Latest / Talk Commerce / All I Want for Christmas is Shopware: A Festive Shoptoberfest Episode
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:05.635) Alright, welcome live from Shoptoberfest brought to you by Shopware Fresh. We are, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, when you hear this, have any, there's no linear time frame, but we are the last pod standing. Is that fair to say, Peterson, the host. Yes, Brent Peterson, the host of Talk Commerce. And Scott Ohsman host of Always Off Brand. And say the joke, Brent, you've been saying it for 19 episodes. Come on. He's starting a new podcast called Always On Isn't that funny? is super old now. Unbelievable. We have two unbelievable guests here. Yes, we do. my gosh. Rohit and Noah. That's right. And what's the agency name? Above the Fray. Above the Fray. I like it. I'm big into names. You don't know that about me, but I'm big into names and I like what you're throwing down right there. Beautiful. What kind of agency are we? Well, we're actually... two separate organizations. I thought there was a burgeoning partnership. There is between our separate organizations. Okay, well, why don't you go first? What's your organization? We're a solutions integrator headquartered out of Portland, Oregon. Go PNW. That's right. And we're full end to end e-commerce focusing on B2B manufacturing. Okay, what do you got going over there? Yeah, so hey, Rohit Padanga here. I'm the co-founder CEO of company called Zamp. Zamp? Yes. I love these names. I'm big into names. A to Z, baby. I don't know if you know that or not. We've got Zamp.com too, which is huge. That is huge. Four letter domains are hard to come by. They are. We do sales tax compliance for e-commerce and software companies. we need to talk. So we essentially combine. I have tax problems. Go ahead. Don't we all? Go ahead. Brent Peterson (02:07.07) We combine real-time technology platform with sales tax experts to fully take sales tax off e-commerce and software companies' plates. Damn. Now you were kind of roped into recording here. Is that fair? Yeah, I wasn't ready for this. Noah was like, hey, you want to be my plus one on this real quick? Yeah. Noah, you signed up for this. I did. I did. it was coming in. It was in my calendar for 4.30 PM. Pacific time. Pacific, yeah. Yeah, Chris said, yeah Noah's in at 430 and I said, okay, yeah 730 p.m. I'm just working on the time difference thing, know first time. Yeah, when did you get in? Last night or yesterday afternoon. I got in late last night. Were we on the Alaska flag or? No, Delta. Delta, Delta. Okay. Yeah, well I just had to get that out of the Frontier and then Sun Country. You know, you have to have something to edit out. Right in the PJs. Good Lord. Brent, what's your first hard-hitting, unbelievable great question? He's gotten like three great questions. Great question, Brent. What have I gotten, I got nothing. Zero. Zilch. I do want to talk about Shoptoberfest. Where's my Sponsored by... So tell us about what you've learned from this event. I know it's about the beer. It's supposed to be about the beer. Yeah. And it's about the beer. But I'm here for the content. You know, it's kind of like people that read Playboy for the artists. Wow. OK. Hey now. And that's really, you I mean, I love the format and the way that everybody that was talking was giving essentially personal testimonials. there weren't a lot of slides. There weren't a lot of slides, you know, in the background. There weren't any slides. It was just one thing. Brent Peterson (04:04.846) and people spoke about their experience, the unique parts of it, how it applied to the world that we all live in and interact with and e-commerce. so, know, Rohit and I were just chatting a little bit about that, about the entropy that it creates. That's his The what? The who? The entropy that it creates. Entropy? Yes. What the f- What does that That's a West Coast term. Is it? He's right from the East Coast. I'm from the Midwest. Yeah. What's any... literally I have to look that up. I went to Arizona State, laughed later. I have to look that up. Honestly, it's... it's... in science, it's like these particles that are kind of moving across a field in randomness, and the more randomness that there is, the more potential interactions that there potentially are. faster the objects move, the more collisions that they have, and that's essentially what entropy is. I don't think I've actually explained that since I was in middle school. You just got my educational level. just said middle school. I did have some opportunity to see some of the TEDx talks. Did you really? Yeah, mean sort of. Where was I? You were sitting here podcasting. Did you give me a burger by the way? I did, yes. You're welcome. What is it that... Is there anything tonight that kind of swayed you into what's going to be in the future for e-commerce? Did you learn anything new? I did. Wow, hold on. have a... I did. did you want me to expand on that? Okay. You can tell us what it might be. great podcast guest, right? Way to book him. Yeah. No. I mean... I'm still stuck on the definition of entropy. So am I! Thank you for that! Brent Peterson (06:00.045) There was a speaker tonight, Ed from B.A.R.K. We were supposed to have him on! He forgot. I think he's out there. can go grab him. But he was talking a lot about something that's very common for most of us, which is the onboarding sequence of emails that comes out after you sign up or purchase something. The three common emails that always come out. how one of them, the third one is always like, here's some more stuff to buy. And the idea that you've actually kind of severed the relationship at that point. You've gone too quick, too far. You've asked for something too soon. It's like dating. Before the relationship is developed. it's like dating. Yeah. We're not supposed to do the dating analogies, but I feel you. I almost said that. We're not supposed I don't know. Somebody told me that once. Really? I don't know. I think all of e-commerce is completely dating. think agencies, clients, it's all dating. It runs down to all day. And always off-brand. I don't know about talk commerce, but we talk about this nonstop. We talk about dating all day long. you? Especially my new podcast, I was on right now. It's better than dating all day long. Yes. But keep going. I like where you're going. And so he was just talking about developing that, you know, that relationship better, how to kind of bring people in to the fold, like when you actually can build the trust and develop that relationship to ask for more. We just got, we just got some baklava. We got baklava. some weed brownies. Is that baklava? No, apple strudel. that's strudel. What is strudel in Yiddish? No, no, it's a Rougala, Rougala. It's not a Rougala, promise. No, Rougala, I know it's not, but a fruity type thing is Rougala. okay, okay. I thought you said a Rougala. No. Okay, god damn Words are hard today. Barks. We were on about the relationship with the customer, protecting that, knowing that. I'm sorry, Brent. Something to add? Brent Peterson (08:05.301) Yeah Noah, were on a roll. Yeah, well, I'm not off it yet. Take over e-commerce hotline in the building. Mayor in the building. Rohit and Noah. And now I'm going to walk away because I can't hear anything. But we're going to do a freestyle battle a little bit later. I like his jangle. He ripped one off earlier for us. yeah. So what hit you was what hit you? The fact that you got to keep in contact. You got to this establish a relationship with the customer. Hold on one more interruption. Hold on. gentle plug in coming fall of 2024. Even though we're at a software conference, these boys are making it platform everywhere. I don't know. Edition, that could have been breaking news or could have been completely deleted from the record. It depends on your editing room. So the idea is that... I heard this once from a company I used to work at, but be interested and not interesting. And so I think that's a key difference. it's like, make it about the person. You have to be interested in what they're doing, the company you're working with, the product that they're selling, their customers. And the second that you start wanting to make it about yourself, when you ask for an additional sale, that's about you. It's not about them anymore. And you don't know enough about them yet. really absorbed them, you haven't developed a relationship, just because they bought something from you doesn't mean that you're in a relationship yet. know, there's still a lot to develop. And I think that's something that is missing from a transactional mindset that, you know, a lot of people are evolving out of, but sometimes we get through the motions, we get into these rhythms and we do best practice or whatever has been done before and it's hard to break out of it. That's a good point for if you're on a membership committee for a major e-commerce pledge. Brent Peterson (09:56.207) I try to get people to join. It's about them, not us. It is, There are some undertones, did you feel? Yeah, little the side of the table? Absolutely. Okay. That's our actual band name is The Undertones. Is it? Yeah. wow. That's a good name. I think it's taken. Anyway. Dot com. Don't look that up. have no idea what comes out Now what do you say, Noah? We're getting a reading here, what do you say, because I'm a former agency owner. Okay. What do you say that I have a joke that at some point no fault of their own, everyone hates their agency. Right. Everyone hates their 3PL at some juncture. What do you say to that? How do you solve that? How do you make it so that's not true? I say that's okay. Everybody hates themselves at some point too. know? Like, it's fine. You know it's like yeah, we all go through the emotions. That's apple strewn with an apple. Yes! But I mean it's true. That's so rude, Brent. Listener, he's reaching across our fine guest to try to get the pastry. think fine maybe. Seriously, Brent! Slight exaggeration. Were you raised in a barn? Yes, I was. Thank you for pointing that out. I'm from the Midwest. Anyway. Shots fired. Okay, you hate yourself, so you hate your agency, it's okay. That's what I'm taking from that. Let's not misrepresent it. My quote. My point being is that people go through a gamut of emotions. have one of our corporate values is that the client is not always right, but we're always accountable. Meaning that, you know, like, doesn't matter whatever somebody's going through. That's wisdom. There's a way that we can control the outcome. Sometimes controlling that outcome means never engaging in the first place. Sometimes it just means to have radical accountability, but regardless, it means caring more about sort of that end outcome and what their purpose is and their mission is than your own or even more so maybe making sure that it aligns in the first place and then working towards that end. I don't know. I know. I like that, What do you, what do you, now, something I do hate is taxes, dealing with them. Brent Peterson (12:15.287) you and everybody else. Configuring them and I have one customer, tiny customer, and she's frustrated because if she sells products she did a big sale and you know, figure out the taxes with not Nexus and it's very intimidating. Let's just, how do you, how do you, how do you solve that? What are you guys doing to figure out how to, you know, hit the easy button, right? That was easy! So one of the things that we've heard over and over and over in the market is these existing solutions out there, they provide you with a platform and they say, hey, Scott, you, you figured out, you you configure it, you manage it, you track it. It's your responsibility. Now you, don't have any sales tax knowledge. You're spending dozens of hours every single month learning stuff, managing it, not even sure if you're doing it right in the first place, spinning your wheels. And so we heard time and time again is, Hey, we don't want to do any part of this. We just don't want to touch any part of it. exactly like your friend here. So what we've done is we've kind of taken that learning and we've said, we're going to build a real-time tech platform, but we're going to manage it for you. And so once somebody on boards with us in an hour or two hours, they really never have to think about it again. What's the difference between your guys' stuff? I'm just asking off the cuff here because I don't know. Between Avalara and TaxJar, Who all the other 47,000 tax solutions? Those solutions that you just mentioned, they're self-serve platforms. Meaning somebody has to manage that platform. Aha! That's Yiddish for okay. Go ahead. Okay, wait, so wait. Yours isn't self-managed? Yours isn't We're a fully managed solution. okay, okay. So we have the tech platform that you'll get from these legacy providers that you mentioned, Avalara, Taxstar, and others. But with those companies, you have to have somebody managing that. Whether it's internally, you're hiring somebody to do that, whether it's your third party, whether it's whoever else that is, we do all of that for you. And that keeps communication streamlined, closes the loop internally, and ultimately... Brent Peterson (14:26.927) the customer doesn't have to think about it. Plus it's just one neck to choke. It's always nice when people aren't pointing fingers at each other. Neck to choke. I was thinking, you keep me clean! Keep me clean! Exactly, we keep it clean. It's a clean choke. Brent, over to you for your next hard-hitting, inquisitive question. Insightful, actionable question. I do want to go back to just this event. Do you? hey, we got a mic down. Mic down, everybody. Mike down, Mike down. That's because Brent was reaching for his 17th pastry. Rowhead. So from this event, I like I've... just got to connect with a lot of the shop where team itself and the folks around the community. There's people, aren't they nice people? Absolutely, great people, just good people to work with. And I think that's kind of just general foundational. groundwork that needs to be laid out before really investing into strategies, platform. For us as a sales tax company, it's important for us to pick and choose where we invest our time. Being at these events helps with understanding who exactly I'm going be dealing with just beyond the veil of corporation. So that for us was really important here. As to from the merchant side, I know I certainly talked to some merchants that were pretty excited to potentially re-platform. looking forward re-platform right now. Bringing in some business. Brent Peterson (16:16.591) You say re-platform and all of sudden you got five agencies standing around you. I was going to say. There's only one on the mic though. Why don't we just call it sales anymore? Why do have to give it BizDev, business development? Can't we just call it sales like it used to be? I think we should call it BizDev, We should better? All the time, yeah. Okay. Go ahead. I think I lost my train of thought. Well, it's common here. That's part of the charm. No, you shop where you learn to the merchants, you talk to the people, they're great, they're open, they integrate with everybody, they're one step solution, it's not a lot of hog posh, they're huge in Germany, why can't it? You know, the Germans are efficient, by the way. Absolutely. They know how to get to A to B quickly, cost effectively, high mean, just the amount of demand they've generated from, I met these guys at E-Tail West a few months ago. We were there. Yeah, we were. Podcasting. In Palm Springs. California. Are you guys going again? We are. We got a big, actually I always operate. I don't mean to tell you this publicly, but we got a big booth planned. Thank you. I like big booths and I cannot lie. Brent Peterson (17:34.797) That was breaking news. What was the other breaking news, That news done broke. That news done broke. We've been doing this for five and a half hours. I just want to break that out. It's impressive. We hold these truths to be self-evident. And your point is, this is gold. We are now finally hitting Pontiac's gold. The rest has been absolute dreck. Noah. Is there actually a podcast called The Last Podcast Standing? No, that's a good, that's a good, buy that URL. You know what, the last thing I have, so what do you, you deal with all kinds of clients, right? You deal with all kinds of, end to end. I don't know what is the middle, the end, I don't know all that stuff, but. What is the biggest thing you want to shout on the highest, you know, on mountain hood? When you're over there, you're Mount Bachelor, you're skiing in Bend from Portland. Are you a skier? Mount Hood, yeah, definitely. Meadows. Meadows, okay. You don't go to Bachelor. Anyway. I'm not bad. What do you want to scream to these people? What do you want to scream that they need to pay attention to? What should they pay attention to? Seriously. Brent Peterson (18:52.15) I was about to break into that song. to your heart and not your only one. No, no, you got it. You know, you Neil Diamond. No. Can I book you as a regular contributor? I mean, Brent and I just got together doing this, what, a week ago, two weeks ago. So really, he was on the pod. Technically, did you get a joke? No, what does just the clean choke? yeah. the choke the joke Joke I want what Noah's Joke or the choke? I think I got four point something I'm from Oregon, I know, we're kind of in spirits. It's Oregon, it's not Oregon, it's not Oregon, it's Oregon. I think the most important thing though is to figure out, Rohit and I were just talking about this with hiring, how do you, it's very similar for building a team. And it's essentially what you're doing as a merchant is you're building a team of vendors that are trying to help you get to where you want to get to. And so there's, I wish there was a silver bullet. I really do. There is, and we were just talking about the same thing. There's a lot of things that can help you get there, and you do all of those things, and even after that, you make the wrong choices. And so, you know, some of the things that can help are paying attention to folks that have worked together, partners that have worked together, that can co-sign on each other's stuff. Sometimes that doesn't work. You got a bunch of crappy partners that co-sign on crappy partners, you know. But by and large, you know, just kind of look out for other clues. Brent Peterson (20:49.486) look for ratings and reviews. Go with your gut though. Do listen to your heart, but don't listen to your wallet because it's probably gonna lie to you. Don't go to buy something like it's a product. This is a service that you're looking to get. And I think that's one of the hardest conversations I've had with most of the people that I work with. They think they're buying a widget off a shelf and it's not. We're an extension of their organization and just like that. We are more like employees than we are like, you know, buying hardware. You know, we're gonna be good, we're gonna be bad. Even the best are gonna fail. So work with the people you know that are gonna be accountable, that are gonna own it. You never know that until you know it, But look for that and really treat it like a service and not a product. I that's the most important thing. Wow, he's like the master. That was well said. That was very well said. Absolutely brochure worthy. No, but it's true. I mean, it's all. That should be the saying for Shocktoberfest. Shocktoberfest. Shocktoberfest. I'm so glad that I got on the last podcast, not the first. It's so much more entertaining. I'm certain of that. Be on the lookout for Shocktoberfest! No, I was an agency. Jesus. Crikey woman. Cheese and rice get you another beer. Brent Peterson (22:33.772) Okay, this has been fun for us. I don't know if it's been more torture for you guys. It's been hilarious. Has it been? I feel like I'm getting, I'm like a real life sitcom right now. Thank you. You actually are. No, but seriously, I owned an agency for 15 years. Let's cut the crap. It's dollar bills. Everybody is basically looking for the best deal they can get, but they want relationship. But if you're not in the zone, you're not in the zone. And every agency, including the one I owned, we had our strengths and we had our weaknesses. So how do you win the business, Noah? How do you come in? You're RFPs, you're whatever. You got three or four going against every agency. I can tell you they're great. They're whatever. How do you win the business? I mean, first of all, don't tend to do RFPs if I get them. I usually like tear them up and I tell them how to do it better. This is a very interesting thing. went back to my CRM. Wait, is it a good question? No, it's a great question. I think, yeah. hey! Scotty got a good question. Scotty got a good one. most of the business that closed lost in our Salesforce CRM was not to another agency. wasn't to a competitor. It was to inaction. And so in action, what does that mean? It just means like we're going to do something we're not now. I It's got defrioritized. OK. budget got lost or revenue or whatever reason. It just didn't happen. And it wasn't that like we lost to a competitor. What kind of client is your what's your match.com? What's your what's your my insane clown posse? My I.C.P. What's your what? Chuck Willoway over here. What? What's your ideal client? That was the bank always asking. What's your ideal client? I don't fucking know anybody who's gonna pay. Are they gonna pay the invoice in 38s? That's my ideal client. You know, I learned in Domino's not all money is good money. Same with Monopoly. Who is your ideal client though, seriously? Let's get serious. It's ICP. Yeah, same clown posse. Brent Peterson (24:50.476) We're going through that exercise right now and the thing that we've come to, yeah, it's more of the mindset than it is like the typical demographics. How do you know? No, it seriously is. How do you know when a... Well, that's the thing. It's funny. That's... Yeah, it's okay. It's banter, man. It's back and forth. No, how do you know? That's my point about dating. How How do you know? How do you know? And we do the first call. We do the discovery call. We do the intro call. We do this call. Then we do a deck call. And then we propose all the stuff that we're going to do for you. How do you know that... they take the toothpaste, you know, how do you know when you live with somebody, all the annoying habits they have? Right, that's, exactly. So one way to do it, and it's not the easy way. it's not, I love this actually, I really do love this. It's not the easy way, and it's definitely a long-term way, but is you spend as much time with them courting as they spend time courting you. hey now. You know, you spend years. We have, two clients, I have two clients right now that I've been speaking to for four to six years. Headshot. Finish him. I haven't let Brent touch my soundboard effects all night and that was the first time. You're banned. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead, you spent a lot of time with them. I had a client I worked almost two and a half, three years on getting. was easy. And then I got them. Yeah. And then they didn't pay the bill after 90 days. jeez. It was a sad time for me Noah. Why? Do you want to hear more? Yeah, I do actually. No, it was... No, I really do. Like what? No, it was Did you go back and think about like, was there a sign that you could have like... Yeah. That you missed? Yeah, they're owned by PE, they sold to another PE, they changed ERP systems and the finance company couldn't figure it out because we were the tiniest, tiniest bill on the market, on the docket. And we were line 347 on a spreadsheet. That's what happened. Brent Peterson (26:47.052) I like that number 347 by the way. That's a good number. That's the first three on my phone number. is it? Yeah it is. I've had it for a while. Wow, phone with digits Alex. 347. Yeah, you don't get the rest though. What's the area code? 3-4-7-5-8-0-9-8-0-9-3-7- that a Brooklyn? No, that's a Jenner. That's not the area code. It's a Jenny. Okay. 8-6-7-5-3-0-9-8-6-7-5-3-0-9 No, that's I mean, but that's that's what you got to do is you got to go back and dissect it and figure out what were the that's radical accountability and knowing who to take on and who not to take on and when you take on somebody who's misaligned or Go sideways like that go back and figure out where you could have known it Yeah, you know where you could have figured that out and there's always a time but there's always something I was blinded I don't know the word. No, it's not. I actually looked that up one time. I always thought it was revved up like a You're blinded by the dollar signs. I was blinded by the dollar signs. the thing though. That's why like don't like money is a beautiful side effect of a job well done. It's not the it can't be the North Star. can't be. Do you any comments to this? I mean I think a lot of what he said really resonates in the sense that you just got to go after the right customer. the right business instead of going after every business. You got to go deep and narrow, build a relationship, that's what these events are for. That's what this kind of helps with. Yeah, to your point though, you can't win it all, you've got to, every time you make a mistake, do a retro, figure out what went wrong, and right back at it. Fantastic. If you... flip the script and really it's not fully flipping the script but like normally it's like there's an RFP we're gonna judge on who we're gonna bring in is this like well you should be judging as well as an agency and not in some weird like control freak way but in like an alignment way like let's figure out what's aligned and like that's what I'm talking about that courtship you know spend the time to get to know them just like they're trying to get to know you so you can Brent Peterson (28:58.838) figure out where these misalignments might be or where it's beautiful and you roll out into the fields of daffodils and daisies. There's usually like a miscommunication and how values being portrayed to that individual or how they're perceiving value because that may not actually align with how you are perceiving and sharing that value. I know, but everybody talks shit. mean, we're way over time and we gotta go, but... People talk shit when you're going into, then I went into a merger situation, not to air my dirty laundry, but it was great lessons and I came out the other side. Is this live or no? Yeah, exactly. Off the record. Therapy number 101. Number 347. Number 347. No, what I'm saying is people talk a lot of shit. It's hard. do. I like your, actually that's a good call right now. It's a good juicy nugget. Spend enough time with them to know what their idiosyncrasies are, what bullshit they're calling or what they're not calling. we have the same values. I thought we did have the same values until I signed on the dotted line and then all of a sudden, wow, we don't have the same values, whatever the hell that means. Yeah. And you define that. think a really good way to look at this is just like you're entering a partnership in an e-commerce transaction with an agency, would be just like a partnership you'd have in a business. If you took it as seriously like that, you're going to have a good relationship. And what you're talking about is developing that relationship before you even enter that transaction to get to know what your partner's like. I think what happens though sometimes is like people are trying so hard to sell this deal to sell this service sell this thing and there was this misalignment between the selling. Salespeople ruin it all the time. I if I that. It's the podcasters that ruin it. Brent Peterson (30:46.152) I agree. That promise that sales is providing and the customer experience actually being delivered has to be super aligned. Otherwise, you know, there's just going to be problems. But I don't put fault in that. You're selling your stuff. They're selling theirs. Everybody's doing what you... I think that's human nature. Sometimes it becomes a little bit of over-selling. but then you have to get your radar out. You have to be able to figure out, you know, what's actually really happening. There is a responsibility for the agency to manage their salesperson. to oversell what they're give to the client. And I think every single salesperson is gonna tell them, I'm gonna give you this and you're gonna get that. I'm gonna give you the world and you're gonna get that island. That's history of building e-commerce. That's not history of... I think it's any business. I agree with you. Since Noah. Since Noah. I agree with that. I'm gonna end on that. Yeah, since Noah, I got you. All right, you guys, you've put up with enough shenanigans and tomfoolery. We've been doing this for nine hours. How many? The last 15 minutes was four and a half hours. It's awesome. No, honestly, congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. You guys are terrific. You know what you're doing. You're taking it seriously. You're getting into the right situations. It's hard. The two of you have carved the way, though. The struggle is real, and I appreciate that. I have huge empathy to that. And I'm glad that I'm done with all that, and I'm tired. And I don't want to do it anymore. Is that a place to end? Was it depressing? Was it depressing end? No, that was perfectly uplifting. As I go and die. Well, that got even more uplifting. Thank you. Continue. All right. Where can we find you? Where can you find you? LinkedIn, whatever, abovethefray.io. I'm Noah Oakenberg. I'm the only one on planet earth. There you go. Zamp.com, sales tax CEO on Twitter. How do spell Zamp? Z-A-M-P.com. Brent Peterson (32:54.092) Sales tax CEO on Twitter. Love it. LinkedIn Rohit Padangay. Love it. We will put those in the show notes. You can also find me at the club pocket full of dabs. And this has been Shoptoberfest from New York City in Brooklyn, New York sponsored by Shopware Fresh.