#118 with Harley Finkelstein (Shopify's President) - Why You Should Drop Out Of School and Start a Shopify Store

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to Uh I put my all in it like no day song On a roll less travel never looking back We are here, we're live. Harley, what's going on? Um Sean, how are you?

I'm doing great. Hey Sean, hey Sam, good to good to be here. We're gonna get to intros in a second. apologies if my internet is gonna suck. I um I'm recruiting this guy Who lives in Philly to be a writer at my company and I'm currently living in New York, but like he was like, you know, I'm not sure. So I just got in a car and I went and rented a hotel for two days and I just showed up at his house and I was like

to recruit him and convince him to join my company. And uh so that's kinda why I'm at this hotel. I used to do fake I I used to do fake trips by the way to Seattle. Like just fate like I I I had to be in Seattle. So I I'll just be in town and uh and actually uh the person that runs Ecosystems probably the greatest leader I've ever recruited, uh came from one of those meetings where every year for like three years I would just happen to be in Seattle and we'd happen to have breakfast and eventually he's like, All right, I'm ready to jump ship. So um I get it. Yeah, so I did one of those trips and I booked the hotel for two nights because I was like, If he doesn't say yes the first day I'm for sure here the second day, so I'm gonna show up again. Totally.

So we're here. Well the trick is if you can get the uh the partner, significant other out with you to the dinner, it's you know, it's a done deal. Cause I used to talk to um that's what we did. You did that. Yeah, exactly. So I talked to Scott Harrison, who's the he's a co founder of Charity Water. And his big thing was he's like trying to recruit world class talent to come work in a nonprofit. And he's like, how do you convince somebody to leave their, you know, million dollar job at at Google and like, you know, come work for one tenth of that for me and like save the world? And so I used to he'd always be in San Francisco. We'd catch up and I'd be like, So what are you in town for? And it's always that. He was like I'm taking, you know, the person I want and their husband or wife out to dinner and

I'm gonna tell them, you know, the Steve Jobs line of like, you know, stop selling sugar water and let's you know come change the world. And It's pretty effective, I gotta say. He was closing a lot of good people. It works. I mean, the key to this whole model is you have to be so long term, right? If you're gonna be at a company or you're gonna be running your business for only a year or two, you can plant those type of seeds. But when you sort of use a tenure or To be honest with you, I I use a hundred year horizon on most of the stuff we do at Shopify and most of the stuff I do personally, which I know sounds extreme, but it's it's a good lens to use. You begin to say it doesn't matter if I don't close this person or get this person for a year or two or three, at some point this may work itself out. And and and it it it it always does. And so we should explain. So Harley, you are Um, the big dog over at at Shopify, I think that's the official job title. Some people call you the COO. Um, how long have you been there? So you said you're taking a long term view. When did you join Shopify?

Yeah, so um I joined Shopify uh eleven years ago. I was one of Shopify's first merchants. I was born in Montreal, in Canada, grew up in South Florida, and moved to uh Montreal to go to McGill when I was 17. That was two thousand one. Um, frankly the world you know, went sideways in September 2001, um, mark stock markets crash and my parents lost everything. And I sort of became an accidental entrepreneur through that process. I wanted to support myself and wanted to help my parents and sort of a t-shirt business, started making t-shirt for universities.

A mentor of mine convinced me to go to law school. Um not to become a lawyer, but to become a better entrepreneur. He His hypothesis was that it would provide me. It'd be like finishing school for entrepreneurship. Teach me how to write, how to think, how to be more articulate. And he happened to be teaching law.

at the University of Ottawa in two thousand five. And so I applied to one single law school. It was Ottawa. and moved to the University of Ottawa and had no friends or family here in town, started to look for where the entrepreneurs hung out. met Toby. He was transitioning from being a snowboard entrepreneur to being a software entrepreneur. And uh I ended up uh opening one of the first stores on Shopify uh in 2006. And that was a t-shirt? It was a t-shirt shop, yeah, uh licensed t-shirt shop. Uh and I finis law school, I made made some money with a t-shirt shop, helped my mom and sisters and supported my family. And then in 2009, I was practicing law in Toronto for all of 10 months and hated it. That was the worst thing ever. And I called Toby and I asked him uh if I can come join him and and and a couple others, mostly engineers, and sort of was the first non-engineer at the company. And uh I'm now actually the the president of Shopify. Uh and it's been uh it's been an amazing life.

Seven days ago. Like a second ago, yeah. Just just just uh changes. Thank you. Uh and it's been uh it's been the ride of of a lifetime and and frankly, it's What's neat and and I'm sure I know you guys talk a lot about this, but the My My my mission, my personal mission and my sort of professional mission are exactly the same. I think entrepreneurship is the greatest tool for uh freedom and for independence in the world. And it was out of touch for for most people for very, very long time, and Shopify tries to level the playing field so that anyone can do it.

And on a personal level, uh, my wife and I, who are both entrepreneurs, we also try to do that as well. So It is um It's uh it's it's truly my life's work. What what how how into the business is it Toby, right? That's the founder's name? Yeah, Toby. How into how far along was he into the business when you worked we started with him full time? Uh but

Three or four years. Do you know how in like in terms of in terms of employees, uh any numbers you can give? Uh sub sub fifteen or s you know, certainly sub twenty. Um and It was mostly the the the interesting story was so so Toby had moved to Canada. Um Because he met a girl.

Uh good reason to move from Germany to Canada. And when you move to Canada I think it's the same in the US. As a new immigrant, you can't just get a job. You you don't have any working papers or You're missing the the uh the documents to actually get a get hired a real job get hired. But someone had told him that

Okay, you can't get a job, but you can totally start your own business. And so being in Canada, he decided he was sort of snowboard shop. And this is two thousand four. In 2004, there were two ways to sell something on the internet. The first way was you put it on a marketplace, uh, like an eBay or a uh an Etsy A or Amazon. I I don't know if Amazon was doing third party sellers at that point, but you can use another person's marketplace and It was very inexpensive to do that.

Uh, but you effectively rented customers from those marketplaces. So you didn't really build your own brand, your own business. And the other way was you'd go to GSI Commerce. If you remember those companies, or um Hybris or uh company like ATG Magento, you go to these big enterprise companies and for like a million bucks, you build an online store. He didn't have that kind of money. But he was also one of the Ruby core members uh building Ruby on Rails with people like DHH and some others. And he ended up falling in love with Ruby on Rails and deciding to build a piece of software to sell these snowboards. And that was two thousand four. And by two thousand six, uh it was

Clear as clear as day that The snowware business was a good idea, but the software business was a great idea. And that's around the time where I met him and he started uh enabling or allowing others to use the software to be start their own businesses and uh And I joined a couple years after that. And when you jo when you join like an early company like that, oftentimes there's like not like a clearly defined role, especially if you're not non engineer. It's like hey, there's a bunch of shit that we need done and it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. W is that how it was at that time? Was it kind of I I actually um

The the advice or the the insight I I give to folks who are thinking of starting early stage company who don't necessarily have who are not an engineer or uh a designer or product manager or something like that is just make yourself as valuable as possible. Forget Everything you think you are, just find ways to add value. And um I was I was technically a lawyer. I had built a number of of

businesses both online and offline. Um, and I we didn't have a CFO then. We had no CMO then. I remember uh within a couple of months of joining we raised our first our series A. It was from Bessemer, Bessemer led it. It was a seven million dollar round. And uh I think it was a twenty five million dollar Pre or post. I can't remember, but I was like, look, I'm gonna figure out a way to like help raise this series A. I'm gonna figure out what what what that means, how what that takes. Um I was, you know, furiously, you know, looking up what is a liquidation preference. It turns out it's a pretty important thing to know what what it is. Um, but that was it. It was it was really

It was just add as much value as I possibly could. And it was only much later when we hired you know a CFO and a chief marketing officer that it became clear where I want to spend my time, which really was both on the storytelling side of Shopify, make sure the world knows but that Shopify exists. So on the gross side on the um on on the uh You know, PR side of things, but also internally focus on a commercialization, uh, which is uh for me now things like our growth team, our sales team. And got to build a Shopify platform, which is cool and Shopify plus and and I've just got to do some really neat things. So I I w the other day I was reading'cause um Bessemer who invested, they have this memo that they put out. Uh they put out a bunch of the historical memos of like what they said at the time they invested. And these are this is something that Sean's obsessed with. He'll go back and read like

The f yeah. The founding letter of eBay or something like he loves or like internal email. But like instead of dinosaurs, it's businesses. I got this idea about this like marketplace. What do you think? Right. So so I dug up the fossils here. They you know they put it out there, which is pretty easy, but it's there's a couple of it really interesting things I wanted to to ask your opinion on. So Um, so like you said, they invested um, you know, the series A and they put this little chart on their memo. If you want to see it, just go to bvp.com slash memos. And um They say, you know, what are the possible exit scenarios? So they'll say, like, you know, it could be a zero, you know, if they burn through cash and they mismanage it and they can't return, you know, the money. Um, they give it a twelve percent chance of of a zero outcome.

Uh, and then they gave it, you know, a twenty eight percent chance of a fifty million dollar outcome. And at the top of the range they had was a four hundred million dollar exit they thought would take six years, and they thought, uh, there's a three percent chance that they can that they can reach this mark. And you know, looking at it right now, Shopify market cap is One hundred and twenty n basically one hundred and thirty billion dollars. And so um exceeded, you know, even the Their grand scenario is four hundred million. A hundred hundred thirty billion is sort of like out of the, you know is out of this world compared to what they were expecting. Um and I think this goes to show that even really smart, savvy investors who have seen many, many deals. Those are some of the best guys in the business, right? Best the best for team. Those the like that's a next level team. Exactly. And so, you know, our ability to forecast and project these category leaders and growing markets is is so, so poor. And in fact, in some ways what you did, I think was a much better way to guide your intuition, right? Or just follow your intuition, which is like

Hey, I've had this problem before. I use this thing. I think more people are gonna have this problem. Let me jump right in and just see w how much value we can create out of this. And that that was w for me sort of my own sort of holy shit moment. Uh when I when I when I realized that Shopify was something much more than a software company was Um, when I moved from undergrad, when I moved from Montreal to Ottawa to go to law school, um, undergrad, as you all know, you don't have to show up for class. Right. You can just jump for the exam, you pass, you're all good.

And that worked great for me because I was I you know I was running a t shirt business and I spent all my waking hours running this little this little business. Law school uses this gradic method and you're required to actually be there. So The t shirt business, the wholesale business just didn't scale properly. And so I needed a way to make money concurrently while I was in class without having to leave class.

And the that the moment where um I I had some relationships in the teaching industry because of the wholesale business. And I set up this little online store. It's called Smoofer, which was a nickname of a law school buddy of mine. This was sort of in the Zappos days where we all sort of people were creating uh business names and brands that were kind of random words it really meant nothing, so smoothers seemed fitting.

And I remember sitting in tax law class and I wasn't an engineer. I had very little experience at that point in in digital retail or retail in general. And I was able to build a store and my biggest competitor after a couple of weeks. was Walmart, Canada. And

It was great, I made some money, I was able to pay tuition and my my you know, help help the family. But the fact that I as a twenty one year old law student was able to build a company sitting in class that competed against the largest one of the largest retailers on the planet that that that time. That felt incredibly different. That felt like giving people with ambition these incredible superpowers, these magical tools in which they can go and take their two their ambition and turn it into something really, really big. And if I was able to do that and I was able to create independence, freedom, quote unquote success for myself,

Wouldn't it be great if we can do this at scale for at that point, thinking of a million merchants, which we have now, we've more than a million merchants. That would have been crazy, but I thought, hey, if we give this to 10,000 people, this would be So unbelievable. And what would happen if anyone who had a product or an idea or a craft or a hobby Was able to commercialize that thing and take it to a global audience. What what would that look like? And I don't think the the Bessmer letter uh memo was. was wrong by any means, but at that point

The total Just for Market. For people that needed An online store was very small. That's the first thing. Second of all, the Shopify product was Fundamentally an online store builder. We were effectively CMS with a checkout. We had some bells and whistles, but it was it was mostly just uh, you know, an online store builder.

And if you sort of fast forward till today The relationship that Shopify has with the million or more brands on Shopify, some are, you know, a lot of small brands, but also some really big ones, the Gymsharks and Allbirds and Bombuses and Tommy John Underwear of the World and Schwin Bicycles and Nestle and Procter Gamble. The relationship we have with them is that of we are their work. When someone says they're going to work in the morning and they're on Shopify, what they mean is they open up the Shopify dashboard. And the relationship we have with them today is. We've given out over a billion dollars of capital. So we're their banks in some cases. We have we helped them with shipping and fulfillment. We helped them with payments. Uh, we helped them with physical commerce as as as well as online commerce. And so there was no way to predict where Shopify was going unless you were inside of Shopify. where you were able to visualize or extrapolate, oh, wait a second, we can be more than just online commerce, we can be a retail operating system. We can also help with capital and shipping and fulfillment. Also, the addressable market is gonna be more than just the people currently looking for online stores. It's anyone that has

ambition, or it's anyone that wants to wants a piece of software that makes more money than it costs. And I think for that reason it'd be very difficult to to predict something like Shopify. Ten years ago. Well, how big did you um Like Let's say five years into your journey.

You you joined in two thousand nine, you said? Two thousand ten, yeah. Two thousand ten. Two thousand thirteen Do you remember your revenue? Th let's say your third year in, your fourth year in. Do you remember your revenue? I don't. Not not offhand. I mean, it was it was sub probably 100 million at that point. Um Uh or maybe close to that. Um that's

Great. Yeah, it I mean we we w we I mean I certainly knew we were on to something. I I sort of always had the you know, the twinkle in my eye that hey, there this is something really, really special. Wait, so you guys were doing a hundred million in revenue in year four. It's probably it's probably less than I I don't know the exact number, but so one cool thing with this memo is it has it for those earlier years. So oh nine, uh oh eight, oh nine, uh basically And it looks like oh eight was like a million dollars in sales revenue. Um, oh nine two and a half million, and then twenty ten predicted was five million at that time. So it's definitely sub hundred million. So I'm not even close to that point. Um but But you guys were struggling, right? We we uh struggling. I mean

I did not know I mean I I thought there was huge potential to this thing, but like any early stage startup. There is a sense of is this thing gonna completely did you sell shares along the way. Um Not much, no. Uh I I mean I I may have done a s very small secondary just to be able to uh afford a house when I got married. Uh but beyond that no. Um Amazing. And and I think that

Is a great question to ask because it does show sort of the confidence you have in the business. So yes, there was some traction and yes, we began to see that people were being successful, but it was actually Yeah. Watching stores that started on Shopify around their mom's kitchen table that grew to be Um, I remember there's a company out of San Francisco called Dodo Case. Do you guys ever remember Dodo Case? It was like this beautiful um leather bound iPad case.

And they started with us early, you know, at some point in twenty ten, and then Obama. took a photo of of of him holding his iPad with the dodo case. And I remember thinking Like This is a company, they make a great product, but what we have done is we've en we've enabled them to distribute it. At at scale.

And and and and including to the the president of the United States. And I remember thinking that Um This is real now. It is real that it it's not just a place to sell a product for a limited period of time or some sort of promotional product, but this actually enables more people to try their hand on entrepreneurship. And again It wasn't like

You couldn't do it. You could sell it on eBay, or you can sell a product. You know, you can build a store in Magento, but it was just out of reach for so many people. So the m the amount of people back in 2013. who self identified as entrepreneurs was so damn low. And it wasn't because they weren't ambitious. It was because they're just the tools just did not exist.

Sam, there's this uh dope quote that I think Toby said that I think is like one of the you know, like Does it involve rebels? Yes. So I was gonna say the exact same thing. I'm not gonna steer s thunder, but let me preface by saying Harley's got this like beautiful PC inspirational way of describing Like we're gonna empower these people. The best description of Shopify was described exactly how Sean's about to explain it. Which I I thought you guys wouldn't want like to militariz it, but it is the best way. I thought it was amazing. Uh basically he's uh there's a quote that he said where he was like, you know, Amazon wants to build a giant empire. And at Shopify, we want to arm the rebels, which is basically like, you know, give give each of the individual merchants the tools and abilities to to sell and have great shops on their own rather than become the one big mega shop of the world. And I thought be really boring, right? I I think as consumers. You know, one of the major things that I I'm I'm seeing now. In retail.

Sort of in in Kind of a uh a pandemic. Is one the the obvious the obvious thing which is that we've had like eight or ten years worth of in acceleration in digital commerce as a percentage of total commerce. Um

In the last like six months. So we've gone from like fifteen percent of of e commerce to total retail to like twenty five percent. Okay, that's cool. It's neat. But the bigger thing that I'm watching is Consumers. globally have unequivocally began to vote with their wallets to buy from independent businesses whenever possible.

And That's those are the rebels. And it's not that those rebels didn't exist. It's that now, if you are a business, you know, let's say you make the beautiful jewelry for your family and you decide this morning in the shower, I'm gonna start a business today and sell this jewelry. The fact that you can give consumers the same one click check-out experience that Amazon does, you can Offer really affordable shipping for two day shipping. You can get pricing on payments and late shipping labels that is similar to what the big guys are getting. That is only happening because of this arming the rebels thing. And and what really has happened is that.

Shopify, if you pretend for a second. That we are a retailer. We're not, they pretend for a second we are. We are the second largest retailer online retailer in America. After Amazon. The difference is that number three, number four, number five, that's like Walmart.com, Target, all these other retailers. They take those economies of scale and keep them for themselves.

Whereas because we're a platform. And because we're trying to arm the rebels. We actually can distribute all those economies to scale to entrepreneurs. So that today, starting on Shopify, you effectively get the same rates on all these things you need to run your business that the big companies were able to afford, and you get it day one. And that is the idea of Army the Rebels. That is how you level the playing field ultimately. Were you guys just sitting around hanging out, brainstorming, and you came up with that shtick, or did someone bring it to you, or did you read it? That's a beautiful Is that like an ad agency, you know, their million dollar retainer by the way. We don't believe in in ad agencies. I I I don't know where it where it came from, uh, but it certainly is resonating and sticking. And the truth is

The the rebels are winning. Like I think I think the greatest, you know, workout gear right now is Gymshark. I think the most comfortable pair of shoes I have is Alberts. I think maybe too much information, the best underwear is Tommy John. Like the stuff that I love, not because they're on Shopify, but because I think as a consumer I like high quality products, they're all independent businesses, aka rebels. So It isn't like I'm I'm supporting them from this philanthropic charitable um angle. I'm supporting them and I'm buying from because they have the best stuff. And I think that is

That is really great. So let's Let's g actually go down that path and You mentioned something earlier about Schwin bikes. I like Schwinn bikes because it's like a classic American brand. Uh one of my favorite entrepreneurs, Sam Zell, bought it.

And uh I don't actually know if he still owns it, but he's a real estate guy. And it's super interesting. If you had fifty million dollars to buy a brand right now and and And put'em on Shopify, what would you do who would you buy? Or invest in if you can't buy it outright. Mm-hmm. Uh so I'm speaking personally now, right? Harley. Um

I'm trying to think of some of the Worst experiences I've ever had online shopping. So here's the cool part of the Shuin story, to to your point about S about Sam or who you know, whoever owns it now. Um, Sam, I I I think The reason I love the Schwinn story is because Shwin Bicycles is a great brand.

It's iconic. People that have swin bicycles love swim bicycles. But It took you know, decades to convince them to go direct to consumer. І тук і тук, пандемік. to convince them to finally decide to create a beautiful direct to consumer online store on Shopify. Um

In the first week of Covid hitting, I remember Heinz catch up. Set up a store on Shopify to do Uh, direct to consumer in home condiment site. I think it's called Heinz at Home. Lynch Chocolate did the same thing. Snickers did the same thing as well. I think Pepsi did it, too. Yeah, I mean Pep we've had Pepsi Co Pepsi co brands on Shop of for a while, layers potato chips.com or something. Yeah, I don't remember exactly what what the domain was, but

The idea that These brands are are now going direct to consumer. Is great and also kinda weird. Why have they not been direct to consumer? Go back two hundred and fifty years. Think about the way that consumers purchased.

First of all, as a consumer The way the place you went to buy was the place where people congregated. So The town square in a small town. If you bought bread, you bought bread from the baker. And if you bought shoes, you bought from the cobbler. There was no intermediary there.

And then In eighteen seventy six, in Philadelphia, a guy named John Wanamaker. Created this Concept. called a department store.

It's called the Watermakers Department Store. And it was the first time that a bunch of different brands and a bunch of different products were all sold under the same roof. And it was a big store in in in in Philadelphia, which is I think where you are right now, right, Z? Yeah. Uh and I'm I'm sure there's some Wanamaker Street there as well. There's the Wanamaker Mile, you know the Wanamaker Mile. And After that happened after Wan Maker's department store launched,

you you effectively had this period of something in the neighborhood like a hundred and thirty years of incredible Intermediation. Where you had resellers of all other people's products. And I think the reason you had that was because

Distribution. was difficult. So if you were Do you guys know Boosted Board? Skateboard Company. I don't know. So if you were Boosted Board. And you wanted to get your hands uh into in your products into the hands of of consumers.

You had to put that into a store like a Best Buy because Best Buy had stores all over the country, all over the world, and that's how you do distribution. But then As the late nineties and early two thousands came around. The Internet completely democratized. And commodities distribution. Everyone had distribution. And so you would have expected very quickly everyone that was

being sold through an intermediary would have very quickly towards direct to consumer. And for the most part, a lot of them did, but but there were so many laggards. And some of our favorite brands, the brands that frankly, are iconic, um just did not take that route quick enough. So the fact that Shwin did that now and the fact that others have followed suit, that to me is um is amazing. I just I I wish that happened more Uh a lot more quickly. And now what happens when I see brands that

Or still not going direct to consumer, but I know that I want to purchase, particularly a fourteen or fifteen hundred dollar bicycle. Let me buy the thing. How could it be so difficult to buy for me to spend fifteen hundred dollars on a new three thousand bike? Um Let me think the brands that I think are Um Okay, my favorite T shirt in the world, and is he he's a friend, so he's probably gonna hear this, but my favorite T shirt in in the world is James Purse. I think James makes the greatest t shirts ever. Um And you can buy it off JamesPurse.com and it's an okay experience. I think it could be 10 times better if they were on Shopify. They don't have accelerated checkout. They don't allow me to use Shop Pay, which if you ever use Shop Pay, it's like the greatest way to purchase something online, or Apple Pay. They don't allow me to do 3D or AR uh fit fittings. Um

That is a brand personally that I would I would put money into. And if James needed my money, I would put money into there. That would be one. A second one would be I I think there's incredible um uh direct I think there's incredible amount of of demand right now, especially for high end wine online. And it is almost impossible, some because of regulation, but some just because of Frankly, laziness for these great wine brands to go direct to consumer. I don't know why that's taking so damn long. Uh, probably the next one I would say would be. Uh

I I think buying uh Apple's one thing, but buying electronics online, I don't know where to buy it from. I don't know exactly where I'm gonna get the best price or value. I don't know who's gonna send to me fastest. That to me creates confusion amongst consumers. Confus is bad. Which which which category of electronics? Well, I mean we talked earlier about my my setup. Uh if I want to buy a new DSLR Sony camera right now. Um, I would love to just go to Sony and buy it. But I can't. I I can't go to Sony. I have to go to

all these different stores and all of them at different pricing and all of them are gonna ship at different rates. But as a consumer, it creates a lot of it it creates a lot of confusion. And frankly, I may just end up not buying it at all. And that to me is is is is quite ridiculous. Yeah, I like that. Uh there's there's this theory of business that's like, you know, business goes through two trends, it's bundling and unbundling. And so and what you described about like shopping was basically that where it was. You know, initially unbundled, got bundled into a department store. is beginning it uh has begun to become unbundled on on the internet again as uh you know the retailers basically have direct relationships with their customers, but then there's also, you know, still at the same time, there's Amazon, right? And I think that one of the key trends here was Um

being able to reach your customers through essentially Facebook ads and um and and draw them to your website. Otherwise, you know, how the hell will they know that you exist? And so I think that was kind of the key. Give your favorite retail experience, right? Physical online physical retainance. My favorite physical retail experience is when I walk into a store and walking in, they know my size, they know that I'm walking in, they have things ready for me. It doesn't have to be high end even. It can be even a low end store that just has, you know, cool socks and knows that these are the socks I always love. One of the reasons that I'm not surprised to see massive closures from big physical retailers, especially those that did not have their own brands, is because they stopped adding value. Why do I have to walk into Barney's to buy a James Purse shirt when I can buy directly from James Purse. Well, I would do it and I would allow Barney's to share in the profit margin if they're adding some additional value to me. So maybe it's education, maybe they've curated something that I wouldn't have seen before. Maybe they help me, you know, find products and brands that I wouldn't otherwise see. But if they're just gonna sell the same thing I can get directly from the brand itself, they don't deserve the profit margin. And I think consumers have voted against that, which is why we see so many iconic department stores close down.

The company Gymshark is fascinating to me and and everything that we're gonna say uh the cool thing about um British companies is even if they're private, they have to reveal their revenue if they do above twenty million, I think, in revenue. Like you can go to Brit companieshouse dot com or something like that and look at it. Australia. Yeah. And uh it's it's great. And Gym Shark was like crazy profitable given how fast they're growing. And that they were like selling hard goods, which is is is rare. Besides Gymshark, which companies have you seen where you're like, Oh my gosh, if I

wasn't doing this, or if I had like a young friend and I wanted to tell him to go and start this business where you've just seen the margins and you're like, wow, this is this is shocking how good this is. Yeah. So first of all, I think um I think so Ben Francis is the founder of Gymshark is is is a friend and and I'm I I know that story well because I like I I I remember when Ben started that business and I've watched it grow. I've had a a a very close view um to that business. And the truth is, the reason that business is so great is because one, they have high quality products and two, they have a deep understanding of their customer base is. They're not if you if you look at Gym Shark's influencer program. And you look at

Um Another company's, you know, a bigger company that's more established influencer program, it's totally different. One feels transactional and one feels like a real relationship. And you can see that, I mean, even inside a Gymshark, the ratio from influencer reps to the influencer is very, very small because there's an intimate relationship. And so anyone that is promoting Gymshark. On social media has a deep connection to Gymshark. They know Ben. They've spoken to Ben. They've talked about uh products that are coming out. And I think they've done it. uh in in a much better way. You know, one company that doesn't get a lot of uh doesn't get enough attention, but it's an amazing business is Fashion Nova. And if you know that that that business, um so Richard started Fashion Nova out of Los Angeles. Fashionova has done Such a great job to the extent that

If you look at Fashion Nova right now and you go there tomorrow, the inventory turnover is massive. It's mostly made in in Los Angeles. And the way that they've created this sort of hyper Um Um, hyper fast fashion is remarkable. And Fashion Nova is a company that frankly is is is As prominent as any of the major fashion houses, and and Richard just started it in a very different, compelling way. I think a lot of the influencers that end up starting businesses, whether it's Kylie Cosmetics or it's Jeffree Star, who both started, you know, had had lives before their Shopify stores.

What people don't understand is actually how great of a business those folks have. They are not selling promotional products. Drake's OVO store, it's not a promotional product. The Yeezy store is not a promotional product. And I think. the the public in general views a lot of these Kylie cosmetic things as oh it's just a brand extension. No it's not. It's someone who deeply understands who deeply understands that space. In her case, it's cosmetics, or Jeffree Star. He was doing makeup tutorials for you know for years on YouTube, and decided I can make a better product than I'm currently using from Sephora. And then they go ahead and they produce it, they manufacture it, they design, they sell it themselves. And so I I they I I find a lot of those types of businesses, they get some attention. They're on the front page of fortune. People really think it's cool. But I think once you actually go a level a level deeper,

It's incredibly impressive what they've done. And then you can keep going. You can look at um, you know, what Tom has done with with Tommy John Underwear or the All Birds store, what Joey has done at Allbirds. I mean, these are companies that if if Let's actually this is a a good place to to pause on this. If Michael Jordan Started the Jordan brand today. He would own a hundred percent of it. Just like Yeezy does, just like Drake owns Ovieo, just like Kylie owns own Kylie Cosmetics. But because

the Jordan brand started in the mid eighties. He was a license or. of his brand to Nike. He received a royalty. The royalty was was was substantial, but he had no choice but to work with Nike on this deal because fundamentally Nike had the means of manufacturing and the means of distribution. That would that would be my answer to your question, Sam, of where would I put the 50 million is I would go to, you know, Zion Williamson or Luka Doncic or something, it's you know, the next NBA star, and I would say, Hey, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna don't don't just sign with Nike. Um your business, own your brand. I will put up the money and let's let's go direct to consumer. Let's own the relationship with the with uh with your customers and rather than just licensing your face and your name and to someone else, right? Who who then controls it indefinitely.

And then they can cut you when you hurt your knee, you know? And But that's not like new. That's not like new. Like isn't that what O Media Oprah Uh what uh you know, what's her thing called? Oh something. Uh That's not crazy new. That isn't new, except for the fact that the s the the scale that they're at right now is new. The amount I mean that we've never seen a scale before. I had uh I I I this is cool and I'm not trying to name drop but it's it's it's a really neat story. Name drop.

I have a relationship with this guy, uh, Marchon Lynch, Beast Mode. Yeah. And so I get to spend some time with him. He's a really cool dude and and um Uh, he's done amazing things for his community in Oakland, but he's also a great entrepreneur. When we talk, we do not talk about the N the NFL contract, which I think was you know, ninety million dollars or something. We talk about Beast Mode apparel, which is a Shopify store. And he is as excited, I mean, especially now that he's not playing football anymore, with Beast Mode as he was with his other life. And the reason was beast mode one, he owned 100% of. He was not at the beck and call or at the helm of of the NFL or of the team. He was able to employ a ton of people in his community and his family.

What I think is unique about these businesses and having this like this idea of a hundred percent ownership is that it moves the power and balance from the big company to the actual person behind it, to the brand behind it. And you're right. You know, Sam, that that this is not necessarily new as a concept. Oprah has been doing it, others have been doing it for a while, but no one has done it at this scale. So that, you know, Drake, for example, may have a bunch of hits coming up, or he may not have any more hits, but OVO apparel is its own thing now that It is tied indirectly to him having hits and him being a great brand, but You know, the collaboration through with Canada Goose, I mean it's one of the most well, you know, one of the most popular winter jackets is the Ovio jacket. Who would have thought that Drake, a kid from Toronto, would be making one of the most popular winter jackets, and that that brand is not a one time thing, but has incredible longevity. And when you contrast that with like going to a concert when you were 13 years old and you went to whatever concert you went to and you bought you know a t-shirt at the stand,

It was like a Gildan kind of crappy t shirt with the two gates on the back. We have gone so far from that. And that means I think that All that to be said, actually, that I think what we're seeing is everyone is now turning into an entrepreneur. And that I think is really cool. Sean, do you know anything about f so our audience, Harley, it's like I actually think it's eighty five percent male. It's probably all dork's like me and Sean. Um so they probably don't know too much about Fashion Nova. Sean, do you know anything about Fashion Nova? Uh I I've I've studied it a little bit, but go ahead. Sounds like you have something good.

So for the guys out there listening. Fashion Nova, if you're a fool and ha live underneath a rock. It's basically I don't know how to describe it, it's like fast fashion. It's almost like H and M or something like that, or uh Forever Twenty One online. Born on Instagram basically feels like Born on Instagram. But

The guy Uh I'm here. The guy who started it, I think he's a An Iranian uh immigrant or I forget where he's from. Somewhere in the Middle East, his parents starved. Persian. His parents started like a

One of those like just kind of boring shops on the corner, nothing special that sold clothing. And he goes, No, no, no, no, no. We can make this a little bit better. So he started doing and he sponsors basically Cardi B was like his big sponsors. And he sponsors tons of people just like Cardi B. And it's like it's like the world hip hop, what's it called, uh what's it hip hop? What's it called? World Star Hip Hop. World Star Hip Hop crowd, which I love. And I follow, and it's like that same crowd. And here's how I knew he was crushing it. He owns one hundred percent of the business, and about three years ago, when they still were small. I read in TMZ that he bought a twenty million dollar mansion in LA. A Vichy he boug he bought a Vichy's house. Yes, and the best way to find out or the easiest way to find out if a private company is crazy profitable is by looking at the real estate holdings of the owner. It's hands down the best like is the best way. If you don't know anything. Maybe you you don't know you don't know how big the mortgage is. Uh you don't know the economics. But actually one of the things you said is act is super interesting. So let's say Cardi B.

So Cardi B now is like you know, it's huge and and everyone would wish that they had a partnership or a brand affiliation with Car D B. But Richard The genius of Richard is that he discovered Cardi B before anyone even talked about it. And he he planted these seeds, these small investments, with people that he thought. had the potential to be the next biggest popster in the world.

And because of that, what you end up with is a relationship between Fashion Nova and Cardi B that is unlike any other relationship from any other brand because Richard was part of Cardi's story. He was there when and and gave her money and he gave her Um assistance and support when no one else would. And I think that's That to me is is is one of the traits of an amazing entrepreneur. They see something that no one else did. Now Pepsi can come in today and just overpay, but Cardi is never going to give the same type of Attention, care, love. um and promotion to Pepsi as she's going to give to fashionometer Richard. And I I I love that. I think I think that is is that's really that's the highest. Is it crazy to say that fashion would I be a

I don't know how to ask this because I know you're not able to say, but I imagine Fashion Nova's in the five hundred Is between five hundred million and a billion in revenue. I I can't can't give out individual merchants uh uh revenue because it's it's not my revenue, it's their revenue. But uh but they've done incredibly well. And and more importantly, though. It's

They have longevity. There's staying power to this thing. This isn't a one and done type of thing. That's the reason why I love talking about the Albert story so much, because frankly, they only have three or four SKUs, but there is the staying power of it. But what is the What is the common denominator across all of these great DTC brands that I think are are are leading in their categories in some cases have become the incumbents. Is it They're using modern retail techniques. Um, if you ask Joey from Allbirds whether or not they're online or offline, he's like, who cares?

If you go to my store and you're trying to pair of shoes and you complete the purchase in store or online, it doesn't matter to me. It's all just retail. The future of retail is about consumer choice. So however a consumer wants to buy is okay for them. If you talk to the Best Buy CEO and you ask them about their channel conflicts, which is a real thing inside of Best Buy, they will talk about the fact that online commerce hurts offline commerce. Excuse me? Like what? Offline commerce, it's all just commerce. If I decide to go into if I was the CEO of Best Buy, I would shrink all my stores down and make them almost almost like FAO Schwartz playground playgrounds. I'd play with the stuff, I'd try the cameras out, I'd, you know, do use the use the products, and then I'd go home and buy the buy the products on my iPad.

That's the way I'd want to purchase. But Best Buy, because they use a more traditional view of retail, which is there's online, there's offline, unfortunately it doesn't lend itself well to consumer preference in 2020. So what are okay, give me uh let's play a little game called overrated underrated. So I I can tell from from from what you what you talked about a second ago, I would say that maybe underrated is a trend where um influential people owning their own brands and going direct to consumer, right? Beast mode, uh, you know, the George County with his album. I think a lot of people think it's just a marketing ploy or some sort of like promotion process. I would say it's equally rated. It's it's perfectly rated properly now. Uh in our crowd it's rated properly now, but I would say and and mainstream it's still not the mainstream behavior, let's put it that way, right? Well you you don't see them raising money, you see very few IPOs and they're like there like there is a t it is a tough time if they actually do want to access the public market.

Unless they spAC. Um so so uh so there's and there's different categories, right? So like it's happening it happened in alcohol, like right, Connor McGregor with his whiskey, George Clooney with his whatever, and then there's beauty where Rihanna's doing it, Kylie's doing it, et cetera. There's shoes uh that we're talking about where you know, whether it's Yeezy or what I was saying, which is like kind of like athletes not not going with the behemoths and maybe doing their own thing, kind of like what LeVar Ball tried to do, but like if that actually worked. And so there's more categories. So let's say that's underrated where that trend's gonna continue and it's gonna grow and it's gonna go into more categories, right? Like maybe Richard Branson should have his own wine uh and he should create his own direct to consumer wine brand, and that should be a great thing, but you know, billionaire wines. And um What's overrated? So maybe I don't know, like what's your take on drop shipping or like some of the other trends you're seeing in online rescue online where you think maybe the hype has exceeded what you think is the true value or longevity of it of it. I actually think it's gonna be controversial, maybe for you and and for your listeners, but I think drop shipping is being completely misunderstood. Completely misunderstood.

Drop shipping. Is a process improvement for retail. That is all it is. And I think the fact that there's so many videos about dropshipping courses and we're all inundated with advertising to think about drop shipping and uh the courses thing is is, you know, you see it everywhere. But drop shipping. Uh d do you guys know that the um uh the the brand movement watches MVMT.

Yeah, but I'm good buddies with Jake. Oh, you know J okay, so I I know Jake really well too, and Cramer and they're they're amazing guys. I've known them since almost almost day one. They actually won one of our build a business competitions years ago. Probably your first big s hit Your first big success, right? Uh I wouldn't say for Big, certainly ones that got a lot of attention because they got bought by Mavato and there was sort of a whole story to it. Um

They started with a drop shipping business originally. And it was only once they figured out, wait a second, there's a market for this thing that they then began to design, manufacture, and and more and vertically integrate. Would they be here today had the concept of dropshipping not exist? No, because they'd never they were there, as you know, uh Sam, they were in their dorm room. There was no way for them to actually produce these products without a drop shipping model. Drop shipping allowed them to access entrepreneurship in a capital light way, and then they were able to expand to it. Um, there's a there's a soccer store that uh I forget the name of it right now, but the the guy started it was a soccer blog.

And he had a really good following. He's talking about uh basically, you know, Champions League soccer. And he ended up just as an experiment going on Oberlo, which is a drop shipping app that that that we we we purchased a couple of years ago. And he found a bunch of soccer balls in Oberlo and he just started posting them and and Within like three weeks, you realize, wait a second, these people that are reading my blog also want to purchase products. And so he comp he changed his business model just away from blog. Blog became secondary thing, the retail thing became the the main business. And he started manufacturing his own soccer balls and it's a huge success now. So I actually think drop shipping is probably um is on the other side of the category, which it's just misunderstood. Is there too many drop shipping courses? Probably. I I I don't know. I I have no data on that. I know objectively speaking. It feels like there's a lot of drop shipping courses, but as a as a business model. It's very, very effective. And I think that um so I think that's one. I actually one that is overrated is is making masks. I think that there's enough masks out there. Um if you're making a y a new unique mask or you're making great you know, unique hand sanitizer, um, that's probably you that has its own positioning and is different. I can see it.

you know, g doing well, but I think there's a lot of masks out there right now. Um I think something's underrated is people taking a skill set they currently have. And that they're really good at something that's unique to them. And actually selling a course around that skill set or selling some hit that helps people acquire that skill set. Uh I remember looking at um like do you guys know Justin Guitar from YouTube, like amazing way to learn a guitar. There is a a a grandmother in in in Italy who has a Shopify store. Um, and we can put this in the show notes. Uh if you guys do that, I can save the link. That she was doing um

courses when tourists came to her little village in Italy, she would teach them how to make homemade delicious pasta. And it was really cool and worked really well, but COVID hit, Italy got hit first, she had to pivot, and she ended up starting a Shopify store where she sells um Lessons on how to make pasta. I think that. So many people are sitting around trying to figure out a ways to commercialize their hobby or try to make some money, supplement their income. And they actually don't realize that the thing that they could make money with is this is the is a skill set they already have. I think that's completely underrated right now. You mentioned buying an app.

I meant I I I did you mean is what you were implying was like a Shopify um plugin? Yeah. Is that what you guys call you c you call them apps. Yeah. Um Uh well, you know, our good friend Andrew, who uh is on the show all the time, I think he started this thing called WeCommerce, and it's all about buying those businesses. Uh I have a I know another know of another guy named Saeed Saed. That does that as well. He owns um

But he does it for WordPress and Shopify. What uh apps Don't exist that should exist. Or the Shopify ecosystem. Uh whew. The neat part about the ecosystem is that because we have so many we have more than a million stores and we have so many different verticals.

Um There isn't one You know. Like there isn't one particular thing that everyone needs. So the way we view we view the app ecosystem is as follows. Shopify's core offering will we give to everybody. is what most people need most of the time.

It satisfies the majority of people's product market. Requirements. But every single business has particular needs that So you may have a sneaker store. It's a US based sneaker store, but your primary market is Europe. And so what you make what you may require is some sort of application that does a very quick conversion from US shoe sizes to uh Italian or European shoe sizes.

We probably would not build that into Shopify because it's a niche market. But that is where the opportunity exists for someone to come in and build that for that particular vertical. Um Sometimes when And and that's a dynamic definition of most things most of the time. For a long time

Email marketing was something that we left to the app, so we had almost every email marketing app in the ecosystem. Uh and and a lot of them did really, really well. At a particular point, we realize that email marketing is so important that it now qualifies. It's crossed the threshold for most people most of the time. And now Shopify has email marketing built in. Now, what we do in those cases, we go to the app developers. And we're very clear that.

Hey, we're gonna be building this thing'cause it now fits our definition of what should be in the Shopify Core offering, but here's the room that you have to continue to build on top of. And I think because of that, because we have that type of relationship with our ecosystem, it means there's always room for more people to make money. But there isn't one thing that you can go to you can say, well, um, you know, right now, uh, there is uh Meal kits or groceries becoming a real niche for us. Well, grocer was never a vertical for shop, like it is now. There's probably 10 things that grocery stores need. To run a really successful Shopify store that Shopify is not providing. And

Uh, that's where that's what you should build on. And actually, that's one of the reasons why looking at the Shopify user communities, our forums. being on social media and asking Shopify merchants what they need to make their business better is a really great way to figure out what you should build next for Shopify. And um And we we don't often uh buy those apps because we we believe in in in in an independent um app ecosystem, but every now and then with something like Oberlo or Kit, um, there's a couple others as well, or handshake, it feels like bringing them into the fold is the right thing for us to do. I have a very selfish question. So the h at the hustle We've got close to two million subscribers.

It's amazing. So cool. It's cool. And People have asked us to sell stuff. I always I'm like, uh it's it's so This is such a big pain in the ass. I don't want to do this.

Um, because it's not our business. Our business is content. But earlier you said something where like, yeah, this these people switched from content to commerce and it worked out quite well. What should the hustle sell? Mm. It's a great idea. It's a great question. Um I don't I I I I know you you know, I know your audience is not only

Incredibly um Engage but Uh They also like to talk about the hustle. I mean, that's how I found out about about it and what you guys are doing with with the podcast. I would actually

uh ask your audience what is the thing that that they need the most and then work from there. So at the beginning bef sort of before we started rolling, we talked about a uh video and and audio. You and I are both using the SMB seven mics these sure mics. Um They are clearly the best microphones to use for interviews like this or anything, uh anything w that that requires digital voice. Maybe you put together a package because a lot of your people that watch the hustle are probably running their own businesses. They're probably startup entrepreneurs and they probably are on video hangouts all day long. And if there is a way for you to put together a package for$250 that comes with a better camera, a better microphone, and a better setup.

that may be something that works really, really well. Alternatively you may actually decide that you want a physical book, like actual trees, actual paper book with one thing or 10 things that everyone said on the podcast that you think could be very compelling. Um, one of the things we talked about is uh, you know, Sean, we talked about overrated, underrated, maybe there's something that you have that, you know, it's it's a beautiful notebook that has Ideas that are overrated and underrated. And so as an entrepreneur thinking of starting a new business, you start to write down all your ideas and diarize them. That's the cool part of what I think what you should not do is take a shitty t shirt and write the hustle on it because that to me is commoditized. I think what you should do is think about wait a second, who are the people that are using uh that are listening to us that love the hustle? Okay, great. They're all sitting in front of the computer all day long. Maybe the AV kit is what we should be doing. But I think that is how more folks should be thinking about how they take a content brand.

and commercialize it into more physical product and Um I don't necessarily think there's there's something that I I don't think you can do that in the wrong way. Um I uh I've been loving m my ember mug. I never thought I'd like an ember mug, but actually sitting in front of computer like that, the ember mug is amazing. My coffee is always warm. Like maybe it's a collaboration in the hustle and Ember, and actually maybe this particular Ember mug you convince them to have a double battery because people that listen to uh this podcast

are just you know, they go hard and they're always in front of their computer and they don't want to that battery to die. That's the type of stuff I would think about. Well goddamn, maybe you just made me some money.

I hope so. That's why I came I came on to to to to to try to convince the hustle to become a retailer and a merchant. And um And that's actually the cool part about what we're seeing around COVID, that that grandmother I talked about in Italy, she became a merchant. These restaurants in New York City, uh, you know, you probably see tons of them, Sam, that have become Um merchants. They weren't merchants, they were restaurants. We had a guy advertise with us it was uh oh uh uh Mr. Holmes Bakery or something or Mr. Holmes Bakery in San Francisco. I don't know if you saw but they made bakery stuff and then like they were the first ones like we're gonna sell banana bread mix.

And they jumped on that right away and they created a Shopify store and they advertised with us and we told we sold a shit ton of that for like like maybe thousands of kits. And they were the first people to hop on that banana bread train. And that is because they knew who their audience was. They had a deep understanding of the people that like their bakery also are the types of people that would like to make their own products, b bake their own bread. I I that is, you know, if you just put out some and said, hey, like here are three ideas of things we're thinking of making, tell me what you want. Um I will help you build a Shopify store uh myself if you'd like, because I just think the stuff is so damn cool. Uh but that's the type of stuff that's that I think works. I think where people get it wrong is they just create promotional product. And that is Trash for the most part.

So let me ask you a question. Five years from now, seven years, ten years, something like that. Um Will we still be shopping like the way we do today, where we, you know, we see some ads on social media or we get an email about a product, we go click, there's a website with a bunch of pictures as as a grid and you scroll, scroll, scroll, you click to check out, and then you, you know, you either one click check out or you type in your shit. Um Is that what shopping looks like seven years from now, ten years from now? No.

I I mean you're you're gonna have elements of that, but that's the neat part about modern retail or modern commerce right now is that So right now from Shopify, you set up a Shopify store, you can build your beautiful online store, you can take our point of sale product and sell in a physical store, but you can also push products to Amazon through through Shopify. You can push it to Walmart through Shopify. You can push it through eBay, to Pinterest, to house. Um more and more people are using uh augmented reality on Shopify, which which we have uh which we have built into the product. But if this was Five years ago or 10 years ago, we'd probably have a MySpace integration too to l to enable you to push to MySpace as well.

And obviously having a MySpace integration now would be completely useless. That I think is is the way to think about modern retail is that Wherever consumers are, that's where you need to sell. And so right now consumers are on social media. and consumers when it's not a pandemic or in physical stores, and they're certainly perusing online. And that's where you should sell. But if you are, um, we've an integration with a company called Reverb, which is out of Chicago, I believe. It's a it's a used musical instrument marketplace. If you're selling musical instruments on Shopify, you should activate the Reverb channel because that's where your consumers are purchasing. And if you are

Chip and Joanna Gaines who have Magnolia shop on shop. They got the that that big TV show fix wrapper. They sell a lot of their products using Shopify's uh Shopify's augmented reality because people don't want to go to Waco, Texas, but they want to know whether or not the couch is going to fit in their house. And so very simply from their Shopify store on your mobile device, you can easily natively from native from the native browser, you can see how that stuff fits. That is the neat part. So Now there are probably eight or ten channels that are primary channels, online being the biggest, physical retail being the second, and then all the other channels. There's probably, you know. Oh. Five to ten.

Primary channels. My hypothesis, my belief is that in 10 years from now, there's gonna be a bunch of whole other channels that we have not even thought about right now. And I think that is. the retailers and the brands that are going to be relevant then as they are now. will be agnostic to those channels. They don't they won't care that this channel is better than the other channel because they're gonna sell wherever the consumers are. Whereas the old school retailers and certainly the department stores, they cannot get over the fact that no one wants to come into their physical location. And so they they lament it. They they they they they're mad about that. And that's just not the way to run retail in the future. It isn't think about how you you all used to buy video games and you were a kid. You'd walk into a store at a particular time, you'd line up with the cash, you'd get the video game, and you go home. And that's because

The retailer was dictating to you. Shon and you Sam how to buy the the product But now you're like, I'm not buying that way. I'm gonna buy however I want. I'm gonna buy on my couch, on my iPad, or I'm gonna buy at a pop-up store, I'm gonna buy on Instagram or Facebook. That is the future retail. It isn't one channel over the other channel. Websites are going to be less it's none of that stuff. It's just about where consumer choice is. And if we want to be the most relevant company in retail in the future, as I I think we are now, we have to enable merchants to sell anywhere that where they have customers. Last question from me. Um, I know we gotta go. Do you

I think that running a public company and going public sounds like the worst thing on earth. Like it's just hell to me. You gotta report to people, you're everything's out in the open. Blink twice if Sam's correct. We know you can't say. I I I actually I mean I I can say I I've it's been it's actually been a really um interesting experience. I think it's been um for me on a personal level, I've actually really enjoyed it. The road show Was one of the most interesting two weeks of my entire life. We met

you know, a hundred different uh investors around the world. And I got to tell my favorite story, which is that of Shopify. Um, I find the the investors we currently have understand the, you know, for the most part, the long term vision of Shopify. Um, I think the fact that we can easily raise money to do All types of cool things. Uh that's gotten easier as well. I I I know that there is particularly as I talk to you private company entrepreneurs and and founders that there's this hesitation to go public and I I

Uh. I I'd love to spend more time talking about being a public company because I actually think that there's a lot of advantages to it. And if you have the ambition that certainly I have, and I know Toby definitely has it, that we want to build a hundred year independent business. Being a public company is a much easier way to do that. And it's a much more effective way to do that. Harley, I just gotta say thank you. This is our our Shopify store.

Yeah. My wife shop at the store. You made her a thousand bucks today. Thank you very much. I didn't do anything this time. She made a thousand dollars. Uh we just made it accessible. What did she sell? Uh she sells uh I can't talk about it on the prod on the on the podcast, but I'll DM you about it. Cool. That'd be awesome. No, I'm really curious what she sells, but I mean So the type of degenerates who listen to this sh show are badass and they're gonna if they heard what Sean was making, they would go and spin up something exactly like it on Shopify and probably make more money than he's making. Exactly. That's why I I o I have this rule which is before something's working, when it's just an idea phase, oh I tell the whole world about everything all my ideas. We have a podcast where we give away ideas for free. Uh but once something starts to work, you know, I zip it. And so uh that that's my rule.

Well thank you, uh, Harley. By the way, I Would have normally said this from the beginning, but your name is awesome. Oh thank you. You've got like one of the cooler names. Uh when I first heard about it you like years ago, whenever you guys were going public, I was like

Let's see what this guy looks like and you do not look at all like I thought you were gonna picturing. Yeah, like an old guy with like a beard, definitely like Jewish beard, like But like kinda fat. Like I think of Like a

Like a like a hairy I don't know. Harvey Weinstein. This is good. This is so I mean I I think this is a compliment. I it doesn't feel like one right now, but I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. Oh thank you. I'll take that. I'll take that. You're good looking and like hip. You got like what looks like a fancy cashmere hoodie on. You look badass. This is um this is call blue salt. Uh and it's like the most comfortable hoodies ever. It's at a California Shopify store. And uh these are the most comfortable shirts ever. So shout out to Blue S. Experienced a Sam compliment where he starts off being like you're awesome, and then he's like, I thought you were gonna totally suck and be fat and hairy. No, I know what it is. I know what it is. It's uh the guy from community. He's uh the guy who has the uh the uh the the perfume business. His name's uh It's similar to yours. You know I'm talking about

No community, sorry, parks and rack. Parks and rack. Okay, no, I I don't know, but I'm I'm gonna go look that up right now. Um, but thank you for for liking my name. And and honestly, uh I think anything that encourages and inspires more people to think about entrepreneurship and starting businesses and and and hustling is a really, really good thing. And so um I'm grateful that you help um people think about this stuff. The fact you give away business ideas and frankly most ideas you give away are probably million dollar companies. That is really cool. So thanks for doing that. That's that's that's that's awesome.

Harley, on one of my podcasts, we talked about how much uh how popular the genre of uh erotic fiction is and how women love to read, you know, Fifty Shades of Grey and a Little Bit Worse. And uh a listener took that idea, built a erotic newsletter for black lesbians. And started mi uh just sold it for I think like I don't know, a hundred hundred grand uh, you know, three months later. And that was uh that's my favorite success story. There's much bigger success stories from the group, but that's my favorite for all the reasons you can probably guess. Well, that's cool. Uh no, I'm I'm I'm look, I I'd love all those all your listeners to do their uh start their hustles and businesses on Shopify, but frankly, uh more entrepreneurs in the world is is a really good thing. Um we uh I think entrepreneurship is the greatest form of self expression. All right, kids, drop out of school, start a Shopify store. You heard it here first. Well, thank you again. This is awesome. And uh

We appreciate you're gonna have to come back again. Yeah, right off great. It's been a great honor. Thank you. Thanks, Harley.

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