Quit paid media. Focused on what works. Got bigger.
"I kinda told myself I need to take a step back from e-commerce. When I took a step back, e-commerce said no and put me back in."
Amer Grozdanic burned out running paid media for brands. The results were good — but never good enough. So he walked away, rebuilt his agency around what he could actually control, and landed clients like MVMT Watches and Billie Eilish without spending a dollar on ads. Today, Praella works with brands up to $400M in revenue, and Amer's seen the same blind spots in almost every store.
We dig into the Shopify features most merchants ignore (B2B, Markets, Flows, Collective), why BattlBox's Whatnot channel converts 10X better than TikTok Shop, and the one question you should ask any agency before signing a retainer.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swim. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swim actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Clavio or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swim's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com. Slash Kurt. If you've been in the Shopify ecosystem for any length of time, you've probably run across Hulk apps. They've got 18 apps and good good product. But it turns out is actually uh came out of an agency right here in Chicago, Prella. And today I'm excited. I'm joined by the co-founder of Prella, CEO, Amir. Amir, I did not figure out how to pronounce your last name. There's actually Amer. Amer? Like America.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:36.799
Okay. That's my name.
Kurt Elster • 01:37.759
Let's try this again. Teach me to say your name.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:39.600
Yeah, uh Amer and uh last name is if you pronounce it The ethnic ethnic way it's Grozdanich. Okay. Uh if you pronounce it like Americanized, because I'm Americanized, you have to make it easy, it's Grozdanic.
Kurt Elster • 01:53.000
Okay. Um Amir Grizdonik.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:56.460
Amir Grisdanik.
Kurt Elster • 01:57.259
Amer Grizdonik. Yeah. Amer Grizdanik. All right.
Amer Grozdanic • 02:01.500
If it's easier, all my friends grew up calling me Sunshine. And it turned later into Sonny. So all my friends and family, uh aside of like my parents and siblings, but all my close friends and my wife's side of the family call me Sonny.
Kurt Elster • 02:19.920
I'm going with oh man. Today of the show, we're talking to Amare Grizdonic from Prella Agency, right here with me in Chicago. And he's got, well, he's been in the ecosystem uh like me 15 years. And I'm excited to have him here to talk through, well, a lot of his experience with Shopify, with what works. And uh some of his past successes. Like they built Hulk Apps, which has got 18 apps and successfully exited that, have built uh stores for celebrities like Billie Eilish. Just a lot of good stuff. And uh, you know, as one of his colleagues, I am excited to pick his brain. Amir, uh, hear that occasionally you go by Sunny. Yeah.
Amer Grozdanic • 03:00.360
Yeah. Occasionally.
Kurt Elster • 03:01.560
Yeah, I you know, if I forget how to pronounce your name, we're gonna go with Sonny. That is absolutely fine. I'm sticking with Amir. Okay. Amer, uh your agency, your business, what is it?
Amer Grozdanic • 03:11.200
Um we are what I like to say an on-site Shopify agency. So we work with uh businesses that are uh emerging uh fast growing uh to three four hundred million dollar companies um to migrate and support them on shop fi so we'll do anything and everything except media buying Uh that is something we don't dabble in.
Kurt Elster • 03:31.319
Uh I don't do media buying either because I don't want to grind my teeth down with stress. Is it the same thing for you?
Amer Grozdanic • 03:38.740
Uh it so we used to in my previous uh agency that we exited uh years ago, we were a full service agency, Lumia, a marketing agency, and I I think you have to and I think it's for for all vertical, you have to be a special person to do that. And I don't think I am like that special to be able to do that grinding. Because I I see it as You're investing somebody's money constantly and you have to report it constantly. And what we got into what burned me out and pushed me away is we used to actually do really well, but it was never well enough And it came to a point like I actually second guessed myself, it was like, am I just not good at this and I can never make people happy? But then I realized like talking to people and everything like that. It's just like one of those things that brands just if I justifiably so always want to do better. They need to do better. They need to increase their pricing. They need to have a r higher ROS. So We we were good. Um I enjoyed helping brands, but it was just like sometimes stuff because you put this pressure on yourself that I can't objectively prove. that I am actually better than the next person or worse than the other person um until they leave and come back. And that's what we had a lot of off. Like, okay, you guys got us from this uh you know benchmark A to to B. Now that's our benchmark. Now we want to increase it. We can't figure it out. They go somewhere else, get sword, they come back to us. And it was constantly their struggle. Um, so yeah, we just took kind of like a step back and said we want to do things that we can control better, I guess I would say. Uh and one of the things that we do, like when we launch websites, that I'm sure you guys do the same thing, we monitor their um conversion rates per channel, but also especially direct and organic because those are less influenced by media buying. Yeah. And that's always my benchmark. How good are we doing? Where I can look at more controllable channels and decide how well we're doing and not necessarily rely on, you know, algorithm changing in Facebook. I know Google has updates, but it's still different. It's it's more more predictable.
Kurt Elster • 05:47.220
With the you said you you know we monitor conversion rate by channel. And so it's like by attribution, where it's coming from, referring channel. I have found that d direct is a catch-all that shop for Shopify in the Shopify analytics. Have you noticed this too? Direct's just kind of like, hey, we didn't know where else it goes.
Amer Grozdanic • 06:03.720
Yeah, so I have a rule. Um so a lot of our merchants use analytics platforms like a triple way or like Clarity, uh whatever might So I always like to look at multiple points of view to tell a story. I'm not a person that is always just gonna go to shop and say, oh, that's my truth. Um, I think we'll like it to be. Sometimes we imagine it is, but I think it's important to go to GA4, see what GA is telling. It's important to go into Triple W and see how they're outputting things. So I kind of like to read from different angles and say like okay what is actually doing here because sometimes you can uncover things to your point that the way Shopify is distributing is not in the same sense especially when you do migrations Yeah. When you do a migration, you can rely on Shopify. You have to rely on GA4 or something different.
Kurt Elster • 06:50.259
And what's so yeah, what's nice about Shopify Analytics with a migration is you import all your orders and then it kind of historically, based off the orders, will backfill in the analytics, but it's limited and you know it's based on this very ideal use case of completed orders. And so I love that they do that, but you're absolutely right. Like you just you lose, you know, sessions and all that stuff. Then your only option becomes use Google Analytics.
Amer Grozdanic • 07:13.560
Well we've seen two in um not Shopify's fault, I don't think, but When we are migrating orders and things like that, sometimes in previous, especially custom environments, they uh define revenue, gross revenue as revenue in like different senses and Yeah, apply apply things differently. So when you even bring it on, it's like it's not always one-to-one. Um but neither is GA4. Obviously there's struggles there too. So it's like You kind of go off your experience and decide what makes the most sense and you align with the brand to make sure that your understanding of it aligns with their KPIs financially, operationally, and things like that
Kurt Elster • 07:50.600
So you know it helped me with the timeline here. Yeah. You had you're in a full service marketing agency, Lumia, exited that had a had a two year non compete and then and then at the end of it, you know, like anyone who's exited business, you gotta go now what. Yeah. And for you, what was that like that now what? Because you ended up right back in, you know, Shopify in an agency business.
Amer Grozdanic • 08:12.539
Yeah, I mean it wasn't intentional. So we had um an agreement with uh our acquisition partners from Chicago. Uh there were an IT company uh at the time they were called the Gerati Group called MPESNow that We had to do a two year transition, stay with him for two years, understandable. And um to be honest, that we we had a lot of turbulence during that transition period. Um not the fault of the acquisition, just like we had people come, go, leave alignment. And we had a international team at that time. And I don't think I was ready to manage an international team. I I didn't think I had the experience. I burnt myself out. And when I burnt myself out, I decided to step away and I started talking to um other agencies approached me. I had conversation actually with Shopify to work for Shopify. All of that kind of did end up working out. And I kind of told myself, you know what, I need to take a step back from e-commerce. And when I took a step back, e commerce said no and pulled me back in and I had um people who referred us uh uh or previously that they knew me to work with me to other brands and things like that. Hey, are you still doing this for great things? And I started to turn them down. Like, no, I'm not in this right now. And it kept happening. And I was like, you know what? Um, maybe there's something here and I just need to approach it differently. That's actually one of the reasons I didn't want to do paid media right away. I was like, you know, let me just concentrate on becoming uh the best I can be in migrating. Let me then in you uh a UX and like kind of these layers. Um not to say that we won't get into paid media, but I don't think all of our Services are at a point where I'm like, okay, now we can take on another challenge. But yeah, so that's what kind of um happened and uh we started Prella. My co-founder was at that time working on different uh projects, uh, Alan and him and I, and I mentioned it too before we started talking, always had this in shake agreement that we're whatever he's building I'm kind of kind of part of and vice versa even though we might not be on the paperwork. And then as we were building prior and he had his other kind of projects. We saw this opportunity um to build apps. It was actually his his vision and everything. I can't take credit for the first time. Yeah, Hull Caps, yeah. And it was kind of basically it's like, hey, I know I was kind of wanting to be part of the agency. I see a big opportunity here. Is it okay for me to step aside? And yeah, let's do that. I I got this. And um we have a couple of minority partners in India. We actually had a um the relationship with them where we used to use them as outsourced talent. It came to a point where we started to grow when we're like, we need you guys. So like we want to make you part of that. So we made him part of that. And we all focused on Prella building it. Alan focused on Hulk Apps and Um honestly, I would love to sit here and say I am responsible for the 18 applications and everything he built. It was his thing. The one thing that I will hang over his head is I was able to steer the agency without you needing to think about it to give you the ability to go all in on on the on hull caps.
Kurt Elster • 11:32.320
But then, you know, with a a business like Hulk Apps, you know, an app business can really generate a lot of cash flow for an agency business. And it's not entirely passive, but It somewhat is, right? It doesn't require as much input as say managing a client relationship. And so I'd like I love apps for that reason. I think that's why a lot of people go after them or try and build them. In your case, you ended up exiting Hulk apps. What was uh, you know, what drove that decision? Why not like just it's successful, it adds to the business, why not keep it?
Amer Grozdanic • 12:08.880
I lean back on on Alan. He felt it was the right time. And he kind of made that decision. Um, like I mentioned earlier, um, he was uh you know, along with the team that supported him, responsible for it. And when he says, like, hey, I think this is the right time, good opportunity Um, do you think this is just something that I should pull the trigger on? And the way it happened is because he got a bunch of offers at once
Kurt Elster • 12:35.460
And it was just that time during COVID where I was gonna say like this, I bet this was over the pandemic.
Amer Grozdanic • 12:41.060
Yeah, yeah.
Kurt Elster • 12:41.700
Uh during the pandemic and at zero percent interest rate created quite the buying phenomenon.
Amer Grozdanic • 12:46.980
Exactly, exactly. And um I didn't um sometimes I like to stay in my lane and that's what he believed in and I said okay uh do that uh and I basically told him when you're ready because He needed to be part of that acquisition uh to transition everything over. Whenever you're ready, the doors open at the agency if you want to come back and um He's kind of back, kind of not. He's actually working on another product, which is incredible, but um kind of like it's a very weird dynamic because I think it helps a person, especially like him, knowing um he has a home to go back to so he can take all these risks. Because he has he has a family, he has to take care of them and everything like that. And um for me to enable because one one thing about Alan and to just to kind of uh lean into um I was a very marketing heavy individual. I was really good at AdWords, Google, and all of that. That's what I grew up in Um I started developing when I was 13. I was a good developer, but not a great developer. So when I met him, he took my being an okay, good developer. to really underst not being a great developer, but being being a great technical mind. And then over the years, kind of under his wing, I was able to lean on things and grow as a marketer. to be a product person and to be now CEO of a company. Um never giving him this much credit, probably. But um but it it is and um and that just hit him. I mean he was a instrumental to it. But I had some really good mentors that saw whatever they saw in me and kind of kept pushing me and here we are.
Kurt Elster • 14:22.280
No, that well, that's incredible because I think a lot of people uh consider having a business partner. And my experience with business partners has been very positive. You know, I had one that was like it didn't work out, but we were still able to end it amicably, you know, and so it wasn't a big deal. Uh and outside of that, it's like really it's been it's been very positive to create scenarios similar to what you've described. Would you it sounds to me like if you had to do it over again, you would still have business partners.
Amer Grozdanic • 14:51.500
Um I would. Something took me a long time to realize. Um because I I felt sometimes I was in a position. So I always say prelim. is community built because I had so many people that helped me. Uh Jay from Bold, Oshin and and his team at Recharge, uh Rob Barr, um Allen obviously, uh agencies that um uh uh uh that just sent us leads like hey you know we we think you could be a good fit for this so everything I own like people say like how did you do it like Not an I thing. It's like a lot of people saw in my team something and gave us a shot and knock on wood. We didn't let them down, which is a great thing. But it's I I would do it. I think um one thing I realized you have to be very direct and very honest. You can take a seat back if you feel passionate about something. Alan and I I don't know if you're the same with Paul, but like we will get into a shotting match. Like uh in a very passionate, good way. He he has one take on something. I have one take on something. Five minutes later after that meeting is over, there's no hard feelings. It is just that we care about something. So to be honest, if I'm in a call or doing anything with anyone, even on my team, If you're not passionate to express what you feel, I sometimes are you passionate about what you're doing? And I think if you don't have that and you lose it, um, it's hard to wake up. every day and be able to collaborate and things like so. I encourage people be be direct, give direct respectful feedback and kind of take it from there. And Alan now he lives He lives in Bosnia and works from there. Or the only thing that I miss is like what you guys have. You used to work at a merch mart. We used to have an office. And uh we worked on this floor that was completely empty. It was like us and maybe four other businesses. But we would walk and have walk-in meetings all around the merchandise mart. But it was kind of it was fun, it was cool and we'd get out and we'd sit down and get to back to work and things like that. But I think it's very important to be direct, to be honest. And even as an employee and as a partner, because I think one of the things that we do when we hire people, I don't know if other people do this, is I tell everyone, this is not an interview. I'm not interviewing you. I need you to also interview me because I need to know that you asked enough questions that I you know you want to wake up tomorrow and work for us. And if you're going to wake up and I always give people a few days, if you wake up between now and next three, four days, but they do decide and you have a hunch, this is not for me, it's probably not for you. And I'm okay with it.
Kurt Elster • 17:33.040
You know, that it's such a good way to approach things. You know, everything has to be a two-way street. But I think you're right. Like ultimately in all relationships, everything success of the relationship comes down to you know open and honest communication, but to facilitate that, you can't be a dick, right? Like that you're you're like, yeah, you gotta be direct. You gotta be candid. I agree with all of that. And some people just hear it as like, I can say whatever I feel like. No. You know, you could do it without being you know without offending people. But uh yeah, okay Yeah, 18 apps, a lot of apps, and you're building it in a place where like, okay, you know, we're we're I love Shopify, but we are we are playing in their sandbox. And so there's always that fear of like, oh, you know, they build a feature that then makes this app redundant. That can happen. Ever is you know, how do you end up with 18 apps? Is it like trying to dodge that stay ahead of that fear? Is it um or is it just like you we listen for problems and build solutions? Build it better. Build it better. So even if Shopify has the feature, we just do the better version.
Amer Grozdanic • 18:40.700
Yeah, I mean to think about it, uh I'll use Shopify. I mean, um Shopify came out maybe five, six years ago with a wholesale channel. Right. Nobody liked it. Shopify would tell you. I think it was a good band aid for some, but I I don't think uh with the wholesale channel, Shopify achieved the 80 20% rule that they talk about. Like we I think it was a 2080. Um where now with the Shafar B2B, I think they have achieved that and they continue to build on it. So I think They learned and they listened and did exactly what you're supposed to do. My thing was always whatever we build, even with some of the things that we're building now, it's there's always going to be competition. And that's okay. Uh you gotta do it better, whether it's service, whether it's a uh it's a feature, whether it's a dashboard. Um I think there's always going to be people that are going to say, uh use subscriptions, for example. Shop is their subscriptions. They don't stand a chance against recharge or skio or or whomever else.
Kurt Elster • 19:39.100
Recharge, Skio, loop. It's like those are all really good solutions.
Amer Grozdanic • 19:42.299
Yeah. Um and there's a bunch of other ones. There's probably like forty now that exists. Like there's like even like submarine and all these and they just do things a little bit better, a little bit differently. And um when recharge is not a good fit, maybe Skio is. And when um Shopify is I think a great this is what I really love about Shopify. They value their partner so much. They do that a lot of people like freaked out when subscriptions came out. But it's like actually it's good because people now can validate their that business channel quickly. See if it's for for them. If it starts growing, they're like, okay, now we need retention. Now we need this tool. We need this tool. Guess what? You have a plethora of apps in the ecosystem that will help you grow up or scale that business to whatever you want it. It's plug and play. And I think that's actually a really, really cool thing.
Kurt Elster • 20:30.140
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Amer Grozdanic • 22:41.420
So so you always kind of want to diversify and going all in is a very scary thing. Yeah. Um one thing that kind of helped us uh internally uh was when you can focus on one craft. And I I know everyone says, well, Magento developers should be able to do ma Shopfire work and all of that. But when you really focus on the craft and you know that ecosystem the platform in and out, it's a little bit different. And that helped us, I think, just become better. The other component was it is so much nicer to get on a call post-launch. To see a merchant automatically experience higher AOVs and higher conversion rates and ultimately later on higher LTVs. Than it is to post launch go, what did we miss on a different platform? Because Shopify has just actually what you pointed out. This is the baseline. If you do the baseline on Shopify, the merchant is going to be better off. Now if you do the baseline plus densum, the merchant is going to love you. And and I think that that was just the conversations launching on Shopify. made everything more enjoyable. The builds were a lot quicker. The quotes were a lot of competitive. We used to go against Magento agencies. Magento agency would quote something for 80,000. On Shopify, we do it for 30, 40 in half the time So it just became this thing was like, why am I trying to force something if I don't have to? If everything's there. And I'll tell you just like I remember In twenty twelve, I think it was, I had a friend of mine, he set up a um soccer jersey store And it was on Shopify. And he knew I was a developer and all to that stuff. And like, hey, can you help me with a store? And I went to Shopify. And I did it for him. It was painful because you couldn't do anything. You were just so locked in compared to a WordPress and WooCommerce. And I told myself, I'm never doing it. And how we actually stumbled upon Shopify, we started to do, I don't know if you remember, you have to. Um Shopify Experts page. Oh yeah. So we kind of dabbled into that when ShopA grew up a little bit and started just taking these like small jobs that were coming in and we were hustling. And then there was a company, uh, as we started to get like more experienced in it called Movement Watches. That's a Cinderella story for Shopify. Yep. Um we shared a computer. And VMT, Movement Watches. I'm sorry? It's movement and VMT. Yeah, yeah, MVMT. And Um a guy that we shared an office space with to a degree, uh, his name was Steve, he found them on Reddit that they needed help with Facebook ads. And then he spoke with him, they started doing stuff um with movement, and he turned to us and said, Hey, they need help with Shopify. Do you guys want to take a look at it? And we're like, yeah. So we started working with them. We started to do their email marketing and everything else. But Moment Watches, which is one of the biggest Cinderella stories in Shopify got acquired by Movado. It was one of the biggest reasons we're here. And I can't tell you how many watch companies wanted to work with us because they thought we were responsible for success of movement. Did we contribute to their success? Absolutely.
Kurt Elster • 25:51.060
But we weren't a reason they were successful. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, they there's uh a brand cachet. There's a shine to it that they hope rubs off on them. Yeah. Because you know, like you must know something.
Amer Grozdanic • 26:02.260
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 26:02.820
And clearly like you are like building the website or doing the marketing or, you know, whatever it is. Obviously you are contributing that to suc to that success. But it's like, you know, they're still driving the ship.
Amer Grozdanic • 26:13.460
Well, I I say it like brand, operator, owner, founder, whomever is in charge, is a person going to the gym and lifting the weights. We're the supplement they take afterwards. If they don't do that work The supplement doesn't work. Yep. You gotta do the hard work and then we can help boost it. But that's about it.
Kurt Elster • 26:31.000
Yeah. No, it's like It takes a village for sure. Like the number when you s it like some of these bigger brands, like when you start thinking about the number of like different teams, vendors, people, services, and like things involved, it is mind-boggling You know, and that like by the time you get to a store that that does ten to twenty million, like it's already getting pretty crazy. And then as you push higher, you know, and past that, it still gets a little wild.
Amer Grozdanic • 26:58.440
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 26:58.920
Um and yet it works. You know, the whole thing. At that point it it works. Um So when you you know when you decide to go all in Unshopify, you know, damn the torpedoes, burn the bridges, do you lose clients who are on other platforms or is it like
Amer Grozdanic • 27:15.040
No, um I mean what we and it's still to this day, um anything that's net new we're built on Shopify If we we manage few websites on WooCommerce on Drupal, believe it or not, and some of these other um areas But um we do that because they come to us and say, hey, we love the work that you guys did on Shopify. We have this ecosystem of websites that are not all migrated and we don't know if we want to migrate them if it's needed. Do you guys want to just maintain them for us? So if they just want maintenance basics, sure. If somebody comes to us and say, Hey, do you want to redo our build on Magento? No. Like we won't do that. But if if if it's just like Maintenance stuff and the website are complicated will take it, but we're like very selective who we do that with. All the clients that we had before, we just kind of kept and kept supporting them. And uh it wasn't something we made an announcement. We're no longer working. We just shifted our marketing communication to go after Or put rather brands in a platform we really believed in.
Kurt Elster • 28:18.420
And that's, you know, we took a similar approach and then just naturally, over time, we're able to, you know people left, went elsewhere, or you know, if we were lucky, we were able to eventually migrate them to Shopify. Um, you know, that's always always a good feeling when you know you're able to to bring them across. Yeah. So Like you have such a deep domain knowledge of Shopify of Shopify Plus. Like, do you have a pet feature app or thing that you think merchants don't take advantage of that they should?
Amer Grozdanic • 28:47.320
Um, I think one big thing is that a feature, it's it's a service for most agencies, I would say, is testing. How so? I just don't merchants don't test enough. I think merchants, uh s especially smaller ones that are moving a million uh uh miles an hour are making decision on hunches and not tracking everyone sa says hey
Kurt Elster • 29:11.840
I'm I make data driven decisions. But ultimately they're only looking for data that agrees with their gut.
Amer Grozdanic • 29:16.559
Yeah. No, it does ex love that's a perfect way to put it. And I think every single brand, big or small, whatever decision you make, you should test it. And a lot of people say, oh, a brand is too small to test. Well If it takes two months to run that test, it is what it is, but at least you know which way it's going. Or especially today, like I I mean back in the day when you used to do A B tests. Um it was a very, very big lift, but a lot of apps are Shopify. The way things Shopify is done, um, like Shoplift and Intelegems and some of these apps. So easy. You don't even have to be technical anymore to test messaging and some of these other things. Um, that's one big thing that bothers me with merchants. And then um I would say app-wise. I'm a I'm a big believer in subscriptions and d done right way. I think a lot of brands could do subscriptions, memberships, and I'm not saying make it core your core business. Just enable it for certain customers if they're repeat customers, um personalize it to offer them a subscription. It's like, hey, we see you bought this three months in a row. You wanna think about it. Like things like that. It doesn't have to be a main thing on your website, but um I think small small like the uh things like that work, but to me A B testing just drives me crazy. The have you played with SimGym at all?
Kurt Elster • 30:48.640
I haven't yet, actually. No. You have not snapped it to a SimGym? No, no. Have you? Yeah, yeah, we we tried in a few stores. My issue is it uses a credit system. And so you log into it says you have five credits. Run your test. It is one credit. When you run out of five credits, a test is ten dollars. Oh wow. Yeah. Oh wow. Now what I l I looked at the documentation before I tweeted my annoyance. I said, hey, I think credits kill adoption. And yeah, I would love to use I I would abuse this tool if I didn't have to worry about credits. And it turns out, you know, I didn't see this in the documentation. Um, it resets every 30 days. Okay. And so you do it's like five you could run five tests without paying for it once a month. Okay, much more reasonable. But it's kind of you know it's an AI user test. So immediately, you know, what's your feeling or reaction to that? It's like I'm skeptical.
Amer Grozdanic • 31:36.820
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 31:37.460
Running it, all right, it was more useful than I thought because it create it creates like little personas where it goes, you know, you're a user who likes deep research. You use the search bar and you have to find the product. And like it get it knows it's attached to the store, so it'll be like go find this product And then it just logs like, all right, what's the effort there? What issues occur and can it succeed? And then it flags it if it can't is like, hey, here's an issue. And so it's kind of clever in that it will you give it two themes, it'll say, hey, this is the one I think will win the split test. Like it makes a prediction and then it gives you it's like here's some issues or like reasons why. And you know, based on that I'm like, wow, this is a fun tool. But then, you know, the credit system kept me from really like going deeper with it. Yeah. Um but Yeah on Twitter a Shopify uh exec replied to me and was like, actually, announcement coming soon. That's gonna be improved. Okay, great. Love it. Yeah. Have you had this experience where like, you know, you can If you can make a cogent argument as to like, here's a feature request, here's an issue, here's you know something I I don't love about Shopify, and you could get it on you know online, they'll take action on it.
Amer Grozdanic • 32:44.900
Yeah. Uh I think people actually don't realize or they forget. I know Shopify's huge, but one two things I love. I love that Toby continues to be a product person and really wants to like uh I I don't know if you were at it and and it kind of changed my way of thinking. Uh Maybe six, seven years back, Shopify had a Unite, I believe it was in San Francisco. And Toby was on stage and he said Uh our goal is to make entrepreneurship easy. And even though they got into enterprise, they got into these things. Tim Jim being a great example, like how you described it, it is to make entrepreneurship a lot easier. And most importantly, they they listen. I mean, I see Harley I mean, there's gotta be a team behind him just monitoring X and and tweeting at people and things like that, but they they really care and
Kurt Elster • 33:43.860
Uh a lot of people I believe I think he's the real deal. I a hundred percent the believe that Harley is as invested as he appears and for sure Toby Now don't question for a second that he is you know as into the software and the platform of the experience as you know his online persona would suggest.
Amer Grozdanic • 34:01.600
No, I'm not plugged in with every other platform, but before them, I've never seen that. I've never seen like even like I don't know if you remember uh like the Magento, the Big Commerce I don't recall two agencies that potentially compete sitting down and talking to each other.
Kurt Elster • 34:18.480
Like I feel I yes, you're absolutely right.
Amer Grozdanic • 34:20.720
I I feel like Shopify ecosystem, what they did is like, you know how doctors share medical information for the greater good? I feel that's what Shopify does for the greater good of e-commerce. And even with um the uh what's it called? Uh the new protocol that they left out is like UCP. Yeah. Universal commerce program. Yeah. I mean it's available to everybody. Shopify didn't have to do that. They could have said, you know what, Google, if you want to work with us, it has to just be on Shopify. But they said, you know, let's enable it for everybody. And I think it's a great marketing ploy, but it's also, I think, what they stand by. It's really, really to make entrepreneurship entrepreneurship easier and better for everybody.
Kurt Elster • 35:00.620
All right, you brought up uh UCP Universal Commerce Protocol. Yeah. Let's and you know AI at large. Let's discuss. Yeah. That's very much a a push, uh, a feature change that's happening in Shopify. You know, just uh the other day I was able to make a relatively complex flow in Shopify Flow by describing it to Shopify Sidekick. And then it just went and made it. And like it all right, it worked, it had a single it worked, and then I reali it had a single bug. Turned out I described it wrong. Oh. And then when I updated my description, it was like try it again. Then it generated correctly. I'm like, shh, it did what I said. Yeah. Um, and so I've had it obviously like there's scenarios where AI absolutely falls on its face. But so far I'm, you know, I'm having a pretty good experience with these generative AI tools for coding. They're good at it. Um and this Universal Commerce Protocol, okay, I see the advantage there is like suddenly you are surfacing all products in Shopify because everybody really I believe gets defaulted into this.
Amer Grozdanic • 36:00.580
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 36:01.220
And then, you know, the I my understanding of the way it works is NAI, say ChatGPT. that can go request from Shopify or for using the Universal Commerce Protocol, UCP, can go, hey, I'm looking for X product in X price range. And then Shopify will return, you know, 10 results to them. And then it's based on like, you know, all the the taxonomy and the category fields that are in Shopify. Okay. All that makes sense to me. You know, we've got really like here's an an open source, a bigger version of what Google Shopping is doing. Yeah. But all right, where does it go from here? Right? We haven't necessarily seen it's so I mean, this thing just happened. So we haven't seen it really applied anywhere yet.
Amer Grozdanic • 36:45.620
Um to me it's gonna be interesting because um I think brand equity is gonna obviously play a big role to who gets served. Uh for example, if you're looking for uh gym apparel is probably going to be Gymshark plus Nike plus whatever else there is. Um where I'm kind of curious is where it's gonna go with the smaller brands. How are the smaller brands that are trying to break through And what's gonna happen? I'm assuming it's going to be something similar to uh to your point Google Shopping where people can bid on uh prompts and where they want to rank and like that. That's the only thing that kind of like makes quote unquote fair sense to me. Um but I I I think it's one of these things that I think Shopify, Google, and everybody else, they just want to make things more conversational and the more data they have, the better recommendations they can they can make. Um my the the way I understand it too is that kind of the way you described it is You're gonna have all this data from Shopify's backend be served to the AIs and they'll do whatever they need to. Maybe I'm not experiencing that, but my my question goes: like, what is the quote unquote optimization behind this? To help you rank or get recommended better, especially against big brands. I don't know that. Um, so I'm curious too, like where he's gonna go. I don't know if you have thoughts on it, but I do. Yeah, you do. I have opinions. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 38:10.780
Well the Okay. I think what's interesting about it is with that commerce protocol is whoever's doing the asking is not the one deciding what products get surfaced. They're going to get a finite list. Say Shopify is millions of products. It's going to return 10 And so ultimately the one giving the answer, whether that's Etsy, because this works for other marketplaces too. Etsy does it um as well. And I assume, you know, more and more are gonna pop on here. And so they that it's up to that platform to come up with its own algorithm, you know, its own ranking factors. And then return those 10, you know, and then of course it you could just ask the question three times and now I have fifty, you know, twenty, thirty, whatever. Um And then the answering platform, so in this case, say chat GPT, is going to then determine how it ranks those. And so it's kind of interesting in that like optimizing for this protocol will really be per platform. But all right, in the context of Shopify, Shopify needs to under like off a very basic query needs to try and return the best possible product that answers whatever that you know that query is. And so there then the last year we've seen it really start offering and expanding those category-based taxonomy fields, which really it's a product meta field that is attached to and triggered by the category of the product. And so that category is like that. Number one, if you don't have that category set, I don't think it's going to appear or will not appear often. And so it's like, all right, that's giving it the broad context on what it's looking at. And then within those, once I've selected the category, essentially Shopify is going to tell you, well, these are the optimizations. And it's based, it's like whatever category meta fields it suggests, fill those out. Because the person who filled them out versus the person who didn't. The person who filled them out's gonna win. And it like the data entry is a lot of work. And so like that's what stops people. And you have a lot of people with huge catalogs. So okay, you got a huge catalog, fine. You know, 80-20 rule it. What's your top 10 selling products? Fill out all the category meta fields for that, and then just start working on down the list in reverse, uh, reverse selling order. Yeah. And I I think that's that's going to be the answer. Um and then filling out, of course, uh all to like essentially treating it like regular SEO anyway. Like, all right, our SEO titles filled out, CEO meta's filled out, we got alt text. for all our images. Uh we've got a complete product description. Where some of these stores get in trouble is we used meta fields. Like you and I both, I'm sure, have done this. We use meta fields to make really fancy product templates. Yeah. And so the act the but that content is not necessarily going to get surfaced. It's not going to use it because it's not attached to the category. It's like, you know, it doesn't have a predefined context. They just know some Yahoo defined this. They're not going to use that. Yeah. Um, and so I think that's that's the answer. This is just a lot of data entry.
Amer Grozdanic • 41:04.620
I I I think so too. Um I also wonder um something I always liked about Google and I'm sure they're gonna do here If Google recommends your S your some sometimes people always use this I always said Google Analytics is a spy tool for Google. Because they want to know what happens to the traffic that they send to their website. If they recommend Ethercycle and Ethercycle ranks number one and everyone goes through the entire uh journey flow and they convert But they're gonna give you more equity because you're taking care of their customer, which is not us, it's the customer looking for our solution for a product. I I think probably the same kind of as you got my head spinning might happen with in this case, except there's something very interesting that um Gemini and Chatcher P is gonna have. They know everything about us. I mean, I've talked to Chachu Tb asked questions about health, about allergies, about everything that you can know. So if, you know, you you have kids, right? I from what I remember. Yeah. You you you you have kids and if you're buying something for a kid and one of your kids might have an allergy ChatGPT is gonna know that and may send a signal right away to Shopify because I need, you know, allergen-free detergent or whatever the case is, and sh show you that right away where Google may not do that in Google Shopping. So I think there might be like personalization done off website because just of all the information that or the persona that AIs are building about you or me.
Kurt Elster • 42:41.280
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Amer Grozdanic • 44:43.700
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 44:44.340
Um that's a good okay. I'm starting to see the potential value here.
Amer Grozdanic • 44:51.000
So cook actually if you don't mind I want to ask you a question. Uh while we're in the topic of AI. Um actually Dennis, one of fellow neighbor agency uh owners Yeah, yeah, from on cap. He posted a message about potential a route the Shafi is going to take and I and I don't disagree with it. uh basically going into a lovable replay direction where merchants are going to be able to prompt and build their own websites and features and things like that. And the agency role is obviously going to evolve. I think like a lot of agencies and I've spoken to them are scared like oh my God what's gonna happen to us in one, two, three years And I think my thing is there's going to be a pivot and we'll figure out what it is, which is gonna have to pivot. You've been around for a long time. You have a very nimble team. Um, where do you think that is going for for merchants and for agencies?
Kurt Elster • 45:42.120
That's a good question. I mean for merchants the tools just keep getting better and easier to use, but they also get more complicated. You know, the plat Shopify as a platform, yeah, it's adding all these really easy to use features like Shopify Flow, I can just generate it. But troubleshooting one, a flow in Shopify that doesn't quite work right, good luck. You know, if you just AI prompted that and then you want to figure out why it doesn't work. Okay, now you need an expert. Like there will always be that scenario because fundamentally, if I'm using the AI, two things are occurring. Either I am trying to save time or I don't know how to do it. Yeah. Right? And what's that split? Well, the people who don't know how to do it and then get stuck, you'll always be available to help them. You know, there will always be the need. And certainly, you know, a twenty million dollar business is probably not going to be run exclusively by one guy and some AIs. Maybe. It could happen, right? Yeah. But at you know, by the time that that can occur it will just be a completely different world.
Amer Grozdanic • 46:43.000
Yeah, I agree. And uh it's funny because you bring that up. I had a couple of merchants that are dabbling into they're doing their own API connections using um uh AIs and things like that or the dashboards and they'll run into a problem that they don't know how to resolve that's like database driven and but it's it's not that they are not able to fix it through a prompt, if they don't have the experience in the infrastructure To tell the AI what to do correctly or or or move him in the right direction. And they'll be stuck on something for two, three weeks and ping me and I'll resolve in fifteen minutes. But it's gonna be interesting and I think to your point just like twenty million dollar businesses at that point what is our fifteen minutes going to be worth
Kurt Elster • 47:27.760
Pair because paired to AI, if I can get this unstuck again, ah, you know, like the whole thing now hinges on this AI's ability to code. Yeah. And so if I get stuck, yet you're right. You know, what is it worth for you to show up and quickly fix it? Yeah. It's also led to just r like hyper focused, hyper niche content, this really fragmented social media. And so someone asked me the other day, said, hey, if you were to start like uh say in an e-commerce academy. Where would you put it? Where would you start? I said, man, I don't even know anymore. You know, it's like, what's the right spot? Where's the right place? How do you position? I don't know anymore, you know.
Amer Grozdanic • 48:05.980
Where would you? Well what do you feel like it's the most honest conversation for for brands to participate in?
Kurt Elster • 48:13.900
I think All of these platforms are pay-to-play. So like the idea of you I'm gonna post and build social reach, I think it's over, right? I do. And even if it does work, like what's the point? Just pay to play. It's not Promoted posts are not expensive. Um and so I think that's that's probably the way or leveraging other people's audiences, but it has to be honest. I mean the number of like shady things I see, especially on Twitter, where I'm like, there's just no way that this is not promoted or sponsored in some way and it's just not disclosed. But like how you gonna know? Right. Um and then, you know, at the same time the you have platforms like TikTok where I thoroughly suspect they inflated those impressions uh and numbers just to attract creators, you know, to get them on there. Because like if you're a creator, you want that dopamine hit, man. You need it. And then That the like once you have the good creators, okay, then you get the audience and then the whole thing just keeps feeding itself as a flywheel. So but You know, which platforms optimize for content, which platforms are okay with letting you off the site. None of them. None of them want you to leave the site, you know, and have links out. And that's really that's kind of the goal.
Amer Grozdanic • 49:26.799
So obviously you took the long term honest approach. I mean I mean I'm I remember watching your videos when you used to drive in your job and If you were to restart and lean on content in this community building, which you've done tremendously, where would you start?
Kurt Elster • 49:44.339
Good point. All right. Well, for Shopify specifically, leadership is very active on Twitter. You know, they call it D2C Twitter, direct to consumer. Like that, that's where you'd go. To in a platform like Twitter where I could click through to a profile and click a follow button. then the easy way to get noticed is like, all right, hot takes, but that's really hard when you don't have an audience. So the real solution is you need to be the reply guy
Amer Grozdanic • 50:08.700
Okay. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 50:09.660
Like you just gotta keep popping up in replies. And you're really lucky, you know, if you get lucky you could ratio somebody. Um well, if you could get more likes than them, that's not necessarily ratioing, but the Like I think that's that's the move is you gotta ride somebody else's coattails until you have like some level of v escape velocity within the algorithm where like you have enough followers and where they might share it. But like Yeah, the end goal is get followers and build an audience. But ultimately, like when you're at zero, that's so hard. And so instead, like you really just have to hitch a ride on somebody else.
Amer Grozdanic • 50:46.300
Yeah. Would you do YouTube again or no?
Kurt Elster • 50:49.160
A hundred percent I do YouTube. Uh I think like if I have to pick just one for sure, I'm doing YouTube and then pairing it to a blog. You know, build my build your own content silo. You know, try and collect newsletter sign-ups, but absolutely do YouTube. And like they're they're targeting and their their promoted posts are getting better. um it you know, the thing works and I think I think people aren't using it as n as they should because it feel like YouTube feels old, you know. I remember watching cat videos twenty years ago on YouTube, right? It's just it's been around a while. And meta is too saturated, you know, and so is Instagram and Facebook. I think really it's like putting the effort on YouTube, which you know that has a great bear to entry because good video content is hard to produce. Like at this point, everybody could do it with their phone. Fine. You could do it record it, edit it, do everything on your phone. But like actually knowing how to do that, AI's bad at editing video. It just is. Yeah. Um, you know, that it's still a very manual process. And so I think there's like that wonderful barrier to entry there. But man, like that's the single marketing skill now, especially for content marketing. Like, can you produce a coherent video? Can you edit it? Can you record it? Have it not be garbage? And it's sometimes if they can have a low quality video, that probably could be an advantage too.
Amer Grozdanic • 52:09.660
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 52:10.059
Or you become, you know, believable.
Amer Grozdanic • 52:12.619
Yeah. No, I actually I agree with you. I think video is a great way to go about it. Uh just because it's like there's so much noise that's like text based, even now with images and stuff like that. That I think if you can take an idea, even if you get your ideas prompted or or whatever from ChatGPT to talk about it, but you can apply your own experience to it. And explain how you went through it. Uh I think that resonates with people. Um I mean I think you like even for you, the way you used to break things down. Um It it it it just it sits better with people because they feel the trust gets built, I think. Um but I think the same applies to one thing that drives me crazy, I don't know if you struggle with this with brands I love when a especially newer brands, and when I say newer um brands that are ten million and under, especially. when they put the founder face or they have a uh a face to the brand that is continuously engaging the community.
Kurt Elster • 53:17.140
Such an advantage.
Amer Grozdanic • 53:18.020
It is. And and I don't know I I know why, but I wish Because it's scary to go face to camera.
Kurt Elster • 53:23.359
That's those are the three dirty words. Face two camera. Nobody wants to do it.
Amer Grozdanic • 53:27.119
Yeah. It took me a long time. I mean 'cause my fear is exactly what you do. Like I think you've done a really good job like breaking and communicating things. My thing is like I don't want to give misinformation to people that their lives depend on it. I think sometimes like the average listener, the average person doesn't understand like if you have a two million dollar business, everyone thinks oh that person is a millionaire. No. Um you were talking about people that have 5%, 10%, 15% margins, people that have uh credit lines to pay. We we have all of that stuff. So it's like development costs, RD. This stuff's expensive. I mean it piles up so quickly And I was always afraid, like, I don't want to misguide somebody or somebody to misunderstand what I'm saying that could potentially cost them. I know I'm not directly responsible for it, but I feel like there's a responsibility if you're going to share information that it's as accurate as possible as you can be.
Kurt Elster • 54:25.720
I think you've done a good job with that and 100% you're right. In the moment, you know, you you lose that trust, it's tough to get it back with the audience. And so I think, you know, being honest when you make mistakes, or you're like, I'm very quick to be like, yeah, I was totally wrong on that.
Amer Grozdanic • 54:39.900
Yeah, yeah. You have to.
Kurt Elster • 54:41.180
Yeah. Um Like that helps, you know, that being candid. And also when you aren't a hundred percent stating that, it's like, okay, this I like the phrase you'll hear a lot with me is I believe. I believe means I don't actually know this for a fact. Yeah. You know. This is just this is what I think. I think that's it's important to you know, to preface that. I believe and I think um, you know, it seems to me, or like, you know, that's very different than I know. And I like those things. But I don't think anyone expects you to be right a hundred percent all the time. It just isn't realistic. But you're right about that like that responsibility and that pressure. The problem is it just it makes it, you know, for the nine times you're right, if you're wrong once, you're letting the one wrong thing talk you out of doing the thing that could help thousands of people.
Amer Grozdanic • 55:31.640
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 55:32.119
That's what's so cool about like when you can make this work, content marketing, potentially you make one video, you get thousands of people unstuck. Man, my my most successful video is just like, hey, here's three different, it's like, here's five different ways to find uh a product ID in Shopify. You know, it's just like here's product identifiers explained. The video's like six minutes long. I think that's like my most successful thing ever. You know, it's got all these comments that are like, you know, I've watched this video years ago and I still come back to it. It's it's great. Um, you know, unfortunately that one has stayed accurate and correct, you know, still works. But okay, let's say all right, Tobias Lutke. Blue-eyed German man that he is, and he I perceive him, his persona, as like always online. And I'm not saying that in a negative context. Like he like all three of us, always online. Culture comes from the top down in an organization like that. Do you think that experience you know drives and informs and is helped what create a Shopify partner community?
Amer Grozdanic • 56:34.440
I think so. Uh but I think it's forced. I think it's um I mean we've we've all been when uh Harley gets on stage and talks about how the Shopify ecosystem generates more revenue than Shopify itself. Um, I think that part was intentional um because I think Shopify took a different approach than a lot of gated platforms, uh, which change everything. And Then you had wood commerce that's the extreme side of that. Anybody can build anything. This is more police and it's a safe environment. But I I think it's um I don't think it has to be with always being online. I think it has to do to what I kind of said earlier, doing something for the greater good and knowing if you want to be a part of it. And um I don't know if you ever read a book um How Google Works. No, I've not even heard of that one. It's a great, great uh book. Um I think it was like Larry Page he was in his office and he was Googling um to buy a motorcycle I think it was like a Honda motorcycle. And he kept Googling and his sponsored ads had irrelevant things that he was looking for. So he got frustrated and he walked over to the kitchen where everybody goes and there was a whiteboard He printed out all the results that he was getting and what the queries were, search terms, and wrote on the um on the board, somebody fix this shit. And he left home. It was like Friday night And a couple of engineers that had nothing to do with paid search modules looked at it. They were all in different departments, decided to stay next few days to create AdWords. And it just came from culture because he said, hey, this is a problem. And somebody was proud enough to be part of Google to want to solve that, even though it wasn't their responsibility. And I feel the same energy from Shopify.
Kurt Elster • 58:37.420
Hmm. I like that. What um okay. You've been around in been around long enough. You've seen e-com platforms and services rise and fall. What's the big you know, what's the next big thing? What's the feature? What's the thing that people are you merchants are sleeping on that they shouldn't be?
Amer Grozdanic • 58:57.460
Um I I would uh like for for an easy answer, I really like Psychick. Um I think it's still underutilized and I don't think people understand how quickly they can get some answers.
Kurt Elster • 59:09.180
Um What do you use Psychekick for?
Amer Grozdanic • 59:11.559
Uh I mean uh I I would do things like um year-over-year analysis, um a lot of analytical stuff that I want to get to a store instead of like clicking around and using drop-downs, I just use it. I do preface, double check, you know, until you get comfortable. Uh, because there's sometimes that it's not hundred percent accurate. Um, but I I use it a lot for analytics. I use it a lot to understand where our uh where our merchants and retainers where where they're heading uh basically and and what's happening. Um that's my probably biggest use for it so I don't have to um analyze things. Um The part that I I think that will be interesting that I I want to see is not necessarily a Shopify feature. I'm gonna go back to it. Everyone add an E B testing tool to your platform on your Shopify store. I think that's a big one. Uh one of the things that I think is now getting better that a lot of people need to focus on is funnel optimization. Right.
Kurt Elster • 01:00:14.980
That's the brands we see that like really take off. Yeah. Put effort into funnel optimization.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:00:20.740
Yeah, I think it's a nice sexy way to see say personalization, but it's it really works. Um I like that a lot. Um I really love Shopify's new B2B Future, I think a lot of companies are not tapping in or saying they're not ready for it or they're thinking about it. Just turn it on. It's not It's not hard to set up. It's like, you know, before you go to another platform, it's a month's worth project. You can do it really quickly. I think another big underutilized um is markets. uh to go uh for internationalization internationalization I mean everything is like there it just like and people get scared. I mean like with the global e uh partnership the Shopify has you don't have to worry about uh you know duties or anything like that. Like as long as you ship out of US to another country, it's streamlined. Um there's just a lot of I think these things like One of the things that I would maybe agencies are gonna hate me for this. Absolutely gonna hate me for this. And my team is maybe gonna hate me for this. Every time you approach to work with an agency or a retainer or however else, I would ask them, what in my tech stack and tell me what I can be using better. Now tell me how. But what? What have I unlocked? Because I don't think a lot of to your point there's so many features in Shopify that I don't think people realize how powerful. It can be. Um with markets, with m multilingual, with multi-currency, um, with flows. I mean I still get into stores, nobody uses flows. It is so powerful. Uh that can streamline things. So I would um I would probably recommend everyone that enters a relationship to do that. Um I'm trying to see if uh what else um that are like easy wins for people. Um I mean a lot of a lot of good ones there. I I mean but here's the the but like these should be my like when I'm saying it but in my head they're like baseline. Yeah. You know I'm talking by baseline. I'm trying to think of something like what have we done that's like baseline I mean, do you have anything that's like then like a baseline feature that people are overlooking?
Kurt Elster • 01:02:28.900
I mean for sure flow. I think the other one is like shop. I think shop and shop campaigns.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:02:35.300
Okay, yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:02:35.860
Oftentimes people just Like aren't aware of it or they're not sure what it is and they don't mess with it. Like if you want to understand it, download the shop app and play with it. And you're like, hey, there's a whole bunch of products in here. Yeah. I could be there too, right? That's what you want.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:02:47.880
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:02:48.200
For me, it's any of the Shopify features that leverage the network effects of Shopify. Like Shopify is a platform, you know, we got a million plus merchants. Great. uh what can all of them when put together do? And that's you know like shop campaigns and shop audiences and you know shop pay and like all of these things that let you borrow a little bit from other stores, you know, like Shop. Hey, because I bought on a separate Shopify store, ah, now I just get auto-logged in with my address of payment on your store.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:03:15.760
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:03:16.240
Cool. You know, that's the thing that other platforms can't compete with. So any of those, that category of feature, which I call network effects, they do not. That's just my term. Um, that look for those, because I think those are the opportunities that people overlook.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:03:30.140
One thing that I think merchants are underutilizing, it's not directly Shopify feature, but Shopify makes it very easy. Is uh selling on different channels like eBay, Amazon, and so on. And I'm not saying put your entire catalog on there. Sometimes I like to encourage, like, okay, on Amazon, put your um Good hero product. Aging, yeah, clearance product and get it in. Same thing with eBay. Uh the as much as we love and hate eBay's and Amazons of the world, but the cool part is compared to uh doing like paid marketing It has a fixed cost and they have the distribution. And if you gotta move stuff, it's better than having money sit on your shelves or in your warehouse warehouse. Just move it. Buy new goods, put it on your website and just like cycle through. And the cool part is if you do packaging nice and especially if you fulfill it, you're going to bring people from these different channels to to your store. One big one too that I absolutely takes a lot and people are scared of it as you pointed earlier um Battle Box. Um there and Whatnot. Whatnot is a video uh platform that you can sell live on.
Kurt Elster • 01:04:36.539
Oh I'm not this is new to me.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:04:37.980
Oh it's new. Oh uh whatnot is incredible.
Kurt Elster • 01:04:40.299
Wait like live video selling that for sure if we want to pick something that people are
Amer Grozdanic • 01:04:44.040
sleeping on and should consider live video selling. I'm huge on it.
Kurt Elster • 01:04:47.320
So the way I discovered the scariest version of face to camera too.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:04:50.600
It is. I'm a car collector I told myself like I want to try this and see how it works. So I used to go on camera with cars and sell cards. And I actually had a decent following and everything was going, but it was just it be became to a point. such a chore, it wasn't like a hobby anymore. That I was like, I gotta just focus on the agency because this is like it was just too much work. And I decided not to do anything with it. And I spoke to John who uh runs Battle Box and everything like that. They looked into it, went back and forth. And they tested it. Um I believe on the first show, um in the f first four hours, they did like twenty or thirty thousand dollars uh in a day. Now they run I think it's two or three shows a day, seven times a week. They hired people to run their ch channels, which are typically content creators. This is probably going to in 12 months became a seven um uh seven figure channel for them. I think by the end of this year it's gonna be an eight-figure channel. And I wouldn't be surprised if at one point it surplas surpasses their Shopify revenue.
Kurt Elster • 01:06:03.300
Yeah, it's it's crazy. We have a client, Pins and Aces, who sells uh golf apparel and accessories and they they do a live selling show and they periodically and they call it power hour. And they're like, When we're live for power hour, like you gotta be there. And it is crazy the amount and oftentimes it's just like it's returns that they'll move through, I believe. It's just like, hey, we got or like one off stuff that's like, you know, just gotta get rid of this stuff.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:06:27.880
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:06:28.200
You know? Then you move through it very quickly. Um, or they'll just do like a live sale right then. And it I can't believe how well it works. But and they're not the only one. I've seen it in other stores too, but you know, they Um yeah, that one's pretty consistent.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:06:43.039
Yeah, and the only the one thing I like about Whatnot is it's a marketplace. So you're going to get the audience you maybe not had before. It was interesting. Um John did a talk at Commerce Roundtable and he said, uh don't quote me exactly on these numbers, but they're going to be close. Uh people who purchase on TikTok Shop, they become customers on their Shopify store. It's about 2% conversion, where people that uh purchase on Whatnot to their is about 20%. So they're outperforming TikTok by 10X. That's crazy. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:07:21.100
The man I gotta check that out.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:07:23.340
Yeah, it's really, really cool. It's addicting too. There's like an addicting component to it. It's super cool.
Kurt Elster • 01:07:28.520
Uh all right, if you were starting a brand new Shopify store, like a Shopify store tomorrow, what do you think you would do differently versus the average person?
Amer Grozdanic • 01:07:37.320
Oh, that's that's a good one. Um I would make it community-centric. I would take the long road and I would try to um Jay, one of my favorite people in the world that runs bold.
Kurt Elster • 01:07:52.180
Jim Myers, Bold, who's been on this podcast several times.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:07:54.660
Yeah, I mean he's an incredible person. Um and he had a talk at Sub Summit that I went to about referral marketing and how well it works. And I am uh I'm a big proponent of leaning and trying to build a community that will advocate for your product. Now you have to have a great product. But that would be one thing. I would diversify channels right away. I wouldn't be just dependent on the Shopify traffic. And um I think the third part that I would try to probably figure out is collaboration with similar-sized brands. I don't know if I'm selling um iPhone cases, maybe go and uh uh partner with somebody who has like supplemental demographic to that. Uh and especially with um Shopify Collective. You can use that and cross-promote your products uh there.
Kurt Elster • 01:08:46.960
But I think yeah, so few people do that.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:08:48.960
Yeah, they do. Actually another you underutilized um another example of the network effects. Yeah. So um I think you can make your show look bigger, you can generate revenue. Uh I know it's not maybe as much as with your product, um, but I would I would probably do that. The other thing, um, it's a tough one and it's a scary one for people to consider. But if there is a person that has great distribution somewhere, let's say I know you have snowboards behind me. You want to sell snowboards.
Kurt Elster • 01:09:19.980
Only those are skateboard decks.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:09:21.340
Sorry. Oh skateboards. Oh sorry. Yeah, I thought they were snowboards. Um I was thinking of Shopify's. Uh, Shopify's yeah, snow devil. Toby always has the the snowboards. Uh but sk skateboards rather, uh I would maybe find a skateboarder that loves my product and I would give him equity in my company. uh to be a promoter of that product. I think there is this um creators economy that we have. And if you can find the right person to be the right advocate, I wouldn't give like 50% away, but I would tell them, hey, you be a spokesperson, do meet these criteria, and you're gonna get your earnout and um you know arrange something. I think from a marketing standpoint, if you can tap into that right away and they can maybe even become the face for your brand. It can be a little bit of a of a hack. It's not easy to do.
Kurt Elster • 01:10:10.040
No. No, and you have to find the right person. And then the other thing is you're keeping their attention. Right? Like after a while, they're not gonna want to shill the product anymore if you don't have them fully engaged. I think that's where people get in trouble with like the you know, having a s especially a celebrity attached. Versus I like if I have to pick between a celebrity and a creator, I'll probably take the creator.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:10:29.619
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't do a celebrity. It has to be, I think, somebody who loves and breathe and it has to be enough for them to be interested, to your point. Because if it's like Passive, they're gonna forget about it, move on to the next thing, and you can't do anything about it. Yep. Uh what would you do? Oh man, what I would do differently for sure.
Kurt Elster • 01:10:47.040
I'm I'm starting with a creator. Okay. I'm getting a creator. And I pri I would be trying to build the audience before ever product. It's like, you know, you said build community for or like make it community focused. I would start with that. Yeah. But, you know Saying build community is so much easier than actually doing it. Right. And it's I think it it fundamentally has to be something that you are passionate about. out. In your case, you're a card collector, okay, that's probably where I'd start. You know? Like whatever you know you know really well, that's where you start. And like, all right, are there Can I find I'm already probably like plugged in a little bit. And so can I find like-minded people? Can I then build that community? Can I then essentially co-develop a product with them, you know, within the community? And then like from there, it you know, you've got word of mouth, it starts to expand. Those people are our initial customers and testers, and you know, now we're confident that we could build our product. And at that point, maybe now we're serious enough. Okay, now I'm adding my creator collaborator to it. And then from there, I know that the hardest thing to do is advertise on Meta. I'm just going to burn cash doing it. And so probably not gonna start with that. I would likely do like a pre-order campaign coupled with PR, which is again, these are really hard things to do. Like I'm just trading one set of difficult problems for another.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:12:06.520
I realize this. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 01:12:07.800
But you know, I wanna take the less traveled path. Um, and I want to go with what I know. And these are much closer to things I know. And so we do, you know, I want that pre-order campaign. Okay, once I've got that out. Then you know I've got my PR campaign. Like now I really know if this is gonna work. Does this have legs? From there, how do you scale? I don't know. Like at that point, you know, I've got new problems. I'm probably gonna have to find someone to assist me.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:12:32.420
No, what I'm disappointed in, you didn't uh plug your app for it. Crowdfunder, oh my gosh, yes.
Kurt Elster • 01:12:36.900
Of course. Yeah, we have crowdfunder for that's why Mike, I'd read a pre-order campaign. To me, it's obvious.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:12:41.860
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I used to do a lot of work with um Indiegogo and Kickstarter back in the day. We did a couple of campaigns where we did over $2 million in 24 hours.
Kurt Elster • 01:12:52.760
Oh, that's a I mean, crowdfunding's tough. 2 million and 24 hours is huge.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:12:57.420
Yeah, that's when we did paid marketing and all of that. And I think those are campaigns that actually burnt me out because Is there a virality effect? You gotta do it in 24 hours, or otherwise you just drop into that algorithm and it's hard to get people's attention. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm a big believer in it. And I think even companies that I think underutilize pre-ordering and product launches and maybe even using your app the that are established. I think people just roll them out, but you can kind of create this buzz with pre-orders and things like that too. Um there's a social component to it.
Kurt Elster • 01:13:29.320
Yeah. You know, like I can see that uh how many other people are engaging with this.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:13:33.640
Yeah, yeah. So I think that's actually another big thing and and I think it's which worked really well. Uh Jimmy who uh uh found his Senlane, uh we did a
Kurt Elster • 01:13:44.160
had a podcast, we shut it down now, but he always spoke about Yeah, you had the the Awesome Podcast, ASL.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:13:49.040
Yeah, the awesome podcast.
Kurt Elster • 01:13:50.240
That was a good I like the concept.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:13:51.680
Thank you. Thank you. A lot of work. Um but uh he always uh advocated for doing product launches for Black Friday instead of doing sales.
Kurt Elster • 01:14:02.380
Which is very m that's like uh going against the grain.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:14:06.059
Exactly, yeah. And it works well um for for some brands, but it's something you have to test and see if it works for you
Kurt Elster • 01:14:12.440
For sure. So if someone needed help or wanted to get a hold of you, where do they go? Where can I learn more about Amer and Prella?
Amer Grozdanic • 01:14:21.000
Uh I mean Prella. com P-R-A-L-L-A. com. Um A lot of people, by the way, ask, uh, what does this stand for? It comes from Latin, prolatus, which means preferred or best, and Ella in Greek means come with, come, please come with the best, um, humbly, um, but Uh yeah, I mean you you you can find us there. Um I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, not so much on X. Um but honestly for me and uh I say this a lot. Um Which I mentioned, the community built test. So like if people reach out to me, it's not always about you come work with us payers for stuff. If I can be of help to point somebody in the right direction, I always do that as well. And um some of actually our best clients came that way because We gave him free help and later on they saw value in something else and we gotta work together. But um yeah, uh whatever whoever listens to this, if they have a question about something and they think it can be helpful, um it doesn't have to be in an engagement level, but just as a community contributor, more than happy to do so.
Kurt Elster • 01:15:21.000
I am so glad that you made the trip out to Skokie, Illinois today. Uh I'm glad uh we're here. We're able to do this in person and face to face. I think it leads to a better result. And I say this only for someone who's listening and is a fellow Shopify partner. Or a merchant just goes, you know what, I think I could do that. And I'm going to be in Chicago. You know what? Reach out. You know, go on uh unofficialshopipodcast. com. There is a a guest application link up there so anyone can reach out and get a hold of us Um and um man, if you want to record in person, that really ups your chances. But Amer Rasdanik Prella, thank you so much.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:15:57.280
No, thank you. And just one last thing for me. Uh thank you um for tr trailblazing the community. Uh I think uh a lot of people don't realize the contributions you made for people like myself. And uh yes, yes. Um it's uh I'm grateful for it. Uh and when I say community help us build something, I think you were one of those contributors. Um we didn't know each other, but I listened when you spoke. So cheers to that as well.
Kurt Elster • 01:16:24.920
Thank you. Thank you so much. Been my day. Yeah, of course. Hey, before you go, I was hoping you would check out our new app, Promo Party Pro. It is what I want to be the single best, easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify. We just put it live in the App Store. We've got less than 50 users. We want your feedback. So if you need to run a free gift with Purchase Promo in the near future, install it, try it. There's a live chat. I check that all the time. And so if you have any issues at all, you know, or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use, let us know. We're happy to help. If you want to try it, search promo party in the app store. Promo PartyPro is the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial.
Amer Grozdanic • 01:17:08.900
Thanks