Speaker 1so welcome to another of the simo marketing podcasts um i am in the back of a shop here and that is really really kind of suitable for the man that we have on the show today um very quickly before we get started my name is simon dell i run a business called simo we're australia's largest fractional marketing network if you want to find out more about us www.simo.com we essentially match people who have marketing issues and we match them with the right people or solutions so we're not an agency um we're a fractional marketing network which is kind of my wanky term for not saying an agency but um with all that out of the way if you do like this uh you do enjoy the today's show please rate us and review us wherever you watch this uh that would be super helpful um but enough of that um we're talking to a gentleman today uh dean salakis uh so welcome first of all welcome to the show how are you very well indeed um dean is a retail guru that's probably the best two words that we could use to describe him but dean give us a bit of a give us the the sort of uh you know the three minute overview of your career because it's it's been very interesting and i think there's obviously a lot that we can learn from you today
Speaker 2yeah retail guru is very generous i uh i'm not sure about that but um uh three minutes geez i always say to people dean they gotta do it in three
Speaker 1minutes you we gotta do it like it's a like a film trailer right so you take all the best bits all the explosions and the sex scenes and shove it in three minutes all
Speaker 2right we'll see what we can do i guess yeah just i'll try for three minutes i'll look at the bottom corner and see if i can keep it there but um yeah so i guess i started my career out at i had a family business my mom started the party people which was a party supplies retailer um selling balloons decorations costumes she actually started as a clown and she developed it into a biz a retail business um that's a whole story in itself i was gonna say there is so much to digest there's a lot to it there's a lot to unpack there actually that's a lot to unpack you gave me three minutes so i'm gonna keep moving um uh as a kid four years old i'd work in the family business you know packing packing stuff and doing things and yeah just helping around the shop but as i in retail from the very beginning and um went to university uh while i was working in the family business did a university project where i was looking at the marketing and launched the business online with uh sorry backtrack a little bit while in high school i launched the business online um in 1999 became australia's first retailer top for click and collect in 2003 i was doing a uni project discovered this thing called google ads which was coming to australia google adwords and launched on there and i became google adwords first advertiser and i was paying one cent a click there's a lot to unpack here but we'll just keep moving um oh god yeah so
Speaker 1many questions i need to follow up on here but go
Speaker 2on yeah keep going yeah there's a few things there um and yeah and i built that business i actually went on to work at woolies and i was still working the family business part time so i went to the head office and i was a business analyst and there's a lot to unpack there as well won an innovation award there and did some fun stuff and sat on new line committees and got to report to the board stupid things they do and um and then i had an opportunity my mom wanted to exit the business so my brother and i essentially acquired it because they had a buyer and um she didn't want to give it to us that was just her way of making sure we didn't take things for granted so and so yeah we bought the business in 2007 i was still working at woolies all the way to 2009 and we were going through triple digit growth so i decided to take the leap and jump into the business full-time by 2009 and um the the business was just on a rocket ship from the beginning and and we kept that rolling and uh we had ups and downs like every business owner has so you know the first few years were just we were flying and then as things got bigger it got you know we made we made a lot of mistakes so we we um we had the roller coaster that you have when you grow a business and uh from good times to really bad ones and um but yeah towards covert and there's a whole nother thing to unpack there we we came out of covert very strong and made an acquisition um that acquisition someone came and acquired off us 18 months later for a lot more than we paid for it and then um they wanted to buy the rest of the business which they did um in december 2024 so i took an exit from the party people in 2024 and um and then i decided i wanted to go fishing every day and that would be my life and um that didn't agree with me so people started calling me asking me for help with stuff and little projects and i kept picking up sort of if you want to call it consulting gigs i said two things when i sold the business i'm not going to become a consultant i'm not going to do a startup um started consulting and that that that that was fun for a bit and then um went to one of the conferences started a whatsapp chat with jethro marks uh to figure out where we're going to go drinking one night that chat group was 100 people by the end of the first day it was 300 by the end of the conference and now it's 4 000 plus uh 18 months later and that's become my primary focus now is continuing to build the community so i'm still doing consulting on the side but to be honest i i'm pretty selective with the work i'm taking and um and i focus on on the community because i just need to give it space and air and you know i've been through business a long time well i've had four exits now and i know that we're we're on that rocket ship again you know we've we've grown really fast in 18 months and this is a really critical phase for me to continue to continue the momentum um it's the hardest part to keep that momentum and um and also not get lost in what you're doing so um yeah i'm working it all out again and i'm in a startup and two things i said i wouldn't do i'm doing both of them so that's where i am today we we all say
Speaker 1i was one minute over now that's cool we we all say that we'll never do it again and everyone does that again because it's maybe some sort of masochist in us all that says you know it'll be different this time and it never is so it never is um look i'm not gonna there's a thousand things to unpack there but i want to i want to talk about retail and today and you know get your your thoughts on that because you know we've got 30 minutes and whatever and that's and that's what i want to you know focus on yeah um and look there's a there's a there is a there is a lot of questions um but for the my first one was to get your thoughts on um online the state of online at the moment because you know we're seeing you know we're seeing that takeover of amazon of of and all those kind of things we're just seeing these these beasts in the marketplace in a what is a relatively small marketplace you know australia's you know what 27 28 million people um how did how did how does small retailers stand out in in in that kind of environment
Speaker 2yeah i would say um that's a really good question it's it's it's not easy and i think um um well where do i go with this i would say one mistake i see people make a lot let's talk about what what doesn't work so well and that's buying customers is difficult um yeah businesses that are totally reliant on buying customers they do work so i'm not saying it's it's it's it's it doesn't work definitely you can buy customers um and that's through digital advertising and stuff like that and it should always be part of your mix 100 um but where you want to get to with growing a business is you to stand like you want to you know you want to have an amazing product and by an amazing product i mean you want to solve a customer problem better than anyone else yeah um and there's a very big distinction there um and that's probably number one thing i mean you could you could argue retail is really simple you've got to have a great product that solves a problem and you've got to make sure everyone knows about it and you can't have one without the other you can't like i see so many businesses that are amazing at what they do but nobody knows about them and it's not enough to be amazing you've got to make sure people know about you so to stand out you know the answer that question it's funny because i would say every business i've built i've had four exits now and each time the strategy's been slightly different um well not slightly it's been quite different um but i've always made a lot of noise and i think you've got to make noise about what you do the big thing i said it was like you know people introduce themselves you say what are you doing oh i'm just uh whatever and you're like there's a mistake right there like i'm just like when people ask me dean what do you do i'm like hey guys i'm the chief party dude we have australia's largest party store we're the biggest and the best um you know we help people make have the parties they dream about yeah just come straight out right yeah and uh you know and i think it's important that you need to you know scream from the rooftops what you do be proud of it and that's i think you just got to make a lot of noise about what you're doing with it's media pr you know i think that's the key thing
Speaker 1is just making noise it's it's i i hear that that problem so many times and not just in retail right i get people that coming to me you know b2b software developers right and you know they've got a good team they've got a smart team they've got smart people they've got a good product and they all sit there and just we don't know how to tell people about what it is that we do um and you know and i think retail is probably a little bit easier in some sense about making a noise i think there's lots of things you do if if you're if you're a b2b software developer it's it's so hard to sort of you know i i always say to them it's like you need to find someone to stand on top of the building and shout across the roofs about how how good you are yeah you do and and you know i think that's the key thing i think that's the key thing i think that's the key thing that's in b2b and those sort of more drier spaces that's symptomatic of the people that are running the business are good at what they do they do right they're good at software development that's why they start a software development business but i think if you're in retail um i think i've shared the wrong link so people are people are accidentally joining the wrong um the wrong chat but i think if you're in retail you have to be a a marketer too um i think you i think that to a degree is part and parcel we're all in sales everyone yeah when you're running a business you're in sales yeah you've got you've got to be able to where was i watching the other day something that somebody was talking about how when you're in this kind of business it's there's a lot to do with charisma and it's interesting you know talking to you and seeing you talk charisma is such an important part of retail and i think i think it's i'm not sure i call it charisma i mean okay well that's i was
Speaker 2going to say yeah that's i mean you see it as charisma um i just i i just like being real with people and trying to help that's it's that simple like i just love helping people i just want to try my best to help people and like i get up on stage and i speak a lot and and for those people that are listening that have heard me speak they'll tell you that i'm not the most polished speaker i don't get up there i don't walk up and down the stage i'm for all intensive purposes i would probably say i'm in terms of the craft of speaking um probably average you know um but i get up there and i guess i think about my audience and i just want to make sure they get heaps of value so people come away from my talks i don't say you're an amazing speaker they go oh that helped or that was great or i really learned something yeah that's what i get that's the feedback i get like people do say to me like i said what do you think of those and i'll be like yeah you're okay as a speaker but the content was awesome although you know or i took this this one takeaway that i just you know people come to me five years after i've you know they've heard me speak it's like oh you'd still use that concept today or whatever so you know i guess you see it as charisma but i guess i just see it as trying to help and trying to yeah do good in the world you know yeah i
Speaker 1it was i watched a video the other day and the guy was mentioning that word charisma and i think you know i there's no we're not getting a long argument about it now but i felt that was an appropriate word because it combined knowledge passion um enthusiasm all those kind of things if someone's charismatic they tend to be a lot of whether it's you personally or whether it's your brand has charisma you know i think that to me feels like a you know something that i think is important for um for retailers how important taking taking the next step from that we still often we talk in you know retail about that that retail experience about how once you step into a store step through the doors how important is that you know talk to me about what that was like with the party people what do you think about people walking in the doors what were they what were they hit with yeah i mean
Speaker 2people that walked into the party people the first thing people were like and i mean i had this almost every time people would walk in and be like wow this place is massive you know and um and you know you'd walk into my store there'd be balloons everywhere it's decorations it's packed to the roof with product it's yeah displays everywhere like i mean we're talking uh walk into my store and it was eight meters for the roof or whatever yeah um and i think it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a but you had just stuff in there everywhere and it just was like i mean we're a party store so we could be a little messier but make it really sort of visually appealing when you walked in so people just came in and had that wow factor from the get-go and um that that was great because people just come in straight away they've you know you know people judge you on your first five seconds like a person the stores are saying they judge you as soon as they walk in and they walk in and they're like holy moly this is amazing yeah um where's the where's the back of the store they can't even see it you know that experience is just a great way to start who else do you think
Speaker 1is doing that well out there then from an experience perspective i mean all
Speaker 2these large format stores some are doing great like you feel that when you walk into like a mecca they do a great um you know there's definitely a few guys that do it that create that wow factor you've got like you know um uh culture kings you know do it well um so yeah some of these brands are doing it great jd sports i did a store walk with them that's great you walk in there you just feel the vibe straight away um you get that from the staff you get that from the way the merchandising is done you get that from the visuals they've got all these you know fun video going on in the store so yeah i think there's a few people doing it really really well and just thank you
Speaker 1when you walk in there's obviously and we're not gonna we won't mention names because you know because you want to obviously carry on working in this industry um but there's obviously a few people that are not doing it well and you know we've seen that we've seen that slew of businesses failing in over the last almost almost with regularity i think every year there's some there's some big names go do you think that that's that's largely down to the fact that that that experience they've left that experience behind and just become a bit formulaic or they've got staff that don't care or the product hasn't been refreshed is that do you think that do you see a trend there in those businesses failing look definitely
Speaker 2i would say on the face of it you you see the experience has deteriorated and that's yeah and often people say oh the problem was the experience was crap you look at barbecues galore lynn craft these guys people going well they they lost their way when it came to experience um i think the easy thing to do is just profess to know the answer like businesses are complex and hard like i mean as a business owner every day people are coming to going oh you could do this so much better or did you you know have you had this idea or whatever like it's easy from the outside to have an opinion i would say being internally is a bit harder and the reason i say these i think some of these big failures there's much more to the story than just the experience being terrible there was something that started it like barbecues galore is a great example where you know as i understand it they were pretty constrained cash wise and capital wise and the first thing to go was these loyalty programs and experience stuff and the in-store the sexy stuff that made them great and that was a spiral downwards for them but it wasn't the first thing that was the problem there were other there were other problems before the experience fell away yeah um but a hundred percent i mean like we say we say experience i think the bigger the bigger problem and i and i and i have this conversation with a lot of entrepreneurs and and business owners and even large enterprises ask them you know what what problem do we solve for the customer i think it's got to start there like what problem do you solve like my party store the the thing differentiated me from everyone everyone thought they were in the business of selling party products i looked at it that i was in the business of helping people have parties yeah and it seems like a tiny distinction it seems like semantics but it's not it makes the biggest difference when you start thinking about strategy and things you do do your officers that don't make any money yeah you do because that's about helping people have parties do you do this do you do that for the customer anything that's about helping them have a party you do it because that's on mission and it's on brand yeah um a business that just tries to sell products and we're not going to where my business is right now but that's their focus right now and it's not how i see the right
Speaker 1strategy if you were starting the party people today in 2026 what
Speaker 2would you do differently what would i do differently oh look i think i'd open more stores but i was always on that mission to be honest i just okay i'd probably would have raised capital i think one thing i was always shy of was letting someone in and and having a business partner um to accelerate the growth um i think that's probably the main thing if i was to look back you're just letting someone in especially when you're on the rocket ship i think that the the thing is people ask for money when things are bad you need to ask for money when things are really really good um because you're selling them that dream and you're on the rocket ship and they want to come on the rocket ship they don't want to come on board when things are bad and you're just a good business like it was really hard to try to raise and you're just a good business look
Speaker 1obviously you know we can't have these conversations without mentioning you know ai and artificial intelligent and how that's how that's impacting what do you see what do you see the trends out there i mean like are there a lot of retailers using it is there still low levels of adoption what what do you see happening in that space there's a full spectrum going on at
Speaker 2the moment but definitely things are moving faster than they used to and i think that's more than ever in my time as a retailer things are moving so fast and there's such a big gap between the guys that are using ai there's there's guys in the retail community that are using ai that half the stuff they talk about i don't understand anymore and um there's other people that are just using chat gpt you know i mean i had coffee with someone yesterday that's not even using that but like you've got such a broad spectrum of of of people adoption um yeah it's all over the place to answer your question it's all over the place i think i think the one thing if i was to put people's mind at ease because everyone's probably anxious about they know i can do so much but they they're probably not using it to its potential that's that's the majority of people and uh that's probably almost everyone but um you know no one's an expert i think is the best way to put it so yeah you know when people think i don't know enough well nobody nobody is the expert at the moment everyone's learning because it's just it's a changing day by day situation yeah i
Speaker 1mean look i obviously you know as we said at the start i'm sitting here in the back of a retail shop um and you know a lot of the things that you've said so far i'm sort of nodding and going okay you know this is this is important for me to understand um but um ai to me has been has been an extra member of staff um you know it allowing claude to who have access to the back end of my shopify site to get it to upload orders write descriptions um you know put things into categories the sort of thing that i can set it going and then walk away and have dinner with the kids and come back and it's done is to me is is revolutionary that is it's crazy you know um and does it make mistakes absolutely um you know it's it's written descriptions for games that we sell here that it just inferred the inferred how the game works based on the title of the game um but it's it's about training it it's about teaching it it's about telling giving it boundaries and rules in which to operate um so you know it's it's it's an amazing tool and i i think the main thing i worry about bigger picture stuff is that you know i have two children who are you know seven and ten years old and what hell what the hell the job market looks like in 10 years time if they decide that they want to go into retail yeah you know what do you what do you think what do you see that do you see a fundamental shift in everything by then or this is this
Speaker 2is a can of worms we could go down here i would say like you know and i did a linkedin post yesterday on how robots are counting in kmart bunnings at the moment they've got these little robots that look like a they look like your robo vac if anyone's got a robo vac and it's got a little pole on and it's looking at the inventory levels on every shelf and it's doing an inventory count every night um you know so you've already replaced stock takers in some of these stores um you know i've seen overseas i've seen robots stacking shelves um you know so we are entering an age where you know ai can do almost anything a human can do and it's going to be really interesting future i would say look and i'm it's going to be so controversial and everyone's got an opinion on this but i would say i don't think ai is going to take all our jobs i think um it will take jobs but we will do something else like i think of when online came around and when when the when the computers came around when computers came around everyone went oh they're going to take all our jobs they don't need computers anymore like they used to we used to calculate everything manually now computer does it all gonna lose our job well people found different things to do so i think we're going through that phase now where people will do different things and the society will evolve the challenge is that it's moving faster than it did with computers so yeah people have people probably won't adapt as fast as then so a lot of people are going to be put out pretty substantially and it's going to be a real tough time emotionally for a lot of people that their jobs no longer required because an ai can do it um but i think so i think people need to be thinking about how do i where do i need to be in the next five or ten years with what i do where do i fit in i think that's the question you need to be asking rather than worrying too much about taking a job because jobs will be there we'll find a way i think but yeah you've got to figure out where you fit you
Speaker 1know my my opinion again which may seem controversial is that you know we we we moved sort of in the 50s and 60s maybe the 70s to you know both parents working um in society you know that that became the normal and i and i and i have this feeling that as ai starts swallowing up some of these jobs that you know we need maybe what that will start and allow us to free us to sort of go well you know if economically we're sound enough um maybe we don't both we don't need both parents working anymore maybe we can have the father or the mother staying at home and raising families and and then families get bigger and become more important but i
Speaker 2think quality of life will improve for sure yeah yeah yeah computer made our lives better i would say yeah yeah absolutely absolutely um
Speaker 1what was my my last question today was well let's let's just continue on that one for a second because cost of living impact is is is making you know is causing some challenges um for everybody do you think this this is a big call i hope i know the i know how you answer this do you think the physical store is more important today than it has ever been or is it just is is that are we losing that significance or you know if someone's sitting there going do i do i focus on e-commerce or do i um you know do i open more physical stores it's interesting when i said to you what you would do differently from the party people and the answer was open more physical stores yeah so i'm guessing you still feel that that physical ability to walk in and interact with somebody is still important
Speaker 2yeah but let me let me unpack a few sort of reasons why i'd say okay yeah first up but the reasons why one when when e-commerce was growing like even today if you ask the average punter who's not in retail what percentage of business is done online versus in stores i would say almost all of it it's like 80 online and it's not it's only 20 only 20 of all retail sales are online and that's after 30 years of growth right it's growing slowly in our lifetime if you look at the curve of if you and i've done it if you look at the curve of if you and i've done it if you look at the curve of i've got a graph in the background but you know if you look at the adoption of ai sorry store sales versus physical store sales versus online sales it's creeping right it's creeping at less than one percent right and in our lifetime physical stores will be the majority of retail sales in our lifetime based on the curve the graph nothing has moved the needle people would say oh we've got 5g coming it's gonna we're gonna have this massive leapfrog of adoption of shopping online and we um every time there's been an innovation online the needle hasn't moved that much yes covid was the biggest one that moved the needle yeah it just went through the roof online shopping and then it came back to the curve so that's number one i would say physical stores are going to be where the majority of retail sales are done in the future now that's a generalization because some categories are 80 online and 20 store and vice versa so that's a that's a generalization but that's the general thing the other thing i would say is that you look at this this is what opened my eyes to validating it further was i went to the u.s and in in march for shop talk and we take aussies to to vegas every year for shop talk to you know to see the best what the best in the world are doing and actually where i got the biggest you know learning was sitting at the airport i'm sitting at the airport there's an amazon go store which is fully automated right you just walk in pick up stuff and walk out um there's a self-checkout kiosk it's just like think of like a bunch of fridges with a little self-checkout station and you can just grab everything out of the fridge put it in the put it in the self-checkout station or pay and walk off yeah neither neither of these two concepts were busy but you looked over at the manual store where people had to walk in and get served by by yeah soon and it was like buzzing right people in there walking around like as human beings whatever the psychology you know we don't have time to go but there's a psychology there that people just want to interact with people and don't so so i think for me that kind of just answered it for me is that physical stores are going to be part of the mix forever or for our lifetime anyway let's just say that and i think it's critically important and i'll just leave with a third thing every time someone opens a store i hear this from every retail i've never heard contrary to this every time they open a store in an area let's say so culture kings open their store in in vegas yeah online sales in the us went through the roof yeah you open a store in a new suburb online sales in that area go through the roof and every retail i speak to validates that is what happens so people often think if you're in a new suburb you're going to be able to open a store it's going to cannibalize your sales it's completely the opposite yeah so i just think yeah moving forward physical stores and we're and you know i'm saying that but you look at all the pure plays for the last five ten years they're all static to do physical plays you got osheran beauty opening stores adore beauty opening stores you've got you know all these pure play businesses starting to open stores and yeah there's a reason because they've seen that trend already and then
Speaker 1look i i had um and i'm forgetting his name now but he was on my podcast in the early days the osheran beauty guy yeah guy yeah one of the one of those two of them isn't there two there yeah it would be guy anthony anthony
Speaker 2no it was anthony i think oh
Speaker 1maybe no i think it was anthony actually yeah you know i think it was anthony um it was in the 30 30 or 40 30s or 40s the number in the number of podcasts because we're in something like 160 now but it was back in 30s and 40s but anyway but that was before they they had the retail the retail play um so yeah and i saw one of his stores open in intrapilly which is my local shopping center and i was like oh my god i'm going to open a store in and i was like you know that was i remember that you know i remember having those early discussions about would you move into to retail and and and i think in those early days they were like yeah yeah that's that's on our plan you know and but obviously it's become such a you know cornerstone of their their their business now but um but it's it's interesting i think just the learnings you know for those who listening to this who don't know me my background is marketing and it has been for 20 years and i opened this retail store sitting behind me about six weeks and we sell we sell board games board games puzzles it's nothing in here there's nothing in this shop with batteries a screen or requires a charger other than my till right everything in here is about you know using your brain social you know building you know relationships with you know family around the table that kind of thing the very traditional stuff um and and there's things in here that range from eight dollars squishy things for kids for eight dollars up to ball games that cost three hundred dollars and then you've got a lot of things that are $180 um and i think the most important learning that i've taken out of this in the last six weeks that has made my life so much easier and we've talked about experience today you've talked about really early on about what problem do you solve and things like that right to me and it's lucky that i'm in this industry but to me it's been having people working here who are so passionate about games and board games and all those kind of things one of the guys who owns 350 board games yeah he was a former ceo cto ceo he's five years away from retirement and he just went i don't want to do that anymore yeah yeah um he said i want to be i want to sit in here eight hours a day and talk to people about board games yeah you know and i think if you if you're building a retail business and my lesson to people out there would be go and go and find people who work in your to work in your business who are passionate about what you're doing and if you're in fashion find someone that's passionate about fashion if you've got if you're hair and beauty find people that are interested in hair and beauty right because if you get those right people it just makes your life so much easier 100 and we've been open six weeks and we've had 25 star google reviews already every single one of them bar maybe two has mentioned one of the staff in the review and that speak that to me speaks volumes about them yeah and what's important to the customer when they come in here yeah for sure
Speaker 2definitely 100 and i did the same with the party people like i had people that were passionate about helping people have
Speaker 1parties you know it it makes i i think a lot of people a lot of people lose sight of that and sit there and go you know is it better for me to employ a 18 year old on a casual low low base wage or should i get somebody that's a bit more invested in the products that i'm selling um who might be more expensive um and i think that second option sort of will pay massive dividends in the end yeah i mean soon
Speaker 2we'll give you at the crossroads of do we hire an ai robot to sit at the checkout or do we hire that second person you mentioned that he's passionate and i'd still hire the passionate person and
Speaker 1not every day every day it's interesting you say about the that checkout thing i mean i i remember going into a uniqlo store the one here in brisbane where they have those those dump bins where you just put your clothes in and it scans everything yeah yeah and it tells you what you got to pay and you do that and i was like i just and there's still there's there's two people sitting behind a till and i was like i just want to go over there you know i i get that this might be quicker and easier and i don't know i just it's amazing how people want to buy from people
Speaker 2yeah even in the supermarket i don't know if this is not everyone's the same as this but i know when i go through the supermarket and i've got the self-checkout option and i've got a person um i'm only going to self-checkout because it's quicker otherwise i prefer to get served by the person
Speaker 1i think for me when i'm spending when i'm doing the weekly shop and i've got to feed two boys and i'm spending 200 300 i'm going i'm going through the self-checkout here because number one i don't want to do it i don't want to be putting 300 you know 300 dollars worth of food through a self-checkout but um you know i want to go through the i mean i want to go through the demand checkout yeah um you know i think yeah it's it's the evolution of retail at the moment i think is is fast it is to a degree a little bit scary yeah but i think as you've probably seen the people that do it well are really going to smash it out of the park
Speaker 2yeah i would say the people that are thinking back to that how do i help my customer solve their problem more than anything else and just focus on the customer i think that's the key you know people that just think how do i automate everything probably going to make some big big mistakes like i mean if you if you automate you know you can get amazon go to run your store your that's going to work out for you very well you know yeah um so i think just being careful about because you know like your brand your emotional connection with your customer the more you automate the tent depending on how close to the customer that is the more you lose that connection with the customer yeah i mean not not not stepping on things like you know you've got live chat and all this sort of stuff but the more you can have a human being involved the the better connection you're going to have with
Speaker 1your customer and and i'll add one other thing to that as well is those people that you have that the way you're trying to help those people do it from a position from the other side of the till don't hide behind the till or the counter or whatever if you get out and stand in the aisles and have conversations with people one thing we've just noticed here is that they're just people nine out of ten people want to have a chat you know this whole day and age where you sort of go hey can i help you and someone telling you to fuck off and leave me alone um again they're in a they're in a situation where you've got a lot of people that are in a business where they genuinely want some help but they want but i think to your point they want help but they don't want to feel sold to yeah 100 that's probably the thing i would i would say help people don't sell to
Speaker 2them for sure and that's the that's the big distinction help people don't sell to them you know if you're helping you're solving a problem if you're selling to them you're selling stuff to them and that's there's a difference
Speaker 1yeah selling if you're selling you're solving your problem rather than their problem so that's right look last last couple of observations for you is that is there anything else that you want to say about that yeah i think there's something else that you think you know that you've seen out there i mean you mentioned going to las vegas i'm the i'm just scribbled a note here that i need to go to las vegas you do you do yeah you need to come with us and of course for you from your benefit and we you and i can both we can write that off as a business
Speaker 2expense absolutely absolutely well i mean with vegas i mean uh conference depending on the business will fund half of it as well so it's almost almost a free trip to be honest um it's just time to get on issues time so mate there's so many
Speaker 1there's so many good games expos all around the world um you know i i've i've written them all down and i'm just going okay that's where me and the kids are going on holiday next year and that's the next year after that and that's uh you know i don't know whether the ato is going to be pleased with me trying to write my kids flights off on as a business like that well we'll see how we go with that so mate look thank you for that i think that's uh you know look i'm sure we could talk um for a lot longer especially about your mom being a clown yeah yeah that's uh that's something i'm going to say for next time because clown that decided to launch a website so not not so silly no not so yeah she's a smart smart clown man smart clown but um if anyone wants to reach out to you what's the best way of finding you and and tell us just maybe right at the end there just a little bit about that because the whatsapp groups seem to be exploding they
Speaker 2are they're growing which is great and just the word of mouth passing on for that and you're in there which is great traps in there yeah um but yeah so i if you want to connect with me i think linkedin's the best place to get me um so connect with me on linkedin it's just dean d my name's there dean salakis um and as far as the community goes i've got a pinned post in there you can have a look at which shows you what the community looks like and it's free for everyone so the retail community is free to be involved and for people what it's about it's about connecting with other human beings in retail um that's what it's all about that's our mission that's what we'll always be about we're about connecting people and you know it's it's a difficult business we work in in retail it's not easy yeah and the thing that i the reason i started it i guess well the reason i grew it is because every time i went to a conference i just felt like i was catching up with family and these people get me and um you know i just wanted to have a place where we could have those conversations we didn't have to wait for a conference to have those conversations a place where you could ask questions to our peers get advice you know reach out for help tell them when you're having bad times and anyone got any anyone can help you out there's plenty of that going on in the community and i think it's you know i just i love it i love what we've we've created and i'm really excited about the fact that we've given people a space for this to happen and i guess um yeah if people want to join jump in test it out see if you like it but you know like you said it's been exploding and that's just because people that jump in there get so much value out of it and and i keep telling their friends which
Speaker 1is great yeah i think from my perspective one of the refreshing things about it was there are you know and again we won't name them but there are other retail organizations retail representative um who i found are very um uh finance you know driven they they they're there to make money they're there to kind of you know grow membership and things like that and i think to a degree some of them have forgotten the purpose behind what they're they're there to do and i think with your group it really feels like purpose is first you know and everything else comes from that
Speaker 2yeah i mean i have to um you know walk the talk if you want to call it that for what i talk about you know solving a problem and this solves a problem and that's going to be put first always so when and i can tell you now every day some service provider calls me up says can i advertise in the group and it's like no you can't because it it takes away from the experience oh not so much it's just a little one it's like yeah you know anything that takes away from what we're i get i get asked i get asked i get offered money every day to for people to advertise in there and i just won't allow it because that's yeah that's and look i could make a lot of money doing it like i even did the numbers the other day we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars if i start charging these guys for what they're doing but you know we're going to build what is something that jethro and i both wanted for us as business owners and we'll just keep doing that and we'll always be staying on mission and these guys want to pay to have access we'll find ways to do it but it won't be compromising what gives people the most value which is having a safe space they can go in and ask questions they're not going to be spammed they're not going to be pitched but you can ask i mean don't get me wrong you can ask them to do it but you can't ask them to do it if you go in there and you say hey i need a 3pl or i need a marketing person by all means simon jump in there and tell them you can help them out um you're welcome to do that but no one's in there unsolicited pitching that's for sure
Speaker 1look i did a a webinar podcast the other week with a lady who'd built and i'm going to forget that i forget the organization that she had but she um she built this lunch thing for women female women's lunch thing and she would get um at its peak she would be getting um you know a thousand people along to a lunch on a friday you know and um essentially the way she made money was she went to people that were you know businesses and said do you have a product that these women would be interested in and if you do you can come along and share the product in a demonstration kind of way and so the women would come to the lunch they'd all be drinking the champagne having a great old time and then there was products turning up going hey we just want to show you our latest you know fashion item or whatever it was right and and that's kind of where i go that feels like you're still in the safe space and if i was going along to a retail thing that was focused on networking and education and support and help but someone turned around and say look can we show you this at the same time i'd be like yeah of course you can because because the focus is not about those those products the focus is about help and support yeah i would say
Speaker 2i agree with you but i'll say we we do take it further there we we don't let them so we have sponsors at our events we don't let them share what they do we we have it in there in a subtle way so we have it on the page who the sponsors are and what they do but they can't pitch they can't get up they don't get a speaking slot on stage or any of that just because again i hate going to these things and hate getting pitched to yes yeah um i love learning about stuff but i don't want to be pitched to so and there's a difference right so you don't mind so you know if you see there that there's someone there and you want to look into it you can look into it on your own time yeah um so we don't we don't allow any pitching at any other events we have we have dinners people pay for the dinners people pay for the sponsors people pay for the drinks but um so yeah so we have sponsors that's how we you know money we have sponsors pay for our events but they don't get to pick it's that simple
Speaker 1yeah mate thank you for your time today uh it has been uh fun and educational and uh i've got lots of notes the next time we talk and um mate appreciate your time looking forward to catching up next time Thank you.
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