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Fireside Chat with Shopify's Andrew Godfrey
33 Plays11 months ago
Liam sits down with Andrey Godfrey to talk about his history at LD, and what he's doing these days over at Shopify.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, y'all welcome back to the commute I haven't been on this for a minute. As a regular host, I was looking for like the perfect guest ah for the past few weeks, and I happened to run into him at a show, Future Islands, what, last week or something? yeah um that was That was a good one. That was that was pretty live. That was rowdy. Yeah, they were fast. And of course, we ended up at the the local haunt, the Imperial Pub, around the corner on Dundas afterwards, which was a spot of mine like 25 years ago when I first moved to Toronto. Anyways, over beers, we caught up, and I was reminded how
00:00:32
Speaker
Fantastic. Godfrey is as a friend and and ah and a one-time co-worker. Godfrey, why don't you introduce yourself? Hey, everyone. Andrew Godfrey. um Longtime listener, first time caster. Is there a verb? Yeah, exactly.
00:00:48
Speaker
Based here in Toronto was at LD from I want to say 2019 to 2022 formally and then before that was was here with Deloitte, Deloitte Digital. That's right. The Brooklyn days. Project Brooklyn. Wow. Left in 2022, joined Shopify. Still based here in Toronto. Still miss you, Liam. Miss you too, bro. Very excited to be here with you. Yeah, thank you, man. You came branded, too. I like the gear. Well done. You know what? Keeping me fed and clothed is a big requirement. I was going to rock the LD swag today, but it's hoodies. And today, it's mid-July. It's not hoodies. I'm crushing on the long sleeve myself, so you made the right choice, man. Shorts and t-shirts it is. You got it. Word.
Cultural Phrases and Team Dynamics
00:01:28
Speaker
I was one of the first sort of, like,
00:01:32
Speaker
Phrases you coined here for me when you joined after a few weeks in we're sort of getting our bearings We're like rebuilding the PCO team, you know, things are our chaotic and wild and you're like, I just gotta get my reps in and And we kept saying that about new people joining or us learning the business and stuff getting your reps in it just became such a like part of the dialect that Well, I hit the gym right before this conversation. So watch
PCO App Ambitions and Challenges
00:01:54
Speaker
out man. Yeah, we're gonna send like a magic mic not safe for work sesh if you're save that for part two ah That's what I'm saying. Jokes aside. All right. So so Flashback, we're on the same leadership team ah running in product and UX across this org. You join on PCO, which is now, you know I mean, it was a premier platform then. It's even bigger and better now. What do you remember about that time? What were the highlights, the lowlights? What did you ship? like Think back, man. What what was it like? so So the story is I was working on the Brooklyn team during the integration of PC Plus and Shopper's Optimum for for most of the time, not the whole time, but certainly right up to launch working closely with with Dudman and Tozer and you know the squad kind of cooked away on the corner ah in the corner of the office there and from launch, which as I recall was February 2018, is that about right?
00:02:50
Speaker
um to when I came back in in September 2019 or October 2019. Not a lot of change. The product was the product. It looked looked very similar. It was a huge undertaking to ship that thing. um And I remember catching up with Lauren It was after an event and you know again over an adult beverage. she She mentioned this like very ambitious vision for what we could do with PCO and I got excited again. I could feel like the vibrations. I did back in the Deloitte grinder for a year and a bit and so you know we start jamming on on ideas and she kind of lays out this this um
00:03:28
Speaker
this vision for the PCO app becoming this hub that creates networks into the ecosystem, the broader LD ecosystem, and then we use the firepower of the millions of customers that are coming into PCO every week, regardless of what business they shop in it at Loblaw, and using that to like strategically direct them through the business and start to bring bring some of that in. I think the word used at the time was convergence. Wow, that was the origin story, convergence. That's it.
00:03:57
Speaker
or and I want a piece of this at the time i think there is leadership shift going on and y'all are hiring a new head of product so that's what i came into and i remember landing and learn how to set me down on day one and said i hear the first few things we should go look at and and i remember the first thing we we had to go into law block.
00:04:17
Speaker
companies into corporate proper and sell this vision through, which was pretty ambitious. And at the time, I hope I'm not telling tales out of school here, but PCO was kind of this product of it's working, don't mess with it too much. I remember. Don't break it, please. We're the love of God. There's an offers feed. It works. Don't touch it. We're minting a billion dollars in points every year. It's hitting two thirds of Canada at that point. We got millions of weekly actives, and it's like, just don't break it.
00:04:44
Speaker
But obviously that
Shopify's Enterprise Transition
00:04:45
Speaker
wasn't ambitious enough. And so we got to go in and tell some cool stories. So that was really the first part of it. I remember you and I were working on like the vision and roadmap. yeah And then we had to transform the team to bring that to life. We had to go convince everybody to get on board. And and over the course of kind of quarters, the dominoes started to fall. We started to bring this thing. to life and and I was really excited to see a lot of what I and you had come in and started to pitch and get excited about start to land even after I left like the ripples of it were so were still there still are there I think there's still some stuff going so it was an exciting run man yeah that was fun that was really fun and I sort of forget that at the time we were both in in Lauren's org like that's right ah her ascent and
00:05:28
Speaker
And so we were sort of peers in there. We pitched this vision. We were mostly staffed by Deloitte folks. I think we start building the team internally. We bring in Laura Shafer, who is leading user experience on on PCO at the time. what up And we we sort of in-house this team.
00:05:44
Speaker
to decide on this strategy and then you know start start running with it. And I remember early days, like some of the ambitions that you see in the app now, like List, which was just launched or relaunched really, ah content stuff, you know targeted targeted, personalized, sponsored offers and stuff, all those ideas sort of like were were germinating and percolating back then. What was some of the first stuff that you shipped that either like won or lost and what did you learn?
00:06:13
Speaker
We made some bets, man. yeah So again, 2019, put yourself into October 2019. Did anything interesting happen? Maybe just following that around Q1 2020. And so there there happened to be a lot of people at home, you know, and and we had um a huge backlog of content that existed in a variety of shapes, helping people you know pick recipes. I think content yeah cooking school was still around at that point um and Chef was kicking off. you so um We were like, how do we keep people stoked about being at home, keep them inspired? And so we brought in this content module to PC Optimize for a couple of reasons. So one was,
00:06:56
Speaker
give people a reason to stick around and do more with us. right The other is to build legs into the other products and start to drive people back um into other business lines and and to do it in a way that was really intelligent, like to build a recommendation engine that showed you the right stuff at the right time. and That was super fun like because would get these very ah you know we we tried a lot and we would get these um Glitches are not glitches, but like we would get bug reports come to us where you know, why did I get this article? like I'm a vegetarian. I should never be seeing something vegetarian. So we're building these interesting use cases Around that and and honestly like we saw some traction with a very tight subset of users But it never became something that I think was like broadly
00:07:38
Speaker
And I remember that content module and then like scrolling down to that at the end of the page instead of watching how to peel that mango like 45 times and being like, there's got to be more here. And there was a library of content, but it wasn't that deep. yeah and And I think that that's when we started talking about personalization because we were like, yeah, how do we give.
00:07:55
Speaker
the vegan, the right version of that versus the parent versus the student versus the whatever. And I remember that need being sort of like a friction point, like we don't really have the intelligence to segment at that granularity at that time, which I think was like a bit of a motivator for us to get to the P13M vision that we're building today, which I can't share too much because you don't work here. No worries. Yeah, I know. I'm not in the circle of trust anymore. That's fine. But imagine we had LLMs back then, what we could have done with some of that content. All that content stuff, yeah. Would have been dangerous. So we learned a lot from that and created some pretty engaging experiences and led us into the other businesses. And let us down paths we wouldn't have been otherwise. But would I do it the same way? I'd probably tweak a few things. Yeah, sure. Sure. I hear you.
00:08:38
Speaker
Hindsight's 2020. And also time, like the the context of the time and what what our audiences are going through is it so important to consider. And and i mean I think we've all like we're all carrying some level of of trauma from those months and years locked up at home.
00:08:52
Speaker
um And trying to trying to give, I think at the time, I remember being in rooms or or digital virtual rooms with with Galen and him being like, content, we've got to help bring content to the people and to your point, help enrich their experience of food with with our catalog and all that, just to bring some joy into the folks' lives, carrying three kids and trying to work a job with like three fingers on one hand, locked up in the pandemic, you know playgrounds taped up. Anyways, I'll stop there because I'm getting shivers.
00:09:23
Speaker
Oh man, those are good times. Yeah, they were unforgettable. Yeah, we did some cool stuff. I mean, that foundation is strong. We're still building on it. You know, I think Noah's floating around somewhere. He promised he'd come by and chirp you for some of the questionable decisions back then. We'll see if he shows up. It's always nice to have somebody to blame. for That's what's up. Exactly. As long as it's not fault, you know. OK, word. So when we ran into each other last week,
00:09:48
Speaker
um We hadn't really caught up in full since since your transition. we've We've crossed paths a bit, but you gave me a good sort of lay of the land of what your first you know a few months of Shopify was like. ah Tell me that story. you know we've got lots of We share lots of friends and talent with that organization. We're always curious about what's happening over there, but but you had a bit of a trial by fire joining Shopify. Tell me.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was ah it was a challenging time. Like, so Shopify has gone through a lot of ah ages, a lot of changes. You know, I mean, it's celebrated 20 years this year. Oh, wow. This was also the same at the same summit where we celebrated 20 years, we celebrated a trillion dollars of GMV moved over.
00:10:25
Speaker
Shopify. So all right and massive scaling from ah from a company of one in a coffee shop kind of thing. yeah And um you know the biggest transition I think has happened and since I've been there has been a really challenging one for us. So over COVID, like everybody else, LD included, and we really had to harden up our infrastructure and our product based on the scale that was coming in, right? Bringing in 10 times the number of customers, really highlighted where a lot of those holes were. And we doubled down on engineering over that time, kind of from 2020 into 2022 really, um to to firm up the infrastructure. And what we learned was, damn, this is a really powerful, strong product that's applicable for more than just small businesses.
00:11:06
Speaker
And it started this ambition into, um can we play with the big boys yeah in the enterprise? right um Can we ship to the Nikes and Louis Vuitton's of the world and have this product nest neatly into their businesses? And so I came in right around the the cusp of the second age of getting into the enterprise. sure There were a lot of organizational changes that went on during that time, um many that we're all aware of. And then we were just learning how to compete there, like how to play in the space where, you know, coming in and selling to a Loblaws as an example is a very different exercise than coming in and selling to
00:11:43
Speaker
like Nix or even Supreme or yeah digital natives that have grown up that way or or or in the $25 million dollars range, not the $2.5 billion dollar range, right? yeah And so so much of that is like, yeah, you got to have a great product, but also how you show up is critical and how you fill some of the gaps between those two points. So yeah that's the part of the business I'm on is taking our core product, bending it,
00:12:06
Speaker
breaking it, building on it, to make it work for these big companies. And um that's hard work, especially when you're learning the motions of doing that work. So that was the trial by fire, was like, how do we both take this awesome product, um but transform ourselves while we implement it? um So it's been great. but But yeah, I don't think it gets, I hope it gets easier. or Maybe I don't, but it certainly hasn't yet. No doubt. I remember it was around that time that we started thinking about Helios and and planning to build our own platform system. And it wasn't without, you know, considering, you know, the growing services in Shopify ah Enterprise and Chatham with Vanessa and folks over there.
00:12:45
Speaker
And we looked at at them and a bunch of others, and we're sort of like, okay, you know to your point, at this scale, at this complexity, across this many verticals, for this many Canadians, on this many platforms, like is there a solution out there? And like you know
Platform Development and Customization
00:12:57
Speaker
and the pitch was good, but it's it's hard to say what's behind the the the curtain, right? and so you know, as we dug a bit deeper, we we're like, man, I mean, integrating here and helping you sort of scale that solution for us is going to be as hard as, as just building it ourselves, you know, so, so as, as we're constantly doing the sort of like, you know, weighing the build versus bias scales at that time.
00:13:19
Speaker
We realize that investment for us as an organization would be really strong IP that we could leverage as well um and and own. And so, you know, we've been on sort of similar parallel track journeys, you know, but we're building Helios, you're building Shopify Enterprise for like the whole world.
00:13:35
Speaker
And we're building building Helios at a bit of a smaller scale for Loblaw in all of Canada. But I know that we've sort of like ah connected dots between our two teams in various functions over the past couple of years. And and we're learning similar things. But I think it's like it's in the like the pricing and promotion. When you have such a big retail footprint, which is probably like rarer for like Shopify clients. correct me um you know across our banners, across our our loyalty and pricing strategies and promotional strategies. like The complexity there is just so vast that we needed to build that from scratch. It was just like, how do you actually instrument that? How can we expect anybody else to understand that? And once we've we've bought it, if we chose to do that, who's going to maintain the thing? So we've built that all up from the ground. And you know we're getting there. We just completed one of our biggest migrations. will all be on Helios and in some full capacity. Always room for improvement, but man, it's been a trip. what's the like How do you standardize those services? like Is there a certain type of client that looks good for Shopify Enterprise, or is it so variable still? like Do you have like tiers of clients and and volume of complexity that you sort of tailor the services around? How much of it is a managed service? How much of it is off the shelf? I mean, I just asked you to give me the entire Shopify strategy. you you you stop me I'll tell you about the kind of the kind of um customers or merchants we call them in Shopify land, but retailers that we we get excited about. To your point, you go into big companies that know what they're doing and are
00:15:02
Speaker
phenomenal at that one great thing, right? And generally, the the software that they've implemented at an enterprise level that's like bulletproof enterprise grade, think of like, and you're gonna hate me for it, but like the SAPs of the world, Oracle, Salesforce. our favorite real these are the big names These are the big names, right? and And what ties them together is that they're infinitely customizable and pretty unopinionated. I remember implementing Salesforce at one point for a customer when I was back at Deloitte,
00:15:32
Speaker
And it's just a bunch of tables tied together with if statements. Build your own bear, you know what I mean? um and And you get to bring all your opinions with you and decide how those tables so interface, right? So you really get to drop a product into an organization yeah and have the product work for you. But let me stop you there. Have you ever have you ever slipped like a cent pack into one of those Build a Bear workshops or one of the noisemakers? Like what's the metaphor there? Yeah, i'm I'm not sure. I mean, the metaphor would be like those super fun customizations that like kind of bend the platform a little bit, right? Like if you're big enough, SAP will do some cool stuff for you. It's hard, it's expensive, but they will, right? right um Whereas like a product like Shopify was built originally with people in mind who don't really have opinions about how they want to run a business. They just want to build cool product, right? Like they want to go. yeah
00:16:19
Speaker
and and make shoes, or they want to you know make art. Or more like the entrepreneurial side. Exactly. yeah they They don't know how you inventory management tables should work and how locations and pricing should should be impacted. So we try to simplify that as much as possible. But those opinions have ah followed into the enterprise space as well. And so we'll run up against conversations where business will be like, well, I want to use it this way. And we go, I don't think you do. And so the companies I get really excited about are the ones that it's not it's not um about bringing us requirements that our product needs to meet. It's about like they want to have a two-sided conversation about how should we do this and how can we transform the organization so that it fits what the customer needs versus like how do I take a product and bend it into my organization. yeah sure Because then you just end up
00:17:06
Speaker
you know kind of like with a confirmation bias of, okay, well, these pieces of software work work really well for me, yeah but are they working really well for your customer? I don't know. So those are the conversations I get excited about. It's not just about building the software, providing the services, but help me design my like future state retail organization yeah around you know practices that are now industry leading. Maybe they weren't when when I built this thing 15 years ago. right Yeah, I mean, we've touched on this in the pod before, but like the the maturity of e-commerce is growing at pace with us building the software that makes it mature, right? And so customers, especially through the pandemic, you know acclimatized to shopping online at a rate unseen before. And so it's like now the patterns the from from ah a browse ah to a search to a PDP to a PLP to whatever, those are are fairly standard yeah
00:17:56
Speaker
patterns now that customers kind of expect, you know, like 10, 15 years ago, it's like, who knows where the button should go? Let's try. And now it's like, okay, now this is more or less templated. We know that these flows convert. I take like shop pay as an example, right? Like when you look at checkout, the checkout experience on Shopify is like, you know, a premier experience. And you know, when you're in that experience and you know what to expect and and how to how it works.
00:18:18
Speaker
And I think that that's like an interesting sort of like philosophical shift where you know it's it's less about the 80% that everybody expects. It's more about the 20% layer of customization that like you know you can you can layer on to the experience to make it special for the brand. And so so in in your merchant base, at scale, like at at an enterprise scale,
00:18:38
Speaker
how much of the stuff that you're Selling is is customized like like how much of it is is just off the shelf is it? Is it sort of that 80 20 80 off the shelf 20 customized or is it like a wide range? Are you still figuring out that model? Yeah, I guess there's two sides to it. So ah So there's the the actual what's in the box with Shopify functionality and then there's the what are we plugging it into? Siders right and so a lot of times like we're not a part of a bigger replatforming with you know, we're ripping out SAP and we're pretty numerical or something. And so we take for granted that there's certain flows that have to exist, especially once you bring in complexity like, oh, we have 2,500 grocery stores, 3,000 maybe. i I don't know how many there are anymore. but But we've got rules that apply province to province and tax and promotion principles that are very different. And you know do we want to reevaluate all that as we rip out an e-commerce engine? Like, not always. yeah um And so we see a lot of customization, less on what we call the primitives, which for you would be like the Helios services. yeah
00:19:36
Speaker
um We definitely see it on the user experience side and it's something that I found not frustrating. It's just interesting So we've had 3 million merchants on Shopify in 20 years. There's 22 million active right now And so when you talk about like the checkout being a being a really pristine experience It's because we've tried it 2 million different times. Sure. Yeah the like the email address field is where it is for a reason. yeah um you know Postal code is where it is for a reason. should but We've tried all these permutations of this thing and we still get big companies really wanting to customize part of that. and What's interesting is um just by virtue of our scale, we started to train people to look certain places. Like you said, you know when you're on a Shopify store, generally a themed kind of out of the box Shopify store, you know where the cart button is, you know where the payment information goes. And so that makes it really easy to move through super quickly. So if I take you to a new custom a new company's website, I can move through that pretty quickly, even though I've never been there and before, right? So anytime you move something around on the front end,
00:20:38
Speaker
for virtue of like, this is the experience we want. yeah You're messing with a ah user's mental model of how they want to move through, or how they've been trained to move through commerce. It's dangerous. So exactly maybe you get a cool brand experience on paper, but is it actually like dialing up your conversion or is it slowing people down? So that's
Leadership and Product Challenges
00:20:56
Speaker
that's where we're seeing a lot of the interesting conversations around how do we simplify some of the customizations that you're trying to make on the UI side and UX side. Yeah, yeah, deciding where that customization has the highest leverage to increase conversions or whatever.
00:21:08
Speaker
Great timing, Noah. um Hello, sir. Hey, Noah's here. ah current Current GM of PCO, ah you know, looking back at all the decisions that have been made throughout the years. seriously and pick Here we go. Here we go. Let's get a little guest host on. Hey, Noah, welcome. Welcome. Hannah and Jacob are like, what the actual? And I spilled his water. Oh, my God. Look at the chaos. They hate me right now for doing this.
00:21:36
Speaker
surprise guest. What you got? What's going on, man? Good to see you. How are you? Good to see you. Pleasure. Love the swag. Thank you. You don't want to wear any of your old throwbacks, right? I've got the LD tattoo underneath, so that one doesn't come off. Sick. How are you? I'm doing well, man. Yeah taking care of my baby or what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah a lot of times. I'm like What is he doing? What do you do? You could probably tie it right back to slack slack threads. Honestly, I've thought about it There's been times where I've been like WTF Godfrey did the beard get to his head didn't go on to his brain the roots are going and that's what it is. So can you tell me anything? What's cooking? I can tell you a lot, man. I feel like you wouldn't recognize the PCO world. It's been a lot of fun. Change is good. Change is good. Change is challenging, but it's fun. I think what you would see, we're starting to... PCO's got a monetary value now that it never really... It always had, but was never really spoken about.
00:22:43
Speaker
And I think the things that we build now all are tied to a number and not just like traffic. Great. Yeah. Like a lifetime value kind of thing for like a loyalty. value Yeah. The jump off is lifetime value, but it's also more like, look, we are.
00:23:01
Speaker
work in a retail environment. So it's all about what are you driving for me? Is that the influence of our new CEO or our new GM? Who called that shot? I'll say a bit of both. We'll give Lauren some credit too. None to God for you though. I've just had to take... I like being the scapegoat frankly. It's like you pick something up and you're like, what? Fuck is this? Don't look at the inside. Don't look at the spaghetti in there. Give me one questionable product's decision that you inherited that you're like, how does this end up? See if it's the same one. I'm peeling garlic videos.
00:23:43
Speaker
Well, at least we're consistent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely know how to peel garlic now. Thank you for that. Yeah, it only lived there for like 12 years. Ask Hardeep about some of the interesting text cutoffs that we had on the videos when they shipped the first time. There's some stories about, we didn't QA the text and there were some interesting contractions that showed up that maybe weren't... A little offensive. Yes, the new gig. I've heard all about it. I'm excited. Well, look, I will say take the positive out of that video. It's put a wind in our sail to just 10X it. Beautiful. To a better experience. I love it. Yeah. It's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But thank you for the info on garlic. And setting the bar low for you so 10X is a little bit easier, right? Yeah, 100%. That is a very low bar. I'd be like, oh, that's the bar. Yeah. Yeah, it's my pleasure, truly. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. But honestly, I'm just tripping. Your impact is still there, which is cool.
00:24:40
Speaker
And people still like venting you. I'm like, man. Yeah, right. Well, it's been cool to see the multi-brand pulling into PCO thing continue to happen. That was unreachable strategically five years ago or longer. It was so disconnected. And to see everything start to funnel in and to use the firepower you have with Optimum is amazing. Yeah. So that's where the monetization comes from. Great.
00:25:08
Speaker
Like that two plus product is key. Yeah. Yeah, you are a legend. We should get a Godfrey poster up on the wall. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
00:25:31
Speaker
by that back to Look at that, eh? Look at that. The years, the ages, the eras, all unfold before you. Thanks Noah. Word, thanks for taking the grilling. It was lighter than I thought. You know, I enjoyed it. Out of a masochist. OK, so I've been trying to like circle Shopify strategy for 20 minutes now, trying to get you to spill the beans. I got some juice out of you, but I want to do a little Shopify versus LD round, OK? So we're always in a talent battle. Is this public? Where's the point? Yeah, exactly, right? Does this get posted on LinkedIn? This is only internal for now. No, it's internal. It's internal. Don't worry.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it. I know. Definitely does. All right.
Remote Work and Company Culture
00:26:17
Speaker
So we're going to do a little lightning round. We're going to get you to vote on where LD wins, where Shopify wins. First thing that comes to mind, all right? OK. OK. Breads and impact.
00:26:29
Speaker
Bread, um so like our product, the Shopify, is pretty straightforward. like It's a commerce product. um LD and Loblaws in general, like you guys impact so many parts of of your customers' lives, like from pharmacy to food to front shops, ah PCO, Joe. like um I think Loblaw wins on the bread for sure, because we're just ah the product's just a narrower focus. Yeah, we're in.
00:26:58
Speaker
ah One for global use word. Thank you. I'll take that dub All right on. Oh, this is a hot one around here all the time on um on prioritization prioritization, okay um Okay for the same reason I'm gonna give this one to Shopify all right narrower products single P and&L mmm fairly flat organization It's a treat You know we do end up having to escalate all the way to the top cheese sometimes sure tie breaks are easy Yeah, we're not competing Businesses were not evaluated separately as divisions or anything like that. So all right really can break ties And I think shop eyes gotta take the W there. Yeah, I like that. All right one for one. Yeah one for one. All right, let's do ah Let's do let's do quality of products Yeah, you can take that anyway, you know likes infrastructure customer experience Where do you think we stack up?
00:27:55
Speaker
So for the same reason we were talking about earlier, like the the unification of businesses coming in through PCO, which I know has been challenging, but continues to be a priority. Shopify has done a wonderful job of unifying features under like a single admin. So shipping code is both accessible, like I could do it, I shouldn't, but I could. um and And fairly easy for anybody on any team to go and work cross-functionally. yeah I'd say like the the caliber yeah of of code is pretty incredible, and it's actually quite hard to take the system down. You still get a trophy at Shopify if you can take if you can take the servers down. OK. Yeah, literally like a physical trophy. That's a reverse incentive. I don't know where it is right now. But it did happen recently, like six months ago, I think, of $50 million dollars loss. And all we did was celebrate it because we found a cool hole. So so did it happens that infrequently, you know? OK. So I'm going to give it to Shopify on on that. And it's only because you guys have so many products to manage that it's a little more challenging. I take that L. When we look at Helios and standardizing our colleague experience through P13N, through SFM, through all the tools we're building on the back end, the gold standard is having sort of like a centralized Shopify enterprise level admin there. So yeah and let's have that chat again in six months, maybe maybe a year. um yes Because yeah, i I agree for now. yeah All right, last one. On culture slash vibes, who's got it?
00:29:24
Speaker
this one i don't So look, i'll I'll be very honest. yeah Moving to a fully remote culture ah was a shocker. It's been really hard. yeah like I know it's not for everybody. um We're a global company. I've got folks in Australia and in Germany and in England and in Vancouver and like getting a global meeting together is impossible. yeah Like without several people being wildly inconvenienced. yeah We saw each other all a couple of weeks ago in Toronto for our summit. Yeah. I heard that was great. 8,000 people crazy. Um, but it's hard to build relationships completely remote out of time zone. Um, it was always just a little easier. So like we've got an awesome culture and vibes, but I just think you guys are able to pull it together a lot more easily being so close together. And I know you, Liam personally do a ton of work to to pull people together. So. Do our best. I have no no regrets giving LD the the W on that one. I'll take the dub on that. We'll make it a tie, too, too, all right? the I agree. A lot of the candidates we're seeing now, you know when we when we do have open openings and we're chatting with folks in the market, you know there's two types, right? There's folks who are totally happy with this remote world, and and there are folks that really miss the dynamic of like doing this and doing this. President company include? Yeah, exactly. And it takes a type, but I do think there's something really special there.
00:30:43
Speaker
you know the the more we sort of remove ourselves from the human relationships that are core to success and happiness in life, the the more the work feels transient and and and transactional. Embrace the ape. you know This is it, man. It's easier to give a shit when you're in the room like having a good time doing the work and and and celebrating together afterwards. Now, I'm not saying that on behalf of our RTO policy. I'm saying that for real. um It's very real. I think we all know it, right? yeah and it just It requires you to be so much more deliberate yeah and I just think it's It's done better here. So yeah. there you go
Personal Reflections and Episode Conclusion
00:31:15
Speaker
All right. Great answer, man. All right. So so there's so much more to God free than products and Shopify and technology. And that's really what I love the most about you. So let's just do like five on your latest like forays into the wilderness. I don't know, man. What tales do you have for me? Every time we talk, I'm like fascinated with the hobbies and adventures you're you're endeavoring to to enjoy, man. Tell me. i So I just I just did a big one. Yeah. Usually I'm in a kayak for these trips these days, because I'm getting old, the knees are getting old. sure um But I thought I would go hiking, and so I looked for a really remote hiking spot. So I ended up on the, I was just a couple months ago, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Nutka Island, yeah um hiking a trail solo, down 40 kilometers along the shoreline, didn't see a person for a week. wow I was warned, bears, cougars, wolves,
00:32:10
Speaker
And I was like, okay, I'm pretty good with food, not too worried about it. The hike was stunning. There's some sand beaches and parks and gravel beaches. You go into the old growth forest, follow these like old surfshacks and stuff. Very, very cool stuff. and And one morning I woke up, I was having my coffee. I hadn't seen people in a few days. And I walk out onto the beach and I'm you know admiring the surf and looking for gray whales, which I didn't see any of, unfortunately. but um And I'm like, oh, there must be another person here. There's like ah there's a dog on the beach. And not far from me. And I was like, oh, it looks like ah you know a big golden retriever or something. I'm kind of squinting. And I'm like, that's a big golden retriever. And it kind of starts jumping. It sees me. I'm for sure it saw me before I saw it. And yeah and and it barks. And I'm like, OK, cool. I'm looking around for its owner. And then it howls. And I've never heard a golden retriever howl before.
00:32:57
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, that's not a that's not a golden retriever, it's a wolf. um And so after I got back from the trip, I only realized this after the trip, there's a Netflix documentary, Island of the Sea Wolves. okay That was the island I was on. I feel like I should have not missed that piece of content, but it's a beautiful documentary if you get a chance in a stunning part of the world. So that was a fun one. That was not a super long hike, but if you ever get a chance, Nutka Island, wow northwest coast of Vancouver Island, um true wilderness. And I mean, working deep in the depths of like technology and and building platforms and all the work you're doing at Shopify and previously here, like what and and then going so off grid and doing that, what does that do for you? Like, is that is that essential? Is that refueling? Is that unplugging? Like, what is that like?
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think like for me, the solo the solo stuff is great because it rewires your brain. you know You don't have anybody to talk to. It puts you back in your head. And and transparently, the first few times I did, I was worried I wouldn't like being hung out youre hanging out with myself for five days, being stuck there. But it gives you a lot of time to reflect, to breathe. It does clear the backlog, so to speak, of all the things and and reminds you that um there There is other stuff in life other than code and computers. And so I like that reminder for that for that reason. But I always end up just coming back refreshed and ready to hit it again. So it it is it gives me some perspective and and frankly makes me want to get back into it. OK. You're never out there yearning like, gosh, should I just be off grid permanently? like what's the
00:34:27
Speaker
What's the end game? Lean, if someday I don't answer your text, you'll know that that moment has come. But i'm not I'm not there yet, I'll tell you. I don't think my wife with my two young kids would be very appreciative of that. And they're not really poor school kids. So unless they're ready to live with the Seawolves, you know, who knows? Pure old children. It's not far off from what I have going to my house right now, actually.
00:34:49
Speaker
I love it. Man, we'll leave it there. That was a great story. Thanks for having me. I can picture you out there. And I love that that sort of natural energy makes its way back into the vibes you bring to the teams you work with. I know you're sniffing around here, hanging out with my wife, trying to get some shop pay action going within that. 1 plus 1 equals 3. That's what's up, man. through convergence, cross company convergence. Exactly. Bring the convergence back. Do great Canadian success stories, I'm just saying. Exactly. Exactly. To me, I'm the experienced guy. At the end of the day, if it's good for our customers, it's good for us. So that's always my answer. Appreciate you coming by, man. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Great to catch up. Yeah, of course, dude. Wicked. See you again soon.
00:35:29
Speaker
All right, folks, that's a commute. Thanks for joining today. That was lovely. And we'll be back again soon. Hope you all are having a great week. Listen to this wherever you are and sending hugs out to the LD fam enjoying that warm weather.