The Livelihood Podcast

In this bumper episode we cover the latest story about how one reddit thread drove the share price of the GameStop sky high. We talk about value investing and why it's important to put your money into businesses that consciously push to grow and improve rather than investing in commodities like gold and crypto currencies. We finally talk about our actual opinions on national lockdowns, spoiler, we think the government is exercising too much power over the people and killing countless businesses in the process. 

This episode we look back at the stereotypical businessman of the 80s and 90s and see if those skills are still relevant today.

We also talk about Luke's new favourite website bubble.io, a drag and drop web app creator that could have you creating the next Facebook!

This episode we discuss why customer experience suddenly becomes a gigantic task when running an online business. With so many orders to process, how can you keep on top of every little adjustment or requirement each customer has. When a business grows beyond doing ten or so orders a day, there's a shift to being able to treat each customer individually and give them the attention they need to being able to do the exact same thing at scale. When you grow quickly this is very difficult to achieve, so we talk about some strategies you can use to try and grow sustainably without those killer mess ups that can effect your brand and people's perception of your business.

In this episode we listen to Luke's BBC The One Show appearance for vanwoof.com, the company he started as a challenge on the show.

Alex discusses how he is feeling after his first week as a full time entrepreneur.

We review David Goggins book Can't Hurt Me, and why its great for anyone listening to the show

2020 was undoubtedly an incredibly difficult time for everyone on earth, but the honest truth is that it was the best year for both of us.  We've been very lucky not to have the virus effect us and our families, in light of this, join us as we review how the podcast changed our lives in 2020.

We started the podcast with the intention of learning something and getting better at talking about business.

Fast forward to now and the podcast has not been a success, but what we have both managed to achieve because of the podcast has been amazing.

The biggest highlight was the Etsy challenge, where both of us launched successful businesses. Luke's pet portraits business Van Woof which sold over $300k+ in 6 months; and Alex's personalized bar ends which did over $8,000 at Christmas and have been designed and built by him.

Listen to find out what we plan for 2021

In this episode we discuss the effects of discounting on your business. Does it impact the value that you can offer the customer over the long term or turn them into deal seeking missiles? Is black Friday a good thing for ecommerce brands across the board? If you've ever wondered the same, then this is a good ep for you. We're also testing out video for the first time, which you can find on youtube here. 

In this episode Luke and Alex discuss the issues Luke is having with his rapidly expanding pet portrait business that currently has over 25 people working, and doing $4k+ a day in revenue.

They deep dive into the scaling issues Luke is having, as well as the anxieties of running an ecommerce business in Q4.

In this episode we talk about some brands that have reached global recognition but can still be considered technically terrible. We're not professional graphic designers, but we are opinionated about brand so I guess that's something. 
We watch the best video ever made on brand, which is a sketch on SNL - it's epic. 
We also discuss the personal brands of Kanye West and Donald Trump and debate how they've managed to maintain theirs through tough times. 

If you listen to this podcast you almost definitely watch similar videos on Youtube and follow similar accounts on Instagram. So you probably get served a LOT of ads by internet marketers trying to sell you courses in dropshipping, Amazon FBA and any other way to make money online.

In this episode we give our opinions on what we think of these courses, and some general advice on what you should be doing with your money and time.

This episode is all about brand, and how it's changed over the years to being something that has morphed into something everyone's not as familiar with. 
What the hell is a brand anyway, is it just a reputation, is it a feeling, is it a nice little logo?
We try to answer these questions, as well as discuss why high fashion brands burn millions of dollars worth of clothes, rather than selling them and diluting their brand.
Enjoy.