The Formula Rhode & Skims Use To Win (and how you can do it too!) Shopify President

24:59Years ago, like 2011 or 2012, we had this thing called the Shopify Build-A-Business competition. Do you remember that? Basically, it was start a new business on Shopify. Whoever has the most sales after a year wins$100 ,000. That was 2010. Turned out that the winner of these competitions, we're building billion-dollar companies, 100 grand, was it enough? So the idea was, let's give them something as a prize that they cannot buy. let's introduce them to really incredible people and we brought in like richard branson and i convinced uh tim ferris to get involved and seth godin and but i really wanted gary vanderchuk at the time he was like peaking it was like pete gary right and he was i wasn't getting his attention and he just put out a book at that point called crush it i think it was called crush it it was 2011 or so and there was this website that i don't think it's still available it's called 1-800-CEO-READS.COM.

25:56And it showed you how far every book was from hitting the New York Times bestseller list. And it showed the number of how many books is left to hit. It was like a sliding scale. So I knew that Crush It was 3 ,872 books away from hitting the bestseller list. And I ended up emailing Gary with a subject line, I want to buy 3 ,872 books. And that was a subject line. I don't think there was any body. There was no written body in the email. And of course, anyone who just put out a book knows exactly how far they are from that and he responded and we ended up having him and he was a mentor for the build a business conscious for years he became a friend i think he's an amazing entrepreneur i didn't necessarily have any additional resources relative to anyone else to get gary engaged what i had was just this idea that like figure out what he needs and what he wants and how can i how can i offer it and we ended up buying, I think, 3 ,000 books at that point from him over the years.

26:51But I knew that if I would have asked him, if I would have created this beautifully crafted, articulate pitch about build a business, why it's so great and why Shopify needs him and all, he would have been like, yeah, that's another email I'm getting. But I knew that by focusing on the thing that he wanted specifically, it would get much easier. That's the way I think to do it is. And I think that is available to absolutely anyone. One thing that I want to say here, because I don't want to mislead anyone, those emails you send out to people that you want to meet, one, they're probably not going to respond to you for the first five or 10 messages.

27:25But second, you have to, like, you know, I'm in LA now doing your show and I knew I was here. So I was like, who do I want to meet? And I knew I was coming here months ago. So I've been emailing people that I want to meet in LA for months now, But I also emailed a lot of people. And I think that is the work that's required to meet these incredible people. Shots on goal. Exactly. And most people don't want to do that. Being rejected is one of the best blessings I think anyone can ever have because you learn the muscle that it's not so bad. But you just said something so interesting that I think an expert can only answer to have a validated POVM-ness.

28:06you said peak Gary. And I think there's a large conversation which we're going to get into this creator economy. Is there a peak life cycle for a creator in terms of relevancy over a span of a certain amount of years? No, I think there's a peak on a per phase basis. We are very close with Jimmy, with the Mr. Beast team. I think Jimmy is amazing. I think Mr. Beast is incredible. One of the things that's most remarkable, Mr. Beast, and most people don't know is he effectively has like it's kind of like these boxes like he's got like box one which is like scrap youtube videos and he gets to the top of that box and then you're like oh he's peeking in that but then what you don't realize is there's another box here and now he's at the bottom of this box and he goes to the top of this box and you're like well he's peeking like no no there's another box there are some creators the best ones in my view who are constantly figuring out their next box.

29:03And this is very different than I think what it was like 10 or 20 years ago where athletes, for example, you have these sort of athletes that would have these incredible careers. And then as part of their next phase, they would put their name on like, I don't know, toothpaste or something or some like random product. And it made sense kind of if you squinted, but like, and eventually they kind of just faded out. I think actually what's happening now is you have much more, these creators, the ones that are entrepreneurial, these athletes, the ones that are entrepreneurial, they have multiple phases of their lives.

29:41And I think there's an opportunity to keep reinventing themselves. So yes, it is true that at any one particular phase, you can peak and there's not really anywhere to go. But the ones that are really good, that are really thoughtful, they find a new box. For Mr. Beast, for example, like the Feastable stuff is really incredible. He just bought a fintech company, a bank, a neo bank. It's so remarkable. His business partner, House, Jeff, like the way they're thinking about the future of like beast enterprises, like they're already thinking about like the box up here. Therefore, if he's down here, he comes from here, but he's here now, and they're already thinking about up here, they have so much room to grow.

30:20And I think those are the creators, the entrepreneurs, the makers that have longevity. The ones that I think flame out are the ones that don't get to the top of the box and there's no second act. Do you believe that every single person that wants to be an entrepreneur selling a company on Shopify needs to have the distribution and the audience, not necessarily even Mr. Beast, but someone to sell to? I think people overestimate how many followers they require and underestimate the idea of a thousand true fans. My favorite blog post ever written, Kevin Kelly, is called 1000 True Fans. And I think it's like a must read for any entrepreneur.

31:04What Kevin Kelly articulates in this blog post is like, that's all you really need. 1000 people loving what you were doing is sufficient to create this kind of flywheel. And I think a lot of people look at their follower count or something and they're like, I owe 200 followers is not going to work. Well, if half of those people who follow you are just are betting on you, care about you, want to support you, that's almost all you need. And it always starts small. I mean, you hear about, you know, all these incredible, going back to Ben Francis Gymshark, you hear how big Gymshark is now. And Ben literally started just by sending Gymshark t-shirts, not to the biggest fitness influencers, but to people that had like 500 followers, 5 ,000 followers.

31:49And actually that 5 ,000 to 50 ,000 follower band on Instagram for fitness has kind of been owned by Gymshark because Ben couldn't afford the 5 million follower fitness people. I don't think you need the Mr. B stuff. I think people have built incredible companies, in some cases, billion-dollar companies, in some cases, single million-dollar companies, just selling something to someone who really values it. And, you know, I had this thing. I started the pandemic called FireBellyT. it's I started my best friend David Siegel so David's Tea and shop I took we took our companies public at the exact same year 2015 and I met David that year so it's like 11 years ago and he took David's Tea public on the Nasdaq and we met they ended up leaving David's Tea and he kept a bunch of tea in like his drawer that only he was really consuming because like his literally it was like David's private collection and in the pandemic I convinced him to build a store on Shopify and him and I kind of partnered up and we built Firebelly tea.

32:49And it's like, it's like very high end green tea. Like it's great tea for people like me that are very high energy. I can't really drink coffee in the afternoon, but like Sencha tea is perfect for me. The story and the experience we've had with Firebelly is that you actually don't need Mr. Beast type followers. What you need is a core group of loyal customers. And David literally called every one of the first customers of Firebelly, asked them what they thought, tried to figure out a way to make it better. And Firebelly is not a huge company, but it's for the people that buy it, they love it. And I think we live in an era now where like, anyone can do that.

33:28You don't need to be Mr. Beast. You just have to over deliver to those 1000 true fans. You know, direct to consumer as a business model, it seems like a nothing. Well, yeah, we basically cut out the whole sale and now we go direct. It's actually a remarkable innovation in entrepreneurship because it means that nobody ever has to beg a retail buyer to put their products on the shelf anymore. Anyone can now just do it on their own. And if it works, you scale it. If it doesn't, try something else. it's so true and it's like from even working in the celebrity world in the past like i think people would be so surprised to see sales results from creator celebrities specifically that have millions of followers that do not get the sales as some of these like homegrown brands that have a diehard community that have a lineup out the door at the shopify store like there are so many of those success stories which i think i'm so interested on your take between traditional celebrity Hollywood brands and like the creator brands, the brands that start with a thousand true fans and why we've seen such success more so with the latter than the former group.

34:39It's actually quite simple. It is all about deep empathy for their followers. Okay. So this is kind of the way business always was built historically since the beginning of like commerce and retail. So thousands of years. The sequence was build a product first and then build an audience or find customers. That has swapped. And that's only been very, very recently, like in the last 10 years. Because what happened was you had this concept of people of influence. I don't call them influencers per se, but people that were, you know, were posting on social media, people that were making videos, people making content on their own in their living room, wherever.

35:18And they began to realize that this audience that they had was a very loyal audience. And they began to understand that audience and spend time with that audience. And they realized what that audience actually wanted. Everyone brings up Chamberlain Coffee, Emma Chamberlain. If you actually know the story of Chamberlain Coffee, it's very simple. Emma started by building this great community, deeply authentically connected, and began to talk about coffee. And began to realize that actually, this community doesn't think there's great coffee beans out there. I'm going to go do something for this community.

35:49I'm going to create Chamberlain Coffee. And obviously, it's become a huge success. When you used to go to a concert as a kid, you go to the merch table. And it used to be shitty t-shirts with a shitty screen print. I recently went to a Drake show. We had this great partnership with Drake and the OVO team. And I looked at the merch table. It was a Canada Goose collab jacket. Why? Because Drake, and specifically his team, Ollie and Matt Babel, like they know the OVO audience. They know the Drake audience. And they know that they don't want a shitty screen printed t-shirt. They want an incredibly well-designed, well-developed manufactured jacket like a Canada Goose jacket.

36:30And they want the branding like this. And so the celebrities that have had the most success with their own brands, they're the ones that actually understand their audience better than anybody else. And it's worked really, really well. But some random influencer creating a coffee company and trying to be chairman of coffee would never work. Jimmy created Feastables because he himself wanted a particular type of chocolate. That works. You know, people give Kylie a hard time, but Kylie Cosmetics is brilliant and it has longevity. Why? Because she started by creating these videos of her trying other people's cosmetics and realizing she can do it better herself.

37:06That's why there's longevity. Same thing with Kim on Skims and Emma on Skims. Like Skims was made because they wanted to do shapewear in a particular way. And they didn't like, they were Spanx and they were like, that's not for me. My community wants something different. Therefore, they created Skims and it worked really well. There's this amazing teenager named Salish Matters. You know Salish? Oh yeah. Okay, so you know her company? Yeah, Sincerely Yours. Sincerely Yours. The reason it works is because first she built this authentic connection with this community of like, you know, preteens, like 10 year old, 12 year old, 14 year olds.

37:41my daughter who's nine loves salish and then she's like look i'm gonna create this thing and she also allowed them to follow the journey hey i'm gonna go try this thing tell me what you think hey i'm gonna try this other thing tell me what you think okay guys i have a prototype hey guys i have my first samples hey guys i just created my online store okay guys guess what we're live and by saying it not only did she create pent-up demand for her products and that she she allowed people to follow in the journey by leaving these breadcrumbs. But she had an audience first and then built a product specifically for that audience.

38:14And it was deeply interconnected. And that's the first time in the history of commerce that you've seen this flip from product first, audience second. And this is the way it looks. That is very different than the old school Hollywood influencer sponsor. Like, you know, there's this famous ad in the 80s of Brad Pitt. I think it was Colgate. He did like a deal with Colgate. It's taught in business school as something that didn't work. But the reason it didn't work because he is not connected to toothpaste. His teeth look fine, but like no one that likes Brad Pitt cares about what toothpaste he's using.

38:51And so I think at the core of all this is authenticity. The reason that your show works is because you're not acting like I've met you in random coffee shops. You weren't exactly like this. And that's why it works. And so it's inviting more people into entrepreneurship through this idea of I have a small community. I'm going to make something specifically for them. And now it's ours. It's not mine. It's ours to share. Do you think that there are anomaly talent celebrities, creators? So let's take Kim K, for example. Like she has one of the most successful creator brands in the world that I would say is just a global behemoth brand now on Shopify.

39:30She just launched Update, like an energy drink brand. But Kim was so known for her silhouette and her shape and like her look that it was a no-brainer for those hundreds of millions of fans to go and buy Skims when it launched. Do you believe that she will have the same effect with something like update? Because she's not necessarily known like the Brad Pitt example for energy drinks. If she did update because her community, the people that look to her for influence, have told her either directly or indirectly that they want an energy drink, then it's going to work. And if they haven't, it won't work.

40:11but I think in particular when it comes to skims which I think you was called kimono originally I think all of us kind of follow these breadcrumbs of the story we remember when the name was like I don't really follow all these things but like I remember when they switched name from kimono to skims I remember meeting Emma and hearing about how that was going to work I think good American another great example good American is an incredible business because it feels like it was built for the community that Chloe had had cultivated so I don't know if every one of them is going to work. What I do know is that we are going to stop calling them creator brands very, very soon if we haven't already, because they're just really, really great brands.

40:49And I think the ones that lack authenticity will almost always fail. They may have a bit of a spike quickly, but if you look back at the ones that have been around for a very, very long time, those are the ones that have deep authenticity. And as they evolve, I love saunas. I'm high energy and high anxiety. So I love saunas. You know, Jesse Itzler? Yeah. So I love Jesse. He's a great guy. I had a chance to spend a lot of time with him. I did his race 29, 0, 29 a couple of times and I got this new sauna and I've been loving it. It's been great for me and my anxiety. And I was like, I need a sauna hat.

41:22The first person I thought about when I thought about sauna was I went to Jesse's profile on Instagram and I was like, what is he? Cause I always see a sauna hat. I was like, what is he wearing? What turns out all day sauna company is his company. So of course, like he, like knowing him on a personal level, of course he should create a sauna hat company. It makes total sense. He also owns all day running company because he also loves to run. That's not a promotional product. That's not a one time, one and done type of type of brand that will have longevity because it was built for him and his community in a very authentic way.

41:55And I also think about on the athlete side, you know, the canonical example of athlete created brand is the Jordan brand. I always thought it was strange that Michael Jordan doesn't own the Jordan brand. I think he gets a royalty and he may own a tiny percentage, but it's owned by Nike. I think part of the reason why that happened in the eighties, when the Jordan brand was being created, he did not have a direct to fan highway. There was no connection. Like he couldn't make something and sell it to his fans. He needed distribution and Nike has distribution. And I think what's so cool right now is distribution has been democratized.

42:34So now when you see these athlete brands, we did this thing with Luka Doncic here in LA. It was during NBA All-Star Weekend. So we helped him do this, create this cool pop-up where basically like he sold his shoes and his gear. But if you hit a basket, it was like a trick shot. You get a discount on all the products. It's amazing. And there was really, really neat. But it was so amazing because, like, Luca has a huge following. He's a very, very famous, well-known basketball player. He doesn't have to go to some big company. He owns 100 % of it himself because distribution for these people is now direct.

43:08When I was growing up, I hated being called a creative. When I was in business, like, I wanted to be Chip Wilson when I was growing up. I wanted to be Chip Wilson, so badly or Brian Hill. And when someone would call me a creative, I would be like, oh, my God, like, I do not. I am not a creative. I'm really good in Excel. I'm very smart. I'm very good at math. What I love about this evolution of entrepreneurship today is like being a creative is a badge of honor. And I think that couldn't be more important in the world of AI. Should entrepreneurs be scared or excited about AI? Oh, there's no debate.

43:38Absolutely has to be excited. So first of all, if you're an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. There's no doubt. There's that great quote that pessimists look smart, optimists win. You have to be an optimist if you're an entrepreneur. There's no room for pessimism. You have to be realistic and you have to know when to pivot or make a change. You can't be naive, but you have to be an optimist generally if you're going to be an entrepreneur. I think in this current kind of wave of technology, you have to be a technical optimist. The reason is when you look at how fast things are changing, a week ago I installed OpenClaw on my phone, on Telegram, and I've been playing with it.

44:15It's really cool. this new like i think they were just acquired by open ai but it was like literally this thing that controls my whole computer and i'm able to and it's it runs 24 7 you know when i shut down like if you use chat gbt you close your computer it stops running open clause is huge evolution and there was all these things i was frustrated about a week ago on the way over here i was playing with it half things i was frustrated about a week ago i've all been fixed i mean think about that in in less than a week, like this thing has gotten materially better. I'll give you another example.

44:46I went out for dinner a couple of nights ago with Rich from Fashion Nova and he was asking me about AI in general. And he said, you know, when have you had your mind blown with AI is what he asked me. I said, okay, take out your phone. And he opened up the Shopify app and I had him click on Sidekick, which is our AI tool inside of Shopify. Okay. So just to be clear, Fashion Nova is a huge team. Like they have a full data analytics team. They're very sophisticated, very very smart i know the whole team like they're smart people ricky and roger like best of what they do is you know i think he said i wonder what what is the most popular first name of on fashion of every customer ever what's the most popular first name and i was like type it in he typed it in got in a second i said okay ask now what is your number one customer again this this huge company and he asked what's what who's my best customer give it right away i said great Now ask a sidekick, what should I sell next to this customer?

45:42And he did it. And right away, it's like, this customer has bought these things. Therefore, we think these SKUs should be sold to that particular customer. She is most likely to buy these SKUs. Two things happened. One, he was mind blown that this was happening literally in like milliseconds. But he also said, he's like, wow. He's like, I have a huge team of people running my analytics department outside of Fashion Nova. And this tool is available to everybody that uses Shopify. That is why I'm so optimistic, because in the same way that we have democratized commerce and retail, AI is democratizing leverage and information and insights.

46:24This idea that everyone has a co-founder, we call it sidekick, that knows everything about Shopify, everything about your business, everything about retail, knows everything about the world, and it's literally in your pocket. Anyone can leverage it. That is really cool. Because if we made it easy to start, AI makes it easy to grow way faster than ever before. So in my view, there is no way to be anything but optimistic about what is happening, especially if you're watching a podcast like this and you're entrepreneurial. Maybe you're not an entrepreneur yet looking at you. You should become one soon, okay?

46:57But for those that are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial, this is massive human leverage. And I think anyone who feels, you know, I know there's like the doomers that are like they're worried about all that. I don't believe that to be true. I believe that like this thing is such an incredible new tool that we all have that that you may not be able to afford the massive team of data analytic experts that a big company can, but now you have Sidekick. Now you have these tools that are readily available. That is unbelievable. I mean, I think that's so cool. I think the other term that I'm so interested to hear from you, because I actually haven't spent that much time with this, is agentic shopping.

47:38Yeah. First of all, what is that? So agentic shopping is just this new front door that you can go to ChatGPT or, you know, Gemini and you can start shopping there as a new surface area. As a consumer, it's like having a personal shopper. And is it accurate? It's getting much better. I mean, we're helping to build a lot of that at Shopify. So we're trying to make it so that not only is it accurate, but also it has real context of what you care about. If months ago you did a search for hiking boots and you typed in, I want really light hiking boots. In three months from now when you go looking for hiking boots, it should only show you really light hiking boots because it knows everything about you.

48:17And unlike a personal shopper at a boutique here in LA, it's not on commission. It's merit-based. This idea of agentic shopping also means that you're going to be found even if you're a smaller business because, you know, on some of the search engines, it's whoever pays more gets found. Merit-based shopping is part of the agentic advantage. And I think agente commerce is actually like you have online, you have offline, you have like marketplaces, you have this new thing I think called that is, it's already coming, but it'll get way better in the next couple of months called agente. And I think from a consumer perspective, it's going to make shopping very enjoyable, a lot easier from a merchant perspective.

48:56It means that it's one more place you can get found. And more and more, the way that I think about Shopify is less about like an e-commerce company and more like a retail operating system where you have this hub and the hub is Shopify. And that's where you have your inventory, your customer, it's where you go to do all your work. And this hub is here. Then one spoke is the online store. One spoke is if you have an offline store, one spoke, maybe a pop-up. Maybe you also sell on, you know, uh, you have a wholesale business, you sell on other people's stores, but you have a new spoke called agentic, which effectively allows consumers to buy directly on all these amazing new tools.

49:30And I think it's going to be amazing for consumers. I think it's going to be really amazing for smaller merchants who may not otherwise get found. I like described as a personal shopper, but it's a personal shopper that only has one objective, which is to delight you as a consumer. That's very cool. What do you think that that means for influencer recommendations? I think there's always going to be a place for that. Back to the agentic side, if the chat knows that you follow, what's a good example? Paige Lauren's. Yeah, Paige Lauren's. She was an amazing store. Love her. Yeah. If the chat application knows that you think Paige is amazing and you trust her and you follow her stuff, the next time you try to find, you're searching for a sweatshirt or some sort of outfit for a particular outing, it should know that like Dairy Boy should chill up and think about how incredible that is.

50:25So that's the idea of merit-based shopping with agentic is that it's not about what it makes an assumption. You know, I'm sure you walk into a store and the store clerk says, we think like you should buy this. And you're like, what is this? I would never wear this. That doesn't happen with agentic commerce. Agentic commerce, agentic shopping is all about what it knows you're going to like because of your entire history of searching for it. I think that's like, I don't know, that's really exciting to me. And it's also, it's one more distribution channel. It's like one more way that any brand, even tiny little brands can get found.

50:59So is it your thesis that it's not going to replace things? Because I think that's why people are so afraid about this word AI. It's replacing me. It's replacing the influencer. Your thesis is what with AI? It's a new channel. It's a new place to sell. Look, we have a partnership with Roblox where through Shopify, just like you can build an online store and you can sell offline, you can also sell on Roblox. You can also sell on Instagram. You can also, you can sell in any service area. The Roblox channel in particular, when it came out, I talked about it and a bunch of people had asked me, I think we did an interview, like who's ever going to use it?

51:32I was like, some merchants are going to find it to be incredibly effective and others won't and that's okay. And, and to Fenty's, you know, incredible, uh, Sapna who runs Fenty Beauty to her credit, she's like, you know what? I'm going to get this thing a try. And Sopnet, our team at Fenty, built this Fenty store inside of Roblox. We power the checkout and all that for her. We make it really easy. It's an amazing new channel for her and for Fenty. So do most brands, should they sell on Roblox? No, not all brands should do that. But this idea that some brands will have their consumer spending time in different surface areas.

52:09We have a Spotify channel. So from Shopify, you can push products to your Spotify artist page if you're an artist. For most merchants in Shopify, that doesn't make any sense. But Beyonce has Sacred, which is her cosmetics company. She has a huge following, of course, on Spotify. So the fact that now she can deliver her products inside of Spotify to her listeners, who also love her as an artist and love her as a brand, the more surface areas that exist, the more opportunity that exists. And I think what we're trying to do is we know that with more opportunity or surface areas, the complexity goes up.

52:45Shopify's job in all of this, our role in all of this is to continue to simplify it so that you don't have to worry about it. We will future proof your business. We will make sure that whatever new surface areas pop up, you can sell into with the click of a button. And I, again, you can hear my voice. I don't think there's anything to worry about other than not playing with these incredible tools. Angels, I hope you are loving today's episode with Harley, the president of Shopify. I was so excited to have Harley on HSR, and I wanted to bring you behind the scenes into the room where the future of commerce actually happens.

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55:23Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. As the father of two young girls that want to be entrepreneurs, which I'm going to ask you to read this little letter from your daughters. Is this real? Yeah. Oh my God. The last one is the entrepreneur, I think. From Bailey, Harley's eldest daughter, nine years old. Dear Daddy, guess what?

56:04I'm so excited to open a tap and acro jazz dance class for toddlers. I'm going to do with me and Frankie. I love you so much, Bailey. Wow. From Zoe, Harley's youngest daughter, seven years old. Dear Daddy, I'm so excited to have a lemonade stand when I'm 10. I love you so much, Zoe. So as a father of two daughters that want to be and are entrepreneurs, how are you future-proofing them to be able to build billion-dollar, $100 million,$1 million, whatever they choose to build businesses in the future. So one daughter here clearly wants to start Dan's class for toddlers. The other one wants to do a lemonade stand.

56:45Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional here.

56:50I want to do for them what my dad did for me. My dad didn't have a lot of money. My dad was an entrepreneur and he'll probably see this and he won't love this, but it's honest. Mida wasn't a very good entrepreneur, necessarily. He never made a lot of money. But what he did for me was he made me feel like I can do it. He made me feel like saying I want to be a DJ. He's like, you can do that. It was kind of blind naivete. It was almost ignorant for him to say that. He didn't know. I thought there was no anything about DJing. But he gave me this confidence that, like, that could be a real thing. and so rather than go back to my kids again nine and seven and say you know a dance class for toddlers is not a great idea or a lemonade stand is not you know like the immediate thing i think about because this is where my head goes is like well what's your differentiation is it the best lemons is it going to be like what's their distribution like how do we accept payments is there a subscription no none of that matters what matters for bailey and zoe is that i just say, yes, and how can I help you?

58:00And let them try and let them fail and just give them the, whatever you want to call it, the swagger, the confidence to just go and try those things. That's the way to do it. Because that business, I still have the business card in my home office. Those silly business cards changed my entire life. It made me feel like these things were real. And I have friends who, when they've heard the story with the business cards, say to me that when they had crazy ideas, their parents told them they were stupid ideas. And they weren't trying to be mean. In fact, their parents thought they were helping them.

58:33Don't get distracted by these silly ideas. You know, focus on studying, focus on sports, because that's what their parents thought. I think this idea of defaulting to yes, defaulting to support as parents, really, really matter. And I, you know, I do that with like, with Lindsay too. Lindsay decided after she had, she gave birth to Bailey, she's like, I want to be an ice cream entrepreneur. about her and I'm like let's fucking go like how can I help what do you need from me and actually she didn't need anything from me she actually wanted me to do like she wanted me out of the way she's like I got this I want this to be my thing I had a tough time with that because I was like well what if we like she's like I want to open one store I'm like let's open 10 stores like no so I think the idea of like knowing how to encourage at the right time in the right way really, really matters.

59:18And I love this. This is amazing. Wow. Harley, I have to do some rapid fire. Last thing you put on your credit card. Well, it's SoulCycle this morning. So probably SoulCycle. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Okay. Last most expensive thing. I love Eleventy. Do you know Eleventy? No. Great brand. Okay. I just bought a bomber jacket from them. Okay. Eleventy. It's spelled Eleventy-T-Y, but amazing brand. Shopify brand? Shopify brand. It's not a picture of Shopify, but yeah, I bought a jacket from them. I love them. They're amazing. I wear James Purse basically every day. I think James Purse is incredible.

59:57What else? I like watches, but I haven't bought a watch in a while. Okay. But I want to give you a fun one. Do you tie expensive purchases like a watch to accomplishments? Milestones, usually, yeah. Yeah, when something really special in my life happens, because I find it's a nice reminder. I bought this watch at the IPO, Daytona. And every time I look at it, it reminds me of that. You know, you and I are both skiers. I just bought recently, I bought a helmet, a POC helmet with Bluetooth built in. And I really love that. Send me a link. Yeah, it's really good. Actually, I know it sounds like I use it.

1:00:31It's just for music. I love to listen to music when I ski. And it's a great helmet. So it's awesome. Speaking of skiing or building businesses. Oh, both. I don't think, again. You have to find it. It's a drop of fire. Building businesses. It's my greatest joy in the world is building. Is there a brand out there that doesn't use Shopify that you want to before the end of 2026? Brunello Cuccinelli. Period. Book that every single entrepreneur should read? Early entrepreneur, I think Rich Dad Poor Dad is really great. Not just for an entrepreneur. I think actually everyone should read Rich Dad Poor Dad.

1:01:12I read that when I was 13. and it changed my view of money and how to manage money. High output management, if you're running a company with a team, is really, really great. Andy Grove, who built Hard Things About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz is incredible as well. Yeah, actually, you know, I'll give you a controversial one, maybe not controversial, but a really important one. It's called Anti-Fragile, the Simtali. There's this idea that if you have something delicate and you drop it, it breaks, it's fragile. And if you drop it and it doesn't break, it's durable. There's a third system called an anti-fragility system, like the immune system where if it breaks it actually reassembles better stronger faster and actually i think this whole book basically talks about the system with the anti-fragile system i think it's an amazing way to go through life to think about life that if you look at failure as the discovery of something that did not work you end up trying a lot more things and be more resilient and the anti-fragile book itself anti-fragility does a really good job of embedding that into your psyche.

1:02:10Beyond that, 1 ,000 True Fans is incredible. It's just a blog post, not a book, but I think it's really, really important. Those are the ones. Is there an industry that you would never start a business in? I love restaurants. We're huge foodies. I know nothing about it. In fact, I can see myself wanting to get into the restaurant business because we love restaurants. My wife and I love dining. It's our favorite thing in the world is go to a great restaurant in a great place with a great chef and have a great Saturday night or Friday night or whatever, but I will not get into it. That's probably the one that I would avoid at all costs, mostly because I like it so much.

1:02:43And I know that I'll be very bad at it because I will make bad decisions that are not objective, but rather are based on like, I'm like, let's expand because I want more people here. And they're like, no, no, no. So I'll stay away from restaurants. Okay. One word to describe how revolutionary this product was on Shopify. Brilliant. because what Rode did when Haley did is, this to me is more than just a piece of silicon and a lip tint. This is empathy. This is Haley and the team at Rode watching millions and millions of customers all over the world at a coffee shop, at a restaurant, having their phone here and their lip kit here or their lip tint here and saying like, we can do this better and saying, actually the way we'll do it is, because the innovation is not just this, it's also this, right?

1:03:38It's how it actually all fits in together. It's the way it slides out. This speaks to me of like, they deserve all the success they've had because this tells me that they listen to customers in a way that no one else did. Like when you see this now, you're like, this is so obvious, but how come no one figured it out? Because they didn't listen the way they did. Brode and Haley and the team, they deserve all the credit that they get for this. This is incredible. For non-lifesaving products on Shopify, is that one of the most innovative you've ever seen? Oh, that's asking a lot. It's like picking my favorite child.

1:04:09This is pretty damn innovative. But, you know, there are like, Figs is also incredibly innovative. Trina has become a friend and she's an incredible entrepreneur. She doesn't come from that world. It was a friend of hers who was a doctor and she's like, I can't believe you're this great doctor at this great hospital and you look like a schlump. Like, I can do this better. So I think that's incredibly innovative. I think, yes, there's some brands on Shopify. Like I look at Birkenstock, built in the 1700s. They're still innovating. Or I look at Mattel. I've got a chance to meet the team of Mattel and, you know, and everyone there.

1:04:46And Mattel was created in 1945. Somehow, like, they keep innovating. Like, forget the Barbie movie. I just, Mattel Creations, they do drops. I was driving here today. I drove by the Supreme store, which is on Shopify. the lineup at Supreme is still insane. What Kits is doing with Kits treats and their collaborations, absolutely insane. Walk into a James Perth store, you can hide all the logos. You can hide the name. You smell it. You're like, James Perth star. How does that happen? Thoughtfulness, people that really, really care. That's why I started the conversation by saying I pray at the altar of entrepreneurship.

1:05:23I pray at the altar of people that have a really, really high give a shit quotient and they make products for people that appreciate that give a shit quotient and it's it doesn't have to be fancy i like these bracelets from m cohen because like he cares about bracelets i know the bombas the bombas socks guys for a long time like i think bombas is so interesting because like they thought about small things like that little rubber inside of the sock so it doesn't slip off i get to experience this every single day do you know to covis yeah the cowboy yeah so like i spent a lot of time with kevin team to covis like who would have thought that there was room for a modern cowboy boot direct-to-consumer business model in 2026.

1:06:03And here we are. Why? Because, again, same reason. When you walk into a Tecova store in New York City or in San Diego or in Austin or anywhere, LA or wherever the stores are, you walk in, you're like, this is Tecova. It's a bar. People are just having tequila shots or having a drink. They're hanging out there. There's people just like having conversations. Companies that really have a deep understanding of who they're serving of any size win. And those that don't lose. And I just, I don't know, I'm, I'm blown away by the people we get to serve every day. And that's like, it's easy for this to be my life's work.

1:06:42It's easier for me to support you when I first met you, because it was so obvious that like, you just really cared. You wanted to have longevity, but you wanted to do in a way that was deeply personal, authentically to you. And people, the world, the public, the media, investors, and more support your customers, we feel that, we see that. We want to vote with our wallets to buy from companies that we admire. Small ones and very, very large ones. It's the reason why so many people go out of their way to go to their favorite coffee shop. Even though Starbucks is closer, they still go there because they know the person there, just the size of the ice cubes are a little bit different and they really care about those ice cubes.

1:07:20And I think people notice these things. Care more. Care more. If you could title this season of your life, what would it be called? I am embracing my spiky object. What I mean by that is throughout my life, I thought I had to be well-rounded. When I looked up to see who were running companies of shop by size that we are today, 10 years ago, I saw a lot of very well-rounded people. They were good at finance and product and they were good at PR and IR and they were good at business and sales and marketing and they were good at technology engineering. They were good at everything. And I thought that's what I have to be.

1:07:53And it was only a couple of years ago that I think for Toby, this is the same thing. We both sort of embraced our spiky object. He is the greatest product mind, I think, in the world and certainly in commerce. And I'm a storyteller. And so I'm embracing my spiky object. I'm not well-rounded. I'm like this and I'm just trying to sharpen my point. So I think this is my spiky object era. I love that so much. Okay. Last one. I do these things on Instagram. Have you seen my HSR love notes? So I do have a very toxic brain and I have to retrain it every single day, this negative self bad talk. And so an example would be like, I'm going to crush my interview with Harley today, even though I'm very nervous and I'm very sweaty.

1:08:34I'm going to have an incredible night of sleep because I'm having trouble sleeping. If you could tell yourself one HSR love note for the rest of your life, what would it be? I am enough. I do this thing called Big Shot. It's this little weekend project. I'm creating an archive of the greatest Jewish entrepreneurs. And we interview these people in their 80s, 90s, in some cases, in their hundreds. Self-made billionaires that I really admire, people I deeply look up to. And one of the questions I ask at the end of the interview is, when did you know that you made it? these are people like linda resnick who created fiji water or izzy sharp who created the four seasons or mickey drexler who basically created the gap and and founder of the old navy like really iconic people and i just say when do you know that you made it and none of them have ever said that they believe they've made it and it's inspiring but i also i'm like are you crazy like you created the four seasons not not one hotel like the entire four seasons hotel chain like the brand the most unbelievable i think the most legendary luxury run on the planet is four seasons and they don't know that they've made it yet and i would like at the end of my life to say i made it when this happened or i felt like i made it when this happened or when bailey started you know her dance school for toddlers or zoe did this and so i think a lot of this content of enough, doing enough, being enough, having enough.

1:10:06And I think that's a double-edged sword back to your question earlier, which is that ambition is really good, but there is a point where you have to be like, that's good. Like I'm enough. I've done enough right now. And I don't need that right now. I'm still kind of in my, in my era where, you know, my spiky point era, spiky object era, where I like, I want to grow. I'm not the best storyteller in the world. And I'd like to be, It may take 10 years or 30 years, but by the time I am of the age that I would be interviewed for Big Shot for my own show and someone says to me, when did you know that you made it?

1:10:39I want to say I was 65 years old or 75 years old and I was, you know, sitting on the porch with my grandkids and I look around and I feel totally and utterly complete. Okay, I have one more question for you. I think I would be so stupid to have one of the best storytellers that I've had on the show. And from one storyteller to another, what is one thing that I could do to improve moving forward as an interviewer? Watch all your interviews. It's hard. I bet you have a tough time doing that. Watch them. Think about your voice inflections. Think about your ums. Think about, not that you do that, but that's what I do.

1:11:22No, but it's good to get feedback. And I watch all that stuff too. And I shall say this to anyone who's watching. If anyone who's watching wants to become a better storyteller, you know, it's hard to get on the HSR podcast, but there are 700 ,000 other podcasts. There are plenty of people that would love to have everyone watching on their show. And if you go on someone's podcast, even a tiny little podcast, you get this memento. You get the video afterwards. Maybe it's on YouTube. Maybe it's they send you a file on Dropbox, whatever. You get to watch it. I actually think one of the greatest ways to become a better storyteller now in modern days is reps.

1:11:57And you can do high leverage, low consequential reps by being on all types of random podcasts. Next time a high school tells you they want you to talk to their class about your baked goods business, do it. But like ask your mom to come and record that and then watch that video. You know, every amazing athlete that I've met who like is like superstar athletes all tell me they watch their tapes. They rewatch their tapes. We've been public now for 11 years. So I've done 44 earnings calls. Not only do they listen to all of my earnings calls that I've done, I listen to everyone else's earnings calls too.

1:12:31What they do differently here. You know, one of the things I started doing in the earnings call was I repeat myself now. Q4 2025's revenue was more than all of 2020. I heard that sad. I was blown away by it. So I said that on the earnings call and I said, I'm going to repeat that. our Q4 revenue was more than the entire year in 2020. Stop. Pause. Now continue. I learned that by listening to other people's earnings calls. Now, a lot of the stuff I listen to other people's earnings calls are terrible. People are inarticulate or they're nervous or, but I am able to pick up these little things here and there.

1:13:06And just like an athlete, entrepreneurs are athletes. We just have to train in a very different way. We can't just go to the gym, but watching the tapes, things we've already done, as small or as large as they are, that is an incredible hack to just true self-improvement. Harley, I really meant what I said at the beginning of this interview. Like I have a big vision and it's bold and it always has been, but it really does take people like you to let me interview you without my shoes on, outside my house. And I'm just like truly so grateful that you made the time. So where can people find you? Where can they listen to Big Shot?

1:13:40And when are you coming back on? I'll come back at any time you'll invite me. You know, Instagram, I'm just at Harley. I'm lucky I have one of those first name Instagram handles. You know some people? And yes, I was able to get that. And Big Shot, if you're interested, whether you're Jewish or an entrepreneur or both, Big Shot.show, it's my weekend project. It's a labor of love. And let me say this. I think what you are doing with the show is more than just you creating a show. You are effectively, you've manifested this. Like, and there's no other way to describe it. You have manifested what you have here.

1:14:09like you you said you want to do it and you're just doing it but i think what you're also doing you're showing people that this is possible and this idea like we cannot do we don't see the reason i want people to go to a local meetup a local entrepreneurial hackathon whatever it might be is because when you see back to what my friend john o 'brien says like if you hang out with nine entrepreneurs you will be the 10th and if you hang out with nine complainers and pessimists you will also be the 10th. I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much.