Season 2: Ep. 6 - What happens to eCommerce when people are signed-in, with Joe Vancena from Status

Callum: Thank you all for tuning in to the In Reviews We Trust podcast, where we deep dive into the world of e commerce. Today, we have a very special guest on Joe Vancena, CEO and founder of Status. Joe, thanks for joining me today on the podcast. Can you tell us, Joe, what Status is and why it's so important for e commerce brands?

Joe: Thanks, Callum. Glad to be here. And Status is a fundamentally, it's a customer account. So we're going to talk about this real estate on your site that every brand has. No customer really uses, brands have likely not invested in, and that's us. We are a customer account, but big picture, some of the things that we get really excited about.

And when we talk to brands and talk to other founders and tech partners like Reviews.io, the big story is really what happens to ecommerce and what happens to the internet when people are signed in. And so when you start to see the intersection of sign in and customer accounts and some of the big picture problem brands are facing with [00:01:00] personalization and retention and the loss of data and consumer privacy, we really see accounts sitting right in the center of that.

So, it is a customer account, it's very simple and some of the things it does, it helps you manage orders and manage your shopping history and wish lists and all of that, but big picture, we're trying to solve some pretty hairy problems. And yeah, that's status.

Callum: So I had a play around with Status, Status, depends how you sell it in the

Joe: I like your way better. 

Callum: We're saying Status in, in Status. Yeah,

Joe: you. I love it.

Callum: tomatoes, tomatoes thing. So I had a quick play around with a brand called Rollo, which is an Australian brand. And I signed up to their account and to see kind of what you guys did and how it worked.

And I love the UI. How customisable

Joe: Very customizable. So we're focused on the top app of Shopify Plus, which is a very sophisticated and picky. So we have custom CSS. Everything can be customized. Fonts, colors. It really is just an extension [00:02:00] of the site. We think of the account a lot like you think of the cart. It's this element on the site that can slide out just like a cart slides out and it needs to look and feel exactly like the cart.

And so very customizable. Yeah, that way.

Callum: I, I, that's how we think of Reviews.io is that it is an extension of the site. And too many times people drop in a review section and it looks nothing like the rest of their site. And it's, it's probably similar for you. You probably log into a few accounts and you go, this account looks nothing like the rest of your site.

It's like that forgotten part. Yeah, it, it, it truly is. You've got to bring it all together. And I think you're right. Those Shopify plus people really want that. single, single look and feel throughout everything.

Joe: And that's really what we're seeing throughout. I mean, in the way that a brand looks at their site, and then really the sophisticated brands look at their consumer experience. Really, that's all we're talking about here. Like design is an element of that. [00:03:00] UX and UI is an element of that, right? And so all we've really done is taken that same interest, that like same bone that's already in these Shopify brands.

They're looking at their site that way, obsessing over the customer experience. And then we just started to reveal a few unturned stones here. And some of the things of like unifying both design and user experience inside of a customer account really reaches out into the tech stack. We start to highlight that someone is.

A customer is signing in to rewards with a password and they're signing into returns with an order number and they're signing into tracking with a tracking number and then a subscriptions app that got smart and they're doing one time passcodes and none of them talk to each other. And so you start to look at the site as a whole and you realize you are obsessed with cohesion on fonts and colors.

But you have so many untapped opportunities for cohesions in your tech stack and the user experience. And that's, that's like our one obsession is how we pull all of this together inside of an account.

Callum: But so how, right. So let's come back to the origin story. How did you get to becoming the founder of Status? Oh, founder, [00:04:00] because there's a couple of you, isn't there?

Joe: there are, there are three of us. And I think that's where I'd start because anyone who has done it before knows it's terrifying to start your own business. And anyone who's asked me, you know, what made you do it? The honest to God answer is two people that I trusted deeply. I had two folks that I, I, I was safe with.

I knew they were extremely talented, the best of what they did. And the three of us were like, ready, let's lock arms. Let's do this. And it was so, I mean, that like getting you over that hurdle with two people with you is so much easier. And so we did it. We, we came together, we all had worked at loop returns, so we all had been in Shopify for a long time.

Those two had actually Chris and Dustin, Chris Pinchot and Dustin Tevez. They had both been at an agency before Rocket Code, which I always joke with us as the most acquired agency of all time, Rocket Code turned into BVA, turned into the stable, turned into whoever else they are now. And anyway, so, so they've been in the game for a long time.

And so we all met at loop. We had been building loop through the series B and there's like a couple of things that we noticed. One is like returns are so much more than just a pain in the ass. And that's what everyone was saying. Like returns [00:05:00] suck. I hate them. Customers hate them. And that's that at loop.

We really brought this idea to market that returns are so much more. It's actually a very vital moment in your relationship with this customer. You should look at it differently. And so we had that bone in our body. We should be looking at these pieces of user experience differently. And through the lens of returns, that was one thing, but through the lens of accounts, we realized this has been an untapped resource.

Everyone's solving personalization. This page literally says my on it, my account. Why hasn't anyone tried to solve personalization with this piece of real estate that no one's touched? And so we came together through many iterations, we ended up landing on Status, but that's the loose, loose origin story and the loose founding story.

Love those guys.

Callum: It is brilliant that you have managed to find this niche within Shopify that nobody's touched. I mean, I've played around with this, the account, and I totally get what you guys are trying to do. It's so valuable what you're trying to do, because we have this problem. We have a solution called Influence.io, which is a [00:06:00] loyalty and reward solution. And obviously we integrate with Shopify's native account area, the my account that you talk about. And. It totally is that that everything else in Shopify ecosystems personalized apart from that. It's like the unloved bit within your site and I completely get it and I just can't believe that someone's not gone, we should customize this and it will be massive.

 I think status is, is got a huge, huge potential. What's on the roadmap? I went on your site and I was reading through your posts and I did see you've done some launches. I did see that, you know, you've got your core products and then you've, you've rolled out new features.

What's your thought process for launching new features and do you have anything in the future that you think is going to make a huge difference to your customers?

Joe: Well, at the highest level what [00:07:00] we've done so far. If we really just oversimplify and self deprecate what, what status has become, we are giving shoppers way more value in exchange for their email address, give the site an email and all of these things happen. You get signed into rewards, you get signed into returns, you get signed into tracking, we activate your wishlist, we save every click, we save every cart, we give you 50 points, right?

So like all of these things happen now, the moment we get your email. So today, this quarter, our whole theme is bring shoppers back. How do we use that email? Not only to engage them on site, which is what we've done historically. But now use email, Klaviyo, SMS, Attentive to bring those shoppers back to the site with all the data we have on them.

So that's like near term. If you want to know what are we building right this second, it all is about bringing shoppers back with that email address. Long term, what we've done inside the product is really build an intent funnel is how we think about it. And so someone gets signed into an account. And first thing we do is we save everything you click.

That's like highest level of intent. You've clicked on a product page. The next thing we save is everything you've [00:08:00] put in your cart and putting it in your cart, you would think is the most intent, but actually it's what everyone does. When they build a wishlist, they just load up their cart, leave the tab open and come back.

It's, it's, it's a second layer of intent. It just tells you that he really liked it and likely told you what variant they liked specifically about it. So we save clicks, we save cards. Then just last quarter, we unlocked wishlists. And so now we can let you save things you've clicked, save things you've put in your cart, save things on PDPs.

It's a third layer of intent. You like, really want this more than something you've just put in your cart. And then certainly orders, right? Things you've purchased. So we think about the picture and what we need to do with this platform. Not only can we show you personalization and products. That are best sellers reoriented the 10 best sellers reoriented based on one single attribute.

We know about you. That's pretty much personalization today. No offence. Now we can tell you everything you've clicked and everything you've put in your cart and use that to personalize as well. So big picture story is like, you know, Callum, you told us that you wear a size 12 and you like the color blue.

Here are the most clicked products by people who like blue. [00:09:00] Here are the most carted products by people who like blue. Here are the most favorited products by people who like blue. That's the big story. And So that's like in the next six months we'll be focused

Callum: No, I, I love it. I love it. And are you integrating with like the search apps and things like that, so you're bringing, because obviously search is an intent, but maybe they're not hitting what they're actually looking for. It's the vagueness. But if someone's done a sign, if they're signed in and then done a search, are you capturing that data and then putting that into your algorithm to do, to do advice?

Is that on the roadmap?

Joe: Our goal is to our requirement of brands that work with us is really to integrate with everything. If you think about how ambitious the customer identity is, if you just think of it that way, it's like this is a person who has a wallet. Most importantly, this is a person with a credit card number who's on my site right now, who on the site has a vested interest to know who this person is.

Every single tool you've ever bought. And so that's a bit of the daunting [00:10:00] task of building an account is that once you start, you need to do everything you can't tell, you can't, you know, Hey, sorry, we're the arbiter of identity search. You don't get access to the signed in shopper. It's just, it's, it's impossible.

So we have to integrate with everything. And I think search is one of those more ambitious and more mature integrations that thankfully I don't get all the time, but it is coming

Callum: I was talking to somebody about intent the other day and I was, you know, talking about search being an intent, you know, and it's an intent, but if you do it on most sites, it actually misses the point because they search for things and don't find things, but their intent is still there because it's a search.

But actually. You know, depending on what they click on, you can actually learn so much. And if that person purchases, you can really think searches, it has a long runway, and I think if you can capture some of that very early and be involved in that, I think that'll give [00:11:00] you huge amounts of data for the status.

I, I absolutely love what you're building. So how many is in the team right now?

Joe: we are a lean mean team of six, six of us.

Callum: perfect size, five and six. Perfect. And another thing you said early before we jumped on was that you're all in the same office in Ohio, which,

Joe: Ohio, in the states. Yeah. I

Callum: which is beautiful, you know, like I, if I was going to do a startup again, five, six, all in the same office. Five, six good people, you can compete with anybody.

I don't care if they've got 300 people or 400 people, five and six good developers or good minds in the same space is such a powerful thing. And I think it gives you such a huge advantage. 

Joe: And we're all first time founders as well, which means we struggle to create or really appreciate the effort it takes to create a good culture. [00:12:00] And I really feel for any founder, first time founder in particular, who's starting and trying to create a culture remotely, like, good luck. Like we're struggling.

We're all in the same building, same. Same city and it's like pretty hard to tap into what makes someone love working here, especially if it's the first time you've ever asked that question in your career. And so it's been hard in person to figure that question out. And so good luck if you're trying to do it online.

Callum: So the, the bit of the journey that you're in is my favorite piece of the journey because I always give it as like a the school buses at the minute you're in a school bus and you six are all on that school bus and you're all talking together and you've got it, you know, like if something's happening in one area or you think if an external force is happening in one area, say somebody, a competitor, a changing market, a client, you will know about it.

Now where it gets messy and the bit that I, I'm not a huge fan of is when, like, we are like reviews is now we're in five [00:13:00] countries and we've got tens of buses, but I can't, you know, I just love that being able to see everybody who's, who's in this bus, you know, like managing everyone everywhere. It, it, it's a different skill set and you really have to up your skills.

Whereas right now you can just focus on what's in front of you. So are you going to, are you bootstrapped at the moment or are you, have you raised capital?

Joe: We have, we have raised, we've raised 2 million in our seed from investors that are fantastic. Jackson Gates at Manresa Ventures, Victor Gugwein at M25.

Callum: Wow.

Joe: It really, they took a big bet on us early off a Figma, a Figma file and a deck. It meant a lot.

Callum: That, that's a big bet on, I mean, you guys have experience, you know, like you've been at Loop and you've, you've been in the ecosystem for a long time, so I can get it, but that, that's a big, big bet.

Joe: We've been told and we've [00:14:00] gotten great advice from Jackson. And and I think his advice that he gave us was exactly the advice we followed through on, even in the process of deciding to make the bet. And it's always something that I try to share with everyone's like fundraising so cool. It's like, well, really, if you've ever done it, it kind of sucks.

And you, you put on a mask every day, go out and you pretend like you're the coolest person on the planet. And it's terrible. But I think it's so cool. And so they ask, and really all I share is like the most important piece of feedback I've been given about both the fundraising process and just investors in general, say you're call your shot, say, you're going to do something, do it, and then say, you're going to do the next thing and do it and say, you're going to the next thing and do it.

And don't worry about going out there saying we're going to be a triple billion, 300 million company. It's like, I'm going to get four merchants by July 31st. Watch this. I'm going to get them to commit a hundred bucks a month. By August 15th, watch this and I'm gonna now get them to give me feedback. And we're going to deliver a roadmap on August 31st.

And like that level of just commitment is what we did through the funding process. And at the end of the day, it's like, you keep doing this and you'll win. I don't know what the product looks like. I don't know what this looks like [00:15:00] as a billion dollar company, but keep doing that. So that's been our model.

It's like make small commitments, call your shot, and just follow through.

Callum: Are you under any, any pressure now to go out and raise again though? Or when do you see that starting? Because that's always the problem. Once you've raised, there's this runway, and as the runway gets shorter, you've got to go out. You, you, you're back putting on the mask again and telling everyone you're the coolest guy in the room.

Joe: It's, it is a complex emotion being a venture backed company. I think there's like starting from the top, like right. Where we are today, I don't feel the pressure. We are in sales mode, we're bringing merchants on, we're obsessed with the product and the merchant, and we have this safe space.

That said, the complexity of the emotion, I think about our, I'm looking at the spreadsheet, built the spreadsheet, and I'm looking at the day we die every single day. And that is a weird emotion to be just operating in. It's like, that's when it runs out, that's when we're done, so what do we have to do today right now to fix that?

And then the other side of this is like, for what we've [00:16:00] tried to pull off we couldn't have done it without. Funding. And so it's like, I'm extremely grateful for, we, we were able to start our beta in April of 2022 and not sell a new merchant. We had four merchants in our beta, April, 2022. And we didn't worry about closing a single brand until August of 2022, when we launched and all we did was incubate the product.

Tell us exactly what to build. Let's meet every week. What do you want next? What do you want next? No pressure from any outside brands. And like, that's a luxury that only really a non bootstrap company could get. So I'm very grateful for it. It's very complex. And it's my first time, so we'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes.

Callum:I mean, I didn't, I bootstrapped if I, if I went again, I bootstrapped because I hated the treadmill and I went to a few VCs and I hated the rejection bit. And I, then I just wanted to prove everybody wrong. And you know, I wanted to be able to go, fuck you guys. I did it anyway. You should have invested.

And. Yeah, [00:17:00] that was my thing. Obviously you've got a thicker skin than me or, or you had a better product from those early days, you know, like people got the vision, you was better at giving that vision, but I probably wasn't very good at articulating my vision at the time, to be honest

Joe: There's a different admiration, I think, for Venture. Venture gets all the attention and Bootstrap really carries all the real stress. We talked about this before we came on, like this anxiety of, like, just the feelings that you get and, and it's your money.

And so, like, for anyone to look at, it's not my money. Like, let's really just boil this down. And so the stress and anxiety that I think I feel, I can only imagine if it was, if it was literally my money and my wife's at home and she's already mad at me because I bought too many movies on Apple TV and like, yeah, it's a different, I have a lot of respect for Bootstrap.

I really do.

Callum: I, I literally talk about it now, me and my wife, we sold our car to fund reviews in those early days, I sold the car to pay for the staff, and it gave me the staff for like six weeks,[00:18:00] 

Callum: And it was like, right, you've got to go and get some clients. I was like, well, I can't drive to them. So can I borrow a car? But yeah, it is different. I don't envy. I think raising venture is difficult. And I think once you've raised venture, I think you're on a treadmill and I think that's hyper difficult.

I think they're both bootstrapping and, and venture backed. Both super, super difficult. That's been a big lesson for me, I think for all of us, but really any, you know, you get a taste of it when you do your first startup, just like in general, like a 10 person, 15, 20 person company, you get this like taste of like someone chasing you and you're like, all right, I got to keep going.

Like I'm fighting for something different than the big corporate guys are in their cushy jobs. You get a taste of it there. When you really start to get in the seat where you're like, Oh my God, there's really nowhere for me to hide now. That was the biggest lesson for me. It was like moving from a place where I could feel the heat.

I was in the hunt. I love that. I'm in the game. This is great. I'm making an impact, but I can hide. There's so [00:19:00] many places to hide. If things fall down, there's so many places for me to hide. You lose that. It's like, okay, there's nowhere for me to hide. And, and I've been on this spot of like, what really motivates me?

Cause, and what is my motivation? Is it a chip? Is it, you know, I do think for, for someone like me, I really enjoyed this like player coach dynamic. I mean, I was an athlete growing up. It was just something I've always related to. And so having somebody and they're not, my investors aren't cracking my ass behind me, but like, I have this vision that they are.

And I really want to impress them, you know, whatever it is, is really become a motivator for me. And so in that way, like it's, it's a positive. It's like this motivation where I wake up every day and I'm like, I've got a job to do. And I've got people that stakeholders, people that care about our success.

And it's become a source of motivation. Without that, I'd be Every day your brain's just telling you to quit. It's like, you can't make it. They're going to kill you. You know, you're not going to make it through that. You smell how big their team is. You're never going to make it like that's the thought.

And

Callum: yeah, yeah.

Joe: back to the kudos to a bootstrap founder because you fight through that.

Callum:[00:20:00] you become a weird person, I think because you become, to be bootstrap and bench capital, you, you've gotta be hyper focused. You know? It's gotta be the thing you think about 23 hours of the day, even on a little bit like, I, I, I took inspiration from so many weird things when I did reviews, one of our best features I took from a pizza sign, in Irvine and it, and it had a picture of how it displayed a review and it was a testimonial they'd got on Yelp and it was how they displayed it on that thing.

I went, took a photo of it. I got to digitize this. I got to, I got - use this. And that was one of the things that actually helped me create a product. That was how much I was thinking about reviews. I was like looking around going, you know, like you become obsessed. Everything you seize, I'm sure you're getting the same thing at status.

Everything you see everywhere you shop, every time you buy something online, you're like, I can improve that a little bit. Yeah, are you gonna be, are you, [00:21:00] are you adding more staff and where are you adding them?

Joe: We are at the tipping point crossroads, call it what you want, but it's time. We can start to see things working and jelling and are, you know, like 60% of our revenue last month closed in one call. And so we have these signals that like, okay, it's like some speed happening here. And and at the same time, more speed, more merchants, more customers, more rows in the database, it starts to, you know, there's just this cascade, more onboarding time, more support tickets.

And so it's, we're at that point where traction is just starting to happen. We really just started selling in January. If you think about like the motion, the engine really started in January. So it's time we're hiring backend. In particular, we are hiring on the go to market side. I'm not sure who this person is.

I hope they're in Ohio. I hope they're listening to this. They need to be like a generalist. There's three of us right on the go to market team and we work, whatever. It's more of them than me. We work like a team of like six or eight, we get a lot done. And so it's just a really specific person I'm looking for on the go to market side, and I don't know what I'd call the role yet, [00:22:00] a killer.

That's what,

Callum: Yeah. Have you read Jason Lemkin's book? Impossible to an inevitable,

Joe: no,

Callum: Get, get this book, right? I'll send you it. I'll, get you a copy. This book will help with fine. At least giving you a clearer picture of who that guy is. Because at this stage you're in now, non-stop reading because the six to 10 is a journey.

It's a, it's a step up. And that person you're talking about, you don't want VP of sales, but you want somebody who's going to help you get to hiring a VP of sales, get you to that bit. Do you know what I mean? If you are a VP of sales, they're going to go, well, you're not ready for me. You know, you've not got a sales team.

You've not got all these procedures and everything else in place. And that books are [00:23:00] really good. It's a really good listen. I've purchased it myself. I like loads of founders kind of at the stage where status is now. And I say to him, like, get this book and read it, listen to it, highlight it, you know?

So, exclusive Shopify plus at the moment. Do you think you will roll out to all Shopify, users and do you have any plans to roll out to other platforms?

Joe: Shopify plus decision and moving to Shopify core, we can call it is inevitable. A bit of a technical question, but more importantly, a focus question, a focus decision. It was actually just really nice. Like we have 9, 000 brands, let's call it 4, 000 that pay us 500 bucks and go get them and scale. And so it was actually really, it's been hard on the demand side and we'll admit, but it's been nice to have the focus.

We will inevitably move to all of Shopify. When that happens, we'll likely be in 2024 and then cross platform, you know, there's, there's a lot to be said when you, if you believe in the vision of accounts, if you believe in this idea of [00:24:00] like personalization and customer data and first party data, shopping tools that all intersects.

Inside my account, if you believe that's true, then start looking at accounts throughout e commerce. You look at like adidas's account, like they're good, but they're not great. And and so the question becomes like, how, how far can we take this? And, and what's the thing that gets an adidas to close or a target to close that.

Is totally different motion incentives than what a Shopify plus merchant needs to close. So we're certainly ambitious in that where we want to ideally, like we see the opportunity all the way up to Adidas's account page, but TBD two year, three year plan.

Callum: Yeah, I guess you've kind of got enough to go at, I suppose. One thing that I would love to see in more accounts in. Places where I shop is there a support so I can ask support questions. They all come back in, you know, so the account manages literally [00:25:00] everything. I've not got to leave to, you know, Georgia’s, or I've got to do chat with Zendesk or anything.

It actually all lives within the, the account area. 

Joe: What one of these kind of bits, well, it feels like a bit to me because I say it so often on every single sales call and every single merchant, but, but what ends up happening is like, you look at the account page and you start with my account. And then you start asking what should belong here. And what we say first, because you know what's funny is like brands will first say can like.

Can I push discounts there? Can I push new products there? Can I push new releases there? Can I give you something? Can I give you something? Can I give you something? And then the first thing with it was like, you is brand talking to shopper. Me is my account is me totally different. And so it's like a little weird, this plan work.

But then you start looking at the account and you say, what can you put my in front of? And if you can put a mind in front of it, it belongs in the account and my tickets. It's like, just, it's, it's such an easy litmus test for things of like, should we care about this piece of feedback in this way? Yes. My [00:26:00] tickets, it's like things that belong to me, my points, my orders, my credit, my subscriptions, my clicks, my cars, my favorites, my sizes, my styles, right.

And like my tickets. Never thought of that should be in the account based on based on our based on our decision making framework of me versus

Callum: Yeah.

Joe: should be

Callum: I love that. I love that you're so focused and you've analyzed that and you’ve, you've got this simple framework and you've almost got your understanding your why you, you've clearly got why you exist and you've broken that down now, so you, that's, I can see why they've invested in status, you know what I mean?

What what'd you wish you knew when you started status that, you know, now,

Joe: Oh, it's this it's a paradox. It's not to take things so seriously, is it, I think, initially. You feel the rush of being alone on your own, even with two people you trust. You're still very much alone in the sea of Shopify out there and everything feels personal and then everything feels like [00:27:00] life threatening and then you get your first merchants and there's this bug that's going to take up, you know, someone's email gets sent to them.

There's like something above and you're like, Oh my God, this is 25% of our entire merchant base, like status is going to end right now,

Callum: end of the world. Yeah.

Joe: You know, and so it's like just to like really back then I wouldn't want to tell myself like don't take it so seriously one foot in front of the other don't stress stress does not help.

Stress will ruin you will ruin relationships will ruin culture. And there was a lot of it early on. So,

Callum: Yeah. I think you're right. I think that kills a lot of startups before they've even got going, you know, that founders feel like they need to do something.They’re under pressure to add a feature or do something. And I think by doing that and not staying to your full focus can actually kill you, easier than actually a [00:28:00] competitor or a bug.

I totally agree with you. Stress. Yeah. I wish I had that advice. I was an absolute ball of stress for the first five years. Every 10 seconds, I thought we were going to get killed by somebody.

Joe: yeah.

Callum: But probably that's, that's not a bad thing. It, it, it keeps you alive in a way that cause you're always on edge. So we've kind of covered what the future holds for status. Let's talk about your target. Who, who is your target customer? Who's the perfect customer for status with what you've got right now?

Joe: If you have a big catalog and your product goes on someone's body, we are going to crush for you. All of our data suggests that you are going to be one of the best performers. So we think of big catalogs as multiple products, multiple collections, ideally. And then we think of things that go in the body as sort of less like broader.

Verticals of apparel, intimate swimwear, footwear, jewellery, accessories, you know, makeup, cosmetics. [00:29:00] We've sort of found the sweet spot of like things that go on your body and and so big catalogs with the body and the reason for that is like, and I can get a little like mad on how we think about this when we talk about like going back to status being all about me.

Right. So Status is me. My account is me. What are things that represent me? What are things that like when I put it on, like this watch, I never take it off. One of my really good friends gave this to me as a wedding gift. And so it's like, now I buy clothes that compliment my watch because this watch has become part of me.

And so like there's that game that we start to see it played out inside of catalogs. Princess Polly, one of our great brands, you open their clothing tab on their collection and it is, I'm not even kidding, 75 links of different product types and different all over the place. It's like this massive navigation and you know, it's a problem certainly, but to us it's like, okay.

This brand has a job to do. You need to get them on like a hero product, a t shirt that they love, make sure they love it. And then you need to get them on pants and skirts and shorts and socks and jewellery and accessories. And that is the game we want to play. So that's my long winded way of who we focus on.

It's like [00:30:00] big catalogs, things that go on your body. To call out who we don't focus on or we work on them, but we don't really seek them is subscribe and forget it. The subscribe and forget shopping behavior is one that, you know, not, not really ideal for us. Someone who sells for candy bars or protein bars and you pick out your favorite flavor, subscribe, and then never think about it again.

You don't need us. You might like us, but we don't, you know, that's not the problem we're trying to solve.

Callum: That's interesting. That's interesting, right? So all you listeners, if you're a Shopify store and you've got a big catalog and you create something that goes on the body, give status a call. So my final question in this, it's been an absolutely awesome interview. I've loved talking to you, Jay. What's, what's a book, podcast, newsletter that you would recommend what you've read that's inspired you.

Joe: I get a little guarded with this answer because it's so revealing to me where it's like you're about to be revealed as a dork.[00:31:00] So be careful.

Callum: No, don't don't worry. Don't worry.

Joe: But I mean, like if my honest to God answer of the one book that has really changed my life the most, it's As a Man Thinketh. It's by James Allen. It's an old book really about the power of thought.

If you, if you Google it and start to look at ‘As a Man Thinketh’. It will come out as being inspiration for this book called The Secret, which is basically a perversion, which is think and grow rich. So just be warned if you start going on this path, I'm not a think and grow rich guy. James Allen ‘As a Man Thinketh’, he talks about thoughts like bricks.

He talks about thoughts like seeds. He talks about your reality as a reflection of your thoughts. And, and honestly, like, if you read this book the headline is. It's all your fault. If something's going wrong in your life, it's like, start with you. You should be looking at what have I been thinking?

What have I put into my life over the last 10 years that has led me to this exact moment now manifesting in front of me? And it all starts with thought and it gives you this like fear and guilt and sadness, but then like control because you're like, okay, cool. I need to not let the bad thoughts [00:32:00] in. I need to curate my mind like a gardener and I'm a dork, but really powerful.

Callum: No. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I will, I'll put the link to the book in the show notes, but I'll also make sure I download it and give it a read. I absolutely love that. 

Joe, thank you so much for being a guest today. Really appreciate you. And I know we will talk soon and hope to meet you in person. In Ohio or one of the future events that we'll all be visiting. Brilliant. Thanks Joe, for being a guest. I honestly appreciate it 

Callum: Thank you for listening today. In reviews we trust is a bi-weekly podcast where I hope to be bringing you advice and insights from brands that are taking the e-commerce world by storm.