Shopify's "Boring" New Updates for Entrepreneurs with Egan Cheung

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like inclusion and marketing. Today, we'll be breaking down Shopify's boring new updates for entrepreneurs. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Egan Chung and EO Fire Studios. Egan is the director of product at Shopify, overseeing tools that millions of entrepreneurs use daily to grow their businesses with advertising, analytics, marketing automation, customer service, and loyalty. He's been part of the startup world for years, experiencing both failures and successes, including one that went from his friend's living room to NASDAQ IPO.

0:39Egan's passion for entrepreneurship extends to his family. He's married to a two-time entrepreneur and father to four aspiring entrepreneurs. In today's foundation, we'll talk about Shopify Edition. We'll talk about some cool new things with customer accounts, entrepreneur goals. We'll talk about improving your business efficiency and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Agen and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:10AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Fire Nation, you have a book inside you and it's time to share your message with the world. That's why I created Author 100, a 100-day program where I will personally guide you one-on-one to create, write, publish, and market your book. If you want daily guidance and mentorship from me, JLD, then head over to author100.com to sign up for a free call with me to chat about the details.

1:49Egan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. All right. What's up, Fire Nation? And John, thank you so much for having me on here. I'm really excited to be here. Not to over-rely on data. And essentially, there's a strong need, I think, for leaders to rely on intuitive decision-making based on whatever it may be, their vision, their taste, even gut hunch. I think the reason why I often get flack for this, John, is because I'm actually a math major and I'm in charge of Shopify's analytics products. So typically you would expect me to be a big proponent of data.

2:29And don't get me wrong. I am like, I absolutely think that data can help you make better decisions. And, and despite that, nothing's a substitute for your intuition for knowing what to ask. And most importantly, I think for entrepreneurs, I mean, this is obviously an audience of entrepreneurs. I think it's really important for, for everybody to, to value the, what entrepreneurs bring to the world in terms of like creating a vision and getting the masses, your customers, your employees, your investors to see your vision and believe in it. Um, that's a unique gift that they bring. Um, yeah, I mean, I've, I've personally fallen to that trap myself early on.

3:08Like, uh, some of my earlier endeavors, I kind of hit like analysis paralysis where I was looking at the data and it seemed like, you know, the thing that I want to do, maybe the data doesn't support it. Maybe, maybe, maybe this is not going to work. Maybe, uh, you know, it has a low chance of working, but I think that's, that's why I have such admiration for entrepreneurs because they, they actually change the environment that they're in. Like if somebody's, somebody sees a vision for a store on a corner of where there's never been a store before and there's not a lot of foot traffic going by, but they see it so clearly in their head, they see their store there and they see it succeeding.

3:42They will change the environment. they will make people walk by that storefront. So entrepreneurs really, I think, change the environment such that when there isn't any data, they bring the data, they make the things happen. So I think it's not always as important as having intuition and passion. Fire Nation, you bring the data, you know that you do, and that's why you're here today. And as you know, Fire Nation, I've been using Shopify for almost a decade now with an Entrepreneurs on Fire. I mean, they're always cutting edge. They're always bringing new, amazing tools and opportunities for entrepreneurs.

4:14That's why I love them. That's why I use them. And that's why I'm going to talk about some new updates that they have for you, for entrepreneurs, for Fire Nation. So I've been hearing whispers, Egan, for a little while now. Tell us, what is Shopify Edition? Yeah, I guess if you've been following us, and even if you haven't, a little dish about Shopify Editions is, it's essentially every six months, Shopify kind of puts a snapshot of what they've been up to for the last six months. to help merchants succeed. It's a full story. You can go and help yourself to the site. It's actually, it's always accompanied with a really interesting kind of visual experience.

4:52And it shows the latest launches, all the updates, all the enhancements across the whole platform. One spot where merchants can go and see and entrepreneurs can go and see what we've been up to, to help them succeed. So what's new? What's different this time around? Because, you know, that's what Shopify has always done in the past. They've always brought the cutting edge, the new side of that envelope, the cool side of the pillow? What's new? What's different? It is a little different this time, John. We've actually made a bold move this time not to go out and ship kind of these big headline, brand new features, brand new products.

5:26Instead, what we're trying to do this time is really focus on making sure our existing products work better altogether. So it's really a lot of the nitty gritty details that will have a major impact. Granted, some of these things, again, as I mentioned, are not going to grab the next headline when you're watching cable news or whatever, but they are going to make headlines with merchants because these are the things that we have heard from merchants and partners time and again, trying to use our products, that they just really need this thing to work with that thing. And this edition is a collection of those really, really important and impactful changes.

6:04Now we love real world examples. We love case studies. It just kind of brings things to life. So can you give an example or two of how you've seen this implemented, maybe even in tests or in the real world, or maybe if you don't have any of those, a way that you're envisioning this being implemented in a real world scenario? One of the things that I work on is analytics. And people will have seen that some people who are existing users of Shopify may see that analytics is undergoing a major overhaul right now. And one of the key points of that is our analytics are now unified. So as you use features throughout the Shopify admin, previously, it was actually interesting because we launched this brand new feature, but it was actually very difficult to get any reporting on it.

6:48And so with this new launch of analytics, we're making it possible for every feature to be reported on and for merchants to actually customize and slice and dice the work that they're doing to get the information that they want. Again, coming back to that data, not to contradict myself, they need to know what questions they're trying to answer. But that's the kind of thing we're looking to have interoperate. Now, there are some pretty cool new things with customer accounts. Tell us more about that. Yeah, this is also a great example, John. So customer accounts is another area that I've been working on.

7:22We're all online shoppers. We all know what it is to expect from a brand kind of like customer service, personalized experiences. And consumers, whether they're looking to manage like one of their orders or check what their store credit balance is or check out their loyalty, they want to be able to do that without necessarily getting in touch with the merchant. So we actually launched our customer account feature a couple of years ago, actually, when we launched our B2B channel. So this was to help merchants be able to sell their products in bulk to other businesses who are reselling it. And that makes a lot of sense, right?

8:00Like a B2B buyer has to log in to be able to see, manage their locations that they're shipping to, manage their payment methods. Oftentimes they have to look back and refer to their previous orders to do bulk orders again. We quickly followed up with support of that for consumers. And we've made that all kind of up to date in terms of what consumer expectations are. You know, like in the past, you would have to remember your password, John. I'm sure that you've got tons of accounts on a ton of different shops that you've shot that before. Like me, you know, it's almost like you need your own software in order to track them all.

8:37So we we've updated a lot of that to get rid of those, not get rid of, but like augment those methods with passwordless methods like pass keys and one time codes and that kind of thing. And so now consumers can log into customer accounts and now consumers can log in across all these storefronts using these modern methods really easily, increasing the number of people who are logging in and getting these personalized experiences. But there are quite a few things we're launching in this edition that go a long way to making that experience a lot better for buyers and a lot better for developers. And that's something we're calling customer account extensions.

9:12So as mentioned, you can log in today and access your order history and that type of thing. But many entrepreneurs offer much more varied programs. They have loyalty programs. They offer subscriptions. They offer a ton of additional functionality. And the amazing thing, John, is that Shopify, we've got this massive network of developers and app partners that build on Shopify to make this available, all this functionality that consumers want available to merchants. But it was a little difficult for people to actually implement some of these things. They either had to go through a lot of hoops to make it very seamless or they didn't go through those hoops.

9:50And then their buyers actually kind of had not the greatest, most seamless experience. With customer account extensions, we're changing all that. So now you'll be able to just go if you let's say you've got a loyalty program. You go onto the app store for Shopify. You install the app for your loyalty program. You drag and drop this interface all over your kind of customer account editor. And boom, it's inheriting your branding. You got the passwordless login. The customer logs in one place and everybody knows exactly who they are and they can personalize the experience to them. Fire Nation, this is why I love Shopify because they're always improving the user experience, the customer experience.

10:26They're just making everything more seamless as they go forward, thinking about you, the entrepreneur. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Picture this. You're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer. How do you even begin to describe it? Not only do you brainstorm new campaigns, create compelling copy, dream up landing pages that will actually convert and generate leads, you also have to gather all the data to make sure it's even working. And tomorrow, you'll do it all again. Marketers are spread way too thin, but HubSpot has a better way.

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11:38But it's not always about our desire to write a book. Sometimes it's about knowing which steps to take and when to take them to make it happen. If you know you have a book inside of you but aren't sure where to start, then I have an exciting opportunity for you. It's called Author 100. Author 100 is a program I personally crafted to help you one-on-one every step of the way, from drafting to writing to publishing and even marketing your book. When you join the Author 100 program, you'll have access to me, JLD, for 100 days. We'll have weekly one-on-one calls, plus you'll get daily guidance from me whenever you have questions or hit a roadblock.

12:17Over the past 12 years, I've self-published five books, including one of the top five publishing campaigns of all time on Kickstarter, the Freedom Journal. I've also traditionally published with HarperCollins, so I know a lot about the book publishing world and where most authors go wrong. I created Author 100 to share my experience and the lessons I've learned along the way, and I can't wait to share it with you. If you're interested in learning more, head over to author100.com and sign up for a free call with me. That's author100.com. Egan, we're back and listen, entrepreneurs love goals. So what is the goal with the updates to customer accounts?

12:58What are you hoping to accomplish? We actually had an internal name for it. Our internal name for it was like self-serve because what we're really trying to do is help buyers serve themselves to do things that they are used to doing themselves anyways. This helps them get really good customer experiences. It helps the merchant because it lowers their support costs and it lets them focus on high value conversations, right? So this really helps entrepreneurs with a lot of business efficiency and customer satisfaction. Well, you just mentioned business efficiency. I wanted to get a little more detailed there and dive a little more into the weeds.

13:33So let's talk about how this specifically helps entrepreneurs on Shopify improve their business efficiency. Because at the end of the day, all we have is time. We're always trying to find more time somewhere. And this can help. How? Just as I mentioned before, there are certain things that an entrepreneur has as a gift that they could and should be spending their time on. Maybe if I could bring this personal for a second, John, I'll talk a little bit about actually an entrepreneur who I am married to here in my house. Yeah. So, um, uh, she, my wife, um, Mia, she actually, she makes allergy accessories for, uh, for kids with food allergies.

14:10Um, she got into this because, uh, our daughter has food allergies and, um, and she started, you know, making things for her and other parents caught on and it's actually, it's, it's really worked out for her. Um, and there are two things that I can see that she loves. And actually I hear it because I hear her working just, you know, a couple of doors down for me. One is obviously at the root of it, it's making things like she loves the act of coming up with new ideas, going to find the materials for it, building prototypes, testing that out, seeing if it meets, you know, if again, her vision of what it is she wanted to make, if she could reproduce it, if she's satisfied with that quality.

14:48I hear her doing that all the time. The second thing that she really loves is having high value conversations with customers. And I talk about high value. And by the way, I know I know that she loves this because that's the only thing that'll make her drop what she's doing on when she's building something. If I hear the sewing machine stop, then I know that she's actually talking to a customer. But the high value conversations I'm talking about here are, you know, talking to parents, other parents who have like fears and challenges about being a parent with food allergies. you know the unique challenges are getting a four-year-old to carry their epi pen with them at school um how to help parents who are kind of like they're just getting into this for the first time and they have a lot of questions and she's been there and she can kind of help them through that these are all conversations that i can tell she gets a lot of energy from but not just energy it helps her to tell her story it helps her to position her products better because she has um like field knowledge from you know like hundreds and thousands of parents now who have dealt with this.

15:44And honestly, it helps her to create loyal fans for life. I'm sure she is interested in doing that because it's good for business. But I think she's interested in doing that because like most entrepreneurs, she gets a kick out of that. But there are low quality conversations that I also hear her having to stop what she's doing to work on. And she still does them because she's really great at customer service. But these are things like the customer has checked out with the wrong size and they just need to change their size. They know exactly what they want. They just, they just want to do that.

16:13Or, you know, their shipment didn't arrive and they're getting impatient. They're just wondering where it is, or maybe, you know, they got it, they tried it on and they want to process a return. So these conversations are, she a hundred percent drops to address them anyways, but that's not a great use of her time. And it's not a great use of the customer's time. Both constituents here are better served by the customer just open up the phone, logging into their customer account and being able to do these things effortlessly, just like they're used to doing, you know, in all other parts of their digital life.

16:43I love that personal example, because it just really brings things to life. I mean, these are the pains, the issues, the problems that Shopify is committed to solving and has been solving for a long, long time. So you can kind of take a step back now, we talked about a lot of things, you know, with everything that's going on at Shopify and improving the customer experience, the client experience, the overall experience. What would be one thing from our entire conversation today that you would really want to make sure our listeners walk away with? A lot of what we're doing in our auditions is work that helps us to kind of unify commerce.

17:19And a lot of that has to do with unifying commerce for the merchant, right? Like, as I mentioned, having a merchant who's trying to do one thing in one spot, have it be easy for them to do something in another spot. But I also like to think about unifying commerce for the buyer. And I'd love for, I'd love for your audience to think about that, you know, whether they're using Shopify or not to spend a lot of spend at least a few minutes every day to think about the experience that their buyer goes through in the complete life cycle of discovering your brand, landing on the site, making a purchase, every touch point and every interaction that they have with you.

17:55I tell my team that is actually a marketing moment. That's a moment for you to tell your story and unifying that experience. You know, you might have my butcher in town is an example. She happens to use our software, but she just does an excellent job of making sure that like whether I am, you know, I order every year a turkey for Christmas from her. If I'm buying that from her in store through our point of sale app, or if I'm buying it as a pre-order online, I can access it all through my customer account. And she's not a big operation, right? Like she's kind of a one woman operation there in terms of like founding it Um, and, and yet with very little effort, and I would say actually like kind of, I think she's told me it was kind of fun to set it up.

18:41She was able to set up a kind of a complete cohesive experience for me there. So I'd encourage you listeners to even like take a step through your customer's shoes, um, every couple of months and just make sure that the experience that they're getting from discovery through to post-sale is exactly what you intend for it to be. Give us the call to action for Shopify. What do you want Fire Nation to do to learn more about everything we talked about today? I would go straight over to shopfi.com to the edition's homepage. It'll be splashed up right there and find out all the amazing things that we're making available to entrepreneurs who have been with us for a long time and are now multi-million dollar brands, as well as for people who are just starting out.

19:26And just be aware that that same technology that is powering those million dollar brands is available to you. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with EC and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Egan in the search bar, that's E-G-A-N, and the show notes page will pop right up. And Egan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John, and a salute to all the entrepreneurs out there.

20:00Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Egan for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams, visit UncommonSuccessBook.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side.

20:36The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Fire Nation, you have a book inside you, and it's time to share your message with the world. That's why I created Author 100, a 100-day program where I will personally guide you one-on-one to create, write, publish, and market your book.

21:14If you want daily guidance and mentorship from me, JLD, then head over to author100.com to sign up for a free call with me to chat about the details.

21:27Thank you.