The Commerce Club Podcast

S201: The Commerce Club podcast is back!!

• Sophie Biggerstaff • Season 2 • Episode 1

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It’s been a while, but I am back and I am SO excited to restart the Commerce Club podcast!

& this time we’re on video…

I had to pause the podcast for a while due to issues with my laptop, starting a new business, life drama and an intensive period of traveling. But, I always knew I’d be back eventually as I love podcasting - it allows me to build relationships and share better insights than any instagram reel or tiktok could allow me to.

In my first episode back I give you an update on what you’ve missed whilst I’ve been gone , with updates on my e-commerce / retail consultancy business, launching my second business, and what my plans are for the next few months.

Give this episode a listen to hear how I plan to support you in your e-commerce businesses going forward.

If you've enjoyed this episode please make sure to hit that subscribe button :)

Incase you just stumbled across this episode and we haven’t met before let’s get formally introduced here: www.itssophiebiggerstaff.com

If you’re an e-commerce business owner looking for support I host my online courses designed for you here: www.thecommerceclub.co

For more content like this follow me on socials:

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-biggerstaff-retail-consultant/

Subscribe for free business resources: https://itssophiebiggerstaff.myflodesk.com/instagram

Hello and welcome back to the Commerce Club podcast. It has been a while since I have recorded an episode and this is the first episode of the Commerce Club podcast that I will be recording on video as well. So I'm super excited to be back. I think I last released an episode back in July 2023, so almost a year ago, just over a year ago actually. And there's many reasons as to why I had to pause the podcast. One major one.

was that my laptop just was not working for recording and it was causing me loads of issues. I was having to record on my phone and the quality just wasn't there. Amongst other things, I started a new business at the same time, I was traveling a lot. There was just a lot of various factors that led me to stop recording episodes of the podcast. And...

I was gutted honestly because podcasting is actually one of my favourite things to do and it's one of my favourite marketing techniques as well because ultimately I really like talking, I like to build relationships with people, I really like to kind of speak my way through things rather than kind of create all of these random carousel graphics etc on Instagram.

and it really upset me that I couldn't do the podcast and I've wanted to restart it for ages but now feels like the perfect time. I've got a new laptop, I have so many updates to give you in regards to my new business and I've got all of this new podcasting platform tools and things that allows me to be able to share higher quality podcasting content with you.

I've also started a second podcast in the midst of the past year and I'll come onto that in a second, but it's just reminded me, recording again and speaking and doing the podcast again has really reminded me how much I enjoy it. So I figured I really want to bring back this podcast. I really want to bring back the amount of expertise, advice and insights I'm able to share on this podcast.

because I don't think you get the same from just like sending an email, right? And a blog post and that, know, putting little snippets of it on Instagram or social media. I feel like video and podcasting and talking directly to you guys who are founders of e -commerce businesses is where I want to go. So where should I start? Should I start back at the beginning? So I launched my business, retail consultancy business back in 2020. If you haven't listened previously to one of my episodes,

I've been going in the industry, the e and retail world for the past 14 years. I started back in 2010. My first job was at Ralph Lauren as a buyer's admin assistant. And then I worked my way up in a buying career for about 11 years. And then four years ago, I started my business off the back of the pandemic. I was a buying manager for a 380 million pound business at Burberry. And I just decided that

that corporate toxic fashion world was no longer for me. To be honest, I'd known for quite a long time. But, you know, it took me a while to realize that I didn't want to work in that world anymore. So I transitioned into starting my own retail consultancy business. And then that went through various different iterations along the way across that four years. And where we are today,

is that I'm still here, I'm still running that business, but in different ways to how I was running it this time last year when I last had the podcast. So now today that business is very much in a format where I am supporting people at a higher level. So people that are really looking to generate more sales in their business on a one -on -one basis.

And then when it comes to the core reason I started that business was because I wanted to help startups and be really accessible and affordable for startups. So there is still an element of that through my online courses and digital platforms and also things like this where I can offer free advice in this format. And then people can kind of understand my ways of working if they like listening to me, if they like the feedback that I give.

and then they can decide whether they want to buy into my course or sign up for one my digital products or come onto one of my mentoring programs. The idea is to build relationships with people through this platform. And building relationships with someone is something that I feel like I have always had a skill for. And that's actually what's got me so near to my clients over the past four years is because they buy into me. They don't necessarily buy into the service or the results that I can get them. Whilst that's great.

they actually just enjoy working with me and that's the feedback that I've had over the past four years. So today where we are is we're still running the business, it's still going. The consultancy is still happening, but it's just in slightly different forms. And I will share more of that in future episodes of like what's going on, but I just wanted to catch you up on like what has been going on in my life at the same time. So alongside my retail consultancy business, which has been running for the past four years.

Last year I decided to launch second business. Now, I always said I would never start an e -commerce business because ultimately I help e -commerce business founders set up and grow their brands, which means I know how hard it is to set up and grow your brand. But if you listened to previous episodes, you will know that I've gone on my own personal development mental health healing journey.

and I became very, very passionate about mental health. And I really wanted to do something where I could combine my passion for mental health and my skill set in the e -commerce world. So after a few different iterations of thinking about what could I do, I came up with the idea to launch an e -commerce marketplace that was catered specifically to mental health products. So in the past year, I've been working on that now.

When I started working on it back in July 2023, I had big ambitions to launch it within the first three to six months. And I very quickly realized, I wasn't going to be able to do that alone. And two, that time when I'd accept myself was completely unrealistic alongside my lifestyle, me carrying on running this business alongside it. When you're trying to focus your attention on two very big things,

it doesn't go so well. So I've really struggled over the past year to kind of maintain the balance and I would say 70 80 percent of my attention has actually been on my new business which is called Time Is Not Here, also known as Tina, you can go and find us on social media. We haven't officially launched at this point of me recording this but we hopefully will be launching very soon and I'm really really excited about that project but it obviously has taken away

some of the attention on my eCommerce consultancy business, which isn't what I want at all. I want to be focusing on both things. I actually still really have passion for this business. I still really want to support eCommerce business founders with their growth of their brands. But it is just going to have to be in a slightly different way. And I've had to take the past few months to kind of figure out what does that look like? Because when you spent four years building one business in one way, transitioning then into doing things in a slightly different way is actually pretty difficult.

and it's come with quite a lot of challenges. So I am going to do an episode just talking about that business and the set up process that we've been going through. I actually have a co -founder in that business because I realized I could not set up a second business by myself. So yeah, there's been a lot happening alongside that. I'm still living nomadically and I've been traveling in Latin America for the past year. So where I left you probably this time last year, I think I was in Europe.

and since then I have traveled Latin America for the past year. I went to places like Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, absolutely fell in love with Costa Rica and ended up spending a couple of months there but it did mean that I met a lot of local people and had to learn a lot of Spanish. So I've also been focusing on learning a new language which is pretty wild.

So yeah, there's been so much happening in the past year that this podcast obviously just fell by the wayside. There's been some good things, there's also been some bad things, unfortunately. I've had like death in my family, I've also been selling my property in the UK. So yeah, it's been an intense, it's been a very intense year. There's been so much happening, but I feel like I'm coming through the other side of things at the moment. And I'm really focusing on my mental wellbeing.

I'm really focusing on my businesses and where I want them to go. This summer I have been living in Barcelona for the past few months. I'm currently in the UK actually just having a little break from the weather because in August in Spain it gets very very hot. But yeah there's basically just been so many things, there's so many updates I could give you but I just want to summarise this all in a really quick intro coming back to podcasting video.

just to give you an idea of like where I've been and what's happening right now. But yeah, I don't even know where to start with digging into half those things, because each one of those things could be an episode on their own. But you know, like where I am right now is that I'm really focused on what is happening in this business, my It's Super Big Star business, which is my e -commerce consultancy. I am mainly going to be focusing on, you know, doing one -to -one at a high level.

and then selling my online courses because the online courses are perfect if you are, you know, really wanting support but you can't afford the level of a one -to -one which I know there's been so much change in this industry over the past few years so even from when I started obviously so many people in the pandemic were set up e -commerce businesses and some of them have survived in the past four years but quite frankly some of them haven't.

and a lot of people haven't survived because they haven't been able to keep their business going in a way that was sustainable for them for various different reasons but I really want to support those that are still going and the new ones that are evolving as well but ultimately my services have had to shift alongside that natural development of the audience that I support so where we are today is that ultimately not many people have

the luxury additional revenue to invest in, you know, like really expensive services, but yet they still need a level of support. So that is why I'm creating so many online products at the moment to be able to support people that can't afford to buy into one -on -one mentoring, but do still need that level of help. So that's what my focus is on at the moment. I'm also going to be focusing obviously

on bringing you loads of value in these podcasts. I'm going to do a bit of a mix of solo episodes and also what I used to do, which was kind of a live mentoring session. So if you are an eCommerce business founder listening to this, please make sure you reach out to me. If you're interested in doing a live mentoring session with me, particularly if you've got a problem or an idea that you want to work through in your business right now, because we could jump on this podcast together and film it. basically I want to.

support you but also I know that so many other people have the same problems or challenges that you're facing right now so I want to share the love, share the knowledge and show people what they can achieve through your success stories or through me working through a problem with you so yeah this episode has probably been a bit of me jumbling but I just wanted to give you an update on where we are you can expect episodes maybe not as frequently as I used to roll them out but definitely at least a couple or two to three times a month I'm gonna be trying to put out an episode

And I'm just really excited to be back recording and trying to figure out basically where both of my businesses go. I'm going to do another episode to tell you a little bit more about my new business which I am really fucking excited about. And yeah, it's a new era, it's a new chapter for me in my business, it's a new chapter for me in my new business and also my life as well because as you probably know if you listened previously

I have lived nomadically for the past three years and as much as I absolutely love my life, I really love it, I am definitely ready for a little bit more stability and I don't resonate with the UK at all. So it's not me going to be going home, but there is going to be a new home, hopefully being built in the next six to 12 months. So.

Watch this space, I'll have more updates for you on that when I get to that point. But yeah, this is a jumbled up mishmash of all my updates I needed to share with you. And yeah, watch this space for new episodes of the Commerce Club podcast coming soon.