Brent speaks with Rob Holthause from Subscribe Pro. Rob focuses on helping businesses improve their efficiency and grow their revenue while building a loyal customer base. Rob is a native of Maryland and is proud to call Baltimore home. When not educating customers about subscription marketing and Subscribe Pro’s products, Rob can be found hiking and playing with his Chocolate Lab mix, Atlas. He teaches music lessons on the weekends and plays bass with the popular Baltimore-based reggae group, Can’t Hang. Subscribe Pro is a subscription commerce solution that enables brands to offer auto-ship, subscribe-and-save, monthly box, and recurring billing programs on the Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud e-commerce platforms. They provide a thorough interface for customer service personnel to manage auto-ship or auto-replenishment programs and allow customers to modify subscriptions easily. Subscribe Pro integrates with over 100+ payment gateways, including tAuthorize.net, PayPal, and Braintree. The Subscribe Pro Vault tokenizes and stores customers’ credit card information securely and helps significantly reduces the PCI DSS regulations scope.

Brent and Kalarav talk about all things Magento and how the community has been embracing the changes that are happening with Adobe, Magento, and the Magento Association. Kalarav is a Certified Scrum Master, Adobe Certified Expert – Business Practitioner, and Adobe Certified Professional Developer with more than a decade of experience in the eCommerce world. He is a Delivery Manager with BrainVire, working with clients all over the world. He loves to explore and discuss the technical architecture of platforms and the growth of other commerce platforms.

I was able to sit down with Mariano Gomide de Faria at ShopTalk 2022 in Las Vegas and we had a great conversation about commerce. The United States needs to catch up with the rest of the world with conversational commerce. Mariano tells us how big players are going to be skipping distribution and going straight to the consumer. The world is global by definition.

Just going back to to multi-store front the, if we put all these pieces together, you have a solution now that will work across borders, across currencies, across languages maybe help us understand how big you've already helped us understand how big of a hurdle it was, but some of the solutions now that people can go to market with and the speed in which they could do.Yeah. So one example I love to use. I think it might've been the first or second multi-store customer to go live with us in beta.This was months ago. This was last year. It's company called The Bullet Group that had. Motorola rugged phones. So these are phones that you can they're dustproof waterproof drop proof, rugged phones, and another brand called cat phones, like Caterpillar phones that they sell all across Europe.They launched. I think they're up to I don't know, 20 plus stores for each of those two brands that are selling different currencies, different languages, all around the world. And they did this in a headless way. Meaning they've got, I think a WordPress front-end is the design. And then the backend is Big Commerce multi-store and it's a multi geo scenario.Ted Baker is doing the same thing. Ted Baker just launched this great apparel brand. They have something like a dozen different stores, different languages, and different currencies. Again, that's the multi-tiered. Use case, but you could also instead do a multi-site current use case. Like maybe your initial store sells to consumers, but then you wanted a B2 B store to sell to your wholesalers and your retailers.You can do that with multi-store. You could also come up with different brands. Sub-brands promotional launches, a store that you spend off and then spend. And the power of this is that when you spend one of these stores up, you can use the same integrations that were on your main store, all the investment you put into building that initial big store, integrating into your ERP or accounting system, your email marketing, whatever your payment solution is.You don't have to replicate all that work. You can leverage it. That's really the power and the speed of multi-store, but I think it's illustrative that those first couple of examples I gave you they have a dozen or more stores and they did it out of the gate.And I think the difference right now in the landscape of SaaS at least is the other, your competitors are all having to have a storefront and a different backend. And then they have to figure out how to manage all those multiple backends.That is correct.You're letting the client effectively manage one place, one place to do everything and then distribute out those SKUs and even multiple currencies with different checkouts in different countries.My understanding is that with Shopify, you can clone a store and it's pretty easy to clone a store. You push a button. You've got another store. That's like your initial store, same theme, same integration, same currency of that. You can't do multi-store, which is one account. And then start changing all of that changing the theme and the currencies and the that have like same integration, same backend one account, one store, lots of storefronts.You have multiple stores and we've always been able to do that too. This is much more powerful. This is. Very appropriate for many of the world's mid-market and large enterprise businesses who do have multiple brands, segments, and, or geographies, but so many small businesses want to do the same thing.And that's one of the neatest things that we'll be doing next. We the announcement today is live launched for our enterprise stores, but we'll be bringing this to our small business stores, our $30 a month for $80 month. Our $300 a month plan, you'll be able to click a button at a store and boom, there you go. Storefront, I should say.So you did mention that these cons are these new things coming up for the smaller merchants. What else is coming up with? Multi-store front? What are the things we have to look forward to?So in addition to bringing it to a small business and click of a button store addition, another major area of investment for us is in international capabilities within our native Stencil framework.So having multi-language we already have multi-currency, but especially multilanguage and some other geographic capabilities built into individual stores. Multi-store front will benefit from this. If you're using. Our native design framework and theming engine called stencil. If you don't want those limitations today, then you can go headless with us and do your front end and WordPress or content stack or content full or pick any other front-end framework.We're a leader in headless but we're bringing some of that native in as well. And then a final release, which should happen next month. It's March should happen next month in April is multi location inventory. So this is also going to be helpful because for businesses who have multiple warehouses and, or the addition of retail point of sale, we'll have the full inventory API capabilities for you to use logic within Big Commerce to track.Where is the inventory for each SKU, and then present that either to the customer. If the customer wants to make a choice, buy online pickup in store or within your shipping optimization to say customers located here closest warehouse is there shipped from that warehouse. So a multi-location inventory APIs are coming out soon and that's quite complimentary.Multi-store front and themulti-store, the multi location inventory is going to help in the omnichannel world. If somebody is trying to connect some of their outbound POS systems into Big Commerce, that'll allow the, that inventory to be available to the storefront. Yes. And today you can manage that logic outside of Big Commerce, but bringing it in is nice and scalable.It's the sort of thing that would let us, for example, we're integrated in partner. With point of sale platforms like Teamwork Commerce, and Square and Clover. Another differentiator from Shopify who has its own proprietary. One size fits all point of sale. We partner with the market leaders and EPAD now in Europe ISEL these partners can then integrate the knowledge of inventory counts that they have in individual stores into the API.And then the merchant who may be. Remote ship warehouses that are outside. The point of sale can integrate those as well. And so that complexity can all be orchestrated within Big Commerce relieving you from having to have an outside order management system or ERP that's handling all of that.A lot of your enterprise clients are going to have an ERP there's this enhances that allowing actually to connect multiple ERP is each store or each you can grab the inventory from each of those ERP systems with the multi, with multiple inventory locations. So you'd have to have that. So that's right. I think that, that gives another advantage to that. We did mention a little bit about headless and I'm always interested in headless.Where do you think headless is going in the next five to 10 years? Do you think the the idea of having this of a monolith where we have an easy. Easily added front end that's part of the system. Or do you think a lot of stores are going this headless route?I think headless will only grow. For example, when people talk about the metaverse, if you start creating storefronts in the metaverse that won't be based on pre-packaged themes coming out of Big Commerce or Shopify, you'll be designing that outside of our framework and then integrating a Big Commerce in as a backend, more broadly.There is a very rich set of frameworks and content management systems and digital experience platforms that companies can use for their front ends. I gave the Ted Baker example, they're using BloomReach, which is a re...

Welcome to this Big Commerce episode of talk commerce. And I have Brent Bellm here, the CEO of Big Commerce. Brent, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us your day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in life. Great.So I'm CEO of Big Commerce. I took over for the founders about seven years ago.Big Commerce is a software as a service e-commerce platform where basically the software. Brands and retailers use to create beautiful, successful fast-growing e-commerce stores. We serve them all around the world. We're big, of course, in north America, but also Australia, New Zealand across EMEA, and very proudly have recently launched in Mexico with further expansion plans in south America.We power brands of all sizes. Brand new companies and startups who get going for $30 a month, all the way up to some of the world's very largest companies. For example, Proctor and gamble runs a vast majority of its brands on sites all over the world. I'm dead commerce, SC Johnson, Unilever other customers of ours, just to pick one category.We recently launched Ted Baker, a leading men's apparel and lifestyle brand. And we're one of the biggest software as a service. Platforms in the world. We IPO code two years ago and now trade as a public company on the NASDAQ. That's great.So we're at ShopTalk today. And you had a big announcement yesterday.Multi-store front. Why don't you tell us a little bit about a multi-store front for Big Commerce and what that looks like?Yes, multi-store front is the biggest and most complex product release in our history and arguably one of the most complex and biggest product releases of any e-commerce platform in history.What multi-store does is it lets any account or customer of ours, launch additional stores for additional brands,  additional customer segments and or additional geographies. All from a single account. These stores can have the same or different themes and designs, catalog, checkout experiences, integrations.The value of it though, is it's a scalable way for companies to expand how and where they sell, leveraging all the efficiencies of a single account. What is so powerful about this is that traditionally one could only get multi-store functionality from the most expensive large enterprise platforms, Magento enterprise, Salesforce, SAP, and what made it really complex to launch is our platform was originally designed for one account, one store.You could have multiple stores, but they each had to have their own account, their own infrastructure. You're basically duplicating all your effort to build multiple. Every component of our platform had to become, multi-store aware. Catalog had to know which store it's referencing, checkout, which store it's referencing tax.Every single component themes URLs had to be rewritten to understand which store am I talking about storefront for a given owner. And that rewrite took us three years. All while on a multi-tenant SaaS platform, meaning without disrupting the 60,000 roughly stores that are running every day, their stores keep running.And then at the end of this path, they suddenly have the ability to add more stores without  anything breaking on the stores that they had. Historically, that's really hard to do. Remember when Magento went from Magento one to Magento two, it was a rewrite. And a component of that was trying to significantly improve their multi-store front capabilities.They had the benefit of being on-premise software. They could just throw away Magento one, rewrite it as Magento two and say, Hey customers, if you want this set of improved capabilities, you have to migrate. It's a total migration. You throw away your Magento one. And now you start over on Magento two.You can't do that with multitenant. Software as a service multi-tenant means everybody's running on a single platform. And when you make changes, they have to not break the stores of everybody running. You can't tell them to version or upgrade or migrate. You have to fix it all while the train is running.And that is what we have done. So we're immensely proud of it. It truly makes us a full featured complete platform for even the world's largest enterprises. And it's a very big differentiator, for example, from Shopify who cannot do this.I want to back up just a little bit and just talk a little bit of a more more about SaaS as well and how much savings clients can realize in their SaaS offering virtues versus the on-prem.You did mention that the having to upgrade and some of those breaking things. The upgrade path in a on-prem version, you do have to shut down and start up and spend money on doing that. Where are the savings then met from Big Commerce for the client when they're on just the SaaS platform,when you're on SaaS a large portion of your software hosting and everything is included in.You don't have to pay separately for hosting. You don't have to have an army of software engineers to maintain your code. You don't have to worry about security and bug fixing. It's all included. That starts for as little as $30 a month, and believe it or not on Big Commerce, if you go start a store for $30 a month, you're running on the exact same platform that Proctor and gamble is and all of our largest and some of the biggest companies in the world they're running on the exact same.We're maintaining hosting, constantly improving performance speed each and every day. Our agency partners who are familiar with on-premise software in particular Magento often tell us that total cost of ownership of Big Commerce versus on-premise software can be anywhere from a 50% lower to 80% lower, depending on the nature of the customer.And the complexity of their site. So it's a dramatic saving. I've always believed that this was the best solution for most companies who are, if you're a retailer or a brand, you're usually not a technology company and don't have world-class software engineers and it professionals, I believe in this for 22 years.In fact, in the nineties, I was a retail consultant first, starting with retail stores, physical stores, and then going to. Internet stores. And when I cut the cord on consulting and said, I'm going to now bet my career on a single concept. What is the concept? I most believe in the world of e-commerce at the end of 99, I joined a company called escalate, which was one of the first SaaS e-commerce platforms back in the day.I remember there being three or so others, I could name Yahoo stores. Volusion, Blue Martini. We were number four. There might've been a few others around the world. They didn't even call it SaaS back then they called it ASP. But at the time, this is like 1999, 2000 companies were spending five to $10 million to cobble together the software and the infrastructure and the hosting for their stores.And Escalate came along and said, we'll do that for you, but only charge you 6% of your sales. But that scales and you don't have all the upfront costs. Incredible idea before it's time. That company didn't end up surviving and succeeding Yahoo stores and Volusion did, but they never really were able to modernize their tech stack as technology moved faster than they did.But today I came back into Big Commerce and into this industry in 2015 with a total conviction that in the year 2015, it's fundamentally broken if on-premise software, no matter how good. And I knew how good Magento was because I partnered with them when I was at PayPal. My boss ended up buying them into eBay.I was part of that evaluation in 2010. So I saw Magento taking off. I had all the respect in the world for what a great platform it was, but it was on-premise software. It burdened companies with having to license their software, then customize it, maintain it, secure it, host it. And most companies can't do that....

Youth don't stop playing sports because they lose a game, they stop because they have a bad experience while playing. We interview Tim Williams about his company and his approach to youth sport. Tim is the Founder and CEO at T.WILL Sports, a dynamic sports company that delivers a variety of youth, recreational, and competitive sports services. He focuses on youth sports and takes pride in the ability to educate through sports and the experiences that come with sports. His goal is to help parents and coaches to inspire greatness within youth.

With so much technological disruption, it is important to stay relevant and I can think of no better way than merging, acquiring, or being acquired. However, these transactions fail because critical deal processes, such as diligence and integration, are being poorly conducted without proven success techniques. We interview Kison Patel, CEO, and Founder of M&A Science. As a former M&A advisor, he has seen these challenges first hand and set out to develop tools and techniques that address industry failings and enable M&A practitioners to drive growth and maximize value.

SAM GEORGE is a master at two things: discerning trends before they are recognized as trends and communicating these ideas to the public at large. Sam was convinced he was insane. When anyone would not respond to his message, he would get upset. The process is predictable. He thought something was wrong. The delay must be related to him. He wrote "I'll Get Back to You" to bring this issue to light and let people know they're not alone. It's important to realize that these emotions and thoughts are normal and can be changed.

Are you an entrepreneur looking for cash to grow? Banks, Venture capital, they all want a piece of you. Asher Ismail shows us a new perspective on funding a growing business and walks us through how his model will help entrepreneurs grow. Asher is the Co-founder of Uncapped. He helps entrepreneurs raise capital without giving up control of their business. The company was born out of frustration with the limited financing options available for European entrepreneurs. Uncapped provides business advances of between £10k and £5m with 0% interest and no hidden charges, allowing founders to access fair and flexible finance. It makes money by charging a low flat fee which is paid back from future sales revenue.

Are you tired of the monotonous sales outreach that never seems to get traction? Do you need to contact thousands of prospects for your sales team? Need appointments booked appointments at scale? We interview Tyler Kemp with LeadRoll and talk about Qualified Sales Appointments For High-Ticket Service Providers and SaaS Startups LeadRoll delivers unlimited sales bandwidth, quick turnarounds, and unbeatable service, helping your closers flood their calendars with qualified leads.

Do you want to create more engaging content in your newsletters? Jared Loftus helps us to understand the importance of a fabulous newsletter. Rasa enables marketers to create newsletters that engage customers through curated content that helps to build relationships. They give businesses a way to provide a real benefit regularly for everyone on their email list. And not just regularly, but relevantly. Through automation, companies can engage with a new level of frequency without spending more time, effort, or money.

Imagine doom scrolling through Netflix, looking for the ideal show to binge-watch this weekend. Not the mind-numbing, watch while playing "Candy Crush" content, but the great shows that you really want to burn through 24 hours watching. After reviewing thousands of low-budget horror movies and sitcoms, you finally stumble upon a hidden gem that you enjoy… but wouldn't it be easier if these incredible shows appeared automatically? Or if the entirety of Netflix was customized for your exact specifications? That's what Content Cucumber does (Well, they sort of do this) Content Cucumber is a writing company. Their clients are metaphorical directors since everything they create keeps the individual wants and needs in mind. Their subscription-based service even lets business leaders update their blogs without lifting a finger, giving them more time to focus on their company (or watch Netflix). We speak with Chris Chasteen, the co-founder of Content Cucumber.

How often have you gotten a handwritten note from an online store or a service that you bought something from? I bet you can remember when this happened last. David Wachs tells us about his unique business and his army or robots churning out thank yous and notes in your handwriting (But written by a robot!)

Isn't tax compliance fun? If you ever thought tax compliance was boring then you haven't met Shannon Kelly. Shannon (pronounced Shanuuun in Galic) entertains us with his tax compliance antics and then we dive deep into partner marketing.

Magento was born in Ukraine and the health and safety of our Ukrainian sisters and brothers are top of mind. Jisse Reitsma and Brent talk over a little history of where Magento came from and the strong Ukrainian community that has helped to make it a world-class e-commerce platform. We dive into Shopware and its advantages in today's market and close out with a little Magento Association talk. PWA to come next time

Contrary to rumors Magento Open Source is indeed alive and here to stay for a long time to come. Willem Wigman talks about the two different support models of Magento Open Source and how this will benefit the community. Long Term Support from Adobe will be called the Magento Open Source LTS version. This is a very common practice in Open Source software. The Short Term Support or STS version of Magento will be supported by the community. We also talk about the benefits of a cleaner more streamlined version of Magento Open Source LTS and how this will increase the ROI of merchants all over the world using any version of Magento.

What is the future of Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source? Vinai Kopp and Brent talk about the recent Adobe Developers Live Commerce conference and discuss the keynote. We talk about Mage-OS and how the community has stepped up to help Magento Open Source move faster into the future. We debunk speculation in social media and talk about how long-term and short-term support will work around Magento. The excellent news: Magento Open Souce is alive and well and will be for a long time.

Coaches are a dime-a-dozen, right? Maybe so. Maybe not. Perhaps you've never taken the plunge and experienced the transformation, Or you did and thought, meh. Been there. Was it YOU who went wrong? Maybe. Maybe not. Henry Daas talks about his book FQ: Financial Intelligence as well as some of the highlights of the importance of having a business coach for entrepreneurs.

Do you want to sell your products across a multitude of Shopify stores? We interview David Perry on how Carro connects participating Shopify stores. This is done to enable cross-store selling or the ability for like-minded partners to directly sell each other products without the need for inventory, managing returns, or minimum order quantities. Sell your products on leading stores, sell their products on yours, or both! You can also discover and work with a massive list of top influencers with the free Carro Influencer Partnership service.

Do you know the four ways to add B2B business to your B2C Shopify Store? Avi Kumar helps us to understand some of the complexities around doing B2B on Shopify. We discuss different business models and how you can be successful on your SaaS-based eCommerce store. Avi is the owner and chief wizard of Invisible PPC, a white label PPC company that is helping agencies break into new markets. Four ways to add B2B business to your B2C on Shopify: Keep it simple, offer special Discount codes on the current B2C site for small-scale B2B sales and/or just testing waters. For more robust solutions consider Third-party wholesale applications. Simplicity and single store to serve B2c and B2B Use Shopify’s wholesale channel if already paying for Shopify Plus. This provides a simple ordering channel to receive B2Bo orders. Finally, a fully separate Shopify online store gives B2B customers the most leeway both during and after the project, enabling, among other things, different catalogs and promotions in different stores. Trying to go online from the Distributer model, consider these points: 1. Is your distributor willing to buy the product/service online? First test with them. 2. Set a higher price on the website Vs what distributor end retailers can offer? Will keep your distributors/retailers happy and trust us clients are willing to pay higher prices on the Brand site. 3. Offer exclusive products online 4. Exclude distributor Geo from online and go in new areas. 5. Offer a percentage for online sales in their territory, this will buy their goodwill and support for online. InvisblePPC White Label Google/Bing ads service focused local businesses, a great choice for small agencies working in the local markets. Highly cost-effective and ROI positive to run Google ads for local business niches.

Before the pandemic, most CEOs thought a 100% remote workforce was unsustainable. The new reality is higher productivity by employees who have had to work at home. We interview Karthik Chidambaram with DCKAP about employee happiness as well as his adventures in selling products.

We speak with long-time Magento Community member Aron Stanic from Inchoo. We discuss all the changes in the community over the years as well as the state of Magento and its brand. We finish off with a discussion on the importance of expectations in the client/agency relationship

The Indian Ecommerce market is progressing rapidly and merchants and agencies need to recognize its importance. Swapnil Ghone talks about his experience in the Indian market and we discuss some of the companies that are already succeeding. Swapnil has nearly 20 years of experience in Sales/ Business Development/ Account Management, Project Management, Operations, Training, and Customer Services servicing the Indian market.

Artificial intelligence is amazing and is progressing leaps and bounds week after week. We interview Kate Bradley with Lately.ai and learn how their tools help social media managers produce and distribute social media efficiently while saving hundreds of hours. Lately’s A.I. learns which words will get you the most engagement and turns video, audio, and text into dozens of social posts. Unlock which words will get you the most engagement with artificial intelligence that studies what your audience wants to read, hear or watch. Lately’s A.I. content-generator will then atomize any interview, webinar, conference panel, podcast, blog, PDF, word document, or newsletter into lead-generating social posts that get next-level results. Because that’s the power of artificial intelligence.

 Brent: Welcome to this new year today, I have ghetto Yansen and he is with Spriker and I'm very excited to talk to him ghetto. You are the global business and technology. Evangelists for Spriker and which in the blue room or the green room, we talked about that you're the Ben marks of Spriker or the Ben marks of shop where, or the benchmarks of Magento or whatever.  Brent: However you want to say that. Why don't you do a better introduction than I just did. And maybe tell us what you're doing day to day and, one of your passions in life.   Guido: Oh, I have many passions brands. One of wishes now a Spriker indeed. Yeah, my background's in the. I guess to try to compromise a bit that I have a background in psychology and what a usability part of of psychology optimizing a web shop off the debts.  Guido: The study itself at university I'm done. I don't feel that old, but at university that didn't have a lot of online things going on. In terms of examples. So that was mainly about the usability. I could think of thing machine or a way, finding an airports how that works. But I always applied this to align to e-commerce and in, started out with things like mumbo and.  Guido: Wait maybe I am old mama Joomla and a, and I switched gears to to e-commerce and Magento in 2008. That time when we were all playing around with cameras and virtual mark, and those kinds of things that Magento came around, which was this magical thing that was way ahead of its time. And we all add a great fun, I think playing around with that and did that for, 13 years.  Guido: And I think that's also like 20 10, 20 11 that I met you. I think we met at a. It was the Moscone center in San   Brent: Francisco. Could be, yeah. Yeah. The fabric comm X dot commerce.   Guido: This will all be beeped   Brent: out with the knee, right? Yeah. In fact, I was just going through all my supplies. I was going through my old video just getting stuff, getting my mat cleaned up and I found of a video of the, in the intro or the, welcome from the.  Brent: PayPal slash Magento slash whatever eBay people. Yeah. And it was us coming out of the conference center and they all, there's huge. Just all the employees lined up welcoming, everybody to the event. So it was definitely a well thought out event and it was fun how could you go wrong?  Brent: I don't know if if the outcome was what they had expected, but it was fun. And then. A fun event, 2011, definitely.   Guido: Yeah. Events were a fun ride. Remember those events were fun. Now we had a lot of fun with that with Magento organized, a lot of stuff. For Magento we had the Mimi, Japan and Netherlands kickstart this whole global movement of Magento events.  Guido: And I've been lucky enough to to attend many of those those firsts, which are the best I think, to go through like those first events in a country where. People have heard each other's names online on slack or on the forums, but never met in person. So all those awkward first meetings, or those are great to to, attend to.  Guido: And yeah, I and it's also a, the Magento ecosystem is also where I met Boris the founder of Spriker and currently co CEO of Spriker. I think we met sills. 20 11 20 12 had a Magento agency. And some six, seven years ago when you started with we kept in contact and yeah, I would have lost a year.  Guido: I was working at a Magento merchants actually. And he approached me and said, Hey, we're growing like crazy at Spriker and we need someone like you doing community stuff. Spriker we need something like that. So to support that. I don't think you actually build this, build a community.  Guido: I The community is there and does its own thing. That's what we see, which has the rights. But we need someone from Spriker to facilitate what's happening out. There are very similar indeed to what's. What bandage. And before that, around though, we're doing a Magento. So yeah, that's the,   Brent: yeah.  Brent: And I, I did I've interviewed my Miquel Turk for both Spriker and it's an interesting and fun platform and one of the. I had made early on was about the who 15 and how we're working on getting sub one second times. And he laughed at me and he said, yes, Spriker, we're working on sub 400 millisecond times or something like that.  Brent: It is an interesting platform and I'd love to dive into it a little more, but first let's I know that you have been involved with. In conversion rate optimization, I think from an e-commerce standpoint, that is one thing that is often overlooked, especially. A lot of clients will come to a technology partner and they'll say, Hey, I want to build a fantastic website.  Brent: Then they leave those either the technology partner doesn't focus on that or the client doesn't see value in that. So can we maybe just have a brief conversation around, what does it mean for conversion rate and why is that? And so why is that even more important than the platform you're on or the store build that you're doing or any of those.  Guido: I think the conversion rate optimization traditionally it's in the name. It's, a bit limiting. It's the oldest Christian in the Ciroc community. Let's first define what it is. So Euro it's about a practice of semi or semi-truck. Practice or figuring out what works for your online store which usually involves doing user research talking to users, doing surveys, translating those into a hypothesis on what could work and what's, where you expect to be a better for, your store.  Guido: And then validating that through experiments. Usually that's, an AB test. That's, very short description of of, Shiro these days. And I think one of the things that was holding back Shiro, it depends a bit on the depends a lot on the area you're in the business you're in, but for many companies it's, relatively easy to say what the ROI is for buying more ads, buying Edwards.  Guido: This is what I put in. This is what I put out. That's, very straightforward and that's something that then people try to apply to Shiro and that doesn't really work zeroes more. Often long-term strategy, trying to figure out what worked for your customer. And it's really hard to say at the end of the day, at the end of the year what came out of that?  Guido: Exactly. Which is also a bit counter-intuitive because we're doing an AB test. So we can exactly say, this is what version a is doing. This is what version B is doing, but. The course of the year, like if you do three aunts or a thousand experiments what's your contribution? I don't know. And that's that's, sometimes hard for managers to get into and also it can also mean that you're not even growing, but it can also mean that you're not going down.  Guido: So your conversion rate stays the same. Your number stays the same if you're in a declining business like a couple of last years with, if you're in a, in a. Selling holiday houses, like booking.com. It's going to be really hard to increase refresher rates or to, or avenue. But you really need a team like this to understand.  Guido: Okay, what are people still buying? What are the, changing consumer behavior to last year's? And companies that do CRO well those are the ones that can survive th...

Cody notes that they work with D2c brands. Cody mentions that the mission is to educate brands on the right way to do influencer marketing.Cody says there are influencers that have zero social following and their job is to get influencers to rally around their brand. Cody talks about how influencers are choosing to represent you as much as you are trying to represent them. Cody mentions that there’s a long-term consistent vision and mission for that relationship.Cody and Brent overview whether social media platforms have changed. Cody talks about how there’s more access into their lives through social media. Brent notes that the market has grown for influencers by the fact that you can become an influencer by going to your iPhone and embracing a brand, taking pictures, and pushing that.Cody talks about how the ability to create content consistently has made it easier for influencers to become influencers. Cody notes that people end up buying fake followers or trying to speed up the process. Brent says the goal as an influencer would be to influence a idea to promote it. Cody notes that there's always at least one influencer in your space.Brent mentions that if a business is looking for help from influencers, they could be an influencer. Cody says they want to get the product into those influencers hands. Brent notes that they follow hoka and see reviews for shoes online.Cody says if the influencer is not thinking of them, they would be outreaching them, dm-ing them, or emailing them to get ahold of them. Cody mentions that if they are a runner, a consistent runner, and they’re putting out captivating content, they will attract running brands. Cody notes that the best way to scale is just the more people that have your product, the more relationships that are going to be able to build.Cody says working with genuine advocates is the best way to scale. Brent notes that they find something defective or not great about the product. Brent says they should think about the customer experience with their influencer marketing.Cody notes that they want a longterm community of influencers that are talking to their audiences consistently. Cody talks about how the time is transactional one-off posts with influencers. Brent notes that brands constantly are trying to hit this, like one-off drug.Cody says if brands are investing in tech talk, that’s something they need to be doing. Brent talks about how it’s easy to create content for multiple channels.Cody notes that they identify 500 influencers on a month to month basis, get them the product they search after they get them, and see their organic performance. Cody says they run facebook and instagram ad accounts. Cody notes that their role is to keep growing the business as co ceo.Cody says they want to be judged on sales. Cody mentions that a lot of the leverage of influencer marketing is starting. Cody says they’re measuring the amount of content. Cody mentions that the metta dashboard on facebook is giving you all the metrics. Cody talks about how you’re not going to see direct, this came from this influencer.Brent mentions that it’s an invite type of thing where you’re identifying people that are generating certain amount of content or influence in that industry. Cody notes that most merchants and brand owners that come to them are looking for a lot of ugc or creative, and therefore leveraging that content within facebook. Cody says they’re producing a pool of people that have proven to post free of cost without us even asking.Brent and Cody say that the best influencers are people that the product and brand fits into what they’re already doing and talking about. Cody notes that most of the time, what they catch them off guard with is that we’re not asking for anything in return.Cody mentions that when they get the product, they feel obligated to return something to the brand. Brent says they see more and more influencers saying they purchased the product. Cody mentions that stats show it doesn't make a difference.Cody says apple has made it harder for facebook to track checkouts, add to carts, and the reporting. Cody notes that the roas is down 50%. Cody mentions that ios 15 has been with email updates. Cody notes that certain effects on email marketing will be in display through apple.Brent asks what would they overview to a brand if they would like to get started on influencer marketing. Cody says they’re ready for influence marketing because it’s the same thing you want that first impression, second impression, and third impression to be awesome. Cody notes that they’ve worked with startups all the way from the m and m's of the world.Cody mentions that their sweet spot is top line revenue of two to 30 million, and they've worked with b2b brands before. Brent inquires if there is any difference between promoting their product and sending a physical item to influencers. Cody notes that they have an influencer marketing course called influencer blueprint.Cody says they give away all of their templates and communication flow and worksheets budget, calculators, and everything in between. Cody notes that they’re active on twitter at cody widdick and instagram at cody widdick. Brent says they are an influencer marketing consultancy agency.

Dick says they're the founder and CEO of online growth systems, and they compete competitively in parkour. Brent asks where do you think the future of commerce is going. Dick notes that the next iteration of commerce is v commerce or voice commerce.Dick says Siri is going to integrate with commerce. Dick notes that they're going to get a commission on every dollar that gets sold through Siri. Dick mentions that voice commerce is going to be big, and a lot of ecommerce companies have seen traction in those areas. Dick talks about how you can optimize your current ecommerce site to be integrated with voice buyers. Dick says virtual and augmented reality is going to be the future of commerce.Brent mentions how coaching and business coaching can be done virtually. Brent says the next thing coming from voice reality is voice commerce. Brent notes that merchants worry about Alexa looking at the amazon store first and the rest of the list. Dick mentions that the best way to optimize for SEO is to write it in a way that people would speak. Dick talks about how you want to make sure you're ranking for keywords that are written the way people talk.Brent mentions that google has consistently changed what they look for. Dick says a good way to test this is to bring out your own phone. Dick mentions that field test it. Dick talks about how blogs are a great way to do it, writing articles and having that be a part of the process. Dick mentions that the third way is a frequently asked questions page, which is powerful for voice search engine optimization.Brent notes that ten years ago they worked on midwest hydroponics, and they built an faq section. Brent mentions that if they are going to write a blog article, make sure they link to the product they want them to buy. Dick says the manual way to do it is to look at your website and identify how many links are on each page. Brent mentions that you can integrate different features to add something like one to three different articles that they could read thereafter.Dick notes that bucky supply was successful before they started helping them, and they were successful after. Dick mentions that Ryan, one of the co-founders of Bulk Reef Supply, was an expert and came up with his own tank food. Dick says if you want to get momentum, do take the amazon playbook.Brent talks about how merchants don't always look at being the leader in their community, and that bulk reef supply has done well by getting down into that community from the ground up. Brent notes that there are other companies that are building communities that are keeping people involved. Dick talks about how youtube is exclusively marketing to other people who are consuming youtube, and they only charge you for the volume of what you're using it.Brent discusses the idea that in the past lost leaders would physically sell something. Brent notes that they’re trying to get people to do the same thing. Brent mentions that a lot of smaller business owners forget that if they have a tool like Magento or BigCommerce, a lot of those things are built-in. Brent talks about how it’s important to understand getting people to sign up for a newsletter. Brent mentions that google analytics is a great tool to determine where they’re going and where they’re exiting.Dick notes that ecommerce clients created a brand new product category. Dick says there was a different marketing approach to get the product in front of customers. Dick notes that they would create a video that's less than a minute long and put it on social channels. Dick talks about how you got 30 seconds in an elevator to pitch to an investor, and you got less than 10 seconds on your Instagram feed. Dick mentions that you need to capture attention quickly and communicate the value they're going to get and give them that call to action.Brent talks about how to look up Entrepreneurs' Organization for advice. Brent notes that there are many opportunities for small business owners to get knowledge. Brent talks about how right now is the best time to be in ecommerce because you have the same tools the big companies have. Brent says you can list your products on amazon and utilize their network to get products.Dick talks about how a lot of ecommerce companies should consider subscriptions. Dick says everybody is familiar with dollar shave club, and that's a company that's competing for a commodity, it's disposable, and your lifetime value is greater. Dick mentions that you can put a unique spin on this and make an e-commerce brand or ecommerce company with a monthly subscription. Dick talks about how part of the value is that you don't know what you're going to get every month.Brent notes that the fish of the month club was a great model to get people interested in a product. Brent talks about how entrepreneurs are a different breed and don't always act the same way. Dick notes that the Entrepreneurs Organization has an accelerator program for companies that are between $250,000 in annual revenue and a million in annual revenue. Dick talks about how it's a great way to learn a lot.Brent says Andrew Dunman was one of the partners at bulk reef supply. Brent notes that it’s been a great conversation and look forward to the next one.

Leslie and Brent discuss being an entrepreneur. Leslie notes that you need to have a desire to be an entrepreneur and not be dependent on getting a job. Leslie says they started their journey 30 years ago when they didn’t want to get a job.Leslie notes that they weren't a successful entrepreneur until the last eight to nine years. Leslie says they wanted to elevate their income and the money they were making. Leslie notes that the purpose of their book is to help other women entrepreneurs.Leslie says the first and most important key is that you need to want it. Brent mentions that a young lady turned down a six-figure job to do her passion.Leslie notes that if you have any passion or desire to be doing something other than what you're doing right now, it's important to follow that. Leslie says it has to be like you human beings, they don't jump off cliffs unless they're really forced, they do not leave comfortable situations, and they don't leave comfortable relationships. Leslie notes that if you're too comfortable, you're not going to do anything.Leslie says they’ve wanted to return to the USA for several years, but their husband had a job and he works for a company. Leslie notes that it’s not so comfortable to do these things and it’s not so comfortable that they rented out or their apartment in Zurich. Leslie says it’s key number seven in their book, which is about pumping the water.Brent notes that as an entrepreneur, having faith and knowledge that work will yield some results. Brent talks about how complacency is easy to be complacent in a job where your paycheck isn't always tied to the fact that you have a new idea or want to make something better.Leslie notes that this is a limited mindset issue that is keeping women small and keeping them from playing big. Leslie mentions that it’s very important that women look at their belief systems around money. Leslie talks about how in order for women to step into power, they need to create money.Leslie notes that they traveled for seven months, bought a teak handicraft in Bali, went back to New York, and started selling it at street markets. Leslie talks about how Amazon started FBA fulfillment. Leslie says they can help you send it to them, send it to them, and they will ship it for you.Leslie notes that they manufacture women’s mostly resort relaxed, colorful clothing from Bali, and they sell it on their website and on Amazon. Leslie talks about how there are 200 million more people looking on amazon than they are on their own websites. Leslie mentions that Amazon is a phenomenal platform for businesses and anybody who wants to start an e-commerce business really needs to be selling on amazon.Brent says Amazon will sometimes take a really good idea and start sourcing that directly. Leslie talks about how you have to be branded and get a brand registry.Leslie notes that the way to be successful in e-commerce is to know who you are serving.Brent says the branding part of it is the key, and it helps to build you out in big box stores.Leslie notes that first of all, you need to have your why you're about to step into this world. Leslie mentions that the next step is to create content that would serve that person. Leslie says one mistake people make is not going to amazon and brainstorming on amazon. Leslie notes that the best way to find products is to read reviews.Leslie mentions that make sure they have an online bookkeeping system. Leslie notes that they need to know their numbers and get intimate with them. Leslie says part of that is measuring and knowing where traffic is coming from.Leslie notes that to find a bookkeeper that knows a system called profit first. Leslie says they've written a book called Money and freedom, seven keys to seven figures, and it will be coming out. Leslie notes that go to their website and get access to a video that says three things to do before 9:00 am to make seven figures.

Hola Nestor, muchísimas gracias por acceder a esta entrevista. ¿Cómo estás?……………………………….Nestor, ¿Por qué no nos das una pequeña introducción sobre tu experiencia laboral? …………………………………Muchas gracias Nestor,  en este episodio me gustaría abarcar un tema super popular estos días, especialmente durante estas dos últimas semanas.  El Miércoles pasado aprendimos que 1,6 Millones de páginas de WordPress sufrieron ataques con la intención de crear un nuevo usuario no autorizado y el Viernes pasado aprendimos sobre Log4Shell, la vulnerabilidad en Java que pone en peligro a medio internet.Así que no creo que haya un tema más relevante hoy en día en el mundo de la tecnología.  Nestor, ¿Qué es lo que opinas de lo que está pasando esta semana?………………………………………..Bueno pues, imaginemos que tengo un sitio de WordPress y que el miércoles pasado recibí un mensaje de WordPress diciéndome que un usuario nuevo ha sido creado y que yo,  como el administrador, no reconozco el usuario.  Así que entro en mi WordPress y efectivamente tengo un usuario no autorizado con un rol de Administrador.¿Qué es lo primero que debo hacer antes de contactarte?¿Dame una definición sencilla de un WAF?¿Que es un ataque DDos y Fuerza Bruta?¿Qué son las medidas de endurecimiento, o hardening?¿Qué es la Autenticación de Dos Factores, o 2FA?¿Qué es una Copia de Seguridad? y ¿Cómo nos aseguramos que no está corrupta?¿Cuál es tu respuesta a la pregunta de con qué frecuencia debo actualizar mi sitio web teniendo en cuenta que me puede crear problemas de incompatibilidad?¿Cuál es la importancia de elegir un hosting bueno .vs. barato? 

Have you ever wanted to do something out of the ordinary in your Shopify store and then found a small application to do it? When you use SaaS, you don't own or control any third-party code, and you depend on a small army of developers to host and maintain all your applications on Shopify. Sander helps us understand the benefits of a hosted solution and how Shopware will help merchants run their store more effectively and less expensive than a SaaS-based solution. He talks about "Flow Builder," which lets merchants customize specific workflows on their system without needing a developer or a third-party application. We talk about how easy Shopware is to start developing for a developer and how the tech stack is "Developer Friendly." Sander gives us some 2022 tips for merchants. Tell your story, make sure you have robust product information, own your customer relationship and make videos! If you can't make all your videos, encourage your customers to make them for you. We finish with ShopwareUnited.com, a global community for Shopware users. Sander Mangel is a Solutions Architect on the Global Market Development Team for Shopware.

 Welcome to this fantastic new episode of talk commerce today. I have Rick west, the CEO and co-founder of field agent. Rick, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us maybe one of your passions in life. The spirit. Thank you so much for having me. I started by telling people I am. Father of three husband of one granddaddy to two.  And so from a family perspective, I spend most of my time chasing my grandkids. Now, if you jump over to the business world and what that looks like gusta passionate for me, if you have for decades has always been that creative side of things. So there's, I've never met a. I didn't love sitting down on a whiteboard and trying to figure things out.  So whether it's a personal problem, a business problem, whatever it may be. I love lowering my head with a whiteboard, figuring things out. That's great. So I know that you're involved in marketplaces. Tell us a little bit about what you're involved in right now. Yeah. So fill an agent. I tell people we started field agent well over 10 years ago in the pre selfie days, brands.  Before you had a front facing camera. Alright. No video, iPhone 3s kinda days. And we started that work is really around data collection and capturing information. And what we've seen over the last 10 years is that we really created a marketplace, a B2B marketplace for our clients to go and find retail solutions.  And it's been pretty cool. It's it's the same B to C concept that people see every day when you shop on Amazon. You find what you want when you want it. We've created that same type of experience from a business standpoint for all of our clients that are wanting to engage at retail. So it's been pretty exciting journey.  This is so I, when I think of B2B marketplaces, I think of something like Alibaba is it something like that? Or how does that go here? Here's typically think of Alibaba and you you go down that path for many businesses. When you look for a marketplace, it is click on a link that takes me to a phone number to call a plumber, click on a link.  It takes me to a business consultant, click on the link and take me to someone that can do graphic design in our world. We've taken those services and those products and say, log in to our marketplace. And after you make two or three clicks, we take you to. We actually have you check out Brent, which is crazy, right?  Because all of the B2B marketplaces are going to take you to a connector to have two or three other phone calls, two or three other meetings. And we've done this work long enough that we know the questions to ask. We can take you right to check out. And by the time you check out two or three minutes later in near real time, you're getting data and results coming back your way.  And so that's the revolutionary change of spam we put on the marketplace. Interesting. So this is a product, more of a product led marketplace than traditionally what we've seen in the past. Maybe you could explain what that means. Product led marketplace, or if I move in going down the right street, listen, you are astute and listen.  That's why you're on this podcast brand. That's why you do what you do. But no, in all fairness is that. When you look at the concept of product led, I'm going to use the example that most people use with around COVID and zoom. If you are not a zoom user during COVID you probably became one.  So I think they went from somewhere around the numbers of 30 million users to 200 million users in six months. In order to do that kind of growth. If they were a click and get to a salesperson or click and do a demo instead of being able to knock out that growth in six months, it would have taken them 10 years and 103,000 employees working six days a week just to go from 30 million to 200 million.  So product led growth in its simplest term says, can you get someone to the point where they can buy something? Without a sales person engaged. Brent, think about our world today. I was talking to a guy the other day. He just purchased a car on broom, no sales person, three clicks. He spent $45,000 on a car.  He never touched, never seen. And I've got another friend in real estate that just sold a home last week to a person from overseas coming into the U S bought a home sight unseen. Now, if you can buy a car and a house, surely to goodness, you can buy research, marketing, sampling trial for the B2B perspective.  So we know the industry is going that way, but the concept of product led growth is just that you do not need a sales person to tell you how to buy a car. Vroom has automated it and it's truly product. Yeah, I know that a lot of our clients are, have moved to B in the commerce space. And one of the worries that sales people have is that this is going to take away from one of their key roles, which is doing the selling.  Do you see this as being a extra tool that a sales person could have at that end, whatever that end B2B merchant is, or do you see this. Something that's going to replace the sales person. And w you can imagine I'm trying to do the work that uniquely designed for, and there's a guy that has interesting leadership podcasts and Mr.  Andy Stanley, and he talks about if you are in your sweet spot, you are doing things that only you are uniquely designed to. And Amazon has figured out it's not designed to sell a $10 pack of batteries. Okay. We've also figured out it's not to sell other items, but what it is designed for, if you're a salesperson, you look at truly what that, that DNA, that the things that are driving for you is that you're still going to have custom work.  You're still going to have enterprise engaged. And you're still going to be looking at longer term, how do you scale within a company and how do you continue to grow that way? But most of the initial contact I would ask. It's going to be product led, marketplace driven because I don't think from a sales perspective, you need to continue to try to send emails, send people, text messages, and call them.  Hopefully you're gonna get someone on the phone. None of us want to shop that way. That being said. There's more than ample opportunity for that same salesperson to help someone go broader to renew, to look at subscription. How can you grow the business in that way? Yes, I think it's going to be a tool for a sales person.  It's going to be amazing lead generation aspect for people that really. More of handholding. And so I'm excited where this is going to go. Yeah. I think you hit the main thing there is that lead generation and that tool, or that an extra channel enablement for the sales person. And I think as a store owner, or as an entrepreneur or business owner, you have to be aware that you need to include.  That aspect when, I mean that you have to include the salesperson aspect in it. But then not to scare the sales person by saying, Hey, this is going to be a new channel. You don't get any credit for this because they're like the post-sale, there's always questions that are going to be the client. I think part of this is having the client.  Speak to the person and on their own terms, rather than the traditional model of a B2B sales person is calling out, making sure that they're in front of them at the time they want to purchase. This lets the client dictate some of those terms and when they would like to purchase and and lets the sales person then go back and do the best, the better part of customer relationship.  Maybe you could walk us through, what does the journey look like now on the marketplace for for the B2B? Yeah. So I think in many ways Brent, the Amazon has taught this well, okay. Now whether you like Amazon or not. You can look ...

Store owners want to get from out of their e-commerce business. Real conversations happen when a customer-centric culture is a prime focus. Whether you are a merchant or warehouse distributor, or a manufacturer looking for digital commerce. You should look at your tech partner, either agency or the solution integrator, and make sure they understand the business aspects and the workflow of your industry. Vatsal Shah offers transformation and growth to organizations and individuals by creating an inner drive. He helps them elevate their brand image, increase revenue and profitability. He founded Pragmatic Consultancy in 2008 to unlock their potential. As a business coach, he championed transformations of 69 IT, Digital Agencies, E-Commerce, and Retail organizations, trained more than 12K people and 184 CEOs. His clients spread across India, China, UK, Africa, Ireland, and the USA

David and Brent talk about Unconferences and how they differ from traditional conferences. We talk specifically about the https://unconf.us in Orlando Florida on January 21st, 2022.

The marketplace model is getting more popular and platforms to choose from are growing every day. Bart talks about his experience as an agency and how he has helped medium and large merchants create their own marketplaces. We discuss the differences between Magento and Shopify.

New rules from Google require you to have a fast website, and we go over web vitals. It's not good enough to have a fast desktop website, and you need to have a fast website across all devices. The episode was originally going to be a stand-alone podcast but seemed well suited for CyberMonday. David Arago and Brent Peterson have a conversation about the importance of website speeds regardless of whether you have a commerce site or a content site. David talks about how he has successfully gotten 100 on WordPress in Google Lighthouse.

Are your clothes made where you live? Where does the cloth come from? Shannon and I dive into some of the sustainability questions that you should ask when starting a clothing business. As the founder and CEO of Factory45, Shannon has worked with Idea-stage entrepreneurs to launch clothing companies that are ethically and sustainably made across the globe. Shannon got her start in 2010 when she co-founded {r}evolution apparel, a sustainable clothing company for female travelers and minimalists that was featured in The New York Times, Forbes.com, and Yahoo! News. To date, Shannon has worked with over 150 entrepreneurs in the sustainable fashion space, many of whom have launched some of the most transparent supply chains in the fashion industry. https://factory45.co/ Shannon has worked as a consultant for crowdfunding projects that have surpassed their goal amounts by as much as 300% and has worked closely with startup apparel companies from all over the world to create ethically-made products with a focus on environmentally-friendly materials and transparent supply chains. Shannon is a strong advocate for increasing supply chain transparency through sourcing, localization, and storytelling. She’s been named a thought leader for the future of fashion by Ecouterre and Triple Pundit, and she frequently writes about conscious consumerism and the intersection of fashion and environmentalism.

For years the SaaS Market has not had a great solution for B2B... until Now. Bundle B2B is a SaaS application that offers enterprise-level B2B functionality to businesses of all types and sizes. It enables store owners to facilitate their B2B operations online and provide their B2B customers with seamless transactions and convenient self-service account capabilities. Alec Berkley, the co-found and director of business development with BundleB2B explain how he got started and how his solution will benefit B2B users. With core capabilities that allow users to easily manage front-end and back-end B2B processes, Bundle B2B can be utilized to fit the needs of any growing B2B Commerce business and improve the B2B self-service experience for both store owners and their customers.

We've all experienced the feeling of a magical post-purchase experience and the lasting impact it can have on our relationships with brands. Consumers want more from their brands, and brands need more in order to deliver. We interview Russell Griffin, the CRO with Ohi. He has flipped the script for e-commerce fulfillment, transforming it from what is traditionally seen as a cost center into a growth engine. Brands join the Ohi platform to deliver powerfully fast, brand-focused, and memorable post-purchase experiences that enable them to grow.

We interview Paul Lima with Lima Consulting. We had planned on diving into Adobe Experience Manager but our conversation went to business and the four types. Listen to learn what they are and get some great wisdom and insight from Paul. We cover the four main areas of business, Selling Products in your store or on a marketplace. Selling services or even selling lead generation. Selling experiences like Disney does or selling your audience. Paul further identifies 64 sub-categories within the four business models. Author, speaker, and visionary, Paul has spent more than 25 years leading companies and helping the world's premier brands transform their digital futures. Prior to starting LCG in 2004, Paul served as one of the America's first cyber-warriors in the US Army. After retiring from the Army, Paul became a product development leader at SEI, the leading global trust accounting platform. There, he led six FinTech solutions and oversaw their evolution, including an effort to web-enable Trust3000 Anywhere, the firm's flagship product, responsible for processing $1.5 Trillion a day. Paul is the author of the digital Transformation Maturity Model. He is an Adobe Certified Expert and certified with several Google products. Paul holds a has a Bachelor's of Science from the Military Academy of the United States at West Point, and a Master's Degree in technology management, jointly awarded by the University of Pennsylvania Engineering School (SEAS) and the Wharton School. Paul speaks Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Jay El-Kaake is the CEO and founder of Fera.ai - Beautiful, simple reviews for Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, and other eCommerce platforms. In mid-2019 Jay made the difficult decision to switch Fera’s focus to something new: PRODUCT REVIEWS. With all the FAKE and fraudulent stories, he believed that merchants needed to help to show the world that they’re legit. To support his new focus he added automated review requests, 3rd party verification, and every other feature you’d expect in a reviews app - and then some. It took over a year to get there and today Fera is the BEST REVIEW APPS for Shopify and BigCommerce, with nearly THREE THOUSAND 5-star reviews.

Twitter: @aforman22 @getgivzIG: @getgivzLI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-givz/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/givz-inc

What is the meaning of community? What does it mean when you go into a software community? We meet Ami Verma, the owner and founder of Techies India. Ami and Brent talk about how unique and wonderful the Magento Community is and why it is filled with "LOVE". We talk about specific topics around marketing and what that means in different parts of the world. We learn that Ami went to every Meet Magento in 2018!

The ecommerce landscape is changing. More choices are here and more are coming. I speak with Stefan Hamann the CEO of Shopware and Ben Marks, Director of Global Market Development. They are bringing Shopware to the world and in this episode, we talk about the benefits of Shopware for the US market. We talk about the ease of use and especially the ability to start on a SaaS platform and move to completely custom on-prem. This is something very unique and exciting to the e-commerce world

We interview Chase Clymer with the Electric Eye Agency. Chase helps brands scale on Shopify. He also hosts a podcast called "Honest eCommerce" where he interviews brand founders. We talk about Shopify and who is the right fit for a Shopify project. We talk about agency/client relationships and what is a good fit? We go over educating a client on their respective platform and how to get them up to speed on that feature. We go into detail on what platform makes sense for what merchant and talk about why a merchant needs an agency to help them. We discuss some differences between On-Prem and SaaS and even dive into some SaaS vs Open Source.

This week we interview Ivonne Rohner with CoachTech Summit. We talk about all things AR and how AR can help entrepreneurs in their growth through virtual coaching. Learn how you can blend VR and coaching and we talk about the XR BootCamp which is one of the well-known virtual boot camps for Virtual Reality.

From Startup to Growthhttps://m.facebook.com/events/2967581053564455  

This week, we interview Brittany Allen, who is on the Digital Trust and Safety team at Sift Fraud Prevention. We learn about Sift and how it helps merchants decrease friction in their checkout while stopping fraudulent transactions. We talk about the "Merchant Risk Council" and some of the latest hot topics, and the big one being crypto currency. Brittany gives some great examples of what merchants can do to mitigate fraud, and we also talk about how consumers have a responsibility in fraud prevention. We go over their fraud index and why fraud is up more than 300% in the last two years. We talk about the "fraud economy" and ways that merchants can protect themselves. Not to leave out running. We learn that Brittany is a budding runner, and Brent exerts pressure to sign up for the 2022 New York Marathon.

This week we interview Sandra Gonzalez and Sergii Ivashchenko with Adobe. We discuss the new Magento Upgrade Compatability Tool (UCT) and why this tool is so important to Merchants, Developers and Agencies. We talk about the specific features and how this tool will reduce the cost of ownership for all merchant runnign Adobe Commerce. We also talk about how some other tools like the Magento Coding standard project and the Site Wide Analysys Tool will all work together to make the development process for an Adobe Commerce store easier and more efficient.