Mark And Kalen Talk Shopify

About Mark And Kalen Talk Shopify

The name kinda says it all. Mark and Kalen talk Shopify. 😂 💚

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Aug 2023

Latest episode

10 Oct 2024

Latest episodes

9 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Oct 2024

   "The Upsell Is The Upsell" w/ David Robinson

   Welcome to the first episode of talkingshop.dev - a podcast where we just talk shop with other developers working with Shopify. In this episode, I sat down with my longtime friend, David Robinson, the director of technology with a fashion brand called Cuyana. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff from functions to Google sheets integrations, NetSuite stuff, a cool discount app that he's using and a bunch of other stuff. I hope you enjoy it.

2. 

   5 Feb 2024

   Endlessly Scrolling Through Winter Editions

3. 

   28 Dec 2023

   Did You See The Sphere Thing In Vegas?

   In a lively chat, they talk about everything Shopify, from a cool spherical billboard in Vegas to Black Friday sales trends and Shopify's growth. They also touch on layoffs in the tech world, quirky TikTok algorithms, and neat tech gadgets like smart glasses. The discussion veers into some shady Shopify app practices and ends with a fun idea for a Shopify trivia contest to see who knows the platform best.

4. 

   28 Sept 2023

   Shopify Side Quests

   00:00 All In Summit with Tobi 00:02:50 Canadian Lovefest with Chamath 00:12:00 Shopify’s foray into Venture Capital 00:19:20 Elon believer phase 00:22:55 Flexport brings back Ryan Peterson 00:28:30 Shopify selling off their side quest of Deliverr 00:39:25 TikTok Shop 00:45:20 ChatGPT’s new features and impact on society 00:48:50 Sidekick AI

5. 

   31 Aug 2023

   Shopify & Steak Dinners

   [00:00:00] Mark: That was one like, funny thing about, I mean, maybe not funny, but interesting thing about Covid and everyone having masks. Like you could conceal your emotions [00:00:10] and expressions a lot better. Yes. In person. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Sometimes the eyes betray it. [00:00:17] Kalen: Yeah. [00:00:17] Kalen: Sometimes I, man it's been so [00:00:20] long, but I remember that I would like, um, like I would try like when you would, 'cause I normally like smile at people in public, like [00:00:30] relatively frequently. And, uh, and so like, but then. You'd have to like really try to smile with your eyes and you'd be like, [00:00:40] you know, because yeah, it's like, it's just a lot more subtle, [00:00:44] Mark: you know? [00:00:45] Mark: I think I noticed after that, actually I started over smiling [00:00:50] with my eyes, even without a mask, and I've tried to like, Correct my smile, like where before I was like, like, like too big. And now I'm like, [00:01:00] like, I'm like, okay, just, just chill out, you know? Just smile with your mouth, you know? No crow's feet, all that stuff. [00:01:08] Kalen: That's hilarious. Crow's [00:01:10] feet is such a stupid word because it sounds so gross, but it's just like, you know, it's just natural. It's like, you know, it's just the [00:01:20] evidence of a life well lived. Like, can we come up with a better word for the evidence of a life well lived than crow's feet? Like, [00:01:30] what the fuck? [00:01:31] Kalen: It always makes me feel like I have a fucking crow, like scratching my face off or something like that. [00:01:38] Mark: Right. Something more [00:01:40] positive. You know, it's like, uh, the, the rings of a, a tree, you know, [00:01:46] Kalen: you Exactly. The rings of a tree is a [00:01:50] great example. Everybody loves the rings of a tree. Yeah. Imagine if work on, if you call them. [00:01:57] Kalen: Yeah, let's work on that man. [00:02:00] I mean, you rebranded the Shopify Collective pretty well. Drop, drop shipping, reimagined re that could be a damn Apple commercial right there, dude. [00:02:10] But the funny thing is that you were saying it in the context of like, it really is not that big of a deal. Yeah. I think you edit [00:02:19] Mark: it [00:02:20] well to make it like positive. [00:02:24] Kalen: It is what I do. Um, but yeah. That's funny. And then I saw [00:02:30] your, I just saw your LinkedIn post about, um, how you moderating. Do you agree that Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you agree that Shopify is [00:02:40] encroaching onto da da and I was getting ready to write a reply. I was like, I was like, here we go. I'm gonna let him know how I feel about this.[00:02:50] [00:02:50] Kalen: And then I was like, ah, that's too much to say, uh, [00:02:53] Mark: save it for the podcast, man. Let me know how you really feel about that. Okay. [00:02:57] Kalen: Okay. Actually, that's a good idea [00:03:00] because, um, because, uh, it's, it's a lot of times it's a lot easier for me to just spit it out verbally, but I mean, and we, we sort of already talked about this, but like, [00:03:10] platforms always, uh, cannibalize their ecosystem. [00:03:13] Kalen: I mean mm-hmm. That's the nature of the beast. So, um, I think you were saying that there's [00:03:20] already third party solutions to this, so like why should they touch it? Yeah. But and I, and I'm sort of newer to the ecosystem, [00:03:30] so like I can imagine if you had been in it for a while and you had seen Fun fact, Carl was the very first partnership call that I did [00:03:40] at Mesa. [00:03:41] Kalen: Oh, wow. And I actually noticed that the guy, the marketing guy there went to my school, which is, I don't, I can't think of the last person I've seen [00:03:50] went to my college. I can't think of the last person I've seen in, in, in e-commerce that went to my school. Mm-hmm. Um, so anyways, we had a cool call. He was real friendly. [00:03:57] Kalen: I had no idea what I was talking about on that [00:04:00] very first call. But anyways. Like, you probably have seen a lot of these solutions have used them and have been like, okay, you know, they work. But from my perspective, there's [00:04:10] something that does feel very like core to the platform to allow this store to sell this store's stuff.[00:04:20] [00:04:20] Kalen: Mm-hmm. It, it just sort of actually feels very right to me as a, as a native functionality. Yeah. And that's without really [00:04:30] knowing that much about how well the other things work and things like that. Um, but there's something that feels very, like, elegant to me about, you know, the core of [00:04:40] the platform is are the stores. [00:04:42] Kalen: And if you're just letting one store sell another store's stuff seems kind of smooth. I think it, [00:04:49] Mark: it's [00:04:50] almost getting closer to the marketplace concept, which the shop app actually is basically a marketplace now. Mm-hmm. So, May, maybe that's their [00:05:00] goal of just kind of uniting merchants more. Mm-hmm. And, you know, um, I know that they've also acquired apps in the past and like [00:05:10] the, the, the Marketplace Connect app that they. [00:05:14] Mark: Half now, it's actually mm-hmm. An app that was already in the app store and I guess they bought it and mm-hmm. Have [00:05:20] rebranded it as a Shopify thing. Mm-hmm. So maybe the, the better question is like, why did they decide to build their own versus acquiring? And [00:05:30] my, my theory is that like Carro has been around for a while and they've taken on VC funding and, um, maybe they were like, too expensive and they were like, well, we [00:05:40] can just write our own, like, for way cheaper, you know, and instead of paying a hundred million dollars or something for, you know, these vc, VC backed company, [00:05:50] [00:05:50] Kalen: um, right. [00:05:51] Kalen: Like I could imagine, like, I think they put 25 mil into Triple Whale. Mm-hmm. I could imagine they would've been down to drop a cool 25. [00:06:00] On, on this. And then, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe. Maybe they came back and said, Hey, how about a hundred? And said, Hey, how about, and then they said, Hey, [00:06:10] how about Toby knocks this out in a weekend? [00:06:13] Mark: Yeah. How about a billion? [00:06:19] Mark: I have no [00:06:20] inside information on that conversation, but I am sure that's what happened.[00:06:30] [00:06:30] Mark: Nice. Nice, nice, nice. I mean, but I guess it, it, you touch on like a third option and it's kind of timely. Is [00:06:40] Klaviyo or Klaviyo? I don't, I can never remember which one, like announced their IPOing and Shopify did invest like, I think a hundred million dollars in Klaviyo [00:06:50] a while ago. Um, and there's another public company, I think Global E that they invested a couple maybe, uh, 50 [00:07:00] million ish, I don't know. [00:07:01] Mark: Um, So it's interesting that there's kind of like three options for Shopify with their ecosystem. They can, they can, uh, invest, they can [00:07:10] acquire or they can replace and cannibalize. And I'm sure that they have to go through kind of a, a business assessment of, of [00:07:20] each option. And maybe with the, the, the drop shipping, it was like, okay, it's pretty, pretty easy to replace this. [00:07:29] Mark: And they wanted [00:07:30] to, instead of, you know, having to pay tens of millions of dollars to acquire something existing. Yeah. That, that may have happened. We were looking at the screen. [00:07:40] Oh, clay Klaviyo. [00:07:41] Kalen: Claudio. Yeah. I want to figure out how to, how to pronounce it. How do you pronounce Klaviyo? Uh, I always say Klaviyo, but, uh, I do too.[00:07:50] [00:07:50] Kalen: That's, that's not an indication that it's, that it's right or anything like that. I'm using an incognito browser this time around. Just be on [00:08:00] the same side. Not that I, not that I have anything to hide in my browser history. Okay. Yeah. I have nothing to hide. I will share my [00:08:10] full browser history with the entire world. [00:08:13] Kalen: Export that at, at some point in the future. Um, I'm sure we all will at some point in the [00:08:20] future, but, um, it doesn't look like there's any good answers to this. But, sorry, I kind of missed what you were saying 'cause I was pulling this browser up. You're saying with, [00:08:30] with Kla Kla, dammit, with Klaviyo going public, you were saying something about, [00:08:38] Mark: well, it's just another [00:08:40] option when Shopify is interested in getting into something, you know, instead of acquiring it or like we're trying to replace it, they can invest in it like they did with Klaviyo and [00:08:50] mm-hmm. [00:08:50] Mark: They've done a couple more of those investments, um, I think Gotcha. Globally, right. Globally kind of powers their like international stuff. [00:09:00] Even like their Shopify markets pro, it's kind of globally in the background. [00:09:06] Kalen: Mm. Okay. Okay. Interesting. This [00:09:10] sounds sort of almost slightly familiar. No, no, not familiar. [00:09:15] Kalen: The one that I hear about all the time is Open Border sounds what it's called. Mm-hmm. [00:09:20] Open Border. Yeah. What's the spiel? What's the difference between these two? Um, one of them has a good [00:09:30] logo. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. [00:09:35] Mark: I don't, I don't know that. I guess we'll figure, we'll figure it out. [00:09:38] Mark: I just know, I know. [00:09:40] Globally, and then Shopify Markets Pro is basically powered by globally, so that's, that's an interesting way that they like didn't cannibalize. [00:09:50] Their, their market. Uh, they partnered with an existing, you know, solution. Oh, [00:09:56] Kalen: gotcha. Okay. I mean, they white labeled it. That's really [00:10:00] interesting. [00:10:00] Kalen: Yeah. That's super interesting. Well, not even a white label is one of those words that you throw around, but then I guess since they're [00:10:10] mentioning it, it's not technically a white [00:10:14] Mark: label, but Right. Maybe, but like, maybe because of the Drake stuff, they were like, we [00:10:20] really, we really gotta support these, these Canadians, you know? [00:10:25] Kalen: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is globally Canadian? [00:10:28] Mark: Oh, I don't know. No, [00:10:30] I'm saying that that's why they created collective. [00:10:34] Kalen: Gotcha. Wait, I don't get the connections. I don't get the connections to [00:10:40] be that. [00:10:41] Mark: All right. Like Harley loves. Ca Canada, right? Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Right. Drake is Canadian. He's [00:10:50] probably the most famous artist. [00:10:51] Mark: Yes, yes. Theoretically, maybe Drake's Management came to Shopify and was like, Hey, we want to do this Drake related thing. What solution [00:11:00] do you have? And they were like, oh, this is so cool. We don't want to like white label someone else's product. Like, and then they created a team to just [00:11:10] build this cross selling, drop shipping product for Drake. [00:11:14] Mark: And then they're like, we should, should didn't market to everyone else too. [00:11:18] Kalen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, [00:11:20] that, that's entirely possible because like, think about what you would, what lengths you would go to for, and I'm not personally a gigantic Drake fan, but I get it. [00:11:30] Like I totally get that. He's absolutely massive. [00:11:35] Kalen: Plus he is Canadian, plus he's, you know, his thing's gonna be in Shopify. So, I [00:11:40] mean, I could imagine Harley being like, listen guys. We're dedicating a hundred percent of our dev cycles to Drake for the next 24 months. [00:11:50] Give him whatever, give him whatever he wants. And then Toby chimes in and he is like, um, we have a couple other things to work on.[00:12:00] [00:12:00] Kalen: And Harley's like, shut out. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. I bet Toby calls the shots. Who do you think calls the shots? Because Toby's [00:12:10] the c I never like Toby's the c e o. So he probably is ultimately in charge of most things. [00:12:18] Mark: Yeah, I think he's, he [00:12:20] calls the shots. I think he still has like, control of the company from a, a public shares, um, perspective. [00:12:28] Mark: Mm-hmm. I think there's some weird [00:12:30] thing similar to Facebook where Mark Zuckerberg has complete control over. Facebook or, or meta even though. Mm-hmm. They don't own 50% of the company, [00:12:40] I think. Mm-hmm. There's some sort of thing set up like that. Um, so he's still the dog. Gotcha. And I think Harley probably like, just takes a lot of like the [00:12:50] mundane. [00:12:50] Mark: President stuff off of his plate and mm-hmm. Obviously, Harley's a little more like energetic and out there, you know, to Toby's more like a [00:13:00] C T O, but he's obviously the founder too, so. [00:13:03] Kalen: Right, right, right, right, right, right. I realized, I think what I'll do on the screen share is that by [00:13:10] default I'll just include our videos. [00:13:13] Kalen: But, 'cause I just noticed the incognito was showing my search history, so it's like, it's my on my auto complete. So it's like, what, what's e [00:13:20] what is even the point? But anyways, and then we can safari. Yeah. That's probably what I should do. And then Safari is where the real crazy stuff goes down. [00:13:30] Just kidding. [00:13:31] Kalen: I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Um, but, uh, but yeah, and then we can, um, and then if we need, like we can, we, if we [00:13:40] ha if we need it for one thing or another, we have it, but by default I'll probably just not include it. Um, yeah. But, uh, anyways, inside baseball. [00:13:50] Yeah. [00:13:51] Mark: Um, with the Canada stuff too, I know that Staples Canada is running on Shopify and has been running on Shopify for a while. [00:13:59] Mark: Mm-hmm. [00:14:00] And that, that is like a story where, um, you know, there was almost like a partnership of like, Hey, I. We're both Canadian companies, like [00:14:10] let's work together. And then some, some dev team somewhere had to like figure out how to make it work. And they have a custom checkout, um, which [00:14:20] is kind of like not allowed on Shopify, but you know, they allow it on Staples [00:14:26] Kalen: Canada. [00:14:27] Kalen: They let it slide for Staples Can [00:14:30] Man Harley and his back room deals, man. I get it. Shoot, man, I get it. It's like, you know, and props to them, dude, because [00:14:40] honestly they're punching way above their weight, you know what I mean? In terms of the, well can, Canada has a lot of cool tech companies, but I mean, they're not just a cool, a cool [00:14:50] tech company. [00:14:50] Kalen: I mean, they're, they're one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I mean, I don't know if they're in the top 10, but, um, I mean, they're absolutely massive. So sometimes you [00:15:00] have to build a, uh, uh, a co, uh, you know, what's the word? Cons, you know, a consensus, um, in, in order to, you know, you gotta pool your [00:15:10] resources and stuff like that. [00:15:11] Kalen: So like, um, yeah, I think it's, I think it's smart. [00:15:16] Mark: They're probably the most well known Canadian company now. [00:15:20] I, I think Blackberry used to be the most well known, right? But poor Blackberry, they, they miss the boat there. [00:15:28] Kalen: Yeah. I, I don't feel [00:15:30] too bad for Blackberry. I mean, they had, they had Dar We do, we feel bad. [00:15:36] Kalen: I mean, they had a nice run of it. Yeah. And they dropped the [00:15:40] ball, man. I mean, you know, it is, I mean, [00:15:43] Mark: did you see that Blackberry movie that they, uh, released recently? No. No, I don't think I did. It's [00:15:50] really good. Um Oh, okay. Yeah, it, it's, it's dramatized. Uh Oh, nice. Just couple, couple big name [00:16:00] actors. Um, nice. [00:16:03] Mark: I was, I was talking to one of my classmates and he used to work for Blackberry, like kind of during the time [00:16:10] of, of the, I don't know, the movie, and he said, mm-hmm. It was pretty accurate. Um, nice. So they, they had a, a nice run and then Apple [00:16:20] ate their lunch basically. Yeah. [00:16:23] Kalen: Yeah. I mean, and at the time it was like, oh, you, you have to have a keyboard and. [00:16:28] Kalen: Stuff like that was their [00:16:30] perspective and Yep. It made a lot of sense because early on, dude, when you try to type on a phone and you haven't a, a, a glass thing and you haven't done it before and the keyboards [00:16:40] weren't mm-hmm. The digital keyboards weren't very, I mean, now there's touch sensing and sounds, I mean, there's all sorts of, and people weren't used to it, but back then I could [00:16:50] totally see where they're coming from, that they're like, this is never gonna work. [00:16:53] Kalen: I mean, I, I can, I kind of wish I had a [00:16:56] Marker [00:16:56] Kalen: physical key, you know, keyboard still on my [00:17:00] stupid phone. You know, [00:17:02] Mark: you can bring around a a, a Bluetooth keyboard. You can pair it with iPhones. Right. Let's prop [00:17:07] Kalen: it up. Right. Just [00:17:10] carry it in my pocket. Yeah. You're, you're standing in line googling something at a coffee shop and you just whip out your keyboard.[00:17:20] [00:17:21] Mark: I've seen people bring like IMAX to coffee shops before too, and I'm like, what? Oh, really? Yeah. That's funny. The whole [00:17:30] computer. That's awesome. Just go all in. Um, but with the, the Staples stuff, it actually, it's interesting because I think that the, going more in [00:17:40] that direction now with the commerce components things mm-hmm. [00:17:44] Mark: Where they're saying, Hey, like, you can use the checkout, um, you can use [00:17:50] our, our product management, you can use our order management. Like we don't mm-hmm. Really care anymore about like what piece you use, but just, just use [00:18:00] some part of Shopify, we'll, we'll figure it out. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that was a big blocker, um, in, in the past because before, like they, I [00:18:10] mean literally they would say like, this outside checkout isn't allowed. [00:18:14] Mark: And, you know, they banned like fast, not that startup that came and went. Right. Uh, bolt, you [00:18:20] know, so many external checkouts. They said no, like you can't do that. Um, right. And now I now with big enterprises, they're, [00:18:30] they're being a little more gracious and saying, okay, however you want to use Shopify, it's totally fine. [00:18:36] Mark: Just use Right. Some piece of Shopify. Right. [00:18:40] [00:18:40] Kalen: Do you think that they're gonna ultimately be as successful in the enterprise space as they [00:18:50] were, as they are in the consumer space? [00:18:54] Mark: Um, probably not. I think they have a, a really [00:19:00] big uphill battle to get into those companies and mm-hmm. You know, as part of why they're pushing like the Gartner, you know, report Yeah.[00:19:10] [00:19:10] Mark: All that kind of stuff. They're trying to get the trust of these CIOs that are used to working with, you know, kind of from the ground up enterprise software, like a [00:19:20] Salesforce or mm-hmm. Like a, a Demandware or high risk or s a p, you know, these things that are like really, they're a pain to use, but enterprises [00:19:30] are used to using them and when there's like almost more of a consumer mid-market solution that's trying to push up enterprise at by [00:19:40] default, I don't think those companies like trust it. [00:19:43] Mark: Because it's like, oh, this isn't, this isn't ready. So Shopify is having to do a lot to try to [00:19:50] combat that mentality of it not being ready for the enterprise. And I think that's why they're doing all these reports and, you know, big Five consulting stuff. [00:19:59] Kalen: [00:20:00] Yeah. And, and it's kind of, because I, somebody told me like, it might've been related to Shop Talk, but somebody told me like Shopify never like [00:20:10] presented at conferences, never sponsored. [00:20:13] Kalen: It might've even been you. I don't know who told me that, but they were, they basically had, they [00:20:20] basically were like, like, it was almost like their absence was like so obvious. It was almost like, we don't care about your dumb spot. Like, we don't need to [00:20:30] do these, we don't need to play these games because our software is just better. [00:20:34] Kalen: It was kind of like reading between the lines, the way I interpreted it. Yeah. And [00:20:40] in a way like that's kind of badass, like in a way it's kind of a bummer that now they're having to play all these sort of games [00:20:50] and it's like, I, I, I totally understand now when I see the Gartner Report stuff. At first I was like, ah, nobody caress about that thing. [00:20:59] Kalen: But [00:21:00] then, um, I was like, okay, I get what they're doing and why they're doing it. Yeah. But, um, it's kind of like, [00:21:10] That's sort of the, that's sort of, that's sort of the problem with the enterprise space is that everybody has to do all these dances and play all these games as opposed to just going, [00:21:20] okay, which software is the best? [00:21:21] Kalen: Let's use that. [00:21:22] Mark: You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's, it's a lot more talk and, and it's sadly like wining and dining [00:21:30] because the, the deals that they make in the enterprise space are so large. Like you have that ability and, you know, if Shopify tries to, to [00:21:40] take every client out for dinner that they have, you know, they, they go broke buying them a few drinks. [00:21:46] Mark: So with the commerce component stuff, my [00:21:50] understanding is that they have a completely separate like enterprise sales team. Yeah. That probably operates more like an enterprise sales team. [00:21:58] Kalen: Yeah. [00:22:00] It's like, it's probably like a mini Salesforce company inside of Shopify. Exactly. And I heard some things about some of [00:22:10] the Shopify products, which shall remain nameless, and the teams that work on them that may or may not be more towards [00:22:20] the enterprise side of the company that may or may not have quality that is less than kind of the consumer product. [00:22:29] Kalen: Yeah. [00:22:30] And it sort of made sense to me. Mm-hmm. Like it sort of clicked for me in a way, [00:22:40] because like we've seen, like that's kind of how enterprisey so Enterprisey software goes, is that. It's just [00:22:50] never as good. Like Right. It's this weird paradox that like people pay more money for it. The decisions are more, the [00:23:00] decision processes are more important, and in theory more thorough. [00:23:04] Kalen: But in practice it's like incentives get misaligned. You know, [00:23:10] steak dinners factor in way more than they should, like stuff like that. And so it's like the software sort [00:23:20] of suffers. And so like, I firmly believe like the, the core of what Shopify does is the best in the world as far as an independent checkout. [00:23:28] Kalen: Like Amazon's is probably better [00:23:30] as a checkout. Mm-hmm. But as in something that any, but any merchant can, can own. But then all of the things surrounding the core, you [00:23:40] know, everything has two and a half star. All their first party apps have, you know, [00:23:44] Mark: that's what I said in that article in modern retail, like Right, sure. [00:23:49] Mark: I'm gonna get canclled [00:23:50] for that. Right. [00:23:53] Kalen: But I still think it's a good strategy that they're doing it and, and even though the, the products are actually good, but they get those [00:24:00] star ratings 'cause their support isn't there. Or because there are issues or whatever, but like mm-hmm. I think the strategy makes sense, but it just like, and then as you take it [00:24:10] to the enterprise, and then now they're doing the consulting Gartner reports and who knows where that data's coming from for BigCommerce and stuff. [00:24:18] Kalen: It's like, you [00:24:20] know, uh, it is like, I don't know, but part of me feels like they, they will win the enterprise just because, I don't know, I feel like [00:24:30] they're a unique company. Like, like I feel like they're just. I don't know. I, I just, you know, part of me thinks they're gonna pull [00:24:38] Mark: it off. They [00:24:40] still have an uphill battle, and I think it's more of a culture battle and a perception battle. [00:24:45] Mark: And the enterprise market moves a lot slower. [00:24:50] Yeah. But I, I, I think that they kind of at least have a foot in the door of like, Mindshare, people know the name Shopify. Um, the, the [00:25:00] question is whether they can change the perception of Shopify as being like mid-market, um, right. And to your, to your point about like, I don't know, the [00:25:10] stability and everything, I think a lot of that is because people, people very high up, like make the decisions and then people very low down have to [00:25:20] implement them. [00:25:20] Mark: Mm-hmm. And that's where, when these big projects get done, it's like someone signing a contract so far away from the actual implementation. Mm-hmm. [00:25:30] Um, and then the people on the bottom just have to like, try to figure out how to make it work. And there's like a deadline and it's like, okay, we're gonna launch. [00:25:38] Mark: This date, regardless of, you [00:25:40] know, the crazy requirements, regardless of whether the platform really does what it's supposed to do. Right, [00:25:46] Kalen: right, right. Basically, the more people involved in decisions, [00:25:50] the worse the decisions get. Yeah. So when you have this, when you have millions of single person entrepreneurs making decisions about software, they tend to make [00:26:00] better decisions than the, the, the, these huge companies and very highly paid people that make decisions in a committee of 20. [00:26:09] Kalen: Yeah. [00:26:10] The decisions end up being worse. Like, but, um, but speak, so speaking of what, shout out to Gil here. Mm-hmm. Um, Greenberg who, [00:26:20] um, he had mentioned, he had tweeted that we're like, we're talking about some of these bigger brands and stuff like that, that, um, uh, working with some absolutely monster brands to [00:26:30] customize checkout, who are actively migrating Shopify next year is going to be a mega year for household brands switching Shopify. [00:26:37] Kalen: So I'm, I'm, I'm obviously super curious right? Who [00:26:40] these brands are and Gil is. Mm-hmm. Like, I, like he's, I'm, I'm, you know, I, I, I love following him. He's building out his, uh, SAS empire [00:26:50] and um, so that's super, super interesting to. To see. [00:26:55] Mark: It's cool too that it seems like these brands are able to go to Shopify [00:27:00] and not have to use a completely custom checkout. [00:27:03] Mark: Um, Shopify's done a lot of work in the past, probably like two years to make their checkout actually like [00:27:10] extendable and customizable. Um, where it isn't like before. I think that was one of the biggest limitations of Shopify. And a lot of the Magento folks [00:27:20] would bring it up of like, oh, but what about the checkout? [00:27:23] Mark: If you need to do this and this, like you can't. Um, right. And that as Shopify opens it up [00:27:30] for, for customization, a lot of those arguments kind of go out the door. [00:27:35] Kalen: Right. Right. And, and, and are you talking about, um, [00:27:40] the, uh, commerce components totally customizable thing or just the current state with the customizations to check out and functions and stuff like that? [00:27:48] Mark: Yeah. Not even, uh, [00:27:50] pulling in the commerce component stuff, they now have, you know, uh, checkout APIs, um, and ways for like checkout blocks, run runs on these new [00:28:00] APIs. Like it, it couldn't exist a year or two ago because Shopify didn't allow that kind of functionality to tie into the checkout. Right, right, [00:28:09] Kalen: right, right. [00:28:09] Kalen: [00:28:10] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and, and, and like, that was the whole thing about Shopify for so long is that the checkout wasn't customizable and Magento's was, but then, [00:28:20] you know, Magento's always falling over. And then Shopify is, you know, they're doing a Black Friday thing and they got this cool ass visualization of bajillion orders a [00:28:30] second. [00:28:30] Kalen: And I mean, that's extremely hard to do. So it's like, well, that's the reason why you can't customize. And now they've finally started to have a significant amount of [00:28:40] customization while keeping the core thing stable. Um, but it took 'em like 14 years to, to, to do that. So that's pretty, but it's [00:28:50] interesting because, um, I posted a question in one of the Facebook groups, like, what's one of the, what do you love or hate the most about Shopify? [00:28:56] Kalen: And people, somebody had mentioned like, well, you can't [00:29:00] use uh, Shopify scripts anymore in the, in the checkout you have to use Right. Like the [00:29:07] Mark: function, Shopify function. [00:29:09] Kalen: Yeah, [00:29:10] yeah, yeah. And, and so I, part of it was like, okay, I can get the frustration 'cause you're comfortable, you're used to doing this previous thing. [00:29:17] Kalen: But my read on it was that the [00:29:20] new set of APIs and functions and stuff are so much better of a mm-hmm. Of a model. Yeah. That like, you should be [00:29:30] glad, you should actually be really happy that you have that down. So [00:29:36] Mark: yeah, you have to kind of rethink some of the ways that you do [00:29:40] things. But I think, you know, overall they've opened up more functionality. [00:29:44] Mark: Just you have to do it a different way. [00:29:47] Kalen: Right, totally. [00:29:50] [00:29:51] Mark: Um, going to our, our Google Doc. [00:29:55] Kalen: Yes. I start to get lost in the screens. Actually. Try not to look at the screen [00:30:00] too much because it, it, it makes it hard for me to like, concentrate, but, um, but, uh, yeah. What did we want to jump? Oh, we gotta get you to buy [00:30:10] something. [00:30:10] Kalen: Oh, yeah. You, you wanna buy something? [00:30:14] Mark: I gotta share my screen. [00:30:15] Kalen: Yeah, dude. Oh boy. Let's get [00:30:20] into it, man. My [00:30:22] Mark: first time sharing screen. [00:30:26] Kalen: May the force be with you. [00:30:28] Mark: Okay. [00:30:30] Are we live? Yeah. So in honor of you joining the two Tesla Club, [00:30:40] by the way, when, when does your second Tesla come in or is it already coming? [00:30:45] Mark: Dude, it came in [00:30:45] Kalen: quick, man. Yeah, it came in like, it came in like [00:30:50] a week, or it might have been a week or like a week and a half from when we ordered it. Nice. [00:30:57] Mark: Okay. Yeah. Uh, [00:31:00] what, what [00:31:00] r [00:31:00] Mark: you have a, a model three and a model Y or what? Two [00:31:04] Kalen: model Y's One. One white. One gray. Yep. Wow. Good [00:31:10] times. Yeah. Yeah. Matchy. [00:31:13] Kalen: Matchy. [00:31:14] Mark: I have a really three and a y, like the [00:31:20] three I, I think is like, probably like worth almost nothing. So I'm just like, I'm not gonna get rid of it. Like, oh, okay. [00:31:28] Kalen: Gotcha. [00:31:30] How, uh, what year is the three? [00:31:35] Mark: Uh, 2019. I mean, it's [00:31:38] funny [00:31:38] Kalen: how that's like [00:31:40] really old. Yeah. But No, but dude, like my model y I got it used. [00:31:45] Kalen: I think it's, uh, 21. Mm-hmm. I think I got it [00:31:50] in 22. But anyways, just little things in the current, um, latest model, like the center console, the place where you put the phones, [00:32:00] like, I'm so jealous. I, I, I'm like tempted to steal my wife's car and let her have mine because it's just so much nicer. But it's [00:32:10] like, you know, small things. [00:32:12] Mark: Yeah. But I think I'm gonna get a charge port sticker thing. [00:32:20] I saw one of your cars had something like this on the back, or was that just something on Instagram? [00:32:26] Kalen: Or am I That was on Instagram, dude, I was at the, um, I was at the [00:32:30] service center and uh, getting my tire looked at and I was looking at, um, one of the cars in the showroom. [00:32:37] Kalen: It was a model SS plaid. Oh my [00:32:40] God. Yeah. It was so beautiful. But it had, I thought it was some kind of a spider-man on the back. [00:32:50] Mm-hmm. And that it had, and it looked so cool. [00:32:58] Kalen: So is that just a sticker? [00:33:00] [00:33:00] Mark: I think so. I think it was just a sticker. That's dope, man. You can still see. How are you? [00:33:07] Kalen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How are you gonna hide your address? [00:33:10] [00:33:10] Mark: I'm gonna, I'm gonna use my work, work address. Oh, I already put it in there. [00:33:16] Kalen: Nice. Oh, it doesn't shed there. [00:33:20] [00:33:20] Mark: I don't care. I mean, it's, it's already public. [00:33:22] Mark: It's, it's not a physical location. Yeah, [00:33:25] Kalen: yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. You got [00:33:29] Mark: smart. I guess I can get [00:33:30] offers. So Yeah, this stuff is, is new and it's part of like the checkout extensibility, whereas before you couldn't have like all this extra stuff [00:33:40] unless you were on plus. And you have to like, manually add it with scripts. [00:33:44] Kalen: Right, right. That's pretty awesome. So, [00:33:47] Mark: so many things, [00:33:49] Kalen: [00:33:50] but I 1% cash. I wonder if those, I wonder if those things are, uh, hurt conversion rates. You got upsells. [00:34:00] Yeah. You got buttons. Like I hate stuff like that. [00:34:04] Mark: Your card was declined. That's funny. That's embarrassing. [00:34:10] Mark is [00:34:10] Kalen: broke. Don't, don't. Definitely don't work with Mark. [00:34:16] Kalen: He, he's broke. [00:34:18] Mark: Uh, [00:34:20] now, now I have to use an another dress or I put the part in and then like, we'll have to like edit that out. Maybe, maybe we don't go [00:34:30] for further close sharing the [00:34:33] spring [00:34:33] Kalen: share. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got close. Close enough. [00:34:38] Mark: So hard. [00:34:40] [00:34:41] Kalen: I don't know how you travel so much without any money, dude. [00:34:45] Kalen: I don't know either.[00:34:50] [00:34:51] Mark: Wait, I don't know. All right. I'm not gonna check out. [00:34:56] Kalen: All right. We got close. So we got very [00:35:00] close. [00:35:01] Mark: But like the stuff on the side, uh, I don't think it hurts conversion. It's more about like the average order value, [00:35:10] um, and like Right. Trying to get people to order more at once because Right. Especially shipping, like we've talked about in the past, shipping is [00:35:20] like the biggest obstacle for non-Amazon merchants. [00:35:24] Mark: Right. And whatever you can do to those, like throw anoth another sticker in the [00:35:30] box that literally like, won't increase the shipping, but, you know, combining those, uh, things. [00:35:38] Kalen: Yeah. By the way, what's the [00:35:40] shipping, what's the shipping time on. On. This doesn't even say [00:35:45] Mark: ground. Yeah. I'm just like, I don't know,[00:35:50] [00:35:51] Mark: like slow ish, fast ish. [00:35:57] Kalen: Dude, you're not gonna get that for like a [00:36:00] week and a half, dude. [00:36:02] Mark: Oh man. You know, that's definitely a call out for, for merchants. Like people want to know like Exactly when they're gonna get [00:36:10] something. When they [00:36:11] Kalen: order. Yeah. People want to know, they wanna know, is it gonna be one day or six hours? [00:36:19] Mark: That's [00:36:20] what am Amazon set that bar. It's like, am I gonna get it tomorrow? Am I gonna get it someday? Like, [00:36:28] Kalen: yeah, yeah, [00:36:30] yeah. It's, it's surprising me that that isn't easier to just sort of fix, but that shows that I haven't like, thought very much [00:36:40] about it. [00:36:41] Mark: I think maybe, uh, deliver or Flexport has to fix that, right? [00:36:46] Mark: Yeah. That's, that's the, the savior [00:36:50] to Shopify shipping problems. [00:36:52] Kalen: Yeah, dude. Hopefully, man. Um, yeah. Yeah. [00:37:00] It's, oh, I saw somebody mention something about Buy With Prime. Oh, yeah. And they were saying that it was pretty, [00:37:10] uh, pretty bad because like, you, it doesn't like, it doesn't like integrate with, um, you know, [00:37:20] like you don't, it doesn't pull the cu let me pull the tweet up. [00:37:23] Kalen: It doesn't like pull the customer information into, um, you know, [00:37:30] into, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just all disco ovulated, you know? Yeah. Um, oh, here we go. He goes, um, oh, this one guy tweeted, he said, [00:37:40] After using Buy With Prime for an eight figure brand this year. I can confirm it's terrible. And then he said, um, it doesn't function at all. [00:37:47] Kalen: Well, with Shopify, customers don't get [00:37:50] typical Shopify email flow purchase isn't recorded in customer account, have to use a separate portal for customer experience, refunds and tracking. [00:38:00] Customers can't use discounts and doesn't work for subscriptions. So it's ba I mean, so it's basically, it's basically like, I mean, it is terrible from that perspective. [00:38:09] Kalen: Mm-hmm. You know, [00:38:10] [00:38:10] Mark: it's, um, they've, they've improved it from a customer perspective though. Actually, I'll, I'll share my screen real quick. Okay. [00:38:20] Um, but it's controversial because it takes them off of Shopify to, to buy the, to [00:38:30] buy it and the orders don't flow back into Shopify. So, If you click Buy with Prime, uh, now they actually have their, [00:38:40] this little drawer card, they didn't have it before, but one complaint before is like you could only like buy some one thing at a time. [00:38:49] Mark: Mm-hmm. [00:38:50] So now they have that, and then you click proceed with checkout, and then it makes you log into Amazon. I've already done that. And then, [00:39:00] um, and then they have a little checkout, special checkout for you. Before it was kind of a, that's. It, it, it was, it was kind of [00:39:10] janky the checkout. Um, but now it was pretty smooth. [00:39:14] Mark: That [00:39:14] Kalen: is pretty smooth. Yeah. And it's probably just, um, [00:39:20] either them not wanting to share customer data or probably that, or maybe Shopify not exposing certain APIs to them. [00:39:29] Mark: I think Shopify [00:39:30] one didn't want them to do it at all, so they haven't really been cooperating. Um, yeah, I could imagine that. And [00:39:40] Amazon's just like, well, we'll do, do it without you. [00:39:43] Mark: Um mm-hmm. But maybe if there was more cooperation, Amazon could flow the orders back into [00:39:50] Shopify, so there was more customer data. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But Shopify loves the checkout and they love payments, and that's kind of how they make their money. [00:40:00] So they, yeah. They're not super incentivized to, to help Amazon with a, a great integration for that. [00:40:06] Mark: Yeah. [00:40:07] Kalen: Yeah, yeah. So, I [00:40:10] mean, yeah, so that may be mostly Shopify being the reason why it sucks, but, um, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon didn't wanna share customer data. [00:40:20] I don't know if they, if they do share, if they do share customer data in general with Buy with Prime. Yeah. Or if [00:40:30] they keep it like locked in. [00:40:32] Mark: I think, I think they share the customer data, but it just, it doesn't flow back into the systems [00:40:38] Kalen: normally. Okay. [00:40:40] Okay. So, so, so it might be entirely Shopify that's, that's making the integration suck, which is, which is fair because they're, that's their main competitor [00:40:50] [00:40:50] Mark: in a way. Yeah. And I, I have a feeling Shopify maybe wanted, uh, a percentage, like a cut, and Amazon's like, no. [00:40:59] Mark: I don't [00:41:00] really want to give you a cut. And so maybe they're still still negotiating on it. Gotcha. 'cause right now, uh, Shopify doesn't get anything if you do a buy with Prime [00:41:10] order. 'cause Shopify doesn't even know about it. It doesn't come through as, as an order in Shopify. Right, right, right, [00:41:18] Kalen: right. [00:41:20] Yeah, that's interesting. [00:41:24] Kalen: Um, Isha, what's your, what's your secret to writing less email. [00:41:30] [00:41:30] Mark: Hiring more people. Nice. Nice. Amanda's clients like, nice. When I started, I was managing all the clients and I [00:41:40] think at one point I was personally managing like 30, 40 clients. And then I realized like, that's not sustainable, that's not scalable. [00:41:49] Mark: And, [00:41:50] but I didn't like trust people to talk to the clients. Um, 'cause I thought that's what clients wanted. They wanted to talk to me. Mm-hmm. [00:42:00] And the more and more, um, I, I find people that do like talking to clients, I realize I, I don't like talk to [00:42:10] talk to talk to clients. And a lot of people are actually way better at, at than me. [00:42:15] Mark: So I'm like, that's great. You know? Mm-hmm. You wanna have meetings with [00:42:20] clients, that's fine. Like, I, I, I don't even like get on calls a lot of times with clients. [00:42:28] Kalen: Nice man. Living a dream. [00:42:30] What, what's, um, what's, like, what would you say is the, is the thing that you like to do and are, [00:42:40] and are good at within [00:42:42] Mark: in your realm? [00:42:45] Mark: Um, I think it's a bit more in, in the strategy. I. [00:42:50] Hey, uh, you know, choosing the platform, um, and kind of like ar the architecture of like, okay, we're gonna use this platform, [00:43:00] um, use these apps, uh, here, here's how like, we can best accomplish your goals. Versus like, I'm not [00:43:10] quite so much in the we weeds of like, okay, how do we code this little thing? [00:43:15] Mark: Like mm-hmm. I used to be, I used to be that person, but mm-hmm. Uh, I realized that [00:43:20] when, when you're so in the weeds, you, you don't have like a good big picture view of like, what's going on. Mm-hmm. I kind of had to force myself to get out [00:43:30] of, you know, doing the nitty gritty to be able to have kind of the mind, mind space to, to think about the other stuff. [00:43:37] Mark: 'cause otherwise I was just worrying about, okay, how, [00:43:40] how am I gonna code this? Like mm-hmm. I don't want to do it this way 'cause I don't wanna write that [00:43:44] Kalen: code. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't [00:43:49] Mark: [00:43:50] that make sense? What, how? How's your. You know, role change and or you have a [00:44:00] job versus like running a company, you [00:44:02] Kalen: know? [00:44:03] Kalen: Yeah. It's, it's actually been, um, similar in the sense that, um, I'm doing, I don't, I have less, uh, you know, [00:44:10] responsibilities. Like, for so long I've been the guy that has to respond to every single email, you know? Mm-hmm. Do every call, and then I would just like, not do calls. I'd be like, uh, [00:44:20] you know, somebody would wanna like, do business with me. [00:44:23] Kalen: Me, I'd be like, uh, can you just email me? Mm-hmm. You know? Um, so like, uh, yeah. So that's [00:44:30] been good actually because, um, you know, like somebody, um, Um, uh, my buddy, uh, roped me into this ebook that a couple [00:44:40] different tech vendors were working on for Black Friday. And then we have a guy that writes content, so he like knocked out the content and I was like, I felt a little weird about [00:44:50] it 'cause I felt like I should have done that, but, um, like that was cool. [00:44:54] Kalen: And so it's, it's actually really nice that I don't have to do everything. [00:45:00] Um, and I'm really, I'm really liking that I do still have to do calls, which I sometimes have a love relationship, love hate relationship with calls. Yeah. [00:45:10] Um, like I had this one possible partner, which is like, they're like a bigger company and we did a call and I was like, excited 'cause it's like a bigger company.[00:45:20] [00:45:20] Kalen: But then I realized I don't think we're very high on their list. I think that they're just sort of, I. Kind of kicking the tires a little bit. And so then I was just [00:45:30] like, uh, so they like checked in again and I was like, uh, like, uh, do I really have to do this call? So then I kind of pushed back a little [00:45:40] bit, but, um, but in general it's, it's, it's pretty good. [00:45:46] Kalen: And um, and then they, and then they let me work on this [00:45:50] podcast, which was, which was cool. Yeah. Dedicated some work time to that, which was sweet. Shout out to Mesa. Um, so slapping [00:45:58] Mark: the logo, now, this is your responsibility. This [00:46:00] is part of your job right [00:46:01] Kalen: there. Yeah. Yeah. Which, which is, which is, helps a lot to keep, keep it going. [00:46:07] Kalen: So yeah, it's, yeah, it's [00:46:10] going pretty good. But, but I do, I do obviously miss, you know, being the man in charge of everything. There's something nice about that, right? Um, [00:46:20] [00:46:20] Mark: At, at Commerce Hero, did you have like much of a team and did you enjoy managing people or is that like, you're like, no, I don't [00:46:28] Kalen: like that. [00:46:29] Kalen: Yeah, no, I [00:46:30] didn't. I never had a team. I never, um, I think I tried to hire one, one my c o o one time to help with some things that didn't last too long. Yeah, I think I might've tried to [00:46:40] hire a support person, hired some video editing help from time to time. But yeah, I've just never been good at building teams, man. [00:46:48] Kalen: I've, I've never been, [00:46:50] ironically, I've never been good at it. Um, and so I never, uh, I never did it. I would just do everything myself and, [00:47:00] um, and it, I mean, it worked pretty well in a sense, but then I just thought I kind of got burnt out on it even though there wasn't like a lot of work. [00:47:10] Time-wise, but, but I still, somehow, um, I just was coasting. [00:47:19] Kalen: I was just kind of [00:47:20] coasting and, and you know, something, you can, if you build something up, it can, it can chug along for a while, but you can't coast indefinitely, you know, and I kind of knew that [00:47:30] in the back of my head. Um, but it eventually just kind of, I. Petered out, but, um, mm-hmm. So I'm, I'm, [00:47:37] Mark: yeah. Yeah. [00:47:39] Mark: That's an [00:47:40] interesting, I think difference between like a SaaS business and an agency, more service based business because mm-hmm. I didn't really hire anyone for like, four or five years and what, [00:47:50] like, made me hire people mm-hmm. Was that like, I over overcommitted to project and so I had too much work and so I was like, oh, okay, I should hire people [00:48:00] to help me. [00:48:01] Mark: Mm-hmm. Because I, I can't scale the business, you know, just having my 40 hours a week mm-hmm. Versus SaaS, it like kind of seemed [00:48:10] more manageable as one person and you can. Choose, you know? Mm-hmm. How much energy you put into it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But if and if you're on the service side and you [00:48:20] just have these things to get done and like clients are breathing down your neck mm-hmm. [00:48:24] Mark: It kind of more incentivizes you to be like, okay, maybe some people can help me get all this stuff done. [00:48:29] Kalen: [00:48:30] Yeah. You're like forced to do it and then because you're forced to do it, you learn to do it, and then you learn to delegate and then, you know, you eventually get to the point where [00:48:40] you have quite a bit of flexibility. [00:48:42] Kalen: Yeah. And I got into this Twitter argument with some guy that was like saying, he was talking about his SaaS and he's like, I've [00:48:50] done, I've built affiliate businesses. That was the big red flag. Affiliate businesses, agencies, e-commerce brands. And now I'm building a SaaS. And [00:49:00] so then somebody respond and I'm like, okay, fine, dude, whatever. [00:49:03] Kalen: And it, these are just things that show up in my feet. Yeah. I'm not going and hunting around, you know? And then some, somebody [00:49:10] responded and said, asked something about building the sass, and then he was like, well, you can't do it as a, as a, you can't do it by yourself. You can't build a sass by yourself. [00:49:19] Kalen: And I was like, [00:49:20] uh, yeah, you can. And then he's like, well, it's, I, we have 22 people that have been working for 18 months on our dah, dah, dah, dah. And I was like, [00:49:30] I was like, okay, like that's cool. Like there's different types and levels of complexity, but there's an entire I. Movement of people building SaaS as an [00:49:40] individual and Yeah. [00:49:41] Kalen: Um, you know, I mean like Gil again is a great example. [00:49:45] Mark: Whole, like Indie hacker community is [00:49:48] Kalen: all about Yeah. That, yeah. Yeah, right. [00:49:50] I forgot about that. That, yeah, that's exactly it. The holy Yeah. And so, um, I was like, dude, you know, [00:49:57] Mark: Like the, uh, you know, level [00:50:00] levels like that. Yes. Made Nomad list. Yes. He's like, he famously brags about Nomad List, you know, makes, I don't know, a hundred k a month or something, and it's [00:50:10] like running on like one P H P file. [00:50:12] Mark: That [00:50:12] Kalen: all Yeah, I know, know, dude. And he's like, [00:50:16] Mark: I know that I have like one server, like $200 a month or something, yo. [00:50:20] Yeah. [00:50:21] Kalen: It's like, yeah, it's crazy, man. That guy. And then it is just p h p and jQuery just for, for life. Like, [00:50:30] he does not give a damn. Yeah. Yeah. It's, [00:50:33] Mark: that's the, [00:50:35] Kalen: that's the dream, dude. That's the frigging dream. [00:50:37] Kalen: Um, But, [00:50:40] uh, but yeah, I was gonna, what was I gonna, I was gonna highlight, oh, which kind of ties into this thing that, um, I was thinking about, like Harley tweeted about, you know, the entrepreneurs, [00:50:50] um, you know, the world needs more entrepreneurs. That's what we're making possible. Shopify Happy World, entrepreneurs Day. [00:50:57] Kalen: Yeah. And it's funny because like, I'm not an [00:51:00] entrepreneur anymore. Although, I guess you could say I kind of am sort of at heart or whatever, but, um, but I, I, I think the mission of Shopify is [00:51:10] really cool, you know? Mm-hmm. Even though, like you might say, well, if it's so cool, then why don't you do it yourself? [00:51:15] Kalen: You know what I mean? But like, I do think it's really cool and, uh, [00:51:20] when people can do that, it's awesome. And I'd actually like love at some point to, to actually make a physical product, like maybe a pickleball something or [00:51:30] other, like, yeah. Now that I'm so into pickleball. But, um, but like, that would be a totally different business from, you know, tech and stuff like that.[00:51:40] [00:51:40] Kalen: Right. But, um, but yeah, like, I, I really think the mission is really cool. Like, um, in a way I don't think Magento like [00:51:50] empowered the, uh, individual entrepreneur in quite the same way. Like, especially in recent years, it was all about, you know, bigger companies or me, or at least medium sized companies. [00:52:00] And so I think that's really cool, but simultaneously, like I'm not an entrepreneur anymore, so it's a little bit of a contradiction, you know? [00:52:08] Kalen: Right. [00:52:09] Mark: But I think [00:52:10] Shopify's done a really good job of slowly going up market, but not forgetting about, you know, the entrepreneurs that are just starting out that, you [00:52:20] know, don't have any experience and are trying to start a Shopify from, from $0 and, you know, maybe it works, right? Maybe it doesn't. Um, and they didn't [00:52:30] have to invest a lot of money, and at least the, the e-commerce part, you know, that if it, if it doesn't work, it was, they're only out like $30 a month for a year or [00:52:40] so. [00:52:40] Mark: So I think, I do think that they really like empower. Entrepreneurs and um, you know, 10 years ago if you wanted to start an e-commerce site, you [00:52:50] probably would have to use something like Magento or like, I think OS commerce. Like there was all these janky solutions and you would definitely have to hire a developer.[00:53:00] [00:53:00] Mark: From the get go. Like you, you wouldn't even be able to like just get a website to shop up, you know, if you weren't a developer. So they [00:53:10] definitely like, you know, broaden, broaden their, I don't know their market right. And I don't think they've forgotten about them. Like, like Magento. [00:53:20] Um, Magento definitely went up market and they left the, the, the lower end of the market [00:53:26] Kalen: even. [00:53:27] Kalen: Totally, totally. Yeah. [00:53:30] Yeah, absolutely. And like that was something that we'd argue about all the time in the Magento community is like, yeah, what about the open source enthusiasts? [00:53:40] You know? Mm-hmm. Like, uh, but yeah, I mean, comparing the two, it's, it's clear and actually to the point where for people like us who are [00:53:50] trying to, most of the time sell or market to the more of the plus side of the ecosystem or the whatever, you know, the, [00:54:00] whatever that is, the advanced plus side of the ecosystem, it's like if you go to the forums, There's a mix of, like, you'll have one question from somebody [00:54:10] who's day one, you know, like, yeah. [00:54:14] Kalen: You know, obviously, you know, very much on a day one entrepreneur, no technical [00:54:20] background whatsoever. And the next question is somebody who's like a C T O for like a brand that has a hundred people, you [00:54:30] know, type of, and, and that's the person we want to, to, to talk to and to sell to ultimately. Um, so it's actually [00:54:40] frustrating from that perspective of trying to isolate. [00:54:43] Kalen: I keep thinking, I wish there was. A Shopify forums for the bigger stores. [00:54:50] Right. Plus only. Yeah. Um, because in terms of what my job is, that's my job, you know, is to [00:55:00] Yeah. Reach out to those people essentially. Um, the, [00:55:04] Mark: the sad thing, it's like, it's honorable that Shopify like has such a passion for, you know, people [00:55:10] just starting out and the entrepreneurs, right? [00:55:12] Mark: But on the flip side for the ecosystem, you know, app, app developers, the, the support tickets from a [00:55:20] merchant that's doing $10 a month versus, you know, the thousand dollars a month is the same cost and the reviews a lot of times are, you know, left by the [00:55:30] lower end. So it, it is kind of like a drain on the ecosystem. [00:55:34] Mark: And I don't know exactly how. They can balance, like being supportive [00:55:40] without it. Right. Being too much support. [00:55:43] Kalen: Right. Yeah. It's an interesting, um, tension there because without the, the newer [00:55:50] entrepreneurs, um, uh, you know, that's like the lifeblood in a sense. Yeah. Like, you know, that's the ground. Um, uh, you know, [00:56:00] grassroots. [00:56:01] Kalen: That's the grassroots, you know? Yeah. And, and that's what like where Shopify came from. And so you need to continue to have that, but it [00:56:10] creates that tension. But like what they did with the reviews, where they're ranking them by, um, Ranking the reviews by, um, [00:56:20] like if there's something sort of more meaningful in the review. [00:56:23] Kalen: I can't remember. Right. I think they're like ranking if, you know, doing some AI stuff to Yeah. [00:56:30] Surface up the reviews that ha are more, have more to say. Like that probably helps to cut out, cut down on some of the like lower [00:56:40] effort, like reviews from the newer stores. Yeah. But yeah, it's a tricky thing to [00:56:45] Mark: solve, I think. [00:56:47] Mark: And I think the Shopify sidekick too [00:56:50] is really targeted towards maybe the lower end of the market to have a, a support, um, outlet for them. Uh, that doesn't require any [00:57:00] resources from Shopify 'cause. Yeah, I've heard that they really scaled up their customer service team during Covid 'cause there was so much demand, but then mm-hmm. [00:57:08] Mark: They realized it was so [00:57:10] expensive and so now they're trying to scale it back and, you know, save on cost, but they don't. Mm-hmm. They don't want to, you know, completely let people down. Um, [00:57:20] and AI to the rescue, you know, chat, G P T comes [00:57:23] Kalen: just as Right. Right. Do you, uh, do you know anybody that's using that? [00:57:28] Kalen: Any of your clients that are starting [00:57:30] to use it for little things here and there? I [00:57:33] Mark: don't think it's totally out yet, [00:57:36] Kalen: so. Okay. I don't know anyone's using it, [00:57:38] Mark: but there's probably [00:57:40] like some sort of a closed beta, so. Okay. Maybe some people are using it, but it's not, you can't just go and install it. [00:57:47] Kalen: Gotcha. [00:57:47] Kalen: Gotcha. That's another one of the funny things I [00:57:50] noticed in the Shopify ecosystem is that something will be released or announced and then it, it's in the, um, it's in the mind share of everyone, you know, and everybody [00:58:00] has thoughts on it and stuff like that. And then you go like, Hey, have you used it? And then people are like, oh no. [00:58:04] Kalen: It's like, I don't even know if it's out. It's such a, Such, such a weird, [00:58:10] you know, but in sense they gotta roll it out gradually. I mean, it totally makes sense. [00:58:16] Mark: That's the thing with the additions, it's a combination of things that they've already [00:58:20] released, things that they're releasing that day, and then things that aren't released. [00:58:24] Mark: And it's coming someday. Yeah, someday in the [00:58:27] Kalen: future. But it's always [00:58:30] phrased in the like present tense. It's always phrase. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so drop the thing, it's like a Vulcan mind [00:58:40] swipe type of thing. But um, [00:58:42] Mark: and we even Toby had like a video even I think before editions, like announcing sidekick. Yeah. It was just such a [00:58:50] push and then like, It's not available. [00:58:53] Mark: It's just, and there's no release date either. Like that's right's [00:58:57] Kalen: kind of confusing. But actually I'm a big [00:59:00] fan of not having deadlines. Like I think that you work on it and when it's ready, it's ready. Like I think that the base camp guys, Jason [00:59:10] free and d h h I think they had, had, uh, gone with that philosophy. [00:59:15] Kalen: And, um, like we were talking about how the enterprise [00:59:20] sales cycles tend to be real deadline driven and that tends to make things worse. Yeah. So I actually, I, I think it's a good way to do software, but it [00:59:30] is like, you do just want a date, like gimme a date, like when, you know, you just want get your grubby hands on it basically. [00:59:37] Kalen: Yeah, yeah. [00:59:38] Mark: Like, well [00:59:40] maybe when it's in beta anyway, they assumed it's gonna get out, so it's smart to go ahead and make a, a public announcement and like get people excited over it. [00:59:50] And I just went, honestly, I wish the betas were a little more open, like, alright, I, I'm just opting in. But most of the time if they have a beta [01:00:00] it's, it's like, okay, get on the waiting list and most people won't get into the beta, so maybe Right. [01:00:05] Mark: You know, maybe they could have more of an open beta program. [01:00:08] Kalen: Yeah. Like maybe if they [01:00:10] could just say, Hey, here's where you are in the queue. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then, but I'm, but I'm guessing they probably look at that list and they probably go, all right, we want this, this [01:00:20] store, we want this. [01:00:20] Kalen: You know? Yeah. And maybe that's, they probably don't just go straight in, in order. Um, so whereas [01:00:30] like with a Tesla pre-order, or you order a Tesla, you know where you are in the line. Mm-hmm. And you're gonna, you know what I mean? You're gonna get, get it at that point. But [01:00:40] yeah, that would be kind of cool. Um, [01:00:43] Mark: so your, you said your Tesla came like pretty quick, right? [01:00:47] Kalen: Pretty quick, man. Yeah. It was like, it's [01:00:50] like a week or so. Um, nice. And uh, yeah, it's because what happened was it was a pretty standard model y and then we, we wanted a tow hitch. [01:01:00] And then we wanted like the nicer tires. And then after we ordered it, they, they sent a message and they were like, oh, we have a [01:01:10] model Y that's really similar, but it doesn't have the tow hitch. [01:01:13] Kalen: And I told my wife, I was like, we gotta have the tow hitch. And then, um, and then there was another one [01:01:20] that had the tow hitch, but it didn't have the tires. And then I told her, I was like, honestly, like the tires are kind of a nice to have. Yeah. But she didn't accept that one in [01:01:30] time, so she missed that one. [01:01:32] Kalen: And then the, and then the next one that came out had everything and it was like ready in like a week. Nice. So I [01:01:40] was glad we didn't actually, when we went to pick it up, I thought we were getting one that didn't have the upgraded tires. Mm-hmm. And then when I saw it I was like, oh dang, we got the [01:01:50] tires. [01:01:50] Kalen: 'cause they just looked, you know, they looked kind of smooth. Nice. Yeah. So, Hey, when am I coming to Miami? Dude. [01:02:00] I'm, no, I'm just kidding. I'm leaving tomorrow. No, I know. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. [01:02:05] Mark: I dunno why. I mean, you can come while I'm not here too. [01:02:09] Kalen: Cool. [01:02:10] Cool.

6. 

   18 Aug 2023

   Vamos Pa' Miami

   [00:00:00] Kalen: Dude your backdrop is so fucking, is that Miami? [00:00:03] Mark: Fucking crazy man. [00:00:04] Mark: It's the Bay. So like nice. It's the Bay and then Miami Beach is even further [00:00:09] Kalen: back. Dude, if I roll out there, could I just ducking stay at your place or would that be ducking Do I need to get a ducking hotel or something [00:00:19] Mark: if I'm here or, and, or my place isn't booked 'cause I sometimes Airbnb it. [00:00:24] Mark: Okay. So when I'm not here. Okay. Totally. [00:00:27] Kalen: Hell yeah. Just just communicate. You passed the test, you passed the test. I was trying to figure out if we're real friends or not. 'cause I, that was my sense was that we're real friends. But that was the test. Yeah. No, but [00:00:37] Mark: have to share a bed with me, hopefully [00:00:39] Kalen: that's okay. [00:00:39] Kalen: Oh shit. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Scratch that, crush that kidding ducking sleep. I'll ducking sleep in the closet before I do that shit. No, but like same with, [00:00:48] Mark: that was a test too. You passed. If you said I'm down. I'm like, Nope, you're uninvited. [00:00:54] Kalen: This hysterical. Oh dude. Yeah. This podcast is definitely gonna fucking go to the moon, dude. I can feel it. But like with what we were talking about I wanted to talk about it. 'cause I think it's super if you don't mind with what we were damning about. Yeah. Because I know everybody's thinking I'm a fucking psychopath right now. [00:01:11] Kalen: And they're wondering, I think Yeah. They're wondering and I think that I. It is something I've been thinking about a lot because I've been in this kind of I guess I'm gonna just close WhatsApp, just so I don't get too distracted. But I guess I'm in this stage in my life both in with work and with life and relationships. [00:01:31] Kalen: Fucking started believing in God again two weeks ago. That was a big part of my life for, if you ever listen to MJ talk, you would know that, me and Philip would talk about that. That was a big part of my life from the time I was 16 to, for quite a while. And, stuff happened, life happened. [00:01:45] Kalen: I stopped, believing for the last five years. Also, my. Career started to decline and I was coasting for a while. And then I hit, I guess I would call it a rock bottom with when I realized that my, businesses were declining and and then there was a moment, and then all this stuff where, so I'm talking about like real friends versus fake friends, when, in my own little corner of the internet, I had, certain level of popularity. So I would go to conferences and people would walk up and I was like, it was weird. I'd never experienced that in my life where people would just walk up, be like, hi, Kaylin, how do you know my name, dude? [00:02:24] Kalen: And they're, they, and then they're like very complimentary and stuff, whatever. And then, that declined at a certain point because the truth is that, Philip was the real talent in the podcast. And it took me a, maybe a decade to realize that. But and he's, I'm really I'm honestly like, legitimately impressed with what he's building. [00:02:42] Kalen: Future commerce. I didn't get a book. I bought a book. Hopefully it's gonna get here soon. But but like then what I saw was that when that changed people. Acted differently around me, certain people. And then a smaller number of people like you, a number of others, never treated me differently, and I realized that, like I had heard this before, that people can be fake and things like that. [00:03:05] Kalen: Like I had everybody knows that, but I experienced it like firsthand, right in the slap in the face. I've had people who I considered to be friends, not, in our industry it's always a combination of business contact and some, there's some personal component and sometimes the personal component is really high. [00:03:22] Kalen: Sometimes it's whatever. It's like a per sliding scale. Yeah. And so I had people that I considered to be actual friends. I. That completely disrespected me and I realized that I was wrong. I misinterpreted their relationship with me. And then I had a smaller number of people that I went, oh, wow, that person was a real friend. [00:03:43] Kalen: You, TJ Ali, AMI a group and I, a bunch of people, Joel, a lot of people. And yeah. There's a good number of people. Maybe it's 20 or 30. I don't know. It's not like I sit down and wrote a list, but it's a small, there's, it's a smaller list. [00:03:56] Kalen: It's a much smaller list, yeah. And everything. To me, I'm thinking about the Bible. So it's like the narrow road and the wide road. The wide road leads to hell. The narrow road leads to eternal life. And it's like similar analogy with like probably if you're popular, Or if you're popular in social media or whatever, there's a 90% of people are just there for what they can get from you and the 10% actually care about you as a person. [00:04:22] Kalen: And so I realized that. And then I. I'm in the, and then I got this new job and it's going really well, and I feel like I'm starting to grow in my career again. And social media has always been a component of that. I used to be a developer, now I'm just like a marketing, DBA or whatever. [00:04:40] Kalen: But like it's. It feel, yeah, it feels like I'm starting to grow again and I feel like I'm starting to get that magic touch back. And like for me, like we were talking to and I value your feedback because you DMed me and you said, Hey man, like you might wanna tweak your approach. And I, because I know. [00:04:59] Kalen: That you're a real friend to me. I value the feedback. I've had other people, I have one particular person in mind who, as I've been getting into the Shopify ecosystem, I've been meeting people. One particular person I met, I. I thought we had a real connection. We talked on the phone for an hour and then they dmm me one day and told me to sign off of social media for the weekend. [00:05:20] Kalen: They're like, they're basically saying the same thing you said, but in a more direct way. And then I said, I first just laughed it off and then afterwards I said Hey, Can we talk on the phone? Like I, I, I, I forget what I said, but it felt like a bit of a slap in the face. [00:05:37] Kalen: But I, yeah, because I felt I had a connection with them. I said, Hey, can we just talk on the phone? I felt whatever. And then they said no. And so then I thought about it more and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna just unfollow. And they unfollow. We both unfollowed and it's like, all right. [00:05:52] Kalen: I thought, because I've learned this lesson firsthand, that you can really feel like a connection is real and then it can be not real. Yeah. So because of that experience now, I'm always on the lookout for it, and if I see the smallest signal that they're fake, I just I immediately react and maybe overreact, that person did that. And I was like, okay. I don't wanna wish you know them, them any ill will, but I don't want them in my life, despite the fact that initially I. I was like, damn, this is a cool guy. This is a cool person. This is a cool contact. [00:06:28] Kalen: This is great. I'm glad I connected. Like this is gonna be a great person to be connected with on a personal professional level. Yeah. And then I changed my mind. I was like, all right, it's over. It's done. Maybe we'll circle back in a few years. Maybe we'll grab a beer at a Shopify Unite four years from now. [00:06:42] Kalen: And we'll be like, Hey, fucking, it's cool. Who knows? But I'm moving on. [00:06:46] Mark: Be honest with me. Was it Toby that DMed you? [00:06:49] Mark: You're like, no, [00:06:51] Kalen: get out man. That's hilarious. To man Toby. Toby, I had to really, I had to really correct Toby. 'cause he really needed, [00:06:56] Mark: I thought you were my true friend, Toby and yeah, [00:06:58] Kalen: I know, like we're not, me and Toby, we go out for beers all the time and I give him feedback on architectural decisions and stuff like that. [00:07:06] Kalen: But so anyway, all that to say I know that. And like we were, you were talking to me about like post frequency, like I know I'm posting probably too much, but to me, like I, I was thinking, I would say for example, two people, I like their social media. Like I feel like we're all weird. [00:07:20] Kalen: Everybody's weird. You're weird in your own way. But I think that for sure you have to find the people that are weird in the way that you like, like nobody's normal. There's this concept of normal and we try to fit in and be normal, but we're all weird. Like you're weird in your own way. And I think it's fucking cool because I like you, you're an authentic person. [00:07:42] Kalen: You know another two people that come to mind, Dylan Whitman, Dennis Hegstad. Their social medias. And I'll maybe just do a screen share. It's like [00:07:50] Mark: it doesn't feel filled. It's like unfiltered. [00:07:52] Kalen: Yeah. That's what I like. And and then there's other people that. Are very buttoned up. [00:07:57] Kalen: They have a very specific niche. And that's valuable too because Yeah, because I realize that's valuable too because I know what it's like when you're following someone. You just want to get, you just want to you, you just want the details. You just want, the, what am I trying to say? [00:08:13] Kalen: You just want specific gil is very actionable information when it comes to, yeah, Gil is like, when it comes to technical Shopify stuff he's the goat dude. Like his feed is pure informational. He has a strong following. It's amazing, right? Everybody has their own vibe. Like Dylan, who, by the way, he went private so I don't know why he went private, but, so I can't see his feed anymore. [00:08:35] Kalen: But because I did this stupid unfollowing, but. Dennis is a great example of somebody that, has a cool mix in my mind between see here's, he'll talk about D two C stuff. Violence is not the answer, this is a, I. This is a totally non Shopify related thing. [00:08:54] Kalen: He has a cool mix and yeah, I like that. That's my kind of weird, like he's weird in this way and that's my kind of weird, and so anyway, that's my spiel. I just wanted to get that off my chest 'cause it's something I'm thinking about. I understand. People have a perception of me that I'm fucking off the farm and some people genuinely worry about me. [00:09:14] Kalen: And the thing is too, man, like this one guy is like the whole, Hey man, are you okay? Like I, I get like there's somebody who I'm thinking of who I was at a conference. I was in a bit of a weird mood and they asked me if I was okay, but in a genuine way. Yeah. And again, this was a person I put into the category of a real friend and they were genuinely concerned. [00:09:35] Kalen: I could see it in their face and it was still made me feel awkward, but they were genuinely concerned. Then there's other people who go, are you okay dude? And it's it, they're not. They don't really care. They do not. Like the guy that told me to sign off of social media, he could give a fuck about me personally. [00:09:55] Kalen: He was trying to do a, like a, he was trying to do like a, he was trying to assert himself as. Hey, man, you don't know what you're doing in Shopify. I know what I'm doing in Shopify. You're being a fucking clown. It was like that. That's that. He didn't say that. [00:10:11] Kalen: Literally. That was how it felt to me. I could be wrong, but that was how it felt to me. Yeah. Anyway, dude that's all I'm gonna say. But like, when you tell me something, I appreciate it because we've known each other for years. I know you're a real friend. I know you're a genuine person. [00:10:24] Kalen: I know you're a smart person. I know you're an empathetic person. I showed somebody a clip. At my work of the last one we did. She looked at it, she said, what did she say? She said, he looks like a very kind person. I think were his exact, her exact words. I'm not kidding. And I said, you're exactly right. [00:10:42] Kalen: You're exactly right. You're a very kind dude, you, and so anyways, man, that's yeah, I listen to you, but if Joe Schmo says that what you said to me, I'm gonna say, Hey, Joe Schmo, go climb a tree, bro, and don't ever talk to me again. You know what I mean? So that's my spiel, dude. And I know we want to talk additions We can we can jump over that. [00:11:03] Kalen: Yeah. [00:11:03] Mark: I'll say one clarification on that is like, when I texted you, it was really just for the like quantity of posts that you had. Got it. It got it. I felt I think if you have two large of quantity without, I agree, the quality agree, it's gonna degrade. [00:11:18] Mark: You agree? So that was more like a business thing. I totally agree. You're crazy and you're weird, and I already know that. So that part didn't surprise me. So it's this is just Kalen but like, all right. From a business perspective, I'm not sure if this is helping you adapt many tweets and that many Instagram [00:11:34] Kalen: post. [00:11:35] Kalen: Yeah. And I mean it like, I mean it like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take your advice to heart and I'm gonna adjust my posting frequency. I'm gonna, I'm also starting to use Instagram, so I'm realizing that some of my personal stuff should go on Instagram. Some of my stuff should go on LinkedIn. [00:11:52] Kalen: I'm learning to dial in. I. My social media better so that so it's more effective, it's like you want to be authentic, you want to be intelligent, you want to be but you also want to be effective. And if you do all of those things at just the right balance, that's when you become, a really Magical Twitter account that, some of the accounts that get, hundreds of thousands of followers, it's because they strike the right balance of all of those things. [00:12:21] Kalen: And then it's just boof. It's just to the moon, exactly. So that's the vision That's the dream, yep. Anyways. [00:12:27] Mark: All righty. Let's talk about additions. Let's really get into it today. Let's dive last time. I think we talked dive, like about two edition thing. Yeah, totally. [00:12:35] Mark: Maybe we should start with like first impressions, do you have any overarching first impressions and then, it's a week later, so what are your thoughts overall? [00:12:45] Kalen: Yeah, totally. I would say that overarching I'm just gonna close out this one notification there. There's too many darn notifications. [00:12:54] Kalen: Okay. Close that. Yeah. So overarching everybody was talking about subscriptions. That was interesting. Let me pull up this page here again. So that was definitely interesting. The collabs. Is it easy to search? Let me see, dude. Is it easy to search this for collabs, because I know there's, [00:13:15] Mark: are you talking about collective or Oh [00:13:17] Kalen: yeah. [00:13:17] Kalen: Collab, because there's collective and collabs and I mix them up in my head a little bit because collabs is okay. Collabs is influencers and collective is. Allowing, yes. Drop shipping adjacent. Yeah, dude, so the Drake thing, dude, I saw Harley tweet the Drake thing. Har Harley followed me recently. [00:13:37] Kalen: No big deal. N B D No not a big thing. Not that I'm not, that I, not that I think about it every day or anything like that, but but he described it and it's frigging magical. Let me see if I can pull this up, dude. Did you looked at the Drake thing, right? That's cool. Trying to remember the the u r l, it's some weird U R l, Drake related, I think it's drake related.com. [00:14:01] Kalen: Here we go. So this site is a, if I, and correct me if I'm wrong, is a headless. Like crazy, like super creative. Like websites have gotten so boring in the last how many years. Everybody does the same thing. Although bro, we are gonna talk. We gotta talk. Pit Viber, dude. Oh my goodness. This is the best. Oh yeah, this is the literal best website. [00:14:25] Kalen: Come on. How did you find that? Place. I got into sunglasses two weeks ago. I, my whole life, I wasn't into sunglasses. I like the look, I'm old as fuck, so my eyes look like garbage on camera. So this is your demographic. This is my demo, dude. So I just, it's fun man. I just, I wear 'em at pickleball. [00:14:44] Kalen: You have to wear sunglasses at pickleball 'cause it's sunny out and I used to always just wear, gas station stuff and for some reason I just, Got, I just got a pair on Amazon and then this guy, and then this guy at my court said he had some Oakley. So I popped by the Oakley play and I just, and now it's become a hobby. [00:15:02] Kalen: That, and baseball caps has become like a little hobby for me, like a, nice. And but so my understanding of this is that it's a, it's just a super creative headless. Is this headless? It is, yeah. 'cause Okay. [00:15:18] Mark: And it's 'cause it doesn't have the normal structure. 'cause they have like slash rooms slash lounge. [00:15:24] Mark: We talked about that. [00:15:25] Kalen: So it's a headless. And you're, you blank bob, like you guys rail against headless all the time because there are so many cases you've seen your clients go, oh, we have to go headless. And then it turns out to be completely not a good idea. And so the beautiful thing about this site is that not only is the cool headless implementation, but when you click on a product, Wait. [00:15:49] Kalen: Okay. So that went to a dude. That's a fucking awesome looking side, dude. Holy shit. But when you click on a product, okay, so here's a product page. Now, is this a standard Shopify product page, or is this a headless? [00:16:05] Mark: It's headless. Even though it has the structure, it [00:16:08] Kalen: still has. Okay. Okay, so my understanding is that these products are not, the Drake related site is not, these products are coming over collective, right? [00:16:21] Kalen: Correct. Correct. Yeah. So that, dude, that is magical because. Normally you have to, you have to get some products, even if you drop ship 'em, you gotta go build a relationship with a drop shipper. You gotta fucking send them some fucking P d F form with all for them to accept you. [00:16:41] Kalen: And it's a whole process. So like the fact that I could go right now, If I knew how to code, still I could spin up a wicked cool headless site and I could just go I don't know how the backend works for it, but I'm assuming there's a backend. I don't need any special permissions. Have you played with it all? [00:17:02] Kalen: Directly? [00:17:02] Mark: Yeah, A little bit, yep. Okay. Okay. There's two, two different apps. There's like a supplier app and there's a retailer app. And the supplier is like the shop that's actually like shipping the products and the retailer is like Drake related. Oh yeah. Basically, it's a kind of a, not a marketplace, but it's, a system. [00:17:21] Mark: You connect to the other store and you pull in the products and then you can interact with the products on, the retail side, like they're your products. But then in terms of like actual fulfillment, it just routes it. To the other store. So it is drop shipping and Right. [00:17:39] Mark: I, but I think it's like a reimagined drop shipping where Yes, I don't, yes. They're not pushing it towards like dropshippers, they're pushing it towards like legit brands already that want to like, create a collective and col collaborate with other brands where it's like totally, so there, there's a very similar app already called Carro and one of our clients Oatley uses it and Oh, nice. [00:18:02] Mark: The way they use it is there's another retailer called Bblt. Who sells blenders, but also all the ingredients that you might want in your smoothies. So they're connected where if people check out on Blin Jet, they can add Oatley to their cart and then as soon as they check out, it comes back to Oatley Shopify store to actually do the fulfillment. [00:18:23] Mark: Nice. So yeah, it's, I don't think it's like a super innovative concept, but it's cool that. Re pushing it. [00:18:30] Kalen: Yeah. Don't, and sorry. Oh, go ahead. Oh, yeah, I was gonna say I agree, right? So it's funny because I always hear about the drop shipping Bross and everybody hates drop shipping. [00:18:39] Kalen: And then, but it's still is this. Like super pop like super popular thing. And I think that the, it's a thing that there's there's this genuine demand for drop shipping because people don't wanna deal with logistics. And then there were there were providers for drop shipping that were probably a bit sleazy for whatever reason, and that's why it got a certain reputation or maybe the. [00:19:03] Kalen: Resellers were a bit sleazy, so it got a weird reputation. And then Shopify recognized that the the value of the core innovation of not having to deal with logistics. And yeah, they built out. Because platforms always cannibalize the best features. The same with subscriptions. [00:19:22] Kalen: Same with everything. So they cannibalized drop shipping. And so all of the drop shipping apps I'm sure are not thrilled. But from, but for, from our perspective, for a consumer's perspective, for an agency's perspective, from a merchant's perspective, it's fucking amazing because now you don't have to do any, you don't have to have any special relationship. [00:19:42] Kalen: You go in. I haven't seen how it works in the backend. If you want to screen share and show it, feel free. But you can just go in, pick a, pick your products. I don't even know what this is like I don't even know what site this comes from. It must, this must be a product that comes from. [00:19:58] Kalen: Funboy, some other Shopify site, right? [00:20:01] Mark: Yeah. It's called Made in Collaboration [00:20:03] Kalen: with Funboy. Oh, nice. Okay. Nice. Yeah, and the cool thing about it is that. The only way we knew that is because they put it in the description. Like you don't Yeah. Necessarily have to, if you want it to just be, feel totally native slash white label, like you can do that, which from a user experience is a great user experience. I don't care if I'm a customer, I don't care whose Shopify site this comes from. This is a cool side, I'm like, Rocking out. I'm like, dude, I'm super into Drake, whatever, which I'm not. Yeah. Ooh, we just found a bug. [00:20:38] Kalen: And then I'm like, okay, cool. Oh dang dude. Let me get a frigging okay. Not found. All right so we already found a couple bug reports and then there's a Shopify Oh, that's cool. So basically it can link to. It can link to an external site, it can link to a product. Oh, here we go. So I go, yo, I wanna spend a hundred bucks on sweatpants because I got too much money to waste. And then I go, alright, cool. I don't care where this is coming from. That's a magical user experience. You're right, it's not, it is not innovative in the sense that, They're just grabbing a product, over the a p i from some other thing. [00:21:14] Kalen: They're copying the drop shipping model. You could say it's very derivative, but at the end of the day it's frigging dope. And I'm checking out now on the Drake related, and to me, dude, that is I guess what I would say subscriptions thing is interesting. I I think what I'll go ahead and say is that this is the most interesting feature of the entire editions, just because that's interesting [00:21:39] Mark: that, yeah. [00:21:40] Kalen: I just, I, yeah, [00:21:42] Mark: go ahead. I it's funny because I think like literally the [00:21:46] Kalen: opposite [00:21:47] Kalen: that's so funny [00:21:48] Mark: because this has already been done for 10 years. There's already apps that are doing it right now, just as good or. [00:21:55] Kalen: Not just as good. Not just as good, not just as good. [00:21:57] Mark: I don't [00:21:58] Kalen: know. Not native. [00:21:58] Kalen: Not native. It might be just as good, but if something's native it's not, you know what I mean? [00:22:02] Mark: It is. Isn't native though. Like you still have to install a Shopify app. Like it's just, [00:22:07] Kalen: oh, first party like, oh, okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. [00:22:12] Mark: And so I, it just, it doesn't seem like particularly novel and like my theory is that Drake's management like came directly to Shopify and we're like, Hey, we want this to do this cool concept or whatever, and Shopify was like, oh, Felicity of having like Drake on Shopify, so we're gonna build this thing. [00:22:31] Mark: Just for Drake and then they're gonna release it to everyone else, which is totally, that's what I'd do. Fine. If it was me, that's what I'd do. Yeah. But it's, it is a little weird that like they didn't use, I don't know, an existing product in the app store that could have probably done the exact same thing. [00:22:47] Mark: Like they I see what you mean. Instead decided to like, Cannibalize their ecosystem, which is, I think that is a big topic, has always been a big topic for Shopify especially of Totally. And like on the subscriptions thing of like just, I don't get why they chose this thing. To try to cannibalize the ecosystem on yeah, it doesn't really worth it but maybe it is worth it for the publicity. [00:23:11] Kalen: I see what you mean. Yeah. And I think that I think it's cool that we disagree about this because like to me, that's what makes a podcast great is when you can disagree, like in good faith and you know that like you, you're not like if people are arguing in bad faith or. [00:23:26] Kalen: Harley and Aaron Sheehan are tweeting right now about BigCommerce checkout, Shopify checkout, and it's it's a bit like adorable to me that like Aaron's smart, he's probably smarter than me but it's adorable to me that they think that BigCommerce checkout is better than Shopify. [00:23:40] Kalen: I don't know. I haven't looked at the data. Okay. I've not looked at the data. But my, I like, does anybody doubt? Does, is there anybody that thinks that the Shopify checkout, I get it, like the consulting study was a bit whatever. Like you could get a consulting study to do whatever, say whatever you want, if you pay them enough. [00:23:59] Kalen: I get it. Like I understand the critique of that. And also I believe Aaron's critique is that, The consulting study shows BigCommerce checkout rates, and I believe his critique is that how would they know those rates if they didn't have the first party checkout data from BigCommerce? And I think that is a valid critique and I have no idea how okay, big commerce, here's the conversion, whatever the number is here. [00:24:26] Kalen: I don't know what this even scale means. 1, 2, 3. What does this even mean on this? On this chart, but this is, this shows you that I have not actually looked into this at all. And how is Magento better than Big Commerce? That makes zero sense too. But at any rate I have no, but it feel, I think that, yeah, I suspect that Harley. [00:24:46] Kalen: Perceives that Aaron is arguing in bad faith. And I don't think he is, but I suspect that Harley doesn't know him. Harley perceives that he's arguing in bad faith because everybody knows Shopify checkouts better. Everybody knows shop pay is better. Yeah. Does, am I wrong about that, or is that just so obvious that it's silly to even talk about it? [00:25:09] Mark: I think it's become so ubiquitous, like everyone. And is it comfortable with the Shopify checkout, right? Like when you get to the Shopify checkout you immediately trust it now versus honestly, even like the same design four or five years ago, I would actually be more suspicious because it agreed they had more of a reputation of drop shipping, that kind of thing. [00:25:30] Mark: Totally. It was like, okay, am I really gonna get my product? But I think that they've promoted their brand so well over the past couple years. When you get the Shopify checkout, you're like, okay. Like at least I know it's secure. Like it's, it's not gonna be hacked. There's no like fraud there. [00:25:46] Mark: Work thing is I don't get my product and then I just go through the dispute process or whatever. And then there's shop pay, the probably more of like the converting factor. If you're already logged into shop pay, which a lot of people are, 'cause they've already bought something from Shopify. [00:26:03] Mark: Or if you're not logged in, it's very easy. It's a quick process shop, pay account, whether they know it or not. But I get what Aaron is like, pushing back on like the scientific of the study because it, yeah, it makes it look like, oh, this is very scientific. And then like you're saying in the chart, it's 1, 2, 3. [00:26:23] Mark: What are they comparing it to? What's the baseline? What is 0%? Yeah. Is it WooCommerce? I don't know. [00:26:28] Kalen: Yeah, and I don't even think these are percentages. These are like, the 36% plus is the d is the diff, is the delta. I don't know what, one, two, and three. I don't [00:26:39] Mark: hopefully some, I guess the conversion rate the actual conversion rate. [00:26:43] Kalen: Oh, percentage. Oh. Okay, got it. [00:26:45] Mark: 2.5% conversion rate. Got it. That's my theory. [00:26:48] Kalen: Got it. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, and I'll be like, I'll be honest, like I have been an Amazon dude forever. Like I don't think I even ever bought something on Shopify until like the Pit Viper might've been my first actual might've been my fir Oh no, I bought something on, shout out to Dad gang. [00:27:07] Kalen: I bought something there. I bought a hat like a week or two ago, something like that. And dude, you're totally right. Like you, once you get and then shop pay. At first I was like, I don't care about whatever this, like, when I went to the creator mart in Austin, when I met Harley for nine, like 60 seconds, shook his hand. [00:27:26] Kalen: I just saw in his eyes that he was like fired up, and he was giving out free shop pay cash with a magic wand. It was pretty cool because it did a NF N P C or whatever it is what's that called? Nearfield Communications or whatever with the Oh yeah. Phone. N F C and I had an, yeah, and I had an old phone, so I meet him, shake his hand. [00:27:48] Kalen: He's trying to give me cash and it would randomly, Give you a certain amount of, a random amount of cash. Could be five bucks, could be 50, could be a hundred, could be 20. And it wasn't working on my phone. So then he told me to take the case off. I took the case off and then he's and then he's I think it's 'cause your phone is old. [00:28:04] Kalen: And I was like, yeah, dude. That was like, I did not leave. I did not leave a good impression. And then and then I ended up getting a new phone because for recording pickleball content. And I was like, 'cause I don't know, I don't like to just buy the newest iPhone. It seems like a waste. But I started recording pickleball stuff. [00:28:21] Kalen: I was like I might as well get a, an iPhone 14, because they're basically just cameras. Those things are just a hundred percent high-end cameras now with apps on them. Yeah. And I figured it was worth it for that. And so it's neat to have a newer phone. [00:28:35] Kalen: But anyways so I'm like, shop pay, I'm like, okay, fine, I get it. You wanna promote your shop pay. But like the other day I used it and I clicked. Dude, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a live purchase. Is it gonna show my address or stuff like that? It might, yeah. Yeah. I can, I wonder if I can blur it out or something. [00:28:55] Kalen: And post, fix it. And post I'll just, I'll, yeah. I'll fix it in po. Okay. What happened? Where did the shop pay go? Is that because I'm not You changed? Yeah. I changed to Firefox. [00:29:04] Mark: I You're not sharing the Firefox, [00:29:07] Kalen: just so know. Oh yeah. Let me, lemme just, 'cause Firefox has my As my personal all my like personal Google auth and stuff like that. [00:29:15] Kalen: So like shop pay is frigging dope, dude. So if I like, log in and then at one point I did oh, here we go. See. So it automatically popped that up and it's gonna automatically send me a code. And it's just super intuitive, right. Boom. It's got all my stuff. Yeah. [00:29:32] Kalen: I'm gonna have to blur this out. Oh, dang it. I have, that's not even your address. I don't know. Yeah, because of my, I was trying to send something to my friend. Who's in India, this, which was something else. And so I had that set there, but it's got everything. Dude, this is as good as am like, as somebody that's used Amazon forever, and you get used to just boom, buying stuff. [00:29:54] Kalen: This is as good. I would even say, I'm sure Amazon's conversion rate is better because everybody's familiar with Amazon. But from a o, from a UX perspective, this is much better than shop Amazon's. I agree. UX is grimy, bro. But everybody's used to it, so they just use it. Being familiar with something is half of the battle. [00:30:15] Kalen: And so that's what you were saying, like people are so familiar. You see the logo, you know that it's got all your stuff. Now here's the main problem, and I was talking with somebody about this and Shopify, got rid of their fulfillment arm. They offloaded it to Flexport. Fulfillment is, I'm gonna be honest, with all due respect to my. [00:30:34] Kalen: Heroes at Shopify. This is garbage, bro. Like we need to compete with Amazon Prime, and I know that, I believe there's a feature for that or whatever. What's that feature called? The the Shopify Fulfillment. There's the fulfillment, but then there's a specifically Shopify Order. Like a trusted order or like a order. [00:30:56] Kalen: Order. Promise. Shopify Promise. Promise. Shopify promise. Yeah. So that's basically prime, right? Yeah, that's basically right. Is this something that has to be enabled? For each site or how does that work? [00:31:10] Mark: Yeah, I think you also used to have to use the Shopify Fulfillment network because otherwise they couldn't really guarantee the shipping time. [00:31:18] Mark: Got it. [00:31:18] Kalen: Yeah. So I get it like [00:31:19] Mark: sorry. That's a merchants issue though, like they, these guys need to use like a better fulfillment network if they want to. Ship faster. True. And I think Shopify's tried to solve it in the past, decided Hey, this is way too hard, this is not true. [00:31:34] Mark: Our like core thing. But I agree with you in terms of just like on a merchant level, like being competitive with Amazon, having fast shipping, crucial. Otherwise people will be like, Hey, I'm just gonna look this up on Amazon if I can get it on Amazon. Yep. I might as well. 'cause it's gonna be quicker and probably more assured. [00:31:54] Kalen: And I had zero brand loyalty forever. Like I zero like Pit vipers. I bought 'em on Amazon. And then when something clicked for me, because I really am genuinely falling in love with Shopify and like I really could care less forever, I was like, dude, I could care less about your cool Shopify site. [00:32:14] Kalen: I want to use Amazon. It's easier. I see the ratings. It ships fast. I could care less. The only thing I care about is price and shipping and, but now like the dad gang guy is super cool. I follow him on Twitter and I like, there's something that connects with me emotionally about the brand, which I'm realizing is the entire point of. Creating a brand is that it connects. See, and I needed a black hat. Dude, this is exactly what I needed. I needed a black hat, so I'm gonna go ahead. I did a one click. I've been looking for a black hat for three days, right? So I've got my stuff, it still has my buddy's address. [00:32:48] Kalen: I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna do shipping method five to eight, which is absolute, absolutely horrendous with all due respect. But it'll get here eventually. I'm gonna hit pay now. I just paid 40 bucks for a hat, which did I overpay for the hat? Of course I overpaid for the hat like, but I feel good that I am supporting this guy. [00:33:11] Kalen: I like him. Yeah. I believe in him. I like what he's up to. I like his mission. I think that being a dad is something that's important to me, it's something that I'm realizing more and more. I talk about it now. I post about it on social media. It's a big part of my life, man. I've had kids for 13 years. [00:33:28] Kalen: I've, there's a time, there was a time when I was not such a good dad. There was a time when I was looking at my phone at the dinner table, constantly distracted, not present with my kids. And that's changed, and so like the if you asked me a month ago, would I pay $40 for a hat? [00:33:43] Kalen: I'd say never in a million years, but, There's something Beau, so that checkout experience, other than the fulfillment, which I think Flexport, I realized today I was talking to somebody Ryan Peterson is going to fix that. Yeah. He is going to solve, I. The Amazon Prime problem for maybe it'll be a third party. [00:34:04] Kalen: Flexport is obviously a third party to Shopify, but yeah, he is going, he is the guy like, I remember, do you remember the Long Beach situation? The Long Beach port situation with they're backed [00:34:14] Mark: up with. [00:34:15] Kalen: They were backed up. Shit was, yeah, shit was wild. And that was during Covid. And this dude was frigging, I remember following him on Twitter, he was going out to Long Beach. [00:34:23] Kalen: He was out there sitting on the dock of the bay, like looking at boats, like figuring it out. Like the guy is an operator. Like at the scale of probably Elon not Elon, but he's probably pretty darn close. He's and it's funny because I was trying to get into, to the to the Flexport partner program for Mesa, and I like emailed. [00:34:41] Kalen: And I was like, why won't they respond? I don't get it. And then I realized like, They're going to fix this. They're going to fix this button right here. They're gonna turn this into a prime competitive, because let's be honest, Amazon is not our friend. As a consumer, like Amazon could care less about the brand. [00:35:04] Kalen: They want to drive costs as low as possible. They are a marketplace play. You do not own the distribution as a brand. You do not own the distribution. They own the distribution. I don't even think they give you email addresses for customers. It's not your customer. You don't, and that's what's cool about Shopify, like I'm realizing. [00:35:26] Kalen: Toby and Harley, they believe in this stuff, dude. They believe in empowering the entrepreneur. They really do. And I and I'm frigging six months into this Shopify journey, and I will go to the mat with anybody on if anybody thinks that they're somehow faking that. Dude, I'll go to the mat on that because I could see it like in that promo video with Toby, I could see it in his eyes. [00:35:51] Kalen: He saw this couple sell something for the first time and you could see in his eyes that he teared up, dude. Like it is real. It's real for him. And I believe it's real for Harley, so anyways, all that to say that I don't even remember how we got onto this topic, but I think we were [00:36:08] Mark: doing the argument about like how much better, like Shopify check. [00:36:12] Mark: Pretty universally accepted. It's a very good checkout. But yeah, a percent exact percentage is okay. Like it's not completely [00:36:19] Kalen: scientific. Exactly. So again, dude, aaron is doing an incredible job at BigCommerce. Daniel the partner manager is great. [00:36:26] Kalen: I went to a BigCommerce partner meetup event, dude, and I'm grateful that Aaron let me in. We were, we're probably gonna build a connector, a Mesa connector. I thought we were gonna build it this quarter, but we're probably gonna build it in, three, four quarters out. So we're, we'll get, everybody's diversifying and that's fine. [00:36:43] Kalen: Agencies diversify, SaaS, diversifies, everybody diversifies. And that's, and that, other than merchants pick a platform and generally stick with it. I think BigCommerce was cool, man. I was at that partner event and it felt like the Magento and a lot of the Magento crowd has gone to BigCommerce 'cause it's a great transition. [00:37:01] Kalen: It's a, arguably a better transition than Magento to Shopify as an agency, as a partner. It's a more straightforward transition, [00:37:08] Mark: it's, yeah. It's funny because BigCommerce is very like, welcoming of like partners and Shopify is a, it's a bit more like a, it's sorry, the door's closed. [00:37:18] Mark: Get in line. We don't even have a process for you to join. [00:37:22] Kalen: Hundred percent [00:37:23] Mark: automatic partner thing. Yeah. But yeah, it's, yeah, I mean they're changing that and I've talked to their head of partnerships Jim, and they have a new new onboarding process. They're onboarding a new cohort of managed partners, that, that's definitely something like in the works. But historically they've not been like super, like welcoming to partners. It's more Take it or leave it. If you wanna use the platform, if you wanna build on the platform, go ahead. [00:37:49] Kalen: Totally. But no, a hundred percent. [00:37:51] Kalen: And listen, like that's, even though I'm new to Shopify, I've been observing these platform ecosystem dynamics for a decade, and it's not surprising to me. The same thing happens with every platform early on in the platform's life. They're hungry for partners because they need partners. [00:38:08] Kalen: They need partners to drive business, and then as the partnership grows, they're less hungry for partners. And when they're less hungry for partners they're less interested in spending time, communicating with new partners and things like that. They do it because of course they have people assigned to do it, but big Commerce is more hungry for partners. [00:38:30] Kalen: And that's good. That's fine. That's. And I've heard that repeatedly. That, and the partner, the agency partners appreciate that because they have a business to run. They have clients to support and they want a platform that will take a phone call, so from, and then, they get a little bit, let's say butt hurt, if Shopify doesn't want to take a call or I don't know how it works. [00:38:52] Kalen: I'm sure there's some partner manager that is not responsive or whatever. I'm just guessing they're gonna, they're gonna be frustrated by that because, they're trying to deliver for a client and it would make their lives easier if they could get somebody on the phone. That's why BigCommerce is a great fit for a number, for a lot of mid-market. [00:39:14] Kalen: Essentially any mid-market brand on Magento, almost guaranteed. Is gonna make a lot of sense for BigCommerce, I'd imagine. Whereas devil's always in the details and that's the kind of thing that you do day in and day out. You are evaluating based on what they need feature-wise and, all that kind of thing. [00:39:34] Kalen: But so I think BigCommerce is cool, man. I know I talked. A lot of smack in the past, and it was partly just joking and stuff, but I think it's cool, man. I had really enjoyed the conference when the c e o spoke, man, he's extremely like passionate and he's extremely vulnerable. He shared some really vulnerable things and I frigging respect him, dude, and I respect Daniel and my phone. [00:39:59] Kalen: Keep, where the hell is my phone, dude, it keeps beeping and I want to put it in a do not disturb. Oh, here it is. So I think BigCommerce was cool, man. But the idea that anybody would argue that their checkout is better is just silly dude. It's silly, right? Am I crazy? I. [00:40:17] Mark: Yeah, I think it's pretty silly. [00:40:18] Mark: Honestly it is, it's like my checkout is bigger than your checkout at this point. Totally. Yeah. And it's just come on. I think Shopify did this study because they are trying to appeal to enterprise merchants. Totally. That, totally. That's why they did this big three consulting thing. [00:40:33] Mark: And they're really trying to push the commerce components totally piece of Shopify where they're basically saying To even a Walmart or a Nordstrom, they're saying like, okay, you can use your old Legacy Pro platform for everything, but use our checkout for the checkout and our payments and that kind of thing. [00:40:51] Mark: Yep. So I think this is if like us arguing. Arguing against it, it's it's missing the point. I don't exactly, [00:40:58] Kalen: I don't think it's [00:40:59] Mark: a hundred percent. It's not gonna really appeal [00:41:01] Kalen: to this market. You're totally right. And I think that I'm getting a better understanding of what it means by Shopify's kind of core consumer facing product is I think is One, like whatever whether it's a business unit or whatever it is, like their core checkout for consumer facing is the main thing. [00:41:20] Kalen: That's the arm to Rebels thing. Yeah. But they've obviously been moving up market and I believe that those are separate, like business units, I believe Those are separate teams and sales teams. Yeah, sales teams. Probably even dev teams, I'd imagine. So when you're moving up market. And again, dude, we saw this with Magento, if you're moving up market, you have to you have to do this kind of stuff. [00:41:47] Kalen: This kind of stuff is not for the startup brands. This is for the enterprise brands that want see a study. They wanna see a Gartner magic quadrant. Yeah. To me, the garden, the [00:41:59] Mark: brands that have a board, like they a hundred percent, the C I O C T O has to like present to the board why they want to use Shopify. [00:42:07] Mark: And if they have this study, it's ammunition of hey, this is we're gonna save cost and also we're gonna increase. [00:42:13] Kalen: Yeah, a hundred percent man. And it's so that's. That is the reality of why this study exists. Now, Aaron's critique is where did you get the data for this big commerce deal, right? [00:42:30] Kalen: And that's a valid critique. I honestly do not have the slightest idea where the data came from. Either the consulting company made it up, which. Listen, I am not a gigantic fan of big three consulting companies as a, I'm not, I'm not like talking smack. I believe that Harley and Toby are extremely ethical. [00:42:53] Kalen: I don't believe they would fake something. So I don't have the slightest idea, man. For all I know the consulting company frigging has some, I don't know, dude. Maybe they have the data. I don't know, man. That's what consulting companies do, man. They get things that other people can't get. Or maybe they just fudged it. [00:43:14] Kalen: I don't have the slightest idea. No. And the reality is no one is ever gonna know, if you hire a big three consulting company to do a study, like nobody's gonna ever know how, I don't know is it like. Is anybody like, [00:43:29] Mark: is I think honestly though, I think it's fair that Aaron's asking for the underlying data. [00:43:34] Mark: I, I don't even know where to find the underlying report because like I used to work for a computer testing company and we did benchmarks and we had to publish like our whole methodology of testing and it's it's supposed to be scientific and I think, I'm sure they did follow a process, but if that's not. [00:43:52] Mark: Publicized if you, if we can't see that process, it is bunk and it's not fair for them to be put. Yeah. Maybe I agree. It's public. You have to have a subscription or membership to something. I [00:44:04] Kalen: don't know. Yeah, I don't know. And I wouldn't personally say it's bunk because I. I believe in Harley and Toby, and I don't know how they did it. [00:44:12] Kalen: No, but no, I'm not [00:44:13] Mark: saying it's false. I'm just saying Yeah, if you're not willing to publish the methodology, I think you also shouldn't push the date, the results of the study. [00:44:22] Kalen: I agree. And I just, it's not scientific. I agree. I disagree because if it's an academic scientific study, then I agree with you if it is a business facing quote unquote scientific study, I. [00:44:37] Kalen: It's, this is how it works, man. I can't think of another example, but if you were to look at another example of a business facing big three consulting study, like this is what they do, like what's another like it's marketing like that you're hiring them to do. Like marketing, that's science adjacent. [00:44:59] Kalen: You know what I'm saying? Would you agree with that? [00:45:01] Mark: But no, because I worked at a company like that and we had to publish like the methodology. Oh. So I see. So if someone could reproduce our study, basically otherwise, like people could just make up numbers and that's not what this sup is supposed to be. [00:45:17] Mark: If you publish. Numbers, like hard numbers, you need to be prepared to back it up. [00:45:22] Kalen: Yeah, that's a fair, that's a fair critique. I think by the way which one was it? 'cause it's McKinsey, B, C, G, and Bain. Are those the right, there's like big three. It's, this is so far above my pay grade, dude, that it like, it's like you said, man, this is so far above my pay grade that it's almost there's no point in even like debating it. Like it's fun to talk about, but it's dude, can you imagine how much they charge for this dude? This, they, this is probably this is like these people are, this is what they do. [00:45:51] Kalen: This is what they do. It's a [00:45:52] Mark: little weird. They just, in this article, they just say buy a big three, global management consulting. They don't even identify the consultant. And then when they like, there's a link to. Study, and if you click the link, then it goes to a Shopify article. [00:46:10] Mark: This is not external. [00:46:12] Kalen: I hear you. [00:46:12] Mark: I'm gonna have to push back on Harley [00:46:15] Kalen: on this one. I hear you. Sorry man. I hear you. I hear you. And I'm fine with pushing back because I really admire Harley and Toby, but. And I wouldn't like, say something rude to them on that level. [00:46:28] Kalen: But I would push back and I would say that, I would say I agree with you. If you're gonna do a study, I'm not a scientist, but I agree with what you said. If you're gonna do a study and the study is supposedly scientific, then I think you do have. A responsibility to show the numbers. [00:46:46] Kalen: So I would agree with that pushback. I would agree with that. With all due respect to Harley, please don't unfollow me. I'll, it'll ruin my week. I would I would agree with that pushback a hundred percent. [00:46:58] Mark: Yeah. So I'm gonna tweet it right now. [00:47:00] Kalen: So when done, that's a good pod, dude. I know we didn't, I think we. [00:47:04] Kalen: Obviously we didn't cover most of the additions, but I think that we covered. Like to me, what's interesting, so I think I'm happy with [00:47:14] Mark: this. I think we covered one thing, which just collectives slowly but surely. We'll addition after [00:47:22] Kalen: a hundred podcasts, I think. I think for the next entire quarter, we'll do 12 podcasts, and by the end of it we will have covered the whole additions and then we'll be getting ready for the next one. [00:47:33] Mark: That's fair. I think that's perfect. [00:47:36] Kalen: Oh yeah. One we're gonna do, we're gonna go, we're gonna make this official, we're gonna do a YouTube channel and everything. Everybody like and subscribe, mark and Kaylin talk Shopify. That's the type, that's the title we're going on this one button smash the like and [00:47:49] Mark: subscribes that card button on Twitter and support button on LinkedIn and Instagram. [00:47:55] Mark: The fire emoji. All of it. All of it. Yeah, all of it.

7. 

   18 Aug 2023

   Dadgang Needs A New Site

   [00:00:00] Kalen: we need like a cool ass like gospel pianist in the background. It's been a while. [00:00:06] Kalen: Been a while. [00:00:07] Mark: So late show. Yeah. Someone has to like, play our intro and then gr shots. [00:00:12] Kalen: We used to go to this like gospel church and they would every once in, they had really talented musicians, professional musicians that worked in LA and oh yeah. They would sometimes just spontaneously start rocking out. [00:00:26] Kalen: It was the coolest thing ever. Was such a blast. [00:00:30] Mark: Church. Some churches, like contemporary churches and gospel churches have like really good musician. They're like professional. Oh [00:00:36] Kalen: yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. They're like real serious musicians. How you been? So what You been up? Oh, good. [00:00:44] Kalen: I didn't do any deploys on Fridays. You still not deploying Fridays even with Shopify or you [00:00:50] Mark: Yeah, even Shopify. If anyone does deploy on Friday, it's like at their own risk. It's okay, do you want a week on? Did you wanna work on the weekends? It's okay. It's if it breaks, like that's fine. [00:01:02] Mark: So it's not you. [00:01:04] Kalen: I feel like even if you wanted to deploy on Fridays, like now the, now you're your bug is such a meme that like you wouldn't wanna do it just 'cause Yeah. You wouldn't wanna what's the word? What's the word? You wouldn't wanna counter your own Same. [00:01:19] Kalen: What hell's the word [00:01:20] Mark: yes. Yeah. Sometimes the problem though is clients request a change to, to deploy on Friday and then try to scare 'em off and like maybe send 'em a free mug that says Never deploy on Friday. That's slightly passive aggressive. It's here's a coupon for this free product. [00:01:39] Kalen: We try to scare him off. Maybe send him a free bug. [00:01:42] Mark: Maybe they'll remember next Friday. Oh, are [00:01:46] Kalen: dude I think I might've left at the hotel I was at this stupid little u s b converter that I used for my camera and other things. Oh. So it's a bummer. I'm on the old laptop camera. [00:02:01] Mark: What do you normally use for a camera? [00:02:03] Kalen: It's just this D S L R Joby. It's like a Oh [00:02:07] Mark: yeah, just this. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I used to, yeah, it's just, yeah. Sorry. I used to have that. I still do, but I, it was a pain to travel with and now the iPhone has this like continuity thing so that you can just use your iPhone. [00:02:23] Mark: It's pretty good. [00:02:24] Kalen: Dude. I was just, because I finally got a decent iPhone, 'cause I usually have an older one and I started doing pickleball videos. So I was like, ah, I might as well get, this one. So then I was trying to set that up the other day. But my work computer has this weird apple id 'cause it has a management software tie that manages all the company computers. [00:02:47] Kalen: That's it. M d m. So I couldn't because the thing actually has to be logged into the same iCloud. Yeah. Same Apple account. Yeah. Which is weird. [00:02:56] Mark: There's something called camo, camo studio. If you want to do it without using the continuity, you actually have more options on camo. [00:03:04] Mark: Really, it's like $25 or something, but if you're interested it's just a software out. Oh really? It was basically, it was doing it before Apple, made it first party. [00:03:13] Kalen: Really? Yeah. Check it out. Maybe I'll just start doing this as we talk in the off chance that I end up figuring out I'm alive. 'cause it's it's driving me a little form, if I'm being honest. The quality driving me mildly insane. Yeah, just, I like being able to position it with the tripod and things like that and [00:03:38] Mark: you crisp and clean. Yeah. [00:03:40] Kalen: Yeah, dude. Gotta keep it crisp, [00:03:43] Mark: keep it fresh. [00:03:45] Kalen: But here we go. This is, that's the other thing too, is I think that if I connect anyways, I'm not gonna derail our whole podcast, [00:03:54] Kalen: although I might. Okay. ' cause I was able to get it to where it could do a screen. If I set up the photo thing here, I think I got it to the point where it could do a screen capture. But it wasn't doing the actual regular camera capture, whatever. Anyways. Yeah, technology, [00:04:19] Kalen: technology is, [00:04:20] Kalen: oh, there you go. That's close. All right, so check this out, dude. So here's the camera. I probably can't. I can't change it anymore 'cause I already started recording. Okay. Alright. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let it go. Let it go. Let it go. I'll [00:04:38] Mark: forget next time. Next time. I think these days, like the short clips and the short form stuff, it's like the quality doesn't matter that much. [00:04:47] Mark: Yeah, you're totally right. It has to be passable. Yeah, you're totally right. Yeah. It's like computer webcams are decent now. Like the new MacBook airs and MacBook Pros have a pretty decent Yeah. Webcam too. [00:05:00] Kalen: Oh yeah, they're pretty, they're super decent. [00:05:02] Mark: I've noticed that the microphone is actually pretty good too. [00:05:06] Mark: If you use the microphone on the laptop and then your AirPods for listening, it's way better than trying to do the Bluetooth audio from your AirPods 'cause it has to like downgrade. Bluetooth audio. And that's also why yeah, I have this mic on. I think you have the Rhodes thing. I've seen it before. [00:05:25] Mark: Yep. Yeah. Yep. [00:05:27] Kalen: It's, yep. But I this way better. This one also couldn't, I also could not plug this in because I don't have the, you the little converters [00:05:35] Mark: just lost everything today because [00:05:37] Kalen: that I use that U S B A to U S B C converter for this and the camera, basically everything. Stupid piece of garbage. [00:05:46] Kalen: But I do think I have a U SS B, C to U S B C, which anyways, dude, I should just, I'll figure it for. I'll not disappoint you The next time around I'll have my ducks in a row. Okay. And just this morning I was like looking around like a madman was bugging my wife. I was like, I can't find my U s B converter. [00:06:08] Kalen: Hell [00:06:09] Mark: gotta get a backup. I'm obsessed with U S B hubs. I think I have four or five just Oh, do you? They're like, there's, they're cheap. And I kept on trying different ones and then never returning the old ones. So I like got a drawer of U S B hubs now. [00:06:24] Kalen: Yeah, dude. I recently got one of those ones that just has it has a stand for you to plug in your phone. [00:06:30] Kalen: And then it has a thing for your watch and then a thing for your ear AirPods. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Type of thing. Yeah. I, I had gotten a really cheap rubber version of it that like, literally falls all over the place and then I was like, dude, just spend the $29 and get something that's sits, straight. [00:06:50] Kalen: So I got that. It's been great. I, it's been like my favorite purchase of the last year of my life or something. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Have alright, so here, we're here now. We're now this is a great transition into the content. This is a fantastic segue. Yeah. Have you have you been into brands, like certain brands that you're a fan of, whether it's like a d to three brand or something else? [00:07:12] Kalen: Have you been into different brands for a while? 'cause like personally I'm pretty much like just whatever's cheapest on Amazon has decent reviews. I've been like that for pretty much ever. And I'm just starting to get into some brands. [00:07:27] Mark: I think to be honest, like I find brands on their website usually, or on Instagram, but I'm one of those people that then goes and buys it on Amazon. [00:07:37] Mark: I'm like the worst kind of customer. Yeah, [00:07:40] Kalen: dude. A hundred percent. [00:07:42] Mark: I feel a little bad about that, yeah maybe at least Amazon is good for the first purchase because you can return so easily. Like you drop it off at Staples or U p Ss. But then if I, if like I become a fan of the brand and buy it repeatedly, then I'll think about maybe I'll buy it from, there. [00:08:00] Mark: Yeah. Yeah, dude. But I guess I'm not a big brand fan person. Yeah. [00:08:06] Kalen: I really haven't been until you're starting, I'm just starting my brand revival. There's a revivals I'm going through right now and that's, but like I got these pit vipers on Amazon. These are the ones I got on Amazon and I think I heard I heard some, somebody say that, or I saw somewhere that there's a lot of knockoffs on Amazon. [00:08:27] Kalen: And I'm starting to think this might be a knockoff because, oh, this is the one that I got on the website. I, maybe it's just an older version. Maybe it's not a knockoff, maybe it's just a, just like a three year old version or something. I know, but the build, like the build quality, like these were 90 bucks on Amazon. [00:08:44] Kalen: These were like one 10 or something like that. And the build quality on these suckers is night and day different. Oh, interesting. And and this came with a super nice case and all sorts of stuff, but I had to wait forever for it to ship. Dude, it's all about shipping, like price too, but man, like the shipping thing is massive, man. [00:09:05] Kalen: It blows my mind that Shopify doesn't, and it's not a Shopify thing. It's like you had said last time, it's. What the merchant is using, are there ways? Are there, yeah, sorry. [00:09:15] Mark: I'm, it's interesting that everyone now expects things to ship. Like day of I'm, I remember a couple years ago it was normal to have a couple days of handling time, but now, like Amazon has just really re reset our expectations of yeah, why I ordered it today. [00:09:31] Mark: Like obviously it should ship today. Yeah. And you should have a warehouse within, a day or two of me, so I should get it in two days. That's just, that's like the bar now that Amazon set. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's hard though. It's an expensive bar to, to maintain unless you're Amazon, it's still expensive for Amazon. [00:09:52] Mark: They just have deep pockets. [00:09:54] Kalen: Yeah. I can't even imagine what it takes to actually deal with all that on the fulfillment side. Yeah. I'm just, as a consumer, I'm just like, yeah, dude. Hey man gimme same day shipping. Why not four to 6:00 PM let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Just you get so used to things so quickly. [00:10:13] Kalen: Yeah. But obviously it's a super hard problem solve, I keep thinking about how Shopify handed off the logistics piece, the Flexport and that. As strong as they are as a company and again, I'm coming from being neck deep in Magento for a long time, which I really think didn't always execute. [00:10:32] Kalen: The greatest. And Shopify that's what they've done. They've executed better. They've but I guess it's those core things that they do well of the the shop, like the core things of the site and checkout and things like that. And then anything outside of the core of the product is like, not necessarily gonna be easy for them to pull off, [00:10:53] Mark: yeah. Yeah. But I think Amazon has an unfair advantage though, because, oh yeah. The I, this is a paper for I was doing it for my M B A class, but like exploring what Amazon would be if a w s spun off, because Amazon e-commerce like still loses money sometimes in different quarters, but a w s has propped it up for like years and years. [00:11:19] Mark: So they're able to operate at like razor thin or even like negative margins. And I'm like, that's, that doesn't seem fair to the independent merchants out there that like obviously have to make money on selling stuff. They don't have some sort of cash cow that like can fuel their growth like that. [00:11:38] Kalen: Yeah. That's so true, man. And it's the nature of the beast in business in general. The one first to market just tends to get these menacingly unfair advantages. Yeah. Yeah, I mean everything from the talent they can afford, the salaries they pay is completely outta control. [00:11:55] Kalen: I sat down, I was this bar in my town. I sat down this one night. And there was this dude sitting next to me and he was a bit, a bit younger than me, like a little bit cocky I guess. And and I usually don't bring up work. I try to like, just not talk about work. [00:12:11] Kalen: If it's, if you're trying to relax, say, so we do it for work. I'm like, oh, I work for this tech company. Oh, which one? Which one? I was like, oh, it's a small one. You probably haven't heard of it. He's try me. And I'm like, it's called Shop Padd. And he's oh, okay. I'm like, we work with Shopify. [00:12:28] Kalen: You heard of Shopify? Of course. He's he's I don't remember how he said it. He's you know where I work? Something like that. Oh. And then he's Amazon, and then he was like he was doing well in his career. He is biz dev manager type of deal. [00:12:41] Kalen: And then he's and we were talking, we were having a good chat. He's dude, I could get you a job tomorrow. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, no, I think I'm happy where I'm at. And he's dude, like seriously, like we pay a lot. And I was like, no I know. [00:12:55] Kalen: It's just, it's not all about money, that it was such a funny, it's such a [00:13:00] Mark: funny conversation all about money, money helps sometimes It does help. [00:13:06] Kalen: Makes it a little better. It does. It does help from time to time. I have a lot more cool mugs if I could if I could afford it. I actually talked to this guy today, dude, who is building an app. [00:13:17] Kalen: And I was like, man, I just was like, man, I would invest if I had the money because. He seems like a smart dude and seems like a cool, interesting idea. But yeah, it's just, that's just one of those things you like to say, it's like a, oh, I'd totally invest in this, but yeah. [00:13:36] Mark: Honestly, yeah, you wanna say that after they've already become successful, it's oh, like I should have invested, if you actually invest and it goes nowhere, which, 90% of the time that's where it goes. You're like, ah, I shouldn't have invested, hindsight is way more than 2020. [00:13:53] Mark: It's 20 15, 20 10. Yeah. [00:13:56] Kalen: Yeah. But but yeah. What were we saying? The, on the brands? Oh yeah. It's a buying brand on Amazon. But yeah, man, if they could fix the shipping, dude, just imagine if every single Shopify site had the same. Type of shipping as Amazon, like the same types of options. [00:14:13] Kalen: That would be such a game changer. I feel like you [00:14:15] Mark: raise an interesting thing I'm not sure if you're, you've heard of Buy With Prime on Shopify. Oh it's a little controversial actually. Yes, because I think Shopify said, technically this is a violation of our terms of service. [00:14:29] Mark: 'cause because you're not using the Shopify checkout. And it's not an official app, it's just like a script that you have to manually install. But it is that concept of you browse on the Shopify store and then when you check out you are redirected to like a custom Amazon checkout and Right. [00:14:48] Mark: Amazon, you have to use Amazon fulfillment and they're fulfilling it. You basically get that experience. Maybe I feel like more people should do that. [00:14:56] Kalen: Maybe. Maybe. It's a controversial I, but it just, I can't escape the feeling that it's somehow is not gonna end well for 'cause I really do believe that Shopify has a very fundamentally different mission. [00:15:09] Kalen: I really, I've really drank the Kool-Aid. I really believe there, we care about empowering entrepreneur, like you own your own distribution, you own your relationship with your customers with Shopify, as far as I understand, with Amazon, you absolutely do not. They don't like, I don't know if that's still the case, but you don't. [00:15:25] Kalen: You don't get any customer information when you sell on Amazon. That's probably different with buy with Prime. [00:15:32] Mark: Yeah. Probably. Do you get more customer information? Gotcha. It's like a hybrid of if you're selling on directly on Amazon, okay. But then you still know that Amazon has your data and Right. [00:15:46] Mark: One of the scary things about selling on Amazon is if you do too good, Amazon's just gonna rip you off and do an Amazon's basics. Totally. See [00:15:55] Kalen: to deal with the devil. And Shopify has shop, has Shopify ever done that? [00:15:58] Mark: Harley makes some tea, like fire teas. I think he ripped me off. [00:16:03] Mark: Nice. I always thought about having a tea brand and Harley took my idea. [00:16:08] Kalen: They, they do cannibalize the app ecosystem, but I think that's pretty much inevitable, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it just feels like it's a fundamentally completely different. Beast for the, from the merchant's perspective. [00:16:22] Kalen: Yeah. And you could say, I just drank the Kool-Aid or whatever, but I think I think it just is, it's a, there, there are different model, [00:16:30] Mark: so it's a different philosophy, but different philosophy. Yeah. Yeah. They are trying to do a little more of the marketplace thing. [00:16:38] Mark: If you've checked out the shop app recently, there's more, right? Like cross-selling and that kind of stuff in the shop app. And then we talked about the collective stuff last time, where you can sell other people's products on your store. So I do think that they, I don't think they want to be an Amazon, but there is some like, movement in uniting their sellers to Right. [00:17:02] Mark: Make them more powerful together, [00:17:04] Kalen: that's a good point. Yeah that's adjacent, I think. But it's not like they're ever gonna, be like, oh, these dad gang hats are doing well, let's do a private, let's do a white label version of them for 20 bucks. [00:17:16] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. But whereas that probably would happen on [00:17:20] Mark: Amazon. Yeah. Amazon didn't do that for the longest time, like decades and decades. And then just one day they. Decided up and decided, Hey, we're gonna make our own generics. And it was jarring. But now I think it's, people just expect it. [00:17:35] Mark: It's okay. Yeah, that's inevitable. If we do too well, like there's gonna be an Amazon basics of something basic, think generic. Yeah, it's like generic. Yeah. [00:17:44] Kalen: Yeah. And it's I don't know. On the one hand, I think there's obviously value in like Bezos mission of driving prices to, to as low as humanly possible. [00:17:54] Kalen: And that probably helps ev lift all boats. It tide lift all boats in a certain sense. Yeah. But I don't know, man. It's also. There's also something drive all boats [00:18:07] Mark: down. [00:18:08] Kalen: Yeah. There's like a slippery slope going on there somehow. Yeah. But [00:18:14] Mark: it's a little like Walmart. When Walmart comes into cities, it drives out a lot of the small mom brick and mortar. [00:18:21] Kalen: Yes. Yeah, [00:18:22] Mark: exactly. Dude. It's an online version of that. [00:18:25] Kalen: Yeah. Whereas like I feel like Shopify is really empowering the smaller guys, I think keep thinking about that, that promo video, Toby, that, the couple that just sold their first thing and then I heard people on Twitter say man, like that. [00:18:38] Kalen: And I didn't even know about the Chaching sound 'cause I, I guess it's in, it's a sound in the app or I don't even, I don't even have that, I've never actually sold anything like, as a merchant shop. You gotta start a store man. Yeah. Hey, we have to start a store. Okay. We have to start a damn store. [00:18:53] Kalen: Let's do a mer store. Hell yeah, let's do a merch store. [00:18:56] Mark: Okay. I know Shopify, Shopify. You can automate it. [00:19:00] Kalen: Plug in Mesa. Maybe you [00:19:02] Mark: can get us a coupon. Maybe we can splurge towards subscription and Mesa. [00:19:06] Kalen: Yes. We'll splurge pay full price. [00:19:09] Mark: You gotta make some logs, some t-shirts. Yeah. Yeah. Hell [00:19:13] Kalen: yeah. But but yeah, dude so I liked this idea we had, I don't know if you wanna do screen share or I could do the screen share again. I think [00:19:20] Mark: you're better at doing the screen share some follow up from last episode of arguments. Yes, discussions on the Twitter discussions. [00:19:29] Kalen: Oh, by the way, yes. I, you know what I'm calling it Twitter, I can't call it. It's like, when I see it visually, I see it as an X, but when I say it, I still say it as Twitter. I can't just call it x, I'm not calling them posts. Maybe eventually that'll change. Like I'm on board with the rebrand. I'm totally on board. [00:19:50] Kalen: It's just that, oh, it's gonna take me like a year to make this transition. I'm not gonna rush into this transition. Yeah, [00:19:57] Mark: I'm fine with the I'll rebrand, but I'm, I don't think that X is like the best like logo or the best brand. It's just, it's insane. Elon Musk has always had it in the back burner and he's okay, like I acquired this thing for $40 billion. [00:20:12] Mark: Maybe I'll just merge it with this other thing I envisioned. So I don't think it's well thought out. It's just his thing, [00:20:19] Kalen: yeah. Yeah. I probably should Don't wanna ar argue too much. I know we have, yeah. We both have strong feelings about Mr. Muffs. [00:20:26] Mark: We both have Teslas, so I think it's, but you started [00:20:30] Kalen: Hey, you started it at some point there. [00:20:32] Kalen: You turned on him. Dude, you like hate us. Gods dude. You gotta test way before You had two Teslas way before I did. [00:20:41] Mark: Yeah. And then I let him on fire when he purchased Twitter. [00:20:44] Kalen: I actually just got, we're just getting my wife one finally, dude. Nice. We just, yeah, dude, we're, it's, she's gonna pick it up. We're picking it up I think on the 15th. I gotta make the payment today. Congrats. I told my wife, I was like I was like, oh, I'm doing a podcast, and then we'll do the payment at four 30 and she's I have to leave then. [00:21:03] Kalen: So if it all falls through, it's not that it's your fault don't feel guilty or anything like that. I [00:21:08] Mark: distracted you. Maybe you can make the payment on the podcast. Buy a Tesla. Tesla live stream. Buying a Tesla. I'm so nervous about it because, like Aller over here [00:21:17] Kalen: because I hate making wire payments. [00:21:20] Kalen: 'cause if you get their number wrong, your money just disappears. But it's not a wire payment, it's linked to your account. In the app. So I think it's fine, but I'm so used to, anytime I do anything that's a wire ish type of a thing I do one payment for a hundred dollars. I wait to make sure that they got it and then I do the rest, because it's freaking nerve wracking. [00:21:44] Mark: But it's better than Bitcoin though. Like Bitcoin you mess it up and there's literally no recourse. Wires technically can be reversed and you can, I don't know. There's ways to stop it. Bitcoin is once you transmit it, it's it's out there, it's gone. I've lost some Bitcoin. [00:22:00] Mark: Have you? [00:22:01] Kalen: Yeah. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how much are we talking [00:22:04] Mark: about Ethereum? It was like two k I think I tried to send some Ethereum and it was like Ethereum Classic versus not Ethereum Classic. And I was like, what? There's a difference. Yeah. I've. I'm glad that we've upgraded our infrastructure to wire payments from that Ethereum crap. [00:22:22] Mark: Yeah, dude. Remember crypto? That was a thing. Ugh. Yeah, [00:22:28] Kalen: I was, so I got real heavy into a Bitcoin phase and then I was like, I changed my whole Twitter persona. I was like following it. It's a fascinating subculture. Like I have a friend that's into uranium investing. Oh, wow. And which sounded insane to me at first, but it's a similar type of subculture. [00:22:48] Kalen: Like it's a very kind of like trolley, like they use the word toxic in a tongue in cheek way. Like that they're to like, to, like in Bitcoin it was a toxic Bitcoin maximalist. And it's this funny MeMed out to the max like subculture. Yeah. Which is fascinating. It's it's neat. [00:23:08] Kalen: But, and then when you're in the midst of that, you believe all the, all the hype and stuff like that. And then once you let go of that a little bit, you admit to yourself that you're like, look, I put a couple bucks in. I want it to go up. I do care about some of the underlying principles, but I'm insanely biased that I want it to go up and I'm really not objective at all. [00:23:30] Mark: So I'm invested. Obviously I have a conflict of interest here. [00:23:35] Kalen: Yeah, exactly. But. Yeah, dude. So we were gonna talk about that. We were gonna do a very gentle loving roast of the dad gang site slash a a. What's the opposite of a roast? A non, an roast of the pit bite Highlighting high ification. [00:23:54] Kalen: Yeah. This lady kiss me every time. Kiss hits me every single time, [00:24:00] Mark: dude. So good. [00:24:03] Kalen: So we were we, I don't know how it came up on Twitter, but, oh. [00:24:08] Mark: Did okay. I you yeah, that's right. Yeah. I saw the DA gang person like posted that they're doing like 10 K in sale a day or something, which is Yes. [00:24:17] Mark: Yeah. Amazing. [00:24:18] Kalen: Good for them. It's insane. It's super cool. Bart. Oh, dang it, man. Stupid. I unfollowed everybody just try to pull like a Twitter power move and it's like messing all my searches up and everything. [00:24:31] Mark: You can follow some people, you can follow [00:24:33] Kalen: bar. I know. Yeah. I can't do it, man. [00:24:37] Kalen: I gotta, I'm, do I have this mission now? This is my fault. Anyways. It's weird man. It's really weird. Yeah. But it's not, but I'm usings. [00:24:45] Mark: Oh, everything. You're like, I'm using meta following people. Yes. Without following that. [00:24:51] Kalen: Yeah. Dude list, that's a thing. [00:24:53] Kalen: But yeah, dude it's but so yeah, so I've been falling bar, he's super chill. Like he's he's interesting to follow and he talks about stuff that they're doing, like just ordered 40,000 hats. That's so crazy. And he'll post at, different things he's doing. It's just fascinating to follow the journey. [00:25:12] Kalen: Yeah. And oh yeah, I think this is me. But and I finally picked up a couple of the hats. I've been following him for six months since I got into Shopify, Shopify with the new gig. And I finally went ahead and bought it. 'cause again, dude I'm not the type of person that would normally buy, you 95 days for it to ship type of thing. [00:25:34] Kalen: But I really like the brand. Like I just like it. Like just something about it just clicks for me, I think is freaking sweet. And but anyway, so we were gonna get do a little, because you had said that the site is like super, like basic, right? Like as far as the theme and everything, right? [00:25:52] Mark: He highlighted that too. [00:25:54] Mark: He was like, we've done 10 K with a basic Shopify theme. We can do it. Anyone can do it. And the interesting question is is the site. Selling like because it's so basic, or is it selling well in spite of it, like if it was, if it was better designed, would it sell better or would it just be a wash? You don't actually know. [00:26:15] Kalen: Yeah, totally. And it's weird yeah so now that I'm actually like in, because I've been a developer forever and so I look at a site and I'm thinking about developing, develop things or to the extent that I have any design sense, I'm thinking about design stuff. [00:26:32] Kalen: But now when I see these things, all I care about are the hats. I don't care. I could care less like how, I was looking for a black hat and I was like, oh, sweet. Perfect. And I think I remember another tweet that he had posted where he said that he was he had posted something really interesting where I think that there was a A problem with an S M Ss blast or something to that effect. [00:26:58] Kalen: And you would think that if you're doing like a marketing blast and you mess it up, like that's the worst mistake ever type of thing. But I think what he said was that people just ended up like figuring out how to buy stuff still. And it, and so it ended up, it ended up being like a non, here we go. [00:27:21] Kalen: Yeah. Setting an ss m s campaign and the link didn't work. Led people to an error page. We should panic and run around stress, right? Nope. Customers still went to the site typing it in on their own and sales came flooding in. Simple life, simple biz. And so I get that right? 'cause once I was ready to buy the damn hat, I was like, I wouldn't care if I went to a broken link, I'd be like, dude, I need to buy one of these hats, dude. [00:27:44] Kalen: Like now I'm looking at this one, I'm like, I need a damn turquoise hat too. But but at the same time, like the pit viper hat, which by the way, this popup is the, some good dude. So good. Tur zero hot. But there's I kept wanting to screenshot this, but I kept closing the popup. [00:28:05] Mark: Yeah. It's so good. [00:28:06] Mark: I got an email from them the other day of the email writer. It's so basic. And he is actually I'm trying to hire or email writer it. Their copywriter is hilarious. It's hysterical. It reminds me of one of my clients sheets and giggles they have. Okay. Just a hilarious voice, with a name like Sheets and Giggles. [00:28:25] Mark: Oh yeah. They like really play it up. [00:28:28] Kalen: That's awesome. Yeah, dude. So so on the one hand I totally agree with him and I totally get his perspective, which is like, dude, we're selling probably more than we can even handle as is. And you really do realize that the product itself is the product. [00:28:43] Kalen: Like these hats, dude. 'cause I've bought like eight different hats. Like it's just sturdy dude. It's sturdy. It's just the right size. Like the embroidery is just on point. It's just great man. 'cause I've literally bought like eight hats in the last, I've gotten into this weird hat phase. And so the product that itself a hat. [00:29:05] Kalen: Show and title. Show and title. So like they're focused, I'm sure on the product itself and everything. And from one point of view, they don't need to do anything with the site. They can leave it like this forever at the same time. Even as much as I'm a gigantic fan of the brand, I would love to see some super cool super unique vo look at these shits, dude. [00:29:33] Kalen: Oh my God. Some super unique voice. Voice, yeah. And style. Maybe even some wild headless thing like the Drake related dude. It would just be fun, and I'm sure it would lead to more sales one way or another. There's no way that this cool ass site does not somehow lead to more sales, it's just too good. [00:29:55] Mark: It makes people like know that you care about your product and that you're legit. I think, dad gang and a lot of like social media influence brands, they do most of the selling off the site. They, on Instagram, you see the posts and everything and you're sold before you hit the site, basically. [00:30:12] Mark: And the site is basically a checkout for you. But it doesn't mean that people don't arrive at your site that didn't get sold on the Instagram. And they're like, Hey, like what is this? Is this legit? They don't even have a real homepage. There's no right banner. Like I'm expecting. [00:30:29] Mark: There's no story, honestly. You have to have been sold on the product, been sold on the story before you come to the site. Otherwise, It's just a hat site that you, if coming from the outside I would land on it and I wouldn't know if I'm gonna get my product or not, because it looks like like a drop shipper. And someone, even in the thread, it was like, oh, that's great. You're doing drop shipping. And they're like, no, we're not doing drop shipping. But the way that they like positioned themselves from a branding perspective doesn't make them seem super legit in terms of we've put a lot of thought into the site, it's just the site was more of an afterthought and we just needed a checkout. [00:31:11] Kalen: Yeah. I think it's objectively true to say that it would be a good thing. Now wh when the timing is for that, who knows? But to do a better version of the site, like I. Even if for no other reason than 'cause it would be cool 'cause it would be fun, 'cause it would demonstrate like how much, they care about the whole product, the whole experience, all that kind of thing. [00:31:33] Kalen: But I pulled up the Instagram, it's crazy too 'cause he'll post that like some professional athlete will be wearing, the hat. And I'm thinking to myself, dude, can you imagine just launching some kind of a product and all of a sudden a professional athlete is rocking that thing. That's pretty nuts, dude. [00:31:51] Kalen: But yeah, like I think it would be dope if they did, I had this crazy thought I was gonna tweet. I think somebody should like, put together a concept for some crazy ass headless version of the site and just mock it up somehow. And not like headless in the sense of like entire thing. [00:32:11] Kalen: Headless. Like maybe I really like the Drake related thing, where like you have some super fun like homepage and then from then you just kick out to regular native product pages with a decent like, yeah, these don't even have a decent theme dude. These are just like super bare minimum, [00:32:30] Mark: I think Drake related can get away with their weird ass format in ux. [00:32:35] Mark: Sorry, can edit [00:32:37] Kalen: that out? No, that was perfect. That was perfect. [00:32:41] Mark: Like it's not good ux. It's cool looking, but they can get away with it 'cause it's $400 socks. So if you're gonna buy $400 socks, you're not gonna be turned off by like the theme. But it is, I don't think that gang I'm not sure if they should go that direction. [00:32:56] Mark: I think they should have a good experience. Maybe pit fight for direction. [00:33:01] Kalen: Yeah. Exactly, dude. Yeah, the whole, this whole window. So their thing is very much nineties. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense and that makes sense. That's why it connects with me. Like all this windows stuff like just is exactly what I wanna be. [00:33:16] Kalen: Yeah, dude, like I think if I think somebody should put together a concept, spend an hour, three hours, whatever, a designer, and just do it for free and send it to him. And if it was fucking killer that maybe he'd pull the trigger on it, that's my, that's what I like, would like to see because and obviously like everybody has their incentives. [00:33:41] Kalen: My incentive is I need to get people to use Mesa, like agencies. Are interested in getting site builds and stuff. And but but what I like about you is that you like, you don't bullshit. Like when you have an idea it's 'cause it's a genuine idea. Even though you are an agency and you are looking for site builds, I'm sure, but You're totally right. [00:34:03] Kalen: Like you're totally right that it would be a good thing. I'm sure they can afford it now to do like a killer site. Like why not? Yeah. Might as might as well. [00:34:11] Mark: But it's an investment and once you're at, a particular rate of sales, if you see your conversion rate go up by 20 30%, like it easily pays for the investment of doing a site rebuild. [00:34:26] Mark: The question is it, does it increase the, conversion rate? I, my theory is that like a good design, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be Drake related level, but just a decent design would increase their conversion rate. Because it would build that trust in the brand of, hey, even if I came from other, whatever site, I didn't know much about Dag Gang, I could learn about D Gang on the site right now. You have to know what Dag Gang is before. Totally. To get there. [00:34:58] Kalen: It's just a I think it would be, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be cool to see somehow all of the athletes like that, like on their Instagram oh, I'm in the wrong window. [00:35:10] Kalen: Oh, yeah. All of the where's this thing here? Yeah. All of these, somehow, if you could I'm imagining a site with all these athletes, like highlighted like full screen, full bleed, with the hat like highlighted and I'm still going back to a headless. I like, I. [00:35:25] Kalen: I like some, I like this. Some kind of a headless concept, dude, where it shuffles full bleed through like athletes with the hat on and then you could click on the hat from there or something like that. And then [00:35:38] Mark: like I would not recommend making it harder to shop on the site. Like I don't think that's gonna increase the conversion rate. [00:35:45] Mark: That's gonna maybe we, maybe Caly and I like we can do two different designs and they can and test it. Yes. And they can see which one sell sells. [00:35:55] Kalen: Yes. We'll figure it out dude. We will. We'll have a put us in, coach a she'll figure this out. Dude, look at this man. Dude's riding a horse through the ocean. [00:36:06] Kalen: Dude. Dude, that is nuts. Imagine that dude just full bleed on the site, man. With that. Yeah. Clickable. [00:36:15] Mark: Yeah. Their content is so good on Instagram. Yeah. And they Yeah, exactly. Pulling it over onto a site, they have that. Honestly, that's the hardest part U usually with new brands, especially getting good content to put on it. [00:36:30] Mark: But they have all that already. It's yeah, [00:36:33] Kalen: exactly. Exactly. They have that piece of the puzzle. And if they don't wanna accelerate their growth rate in this area they don't need to. Obviously they don't need to, but it just, it would be dope dude, if they had a super fucking cool site and but again, just to reiterate, the fact that they don't need that is pretty awesome. I've been a developer my whole life, so I'm always thinking about what can I develop, what can be developed as far as websites, generally speaking, web applications. And the fact that somebody doesn't need that, they can figure out a cool IG content angle, throw up a Shopify site. [00:37:08] Kalen: Throw up some product shots and they're off to the races. Is that's amazing. That's super, super cool. Another guy like along [00:37:17] Mark: on Twitter think is one of the, I was gonna say, oh, sorry, go ahead. That's one of the great things about Shopify is that you can start so small, you can start basic and you can get really far, you can probably get to a couple million dollars in sales and then if, when you want to go to the next level or whatever, you don't have to re-platform. [00:37:36] Mark: You can keep scaling on Shopify, you can get redesign, you can do more custom stuff, and you don't have to, go to Salesforce Commerce Cloud Totally. [00:37:46] Kalen: Or Magento. Absolutely. Absolutely. Another side of lack, I've been following the the founder dude on Twitter is this one. They have a bit carnivore snacks. [00:37:55] Kalen: They're like meat. They're basic, I think it's basic and beef jerky type stuff. But they they have a, they have a more of a unique design to it. I'm think, trying to think out loud of like good exam, like good references, like what would be a good reference for the dad gang thing. [00:38:11] Kalen: But yeah, as a guy that loves beef jerky, dude. Like this type of a product, this type of a shot here is just like speaking right to my heart, dude, grab some of that. Go to town on it, [00:38:23] Mark: Great visualization. Yeah. [00:38:26] Kalen: Makes me, but do you have any other reference, any reference sites that you think would be like a similar, in a similar vein? [00:38:32] Mark: Gang [00:38:33] Kalen: for dad. Gang. Yeah. [00:38:34] Kalen: Don't say [00:38:35] Mark: sheets and gigs. The thing is, [00:38:37] Mark: Every time I say that the interesting thing is because there's such a, like a influencer backed brand right now, they don't have a brand except like their logo. Like I do think that they need a bit more of a brand guide to help them figure out their voice because they have an Instagram and they sell products, but they don't have a definitive branding voice yet. [00:39:03] Mark: And even, I don't know, I don't even know if they have a color scheme. [00:39:06] Kalen: That's true. So much to be done. I'm pulling up Jim Shark. Yeah. Not sure. Kinda [00:39:13] Mark: interesting. We have, speaking of gr gym, sharp cross rope's, a pretty cool brand cross [00:39:20] Kalen: rope. I've never heard of that before. [00:39:22] Kalen: Yeah. The best way to jump rope experience. Oh dude. What about cross? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. [00:39:29] Mark: Dang. That's pretty cool. $60 off. [00:39:32] Kalen: Nice. [00:39:34] Mark: Yeah, this is, this kind of thing that was like, you could put the, photos at the banner and then have the Instagram kind of below it too, and just I know. [00:39:45] Mark: Take all that content that they already have and just Yeah. Reformat it into a website. Yeah. It's, yeah. Basic. [00:39:52] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. In a way it is. What do you think it would cost to do something? What would you recommend cost-wise? Would you say, Hey, put 50 grand into this, put 20, put $10 million. [00:40:05] Kalen: Like what do you think would be [00:40:07] Mark: the right amount? So there's first Bill, I would say 20 K. Yeah, they don't need a fully custom site. They don't need a headless site. Definitely don't go headless, please. Re it's gonna make more work for them. Sure. They just need yeah, they just need a little story, like a homepage and an about page that has a little more about the brand if theoretically, if you went to the website and you didn't know anything about them, you need to, you didn't, you need to be able to be like, sold on the brand. [00:40:41] Mark: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cross net. I think he's in Miami. Cross net is [00:40:45] Kalen: cross. Oh, is he? Oh, is he Miami? Nice dude. He's a great Twitter follow. [00:40:50] Kalen: Him and his brother, it's two brothers, right? That I think [00:40:53] Mark: so. I think so. I think it's Greg [00:40:56] Kalen: and Chris or something like that. They're pretty cool, man. But think so. Yeah. Yeah. Look at, just like you just said over repurposing the content, man. These are basically reels. And this looks great, dude. [00:41:08] Kalen: Just side by side, like that I looks great. I agree. It's not even that complicated to just, Selma. Yeah. To just kick it up a notch. I think the world needs it. The dads of the world need it. And we're, this is our live pitch. This is our live pitch to to Bart to kick it up a notch. [00:41:27] Kalen: But even if he chooses not to, I'm gonna buy. Yeah. [00:41:31] Mark: Yeah. I was gonna say, sometimes I get these random LinkedIn messages and it's someone's like holding up a, like a piece of paper and it's yeah, Calico, you need a new website. It's what? Oh, really? I've never seen those before. Yeah, we recorded a podcast for them. [00:41:47] Mark: Oh yeah. I get that. Sometimes it's like you put a little effort into it, but it's still copy and pasted video's. Pretty low effort. Yeah. But we recorded a whole podcast for them, like they just special podcast, dude. [00:41:57] Kalen: Yeah, dude, it's, this would be pretty dope. We should pull up, I was thinking that we should, we need to have a segment where you talk about some of your stuff you've been working on, and then I can talk about some of my stuff. [00:42:10] Kalen: A little self promo, little bit of self promo is always important. Okay. So I'm just pulling up your site. Maybe there's, What's the most recent couple? Oh, I remember looking at the Mini Dreamers. What's the most recent couple sites that you guys have designed that you like a lot? [00:42:27] Mark: Oh, there's this explore Cold Brew. I really like that one. That sounds, I don't think it's on the site, so you just have to Google it. Yeah. So the, that sounds cool. The founder is, he's like a mountaineer half the time during the build. He was like in Antarctica doing a hike. But I think the site turned out really well. [00:42:48] Mark: Nice. He's a cool, he's a very cool dude. He was on some reality television show due to doing the hike. That's, I think this is a good example too, where they had like a logo before and they had products but it wasn't telling the story of the site. What are you doing with the cookies? [00:43:06] Kalen: No, it's because I closed out the little the little 10% off widget. The popup. Yeah. And I wanted to want 10% off. Wanted to click on it. And s Yeah. I wanted to see what it was gonna look like. Look beautiful. That's so funny, dude. He was just out in the mountains. That's the type of dude I want to be, man. [00:43:22] Kalen: Yeah. Once I like get my ducks in a row, man, I want to get off of Twitter. Just be playing pickleball all, all over the world, all day long. Check Twitter once a week and just live the dream, but that's the life. That's the life dude dream. But this is, dude, this [00:43:39] Mark: is, Yeah. And this is like a Shopify theme, but we always build upon an existing theme. [00:43:46] Mark: So we get a lot of the building blocks of the theme, and then you put the branding, put the colors in, and you just I keep on saying it's telling a story of the brand. So that what, by the time you get to the checkout, you know what they're about, like you believe in it. Yeah, dude, [00:44:03] Kalen: Like it's me. Yeah. Dude, it's occurring to me that they don't even have lifestyle shots. Lifestyle, is that what they're called? Product like lifestyle. You know how there's lifestyle? Yeah. Like they're just all pure regular shots of the hats. But dude, I need to see a shot of an athlete wearing one of these hats, wearing it full bleed on a headless page. Like drink related dude. Yes. [00:44:32] Mark: They, the athlete needs to walk across the page. Yes. And pose with a hat on. [00:44:37] Kalen: Yes. Dude. Here's what I want. Here's what I wanna see. I wanna see the guy on the horse. All right. [00:44:43] Kalen: Here's what I wanna see. I wanna see the guy on the horse going through a river, like full bleed across the screen. Just walk, just walking, riding the horse across the screen, dude. Like an intro. [00:44:59] Mark: This one, it needs to be like Old Spice style. Yeah. Like Old Spice style. That gang, like it's, we should also create an advertising agency to, to make that happen. [00:45:09] Mark: That's true. [00:45:10] Kalen: Yes, David, this is the pitch. Oh yeah. This is the pitch. But but yeah, dude, this is cool. So they do coffee and stuff. Yeah. Elixirs. What's an elixir? I always wonder. [00:45:22] Mark: Basically just a, it's usually like a constant, very concentrated version of something, essential oils. You have to super dilute it, otherwise it's usually a little too strong. [00:45:32] Kalen: And does the client do the product shots and stuff like that? They supply all the, all your product [00:45:37] Mark: shots, you probably don't. Yeah, usually. Nice. Usually clients, have their own products and they do the product shots. [00:45:45] Mark: Nice. Seems like Jagging has their product shots. And then they have all the lifestyle image imagery on the Instagram already yeah. Like [00:45:55] Kalen: at a bare minimum, just throw some of these lifestyle shots onto the product pages like that would take. I'll do that for, literally add me to your Shopify account. [00:46:05] Kalen: I'll do that for you. Just because Yeah. Their lifestyle shots are so cool, dude. Look at this man. Great. Yeah. I love it, dude. I love the whole mission. I feel like dads are, it's hard to be a parent. It's hard to be, it's hard to be a dad or a mom, but I'm a dad, so I'm more thinking about that side of things and, it's like it's tough dude to do a good job of it. [00:46:30] Kalen: A lot of people are checked out. A lot of people are, I used to be staring at my phone all day at the dinner table, like just completely absorbed in it. And I think back to that time in my life, and I'm like, I cringe. It makes me cringe that I was doing that, and now I'm more, I'm more active with my kids and stuff and whatever, but [00:46:50] Mark: Dude, the dog has [00:46:51] Kalen: a hat. [00:46:51] Kalen: Great message. Come on. Yeah, dude, I'm trying to give an inspirational message. My dad. It's, but nice man. I dig it. I dig it. What can I say? What can I say on [00:47:03] Mark: any cool Mesa stuff? I feel like, no, let me think. Now this is your opportunity to demo to me because I just pawn you your demos off on like John or, one of my teams. [00:47:14] Mark: Nice. So this is totally, [00:47:16] Kalen: yeah, this is my chance. This is my check. The tricky thing is I'm excited. We really, we, these are our latest connectors. Actually I used to spend every morning I would think through use cases and then I've been doing a little bit different stuff on the podcast clips and things like that, which has been cool. [00:47:35] Kalen: But so my head isn't quite as much in the weeds as it has been. Oh, we recently did a time, we added time travel support for infinite options as well as another thing which time travel is just the ability to do retroactive workflow runs. You can run, something against, so infinite options is a pretty Is another app that shop Padd, the parent company built I'm guessing, I think it's probably our biggest our biggest app and as by, oh, I didn't realize that installations. [00:48:07] Kalen: Yeah it's like pretty massive, like it has a, like crap ton thousand reviews and stuff. Yeah, it's pretty nuts. But but yeah, it's like at that sort of lower price point and but so we did not have support for time travel on this. So I think it basically allows you to add options to products type of deal. [00:48:27] Kalen: Haven't actually used M S L personally, but but yeah, it's pretty, pretty popular. And so we added time travel support for this so that if you wanted to run retroactive flow against, a hundred million products and you needed to hook into that infinite options, you can do that now. So that's cool. [00:48:44] Kalen: I think the Shopify time travel, which we have supported products I think collections. Orders. The real base, the real core entities is pretty cool if you're looking to do that. I've had multiple plus merchants that were trying to do something on flow and it would you'd hit like some snags when you try to run it on large numbers of orders. [00:49:06] Kalen: So I think that's a cool use case there. Like we do a lot of tagging, so somebody wants to run process a hundred thousand orders and if the order has tag X, they want to tag the customer with the same X which I assume they wanna do that because that feeds into some other, maybe into the marketing automation they're doing something like that. [00:49:27] Kalen: So there's a lot of those workflows that are pretty, pretty straightforward, but just being able to do it easily and reliably and with the support team, [00:49:36] Mark: I didn't realize that. Shop Padd had so many apps and it's cool, it's like its own little mini ecosystem of Yeah. Of apps that, work together, but I assume better than external apps. [00:49:49] Kalen: Yeah, dude, it's I think they're pretty solid. I'm personally I'm mostly just only looking at Mesa, but I'll see things come through Yeah. Related to tractor input options and things like that. I haven't heard too much about the others, but, [00:50:04] Mark: They're better reviewed than most of the Shopify like native. [00:50:08] Mark: Apps. I was just looking at the shop page. Shop Padd. I think we talked about that like couple episodes ago. Like all the first party apps always have terrible reviews. [00:50:17] Kalen: Oh dude. Yeah. Like horrendous. What was it? Collapse or Collective? Terrible was [00:50:23] Mark: like [00:50:24] Kalen: collective, yeah. 3.2 stars or something like that. [00:50:28] Mark: Shopify flows 3.3 stars. Yeah, bundles. Wonder what subscriptions is gonna have. [00:50:36] Kalen: Yeah, [00:50:36] Mark: it's just like you would think that Shopify could fix their own reviews. They just remove the bad ones, they're Shopify, [00:50:42] Kalen: right? It's, yeah. And it's, it actually is good the fact that they don't do that. [00:50:46] Kalen: 'cause they definitely probably could just rebut remove the reviews. But I think it, a lot of it boils down to the fact that there's no support if I'm understanding correctly, like you can't get any support, just the standard support channels. But [00:51:00] Mark: yeah I think that since there's no additional revenue for them to be made in the app they've not really created the support infrastructure that they need to make the apps like, I don't know, easy to use. [00:51:15] Kalen: And I think the strategy makes sense. Honestly, the more I think about it, I think it makes perfect sense. Is it weird that bundles has a 2.3 stars? Yeah. It's weird, but it makes sense that they're gonna build out these things that are outside of the core. They're gonna do 'em as separate apps. [00:51:31] Kalen: So they're dogfooding their own APIs. They're not supporting them the way that a third, the way that a 20 person company like my company, would be able to support them. And so in a way it creates opportunity for the ecosystem. It also sets a direction for the ecosystem. [00:51:46] Kalen: So I think it all just makes perfect sense in a weird kind of way. That's what [00:51:52] Mark: you know. Toby was saying that about the subscriptions, it, they're just setting a floor of like capabilities right? And Right. And then they're, relying on the external app developers to, to expand on that, but they wanted to have, some basics without having to pay a 1% fee or something like that. That makes sense. It would be interesting to see, if it does cannibalize the ecosystem or is it's good. Maybe that 1% isn't worth it. Or a merchant that's not doing many orders. Maybe they're a drive on that app developer, they just send so many support questions that it's not really worth it to support 'em. [00:52:32] Kalen: By the way, how do you use the Shopify collective? I can't seem to find the the [00:52:38] Mark: app. It's not in the app store. It's okay. It has its own page. It's like Gotcha. Collect shopify.com/collective. [00:52:49] Kalen: Oh, okay. Gotcha. [00:52:51] Kalen: I'm super [00:52:52] Mark: interested in, alright. And then they slash retailer, [00:52:54] Kalen: Always terrified our browser, auto complete. Oh, we only have a couple minutes left. [00:52:59] Mark: Yeah, I know. We've already done an hour and five minutes. I know, dude, it's great. That, that pitch took a lot of time. [00:53:07] Kalen: We put our blood, sweat and tea. We put our heart on the line there, man. [00:53:12] Kalen: Oh, Bart does the right thing. Put our damn heart on the. Christ sake. Bus. [00:53:17] Mark: You pitched headless? I pitched not headless. So we'll see which one wins out [00:53:22] Kalen: made it best, man. Win. Yeah, [00:53:24] Mark: maybe if they pick headless you have to code it. I'm not gonna code [00:53:28] Kalen: that. Good luck. This React [00:53:31] Mark: Ks, I don't know. [00:53:32] Mark: Yeah, I bet I could. Yeah, you do coding. I could [00:53:36] Kalen: sniff somebody out. I've heard. [00:53:38] Mark: But, [00:53:38] Mark: but [00:53:39] Kalen: Maybe we'll do the AI thing next week. Maybe we'll talk more about that next week. Yeah. Unless you wanna Yeah. [00:53:44] Mark: Yeah. Oh, cool. N no it's Friday. It's five 30. Come on. Yeah. I mean it's, you get me four 30 for you and you have to buy a Tesla. Yeah. Like you're about, have to be late for buying a Tesla. [00:53:55] Mark: I think [00:53:56] Kalen: you gotta buy a damn Tesla, man. I gotta try. Don't freaking wire money to some frigging. Some accidental place or something like that. [00:54:05] Mark: You can wire it to me if you want. [00:54:07] Kalen: I don't have enough money to be just sending Ethereum into the universe like you, man. If I sent it to the wrong place, [00:54:14] Mark: I don't have him enough money to do that either. I have $2,000 less. [00:54:19] Kalen: You, I could tell you're freaking rolling [00:54:22] Mark: it, but you're about to have two Teslas. So we're on the same level, like two Tesla clubs. [00:54:28] Kalen: No, even close. We're the same. We're not even close. Oh, good times, man. We gotta figure out our closing sequence now that this podcast is becoming a thing. [00:54:38] Mark: But thanks for the sponsors. Yep. Mom and dad. Yep. Life can subscribe. Hit that heart button. Oh, that stuff. [00:54:45] Kalen: All that good stuff. [00:54:47] Mark: The Celebrate button on LinkedIn

8. 

   18 Aug 2023

   Hello From The Children Of Planet Earth

   [00:00:00] All right. So about 20 minutes into this one mark side of the audio and video ends up cutting out. So only my side is left and, uh, we just decided to go ahead and publish it. As is because it's just kind of hilarious and we don't really have another option, but just in case you wonder why that happens. I wanted to explain it upfront. [00:00:18] Kalen: Have you ever heard the phrase Chil fuck. What is it? Chil children of the planet Earth, [00:00:25] Mark: children of, I've heard a phrase of children, of something, [00:00:31] Kalen: children of hello From the children of Planet Earth. Have you heard that? [00:00:35] Mark: Oh no. I have no idea about that. [00:00:38] Kalen: Dude, that's wild. 'cause it's my buddy was telling me about that yesterday and it's it's a phrase. [00:00:44] Kalen: That I gotta Google this shit. It's a phrase. Okay, where is this thing? He was telling me that it's a phrase fuck. It's a phrase. Oh, that from [00:00:56] Mark: recording? Where is it? Oh, it's, oh, that's the thing that they sent into space. It's like a, that's it. Vinyl or something. That's it. That they launch in his [00:01:03] Kalen: space. [00:01:03] Kalen: That's it. That's it. Yeah. So I'm gonna give a quick sh Dude, I have, that's, this is so bizarre, dude. But my friend. My friend Imad told me that, so I'm gonna fucking clip this and post it, dude. 'cause he was like, he wants me to he's so weird. He's fucking cool. But he's he's Hey man, I want you to make me go viral. [00:01:22] Kalen: And I'm like, what? I'm talking about, dude, [00:01:24] Mark: if anyone can do it, you can do it. I like Toby. [00:01:27] Kalen: I'm like, bro, dude. I'm like, dude, I got lucky, man. I screenshotted a video. It wasn't even my site. Some other dude, did you read the deep dive of that? The thread from you or someone? Oh no. Commerce, ui. The company's called Commerce [00:01:42] Mark: ui. [00:01:43] Mark: That, that video that they had all the models, like videos and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. [00:01:48] Kalen: Cool. And then did you see the thread? [00:01:50] Mark: I guess I don't think I did, dude. [00:01:52] Kalen: Yeah, so that so that shoot, where is it that thread? 'cause at first when I saw it, I thought it was just, should I do a, should I record my screen for the thing too? [00:02:03] Kalen: Or, it's up to you. Why not, dude, let's freaking do it, man. Just go nuts. How's your day going, dude? [00:02:10] Mark: It's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty chill. Yeah. This has been like the, this is the highlight of my day I'm just like, hell yeah. Looking forward to this. Hell yeah. [00:02:20] Kalen: Did, I'm looking forward to, but he, let me just find this thread, dude. [00:02:25] Kalen: Because he did, or, yeah, the team did a really real, okay, here it is. Bro, they did check this out, dude. They did a whole deep dive on the studio on Check this out. Do you see this? Do you see this? Dude? Isn't that beautiful? It's crazy it's so nice dude. And anyways, I scanned it. I didn't like fully read the entire thing, but they did a pretty deep dive and then they did another deep dive on, headless on. [00:02:55] Kalen: Specifically. Okay, so this is like why this is like how we did it. And then okay. Boom. Here's the other thread. They did a deep dive again, I didn't really read it, but why is the site headless, right? So blanklob I thought his name was blankbob for [00:03:14] Mark: that's, I thought it too. Yeah, you did. I pronounce it in my head like that. [00:03:20] Kalen: Same here. That's a, such a perfect name. But anyways, Youness who's cool as duck it's funny, we had a beef and then we ducking cleared it out and now we're ducking bros. But he He would say, his whole thing and this is, and your whole thing too, is that headless is overblown a lot of the time. [00:03:39] Kalen: And anyways, I didn't fully read this, but it's talks about why they went headless and stuff like that. So people, hopefully people smarter than me are gonna look at that. Should we look at this beef? Should we look at this beef I'm getting into with the with the guy here. [00:03:53] Kalen: This dude, you [00:03:55] Mark: see this? Oh, no, I didn't know that was the beef that you had. I thought it was, yeah. Jon Manly the headless thing. It is interesting from the commerce UI perspective because they have a good point where, they were saying like, we built this in 2019 and we couldn't do a lot of the things that we could now with online Store 2.0. [00:04:16] Mark: And I think that's like actually what Shopify's goal has been to make online Store 2.0 so good that headless is less necessary. Got it. Even though it, at the same time they're making headless better. I think they still like, prefer brands not to do headless. So it, it should be okay, if I can't do what I need to do, headless is the option, but Right. [00:04:41] Mark: More and more I can do what I need to do just using, online store 2.0. [00:04:47] Kalen: Yeah, I, yeah, I wish I knew the details of that stuff better, man. I feel like [00:04:52] Mark: if that could dominate like so many. A podcast. It shouldn't dominate this one there. There's too much to talk about. [00:04:59] Mark: Exactly. Exactly. [00:05:00] Kalen: Otherwise, yeah. So maybe I'll just keep sharing the screen, dude, and we can just look at additions, man. Yeah. Going nuts, [00:05:08] Mark: dude. The presentation where cooler and, I'm [00:05:11] Kalen: sorry. I know. Go. It's so nuts. Dude. It's so crazy. Like the, literally, like when I saw the first editions that was, I was like a week and a half in, or I was like three weeks into drinking the Shopify Kool-Aid and I was like, this is the best landing page I've ever seen in my entire life. [00:05:28] Kalen: Because not only is it like a beautiful landing page, the amount of content and the way Yeah. And then even the performance of it. How does it load so fast with all this stuff? I think it must progressively load or something must be headless, but must be. Yeah. Yeah. And so then that was the funny thing is that. [00:05:47] Kalen: I was busting I was busting I can't find the tweet, but I was bus. Oh, that's funny. Shout out to Philip. I was busting I was busting Eunice's chops because he was complimenting the oh, I think he mentioned, or somebody mentioned that this is Shopify under the hood. [00:06:03] Mark: In a, it's using like objects from Shopify or something. [00:06:07] Kalen: And then so I was like, oh, now you like headless and stuff like that. But yeah. [00:06:12] Mark: But but anyway, I can tell it's like not normal Shopify. 'cause it doesn't have slash pages, slash collection. Oh God. That's like the dead giveaway. That not [00:06:21] Kalen: Gotcha. That's changing. [00:06:22] Kalen: Gotcha, gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. You gotcha, gotcha. I'm gonna eventually understand Shopify's better. It's so weird dude. 'cause I'm so new to it. But also that's what we're here for the community. That's what we're here for, man. You're my mentor. You're my spirit guide into the realm of Shopify. [00:06:39] Kalen: Oh boy. Buckle up. Yeah, dude. Nah dude. I honestly, I wanna say I appreciate you because I tweeted about this, but. There was a way in which I, over the past several years, I feel like I, I fell down a peg in let's say my career slash the ecosystem slash whatever, and I really did notice certain people treat me different because I didn't have whatever clout, I guess is the way to say it. [00:07:05] Kalen: And 'cause I guess to a certain extent as cheesy as it sounds, I had some of that to an extent in Magento for a time. Yeah. And I remember at that time, I'd go to conferences and everybody was like, oh, what's up man? Every everybody want, talk to me and stuff. [00:07:21] Kalen: And I was like, what the heck? And then and then I basically lost that the last couple conferences I went to. Fucking, nobody had any clue who I was. And I was like, just some fucking newbie. And I really saw which of my friends who I thought were my friends. Treated me different. And then in the end I realized they just wanted something, yeah. From me or whatever. But then like you and like several other people, I'm like, those are my fucking ride or dies. You know what I mean? [00:07:50] Mark: I'm just grateful when business for business and personal gets mixed it's like a blurred line. And Yes. And then when the business is taken out of it, who's left? [00:07:59] Mark: And it's okay, yes, we were actually friends. It, yes. It [00:08:02] Kalen: wasn't just business. Exactly. And yeah. Yeah, man, I'm grateful for you and I feel like I'm gonna hopefully get back to, fucking getting that clout. But it sounds so dumb, my friend. My, it's such a dumb, sometimes there's words that are basically Gen Z words that you go, that's such a dumb word, but then you realize eventually it's just the right word. [00:08:28] Kalen: You know what I mean? It's there was another word like that occurred to me that I can't forget. Oh. Main character energy. Oh. Have you seen that phrase before? [00:08:37] Mark: Yes. I've definitely, it's, it can be [00:08:39] Kalen: super cheesy, but I realize I realize it's totally the right word for a certain thing, but yeah, dude I'm bullish as fuck on Gen Z. [00:08:48] Kalen: 'cause I think that people our age, like how old are your thir, you're. 35. 30. 35. This is so weird, dude. 'cause ev the guy I played pickleball today was 35. My basically new best friend in Texas. Ryan is 35. You're 35, so it's anyways, but age. How old are you? That's the f I'm 42. Really? [00:09:09] Mark: Oh yeah. I thought you were still in your thirties. Hell yeah. That's what I'm have to hear. I'm not calling you. [00:09:14] Kalen: Yeah. You don't. No. That's the Precises. [00:09:15] Mark: You have 35 character energy. [00:09:18] Kalen: That's it. That's precisely what I'm shooting for. Because there was a time when, honestly I, because I, I lost some weight. [00:09:25] Kalen: There was a time when I was probably 39 and I was much more overweight. I kid you not, there was a time or two where somebody thought I was in my fifties. Wow. And I remembered feeling like, where's I'm looking forward to being my fifties in the sense that you could be super healthy in your fifties. [00:09:44] Kalen: But if you're 39 and you look like you're 50, like something's like a little, tweaked a little, something needs to tweak. But so yeah, like now then I started to get to the point where people sometimes told me I looked or seemed or looked younger than my age. And basically that's what you want. [00:09:58] Kalen: You want, like there's a guy I played Pickle Wa with who's 68 and he could pass for 50 and he's in super good shape. He runs fast. Yeah. He plays pickleball good. You know what I mean? So that's the goal is for all of us to feel and look young, younger than we actually are. [00:10:13] Kalen: Pretty [00:10:13] Mark: much. Yeah. I think everyone wants to once they hit 40, wants to stay like between 4 30, 5 and 40 and appearance forever. Yes. Yes. But like until then yes. You don't wanna be look too young because then people don't take you seriously. So there's like a curve. Totally. [00:10:29] Kalen: The crazy thing is my friend Ryan he'll sometimes get carded and shit like that at a bar. [00:10:34] Kalen: And whereas I haven't been in card like. They'll do it as a formality, but they like, they know that I'm fucking, especially if I have a little white in my beard, but he was mad that he got card and I'm like, what the fuck are you mad about, dude? Yeah, that's a lot of people problem to have, dude. [00:10:50] Kalen: What are you talking about? But but yeah dude additions, man. I know you had, I know we're doc, so Yeah. [00:10:58] Mark: Did, so you had, you guys had a watch party yesterday. How'd that go? Was that cool? [00:11:03] Kalen: It was okay. It was literally, it was three of us total sitting around on the couch and they had, the dude had a tv. [00:11:11] Kalen: My buddy Alex there, shout out to Alex, was SKU savvy. I met him at the Shopify Mart creator Mart. Randomly in the line. He's super cool. And he came out and we hung out. And then this other dude was there. But there was a tv but he didn't know how to plug the laptop into the tv 'cause he had just, moved there two months ago. [00:11:29] Kalen: And his roommate, he didn't know how to set it up anyways, so we're sitting on the couch, three of us watching a laptop on a coffee table. So it was probably the worst watch party of all time in that sense. But old, we had a, we, yeah. So we had a fun conversation, but I'm imagining it'd be cool like to get more like events going in Austin type of thing with more people, but I don't know, man. [00:11:54] Kalen: You know how it is with people. It's sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's I just don't like people, dude I just don't want to, you know what I mean? I don't wanna be around people. [00:12:03] Mark: I like the idea of having some in-person event for the announcements, but maybe like in the evening at a bar. [00:12:10] Mark: And it's not so much like you watched them together. 'cause like I think you should do that kind of on your own time, but it's more like, Hey, let's hang out and what we're you and I are doing now of let's talk shop about what this means. What's surprising? [00:12:25] Mark: Or what's, like why are they featuring this kind of stuff? Yeah, totally. Some of it, sometimes I'm like, why are they pushing this? Is this like a pet project of like Harley or Toby? And sometimes I'm like, okay, this is actually cool. [00:12:38] Kalen: Do you love Harley? And Toby? Jake genuinely. [00:12:41] Mark: No. No. [00:12:43] Kalen: Okay. I, is that a fair quick question? I we're recording. No. We are recording. I don't, I can take it out if you want, but I'm just, no, I'm just kidding. I'm just genuinely curious because I like, you know how I am dude. When I get into stuff, I get all the way in and then when I went, and then if my heart is out of it, my heart is all the way out. [00:13:02] Kalen: So I saw the clip of Tobi watching the, the recent pro promo they released. I saw the clip of him looking at the couple that just made their first sale. Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah. And he started to like, he smiled and he started to tear up. And I was like, dude, this guy, like genuinely like I know, everybody's oh, they don't care about the rebels, the arm, the rebels. [00:13:26] Kalen: They don't care about the small guy. They only care about plus. I get it. And I think that as an org, they probably are prioritizing mid-market enterprise heavily. They definitely are, but I really don't, I really think those guys believe in the mission. I really do. I really do. No I, and it's cool to me. [00:13:47] Kalen: I agree. It's meaningful. It's meaningful to me. Because Magento lost that, like I believe Ro Roy and Yoav did as well. Believed in it. But then, they obviously sold, Roy sold for, I believe I forget the details. Anyways, it's cool to see Roy on Twitter again. Dude, I've seen him on some tweets and I think he dropped off of Twitter for a while. [00:14:07] Kalen: Roy Rubin, and I've seen him recently, so I'm guessing he's working on something, but anyways, then they sold and, eBay and PayPal and I think for the last long as I can remember, it was like people were good people, nice people. Lavelle is a go is great. Like what a super, not super cool guy, super great leader, but I think it was more about, hey, let's let's tune this up in three years and let's get a return on it. [00:14:33] Kalen: You know what I mean? Yeah. Whereas I genuinely believe, I think Harley said Shopify's a hundred year company do you remember him saying that? I think I saw him [00:14:42] Mark: tweet that. That sounds familiar. I wouldn't be surprised if he said it. [00:14:46] Kalen: Yeah. So I just feel like he, they genuinely I'm a big believer in founder led companies, as just in general. [00:14:53] Kalen: But see here it is. We're building a hundred year company and I think that I think where the hell did that? Oh, here we go. Yeah. So I genuinely believe this and anyways, but that's my answer to the question. But I didn't let you finish giving like your answer to the question. [00:15:08] Mark: I have to put some nuances into that. No. You're like, [00:15:11] Kalen: hell nah. [00:15:12] Mark: So no. So what I think about Toby is I agree with you. I think he has like a huge actual pers personal passion for the merchants. Yeah. Like the smaller ones. Actually, I think that for a while that was actually to the detriment of the company. [00:15:28] Mark: I think they were a little more like too focused on the merchants that were probably not making them a lot of money. Which is why I think they resisted, like even raising the prices on their basic plans for so long. And then when they did, people like rose up, but then I don't think it, was a bad thing. [00:15:47] Mark: But I think that they've found like a good balance between Trying to like, build features for the lower end internally in Shopify, and then also like leveraging the partners and the apps for the more advanced enterprise which kind of like really segues into this big announcement of Shopify subscriptions, which is a bombshell actually, because subscriptions have been such a big part of the app ecosystem. And now they're essentially like competing with that. But then they're like you, there's apps for more advanced things. On the one hand they're saying like, Hey, we have these basic versions of these features. [00:16:26] Mark: Now it's free. You can do subscriptions for free on Shopify. But if you're like a bigger merchant, you can still use the apps, so totally. Yeah. What do you think about that? [00:16:38] Kalen: So I feel like I, okay, so here was my realization. I feel like previously I felt the degree to which Shopify competes with its app ecosystem was random, it's as an app, like we're an app, we, flow is we would be an alternative flow. As an app. You, the, you are, you always have, let's call it cannibalization anxiety, right? Showtime. Yeah. Showtime. Yeah. I can't all that's a so I always thought okay, it's that's such showtime. [00:17:12] Kalen: It's it's who knows? Who knows what they're gonna do. It's anybody's guess They could kill my business at any time. And then what I realized was that if they're gonna do an app, it's actually very clear what their playbook is. And I think it's logical, and I think it's really aligned with the whole ecosystem, which is, hey, if we create a, something that competes with the ecosystem maps, we're gonna roll out a basic version. Yes. Is that a train? Sorry. [00:17:44] Mark: There is a train. That's [00:17:46] Kalen: wild, [00:17:46] Mark: dude. Bam. So it's like you just cussed [00:17:49] Kalen: Uhhuh. [00:17:50] Kalen: Dude, I just took a big old bite of an apple and then I realized, I wouldn't be able to eat it all. That'd be nasty. It take, it would've taken me like a minute to finish Chew, but anyways so I think that they The playbook. Yeah. Playbook, basic version, right? Look at Shopify email or is it called Inbox or e what the hell is it called? [00:18:07] Mark: It's both. There's an Shopify inbox and a Shopify email. And what's the difference between Inbox is between, I think it's more, inbox is more of a live chat and email is like a Klaviyo like email market. [00:18:18] Kalen: Oh gotcha. So I'm thinking of Shopify email which I think what I had seen and I saw I think I saw what's the privy dude's name? [00:18:28] Kalen: Ben, I think I saw, is that his name? Anyways, he said dang it man, I can't find anything these days. He basically said that he thought that They were, he was impressed that they were iterating. Oh, here we go. So this is the dude that started Privy, right? Or he started, do you know this guy? [00:18:49] Kalen: Yeah. Privy? [00:18:49] Mark: Not personally, but Yeah I know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So [00:18:52] Kalen: then he knows what he's talking about, right? So anyways he was talking so I asked the question like, what's the what's the native, what's the native function? Lemme just read it, dude. Which native functionality that overlaps with popular apps heavily are you most bullish on? [00:19:06] Kalen: And and I said, don't say subs, right? 'cause everybody's talking about subs. And he said email. And I had also seen, he said that, they've got marketing tools. They, there's, I think the way it works is there's flow templates that that tie into your marketing automation. Do you ever use those or. [00:19:22] Mark: I've never used them, but I know they, they exist. [00:19:25] Kalen: Okay. It's so funny because there's so much functionality that I'm always like, I haven't used Flow, just I've tested it a couple times, but I'll hear people discuss, you talk about potential limitations, and then I'll be, pitching them on Mason stuff but there's so much functionality. [00:19:39] Kalen: Like it's almost like nobody's used every piece of functionality, like but but anyways, point being email or Shopify email is maturing. Yeah, when they launched it, what was it, four years ago? Five years ago? I don't know because I wasn't really following closely then. [00:19:55] Kalen: You don't know when it was launched Shopify email? Seriously, because I thought it was like, okay. Two years ago. Okay. That makes sense. Two years ago, April no. April, 2020, dude, so that's three years ago. Three years ago. Yeah. So three years. But I remember at the time it was the same as subscriptions. [00:20:14] Kalen: Everybody's oh my gosh, they're gonna kill they're gonna kill Klaviyo, they're gonna kill MailChimp. And then it came out and it was like really basic. And so everybody's of course we still use Klaviyo, like everybody and their grandma still uses Klaviyo. So I think the same is true of every category, like they launch and then they continue to mature as much as it makes sense to mature. [00:20:40] Kalen: And so I don't know, subscriptions nearly as well as you do as far as actual fun. Like I know you do a lot of recharge like I, I'm guessing, and you probably know better than I do, that there's no client of yours that could use the native subscriptions as it is. Correct me if I'm wrong. [00:20:59] Kalen: Okay. [00:21:00] Mark: Right. [00:21:01] Mark: Yeah. [00:21:01] Kalen: Yeah. [00:21:02] Kalen: Right. [00:21:03] Kalen: Yeah. [00:21:04] Kalen: Right. [00:21:04] Kalen: Right. [00:21:05] Kalen: Yeah. It, I would imagine I, my understanding is that it coincided with the meetings policy where they killed most all of their meetings over three people or something. I know a lot of people also like to trash talk the whole meetings thing, and they're like, oh, it's not real. [00:21:21] Kalen: They still have meetings. But again I yeah yeah. I love that too. And I think they genuinely did kill a lot of meetings. I don't know if they killed every meeting. I'm sure they didn't kill every meeting, but it seems to me and I don't know if they've talked about this, but I'm just guessing that if you kill meetings, you have to replace it with something. [00:21:42] Kalen: And what I would think it was replaced with was like KPIs. Because like our com, our company does KPIs and it's the first time I have KPIs and they're like good. Like I get it, but I don't like having KPIs, but I'm guessing that they must be shipping more because instead of just throwing meetings at every problem, they must have some kind of internal metrics for aligning everybody on let's ship features. [00:22:14] Kalen: That's my, that's, yeah. [00:22:17] Kalen: Yeah. [00:22:17] Kalen: Ah, that makes sense. [00:22:21] Kalen: They're Canadian. I love a Canadian dude. I was just talking to a guy that was from Toronto. Toronto. I love a Canadian dude. But that makes sense, man. That actually makes, that makes a lot of sense actually. I think you convinced me. It's more likely that it's leadership changes than it is KPIs. [00:22:37] Kalen: 'cause KPIs can be good. It's they can be good or they can be bad and whatever. But like leadership is for sure a major factor. So something and see again, going back to the thing of how I really genuinely love Toby and Harley, even though they haven't followed me yet, but we're gonna change. [00:22:55] Kalen: We're gonna get that changed at some point. We're gonna get that follow, we're gonna lock it in. But but they, everybody thinks I'm growth hacking and I'm like, dude, I'm not growth hacking. I understand. In the past, I have done some growth hacking and people think I'm just faking everything. I'm not, dude I genuinely like this dude. [00:23:15] Kalen: Like when I saw him on the video, I was like, this guy is my dude. But he But you mentioned money, right? You mentioned being a millionaire, the people, the v whatever the whatever that level, that tier of VPs or whatever tier it was that had enough whatever stock or whatever to be like fu money. [00:23:34] Kalen: Toby and Harley are both billionaires, right? [00:23:37] Kalen: But they're both, but they're both billionaires, okay Harley net worth. Now these net worth calculators are not what? Four mil? What the heck? That doesn't make sense. Does that make sense? I thought he was a billionaire. [00:23:52] Kalen: Oh, no. He's deaf dude. He's def dude, he's definitely a billionaire, [00:23:56] Kalen: but he's clo He's, if he's not a billionaire, he's billionaire adjacent. Dude come on. I we're never gonna see the exact numbers, but for all intents and purposes, okay. I believe that. I believe that. Okay. But my point is both of these cats could sail off into the sunset and do whatever they want. [00:24:19] Kalen: Which personally, I, if I could, I would be in Costa Rica surfing every day of my life for the rest of my life, but, so that's why I genuinely believe in them. I met Harley at the Creator Mart for a minute and a half, shook his hand. And I just saw the energy in this. [00:24:37] Kalen: Dude's like eyes, like he's fired up, dude. He is fired up. And I know what it's like to have a successful product and then to lose the, or not, I don't know what it's like to have this level of success. I know what it's like to have a very small scale, little bit of a success, and then instead of building on it, You somehow lose the motivation, you somehow lose the vision, and then you just, get, it's like you're wandering in the desert, and it's like, there's no and then you just end up, it just doesn't go anywhere or you sell or whatever. [00:25:14] Kalen: But these guys are in it for life. I think they're, I believe they're in it for life, and that's pretty special. That's pretty fricking special. I'm so sick of this whole fanboy thing. I don't want to hear the word like, but if anybody thinks, I'm just saying this for some, for some growth hacking purpose. [00:25:34] Kalen: If you think I'm saying it for Twitter, like it's like we have to stop doing that. Dude. Debate it on the merits debate debate, it on the merits. And I'm sure that, like we just debated on the merits. Is it KPIs or leadership? And then you convince me it's probably leadership. If you think somebody's being inauthentic, debate it on the merits and I just gave my case. [00:25:56] Kalen: I saw it in his eyes, shook his hand. They're both billionaires. They could both do whatever they want. They say it's a hundred year company, it is it looks like a hundred year company. It acts like a hundred year company. It walks like a hundred year company. Magento was a beautiful thing. [00:26:12] Kalen: We both really loved the community. It was not a hundred year company unfortunately. It just wasn't. [00:26:18] Kalen: Right? [00:26:19] Kalen: Yeah. [00:26:20] Mark: Right. [00:26:21] Kalen: But it's funny, like I am starting to believe in them, but I don't know how common that is because I'm starting to get the lay of the land, and I feel like. I feel like yeah, there are, there are growth hack, there are growth hackers like that are, and then there's the whole debate around people that are people that are, apps that are manufacturing hype, right? [00:26:43] Kalen: By paying influencers on the side, things that are, I think, unethical. And so everybody's so skeptical. Like everybody's it's all fake and send Lane. Okay. So I've been, look, I've been following Send Lane. Are you familiar with Send Lane at all? Okay. [00:27:00] Kalen: What TV show, [00:27:02] Kalen: what. [00:27:03] Kalen: I remember the Commerce Roundtable. It was I remember that. I didn't know it was related to Send Lane, but I remember seeing you in a video of a Commerce Roundtable. [00:27:13] Kalen: Okay, got it. Okay. So I've been following them, I've been following Jimmy, and I just had this sense that they were, onto something like everybody knows Klaviyo, everybody knows that they're really big, they're very popular, but they're big. They have pro, they have the problems that bigger companies have, which is maybe they're not as responsive, maybe, whatever. [00:27:35] Kalen: And and I know that a lot of people love them and, you're probably a partner. We're a, we're not a partner, but we have an integration. They. They're, they have extraordinarily successful product, but I just got the sense that these guys were coming up, and I'm developing my instincts in the ecosystem because they're rusty, but it's all the same. [00:27:57] Kalen: Like I, we've been observing e-commerce ecosystems for 10 plus years, and you start to notice patterns. Do you feel that way, like coming Magento to Shopify, do you see similar patterns and stuff? [00:28:08] Kalen: Yes, exactly. Exactly. [00:28:12] Kalen: Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Yes. [00:28:16] Kalen: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And so they're the 800, they're the 600 pound gorilla, right? I always forget, is it 800 or 600? 600? Anyways, they're the 600 pound gorilla. I'm starting I'm looking at Jimmy's tweets. He's always I like his style, right? 'cause he'll troll a little bit. [00:28:36] Kalen: He'll be like, good morning to everyone except my competitor that's not answering support emails on the weekend, which is just, it's just hilarious. And it's not just hilarious. It's also a gigantic competitive advantage. And anyways, recently they, I feel like they've started to pop. I saw, I believe it was Greg Mead with the cross game type whatever. [00:29:01] Kalen: He's like pretty big on Twitter. Yeah, I saw he switched and then I've saw two or three in quick succession kind of switch. I want to say eCom Cowboy, but I could be wrong about that. I'm just off the top of the dome. But I went okay, dude, I think they're popping. And then some people tweeted oh, let me guess. [00:29:22] Kalen: Send Lane is is giving people advisory shares, like the insinuation being that they're essentially manufacturing hype, which was my understanding of the ins of the insinuation. And so I don't believe that, I don't, I th I know that certain companies manufacture hype. We may or may not have a competitor that we believe may have manufactured hype. [00:29:50] Kalen: And I know that there are for sure apps that manufacture hype, but I don't think it's, I don't think they are. And so then when people are so pessimistic that every time an app pops, they assume it's fake. That's not the way, that's not the path. The path is, we gotta figure out which ones are fake. [00:30:15] Kalen: And then if they're fake, then you know, people should know that they're fake. You know what I mean? I'm not sure how you feel about all that, but to me, the skepticism related to the apps is like similar. Like I have zero skepticism about Toby and Harley. I didn't know anything about them. I saw Shopify vaguely as the enemy for when I was in Magento. [00:30:36] Kalen: Even though in theory you're not supposed to feel that way, the pie's big enough for all of us, blah, blah, blah. In reality, I saw Shopify as vaguely the enemy. It's first you laugh, then you, what is it? First you laugh. Then you fight. First you laugh. Then you join them. First you laugh. Wait, first they ignore you. [00:30:57] Kalen: Then they laugh at you. Then they fight. Then they join you. This is so dumb. They're not. So my point is, we ignore, I, that's what I did. I had a Magento podcast for eight years. In the beginning, I ignored Shopify. We thought it was silly. We thought it was for tiny sites. Then it got a little bigger. [00:31:15] Kalen: We started laughing. I'm sure I almost wanted to go back to the Maj Talk podcast and look these clips up. 'cause I know they're out there. Where, we would've, I'm sure made fun of Shopify in some way. And then fast forward, I've joined, and now my Twitter says Shopify in my name, Shopify Automation. [00:31:32] Kalen: So that's an ego hit, that's a, that's an ego hit for me but I accepted it and, okay. Okay. [00:31:40] Kalen: Okay. [00:31:41] Kalen: Dude, this is Chase, the Apple. I'm on mute. I was like, let him, I was like, keep talking, mark. I need to, Finish this damn album. Gimme like seven more seconds of content. [00:31:49] Kalen: See, that's see we're getting our, we're getting our momentum going. Dude, this is our second one. Mark and Kalen talk, Shopify. I think the name is, I think the name is so bad that it's perfect, right? It's so perfect. Like the ai, nah, hell nah. That came straight from the dome. Dude. [00:32:10] Kalen: AI is garbage. It's stuff like that. But and then the acronym is cool too. It's max. [00:32:17] Kalen: Max, let's call it Max. Oh shoot. It's basically pronounced, the acronym is pronounced Max, m a k t s. Hell yeah. That's cool, man. [00:32:28] Kalen: Dude I'm, I almost want to just go like battle the Shopify dudes. These guys are all getting into fights with me. It's hysterical, man. I keep getting into fights with people, but I'm not being rude. I don't think I'm being rude. Like this guy was like, oh, Eunice drank the Kool or Kool-Aid effect. [00:32:47] Kalen: And I was like, what are you talking about, dude? Eunice was just saying he goes I'm gonna just get into the beef. 'cause it's hysterical. He's He, I'm gonna just I'm just, this is all I'm thinking about right now. So he is like a new customer account, A P I B two B auth. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. [00:33:02] Kalen: I'm curious about, I'm curious to better understand B two B au. There's been a couple use cases that I had heard of that I was curious about. I was interested in the B two B pricing, a p I and he's like the Kool-Aid effect. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I was like, what is the Kool-Aid effect? [00:33:16] Kalen: Like I was actually curious about it because I didn't know if it was a thing, but I don't think it's a thing. I think he just made it up and drinking the Kool-Aid is a phrase. So basically he's doing that thing that I just described where he's being overly pessimistic about the fact that Eunice is excited about a new a p i, essentially. [00:33:37] Kalen: And so I'm like, what do you mean? And he's expecting X. And I'm like, wait, is this a thing? And I'm like, I don't think it's a thing. I think Buddy is just confused. And so I look it up and I'm like, you're basically saying he's drinking the Kool-Aid. I was like, what else does Google say? I was like, it says a thing or two about a thing or two. [00:33:54] Kalen: Did you coin the term Kool-aid effect or are you just misinformed? And then Eunice said, he's a cool guy. He just has a bad temper. And I said, I'll take your word for it. He needs to do more research before trying to spar with me. I'm gonna make him look silly. And then he tried to, oh, and then I posted, I'm gonna start getting into Twitter fights with anyone who beefs with blank. [00:34:14] Kalen: I'm gonna call him blank Bob. Dude, I don't care. Blank. I can't even pronounce blank lob dude and blank Bob is just something perfect about it. And so then anyway, then he like, he's buddy injected himself to act intellectual without context. I'm about this heat. Let's fucking go. [00:34:30] Kalen: And then I go, alright chief, you didn't answer the question. And then he didn't reply. I waited five minutes before we were getting ready to podcast. I was like, Hey buddy, struggling to reply. And I'm like, you know what, dude? Honestly, we're gonna become friends. I could tell. I could tell even though this guy. [00:34:43] Kalen: I was like, we're gonna come. I like him. I like the fact that he's fighting with me. And then and then Eunice is you guys are perfect for each other. Trust me, I know you both. And then he goes, we're not gonna be friends. So I'm just like, all right, man. See you on the flip side. [00:34:57] Kalen: So anyways, shout out to Pan Panoply. I'm definitely gonna become friends with Guy. He just doesn't realize it yet. But all these beefs are just like funny I love they're they're just awesome. Right. Yeah. [00:35:08] Kalen: Yes. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I think it's fine to be excited. I agree. And we need both. We j we actually, because we've seen, I've seen I, I used the word ecosystems what did I cycle or something like. These things come in cycles. We've seen these cycles in Magento. [00:35:29] Kalen: Like people get excited about something, they become pessimistic. The company, it's like you described, the company gets so big, they start ignoring people. Everybody, this sense of resentment builds, right? The Magento community resentment was off the charts. And I thought in Shopify land that everybody was happy. [00:35:48] Kalen: I genuinely thought everybody was a happy camper. But I'm realizing it's the same thing. There's people that are disgruntled about X, Y, and Z, right? Maybe there are maybe some May, there's a lot of recharge partners, right? Shout out to Recharge. We do a lot of recharge, right? Shout out to Kristen. She's super cool, man. [00:36:07] Kalen: She's cool as hell on on On is that her? Kristen? Yeah, Kristen. Kristen LaFrance. She's cool. There's a lot of RECHARGE partners. Now our question is Recharge Partners are like, oh, what's gonna happen to recharge? Because we are invested in Recharge in the sense that we're partners. We've got rev share, we've got, and not just Rev share, but we have clients that like recharge. [00:36:30] Kalen: We know how to use it. We've got good support channels. We've got projects that we know we can launch and rely on them and depend on them. You're invested in recharge. That's why Recharge is successful because they have a partner ecosystem that's invested in them. So then the question is, are you going to be pessimistic about the native functionality? [00:36:52] Kalen: Just we all have incentives. Like I'm a partner now. I didn't used to be a partner. I used to be my cowboy. I said not a cowboy. I used to be like independent. I talk shit about part Magento all the time. Now I'm a partner, so I have to walk the line and I, but I've known my whole life partners in Magento and Big Con it's all the same. [00:37:12] Kalen: Yes, you have to walk a line whenever you're a partner, you have to walk a line. You're not gonna just trash them in public for no reason. But the question is are you intellectually honest? And that's what I like about you, like you are an intellectually honest person. We all have our incentives and that affects our decision making. [00:37:35] Kalen: But you're the type of person that you're gonna call it, like you see it, so you're not quite as in love with Toby and Harley. That's fine. Like I happen to be, but you're more skeptical and we need that. And it's good to Hash it out, but the people that say everything is dishonest, everybody who likes X is dishonest. [00:37:57] Kalen: Like that mindset is just fundamentally wrong. And I, and so that's my whole, that's my whole spiel, dude. I had to get that off the chest. [00:38:09] Kalen: Totally. [00:38:09] Kalen: Right. [00:38:10] Kalen: Exactly. Exactly. And I think we have to mention shop wear in this conversation, because obviously Ben Marks is there now, and I see them as a I see them as a version of al almost a version of the second coming of Magento. Like literally, I see them as the second coming of Magento in the sense that they're open source. [00:38:33] Kalen: They have a similar kind of heartbeat. They have a similar ethos. They have a similar vibe and Ben Marks is there, right? I think that fundamentally when Magento started to decline they just did not fundamentally understand open source versus cloud and like the cloud, Magento cloud just had a lot of challenges. [00:38:56] Kalen: Right? And to say the least, so I think, I don't know, I don't know how shop wear works. I don't know if they have a cloud. I'm assuming they probably have a cloud version. I'm assuming they have a deployed version. I haven't really looked at it, but I am pretty sure that whatever they're doing is probably solid. [00:39:13] Kalen: And it's good to have an open source alternative. It's really good to have an open source alternative to Shopify. So it's cool. It's cool. But yeah, Magento just didn't, just didn't get it unfortunately. And, so it, it is what it is. [00:39:27] Kalen: That would've been the move. ASSE would've been the move. Or Maj Mo or Ma or Maj Mojo too. Whatever. Everybody has their favorites. [00:39:34] Kalen: Right, totally. Totally. Maybe we should wrap it up here. I I know we didn't get which subscriptions. We talked subscriptions, which honestly is I think, I know we didn't, I know we didn't like I know. We didn't really, okay. Okay. You, I'll let you close it out, dude. Give your take. [00:39:52] Kalen: Give your take. High level take. I honestly. I thought col collab. Is it called collabs or is it called collective? Yeah, I thought collective looked awesome. My c e o Aaron made an interesting comment, which was that, which I thought made sense, which was that which was that he thought that collabs was the, one of the most, in collabs is a good example of something that was always going to be hacky when implemented by third parties. [00:40:17] Kalen: There are some things just have to be inside the platform. And when he said that, I was like, yep, totally agree. So that seems pretty interesting for sure. Yeah, that's a good question. What's the difference between, see, dude, this is the thing, dude I'm still getting up to speed. [00:40:34] Kalen: Okay. So I feel like when he said this, I thought he was talking about collective, but it may apply to both, it may apply equally to both in some sense. Although the, what I was thinking he was talking about at the time was collective in the sense that you're allowing this is wild, right? [00:40:51] Kalen: Because now you're allowing, like you've got all, you've got all the Shopify stores, you've got massive number of stores, you've got the shop app that pulls in, and now the stores can all pull from each other. So that's, that seems like a fundamental innovation. Like you're gonna get network effects. [00:41:08] Kalen: You're gonna I don't know. That seemed, I don't know very much about the details of it, but that seems to me pretty interesting Shopify Collective. [00:41:16] Kalen: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. [00:41:18] Kalen: Right. [00:41:19] Kalen: That's hysterical, [00:41:20] Kalen: right? Yes. So I'm gonna say I agree with you on, I'm gonna say I agree with you on the influencer side. I honestly thought he was talking about collective. So I agree with you On the influencer side, that doesn't seem like it needs to be native. The thing that seems like it needs to be native is allowing one store to sell from another store. [00:41:42] Kalen: That feels to me like the kind of thing that needs to be native. [00:41:47] Kalen: Right. [00:41:47] Kalen: Totally. Nice man. This definitely was not the best additions recap it could have possibly been, but I think that, I don't know. I feel like we talked about things that at least I was interested in and I know there's a lot. We could do a part two tomorrow, dude. We could do a part two soon and just get into more detail, but I I know we only barely scratch the surface as far as what's actually in additions. [00:42:13] Kalen: There's so much in here. I don't even, I have not read this entire landing page, not even close, there's a lot, dude. There is a lot. That's what's so impressive about it. And I think what we wanted to do was a real deep dive. Maybe we can find the time to look at all this stuff, dude. How there's so much, it's like crazy. I know, dude. Like an eight hour what's it called? [00:42:38] Kalen: Marathon. Do a marathon podcast for eight hours. Cool, brother. Good talking man. I'll go ahead and do we wanna do any closing? Closing? Nah, that's cheesy. Let's just close, let's just end it.

9. 

   18 Aug 2023

   Looking A Lot More Natural These Days

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1K-Cgf7dl4&t=3s [00:00:00] Mark: Looking a lot more natural these days. Cool. Yeah. What's the goal? That's the dream. Like your old self, when you weren't yellow, [00:00:07] Kalen: you're like, what happened? Did he get what's the thing that jaundice kids get? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Was ca and his whole YouTube channel got jaundice? Gotta [00:00:18] Mark: put you under the blue light. [00:00:20] Mark: Yeah. [00:00:21] Kalen: Cool. [00:00:22] Mark: We're recording now, right? We're [00:00:24] Kalen: recording now. I can trim up the beginning part and stuff like that, but yeah. But yeah, we are recording back. We're back in business. Let me get this Google Doc thing opened up, but yeah. All right, man. We finally did it. I guess let's do, yeah, I don't know if this is a, what podcast this is. [00:00:44] Kalen: I'm playing with the idea of maybe starting something through the new company or I don't know. I don't know. [00:00:52] Mark: But this is just content right [00:00:54] Kalen: now. Yeah. It's just content. It's just content. But I don't know how to intro it. It takes a while to get comfortable with the old intro sequence, so I don't know how to, [00:01:03] Mark: yeah, how to start. [00:01:05] Mark: Maybe we can start by, I'm actually going to interview you. Calin. Could you introduce yourself? What do you do? Yes. Yes. Why? Why are we [00:01:13] Kalen: here? I can do that, I can do that. So I work for a company called Shop Pad now, and ma the product is called Mesa, which is workflow automation, Zapier for Shopify. [00:01:26] Kalen: My boss is gonna hate me for describing it that way, but cuz they're also the competition. But Yeah. And I've been diving into Shopify land after having been in Magento for some time which is where we met. And yeah, so I've been just diving into Shopify the past few months and working on automation, try to find interesting use cases for automation stuff. [00:01:53] Kalen: And yeah, that's my that's my deal, man. That's cool. What's yours? What, who are you, explain in, introduce yourself to the viewers and the listeners at home? [00:02:05] Mark: That's a good question. Who am I? I am still Mark Lewis. I've been Mark Lewis for approximately 35 years. [00:02:13] Kalen: Realize you were 35. [00:02:15] Kalen: Dude, you're like, I feel like you're more mature than me most of the time, and I've got a couple, I've got a couple years on you. [00:02:22] Mark: That's good. I think we have different strengths and weaknesses. True. Think so. Maturity is not one barometer like true. True. I have zero children, so I am probably a less mature father than you. [00:02:35] Kalen: Yeah, that's probably the case. Yes. [00:02:38] Mark: So I have to give you that. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, I'm Mark. I run an e-commerce agency NAICA Commerce, and our specialty is Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce In that order we're a full service agency except for, we don't do like growth or ppc. We're really focused on site ops, development, design keeping your site. [00:03:05] Mark: Up and maintained and converting as best as possible. Most of our clients are between, three to 5,000 million in revenue. And we're basically like the e-commerce, like fractional team for our clients. Usually our clients do have like at least a marketing manager, maybe a design team, and we're interfacing and like filling in the gaps of what they do and don't have internally. [00:03:30] Kalen: Nice. Yeah. Very nice. And any any recent, so I know topic wise we want to talk about, oh, I pulled up the entirely wrong. I pulled up a Google Doc with our notes. But then I accidentally pulled up my weekly update to my boss. I was like, let's talk about that calin to [00:03:50] Mark: do that. That's a whole new one. [00:03:51] Mark: Your weekly review. [00:03:53] Kalen: Yeah, I know we want to talk about headless stuff. Because that's one of those things I think you, you did, you you were included in a modern retail article on the topic, [00:04:04] Mark: yeah, modern retail kind of did a explainer on composable commerce and That's right. [00:04:11] Mark: Trying to suss out the differences between headless. And composable. Which as you probably know, they're very interrelated. Composable being a bit more broad term of being like, Hey, we're gonna take all these different little pieces of parts and put 'em together. And not have, right. [00:04:31] Mark: It's like the opposite of a monolith that we've been used to of like even Magento. I was just thinking the other day of we used to develop like reviews apps basically on Magento over and over. Like every client would be like, Hey, we want reviews where we just have to do it custom. Over and over now. [00:04:50] Mark: No one thinks about, like when they're saying like, oh we need reviews on our e-commerce site. Even on Magento, they're not like, oh let's do reviews ourselves. It's always using some sort of system like, like a stamp or a yacht po that's like. [00:05:05] Mark: That, that's composable commerce in a big way of like just basically breaking everything apart. Yeah, I think it's like the microservices stuff. [00:05:15] Kalen: Uhhuh, the my my personal struggle with these topics is that I understand them enough, big picture to understand them. [00:05:25] Kalen: Big picture, but I'm not, Close enough to them to really get into. I it just feels like every conversation around headless that I have with the level and composable with the level of detail that I get into them is headless can make sense if you have a very custom need and if not, then don't do it. [00:05:44] Kalen: And that's the, yeah. The level at which it makes sense to me. But I'm sure you, you get into more detail as you're working with clients on builds and stuff like that, [00:05:57] Mark: yeah, it's been interesting the past, I would say two years because I feel like there's been a push for headless for a while. [00:06:03] Mark: Like even before the pandemic. It was, yeah, it's been the cool new thing of oh, You should go headless if you're really like, serious about e-commerce. Yeah. So either, even if you didn't have a specific need, it was just basically oh, that's the premium option. Like why? Why don't you buy the safari Ferrari, there's a lot of reasons. Even if you can afford the Ferrari maybe the Ferrari is a lot of maintenance. A lot of, yeah. Insurance, a lot of upkeep. Yeah. And I think now the market is leveling off a little bit and people, merchants are starting to more understand like like the downsides of going headless. [00:06:41] Mark: So there's a more measured perspective, and. And to that point, like the downsides I would say is the maintenance the main maintenance of a Ferrari. Like once, if you're using Shopify, once you go headless, so many things don't work out of the box, like so many things are custom development. [00:06:59] Mark: And even probably with Mesa, some integrations probably don't necessarily work because they're relying on some sort of inserting something into the front end. And so it's just it's possible you can still like, do everything, but it's way more work and more development. [00:07:15] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm thinking of Glossier was one of the recent sites that launched on Shopify. And it had a lot of people were talking about it, but. I don't know. And they're using stock Shopify. Yeah. And it was one of those things where for a really high profile br brand, like like Glossier you would've probably may, maybe a year, two ago, you would've expected they'd launch headless, or maybe a lot of people still would expect somebody like them would launch headless. So it was a bit of a surprise. That they to certain people. Yeah. But then from the perspective you're coming from, it's just like it should be the default option to a choice to go stock. [00:07:58] Kalen: Unless you have some very specificities, but people were going crazy on Twitter. I remember just I guess from a UX perspective about Glossier, everybody was losing their minds and yeah I thought it was cool. I don't know. I'm, I guess I I'm, there's, I'm trying to understand like I'm in a very much like a learning phase of, or like a beginner mind. [00:08:19] Kalen: And so I'm like, not assuming I know everything about everything like I used to, but, so yeah, I, I saw it and I was like, oh, cool sight, like I, I'm assuming it's for a different demographic than me, so I probably, sh whatever. But I thought it was cool, but everybody was going nuts [00:08:35] Mark: about it. [00:08:35] Mark: I. Yeah, it, the interesting thing is you, you said like they didn't do headless and I think that was a big surprise and especially since Shopify has invested in hydrogen, they've invested in making headless, Better and more possible. But simultaneously they've really invested in the, online store 2.0 experience. [00:08:59] Mark: And I think they've improved that so much that it, it's almost come to parody with doing something headless unless you really need to do something custom and integrate some, like other custom CMS or something else to control the front end. So I do think brands are like realizing oh, we don't have to go headless. [00:09:20] Mark: And like you said, like it, na native needs to be the true default even. Even if you're a billion dollar brand, [00:09:28] Kalen: and it's so interesting coming from the Magento perspective where. Thing and my perception of the Shopify ecosystem having been not super close to it, was that yeah, everything's easy with Shopify. [00:09:40] Kalen: It's less custom, it's less work. Things just work. And so it's interesting coming from that perspective and then seeing in, in some ways like headless is like a reincarnation of Magento in, in, in the sense of having to do more. Custom work, more maintenance. You're getting a more of a custom site which has benefits to it. [00:10:04] Kalen: Yep. So not that it's Magento, but it's a it's the same, it's a similar dynamic. It's a similar tradeoff co complexity with customization versus simplicity with less customization. Exactly. So it was interesting to see people fighting this similar battle in this other camp, [00:10:22] Mark: yeah. And I don't think, I don't think merchants really knew what they were getting themselves into when they went headless initially like on Shopify, right? [00:10:31] Mark: We've done a number of migrations from a headless Shopify build to the native theme and. Every time we do the merchants just fall in love with us forever because they're like, wow, you saved us so much money and like hassle. We were having to email our developer every time we wanted to add a product or do any little tweak, like just the perspective of going back, or for them, I think they never had the native experience at all. They were just, they got on Shopify headless and they were like, This is a lot of work. Like I thought Shopify was supposed to be easier. And they were a little di disillusioned. And then they got like the real Shopify experience and they're like, okay, like this is more like what I was promised. [00:11:15] Kalen: Yeah, that makes sense. And then I think Dollar Shave Club just recently launched, which was a cool one. [00:11:22] Mark: Also not headless. [00:11:24] Kalen: And also not headless. [00:11:25] Kalen: Yeah. Which, they're, they've gotta be mad. I don't know what their numbers [00:11:29] Mark: are, but they've gotta be gigantic. They're they're a little infamous too, because I think they were down for At least a week. They had some sort of ca catastrophic like data data center issue or something like that. [00:11:43] Mark: Like a couple years ago, I remember, oh, basically before they were on Shopify they had a fully custom system and everything, and then they were just like totally down for it was at least a week. Oh, [00:11:57] Kalen: wow. That's [00:11:59] Mark: rough. I'm sure they're saving a lot of money and I'm sure like they scale back their dev team. [00:12:05] Mark: Just having the simplicity of running on Shopify. Yeah, but I think once, once you start out so custom and like you have a big dev team, it's probably a little hard to scale that back. But that's what we've been seeing, especially like now that people are, like a little more concerned about the economy or more conservative, they're considering something like Shopify versus, like in the past they would probably do like a Salesforce commerce cloud or, some something way more enterprise. They're like, Oh maybe I can make it work. Maybe I can cut costs. Not just like platform costs, but like ongoing maintenance and development. [00:12:44] Mark: If if I move to something simpler yeah. Can I make something simpler? Like work in my environment? Yeah. [00:12:52] Kalen: I hadn't really made the connection to the economy, but that's like the headless to native transition happening at a similar time as the economies. Getting a crunch. Yeah. But yeah that's gotta be part of the factor. [00:13:06] Kalen: But yeah, if you're, the e-commerce director that made the decision to go headless and it was that Ferrari, you said, Hey we have the money, we have an, we have a great brand, let's go for the Ferrari. And then you've got a team supporting it to then scale that back and go. Oh yeah, let's just go with the, like off the shelf, Shopify, even if you're getting plus or whatever, sure. And then it's oh, we don't need this, these, this in-house talent, or they can focus on certain other things. That's gotta be a tough decision to make. Yeah, and it's like the simple it's like a. It doesn't seem like a, in some senses, in some context, it doesn't seem like a sophisticated decision. [00:13:46] Kalen: It seems like the sophisticated decision would be to do the bigger, more complicated thing. [00:13:52] Mark: Sometimes simpler is better. Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you've already done maybe even a round of layoffs at your company and you're like, oh, we just laid off half the dev team. Like, how can we make their lives easier, the developers that we have left? [00:14:08] Mark: I think it makes a lot more sense to start simplifying rather than just trying to like, invest in, maintaining the Ferrari. Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:19] Kalen: Yeah, that's interesting. [00:14:20] Mark: On more of the enterprise macro level, they, we have these startups like fabric and commerce tools, which are like only composable commerce, like they don't have a front end. I'm seeing like they're talking more of the companies that are using these old big monoliths like IBM WebSphere and they're saying, Hey get off this mono, a slow old monolith that it's so hard to develop on and use us. [00:14:48] Mark: And then you can develop like with whatever tools that, that you want. But those companies already have, a huge dev team and basically they're. They're trying to simplify, coming from a really complex old system. And then headless is actually simpler than that old system, whereas Shopify's on the other side. [00:15:09] Mark: It's like it's already simpler and so if you go headless, you get more complex. [00:15:13] Kalen: That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. I've never seen WebSphere. I can only imagine. It's fairly enterprisey, yeah. A lot of these bigger systems have been around for a while. I was talking to somebody on Twitter about NetSuite and how they use it, but that it's not necessarily that smooth to work in. [00:15:32] Mark: Yeah. Some of those systems like NetSuite and like even Salesforce Commerce Cloud, I think that they're pushing headless a bit because their front end isn't particularly sophisticated and honestly like Magento I think did a couple years ago when they're pushing like PWS and. Headless in p w studio they were pushing it because the front end theming of Magento was so bad and it was such a pain. It was like, oh, that was the antidote to that you just abandoned the theme altogether and Right. Headless. So I think the more complex systems even Magento to, to a point still is okay, headless is. [00:16:15] Mark: The solution to that complexity or like that old, front end system. You can just write in whatever you want. You can write in React view [00:16:24] Kalen: yeah. But even then, but even then, like the the Hiva theme picked up a lot of popularity. Yeah. And I would say amongst the, whatever the. [00:16:34] Kalen: Community is versus there's certain segment of the community that it's the go-to choice. Yeah. And that's just, and I think that was a reaction to, like you're saying, issues with the default theme and also issues with pwa were, being super complicated. Yeah. [00:16:50] Mark: But yeah, I don't think they got too far in Magento headless world. I haven't run across a ton of Magento, two sites that are headless. Yeah. And it does get even more complex, but at least like you could like theoretically separate your front end team. Like really they could write and react as opposed to learning magento's theming system, which is pretty complex. And it's XML and all that fun stuff. [00:17:15] Kalen: Yeah, it's funny, I have a different I think, perceive all the Magento stuff a lot differently now, like being immersed in Shopify and stuff for a few months. [00:17:26] Kalen: And it's funny because some things are obviously different that I, other things are similar that I didn't expect to be similar. Like for example the whole uptime thing, like where people are concerned about their site going down or being broken, which can mean different things. [00:17:45] Kalen: Like sometimes that's the core Shopify infrastructure, like a very small sliver of the time. It's the core Shopify infrastructure. And just being aware of that for the uptime. Shopify app tracks all that. And then, but then there's maybe you broke something in your theme code. Maybe you have apps that are doing something weird, right? [00:18:04] Kalen: Yeah. So like the anxiety around, is my site down or broken? I've been surprised by how common that is though. It's a completely different. Thing from with Magento where like your whole size is down. It's just broken. The server's down, [00:18:24] Mark: it doesn't down load at all down. [00:18:26] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:26] Kalen: Yeah. So that's been a kind of a, that's been a surprise. But, [00:18:30] Mark: And then with Magento, you could theoretically break the checkout and you could still break it. Like you can Yeah, break with Shopify, but there was another level of the server just not being available. [00:18:40] Mark: But then sometimes it's the worst thing is like the server is available. Or, the site loads, but it doesn't work. You can't get to the checkout. Cause then you don't even have awareness of it. And that's why, these apps like uptime right time are like helping you test your site, like that, that's more important. That, that's just as important as the server being up. If you can browse and not check out like you're basically closed still. [00:19:05] Kalen: And also it's as problems get solved in technology, then you care you have different problems, but things that would've been smaller issues. [00:19:17] Kalen: Like your whole site being down because your servers are broken versus my add to cart button is broken because the developer did something. The job you would think the servers down is like by orders of magnitude, a bigger problem. But once that's out, out of the picture and it's not really within your frame of reference, now that add to cart button is just as bad. [00:19:39] Kalen: From the business person's perspective, it's it's not working. Like them heads are gonna roll, one way or another. [00:19:45] Mark: Exactly. So yeah, you're just like, different problems. There's still problems, but they just shift from the site being available versus like the site just functioning correctly. [00:19:58] Mark: Yeah. It's [00:20:00] Kalen: like that hierarchy of what is it, Maslow, it's like Maslow's hierarchy. But like the, the tech version, [00:20:07] Mark: I think we've moved on to better problems of like, all right, yes. Can I buy something? Yes. But they don't go away completely. Yeah. [00:20:15] Kalen: Yeah. And then seeing, like I saw, I see, I saw a lot of people who were really excited about like the Shopify functions. [00:20:22] Kalen: Which allow, I still don't understand 'em too well, but every like developer I talk to is like super pumped about 'em and playing with them. But it seems like they let you, and along with functions, some of the checkout customization features that have launched more recently are Yeah. Are letting you do more customization in the checkout, which obviously it's taken Shopify a while to get there. [00:20:49] Kalen: And they've had different types of customization options for plus and people, but they're getting more and more custom. But it's to do that while keeping your core infrastructure rock solid is a very hard thing to do. So that's been interesting to, to look at. And have you looked at the functions at all Shopify functions? [00:21:11] Mark: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little similar to the Shopify script editor that they used to have, or they still have for Shopify Plus. Where you can tie into some native functionality. The script editor was written in Ruby. But there're definitely, there's sunsetting that, and there's more functionality in the function editor, and I think to your point, Shopify is slowly opening up like the kimono and like they've, they had a very walled garden approach, Apple. And I was watching this Blackberry documentary, which is, or actually is drama. It's really interesting. But I forgot that when the iPhone was first released, they didn't have an app store. [00:21:52] Mark: It was just Apple's apps and then they had an app store. I can't that either. Very limited, very limited APIs and everything. And I think that's what Shopify has been going through of like, all right, we have apps and how can we open up the checkout? How can we open up the backend functionality? [00:22:12] Mark: The primary thing is preserving the, the core, core stability of the platform. If we compromise that, if we go to the Android model, it's just like the wild west of you could have viruses on your site and, it gives you more rope to basically break your site. [00:22:28] Mark: Versus there, there is a level of comfort that there's like less ways. To break a shop by site, it's still very possible, yeah. We have experience with that. Our clients have experience with breaking their own site as well. But I do sleep way better at night, the past couple years than the first couple years of, working primarily on Magento. [00:22:50] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. So [00:22:51] Mark: you're the anxiety of what could go wrong? [00:22:55] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's like you're definitely sleeping easier and yet there's still is anxiety around some of those things. And, it just evolves. But the, and then the app store has been interesting to, to see how people, what issues people have with it. [00:23:14] Kalen: And a lot of developers are super not thrilled with a lot of things about the App store. Which again, I thought everybody in sh in Shopify apps or everybody's happy, like you're not, you don't have code overlapping like with Magento, like code level break conflicts. But now it's like you have other types of conflicts between D, multiple SaaS apps, maybe it's front end or just, are they in integrating the way you'd want them to, whatever. [00:23:47] Kalen: Yeah. And then there's the issue that there's like too many of them. So everybody is overloaded with all these apps. And then people are also frustrated about the expense of the apps. Because, SaaS is Basically as an, as a whole industry has is increasing prices all the time. And so you get apps that do well and they tend to, and then you're paying, 750 bucks a month for something and then you've got 15, yeah. So that's been interesting to. To see some of the dynamics there. [00:24:18] Mark: I bet with Mesa more of those dynamics of there's so many copycat apps for basically everything, so it's how do you stand out in the App store? I've heard it's very expensive to try to use like their advertising on the app store. [00:24:33] Mark: You'll get like an install and like you pay per install. You might pay like a hundred or $200 for an install, and then someone uninstall it like two, two minutes later and it's just like like I just paid $200 for a conversion, but it didn't really go anywhere. [00:24:49] Mark: Yeah. [00:24:51] Kalen: I've seen people talk about that a lot on Twitter. I don't, I haven't dealt with any of the, our. App store stuff. I do think we, I have done some searches and I see Mesa come up, so I'm guessing we do good. Have some ads running there. I should ask the team about that. But I've seen people post about the like Gil and Green Greenberg, Gil Greenberg? [00:25:12] Mark: I think so. Just, [00:25:13] Kalen: he's just Gil to me. And Dennis Hegstad I think too. But Yeah, it seems like it's, and then I think a lot of like if you're a newer, like last couple years, fund, like well-funded app, a lot of 'em, it seems like they don't really even care that much about the app store or they're going after the plus market or the, somewhere towards the higher end of the Shopify market. [00:25:36] Kalen: And like you'll see, they'll have one review or two reviews or something and and they're out here, liquid IV as a customer and a whole bunch of others and stuff like that. And that's the. The direction that they go. [00:25:50] Mark: Yeah. Cuz I think the app store serves two functions for those kinds of merchants. [00:25:55] Mark: It's one, it's a possible install channel, like you could find out about the app. And that's probably not super useful for enterprise level sales. But two, it's. Just a quick way to be able to install, like once you've done the due diligence and done the sales process for weeks and weeks on the enterprise level. [00:26:15] Mark: Yeah. It's just okay, now it's very easy for your team to install it. Yeah. So you need to be on the app store, even if you're not like really leveraging like the marketplace functionality of, people discovering you. Totally. [00:26:30] Kalen: And then they just recently, I think I wanna say maybe it was Friday launched the updates to the relevance ranking for reviews in the app store. [00:26:40] Kalen: Yeah. Which was interesting. Pretty cool. Any changes? Yeah. So I looked at Mesa and actually the top like three were all really good, longer, more meaty reviews. Nice. And it had pulled in a couple of older ones cause it used to just sort by recency. Yeah. But I went in and it pulled in a couple older ones that were, but I looked and I was like, oh, they're all, they all look really good actually. [00:27:04] Kalen: But I think one of our other apps somebody told me had the same problem that other people are seeing, which is some of the things that floats to the top are not super flattering. And in some cases a couple people said they're floating stuff at the top that doesn't even necessarily look very high quality. [00:27:23] Kalen: Yeah. So that, I would def that's definitely frustrating if that's, if that is happening to you. But I like the idea a lot. [00:27:30] Mark: Yeah. I think they're trying to optimize. I think they are aware. It's a problem. And I know they added at some point install time. Like, how long have you used this app? [00:27:41] Mark: Months or like seconds, basically. And I'm assuming they're factoring that into the relevance as well of someone that's used the app for a couple months is gonna have a much more relevant review than someone that used it for one day, basically. [00:27:54] Kalen: Yeah. And then like I saw somebody posting about how people will do, customers will do stuff like, they'll give you a one star and then they're emailing support and they're asking you for some new feature, and then they're like I'll update it to a five star if you do the new feature. [00:28:08] Kalen: And I was like, that is so manipulative. And so then we, I was looking at the the the rules of what you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do with ratings. Yeah. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna write a bullet point for this type of thing because this should be like it should be across the boards that you can't do that. [00:28:27] Kalen: Yeah. But then as I was like writing it, I was thinking it through and I went if to them as a merchant, Your app is a one star without this new feature, then that's how they feel. It's a one star, like it's in a way it is how they feel. You know what? Indeed it's well, like it's shitty, [00:28:51] Mark: but if you buy like an apple and you're like, ah, this doesn't taste, this doesn't taste like an orange. [00:28:58] Mark: It's whose fault is that? You like, okay, yeah, I get, if it's like false advertising in the app's description, they say that they're gonna do something and they don't. Yeah. But like sometimes it's just merchants are just. Angry that it just doesn't read their mind. Yeah. Like it doesn't do exactly what they want. [00:29:14] Mark: And it's just try another app. Or I'm sorry. There is no app that exists. Yeah. That doesn't [00:29:19] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. Like they're just asking for a brand new feature. Yeah. And if you give it to, yeah. And I was going man, that's so crazy that Shopify lets them do that. I would think that there should be a way to report those and, yeah. [00:29:34] Kalen: Even if I think they're only, the reporting process is just manual currently. I think really, I think you'd have to email some, somebody to report, a review that breaks the guidelines, but it seems like it'd be good to have that option and what they do with those reports. Of course, they could figure that out, but just having the ability to go, come on man, this is not cool. [00:29:55] Kalen: And then start to categorize the different types of reports. Seems like it would help, but [00:30:01] Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure like it's a lot of work. If they're doing it very manually right now. [00:30:07] Kalen: I think so. Yeah. I think they're, [00:30:10] Mark: I like a lot of that is why I haven't really been interested in doing an app. [00:30:15] Mark: A lot of people ask. Agency is just oh, you could do Shopify apps. Like what? Why don't you just do it? And I'm like first off, we have to develop it the first time, which a lot of times we have to do it one off for one merchant, which is fine. But then like those customer service requests and it's just if we're charging $10 a month, they send in like one customer service request. Yeah. And then the time. And money it takes to fulfill that request or just even respond to it as there's all your profit gone. [00:30:44] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's brutal. Yeah, once, once you get going and the economics are working out, then it's Hey man, that's a great business model, but can be tricky to get there. [00:30:56] Kalen: It seems like you're very much like. Comfortable with the agency model. Like it's what? It's like your, it's your expertise. You're not trying to do a bunch of different random things. Yeah, you found your sweet [00:31:09] Mark: spot. We like dabble in the background with fun projects. But I think in terms of like actual, like where the business are business is going, I think it's smarter to focus on the service side. [00:31:24] Mark: Because a lot of apps and Partners and everything they have the opposite problem. Like they're very focused on the product, but they're really bad at services. So there's a lot of times like synergies between us and partners because they, like a recharge or a Klaviyo. [00:31:40] Mark: They're like, we wanna sell our thing, we don't wanna do customer development, or we. Our business isn't really set up to serve customers in that way, and I think I think it works the other way around as well. We're not set up to, provide like product ties support to something, because basically we're like a little too expensive. [00:32:00] Mark: We don't have those layers of like customer service of okay, like this first tier, second tier. Everything would probably just go to a developer immediately, and then it's it just doesn't make sense time wise. [00:32:12] Kalen: Yeah. And then, yeah. [00:32:13] Mark: Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say I have invested in things in the ecosystem and I think for agency owners it's probably like smarter if you want to be involved in more of the ecosystem and have some skin in the game, like to, invest or something. Yeah. But if you try to do it yourself I've seen a lot of agencies try to do it and it seems like a huge waste of time. [00:32:37] Kalen: Yeah, man, my timing is so bad within I haven't done a lot of investing into just like a little bit, but I was just thinking over the weekend about like how bad my timing is with most things. E even with Tesla I had been a fan of Tesla forever, and then I finally got one and like right after I got one that. [00:32:58] Kalen: A model y like the prices went down by 18%. Oh my God. [00:33:03] Mark: You bought on the way down. [00:33:05] Kalen: Yeah. And yeah. Just, it is, it's it, and I feel like I'm not bad at Seeing a need in the market or yeah, seeing a like something and going, oh, that looks like a, a good thing. But then in terms of pulling the trigger on it at the right time, I'm horrendous at it. Yes. So I guess you just have to know your strengths and your weaknesses and playing your strengths, [00:33:29] Mark: I think timing is everything. When Yeah, when you're seeing things at an early stage it's hard to have the confidence to go through with it. Yes. But that's probably like the time that you need to start. [00:33:41] Mark: Otherwise, if you're just a me too, six months. 12 months later, like you were already behind the people that did that, have that same idea that time. Yeah. [00:33:52] Kalen: I think it's like I see the things and then it's easier for me to put my time into doing something related to that versus putting money in. [00:34:03] Kalen: I end up being too hesitant and then even, and then too slow, and then I, Do it at the wrong time, basically. [00:34:11] Mark: But Yeah, investing in general unless you're just investing in like an index fund, it's probably like a losing game anyway, right? If you're doing angel investing or even stock picking, Yeah. [00:34:23] Mark: There's hedge funds that like they get 18% returns or something and that's like amazing. So if if they have like thousands employees and quants and PhDs and everything, and. That's their bar. Like I really don't think that, the ordinary person is going to achieve that. [00:34:39] Mark: Gambling. Yeah. [00:34:40] Kalen: Yeah. I think I saw somebody tweet about it that, and I think they had, I don't know, some large number of angel investments in SaaS and tech, like maybe it was 30 or something, and I think they said that. Only one has really made any money. And there's somebody, and I forget who it was, but there was somebody that's yes, I think it was yes. [00:35:00] Kalen: And like he's like super plugged in, and. [00:35:03] Mark: So yeah, I think it's just, it's also a very long horizon of I think he was talking about the last two years and in angel investing. Okay. That's so early. Like basically you have to give yourself about 10 years to see how you really did and 10 years later it's you've moved on so much. Probably is so you're really like shooting in the dark and you just, see what comes of it. [00:35:26] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. I talked to this dude Daniel, and he has an app called Abra. It's a discounts app. And when I talked to him before I saw this, it crossed my radar. [00:35:39] Kalen: I was talking to an agency owner buddy of mine, and he was saying that certain things in Shopify are hard to do with discounts like, I don't know, multiple coupons at a time. He had a couple things and I was surprised. I was like, that doesn't seem like it should be that. I was like, there has to be something out there for that. [00:35:56] Kalen: But he, he knows that. He's looked into it and. And he was thinking about building something similar. And then and then I think Albert handles some of those UK use cases or his planning too, or I don't know, but when I but what, but this is an example of an app I see and I go, yeah, I think this is gonna, I think this is gonna take off. [00:36:14] Kalen: And the founding team, they were in house with Shopify for a while and stuff, and they seem like they know what they're doing, but. Yeah, but did that, I had that thought the other day after talking to him, I was like, yeah, this is going, this app is gonna gonna go somewhere, kind of thing. [00:36:29] Kalen: Which you know, sometimes, go ahead. Oh no. You go ahead. [00:36:33] Mark: I was gonna say, the problem is like, as we were just touching on in the app store, is there's so many apps that do like the same thing. And basically you release an app and then someone clones you. It's hard if your entire business model relies on the app store versus Like a Klaviyo or, I don't know, I'm trying to think of another example. Like a yacht PO or stamp, like they are on the app store. But they're they're more of, there's a SaaS product that's leveraging the app store for maybe a channel, but more of just easy install. [00:37:07] Mark: I'm like, I'm not too like optimistic about, individual apps that basically oh, I, it just fixes a Shopify problem, I think. Other competitors are gonna come and compete to death or Shopify can just fix it too Shopify does support multiple yeah. [00:37:25] Mark: Coupons now. Oh, okay. [00:37:27] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. That was a recent thing actually, right? Yeah. Remember, I remember, yeah, I remember telling him that. And then I can't remember what the, I can't remember the specifics. But yeah. No it's that's the deal. It's and I think that's why. [00:37:41] Kalen: Everybody's building out their partnership channels, that's the way to develop a competitive moat versus just the, I think you could almost say that if you're just relying on the app store there, there probably was a time that it would work, but that time's probably gone. [00:37:59] Kalen: Yeah. And this is another one of those interesting Magento parallels because when I built, started building my extension for Magento, it was just after that, probably three, four, a year, five year timeframe of when you could just launch an extension in the marketplace. Marketplace, what we call it, the extension. [00:38:20] Kalen: Yeah. Marketplace. Yeah. And a, and there was a whole like generation of people that did that. And and then it just took off. And then I got into the tail end of that and I had to do it different ways. And so it's probably a similar thing with Shopify that's why everybody's doing partnership channels and yeah, [00:38:38] Mark: stuff like that. [00:38:39] Mark: What's interesting about the Magento marketplace is what I actually feel like it never really took off in the same way of the Shopify marketplace where plenty of extension providers like just opted out of it, may, maybe they would list it, but like it wasn't, I don't think it's been like the main source of sales for a lot of, magento. Extensions and integrations and I think probably it's just a bit of a numbers game. Like I don't think that there was enough like merchant traffic to the marketplace where it made sense for, extension vendors to really focus on, marketing their apps there. [00:39:18] Mark: Because also I think they, they probably lose a cut. So it's like, all right, maybe we optimize our SEO so that when people. Google. Yeah. This problem on Magento, they go to our website versus competing with our marketplace listing. [00:39:31] Kalen: Yeah. And then of course with Magento you didn't you didn't have to go through the marketplace because it was, it's open source. [00:39:38] Kalen: You could do it yeah. Separately. [00:39:41] Mark: And they really never solved the quality problem too. Like it theoretically should have been like a stamp of quality of you're approved on the marketplace. But my opinion is that th it, there was really no difference if I didn't trust an extension on the marketplace any more than I just getting it straight from the merchant. [00:40:01] Kalen: Sure. Better. But would you say that the same exists in the sh with the Shopify app store? Like you don't trust something? Just for being there? [00:40:12] Mark: That's a good question. I think it least it has more like volume in terms of like reviews. So you have more data points of okay, there's 30 reviews that are positive. [00:40:24] Mark: But the Magento marketplace didn't really have the volume of reviews to be able to make that assessment. And I do think that Shopify does keep a pretty close eye on the quality. Like I've heard that the app store approval process is actually pretty pretty hard. [00:40:41] Mark: Like it's just a bit of a pain. Sometimes that's true. That's true. So it's a high bar. [00:40:47] Kalen: Yeah, that's true. And that's another complaint you hear about is that is that, it can be difficult or it can be like random, like the, what you may have to do to get approval is could, depending on who's reviewing which individual is dealing with, it could be different. [00:41:04] Kalen: Yeah. Your mile, your mileage can vary and then that could be frustrating. But [00:41:09] Mark: yeah, I haven't had to deal with. Yeah, back in the day I've done some iOS apps and it was the same way with Apple Some, sometimes you could submit something and it was like, all right. Got through sometimes like a random reviewer just flagged something random and it's just this was in the last version and the last reviewer didn't care about it. [00:41:28] Mark: So what are you bringing up now? That was always like anxiety producing of submitting a new version to the apple. [00:41:35] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Haven't had to deal with that too much, so fingers crossed. [00:41:41] Mark: You're more of an Android man, so are you gonna get the Vision Pro though, or the Oculus? [00:41:46] Mark: Ah, [00:41:47] Kalen: the vision man. I got, I have an Oculus, that's only 300 bucks. But I haven't used it much. I got it. And I did some of the exercise apps, which are surprisingly good. There's this boxing one. Where you're like, pun these things are coming at you and punching them. [00:42:02] Kalen: But you, it, it yet gross cuz you get real like sweaty, which is the point. But you'd really Yeah. Get like a decent workout, but then everything just gets like nasty. Okay. And so yeah. But as things get better, man, it's gonna be pretty cool. But the Vision Pro dude, that thing looks. [00:42:21] Kalen: Ooh. Looks super interesting, man. The price tag is quite a bit higher, but yeah, but I saw you tweet about it and I was like, oh dang. He got one. But then I realized you were probably just joking. [00:42:32] Mark: I will get one as soon as it, release it, but, [00:42:35] Kalen: Nice. [00:42:36] Mark: I. It's I do think it's actually gonna be pretty significant, even though it's priced, it's priced even more expensive than a computer. [00:42:44] Mark: Theoretically, you could replace like your MacBook with it. Yeah, because it's supposed to have the apps and it's designed to be your monitor, your computer. Yeah. And then I think as opposed to the Oculus tried to pr create a product that like it was at a price point that people would actually buy, like in mass. [00:43:04] Mark: Apple's we need to create the best version. Yeah. And then we'll see where the price is and then Yeah. We'll just convince people it's worth it. [00:43:12] Kalen: Yeah. It's Inelastic demand for Apple products, but Exactly. Yeah, dude, I like at, there's gonna be a point where you, it's gonna be possible to work. [00:43:23] Kalen: And then eventually we're, you'll be able to spend most of your day in vr. So it's just a question of like, when that's gonna happen, but, there'll be a tipping point. This might be it. And that's pretty. That's pretty huge. I tried one of the like computer screen mirror things in Oculus, but it was just horrible. [00:43:40] Kalen: It was pixelated and, yeah. But yeah, to the point where they really get the sweet spot of comfort and resolution and stuff to where you can work in there. Man, that's gonna be so cool. I have a [00:43:52] Mark: feeling, I think I heard feeling, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, I have a feeling they've done some testing and they've brought the displays so like to high level that like they probably solved the problem, like fatigue. I think that's a problem with a lot of displays like the Oculus is like it's low enough quality that you can't use it for a while. Yeah. But my feeling is that Apple's figured that out basically. [00:44:18] Kalen: Probably. At 3,500, they better have man. [00:44:22] Kalen: Yeah. They better [00:44:23] Mark: have. If I only use it an hour a day, I'm not sure if it's worth it, [00:44:26] Kalen: yeah. But I heard I think I heard Zuckerberg on a podcast talk about how they do their meetings. They're, they're dogfooding the meetings app and that it's like, You can you can have like side conver, like you're, like, if you're doing a meeting, you're in a room and you can have a side conversation with the person to the side of you, which is like a very natural thing that would happen in a real meeting. [00:44:49] Kalen: Like you would say. Little comments and yeah, and just some of the other like subtle things that you would be able to do. And I wanna try to find a way to do that, like with work meetings. Cuz I think there's something there. Zoom calls are like, everybody's sick of Zoom calls, but I think it'll get better with VR at some point. [00:45:10] Mark: Yeah, I think it is still like a bit of a ways off, but I think this is like a step in the right direction and, technology gets cheaper and better over time. So even though like it's super, the Apple version is super expensive now. I anticipate that's because it's just the first version. [00:45:28] Mark: Over time they'll, the, they'll, this is the pro, and then they'll have the regular version, yeah. They have the iPad Pro, iPad, air, Yeah. A little confusing with the old versions. Yeah. And I think they'll have different price points of this, but they needed to go go all the way first. [00:45:44] Kalen: Yeah. Oh yeah. No, they probably just had to, It must have been so hard to cross some of the thresholds of comfort and fatigue and all that kind of stuff, because Yeah, like the Oculus, it's like amazing. It's definitely you're like, wow, I've never experienced this kind of a visual, thing. [00:46:00] Kalen: Before, but then it's just still, it's just it's uncomfortable after a certain point, yeah. But Yeah, man. I think we mostly covered it. We haven't talked too much about airplane wifi, but that's okay. I [00:46:13] Mark: don't think that's we relevant for Yeah, that's a personal gripe. [00:46:20] Mark: Like a first world problem mark problems. [00:46:23] Kalen: Why can't they type you if you have wifi [00:46:26] Mark: or not? That's all we, I'm gonna, maybe I need to start an app, like a flight searcher that will very high, very much highlight that ability or not. [00:46:36] Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. Cool, man. This is fine dude. Thanks for joining and totally. [00:46:41] Kalen: Now I gotta figure out how to end this thing. Just crop, I'll just crop it off at some point. Yeah.

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