's an incremental cost add to run those services, it truly is almost incomparable to the pain that you will have if you don't get good addresses for your customers.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. That was a really interesting observation you made around marketplaces and how in Australia we just accept marketplaces as one of the key pillars of E commerce, but for the rest of the world it's emerging or it's a bit whatever and I've always hung onto that. New Zealand Trade Me was always the marketplace. Is the, Is that still the case?
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, they are the dominant marketplace here. Although having said that, obviously the market is doing very well here, particularly amongst new goods and direct market brands who want to sell direct to consumer via a marketplace. You look at the guys over the market, some of the top minds in Australia and Kiwi E Commerce have set up that business backed by the warehouse group with infinitely deep pockets. They've done a very, very good job at taking market share from trade me. But at the bottom end on the secondhand goods market in particular, Facebook market is taking it to trade me. My fiance for example, she buys and sells a lot on trademe or historically did and now does almost everything through Facebook market. She doesn't use trade me, she uses a fraction of what she used to. Trade Me still does well in things like vehicles and very, very specific verticals that they just own. Obviously they've got trade me jobs and they've got a couple of other verticals that they absolutely dominate, but certainly their grip over the last five years has weakened unlike we've ever seen. Before because of new market players coming in and really disrupting their entire business. Let's be honest, on the high end, brand new goods and direct to consumer, we've got the market and on the low end we've got Facebook. And that has changed the game for Trade Me. And look, are they still ridiculously profitable because they haven't rebuilt their core platform in ever? Yes, they're ridiculously profitable and yes, they will continue to throw off obscene amounts of cash for the foreseeable future. But are they now unassailable like they used to be? Absolutely not. And there's definitely chinks in their armor now.
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Nathan Bush: What did you make of last week's news about Amazon starting to deliver to New Zealand and New Zealand customers from Australia?
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, well, look, I think the only precedent we have to look back on and compare it to is when ebay tried to do exactly the same model about 10 years ago, and it may have been more like 12 or 13 years ago, they failed miserably and were sent packing by Trade Me back to Australia with their tail between their legs. Now, there's some fundamental differences now that I think will make Amazon's entry into New Zealand more successful. One is, at the time, one of the reasons why ebay did so poorly was because their site was so slow. And of course broadband wasn't that common and so high performance Internet here was really pretty rare and their site was just glacially slow as a result. Whereas Trade Me, because it was built during the dial up era, it was lightning fast. And so performance was never an issue with Trade Me. It was very, very fast, always from the beginning. So not only was Trade Me the first to market, but their site was just geared towards get that transaction done and get it done easily and quickly, find the product you want, put your bids in, put your auto bids in and get it done. Unfortunately, ebay, because their code base is such a, frankly a clusterfuck, they've always had problems with their ux. They've Always had problems trying to rewrite that and build out apps on top of it and everything else. And that was, you know, most pundits worldwide didn't really attribute it much to the performance. The performance was abysmal in New Zealand and so Kiwis would try it and frankly the range wasn't great for Kiwis. The range wasn't as good as it was in Australia, pricing wasn't that great, freight was expensive. So there was a whole lot of reasons why that whole cross border thing didn't work. And of course because ebay wasn't doing its own logistics at that point and it had no middle mile services to offer merchants. Basically it was left up to merchants to sort it out. So we had a major, major barriers to entry unlike anything we've ever seen. When ebay tried it, Amazon largely doesn't have to think about any of those issues because their performance is amazing. They have tons of their own logistics capability and of course about ready to open up the largest automated warehouse in the southern hemisphere in Sydney later this year. Dominate the middle mile, dominate pricing, dominate range and you have a ready and willing merchant based Australia now wanting access to the New Zealand market VI via Amazon. Now, do I think that this is where Amazon will stop? Absolutely not. They also haven't announced whether they're going to bring prime to New Zealand. Obviously prime is massively successful in Australia. It's helped to drive the underpinnings of their growth and I don't think prime gets enough credit for that to be honest. And I think if and when that is offered to Kiwis and if and when we have local logistics and even one local warehouse in New Zealand and a local domain, I think that changes the game even further. I think this is a test by Amazon. Look, they love western markets, they love English speaking markets, they love to leverage local assets to the max and they always start out slow and then they always end up dominating. Kiwi retailers better watch out because Amazon is now the 800 pound gorilla living on their doorstep.
Nathan Bush: What's your gut feeling around customer sentiment in New Zealand towards Amazon? Is it generally favorable?
Jason Greenwood: Look, I think like as in a lot of other parts of the world, people speak out of two sides of their mouth. They out of one side of their mouth, I say Amazon shit treats the warehouse people shit. It pays shit. You know, they don't allow unionization, they kill small business. They, they compete with their merchants, they sell direct against their merchants, they use their data against them. They're a frenemy at best. You know and all we would never support them. But yet we see Amazon's growth numbers. I think people talk a lot of shit, but I think their behavior says something differently. And we've seen the stratospheric growth of Amazon in Australia despite the likes of Catch, despite the likes of ebay, despite the likes of Kogan, despite the likes of the new Bunnings marketplace, despite the Meier market. We've seen Amazon take it to the market in Australia. I don't think many people gave them as much credit that they would ever get this far so fast. But if you've been watching them behave elsewhere in the world, you know this is absolutely their modus operandi. So I think that whilst Kiwis out of one side of their mouth they're going to say Amazon is shit and we won't support them because we don't like Bezos. The reality is they're going to buy where Kiwis love a deal, Kiwis love a deal and if they can get something they want at a cheaper price,
Nathan Bush: they're gonna do it.
Nathan Bush: Yep, it's the snake effect. It's the momentum that Amazon's built up
Speaker E: here in Australia is just incredible. And they don't do it with big launches, they do it little introductory features here and there and then all of a sudden they've got 25% of Australians signed up as prime members who go to Amazon as default for their shopping and you go, how did that happen? Because it's not a big fuss, it's just so slow and steady.
Jason Greenwood: Inexorable is the word.
Speaker E: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Now I am looking at your backdrop
Speaker E: and it is just incredible. And you mentioned a skill shortage in New Zealand. If you were early in your E commerce career and you went, wow, I would love to set myself up in New Zealand. In E commerce, what skills are in most demand?
Jason Greenwood: Pretty much anything to do with digital and E commerce. So whether that be if you're a creative, then obviously orientating your career around creative endeavors and design, all of the design elements, ux, UI marketing, design, marketing, creative at scale is in big demand. Particularly with the impending death of third party cookies and all of that targeted acquisition, really good retention based marketing, CLV based marketing becoming increasingly in demand, which means you have to treat customers better than we ever have had to treat them historically. Because historically e commerce treats customers as disposable. Unfortunately that's the reality. That's just being honest because acquisition historically has been so easy and cheap that it's created bad behavior by merchants and unfortunately it's going to take a few years for that bad behavior to go away. Obviously if you're highly technical and you're quite analytical, then anything to do with data analysis, data engineering, BI tooling, becoming expert in bi, whether that be through something like a glue IO or, or Google Analytics. Also anything to do with kind of tag manager or tag based implementations which are particularly from a data layer perspective are more complex than they've ever been. And especially with GA4 and everything else, massive opportunities in that space. So data scientists, data architects, all that stuff, very good. Anything to do with CRM marketing. So anything to do with retention based marketing and being able to segment customers based on behaviors and based on technology that allows you to segment unlike ever before. That's a really in demand skill. And then obviously technical chops. So you know, dev chops or like me, I'm a hyper technical non developer. So I'm a non developer but I read API docs and I understand all platforms that I deal with. I understand them at a really granular technical level so that I can become a senior, you know now, now at this stage of my career I'm a senior solution architect across pretty much every platform that I deal with. Started out as more of a BA level business analyst level of expertise and then over the years as I've architected on more and more platforms, it's grown into more of a full spectrum solution architecture skill. Big demand there, both front end and back end development. And obviously in a SaaS world when we talk about back end development, we're not talking so much server side stuff, we're talking more app and integration based development and also custom front end logic based development. So anything to do with React, anything to do with JavaScript, JavaScript, anything to do with microservices, anything to do with APIs, all massively in demand pretty much if you have a skill or an interest. And the same with copywriting, if you're creative and you like to write copy, then obviously the demand for really high quality SEO friendly copy and product data management and then of course just pure digital marketing skills. So understanding how the mix of both transactional and digital marketing channels work together to deliver all the way from consideration, all the way through acquisition and remarketing, if you can understand that and you can understand the psychology of buyers, there's just going to be almost infinite demand. So it almost doesn't matter what your natural inclination is. The digital equivalent of that is in demand.
Speaker E: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And are you finding that New Zealand businesses are open to remote and flexible work or is it very much an office mentality?
Jason Greenwood: You know, pre Covid, I would have said it was very much an office mentality. But Covid has definitely changed, albeit slowly. There's still a lot of businesses that now they're sort of forcing most employees back into the business. But I tell you, that is going to be a major attractant for top talent is a your willingness to hire remote both outside of New Zealand and inside of New Zealand, people that want to telecommute versus physically commute and when even on the North Shore, I'm in the northwest of Auckland and even to get to the north shore of auckland is a 40 minute drive which is not that far. It's like 15k down the road, 20k down the road. When we're talking those kind of commutes, at least flexibility around, hey, two days, Monday and a Friday we're in the office, but Tuesday or maybe Monday and Friday we're out of the office and Tuesday through Thursday we're in the office. Or some blend of that I think is going to become very much the norm over the next decade. And certainly hiring remote talent, especially on a consultancy basis, is becoming much more acceptable even in other countries outside of New Zealand. I just signed my first international client in Ireland recently. I deal with a lot of obviously I consider Australians local clients, but outside of my immediate region of Anz, I just took on an Irish large B2B Irish business and they found out about me through LinkedIn and reached out to me and had a meeting with the CEO late at night, my time, my first call with them and within two days of that first call they had signed a contract and paid their first invoice. It happens, right?
Nathan Bush: I can't let you go. And you've given us such a great overview of the New Zealand market and where it sits right now. But I can't let you go without you giving us your top tip for standing out on LinkedIn because you do it so well. What would you say to people who want to use LinkedIn as a platform to really get their personal story out there?
Jason Greenwood: Wow, that's a tough one. Only because I don't have any great hack for you. But the one thing that I think for me has made me stand out is the fact that I'm prepared to take very controversial positions. So I have strong opinions based on experience or what I like to think is based on experience, and I'm not afraid to share those, even if I know they might be slightly unpopular or not on trend. So, you know, for example, you know I've gone against the headless train. You know, everybody's saying, headless, headless, headless, headless. And I'm, I've been one of the very vocal, few, very vocal people in the market saying 99% of merchants don't need to do headless and they definitely don't need to do it right now. It's immature, it's going to cost you a lot, it's going to take a lot of time and you're going to lose a lot of the benefits of SaaS platforms while you're at it. And that's a very unpopular position to take. But it also positions me, I guess, hopefully, in a way as a thought leader around my position because I back that up. I don't just issue a throwaway statement, I document why I believe that's the case. And I'm willing to have that debate or discussion with anybody who believes otherwise. And so I guess that would be my one piece of advice is don't be afraid to take strong positions that you believe in, even if you think it kind of goes against the grain.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you're still doing there is you're still offering value to people. It's not like you're just throwing this out there and going, this is my opinion, take it or leave it. It's like I'm willing to discuss it. And I think the same, the same happens for people who take LinkedIn so seriously. And sometimes it's easy to stand out on LinkedIn if you do things just a little bit differently, make it funny, make it, you know, controversial, just don't try. And just because it's a business platform doesn't mean you've got to put on suit and tie and be the most boring person in the world. Right?
Jason Greenwood: Yeah. And look, I think also brands in particular are really bad about not unshackling their team members to be vocal. So they've got lengthy social media policies that basically scare everybody in the business to death to where they aren't themselves on social media and they basically just repost what their CEO or what their CMO has posted on LinkedIn and then they, and then they give it a thumbs up on the repost and that's the sum total of what they do. And I think brands have a lot to answer for in that regard. And I think that homegrown Lexer out of Melbourne is a really good example of a brand who has unshackled their team to be extremely vocal about what they're passionate about on LinkedIn. And it's still very relevant and it's still very educational. But man, the personality of their team members shines through in their posts. And it's funny because I talked with Nick at Lecture on my podcast and I said, what do you guys do to get your people to be so vocal about their passion, which is your business? Do you pay them? What is it? And he just said, no, we just hire really passionate people that it spills over and we don't have really tight policies around that where we're going around and policing what they do and say. And so therefore they feel like they can just be really vocal. So that right there, I guess, is an example of an Australian business doing it well when it comes to empowering their teams to do so things.
Nathan Bush: I thought it was just in the cool merch that they had.
Jason Greenwood: Well, they do have some pretty cool merch. They do have some pretty cool merch, I gotta say.
Speaker E: That's awesome.
Nathan Bush: Jason, you've been so generous with your insights and your time. Thank you so much. What's next for yourself and Greenwood Consulting? I know that you've just picked up that first international contract. What are you really focusing on?
Jason Greenwood: Yeah, look, it's more of the same in the sense of B2B and D2C merchants, but I'm also going all in on my content game. I'm speaking in Queenstown at Retail Global New Zealand now that the world's starting to open back. I used to speak at probably two to three conferences a year pre pandemic. I'd like to get back to that, to be honest, because I do like the speaking circuit. I really enjoy it. I have a lot of fun meeting with industry people and hopefully bringing new insights to the table. So I want to do a lot more of that over the next 12 to 24 months, get back into that doubling down on the newsletter and the podcast. And look, I've loved. You've upped your consistency game. You're putting out, I think about three podcasts a week at the moment. I don't think I can catch up with you. I don't think I can keep up with you at that pace. But I've committed to one episode a week. Every single week drops on a Thursday, religiously, 11am New Zealand time. I'm going to continue that up and then just see where the next content opportunities emerge. But I'd like to eventually, like in a perfect world, I'd probably get to a place where I only take on maybe one or two consulting clients per year to stay Sharp. But then I'm focusing much more on content and education and speaking at conferences because that's my true love. My true love is really educating people and producing content. That's what I really, really enjoy doing.
Nathan Bush: You can make such a big difference at scale that way, can't you?
Jason Greenwood: Well, you know, obviously speaking in person doesn't really scale that well either. But yeah, look, it's, I, you know, you know, I have to give Gary Vaynerchuk some credit in that. Whether you love him or whether you hate him, in early 2018, I was listening to him and I was pretty into him, especially at the time, and I was sort of listening to every piece of content you put out and he just kept hammering home, well, if you think you're such a fucking thought leader, put your thoughts out there and let's see, let's see what the market thinks, you know, put your money where your mouth is and actually start putting your content out there for open critique. And if you're not doing that, you're not a fucking thought leader. And you know, he basically said, get off your ass, pull finger and start putting content out there because you've got no excuse. You've got a phone, you've got no excuse. And I have to give him credit for kicking my ass so consistently. Every single piece of content I saw from him, he just beat on me to the point where I find like, okay, okay, I'm going to start producing content and I've been consistent ever since. And so I got to give him credit for that.
Nathan Bush: You're going to be known as Jason G. Of the E Commerce world now.
Nathan Bush: You know,
Jason Greenwood: something like that.
Nathan Bush: Now how can.
Nathan Bush: You've got so many great resources out there. Now's the time to, to direct people to where they can get more of Jason Greenwood. Where can people go?
Jason Greenwood: LinkedIn, obviously. First I put out more content there than probably anywhere else. It's been a really good platform for me. Really like the sort of business focus of the platform works really well for my audience. And then they seem to love it, obviously at the Coalface podcast, on every podcast engine pretty much on the planet. At the Coalface Digest, you can Google that. It's the premium newsletter if you want to sign up. It's dirt cheap in my opinion, and it's just, it's a no brainer for anybody working in the industry, in my opinion. But obviously it's up to the people to make up their own mind. And then I do do a little bit of stuff across Instagram and a little bit of stuff across YouTube and Facebook, but my focus primarily is LinkedIn, podcasts and newsletter. That's the big three.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. So much great stuff out there. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today. Jason. It's been awesome talking to you mate.
Jason Greenwood: Thanks for having me on and yeah, but man, I'm a big, like I said, I'm a big fan and I love all the work you're doing and all the content you're putting out too man. I think between the two of us we've we've got anz pretty well covered.
Nathan Bush: One day we'll get the two to unite once this bubble's back in place.
Jason Greenwood: Totally looking forward to can't wait to see you again in person soon.
Nathan Bush: You too. Thanks mate.
Jason Greenwood: Cheers man. Bye.
Nathan Bush: So even though Jason is so well
Nathan Bush: connected across both Australia and New Zealand,
Nathan Bush: it was so great to get the chance to dive into the world of just New Zealand e commerce with him. And what did I take out as the main differentiators between Australia and New Zealand? My top three would have to be that one. Kiwi customers are more price sensitive, so you need to really think about your range and your pricing strategy before entering the market. Don't assume it's just a copy and
Nathan Bush: paste from what you've done in Australia.
Nathan Bush: The second thing that stood out for me is around the reliance on of marketplaces in Australia never really stuck with me how ingrained they are in our psyche and that that may not carry across to New Zealand as well as it does here. And the third thing is that Jason touched so much on how there is so much opportunity for growth and development in the New Zealand market. It's still early stages, they may be a little bit behind Australia even with the great uptake in After Covid, but still so much opportunity over there and it is not too late to finish up. I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the E commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12High12h I g h.com au forward/hi5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check out it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
