Have Shopify Brands A/B Tested Themselves Into Invisibility? Philip Jackson calls it "The Sea of Sameness"

27:37I feel like I pinch myself every day that this is a job I get to do. But they come and they listen to it. We curate incredible speakers. We bring people from outside of the e-commerce and retail industry to come and inspire them. Like last year, we brought Dami Lee, who's an architect, to come and talk to these people. We brought in Andrew Huang, who's a YouTuber and he's an author, incredible filmmaker. And they just come and speak to us inspire us about their cultural experiences, right? Just people that are totally outside of our world. And then we as sort of the Babelfish sort of translate it back to them.

28:14These are people that have incredible vision. I think what we've lost is like, what is the vision for our brand outside of the next three to six months? Outside of what our dashboards tell us? Like, do we have an actual worldview of what our, of what the world will look like with our brand in it and what the world looks like without our brand in it and what the world could be with our brand And I know it's like there's a joke meme that goes around is like what the world could look like if boomers could pronounce Chipotle correctly. And it's sort of the futuristic world. But that's what you should have your worldview is.

28:45This is what the world could be if my brand existed. And that's the worldview. The other thing is treating customers like a lead instead of co-creators or participants. That, again, is part of the, like, your brand does not exist apart from having people in it, in the modern sense, in parcel of your community. And I do think that's such an important part of the modern brand building is that it's co-creative with your community. So it's not just aesthetics. These are much more than the logo today. Yeah. And I often say too, it's often what your brand is, what the way other people would describe you, not how you describe yourself.

29:27So that's like, if you really want to know, ask someone else how they would describe it. And then that's if you're doing a good job or not. Can I actually throw out a third option? Sure. No, you can't. Yes. I have this book. I was going to ask you about that. Called Lore. And this is our newest book from Future Commerce Press. It's a coffee table book. We put out one of these a year. Shameless plug, futurecommerce.com. You can go get this. But we called it Lore because I believe every brand has Lore, whether it's founder, Lore, or maybe you have a century-old founder. The founder is long gone.

30:00Century-old brand, you have Lore. Everybody has Lore, right? But I think a lot of people think, well, where's the truth of the brand? And so we dive into this over 300 pages. There's a bunch of angles to take on this. We do have one particular chapter sort of in here that's dedicated to something that my co-founder would call mythopoeia, which is an extraordinarily big word and I had to learn how to pronounce it. But it's sort of this concept and this idea that is the brand in the eye of the beholder of like the customer? And I think that's an interesting point of view. Like, is it what your customer says about you?

30:35Which is what you just said. And I think that I tended to believe that was true. If you ask a creative director, I might say the brand is what the brand defines it to be and what the brand book says that the brand is, right? And that's how, if you do your job right, then the customer will have the same point of view that you have and you've put your brand out into the world and it's received in the way that you've intended it to be. But I think there's a third option. And the third option is that neither the brand nor the customer actually holds the universal truth of the brand. That in reality, it's somewhere in between and that you're both telling a facet of the story of the brand and that the truth lives in the middle.

31:12And in that way, it's more like mythology in that we're all creating the story of the brand together over time. And that as we're building the story of the brand together over time, it is subject to change over time. And no one person owns that story. And that means anyone can contribute to it. And in that way, it kind of relinquishes us of all control. That's a little scary. I think that's a lot scary for brand owners. And it's, I think, something that we, I think more storied brands understand than we know. And newer brand owners don't really understand just yet. And I think you see this with brands that work with influencers and creators.

31:52Like it used to be that you would give your creator or influencer community, okay, here's our brand guidelines. This is how we talk about the product. These are the features and benefits. This is what it does. This is how you can, what you can say on a video. Now go make a video and go make some content. And what they learned is like creators, they want to talk about it the way they want to talk. Like the good creators. So what brands are doing now, it's like, we're not going to give you anything. Like you go use this product and talk about it how you would. And they actually learn so much more.

32:23And then you nailed it. Like they end up adopt the brand, like the brand, the messaging adjusts different creators talk. and you often hear brands changing, like actually changing content on their head, like their website or their email copy based off of like creator communities. Hexclad has done this and others. And like, you're right. It is out of your hands to an extent and it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah, it's super interesting. It is, but when you tell people, actually your brand is more like mythology, literally nobody cares. They're like, how does that help me sell stuff? Yeah, yeah.

33:00But I do think that if we, what we are lacking is a sense of, a greater sense of awe and purpose in our jobs that we're doing. And that is something that we are bringing to the culture of our commerce industry. And that's something that we're doing through research and through insights. And we're doing that by publishing larger pieces of print. I'm helping to elevate the conversation because we have for so long had a much less elevated conversation in our space. And I felt like somebody needed to have a higher level conversation. There's, you can get the tactics anywhere. We can all have the tactical conversation.

33:44I had that conversation for 22 years. Let's have a different kind of conversation. So I appreciate anytime someone's willing and open to have a deeper one. I think it's good. I think it's I think we are, we live in a society where we just are going for like easy wins and quick hacks and things. And change starts way back before it turns into action, like how you think about things and how you approach things. So I think that frame up really helps. So it's important. I'd love to touch on something you said really early on and we didn't go into it, but I just made a mental bullet in my head to come back to it.

34:19You talked about, I think you called it good friction. I can't remember the exact word you said. But I've heard you talk about this and you said friction is misunderstood. And we're so afraid of any friction that we've over-optimized. Tell me about this. What is good friction? I think we all understand that a little bit of friction is good. I had to put new tires on my car because they were bald. So you need a little bit of friction, right? Not enough friction on your tires is a bad thing. As I have said in the past, a frictionless flip-flop is dangerous. Frictionless sex is no fun. We need a little bit of friction, right?

34:54Somebody wants friction. What I've seen in my experience, and again, this is my experience and maybe others have different experience over the years, creating extraordinarily slippery checkouts leads to deleterious effects down the line. So when people have very quick, thoughtless checkouts where they buy a product, especially one that is around what I would say is sort of the rings of intimacy is the around you, on you, in you. So when something gets closer to the ring of intimacy, where it's like something you ingest, it's a much more considered purchase. And if the checkout process is too slippery, if it's too quick and you make it too fast and it's something that is too intimate, they're much more quick to want to undo that transaction.

35:44that's where you start having chargebacks that's where you start having cx complaints that's where you start having negative reviews like the ill effects of the fast checkout the frictionless purchase start to reveal themselves down the line yeah and so everybody wants a fast frictionless purchase nobody's thinking about what are the knock-on effects afterward i shouldn't say nobody Many people haven't thought about that. And so we, what we have found, what we found in my agency days is a little bit more education up front for certain product styles. I spent a lot of time in nutrition and I spent a lot of time in the supplement space.

36:27And I did a lot of in footwear and I did a lot in apparel. I did a lot in intimates. You know, when you're spending a lot of time in those sorts of categories, you learn where those points of friction are and you learn where to introduce them and to test where to introduce them and find what works for a specific product, for a brand, for a customer. And it doesn't work. One product, one PDP, there's no one thing to rule them all. It's not a best size, best fit approach. And so you learn to also constantly retest your own assumptions on a repeating basis because you can't just set and forget. So that's sort of the big meta overarching idea there.

37:09I love this because I often, something I think a lot about is like wine. You buy wine. If you just picked it up at a store or say you're at a restaurant and you just asked for a good bottle of wine or something and it just like appeared or just brought out or the server just brought out. it to you. You'd have a certain level of appreciation for it, but you might not just go and, I might taste good, but you're probably not going to rave about it to your friends. But when the sommelier comes out and tells you about it and tells you about where it's from and how the, why these grapes are maybe different and their experience with the wine and they give you some information about it, it raises your level of experience with it.

37:51And you experience it a different way because you have understanding on it and you're now you're also armed with that information to then when you're telling someone about the wine you know about it but that is friction it slows down the process you didn't get it as fast oh for sure but you're educating them on the product which i think this is like amazing like you'll i think there is like no such thing as value this is a theory i have like there's netflix arguably has a billions of dollars of value of, I don't know, if you added up the cost of every movie and show in Netflix, if you were to buy it all, like there's maybe a billion dollars of value there, but some people don't want to pay $15 a month for it.

38:30So what is value? Like there's no, and some people will pay$100 ,000 for a comic book and some people wouldn't pay$2. So there's really no, it's all perceived. It's all perceived what you perceive the value to be of it. And that only comes from education. And so we think that as brands, and he has to tie this back to commerce, is like, we think that when someone buys a product, they've seen the value in it and they're buying it. And then we think, okay, great. They've bought the product. I win. That's a checkout. It's ching. But it's not. In their head, they're actually, they're a lead. Like, they're trying it out.

39:07They're not committed. They're like, they're just enough to get them through the checkout. And then your job is to continue educating them through the checkout, after the checkout, show a video on the thank you page, email them the second they check out two hours later start sending them emails of like people that have used the supplements or whatever nutrition product is and some results and then there's a placebo effect probably when they get that whatever supplement it is that they're probably going to feel better because they've been educated about it i think about this a lot and i've never thought about it as like this good friction concept which i love that framing do you Does this like this like perceived value and real value, like I feel like that ties into this.

39:50At the top of the show, I mentioned OmniSend can now talk to ChatGPT and Claude. And I want to tell you why that's even bigger than it sounds. So if you missed it, quick catch up. OmniSend is what I use for email and SMS on every Shopify store I work with, plus for this show as well. And you can now connect your AI, Claude, ChatGPT straight to your OmniSend account. Your data, your campaigns, your flows, everything. You open a chat and you ask, what should I focus on this week to make more money? And it will come back with real answers about your store, which flow is underperforming, which automation needs improvement, which customers are going quiet, what's missing, everything.

40:29My favorite part though is AI segments. I used to build these by hand, clicking through filters forever. Now I just type something like customers who bought twice but ignored my last campaign and it just builds it. And anything it writes already sounds exactly like your brand because it pulls from all your previous emails, from your website, your logo, your color, your voice, everything. I've been doing this for 15 years and this is the closest I've ever felt to having a full-time marketer sitting right beside me. I have a link for you in the show notes that will give you 30 % off for your first three months or you can just use code J30 when you sign up, J-A-Y-3-0.

41:05If you're ready to migrate from Klaviyo to Omnisend like thousands of others, they will do everything for you. You just show up and all your campaigns and automations from Klaviyo will be set up and running in OmniSend, ready to go. And usually at 35 % less what you were paying Klaviyo. It does. Actually, I'll use your Netflix example as the tie-in because I think it's really apropos to our culture. Netflix is probably one of the greatest low friction examples of a service that exists, right? They, at the end of a show, it auto plays the next. Also in their original programming, original series, they tend to drop an entire season all at once.

41:47If you get Squid Game, you're going to get all of Squid Game all at once. So you can binge the whole thing and see it all in one go. If you want a day one Squid Game bang, you don't have to get spoiled at all. Best way to watch a series. And Netflix employs some of the largest number of data scientists of any organization on planet Earth. They know without a shadow of a doubt, and I believe them, that the best way to get people from the start of minute one of a series to the very end of a series to the credits roll at the end is to drop a full series in its entirety in one day. Yeah. I know that they know that because they continue to do it for the last decade.

42:30They would do it differently if the data told them otherwise. So let's all agree on that. But what do they lose that can't be measured otherwise? When a show drops weekly, like recently the Game of Thrones series that has been coming out or Severance, when there is a weekly show... Is the new Severance out? No, Severance recently. Oh, but when they... Yes, okay. Okay. Episodic series like Severance or... Yeah. And they did it with Stranger Things. Correct. When you have a weekly episodic, there is something that happens that you can't measure, which is cultural resonance. Yeah. There's something that happens where people are talking about it.

43:13People are wondering about it. Fan theories are circulating. You listen to the podcasts about each episode. Podcasts that come on, right? There is something bigger that happens on a larger scale that sustains the cultural expectation that people have. And it hits harder. It lasts longer. And the halo is bigger. And that's something that no dashboard can really tell you. I mean, there's probably a form of social measurement that could tell you something. but the numbers engagement of how many people get to the end of the series would tell you otherwise. It would tell you that more people didn't make it to the end of the series, most likely.

43:53So it would be an, it's, that's bad friction by the dashboard, but it's good friction by the culture measure. And so I think it depends on what you're aiming for. But if for me, it would be for longevity of the, you have to probably balance both, right? You probably just wouldn't go hard in the paint on one. But for me, I think for a brand to make it in today's era, what we really need to see is like a measure of, there's things that we just can't measure, what does extend into these cultural resonances. And to me, that's something that I think comes with intuition. And yeah, I think it does have that good friction aspect to it.

44:35That's super interesting. Yeah. I think like kids, I have kids. Do you have kids? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Two teens. Two teens. Okay. So like when they want something and you just get it for them, the level of appreciation is almost nothing. Oh yeah. It's the same. Yeah. They'll get, but if they wait for it and if they work for it or they save up for it or something, like they'll cherish it. Like it's still like, there's so many examples of this. Like it is like a universal truth. There's like good friction. Right. And it's why in a Four Peaks, so we have a series at Future Commerce over on Future Commerce Plus, which is an education series, Orchid Bertelsen, formerly of Common Thread.

45:16She taught a series over there about the new funnel, which is more of like a loyalty loop. And the loyalty loop sort of depends on one of these pieces of calendar management, which is a Four Peaks planning method. And it's about sustaining interest. It's about keeping people's interest. And part of that is you have to give people something to look forward to. We have to have something on the horizon that people are always being teased by and always being sort of looking forward to. It's either the coming product drop or a pre-order or something has to keep the brand alive and keep it in the back of their minds.

45:55And the cheapest, easiest way is the discount. And that's also, that's where I think we, she just explains it way better than I ever could. But she gives a bunch of examples on how to do this and a bunch of brands that have done it well. Skims does this extraordinarily well with product development and through gags. But we see this a lot today with product development as marketing. But that's a thing that we're seeing play out today over and over again is how do you keep your brand alive and resonant in the culture? Yeah. I mean, Apple did this great with their keynote drops every year and the big releases.

46:31And every year there's something, you got to wait for it. And then there's the Mac rumors that come out and everything. Yeah. We're getting close on time, but I wanted, there's a couple, only one or two more questions that I wanted to make sure I get in. One of them was actually, like for those listening, I always ask guests, hey, is there anything you want to make sure I ask you on the show? One of the things that you wrote was, I think it was, how do you build demand without becoming a content hamster wheel. And I love that because a lot of merchants I talk to, they are literally on a treadmill.

47:02They're like posting content every day. They're sending three emails. They're making reels and TikToks and whatever else. And they're just like content hamster wheel and they're exhausted. And some of them will burn out for sure. Some of it might be working. I don't know if it's not. What's the alternative? Why did you list that as one of the questions you wanted me to make sure I asked? because I think it's super relevant. Well, I think it comes back to why people continue to tag me in things like, I get tagged in multiple things, one of which is time capsule. If there's something time capsule related on the internet, I get tagged in it by people in my community, people that are subscribers of Future Commerce.

47:41The other is I've become synonymous with our trademarked catchphrase, it's the commerce's culture. And I really believe that how do you build demand without becoming a content hamster wheel. It's because content isn't the volume of output. It's the distribution of your belief system. So for me, it's taking one core idea and repeating it over and over again through a variety of formats. And when you repeat it over time, it becomes synonymous with you. And this is what has become core to future commerce as a brand, is commerce's culture. It's become synonymous to us as a brand. When with AG1, I think AG1 has done a phenomenal job in repeating their core identity of it's a simple one a day, take this packet and it works for achieving your goals of living a healthy life as and they almost always associate it to something active.

48:39you sort of have this life style that becomes associated and they're extraordinarily good at framing it and they're extraordinarily good at doing it even visually without having to have a like a catchphrase yeah and so when you have one core idea you can deliver in many formats and you repeat over time the publishing of it doesn't have to be the recency and frequency bias that i think it that we tend to believe it does it just needs to be memorable and it's not just about the impressions. I think, again, coming back to what I said before, it's about your, the trust factor and the reputation. So that's what I think it just, as somebody who's created content on the internet since 2013, I've had a podcast since 2014.

49:25I've created literally maybe 2000 episodes of podcasts now. Crazy. I'm, it's, it is crazy. I feel like you can easily, there's a, I mean, I haven't even quantified how many like short form pieces of content. It's probably, it's probably millions of minutes of content. But when you kind of break it all down, it's really just a handful of core ideas that get repeated over and over again. And I think if we were to really be honest, if brands really were to be honest, I don't know that they could say it's a handful of core ideas. I think it's a scattershot of a bunch of things that are mixed messages that are just trying to get people to convert.

50:00Yeah. I have an analogy that I, I didn't make this up. Actually, our CEO says this all the time he came from into it and paypal for 10 years anyways he says marketing is like a drumbeat and it just needs to be like it doesn't to us if we put a message out we think like oh we can't talk about that again the next week or we're going to talk about something different he's like no you got to beat the drum the same drum over and over and like we think you don't become the commerce's culture guy if you just say it once and but but you are you've worked that into hundreds of episodes and content that probably come up on talks, conferences, you're beating that drum.

50:43And it's, I think, in some ways, to me, that actually takes weight off my shoulders when I think about it like that versus thinking like, brainstorm every week, what can we put out this? No, beat the same drum, beat the same drum. That's right. It's actually not bad, people. You're not annoying. We think that we can't say something more than once, but it's not that at all. You just got to beat that drum. And that's when you become the iconic, like when someone says the name, that's that brand, right? Like AG1 has beaten that drum and they're still beating it. I mean, we come back to the bada bada, like how long has they been saying I'm loving it over at McDonald's?

51:22Like it's a long time, right? So, yeah. So if you were advising a Shopify merchant, I don't know, doing like mid-size, maybe five to 10 million a year. They've got a small marketing team. What would you tell them to focus on? And what would you tell them to stop doing given kind of things we've talked about today? Well, stop chasing trends. I really believe that. There's a lot of things that I think people are over-invested in these days. So everybody's context is a little bit different too. I don't think it's ever too, well, I have a friend, her name's Alex Greifeld. I think everybody should probably be tapped into her.

51:58So aside from Future Commerce, I think I love when people subscribe to Future Commerce, but you should definitely be subscribed to No Best Practices, which is Alex's media property. She has this really great thesis on the five to 10 million range that you really just need to know who you are. And if you're DR, if you're direct response, then you need to go all in on DR. And if you're brand, you need to go all in on brand. And so you can't live in the middle because that's where the middle is where you go to die. And so if you're if you really are a brand, then you need to do brand things. And that means you're playing a long game.

52:31So you can't do short game things. And so for when I'm talking to brands, I'm talking to brands. I'm not talking to people who are doing direct response. And so you got to play longer games. And that means you got to be default alive. And that means taking longer looks and longer out views and having bigger vision. And that means it's slower. Things are just slower. And so you got to have more patience. And so for me, it's you got to look for the bigger wins over longer hauls and stop chasing trends because doing all of these little short bursts, they winnow down your budgets and you leave you nothing left to actually have bigger wins along the line.

53:11So that's sort of my meta advice. And I do think Alex is a great person to follow who can give some really targeted tactical advice along the way. Amazing. Got time for the quick lightning round? Yeah, let's go. Okay. A Shopify merchant tells you they've got$10 ,000 to spend. What should they spend it on? Better ads? Brand? Where are they spending their$10 ,000 today? Right now? I mean, they should spend it on bold commerce for sure. No, they are$10 ,000 right now. You know what? I actually, I'm pretty bullish on, you know, this, if you have$10 ,000, I... I said$10 ,000 instead of$100 ,000. Like that's a specific amount.

53:48It's a tough, I mean, you can always put more money into ads, but I would be testing right now on more AEO. So I'd be doing, if you're not, if you don't have like brand radar, if you're not doing stuff like with AREFs right now, if you don't have an SEO agency, like I would be going and spending money on that right now. 10K is probably just the entrance fee, but like you should probably be doing that. You should be doing that right now. AI generated product descriptions. Yes or no? That's a big no. but you should probably be looking at what it is. It depends on the scale of your catalog. I think there's an asterisk next to the no.

54:24What's one brand on Shopify right now that maybe most people haven't heard of, maybe some have, but that people should be paying attention to? Higher Dose. Yes. Higher Dose is a rad brand, you guys. And my friend over there, Ingrid Milman-Cordy is the CMO and she's doing some really sick stuff. They have their, I wasn't necessarily hip to it or was a believer in it, but they started with like red light therapy products, but they really expanded into a really large assortment of high considered purchase, like really large AOV appliances for wellness. And this company is growing like gangbusters.

55:05They have done a lot in, I think, investing in brand like we've been talking about, but they're growing professional line as well. And they're doing consumables. And I think that they're spending, they've done a lot to grow the site experience and they're converting really well. I'm really impressed with that shop and I've become a customer recently. So I can't say enough about them. And operationally, I know that they're really solid as well. And so I know the team. So I think that's one to watch. I would agree 100%. Last one. Fill in the blank. The biggest thing Shopify merchants will regret ignoring in 2026 is?

55:39Is AEO. I think, yeah, don't regret it. Yeah. Answer engine optimization is the thing. Yeah. Okay, before I let you go, you wrote in, I always ask guests some fun fact. You're an ultra runner. You run the same amount of miles as your age every year. Is that right? That's right. You leave this to the end. Thank God you left it to the end. Well, it would have changed the whole format of the episode. I'm 45 this year. I'll be 46. Hey, I'm 46 as well. We're the same. Nice. Yeah. So you run 40. Also, my first website, my first e-com website was in 98. We should commiserate. Oh my gosh, that's so crazy.

56:12We should jam at some point. It was, wow. Was it also built with Microsoft front page? Yeah, it was. And it was like a Fox Pro database. Okay, yeah. But we'll have to talk at some point. Dude, this was a really dumb thing I started a few years ago. And I just think it gets longer every year. I've got a hundred K that I've done a number of times here in Florida. There's a spur of the Florida trail that's, that goes through a portion of the Everglades. If anyone cares to look it up, it's called the Ocean to Lake Hiking Trail. And about 70 % of it is underwater. And so it's just a grueling run, but I've found, I've sort of fallen in love with the misery of it.

56:48And for those who are, use the U.S. units, it's about 63, well, it's a little over 62 miles, so 63.1. But it's - A kilometers, right? Yeah. You're saying? A hundred kilometers is about 62 miles. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were saying 45 miles in kilometers. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's 62 miles. Crazy. This trail is about 63 o 'clock in. Hey, I'll do that this year at some point, probably October, November. And I'll do that sort of a self-supported run. But yeah, I run my birthday in miles every year. And that's usually my launch to a bigger race. And I started that as just a real life turnaround.

57:25I was not always this way. And so I'm pretty proud of that. And if anybody wants to read more about that story, I've got some of that out on the internet. You can find some of that. If you just Google Philip Jackson running, it's you'll find it somewhere amazing it's nice that you well thank you for sharing that because we all get better from sometimes learning from someone else so yeah if you inspire one person well philip this has been incredible i want to make sure you're doing a ton you've got podcasts you've got books you've got events can you tell me everything that where people can not just learn about you and go but like tell me everything you're doing so like if someone's like okay this Philip Guy, I want to follow him.

58:07Tell me everything you got going on and where we can send people. Yeah, thanks. Futurecommerce.com is the portal to everything. Future commerce everywhere. So it's future commerce on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. And we do, we have events. And the book is available there as well too? Yeah, future commerce there as well. And so if you want to get Lore, which is our newest book, if you're watching right now, we've got a whole shelf of books up here. But our newest book is called Lore. It's the red one. I held it up earlier. And that's future commerce. If you go to futurecommerce.com, There's the shop link at the top, proudly hosted on Shopify.

58:36But we're happy to say that we have a new book coming out at Shop Talk. That's coming out. It's called Strata. And that book will launch on the 24th of March. And so if you are around Shop Talk and that's your jam, we have a launch party happening at the Skyfall Lounge. So if you are on futurecommerce.com, there's info about that. Is the Skyfall Lounge, is that on the wheel? It's at the W. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the 64th. The W. What's the concept of the book? Can you give us a hint? Yeah. So the concept of the book is, again, following along with commerce's culture, because, again, you have to keep repeating the concepts.

59:14Right. So strata, just like in geological strata, you have layers that build upon layers. And so what we did was we took all of the aesthetics of the last year that sort of emerged, everything from Sydney Sweeney to Mom Donnie to the to the six, seven kid to the Costco hot dog and sort of the tariff debate with Gina Raimondo and joining the board of Costco. And so all these things that sort of emerged as storylines from the last year and K-pop demon hunters and a bunch of things. And we've turned that into a really high powered, really like in your face zine. And it's 80 pages. It's a cool format for us.

59:57We have another zine called the multiplayer brand. It's sort of similar format. But this is unlike anything we've done before. I think it's kind of loud and it's a little it's a little edgy. I'm really proud of it, though. And I think it has something to say. and it's sort of following in the footsteps of some other great thinkers. There's, if you know of any philosophers, there's Stuart Brand, who's a great thinker and sort of the father of the Whole Earth Catalog. And then there's some other folks. He created some great content literature that this is definitely following the footsteps of. So we'd love to see you guys there and would love someone to pick up the book.

1:00:32Yeah. Yeah. And I think on your website, on the top, I think I saw a Shop Talk banner on there, right? Yeah, there is. information for people to find out about that. Okay. So I'll make sure I include that all in the show notes. So thank you, Phil. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jay. I just want to say for everyone listening, if you got value from this episode, make sure you hit subscribe. We just crossed 85 ,000 subscribers. Super pumped about that. And it's growing. Thank you. Coming from you. That means a lot. Like we're only at, I don't know, a quarter of the episodes you're at. So I got to catch up to you.

1:01:03But the last thing to say for this is I had so many takeaways, but if there's one big one, And just you don't have to overhaul your site, your entire store. Find a place where you can inject your point of view, your opinion that maybe a competitor can't copy. They can copy the UX and the UI and everything, but put your brand and your voice in there. Remember and tag Phil on social when you do it and tell him about it. Phil, thank you so much. Thank you, brother.