032 | Aysnding with Carrie

Welcome to Commerce Famous, the biweekly podcast all about ecommerce and retail. In each episode, your host, Ben Marks, cuts through the clutter and takes you straight to the stories and experiences of those who shaped digital commerce as we know it today. While their names and faces might not be recognized on the street, each of Ben's guests are famous for commerce or commerce famous. Without further ado, your host, Ben Marks. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the show. This is your host, Ben Marks. And with me today is, someone I've, known about for a long time, met a couple times over the years, Carrie Weidenbach, cofounder and COO of Ascend, a, consultancy and agency. Is that correct? Is that the best way to to frame it?

Yeah. Absolutely. Perfect. I mean, based on your pedigree, that seems that seems appropriate. Right?

So we're gonna get right into it because you have, a long time career. I was surprised when I went looking through your LinkedIn to see, time, at Ford Motor Company, like, at the beginning of the February. Just real briefly, you were, you were doing procurement and, of of IT, so buying software, I guess that that assumes evaluation of of business needs and everything else. Can you just briefly go through that? Because that seems like a solid foundation to base a a a career in this business on.

Yeah. Actually, it was a very solid foundation. So, you know, Ford Motor Company buys the amount of IT and software of a small nation. I can believe it. I was I was one of 20, technical buyers there, And I bought things like peripherals.

So, like, back in the day, we would call those, like, handhelds, like, Palm Pilots and Blackpilot and all of the printers for Ford Motor Company. And then I also bought mainframes and mainframe software. So from something very little to something very, very big. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't doesn't quite fit in a closet, folks. These things were these things were large. Boy, compute really has come a long way in the last It really has. And it it was interesting.

Like, one of the projects I was on for Ford was, like, you know, the the first, Linux project. And, you know, back in the day, that was a that was a dangerous thing using operating systems without indemnification for a large corporation. No kidding. I'm actually I would I would say in that regards, Ford was probably ahead of the curve. Although it does remind me of an interesting story early on, and I think it was Magento that they went, you know, when they were just starting out, they were going to trade shows and showing their stuff off.

And everyone's like, wow. This is this is great. You know, by the way, we're from, you know, insert large manufacturer in Japan. Like, everybody knows. Like, yeah, we're using you, but we can't tell you.

You really should come up with, like, an enterprise program. You know? And then we saw in that business, we saw, you know, Red Hat come along and and really perfect you figure out the monetization on the services side. And, well, I guess That was actually a contract that I negotiated was with Red Hat and Ford because they were they were willing to offer some balance and some security for the company. And so early on in my career, I developed a love for open source and saw the potential in it.

Well, that that actually is a great I think that can that little theme can keep popping up in all of this. I mean, you you you, spent, many years, in in in other businesses. Feel free to bring those up in in, you know, in other roles. See scrum master in here. So, Mary, project project, you know, either you were laying the foundations for a project or you were making sure that project was was moving forward on plan.

Yeah. Yeah. After Ford, I worked at a company called entertainment publications, and you're gonna remember these because they were these like phone book size coupon books Yeah. Where you you people would sell them as fundraisers and would do like the buy one, get one hotel or dinner. Yeah.

And, and everything. And so I worked in it procurement in this organization and they had a really charismatic, it leader, software development leader that I worked with quite a bit. And this is when I started to see software development happening. And I, I went to him and said, I want to learn how to do this. I want to know how.

Things get done. And especially, I want to understand how things get built with software. So he allowed me to transition. I was in a director role and he actually allowed me to transition into a project management role, which was a step down where I became the project manager and release manager for entertainment.com. And I started to learn about all things agile and scrum and software and ecommerce.

And that was when I was like, oh, I like this stuff. Well, I mean, and I think that that appeals to a particular, you know, to a particular mind, and and I, in my past agency experience, some some people, you know, naturally fit in with that approach to to projects and and some you kinda have to drag kicking and screaming. But but generally, I think a a well designed organization is going to show be able to show everyone the merits and and how, you know, how this process pays off for for the organization. Now you you you've also spent time after that at at some other companies, but then you found yourself at one of the one of the early adopters of Magento, Classy Lama. And you were there for almost, almost five years.

Now you came in, you know, as a director of project management office. So, you know, running running the PMO, then up to COO and then president. So that's quite a journey. And I know that they're I I've known the the Classy llama team for many, many years. Everybody looks forward to running to them at the at the conferences because they have, you know, the great the great llama squad.

Good llama. Which, you know, I've got a I've got a puppy laying at my feet right now, and she absolutely that's that's like one of a one of a couple plushies that she just absolutely won't destroy. She's just she's proud of it herself. Your your your time so you were coming in, you know, with with, various experience, you know, in and around, all the things that that need that are necessary for a a an IT project like an open source based ecommerce website to take off and succeed. And you clearly you know, you did this work well enough that you were able to move up, through the ranks there with some, you know, surrounded by some very strong personalities.

Just tell me tell me about that because I think that really gets us into the the the commerce theme and and what your perspective was maybe at the beginning and then how it was coming out the other side. Yeah. So interest I mean, I I'm a Michigan native. I still live in the Detroit area. For those that know Classy, they're in Springfield, Missouri, a place where I had never been and wasn't familiar with, but some mutual friends connected us, and and they needed help really delivering successful projects and these, you know, these large open source projects, with some sophisticated clients.

And so I I originally came in as a consultant and started to lay the groundwork for how this company would serve its clients and deliver to them. And, you know, and we gained some traction and some success there. Eric Hansen was with me at the time. And if anybody has ever worked with Eric Hansen, he is just a brilliant mind and a wonderful person and had a fantastic time working with Eric, working with Rob Tall and David Alger. All of those are kind of commerce famous people.

And all each of them in their own rights. I know every I know every one of them. Yeah. So, I mean, we had we had a brilliant team and and could do some some really good stuff with great minds. So I had this incredible technical stack, and all I had to do is just show up and plan it and deliver it and get it out the door and set client expectations.

And we we just, you know, started with that foundation and and grew it. Commerce famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source ecommerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants. More than 50,000 clients already processed over $25,000,000,000 in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in ecommerce at shopware.com. Yeah.

And in the time that you were there, so this is, you know, this is, you know, starting in the second half of twenty eleven, all the way up to 2016, the a whole of of the ecommerce landscape certainly evolved quite a bit. And, you know, it framed I'd framed, I I'd say in part by, by Shopify's success in in becoming something other than just like the little Pressomatic ecommerce, storefront that it was, you know, something that could really serve the lower end of the market. And you saw you just saw the different players, you know, sort of shake out and stake out where they fit better and better. Magento became and Magento became a much stronger contender in in b to b and kinda pushed its way up into the mid market. Magento two came out.

You either know about that or you don't president, and I can tell you that he was not. That that was rough. Been here for me. Yeah. But I you know, so many changes.

Like, I remember having the conversation with David Alger. We used to do, you you know, everything back all our hosting was what we would call on prem, you know, which was, you know, maybe we were doing slices of of virtual things, but these were real, you know, these were real hardware boxes that our clients were running their Magento instances on. And, you know, I remember that first conversation with David where he's like, I think I think we need to move it all into the cloud. And I was like Oh, wow. I don't think the clients are gonna go for this.

Like, I don't you know, like, a virtual slice is one thing, but, like and so I remember those debates and Well, in helpful context. So so, Magenta too has been discussed on this, podcast before. I have intimate knowledge there and probably some culpability. But, you know, think about it. Like, Magento one was actually it came around.

It came into existence before, like, cloud computing was really in vogue. So, you know, the the the scaling that and the care and feeding of that in a hosting environment was was a particular challenge. M two kinda sought to fix some of those problems. The the rest the rest is is, you know, an an an infamous history there. But, you know, you you certainly saw the challenges as a lot of other agencies did, back in the day.

Now, of course, all the while, there's this great platform out of Germany, Shopware, that's that's that had, you know, done the hard work of being this project that had grown from, you know, the early two thousands into, made the decision to go open source. And, you know, eventually, you would find your way around to it. I'll I'll get to that in a minute. Yeah. But you you so coming out of, coming out of that era, I mean, I think surviving well into 2016, that says a lot because it was it was kinda late twenty fifteen when m two came out.

Classy, I remember, was involved with, with the beta program for m two, and and I think For m two and we built the, you know, the Luma responsive theme. That's right. Yeah. That was another big project that we did. We did the PayPal tokenization.

Yep. So we did we did quite a few interesting strategic projects. Yeah. And and, you know, I remember, you know, I've I've I've had classes and and I think even certification and course creation exercises with, a couple of people you mentioned, David and, Dave and Kurt, as well as some others. I apologize for not naming everyone.

And then, you know, and then you just jump over. You jump away. You jump over to, like, service management company. Right? Still, there in Troy, e seven?

Oh, so at e seven, they they were doing custom software, and they wanted to build up a partner relationship. And I shared my ecommerce experience with them, and they said, we want that. We wanna build that. And so we spent some time getting to know Ourocommerce. Yep.

Yep. The team over at Ouro. So Ouro, another, another project. You can't really get out of this business, I think, without talking about Magento. So, you, Yoav Kuttner, cofounder of Magento, created the the, well, he and and Dima and others, Magento alum, created, the Oro platform, then the Oro CMS, and then, after I'm assuming what was a a a lockout period, just dropped, oral commerce to B2B focused and still getting, still getting a lot of mentions today.

In fact, Rick Rick action. And, you know, I was at e seven. You might remember Darren Spanak who Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's a good friend of mine, so she was at e seven.

So we built up this small ecommerce business there, and we also built up an Atlassian practice, which was really interesting. So a lot of a lot of ecommerce builds go hand in hand with using a tool called Jira. And, so Gotta gotta manage that project somehow. Do that how somehow. So so yeah.

And, you know, Oro's a great product. It it wasn't it wasn't for me. I, you know, I missed my, I guess, my standard Adobe and Magento days, and I ended up at at a a pretty great place, that, something digital. Something digital than, than RightPoint? Yep.

Yeah. What was, and and and so just so we talk about more of the Illuminati, you know, that that's that's the the former home of of future commerce leaders. Yeah. Yeah. Philip Jackson and and and Brian Lang.

So it was so it was Brian Lang that brought me over to something digital because and I I told you this. I think Brian Lang was the first project manager that I'd ever hired at Classy Lama. Rep. I know. So I got, I got to watch Brian Lang, run projects, and and he actually was pretty capable at it.

But I always knew that deep down, he was better at, at sales and promotion and networking and Yeah. I just stride. Drinks at, like, 3AM in Austin. Yeah. I mean, the guy the conversations I've had, with, with basically anyone involved with Future Commerce, whether they're the, you know, invited, illustrious guests or, you know, with with the people working in and around the the the team itself, they're all, you know, they've they've all really, you know, been, you know, spent time in the trenches and really kinda come into their own and are adding, I'd say, significant, you know, significant creative value into the space.

It's it's it's it's nice and refreshing to, to get the the Future Commerce newsletter. No, they're not a sponsor, just because it's it's interesting to see the stories and the art and the magic that happens around something that is fundamentally an exchange of an exchange of value. Yeah. And future commerce has an interesting they're kind of like focus they're focused on the culture of commerce, and they've turned it into an art form. So that's seeing what those guys have done is is fascinating.

So yeah. So the the group at Something Digital called me up one day and said, hey, Carrie. We've got a challenge that we think is is the right size challenge for someone like you. Very cool. We've, you know, we've got a very large enterprise client that is on Magento, you know, and and they're trying to do something really aggressive.

Can you come over and help us out? We'd like you to be involved. At this time, something digital was in there in Manhattan, and they had no remote employees and certainly not remote, project delivery operations type people. Yeah. And they said, I don't know if you can do this from Michigan remote.

And I'd already been president of Classy Lama as a remote employee. And I said, why don't you let me try? You just contract with me. Oh, wow. How did that and then that worked out.

That this can work. Very cool. What was so this is gosh. And this is what a what a what a current topic this is, right? Because, you know, I see I see lots of, lots of job postings and, you know, even for roles that are majority of the time on the road and there's still these these mandates.

You know, it is interesting when I talk with some of these companies and employees of these companies, what you hear is, like, well, yes, there's an RTO, but, it turns out, like, it depends on, like, if your if your home office is this one, you only have to be a badge in, like, once every three days or, you know, or once a week or once every two weeks. It it it is interesting watching the pendulum swing, but you were out there, you know, pre COVID ahead of Pre COVID. Right? Way ahead of of this, you know, this this moment that swung the pendulum all the way over to one side. What were what were some of the things that made, that that made that a successful exercise, especially for for a company that was not used to that?

Yeah. So I I I guess I was just fortunate that I'd done it before. And so they asked me, what what makes this work? And I and I explained to them. Well, I mean and that's I it's almost like you're you're you're demurring here.

Like, the what about what about Carrie and Carrie's capabilities made that work? Because there's clearly I I I can tell you that there are plenty of people out there who, you know, who would not thrive in that environment if it was their first time, you know, and especially if it was the company's first time as well. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a shrinking or a shrinking flower. I'm not a quiet person.

I'm pretty good at at, you know, telling what what the needs are. So I explained to them how it could work and how they needed to engage with remote employees, And they were totally open to trying it, and, you know, lo and behold, they realized it it was a game changer for them and, you know, prepared them for things to come when we all had to work from home. But this, you know, this client was an international client, very global. So this was for AB and Bev, which some people don't know that name right out of the gate, but ABN Bev is the parent company of Anheuser Busch and about 500 other brands of beer. Yeah.

They keep buying, they keep buying everything. They keep buying up entire companies. So they're the fifth largest consumer goods company in the world. And they were going through a digital sales transformation and they really believed that they could transform their entire sales proposition if they were to move a lot of the sales experience online. And the challenge was for us to start in South Africa that had no, you know, no online sales presence.

And in four months launch, you know, an, an end to end B2B sales tool in South Africa. And I've I've a little bit personally connected with, AB InBev over the years myself. So I just I have I have far limited insight, but but, yeah, you're right. The scale the scale scope, it's it is truly massive, you know, and especially considered if you, like, look at the gestalt of of of AB InBev. It's it's it reminds me of, like, Nestle.

You have just, like, you have Yep. Companies and departments in different countries, and these are these are not they're not there's not one thread going through them all. This is this is incredibly complicated, tons of value. Yeah. All the different local rules.

I mean, I know I I have friends with folks in Spain who are working on AB InBev. I had trained the team down in Brazil that won, I think one of the maybe the original Magento AB InBev deal, and then, you know, and and built this project. And, you know, it turns out AB InBev actually was was really was very pragmatic and was actually looking for not to hear affirmations about how this would be easy and and, oh, yeah. Just go with us and we'll get it done. They wanted to hear where are we gonna have problems, you know, and and that was that maybe may I don't know if that was a pervasive attitude there, but, certainly, it was the the kind of the kind of of customer you want going into something of that scope.

Yeah. What they knew. They had tried to do a launch in Argentina prior to the South African launch, and it it it it didn't complete. It had about 700 bugs that needed to be fixed before it could go live. So just to give you some context, we were working with, a company that they had bought called South African Breweries that was a 180 year old brewer.

Really fascinating organization, very old company, tons of history. They had partnerships with with Miller and Pepsi. And, you know, so the scale of what we're talking about is quite large, not to mention we're doing this in a country that has 11 national languages. You know? And and in South Africa, they don't sell beer through distributors.

The brewery can sell direct to all the bars and restaurants. Yeah. So we were selling. What are they there's a term for that, right, when you have to sell through distributors, like, point of a point of consumption. Yes.

Yes. Point point of well, that's what AB and Bev calls their customers. So any address is a point of consumption. And then it's the path that gets to there, which can vary based on computer would what would be in between In between. Point of consumption.

So in South Africa, they sell directly to what we call the pack or the point of consumption. Yep. But in The United States, we don't we can't sell directly to the point of consumption in most cases. In The United States, there are a few places where AB InBev does own the distributorship, like up in Seattle. So it's you know, there's different markets all over the globe.

So we were able to to launch this in South Africa in four months on time and on budget, and AB InBev was really impressed with that and we just kept going. So in four years we did 19 countries for them. And this, and again, folks, if you haven't figured this out, this is, this is not like, oh, we'll just take this, this package here, and we're gonna drop it here and change the names and the locale and language, and we're good. Because No. Because every single one had a different ERP system because every country was a purchased business that operated completely uniquely.

And, for example, in Argentina, we would change the ecommerce site to have Spanish and Mandarin Chinese because so many of the pots or her points of consumption, were owned by, you know, Chinese individuals. Yeah. So different languages. Yeah. And this is all in the context of, you know, so, I mean, this is all in the context of of b to b, which is already nuanced and complex and just every Yeah.

Every implementation is always in its own unique And so we were doing web, but there was also, Android and, multiple component to it too. So every launch had had web iOS and Android as a front end component plus, you know, multiple integrations. Is that is that, is that for, like, sales agents, like, field field team out there? Or Customers. So so many of the customers globally, if you own a a tiny corner store, mom and pop, deli, maybe you don't have a computer.

So you're buying you're buying your beer through your cell phone. Interesting. Now what was and this is okay. So this is this is an interesting time, right, because this was this was the heyday of headless. Right?

Do I have the timeline about right there? Okay. So was what were these headless implementations, or was it specific? Headless implementations using, so the Magento web use Magento as a front end. But for the, mobile apps, we used, the Magento admin as the configurator for the mobile apps.

So the features that we would toggle on and off for the different countries was all controlled through Magento. Okay. So this was a this would have been a custom module, well, really meta module built into the admin. Right? Correct.

Okay. Interesting. Wow. Yeah. So so there was there was kind of a there was a master level access.

List, but then, like, the back end of Magento was the controller for for the mobile apps. And then, you know, we would do that by feature, by country, you know, language, all of this. So just in incredibly complex. And about two years into this, ABI was in negotiations with Adobe Commerce and got really frustrated about the rev share. Yeah.

That just it doesn't doesn't work. Right? It doesn't it doesn't work because their vision was to put all of, you know, as much of their sales as possible through this machine that we were building and deploying all over the globe. Right. And that would that's always a that's always a a point of contention when you have, when you have a a a platform like, you know, a a b to c platform and and licensing terms and everything is all, you know, and and that's all based around GMV, the whole, as you well know and hopefully most of the audience knows, the GMV and margin is very, very different.

GMV, AOV, margin is all quite completely different, and it really does not what you can get away with in b to c does not work in b to b. Does not translate in in b to b in any way, shape, or form to say, oh, you know, you're gonna sell billions of dollars through this application and and charge a rev share. So I was actually this is kinda interesting. They were supposed to speak at Magento Imagine with me. And, I I wanna say about a month before the speaking engagements ABI pulled out.

Well, it's done. We're not doing this. And so slowly over a period of two years, we rebuilt everything that had Magento at the center of it with custom code. We built up headless. Yeah.

Totally bespoke? Wow. Was it was it still based in PHP, or was it different language? Or React. React.

Okay. So JavaScript. Okay. Wow. That is so, I mean, this this points to this well, this points to That's so headless.

Right? Yep. Yep. Headless all the time. So, you know, for the web front end, they went completely headless with microservices and built out microservices on the back end, used a bit of Optimizely for some toggle feature control.

But most mostly all all just custom. Well and this I really like this discussion. The rev share. Right. Right.

Right. And, well, rev share and and well, I'm not I don't know. I was not party to these discussions, and I don't think I was there at the time that this happened, back in at the Adobe days. But, inflexibility performance of Adobe. So the two I mean, those were the two killers Interesting.

That, you know Interesting. Well, when you say perform you mean just the performance of the application? The performance of the application Yeah. Okay. The speed of the application.

Well, and that that is always, you know, and I'm I I do like to point out that that at when something like this is scaled, anything is scaled, any even if it's built for everyone and you might have you might look at one brand and they're operating for 4,000,000 SKUs with no problem. As you start to scale anything in a certain direction, and you could even be scaling complexity, an otherwise well performing solution is going to hit some is gonna hit some challenges that are gonna require some some kind of remediation. It's just it's it's it is, you know, and I I like to just I like to frame it that way. It's not a slight again. You're absolutely right.

And I'm, you know, I'm I'm not gonna nail this on Adobe Commerce that it was it was the performance of the application because the amount of customization and scale that we had been that had been done to it was It was probably already very much its own its own thing. I'd also like to point out that this is exactly a great example of when headless and microservices are absolutely valid solutions, right? But if you're a mom and pop doing, you know, 200 ks online, probably not gonna need it. Right? You don't you don't you don't wanna go this route.

Yeah. But I some, you know, some stories or some metrics that I wanna share about what we did, 2,600,000 customers globally, over $6,000,000,000 in sales through this platform. And so anybody that comes to me and says, oh, I'm not sure that you can sell b two b online. I'm not sure that you can integrate it with a sales team. I'm not sure that you can make this work successfully in b two b.

I have seen it done so successfully. They were more profitable, you know, per per leader. Well, and you can just be a year old than than they ever than they ever were before. They could control their promotions and their engagement of their customers so much better. They had a really cool, reward system to engage their customer.

They had an algorithmic selling, using AI to recommend future purchases. You know, and, yes, it took some work and, yes, it was complex, but did it show ROI for their business? Absolutely hands down transformed how they do business. Well, in in and in in that regard, you know, they they obviously made a substantial investment in this, had substantial payoff. Sounds like they were actually sort of leading in in some in some key areas.

Yeah. That I I am curious for because of the the regulations, and the way regulations have evolved around, especially alcohol, AB InVev is not just alcohol, but, but around, yeah, spirit All kinds of things. Spirited beverages. Like, were were were, like, regulatory concerns? Were those built into, you know, application core logic or instance logic, or were they part of the ERP or a mix of both?

Definitely, we had to take it into consideration, every bill. So every country has different regulations when it comes to alcohol sales. You know, The United what's what's needed in The United States is very different than what's done in Argentina or Colombia. And so for every country we had to take into consider those regi regulations and we programmatically had to consider them. And, would you, would you say that, I've been like, even in The U S you'll get, it's not just The U S it's like 50 different regulations because every state handles this differently.

I know South Carolina has been backwards on this for years. Yeah. So so okay. And then looking at looking at all of that, and then going, you know, going into where you are now. Right?

So this gets us into, Ascend. Yeah. And the reason, you know, what is what is what is it what is it that, led you to be a cofounder of a of ASend? Like, what is you you you and I ask because you have the experience, the perspective. I love the idea, again, that you could just point over your shoulder and say, look at what what we've done, what we've proved is possible.

And not just possible, but but like successful. Oh, very successful. Absolutely. So, my business partner and I, my business partner is Mickey Winter and she was the chief creative officer at Something Digital for sixteen years. So just, she has an incredible design experience and very deep experience in e commerce similar to my own where mine is with technology and delivery, you know, hers is beautiful, functional designs.

You know, we've been doing this long enough where we've noticed a lot of patterns in the industry and wanted to do it our own way. Right. Every, I think everybody gets to a stage in their career where they're like, okay, I've done this long enough. I I'd like to take some ownership in this and, and do it, do it how I'd like to see it done. And so we have this concept of of a more conscious commerce.

More conscious commerce. Yeah. A conscious commerce. Can I'm sorry. I what is that?

Yeah. So, you know, the idea behind conscious commerce is you're really paying attention to what is a needle mover for your customers. Right. So many times, and I've, you know, I've been in a lot of agencies. I've experienced it.

You know, agencies focus on what they do. Well, that might be development that might be design. You know, that might be these different elements, but in conscious commerce, we really want to focus on what moves the needle for our customers and listen to them. And being conscious is just about being open minded, open to things being growth oriented, you know, and, and just really taking responsibility for how you can make things happen. So these these are I mean, this is the kind of, I don't know, ethos that I think is is, is refreshing to see in in this business.

How how how what are the ways in which that manifests in the projects that that you're that you're working on? Granted, it is it is early it is early days. It's early days. Right? We've been in business for seven months now, but some things we talked about, experiences that we had that were always challenging to our clients, one of the biggest challenges that clients always had was was data and product data.

And a lot of times, agencies don't wanna touch it, but but we talk about it with our clients. I've I've got two two organizations that aren't even clients of mine that are, you know, wanting to build on ecommerce. And I'm coaching them about thinking about their data and about how important that is to their commerce experience and about modeling that data to be good data from the start, to have good, category hierarchy, to have a good data design before you start building your site to make it successful on the other side. Similarly, content. Content is an often forgotten about area when you're developing sites.

But, you know, your your additional content, how you're supporting your sales and and marketing business is really critical to your function of your site. And so, you know, just some different areas of things that often get neglected, we think are important to commerce success. We focus a little more on those those areas. So content in particular, I tell you, I'm getting I'm getting frustrated, a little bit at the proliferation of, like, straight from GPT content. And and I think that's a trap.

I see it I see it especially in professional networks like LinkedIn. In fact, I literally just posted about it. It it's not something I don't normally I don't normally use it as a platform to complain. I normally use well, I used to just complain about platform. But now that I'm actually really in, you know, using LinkedIn more and more, it's just I I I kinda need proof of work.

I need to know that there's value. Brent Peterson from Tel Commerce just just actually today published a piece on this. I not saying don't use GPT. Not saying, you know, don't don't don't don't don't don't leverage these great tools around you. But what, you know, whereas whereas one of your positions is that the content is it can be an afterthought and and it is so essential, how do you what what what advice are you giving your your your customers, friends, peers, network around this this subject of like, I guess it comes down to authenticity and and maybe, and again this idea I keep putting in together in my mind is proof of work.

Like, I don't I don't I don't want you to give me something that that undigested from from something that I could have asked the same I could have prompted the same way, gotten the same result. There's a little bit of value in that prompt, but I I want some, like, some original analysis and effort there. There's value and creativity and unique content. I mean, it it there has to be a balance between how much is is agent generated and how much is human generated for it to be meaningful. You know?

So you you like all things that we do, you have to balance, you know, cost and effort. Yeah. I do I do wonder things. I mean, I remember having to go I grew up close to Wake Forest University and, like, that's where, you know, they had a great library, and, tobacco money does pay off kids. Not just kidding.

But but they, they had a great library. And I remember, you know, just taking stacks of books and making literal copies of my sources and you had to really put all this stuff together and I think there's an immense value there. I think there's also value in interacting with systems that can, you can have an idea, you can throw it out there and I like some of these more dialogue based agents that are, or agents and interfaces where you can kind of hash things out in conversation almost like a, like, you know, like a Socratic dialogue but just with, you know, the big machine. I do wonder about where things are going, in terms of, you know, in terms of, you know, how what is what is the marketplace of ideas? What is the value of content that or even even looking at product information and how it is enriched and and and maybe even but also dulled or averaged out by just over application of generative utilities.

So, I think you, you know, you all, you and your cofounder and the rest of the team are gonna be in an interesting position with your experience and with this perspective. Do you, you know, as you as you look out, you know, into the next, gosh, I I used to say, like, you know, eighteen months, you know, five years. What do you how do you see things going? But it that's that's a bit of a fraud, you know, term right now. So, I mean, I'll let you pick the term.

You know, in x amount of time, this is what I see will come to pass. I'd be really, really curious to get your take on that. I mean, there's no going back. Right? The genie is very much The genie is the genie is out of the bottle.

And so what we really talk about at Ascend is your you know, this idea that the the value that you bring, the meaning that you bring as a brand, how you give back in the world as as a brand really matters so much more to people these days because there's so much fake everything. There's so much fake everything. And so people are deeply needing connection and meaning and purpose. And so we really feel that that is the differentiator for brands going forward. Well, and I'd I'd also, I'm kinda curious, you know, do you see, I think I think where what I where I've seen businesses struggle over the years, and and I would absolutely, defer in my assessment to to yours given given your history, and and perspective, a lot of I think I was I was always amazed at at at how often businesses didn't really seem to actually understand what they were in the business of doing or or the the what was important to their customers.

I mean, they were these were successful businesses, you know, making generating millions and millions of dollars a year in in revenue. And but it it you know, when you have those conversations, and these were these were replatforming conversations because I was, you know, I was in the agency world. They come in and and I would find myself, yeah, looking over at like an agency cofounder and say like or I'm sorry, agency founder and say, like, like afterwards, like, wow. They don't they don't really even understand why or how they're successful. They're just they're succeeding and they're kind of keeping up with what's in front of them.

How do you I'm sure you must have encountered moments like that in your career. What are the things that you say are corrective actions? Or even things that you build, do you do you figure out the right dashboards or the right lenses to put on those? You know, when businesses are operating like that without a foundation, they can quickly get themselves into trouble and they don't know how to get themselves back out of trouble. So I think the tariff situation that we're in right now is a good example.

If, if you don't know your purpose, if you don't know who your why, if you don't know what your foundation is, and you're just, you know, out there selling and earning money, because. Because you could, and then the market does a massive shift on you Yeah. Where you have to rediversify your supply base and do all these things, and and you don't have those foundations, those, you know, changes, law changes, tariff changes, restrictions can can rack your world. I guess with that, what you're saying is this, if you're just going along stumbling forward, you you don't recognize when you're off the trail or you're actually getting pushed back by a headwind. You you need that that insight analysis.

That's, well, I well, I tell you what, you've, we we saw each other a couple weeks ago at Shopware Partner Day here in The US in Chicago. Always, always a good time with the Shopware team. And, I know so you were you were recording a, podcast with Rick Watson, which just, just recently came out. I was listening to it mowing the lawn just just a a day or two ago. And, I, yeah, I'm kinda curious.

You know, you've you've you've chosen obviously, I work for Shopware, but I I I talk about all valid solutions. And I am very curious, you know, what is it about, you know, given, again, given your rich experience and perspective, what is it about, Shopware and possibly even other, you know, other solutions out there that that you see as as doing things well, doing things right these days. Yeah. So, you know, like we talk about our relationship with our clients, Mickey and I were really intentional when we started this agency and we were looking at who we wanted to partner with as a platform in e commerce. You know, I've done over a 100 builds and I I've, I've tried, you know, just about anything you can think of, you know, back to back in the days when it was like written in cold fusion.

So. My first, my first programming language, by the way. So we had, you know, we had something specific that we were looking for and we were looking to serve the mid market, in particular. And so many platforms that I'm familiar with are driving up market. And we didn't wanna be there.

We will we still wanted to, you know, serve the small to medium business. We wanted flexibility. We wanted to give options because, you know, from my background, I know that ecommerce is not, you know, one thing fits all. And you you need to customize stuff. You run into complications.

Every business is unique. And, you know, a lot of people, I think, ran to Shopify because it's a great platform and it's easy and, you know, but you can't necessarily scale and grow the way you need to with your business. They say that they do b two b, but you have to end up spinning up, you know, multiple sites. And that's a lot of extra work, and it's not a and and so we needed something besides that that was that was open and and customizable and, you know, performance. And we found Shopware, and it was like love at first sight.

Well, I'd say Jason, you know, the The US general manager, of Shopware, one of the things I like what he says, and he and he actually he and the Future Commerce guys came up with this concept of the flyover states of ecommerce, which is in fact the mid market. Right? It's it's you have a lot of brands that are part of the brands or they're in the manufacturing chain of the brands that you would actually recognize. So these are large, you know, pretty substantial businesses, like multi multiple hundreds of doll hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, they but they've they've never been really a direct target for for anyone because everyone is either trying to serve, you know, the the masses or they are. They're pushing up into that enterprise space.

And I I really I really like that you you have you have an experience of of sort of of of commerce at all levels and and have settled on the mid market. I think there's a there's a there is a tremendous opportunity and satisfaction in solving mid market problems because, sorry, just to say what Jason said about this, in addition to the flyover states of e commerce is that, mid market businesses tend to have, like, enterprise enterprise sort of needs and requirements but definitely not those kind of enterprise timelines or budgets. And that's when you do, you need to pick a solution that is nimble and built for customization and, and yeah, I would agree just based on what I hear from people time and again, you know, Shopify is a perfectly competent solution and and and every, you know, every quarter they get better at, you know, being a better solution for more for a larger surface area of of of merchants. But it is you can really get yourself into trouble with with, you know, with a system that likes to put people in boxes or put businesses in boxes because when you don't fit in that box, you end up having to start doing very bespoke things outside of that box.

And then you're building dependencies in on or at least my idea is you build dependencies on not just these custom applications and spaces, but also particular agencies that built that. I'm actually telling you that because I'm curious if if that if that kinda matches your assessment as well. Yeah. And you end up building inefficiencies into your operations of your business because you can't, you know, like, ABI is over on one side where they could customize it however they wanted to, and they they could afford to do that and build it all from scratch. But, like, you need something that can grow with you and your business, but that you can also gain operational efficiencies out of without costing you on a harm and a leg.

Right. That that right. You're basically investing in stagnation or or you're you're setting yourself up for really the times in which we find ourselves right now, which is you you really need to figure out, you know, I mean, doing more with less is is is a bit reductive, but effect effectively, that's what we're talking about. Right? That's you know, and it's the thing that Shopware gives people is the ability to continue and grow and change on their own terms, where if you're on a sassy commerce platform, you maybe initially it'll save you money.

But as your business starts to expand, you you may find that you're limited and then things that you can do or laws can change all day long. You know, we're seeing this now. Minute to minute. Expect them to change And, you know, and your business is impacted in such a way that you didn't expect, and then you can't pivot the way that you need to. So you have to consider, you know, risk, with these SaaS platforms because they just don't give you the flexibility that something like a shot board does.

Well, I, I don't if there's anything else you'd like to add, I mean, first, I will add, you can you can find out more about a Ascend, a y s n d, and and Carrie and and her journey. Just head over to the head over to the website. I would say I would even invite people to have conversations with you, if they're curious about what you all have to offer and, or, you know, wanna hear more about the experiences that you've had, that they should reach out to you through, through LinkedIn. Anything you wanna add before we wrap up? Yeah.

Two quick things. You can find Ascend at the World Health Expo in Miami with Shopware, June eleventh through thirteenth and at the Vision Summit in New York. Oh, Visions. Yeah. We're gonna be, we're gonna be doing, with, with Shopware, we're gonna be doing, a, a museum tour where the event is hosted.

So yeah, look for us at either of those events or find us on LinkedIn. Very good. Well, Carrie, it's been an absolute pleasure spending this time with you. I look forward, I'm already following you guys. I'm I'm looking forward to just hearing more about your success and and just kinda soaking up some of the some of the knowledge that, that you all have to share.

Thank you so much for, for this for this time together, and I, wish you all the best.