Episode 47 || Business Betterment

[doug@ebay]

This week we’ll talk about Business Betterment, and how to make your business “better.” In the Main Story eBay seller Monica Gamboa gives some tips on betterment from a seller perspective. On Inside eBay Senior Director Jesse Kiefer gives us the eBay perspective on improving your business. We’ll also chat with Casey Campbell from trusted partner Chubb Insurance about the importance of business insurance, especially as you grow bigger. Of course, we’ve got The Buzz, and we answer seller questions! To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

eBay for Business- Episode 47 – Business Betterment

This week we’ll talk about Business Betterment, and how to make your business “better.” In the Main Story eBay seller Monica Gamboa gives some tips on betterment from a seller perspective. On Inside eBay Senior Director Jesse Kiefer gives us the eBay perspective on improving your business. We’ll also chat with Casey Campbell from trusted partner Chubb Insurance about the importance of business insurance, especially as you grow bigger. Of course, we’ve got The Buzz, and we answer seller questions! To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

Links

#ebaypodcast
ebay.com/podcast
ebay.com/sellingonebay
#makingithappen
ebay.com/meetups
ebay.com/community
ebay.com/sellercenter
ebay.com/payments
ebay.com/communitychat
trends.google.com
ebayopen.com
explore.ebay.com
ebay.com/salestax
chubbsmallbusiness.com
Restricted Items eBay Help Page 
Internet Sales Tax Seller News Announcement Update 

theposhhanger

Hosts

Griff, Doug Smith, Liz Austin

Guests

Monica Gamboa (eBay Seller), Casey Campbell (Chubb Insurance), Jesse Kiefer (eBay Staff)

Transcript

Doug life is about constant change.

What do you mean Griff?

I mean, unless you lock yourself in a windowless room for the rest of your life, you're going to be impacted by change. No question.

Change. Yes, like the weather, always change.

Or career. Doug, take a look at us for example, who'd know we'd end up as podcasters?

Good point. Or like your Facebook friends list. Always changing. Friending and unfriending.

Tell me about it. Who knew friend would wind up as a verb? There's a good example of an unexpected change, but change happens to everything.

Like my waistline Griff.

Put down the high fructose corn syrup, Doug! Or consider the constant change that happens to what you might call your everyday circumstances. For example, running a business.

Ah, I see where this is going. Another Griff lecture, perhaps?

No, not really. Just an observation.

Of course. So change. It's constant. It's inevitable. No great epiphany there, but Griff is change always bad?

I have a saying for that.

What's that?

Change is only as bad or good as you let it be.

Now you've lost me.

What I mean is that one can take control of change to some extent. One could for example, decide to change their wardrobe.

Or their hairstyle.

I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Or they could decide to improve their business as opposed to just letting it plot on as it is.

You really know how to take the long way around to a point, don't you?

I do so love a wordy road trip and that's what this week's episode is all about.

Wordy road trip?

No, Doug. Improving your business. Also known as business betterment.

Business betterment.

Right.

Sounds like a corporate breath mint.

Always with the snack references. Thus the waistline. I'm Griff and this is eBay for business. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace.

And this week's theme is, as Griff said, Business Betterment.

And to nail the point to the wall, we have guests.

This week we'll visit with eBay seller, Monica Gamboa.

And from the eBay side we'll converse with eBay, Senior Director Jesse Kiefer. Monica and Jesse have valuable insights to share on this topic.

And we will also speak via Skype with our eBay Open title sponsor Chubb Insurance.

It was actually a really good interview and I learned a lot about what Chubb offers. They're going to be at eBay Open, you're going to want to listen to this. Plus we'll have question time. That's your questions and our answers. But first let's go to the news.

So what do we have in The Buzz this week, Doug?

Well Griff, a quick touch base on everyone's favorite topic taxes. Internet sales tax that is. We've posted a seller news announcement in the eBay community with all the latest on Internet sales tax. We've got the latest info, the latest states, and the latest links Griff. We've even got a handy short URL for you to remember. ebay.com/salestax.

There's a number of new states where eBay will be collecting sales tax on applicable transactions and this all starts on July 1st, 2019. For those states that we are collecting tax, you do not need to take any action at all eBay seller. There are no extra charges or fees for this service and prior to these dates, please continue to collect and remit tax in these states as according to the rules that you follow already from your state and comply with any other applicable requirements they may impose, they being your states.

Additional states will likely be added. Stay informed on the help pages. See the link in the episode transcript. If you are exempt from paying taxes though on your eBay purchases, visit ebay.com/salestax to learn more about our buyer exemption program for tax exempt buyers.

That's right. So if you buy to resell and you have a tax number, you can actually be on file so that you don't get charged tax. You can learn more at ebay.com/salestax .

Sales tax remains a topic of regular discussion and actually sellers are helping each other understand the application of internet sales tax. We've seen some confusion from buyers and newer sellers as to why sales tax being charged is common. Community members are working together to help each other with Internet sales tax. And as always we pass questions and issues on.

Yeah, there was one of them that came up I saw is that buyers were wondering, why am I getting charged sales tax? And they think that the seller's doing it and we've actually included a little message now and the buyer sees it. Say you are being charged sales tax because the state you live in requires eBay to charge it. It's not the seller. Okay. What else do you have?

How about Seller Hub Griff?

Really?

I'm talking about Seller Hub as a topic of conversation. eBay makes a change, we get some feedback in the community and we pass it back to the team.

Well isn't that the true nature of eBay community?

It is true. Well the community didn't like the Seller Hub changes Griff.

Which ones?

Well, sellers want to be able to customize sort options within the new view and it seems some of the information that used to be available that they could access is missing. Community members have been working together to attempt to adapt to the changes, but we've passed this feedback on to the Seller Hub team.

Do you think it'll result in anything?

I hope so. We always hope so. Sometimes we see those results and report them back.

They're asking for something quite reasonable and it was something I would want. You'd want to be able to source that stuff. Especially if you have hundreds and thousands of listings.

Yes.

Anything else from the community?

Good till cancelled listings are still a hot topic. Some sellers are having a hard time adapting. We note their feedback again and pass it on to the team.

Hmm. Okay. Well this episodes theme is about Business betterment and one of the things eBay's Jesse Kiefer talks about when he's on the show this week, is going to be about adapting and continuing to learn. So perhaps we should pay more attention to that.

There you go. It is important to succeed on eBay. Adapt and learn with new changes and trends Griff.

Anything else in the news this week, Doug?

Well Griff, I actually really geek out over eBay News.

It's so adorable.

It's true.

I follow all the stuff that comes up. Even the really technical stuff.

Probably because you wear glasses, right?

Probably.

Okay. And?

This was a good one on eBay Inc from VP of Buyer Experience, eBay and General Manager, eBay, New York, Bradford Shellhammer. Over the past year, eBay worked to enhance the shopping experience for customers by applying personalization and artificial intelligence to reimagine several features for buyers.

And what are some of these features and changes?

Ten ,count them. Ten changes Griff.

Really?

In this run-on sentence, these changes include personalized content for guests showing trending in your interests by again with one click improved image search, finding more of what you love, the right offer at the right time. Personalized promoted listings, personal shopping on eBay and evolving personalized homepage and segmentation in search for new customers.

You want to drink?

Yes. You can read more about these features at eBayInc.com. Listing them is all the detail I have breath for Griff.

What's next Doug?

Looks like we might be getting into cryptocurrency or at least looking into it. Exploring the opportunities.

Sounds like my dating years.

And nearly as volatile and unpredictable Griff.

You have no idea.

eBay is joining the Libra Association as a founding member in its pursuit to develop the Libra blockchain to promote, build and expand the Libra network.

Isn't this the cryptocurrency that Facebook announced?

And we are joining up with it. Yes.

Oh, interesting. Go on.

In these pioneering days of cryptocurrency and blockchain, Griff, we're excited to be at the forefront of development, testing and learning in our role as a founding member of the Libra Association. Libra is intended to be a global cryptocurrency powered by the Libra blockchain. It will be fully backed by the Libra reserve, a collection of low volatility assets. More on this in the future.

Oh boy.

Yeah. I'm going to need your help on this next one Griff.

Luxury fashion brand name pronunciations?

How did you know?

I have the script in my hand Doug. I can see what's coming and I know you pretty well.

True. Well Griff, eBay's teamed up with the vintage retailer What goes around comes around. On a series of music inspired luxury capsule collections adhering to the motto, Peace, Lux and rock and roll. Highlights include a Herms? Her me?

Hermes. (pronounced Er- Mez).

A Chanel studded messenger bag and Levis 501 jeans. With multiple pieces being listed from 9.99 with no reserve. And we're working with Alexandra and Theodora Richards on this Griff.

Who are they?

The Richard's sisters. The daughters of Rolling Stones guitars, Keith Richards. Who's still alive, and supermodel, Patti Hansen.

Are you sure they're not the granddaughters?

Yeah, I don't, I never know with those Rolling Stones. They know they roll around a bit.

We've got to make the world a better place for Keith Richards.

That's true. Because he'll outlast us all.

He already has. So Alexandra and Theodora lend a hand by modeling the items for the collections look books. So, so I guess their hand models Griff? Interesting.

No, they're lending a hand as in helping out. Can't you read?

Oh yeah.

Well guess what Doug?

What's that Griff?

Thats all the news that's fitting in this week, finally. So coming up next, let's mosey on over to The Main Story.

It's time for The Main Story and keeping with our theme for this week, which is business betterment. We're here with Monica Gamboa. She's known as the posh hanger, and again, we're talking about business betterment. She has a story to tell. Hey Monica, welcome to the show.

Hi Griff. Thank you for inviting me. I'm so excited.

We are too. We want to learn a little bit about you. How long have you been selling on eBay?

I actually have been selling on eBay since the late nineties. We won't say how old I am. I was always interested in eBay when it came out back when it was like Craigslist and used to get checks in the mail. You remember that?

I do.

So I always found it interesting, but definitely never thought of it as something I could do full time, which I am now. I was in the corporate world for almost 17 years and I guess that could be another story or a question for later.

Well, but you piqued my interest. I want to know, apparently you've left the corporate world and you say you're a full time reseller now on eBay. Tell us about that journey. How did that happen? How did you end up leaving the comforts of a regular paycheck and into the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship?

And salary and PTO? That's like, what is that now? I don't know what that means. Well, I always say my story is more of like what not to do only because I didn't plan it. Just like I was saying. Yeah, I sold for many years as a hobby and took you know, years off and just would sell random little things. Never ever did I thought it could be an actual business or a way to sustain myself financially. While I was at Wells Fargo, I started there when I was 16, I worked my way up to a sales development coach. Which I would go around and train people how to sell our products. And then I was a Branch Manager and we were merging with another company and to make a long story short, I kind of saw the writing on the wall and without any planning, I don't recommend that. I was in an interview and I literally just quit that day on the spot. I handed them my bank keys and I quit and I walked out. And that's always a decision that's haunted me, even now. Because I think, did I make the wrong decision?

Do you still think that today?

No, I don't think that anymore.

Okay, good.

But that took years when I was struggling. Right after I quit, when I was going to Goodwill. At that time, I thought I made the wrong decision. It took me years to realize that it wasn't, but it was definitely not something that happened right away. So when I quit, I actually went through a bit of depression because I was running two Wells Fargo's, I had like 50 employees, I had four assistants, I had all my customers, I had my bosses, so I was constantly around people. I was constantly, it was a hustle and bustle as a brainstorm. It was the sales goals, it was the P and l reports. It was like so many things going on. So I went from that to being alone, literally overnight.

It is a very solitary profession, being a single proprietor.

Oh yes. And especially because when I quit it never dawned on me that I was going to try eBay. I had a lot of banking connections and I thought, okay, maybe I'm going to go to another bank or maybe just another area but stay in the corporate world. Then I still didn't think I'm going to sell full time items on eBay. Never.

What is it that you sell by the way? What categories?

So I mainly sell women's fashion. So from lingerie, intimates, shoes, and then clothing. That's definitely my dominant category.

Remind me, have I ever bought something from you?

No. No, I don't think so? I would be jumping for joy cause I do my own shipping so I would definitely notice you.

Well. So you're doing it full time now and you're supporting yourself doing it. How did the corporate world, if it did at all at Wells Fargo, prepare you for selling online and being your own boss?

It prepared me a lot. It made me look at it as a business from the beginning. I was already calloused from dealing with upset customers at the bank. I mean you mess with someone's money. Trust me, you get upset customers. So when I would have an upset customer on eBay or maybe they were being unreasonable or I made a mistake because of course we're sellers, we're going to make mistakes. It helped me a lot with the customer service and knowing how to diffuse people. Cause I had to do a lot of that, especially as the manager dealing with really big problems. So dealing with people's money to, okay, I didn't notice that there was a button missing on this item or oops, I accidentally put the wrong size. Those would be like kind of some common things people might be upset about in the fashion category. Also not taking things personal.

Yeah, that's important isn't it? Not taking it personally.

Not taking it personally cause I do see a lot of people getting really frustrated over one upset customer. Like okay, I get it. That's frustrating too. But that's just part of it. We have to learn to deal with it and not take it personally.

It's easier said than done sometimes, but it's really important if you want to succeed in any business.

Absolutely. It doesn't mean like I don't get frustrated. Of course I do. Yesterday I had the slowest sales day and a $300 return. Hey, it's going to be a little frustrating.

Darn, I was going to go out to dinner now it's cat food for me again!

I'm breaking out the canned tuna. Our theme for this week is business betterment, otherwise known as improving your business. Do you constantly work to Improve your business? Is it a point of importance to you in order to succeed and thrive in business?

Yes, a1000%. Speaking of the corporate world, another parallel that I noticed right away when I was a sales coach, I would teach people new techniques or maybe we've got a new system in place and sales are always evolving. Any business. Business is not stagnate. It's a living, breathing entity that's constantly evolving. You can't do the same thing now that maybe you did 10 years ago and expect the same results. You will have to constantly adapt and you have to constantly audit your processes. Is My shipping the most efficient it could be? Is My listing the most efficient it could be? Am I picking up the right items because I used to be able to sell this item for $50. Now I can sell that same item only for $20. How am I gonna work that around? So I feel like you have to constantly adapt, improve your processes, audit your processes and not stay stagnant.

And this is what you do. You do this constantly. I'm assuming you're researching and checking out the competition.

Yeah. And you actually brought up a great point. Um, one of the first eBay meetups that I went to that you were at, you were showing us your store and you were giving an example of a shirt, a men's shirt. I believe it was like a men's button down polo shirt, Hawaiian shirt. And you were saying that x amount of years ago, I used to be able to sell this shirt for, let's just say $40. Now you pulled up the results with that same shirt and they're going for $20. That was a perfect example. Your process has to change.

You're very active on InstagramMonica, everyone knows this. And again, you're under the Instagram user id, the poshhanger in case anyone's interested. Go check her out, by the way.

Thank you.

How does this help your business? Is this something that's just a personal interest to you or is there a business purpose behind this?

When I first started Instagram, I actually didn't know the reseller community existed. I mean, Duh, that there's other people doing this, but it never really occurred to me that the community was so big. And so when I started eBay, I didn't watch any YouTube. I didn't, I was just like in a hermit crab. I just did my listing. I did my selling. I never watched YouTube. I never got on Facebook. I didn't know all these Facebook groups existed. I never got on Instagram. When I finally did, I think it's been three years ish. I started with the intention of doing it as a business. And that's why I did the Posh Hanger the same as my store name, and I thought, okay, this is the free way to advertise my products. Here's this item I'm listing today. Here's some new arrivals. You know, the fact that I wasn't utilizing social media I thought was not smart of me. So I started that and then I started to Hashtag like eBay, eBay seller, and then all of a sudden I stumbled onto the community and found out, oh my God, there's a bunch of people like me. Then the business side of it kinda got pushed to the side. Because I got so interested in talking to other eBay sellers because I had been doing this for years by myself with not one reseller friend to talk to, to understand what I was going through. It kinda turned into a little bit of the like tips on eBay, tips as a reseller. And then the um, engagement just grew from there as stories rolled out. And I would just kind of like document my day. Like, here I'm doing my shipping today, here's my inventory, here's my listing process, here's a haul of what I got today. Just the fact that anybody cared still blew me away. Like what? Other people like this?

Oh, of course.

You know, cause I was, like I said alone for so long. So that kind of just took on a life of its own.

Activity on social media can become almost like a habitual time sink and where you're trying to run a business, maintaining that balance can be really difficult. And I hear that you recently actually took a break from social is that correct?

I do take breaks. I think the last one was actually at the end of last year. I'll take a month off. I've taken two months off. Just in times where I can't keep all the plates spinning. I just recently have been getting a little bit of help from my sister who's in the area temporarily. But prior to that it's been me doing this all by myself. The sourcing, the listing, the shipping, the putting the inventory away. Like all of it. It's a lot of work. I call it when I'm on thin mental margins, which means like I can't carry more than just what I need to focus on for my business. So I'm like, man, I am running on some thin mental margins right now. When I get in those modes then I won't get on Instagram because I just, I can't maintain it all.

This is a problem that a lot of us have and it's always nice to hear from somebody else who's found a way to at least be able to manage that work life balance. And if taking a break from social is what it takes, then that's a great one. Do you have other things that you do to actually keep your work and life in balance so one isn't imposing on the other?

To be honest, I think I am very bad at balancing because I am a single parent. I do this full time. I live in an expensive area, so I'm always thinking like, I have to be working, I have to be working, I have to be working. I gotta have savings, I gotta have money for inventory. It's just like being on this treadmill and sometimes I don't know how to get off. Because I'm always worried that there's no second income coming in. I don't have a spouse, so it is all on me. And that amount of pressure.

It makes it hard to actually maintain that workload. I think this is probably a situation that a lot of folks in areas like silicon valley where the pressure is so high, they experiences as well. But this is an area where we can all learn to improve and that's what we're talking about today.

Yes, and I'm trying this year more so than I think any year, I've really diversified what I'm selling and have introduced some other streams of income. But you gotta find a way to take a day off here and there.

There's always the beach calling us.

Exactly and I live like so close and I have been, I'm trying. That's the goal for sure.

Well Monica, it's been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again at our San Jose meetup in the coming months. I know that you're a regular visitor there.

Yes, I love it. I try to take advantage of it because I'm so close. You know, Santa Cruz, San Jose is pretty close.

Well, I want to thank you for taking the time. We're going to let you get back to selling so that you can keep on top of things. But Monica, it was a pleasure. Thanks for joining us and best of luck to you.

Thank you so much Griff. It's been fun.

We've been chatting with Monica Gamboa, she's the poshhanger on eBay, that's posh hanger and we've been talking about, well, business improvement, but as you heard a lot more of other things too. So coming up next we're going to get the Inside eBay take on improving your business from a good old friend of ours,Jesse Kiefer. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Inside eBay. Today we're happy to have with us Jesse Kiefer. Jesse is the Senior Director of Business Enablement here at eBay and today we're talking about business betterment. Jesse, thanks for joining us.

My pleasure. Great to be here.

So tell us, how long have you been at eBay?

Goodness. I've been at eBay for almost eight years. I was previously working just with our US business and our US sellers and I'm now in a global role working around the world with sellers.

Now you've got a new role.

I do.

You all know that eBay is a big global business. We have sellers and buyers all over the world. I've had the opportunity to help run our global business reporting up through our markets organization. So our markets are the different businesses around the world. We have a big business in the United Kingdom as an example, a big business in Germany, big businesses in Australia and in other parts of Asia. And all those businesses have very cohesive groups of sellers and buyers and of course a lot of cross border trade as well. And so we have an organization here at eBay which is all about how do we make our business run better globally? And that's what I'm focused on.

And you have to manage all these different marketplaces or markets?

That's right. One way to think about it is that we have a, what we call a horizontal platform. And so when our website development teams are building the different websites, there's a lot of consistency between those platforms globally. You might call that horizontal, but our sellers operate within a market. And so our business teams for the most part operate within a market. So we have a US big business team, we have all these other business teams around the world and part of my job is to help make sure that we're sharing best practices across markets. And that we're creating the best possible marketplace globally while also being sensitive to the regional needs that you all our sellers have.

Well I want to congratulate you on your new role before I say anything else because that's a big load of responsibility.

Thank you.

And I'm sure you're excited about the new role?

I am. Yes. I miss working with you so much.

Well, but here you are and we're recording away so it all works out. But before you were in this new role, you were heading up a team called Seller Engagement. That's why we wanted to bring you in because you have a lot of experience with this. What does seller engagement, that term mean to you?

Well, what it means to me is that we are not just a corporation at eBay. In fact, when we talked to the people that work here, I think one of the things that people really take pride in is that we are a people oriented company. And both our buyers and our sellers are part of what we think of that. We don't just think of ourselves as a company eBay, we think of ourselves as a collection of sellers and buyers coming together in this big global marketplace. So seller engagement is the many ways in which we connect with our sellers. Be it on our podcast, such as this or on our community platforms online, Seller Hub, Seller Center. And especially when we're out in person in the community, be it eBay Open or the meetups that we participate in around the country. To me, seller engagement is all those things. The many ways that we touch our sellers.

Why do we make this effort? What's in it for us as a company?

It's safe to say that sellers have a lot of options in this country and in other countries around the world. We want to make sure that they stay focused on eBay as one of, or as the primary focus. One is that's from a business standpoint, we think that's better for them and better for us. And also it's just more fun to be honest with you, Griff. It's more fun to be personally connected to our customers, to our sellers. We think it's just kind of a better way to go through life, is more connected.

And we learn a lot from them as well, and that helps the business in general.

Absolutely. I think we don't always get it right, but part of seller engagement to us is making sure that when we don't get it right, we get that feedback really quickly so we can make it right. And then also when we're designing new products, new features, we are putting our sellers at the very front of that and getting input and feedback along the way.

Part of eBay' DNA, so to speak. It began this way as is as a community of sellers and buyers. As you mentioned, that was Pierre's original vision. We've morphed into many different versions of, and changed a lot over the years as marketplace realities have presented themselves with the expansion of the Internet. How important today is the concept of community to us here at eBay?

Well, community is central to what eBay is. There's a danger as the economy's grown, as eBay's grown, that selling becomes just a transactional experience. Where all you do is engage with a website and you don't think of it as a collection of people, but rather just a collection of technology. I think there's a danger that that becomes really impersonal and I think core to eBay from the beginning has been a more personal approach to ecommerce and community is the embodiment of that personal approach. The human to human connection, both from a seller and a buyer as well as from the folks that work at eBay and the sellers community is more important than ever.

So community connection. These things are important to help us in our goal to help businesses on eBay, People who sell on eBay. Better their business, better themselves and they're constantly improving. But there's an important question there that a lot of our sellers are probably asking themselves is, why should I think of myself as a business?

It is a very tough economy out there. Even though there's a lot of strength right now in the economy. It's a challenging environment in which to run a business. It's important for sellers to have a business mindset. Because in order for them to sustain their livelihood, their income, the different components of their life, they're going to need to be adaptable and they're gonna need to be very focused on customer needs and changing trends. A business mindset will ensure that they're able to sustain over the long term.

Don't think of it as a hobby. Don't think of you, I am just a mom and pop. You may be, but first and foremost, you have to think of yourself as business.

Thinking of yourself as a business isn't mutually exclusive to the things you mentioned. I can really enjoy what I do. I can really enjoy sourcing certain types of inventory and engaging with buyers and engaging with suppliers, but I can also have a business mindset. I think it's a critical component of how folks should approach their day to day.

What tools does eBay have to help enable things like business betterment?

eBay specifically has a lot of tools. One of them of course, is this podcast and subscribing to this podcast.

Thank you very much.

We also have our community platform, which is a space where sellers can ask each other questions and then also ask eBay employees questions who monitor that platform. There's also Seller Hub and eBay Seller Center as tools. And then there's events like eBay Open.

And Retail Revival.

Retail Revival has come to many cities and has also enrolled out globally right now.

Awesome.

Retail Revival is very exciting. So those are some tools that eBay has for sellers.

Of course, beyond just eBay. If I'm a business and I want to be better at what I do, there's also advice that we can give beyond just eBay itself. For example, the idea of mentorship and that may be finding somebody on social media or in the eBay community or a course somewhere where you can learn more about how to make your business better.

Sometimes sellers ask how they can improve their business and the way that I think about this, there's, there's really two things. One is the operational components of running a business on eBay and that's where Seller Hub and Seller Center and the community boards are going to become really good resources. And those will be things like doing free shipping more when possible, offering returns when it's possible, making sure that listings are as high quality as possible. Those are very important. The second thing is more of a mindset. And I'd say it's a business improvement mindset and that's where you can focus on finding a mentor that has more experience or maybe has been through some similar challenges as you and there's all sorts of free resources online around videos about selling on eBay and business topics in general. For example, bookkeeping and accounting. And it's also a mindset of being open to change, being open to learning. And being open to adapting and making changes in your business so that you can grow and sustain.

And the reward for doing so?

Well. Hopefully the rewards are many. Hopefully there are financial rewards, but this isn't a self-help podcast.

Kind of!

Hopefully it's a fun and exciting way to approach your business on eBay. Hopefully you do grow, but hopefully you have a lot more fun and it's more engaging for you to be constantly learning and adapting.

And the sense of accomplishment. I set out to do something and I actually achieve what I set out to do. That's an amazing reward that we constantly overlook.

One of the themes that as I've met sellers and talk to sellers that have been selling successfully for many, many years or in many cases even multiple decades on eBay, it is change. It's hard to find a seller that's been selling for 20 years and 20 years ago they were selling the very same things that they're selling now. The market's changed, customers have changed, the competitors have changed. And even if it's still the same passion area, the same industry sector for example, the inventory itself over time has often changed.

And you have to stay up with the change or you get left behind. I find it exciting. I think a lot of people may find it intimidating and I think the purpose of the podcast is to convince them that it's not intimidating. It's not so much about risk. It's actually about adventure.

Yes, and those aren't mutually exclusive. You can be, you can be a little bit intimidated, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to tackle some new things with open arms.

It's perfect. Jesse, I want to thank you for stopping by. Before we go, anything else to add?

I would say just want to say thank you to all our sellers who are tuning in and engaging with eBay and trying to grow their businesses with eBay.

Thanks so much. We've been talking with Jesse Kiefer, he's the Senior Director of Business Enablement here at eBay and we've been talking about a business mindset and business betterment up next. Casey Campbell of Chubb Insurance. Chubb Insurance is the title sponsor this year for eBay Open.

Every year at eBay Open we have an event title sponsor and this year is no different. Our title sponsor this year is a well known name in the insurance industry, Chubb. We thought this year we'd take the opportunity here on the podcast to get to know our title sponsor a little bit better and joining me right now is Casey Campbell. She's the Senior Vice President, Digital Business Officer for Chubb North America Commercial Lines. Hello Casey.

Hello. Thank you so much for having Chubb here to speak with you and I'm delighted to be talking to you as well.

Could you give us a little bit of a snapshot of your role at Chubb?

Sure. I lead Chubbs’ digital business serving exclusively small businesses in our North America region. My focus is on bringing solutions to small businesses that are tailored to what they need from their insurance company and how they want to purchase and service that insurance.

Although many of our sellers, Casey listening right now may have heard of the brand name Chubb or that Chubb is in the insurance business. They may not be familiar with the company itself. Exactly who is Chubb and what is their history in the insurance field.

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property casualty insurer by market capitalization. We've been in the insurance industry since 1882, that was the year that we were founded. We're also the largest commercial insurer in the US. Beyond that we have operations in 54 countries and we offer all lines of insurance, ranging from property and casualty to accident, health, life insurance, and we do that with excellence everywhere that we are in business. We have this concept called craftsmanship. And craftsmanship is about tailoring insurance solutions to the individual risks exposures and then delivering really exceptional service. That's really the hallmark of our brand is exceptional service.

Chubb already has a very strong presence working with individual agents and with brokers. Why did Chubb decide to also develop a digital channel to sell small business insurance?

Well, first of all, Chubb is deeply committed to the small business community as part of the growth engine of our economy. So first and foremost, we want to make our insurance products available to small businesses in the way that those small businesses want to access insurance. For a large part, about 80% of the market, currently shops today through independent agents. And then of course there are captive agents, but what we're seeing emerging is a desire to go to the Internet, find an insurance company who can serve the needs for insurance of that business in real time. This is continuing to evolve, particularly as there's some demographic shifts on who owns businesses and how digitally savvy they are. Business owners can do a lot online today, whether it's engaged with a tax accountant or a lawyer or payroll servicing, credit cards, bank accounts. All that is mobile and is online. Insurance has been a little behind the times and Chubb is committed to advancing our capabilities and making insurance as easy to get as it is to deposit a check into your bank account.

Casey, most of our sellers understand on a very high level the importance of minimizing risk and liability in a business. But conversely, many of our sellers are understandably hesitant to invest in a business insurance policy because they make the assumption that well, it's going to be too expensive for their business model or it won't provide the type of services and protections that are tailored specifically to small businesses like theirs. What can Chubb offer these sellers?

Well, first of all, insurance can be very affordable and customizable. Chubbs’ online do it yourself offering enables you to build different packages. And we're very clear about explaining what is included in those packages and what is excluded. And that's really the most important thing for a small business owner when they're doing it themselves. They need to know what they're buying. They need to have confidence that what they've bought is adequate for their business. Second of all, what we've heard from all of our small business research and experience is that how the insurance policy is paid for matters a lot. For cashflow purposes, you may prefer to pay in 12 equal installments. You probably don't want to get charged any fees for paying in installments as well, or you may be the type that just prefers to pay it all upfront. Whether you want to pay with a credit card or EFT or even through PayPal. The Chubb offering gives a small business owner all the flexible options to pay how they want to pay. In terms of actually proving that you have insurance, a certificate of insurance is required. This is something that we deliver automatically. So as soon as you pay right on the screen, there's a certificate of insurance. You can download it, email to anyone who's looking for proof of your insurance all in real time. And to assist shoppers as they go through the process, there is always the one 800 number with a licensed insurance professional who is delivering that craftsmen level service that I talked about earlier. To make sure that that small business owner gets what they need and if they're in a hurry, they can get in and get out all by themselves in about six minutes time.

Okay, you sold me, I really want to check this out. Where do I send people? Where do we go to learn how to do this online Casey?

The website is called www.chubbsmallbusiness.com but inside the seller portal you can also get information about Chubb, about our products and services and link directly to that site from the sellers portal.

And you can do it all from your desktop. Finally, Chubb is the title sponsor at this years eBay Open event in Las Vegas. This is the week of July 22nd. Casey, what do Chubb and eBay see is the fit for this partnership?

eBay invests so much in supporting its sellers and helping them flourish, create the life that they're looking for through the business that they're looking for and enable them with lots of capability. Chubb firmly believes that business insurance is essential to driving both sustainment and enabling businesses to thrive. In the unlucky event that anything happens, you want a company who's going to stand by its promise to pay claims and do so in a manner that is easy, simple, straightforward, and makes you feel that they're doing right by you. In that way, we believe that Chubb and eBay have the interest of the sellers in mind and both are supporting their desire to thrive to the extent possible. We're delighted to be the sponsor of the Open event this year and we can't wait to meet as many sellers as possible.

So Chubb will be there?

We sure will. We'll have a booth. We'll be giving a pop up session and we'll be doing two training seminars.

Oh, fantastic. So you've heard it here. Make sure that if you're at eBay Open that you take the time to check out the booth for our title sponsor Chubb this year. And also check out what they're going to be doing in the way of education and how they can help your business. Thanks again, Casey, for taking the time to talk to us today and thank you to Chubb for being our title sponsor for eBay Open 2019.

Great to meet you Griff. Thank you.

We've been speaking with Casey Campbell, Senior Vice President, Digital Business Officer for Chubb North America Commercial Lines. Check them out at eBay Open.

Up next. You have questions. Hopefully we have answers. It's question time here on the eBay for Business Podcast.

Now it's time for your questions and we have three this week that we selected. Doug, will you read the first one?

Yes, I would be happy to Griff, I have the envelope in my hand. This is printed email from podcast@ebay.com. Hello eBay, Maybe this exists and I can't find on the site, but how or where can I go to pull a report of all my active items currently for sale? I currently have up to 200 items at a time on my listings page and copy and paste them into Excel so I can add my new inventory into my database or Excel sheet. Grady812.

Well Grady812, I have some bad news and some good news. And the bad news first is on Seller Hub there is no way to download a report in any form, even CSV or Excel. However, there is a way to do this and most folks aren't aware of it and it will download as a spreadsheet. Doug, do you know about this?

This is interesting. This is like a pro tip. This is a secret, a workaround.

It's not terribly secret. It's called the Merchant Integration Platform and this was a tool in API tool that ebay built for primarily at first big merchant to get inventory onto the site really quick. Anyone can use it. It's available to anyone. Now I'm going to give you a URL where you can go to learn more and don't be intimidated by the information on the page. It's pretty robust, but there's some instructions and there's a link to a user manual as well. Go to https://developer.ebay.com/products/MIP. That's developer.ebay.com/MIP and the link will be in the transcript as well. Read the information there. You can sign in and you can actually use the MIP program to download your current listings. And you may find that you can also use this to upload listings as well. But it's the roundabout way to get an excel spreadsheet type download report of all of your current active listings. So check it out.

That's a fantastic tip, Griff.

I live to serve and please.

Alright, graph. I have in my hand the second envelope a little thicker than the first. Let me open it. Okay, there you go. Griff, I've been selling on eBay for over 10 years and recently encountered a problem that I don't know what to do. I acquired some brand new hearing aids. When I listed them. A window popped up telling me that the FDA requires that I obtain a signed waiver from the buyer before I can sell a hearing aid. Does eBay have a mechanism to allow exchanging a pdf file between the buyer and seller before a transaction takes place. I believe that the eBay Messages only allows jpeg files. My concern is that if the buyer doesn't carefully read the listing description, they won't know how they need to sign a waiver. Further communicating about the waiver will take place outside of eBay and could be time consuming leading to via frustration and an item not received claim. It occurs to me that there must be other items that require government regulations be met before a sale can be made. I think that this would be an excellent topic for a podcast, to detail a procedure for sellers to follow on how to list such items. Thanks George Kufa from Elgin Illinois.

Yeah, this is the interesting question and we went back to the Trust Team to get some information about this because quite frankly neither of us knew anything about it. And we were told by the Trust Team, the following, and I'm going to quote, "we partnered with the Prohibited Items team to determine the exact process for selling hearing aids on eBay and currently listings for hearing aids require the seller to include the FDA disclaimer. However, there is no specific process for the seller or potential buyer to follow with how the documents need to be provided. And the seller and buyer would need to coordinate this on their own. The volume that the Prohibited Items Team receives on this topic is little to none. So they really don't consider it as a big pain point for members. In the transcript, the text that we recommend that you include into your descriptions will be found there. A friend of ours on the Prohibited Item Team named Mike created this. It's called the FDA disclaimer. You would just copy this text and you would put it into your description. Remember that although eBay serves up the alert about the FDA regulation, it's not an eBay regulation so you can list the item and you can sell it. And if you have this text in the description, should someone from the FDA find the listing, they'll know that you're following their rule about the the prior alert. You can find a copy of the waiver and you could send it to them via email. You know, you can always get a buyer's email from the orders page on Heller hub. If you go to orders, look for a listing where you sold something, say like the hearing aid, there's an order number. If you click the order number, you will see the buyer's email address. And you can send them any necessary documentation as a pdf attachment through the regular email and have them sign it so that in the case the FDA approaches you, I doubt they will, but if they do, you'll have a signed copy from the buyer on eBay. There's no way to know who the buyer is until they purchase it, whether it's an auction or it's a fixed price listing. So you can't really get a signed waiver from a buyer prior to purchase. But you can put the FDA disclaimer paragraph in your descriptions and then you can send the pdf if you have one to the buyer and say, Hey, I need you to sign this and send it back and that should keep you covered. And if you need more information, we'll also include a link to the eBay Help page that describes this particular policy when it comes to selling prohibited or restricted items that are medical. I hope that answered your question.

All right. Thanks Griff. That was a long one. All right, Griff. Very exciting. I have the final envelope for today for this week in my hand. It's very thin. It likely contains a small question on a small card.

There are only, there are no small questions. Only small answers.

That's right. All right, I'm going to open it up.

Okay. It sounds like you're rubbing your hands together.

Don't give up your day Gig for sound effects.

Griff. Why do I have to keep using the mobile friendly checker?

Good question and guess what? There's a great answer. You don't.

That's it?

Our good friend Valeri over in Product. We approached her about this a few weeks or actually a more a month ago and she said, let me look into it. And they came back with us and they said they've made all listings mobile friendly automatically. Regardless of how they were listed, either on mobile or in the computer. And here's what they changed. There's something that you may have seen called the viewport meta tag and it needed to be added to listings to make them mobile compliant. Well that tag is now added by eBay at the time of rendering the view item page on the mobile device, so you do not have to add that tag anymore. Sellers no longer have to use the mobile friendly checker to do anything including to add the viewpoint Meta tag in order to make their listings mobile friendly. Why does the mobile friendly checker still exist then you might ask? Well, if the description has embedded images, that tool will warn sellers if the embedded images have defined fixed widths that aren't mobile friendly, so it'll still be there as a a way of alerting sellers, Hey, your listening is not going to look very good on mobile. If your description does not have embedded images, you do not need to use the mobile friendly checker. Let me repeat that. If your description does not have embedded images, you can just ignore the mobile friendly checker.

All right.

Pretty good news.

Yeah, that is good. Yeah, I like that.

Well, Doug, that's all this for this week's question time. We'll have more of your questions next week. Remember you can submit questions by phone at (888) 723-4630 or email at podcast@ebay.com. You can also submit questions via the feedback submission form on the eBay for Business Podcast community Page at www.ebay.com/podcast. Look for the link in the lovely mustard yellow box.

Thanks again, Doug for being uh, my Johnny. No. Um, Ed McMahon.

Ed McMahon. Yes.

Thanks for being my Ed McMahon.

Griff, you are the king!

Yeah. And I can get out of this turbin and I can get back to my real life. Coming up next, It's the shows Coda. Look it up.

And that's our show for this week.

Hey, I have a favor.

What? Doug?

I have an urgency that just came up. Could we like get to the point of..

Oh, I get it, man. An urgency. I see it now. Well, okay, I'll take this really quick.

Join us next week when our theme will be sources of inspiration, business mentorship. We'll talk to eBay seller, Dana Crawford about her experience as a mentor to other sellers and on the eBay side we'll speak with Alexis Galavan from our office in Austin, Texas. And she's going to pop into the studio via Skype to share her views on mentorship as well.

And we'll have a special report from our correspondent, Liz Austin about eBay for Charity.

And I feel so bad for you sitting there shaking. Oh good. We really haven't touched on eBay for Charity in a long time. It'll be nice to revisit it.

Indeed. And don't forget our number.

Of course, if you want to join the fun here on the eBay for Business Podcast, you can be a part of the show when you call us at (888) 723-4630. You can call that hotline anytime, I'm trying to go as fast as I can do any day of the week, leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air.

You can also email us at podcast@ebay.com.

And I'll just get through this quick, blah, blah, blah, Yada, Yada, Yada. Then you should be attending a local eBay seller meetup in your area. At seller meetups, seller share tips, stories, insights, and even a few complaints. You can see meetups that are scheduled on our special eBay community page for meetups at www.ebay.com/meetups.

Hopefully they have a bathroom at the meetups. And don't forget our weekly live video stream on the eBay for Business Facebook page every Wednesday at 12:30 PM Pacific Time. Go to facebook.com/ebayforbusiness. Quick roll the credits.

I told you not to drink that much coffee before a show, but do you ever listen to me? No.

The eBay Podcast team Head of Community, Brian Burke. Cohost Alan Aisbitt , Marketing Strategists, Liz Austin, Executive Production Assistant Correspondent and Director of Dire Urgencies. Doug Smith. Editor in chief and top Host Griff. Okay, bye.

Okay. eBay for Business produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

So I guess this means..

No ad Lib!

Where is he? Where did he go? There you are. We'll do one next week.

[buffaloswamptradinpost]

I just listened to this episode and there was a question about downloading active listings. There was a long URL given for a tool eBay had developed but the File Exchange app was never mentioned. I find it easy to use for importing and export active and sold listing. It can also be used to upload new listings, although the commands are a little fuzzy.

Also, why are these resources so hard to get to? And have complicated URLs? Why doesn't ebay create an intuitive menu so it's not so difficult to get around? I found that most of the info I need is here but can be extremely difficult to find.

[dancesunshine74]

Is there any way that when I am listing and adding photos from my iPad Air 2 

that the photos that I took last could show up first in my search.  I takes me for ever to get to the bottom of my photos where my newly taken pictures are located for my listings.   I use recently taken pictures but still have many many in that folder too!  Please Help!!!

Best Wishes Linda

[ngtra_283]

hi

[ngtra_283]

yes