He Fed 500,000 Emails Into an AI Copy of Himself

# Transcript — Drew Morgans (Marknology)

*eCommerce Podcast · recorded via Riverside · 53.6 min · Matt Edmundson + Drew Morgans*

> Named systems: **OpenClaw** (the open-source always-on agent framework Drew built on), **Winston** (his personal system), **Drew IQ** (rules layer), **WCS** (context engine), **Ecom Pulse** (omnichannel tool).

**[00:02] Matt:** Welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson, and it is great to be with you today. I'm very excited for today's episode. We have a returning guest to the show. I'll let him tell his story in just a second, but we have a great show coming up. I have no doubt. I've been really looking forward to this. Always good to catch up with old friends, and that's what we're going to do today. If you're new to the show, welcome. We talk about all things. Ecommerce, how to build, grow, and do all that sort of good stuff online with your business. It's what I do. I run my own ecom businesses, have done since 2002, which is a really long, a really long old time. Hence the reason I call myself the ecommerce dinosaur. Um, but yeah, welcome to the show. Uh, make sure you like and subscribe and do all of that good stuff. Um, but yeah, welcome to this. Let's just jump straight into it, buddy. How are you doing? All the way in Kansas City.

**[00:55] Drew:** I'm doing well. Um, I— it's been too long since we chatted last. And, um, you know, I think, uh, I think you might be an ecommerce dinosaur. Um, I'm usually not a fan of people like, you know, kind of making fun of their age or their experience because I think that it's something to aspire to. But, uh, I feel like I'm a dinosaur and you've got me beat by a decade. So You know, I actually do, you know, I look up to you as an operator in a lot of ways, you know, through our conversations, I've learned just quite a bit and always look forward to a chance to getting to connect and just hear what you're working on and what the lay of the land is.

**[01:36] Matt:** Yeah, nice. I mean, well, for those that don't know, maybe they didn't catch the first show, but just tell it, just give us a brief elevator pitch.

**[01:43] Drew:** Yeah, so I've been in the Amazon ecommerce space for about 15 years. Um, run a full-service agency called Marknology. What's a full-service marketplace agency? Um, you know, especially when Amazon was becoming a thing, I jumped in, uh, headfirst and, and haven't looked back. So primarily Amazon, um, helping brands navigate Amazon images, SEO, running advertising, their reporting analytics, um, resellers policing the platform. And it just expanded from there to TikTok Shop, Walmart, Um, and in other areas like that. So I think we really consider ourselves marketplace-centric instead of just Amazon in that regard. And, um, along the way I've launched a warehouse and 3PL. I guess I'm 6 years into that. I'm just a small— I, I wanted to build my own brands or acquire my own brands, and in that roadmap saw that, you know, I think fulfilment warehousing, what happens there is a big profit centre, or quality, um, of your experience, you can really control it. And so I launched that for better or worse.

**[02:46] Matt:** Yeah.

**[02:46] Drew:** And, um, and also have a, a portfolio of brands that are, that are mine, um, mine and, and other investors, a couple investors with me on those. So a brand owner, warehouse and 3PL, and, um, you know, in the ecommerce space. And, and I think the last episode I caught of yours was AI, and I know everyone's talking AI. It's, it's, um, it's like the general word that, you know, goes so much deeper, kind of like when someone doesn't know your music genre, And they just say rock and roll or something. And you're like, listen, there's a lot of subcategories, okay? There's a lot of niche there. Um, but you know, I've been pushing super, super hard there as I try— as I leaned up my agency. Um, '24, '25, we, we dropped about, about 7 or 8 people. We're about a 32-person agency, just for context. But for us, it was like, it was a bit of a shift. And, and when we did that, um, It wasn't because of AI, it was because of just the industry and the economy and things were where we were, where I was. But in doing so, also kind of put my back against the wall with work and hours in a day. And I started digging into AI. I had already been working on something, started digging into AI, and the last year has been deep, deep into, deep in the deep. So yeah, I'm well-rounded, more of like, Was it a master of many? Um, yeah, doing, yeah, doing a little bit of everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**[04:12] Matt:** No, I, I love that. I think we're quite similar in many ways. And you have a great little office in Kansas, don't you? Kansas City. Uh, there's a great barbecue place down the road from you guys. I remember that.

**[04:22] Drew:** Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

**[04:24] Matt:** And, uh, it was great getting to hang with you and the fam, and, uh, you got to meet my daughter, and we just had a good— I mean, it was great.

**[04:31] Drew:** And you're wearing the Goonies shirt, which I think you had just had a chance to like go in the house or something before.

**[04:38] Matt:** That's right, it was on that trip. Yeah, yeah, on the way back from the Goonies house, we, um, we stopped off in Astoria and we, we did the whole Goonies thing. And, um, yeah, and then we came to see you, didn't we? We flew from there to, to, uh, to Kansas, which was great. So yeah, I'm still obviously, you know, this was a gift. Uh, I don't know who got me this actually.

**[04:57] Drew:** I don't know if you coordinated it or not, but for me I was like Wow, he remembers the last time we connected, you know? So no, it's great. And, um, you know, I know, um, you've got your hands in a few things, um, not sure everything you're touching, but, um, I think that whether you're selling in Europe, you're selling in the US, wherever you are, a lot of the same principles are applied.

**[05:19] Matt:** Yeah, absolutely. So you've been digging deep into AI. I'm curious, bud, what have you discovered? What's been like some of the standout things where you just go, I've done this and it's been brilliant, or I've done this and it was a waste of time.

**[05:31] Drew:** Okay, so for context, anyone listening, like when you say you've been digging in, you know, people talk about what subscriptions they're on, whatever, you know, I've probably spent $50,000, you know, in learning. So painfully so, but also like I'm breaking it, I'm pushing it to break it, I'm pushing it to break it, I'm pushing, pushing, pushing. You know, I've been speaking a little bit on, as a speaker, you know, as a person in the space, I generally try to choose a subject that everyone else isn't talking about and be like, this is what the people need to hear, you know, like Moses or something, right? But with AI, you know, that's where I'm living. So it's right where everybody's kind of hot and what they're talking about. And, you know, for the longest time I was trying to build software kind of behind the scenes as a service agency guy. I went to school for computer science. Um, networking, security, programming languages. That's my degree. And, um, found ecommerce and kind of put that on the shelf. I didn't go the software route naturally. All that to say, um, I've been, I've been building software and building systems internally. It started with like, what can I do to help myself? So, um, I started OpenClaw, uh, like when it first came out, I think in February.

**[06:50] Matt:** Yeah, yeah, it went nuts, didn't it? Everybody wanted OpenClaw on a Mac Mini.

**[06:54] Drew:** Yeah, exactly. Um, and people were scared, you know, they were nervous. But I think there's very few— I mean, I'm in a unique situation by being a CEO, if you want to put it that way, business owner that also can do the coding and the programming. And, um, where I'm not having to get permission from this person or this person, right? I'm just Going. And, um, because of that, I think I've gotten a lot further than other people would, even, even at big companies, because they're going to have these, these kind of these roadblocks, you know.

**[07:26] Matt:** Yeah.

**[07:27] Drew:** So, um, all that to say, I'll try to summarise kind of like what, what I, what I've done, you know. So to anyone that doesn't know, OpenClaw is like an agent that, um, has a heartbeat, a soul, these files that like keep it always awake, that keep it always kind of listening, always there. You interact with it through Telegram or Discord or a channel like that. And the more things you connect it to, the more things that it can do for you. So it could be connected to your email, to your, you know, your project management, your Slack. So, you know, to that end, I started like ingesting the 15 years of work that I've done. So podcasts, blogs, articles, SOPs, playbooks, Proposals, won, lost, you know, as far back as I could go, I could essentially turn into value. So, you know, I'm talking 500,000 emails just under mine, not, not the rest of the team or anyone else, just, you know, 500,000 emails over the course of 15 years. And then from there it was like, well, I want to get the 300 episodes I have from the podcast. And, you know, the podcasting was cool, but the real meat's in the emails. So then, you know, I'm segmenting them out. I am, you know, all these things and I have all of this data. And the problem I ran into was context. I think everyone's running into context, right? It's as a, as a guy, I can know, okay, Matt has a daughter. He likes The Goonies. He like, you know, runs a couple of brands. He's had a successful exit. He, you know, he runs a podcast. He runs a community group. He's, um, he's a Christian. Uh, all these like things that I have in my context just from pulling it like this. Right. And with the best friend, you're going to know more or less, but in general, like the AIs are going sequentially, like, okay, I'm going to go look over here. I'm going to go look at Andrew's email. I'm going to go look at Andrew's podcast. I'm going to go look in this software data. I'm going to go look over here. And it goes kind of sequential like that, but it's not like it knows everything all at one time. And I was like, I've done all this work to kind of build these, these brains, so to speak. And, and my AI, let's say Claude or whatever on top of that, is just missing stuff all the time. And I'm spending all this time getting him to do other things. And at first it was like, okay, let me be able to build a proposal without the design team. Let me be able to set up an email without, without the marketing team. And it could do these one-off things, but like in regards to like actually thinking like an operator, thinking like Drew, uh, in regards to an e-commerce problem or whatever, it would have some of the story but not all of it, and it would have holes. And so went from kind of like this, like, winging it system to giving it a set of rules. Like, I gave it basically 350 rules called Drew IQ, Q, um, where before it even gets to the AI, it's running through a series of like, if this, then this. that I already know as an operator.

**[10:27] Matt:** Yeah.

**[10:28] Drew:** Right? So if I'm evaluating advertising, PPC, and I'm like, okay, Claude, uh, you know, the general, the general approach is like, should I— what should I do with this campaign? Should I raise bids, lower bids, pause bids, add new keywords, whatever? It's just thinking about the PPC. Well, I wanted to think about inventory levels. I wanted to think about margin. I wanted to think about where the competition is. I want to think it— to think about on Amazon search query performance report gaps. I wanted to think about organic ranking. I wanted to think about, am I launching or, um, am I just, uh, trying to rank for keywords or am I trying to clear stock? All this different context. So in order to get it like that, I set up these rules and I set up tags. Okay. So the tags would get everything a little bit of context. Like this is a launch SKU. This is this, this is this. And so before there was a software, there's just the backend of OpenClaw. So I've got email and I could talk to it and it's doing certain things, but I just turned into a glorified, um, delegator, if that makes sense. Like I was given superpowers, but I was just becoming the delegator myself. It didn't really have the intelligence to route things or really know consistently what kind of output I wanted across the board. So I know it's taking a little bit, but I, I get to like kind of like where we've ended up. Um, but I wanted all that context in one spot and I wanted like, hey, I have all these things in my head from our SOPs, our playbooks, our rules that are like, if I'm really looking at advertising, I'm like, I need to take— first I'm gonna go look at it. I'm gonna get all these tabs open, so to speak, in my, like, you know, normally I'd get all these tabs open. I'd be like, I'm gonna look at the margin real quick. I'm gonna look at the inventory real quick. I'm gonna look at our ranking on this app, Helium 10. I'm gonna pull this data, you know, pull up 5, 6, 7, 8 different sources. And then I start to get to work on the advertising. Right? So that would be what happens normally. Well, if I know I'm going to check all those things, I could theoretically write rules that would make it check all those things before it came back with an answer. Well, okay, can do that, but it was expensive and it took a lot of time. It would sit there and think and think and think too long. So I built something called, uh, it's abbreviated WCS, and what it does, it's on my machine, it surfaces all of the context in like half of a second for for everything around that brand. And then it runs it through. So it's run through the rules already and it's surfaced everything all the way to the top, meeting ingest everything. So by the time the AI hits it with your beautiful prompt that you've written or whatever, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pre-done, it has all of this context there and it's able to like actually start helping you.

**[13:06] Matt:** Okay.

**[13:06] Drew:** And so otherwise it was sequentially going down this order. I needed to have everything there. That has been like, Painful, but also like, wow, when I, when I've got it there. Um, and you know, that's the main issue with, with software that's out there or anything really trying to help you, even getting an assistant for myself or really getting someone to help me, is they're like missing all these context pieces that like would take a lifetime to give someone, even, even an amazing person, unless they're just involved in everything. So. Um, there's a software front end to that that's like internal for our, our company that's like, you know, been amazing. My goal is just to reduce software costs and increase efficiency and give the team a lot of things that if I was helping them with something, this is how I would help them and where I would direct them and what I would tell them. And so it's been, um, getting away more so from vibe coding and things like that and more into like structured coding and then vibe on the end or like when you're like experimenting, but you need these, like the structure in place to kind of get you there. So, you know, you can add everything else to it, like cutting up podcast episodes and the marketing elements, and that kind of came first. And now it's this data layer and interpreting it that I'm kind of going into next. Um, but it's been amazing. I think, um, I think, uh, I'm excited finally. Like for me, software has always been a pain point and it's not even to me about monetising this and then going and selling it. It's really about adding value to my agency, you know, to my customers, to my team, and getting something solved that we haven't been able to solve for a long time that's just never really existed. It's always been kind of this piecemeal of, of like, you know, 10 softwares or something if you're really there. And yeah, it's been really refreshing, I think, just being able to control some areas that were frustrating for me. And an assistant is always I've always struggled with assistants. I really needed a copy of me. Like, that's at the end of the day, that's kind of, you know, that's really what I needed in order for it to be helpful outside of like, you know, basic things. So I've even, you know, wrote an app and got approved by QuickBooks. So, you know, my emails coming in automatically draft invoices and do a bunch of stuff like that. They don't send, it's always human gated, but, you know, um, I've created the assistant and now I'm kind of onto like, okay, how do we really like take Everything we've learned across 10, 15, 20 years. And, and what I think what's exciting is like in the past that work was already done. It's like expense, it's energy expensed and bringing like value out of that work from the past, old, old podcast episodes, emails that you've responded to and being able to see my business like, wow, here's 500 use cases of, of objection handling that I, that I did or that I tried and failed, or like, you know, having those types of metrics as an agency owner is really cool. So I'll set the mic down because that's a lot. But, um, yeah, it's been a, it's been a fun journey, I think, uh, and getting to be creative again instead of just managerial in my company.

**[16:14] Matt:** So isn't it? I think that's similar to you, but in the sense that I am the CEO or MD, whichever language you want to use, of the company. And I, I started off programming to, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I did all the initial sites. That's how the whole thing was born. And then I just hired really good people and I just never really kept up the skill.

**[16:37] Drew:** Touched it.

**[16:37] Matt:** Yeah. And you're just like, well, you know, we've got good people. I don't need to do that. But then with the advent of AI, I've sort of picked it all up again and rediscovered, I guess, a whole bunch of that stuff. And I just love the creativity of it. I think What it's given us the ability to do is to look at, you see a problem in your business or you identify something that is, if I could get another me to do that, that would be amazing. And within a few hours, you're like 80% there. It's the most extraordinary thing. I've never seen anything like it. And so like you, we're canceling subscriptions left, right, and centre at the moment because We don't need them. You know, we, we don't need project management software anymore. We've written our own. We don't need, um, this type of analytics over here because we've written our own and it's actually much better for us because it's bespoke to what we need. And so, yeah, I'm with you, dude. I, I, I love the creativity of it. I love the fact that I get to play and just have a bit of fun, you know, and just, I, I mentioned this before on the podcast. I don't know if you saw it, but I, Um, I was, I was a child that grew up in the 1980s, and so I developed KITT, um, on my phone as a sort of a face for Claude. And so when I'm driving, um, I have this big microphone button on my phone and I can press that button and I can talk to the phone and it will answer me. Um, and then it will sort of, it will come back, uh, with its answer, with its sort of mock KITT voice. Uh, and the little dials go up and down like they should. And now I'm like, I'm saying to AI, I'm like, this is awesome. I mean, it's, it's, it's practical in some respects because I can do stuff while I'm driving, but it's totally off the charts.

**[18:29] Drew:** It's added some fun. It's added some fun to something that as a business owner or operator you have to do day in and day out. And, and, um, you know, just instead of typing, right, we're talking easily. Uh, and I know some people have been doing that for a while, but when you really start coding a lot, it gets— and I think one thing that's been really refreshing for my brain, like, is I think, uh, I'm a strange person, you know? Like, I, I'm a Pentecostal kid raised in Africa, in Congo, um, school in Hawaii, you know, my story, like, just here, there, and everywhere. Um, and I'm, I'm a little different. Uh, I think even with just my creativity, like, the— my imagination, I literally grew up with You know, without a TV in my home. I grew up in— I was born in '86. Um, you know, I didn't have a TV. I played outside. My— the imagination, sky's the limit. And I didn't have a lot of kids, uh, telling me something wasn't right or whatever. There was just no one to tell me that. So, you know, um, I think in some ways I've always just struggled communicating what's in my head or my ideas. Um, and you spend so much time if you're a leader, like, um, changing what's your words to make it fit whoever you're talking to, right? Trying to say that correctly. Like, and, um, like, if you get it tuned right, just the— it's almost like a therapist in that way, except it's around work things. And, um, you're able to say whatever. I can say it in my, my words, I guess, how I want to say it without being super descriptive or whatever, right? And and all the, all the isms. But, um, that's been kind of refreshing to just be able to be creative without having to get someone else to buy into my idea right from the beginning when I'm coming up with the idea is like in itself liberating, I think.

**[20:17] Matt:** Yeah, no, it is. I love it. I love what you're doing. It's great. Where, where do you think it's going to over the next sort of 6 to 12 months? What are you seeing?

**[20:26] Drew:** Well, I think the trend is going to be Look, if you're mediocre, you're in trouble in whatever job you're doing, pretty much, unless you're like hands-on outside working on the house. Like trades is gonna explode, you know, I think, uh, just become more valuable than it was. And, you know, I think, uh, a couple years ago we'd have been like programmers are like the set job, right? Like just, um, and that's not the case. So, you know, uh, still can be surprised, but I think, um, actually like launching an app. Uh, developing it, getting a marketing concept for it, going to market, I think is going to be gone pretty soon. I just don't think that makes a ton of sense. Like, I think it's going to be more of the bolted-together things that really are valuable. Um, um, and, you know, so I think one is if you're mediocre or the bottom of the barrel on a team, you're, you're going to be in trouble.

**[21:16] Matt:** Uh, yeah.

**[21:17] Drew:** I think the true, the true operators, like people that are good at their job, really, really good people at their careers are going to be just fine. And whatever that is, even if, even if AI does it, there's going to be a need for the people that can think it out. Um, and I think that, you know, trades and in-person events and this authenticity piece is going to even get bigger. I think it'll be a course correction, um, which I'm excited about, really.

**[21:42] Matt:** Yeah.

**[21:42] Drew:** Um, I love the authenticity piece and, and in-person stuff. And I think that there's just going to be a— sure, it's hard to tell what's an AI video and what's not now, and— but it's going to create this whole movement, counter movement to it, I guess, like parallel movement that will be like the real original people that are different, that, that really have what only a human can do, I think. Um, you know, as far as like unique experiences, because AI is really layers of what everyone else has done already, right? It's not really creating something. I have yet to see it create something just like brilliantly unique. It's, it's really just helping us do things that we're already doing, you know. Um, as someone that's been putting out content on Amazon for 15 years, I'm sure the AI agents have been learning from us, you know what I mean? Like, that's just the truth. Um, so I don't know, it's more of a gauge feeling than it is like it's exactly going to happen like this, you know. Um, but I think even as the AI gets smarter and smarter and smarter, it's still going to cost. Um, you know, the brainpower is still going to cost. And so there'll still be a limit in regards to like how much the normal person can use it for and without paying quite a bit, you know, because we've got some stuff now that we're able to do ourselves, but there's still quite a bit of cost to it, I think, whenever you're trying to do anything significant. Yeah.

**[23:04] Matt:** And that's something you have to factor. I mean, for the first time ever, we did 2 new— our last 2 hires were AI guys to specifically board on board. You're going to focus on doing stuff on AI to help the operation get better, to get leaner.

**[23:19] Drew:** Where did they go to college? Uni, I guess, as they say.

**[23:23] Matt:** Yeah, well, funny enough, one of them's still at uni. He's doing computer science. And the other one did nutrition at university.

**[23:32] Drew:** Exactly. My point was like, my point was gonna be, I don't think there's really just similar to Amazon, right? And I've built a life for me and my family on a marketplace called Amazon that no one goes to school for. I think AI is another one of those arenas in a lot of ways. And I think having a programming background is incredible because if you want consistent output, you need to code, you know? And if you wanna work on a team, Even more so, you need to be able to code, um, correctly and organise and effectively and all those types of things, right? So, um, those characteristics of that learning, I think, is gonna— is a good background for, for AI. But I think AI is self-taught, like, in a lot of ways like that. I mean, there's—

**[24:16] Matt:** Well, it is. I would say on our team, I probably know more about AI and I can see more of the possibilities with AI. Um, and I, I'm quite happy that that's the case, uh, certainly at the moment.

**[24:26] Drew:** It's brought us relevant again in some way, right? Like, um, You know, I'm being honest, like, um, through the pandemic, outside the pandemic, like, as an agency owner in the marketplace space, it's been very confusing, you know, um, going— teams going offshore, um, the, the number of people doing Amazon or saying that they do Amazon in a big way, the competition got a lot louder. It was not as blue ocean as it was before. There's been a change of the guard, I think, a little bit in people understanding that there's teams that know what they're doing and teams that don't. Um, little plug. But also, um, you know, it's like, am I going to need to learn a new skill? Is this going to be just like, you know, done by agents? And, and I don't think so. I think that there's still so much nuance in really understanding how to run a great e-com brand that AI can kind of surface it all, but it can't run everything. You still got to be unique. But, um, all that to say, myself, like, part of e-commerce, part of what's hard is like you're constantly having to learn new things, learn new things, learn new things, learn new things. And is this skill gonna be outdated? These are like thoughts in my head, you know, am I gonna— is this gonna be something that just, you know, Joe off the street can do? Um, and now all of a sudden, I think because of all of the previous skills, programming for me in college and, and different things, or like building websites, things we did in the early part of our career, now that we have a team, all of a sudden again, I'm leading the way, um, you know, in my team. And it feels just kind of natural again, like it kind of reset to the early days. Um, And I didn't see that coming.

**[25:59] Matt:** No, and that's really good, isn't it? I mean, I would say I feel the same. I think there are people, there's like, there's a guy called Mark on our team who's our lead, he's our head of technical. So he looks after all the coding, you know, and all the technical aspects of whatever we do. And I would say he is, he still, when it comes to websites and e-com, He is better able to use AI to get the good stuff out of it, if that makes sense. I can take it to a— like, we're working on a project at the moment. I took it to a point and I'm like, Mark, I'm stuck. He can go away. Now, I know more about AI, but he knows more about coding, and he can look at what the AI's outputting and going, right, this is where the problem is right here. Why is it doing that? And he— I would never have seen that, but for him, he can see that, he can understand it, and he can get AI to help him. do his role better as the head of technical. I think probably where you and I are different, not only, I mean, you're a coder, so you would be able to do that much more than me. I guess where I see it is I can see again, we have this technology that will make the future different. So I'm much more visionary, I suppose, and much more kind of like, right guys, let's look at what we— because everyone's got their head down looking at their job.

**[27:18] Drew:** Yeah.

**[27:19] Matt:** you as the CEO can look up and you can survey what's going on and going, right, this is a big area of opportunity for us right here. And if we do something there, that's gonna, that's gonna make a big impact. Let's go there first.

**[27:29] Drew:** Yeah, it's like that, that learning. That's exactly what I'm trying to say, is it, um, is exactly that, which is gone a little bit from, okay, trying to master these skills to like being able to see visionary again instead of just perfecting what's here. It is like refreshing, it's super refreshing, and it feels like, ah, empowering to me in the e-com space. And I think the other part is I was talking about the communication, how refreshing it is to communicate an idea, you know? And when I think—

**[27:59] Matt:** Yeah.

**[27:59] Drew:** Whenever you're on a team that's working really hard, and my team works really hard, whenever I have ideas and I've— I'm just the idea person, I've always been that, but I trailblaze the way usually, and then the team comes and manicures the lawn, but I cut down the jungle, you know? Like, that's generally how the approach has been in every area, whether it's TikTok. I mastered TikTok. Walmart, Shopify. I jumped into these areas and I bring them to the team once I've kind of mapped it out. But it can be kind of like you hold yourself back, uh, in a lot of ways when I sharing it with the team, because I know in their head they're thinking, okay, if I come up with a new way I want to do proposals before AI or whatever, right? Or I have this idea for them, they're just like, how much more work is that for me? Right?

**[28:41] Matt:** Yeah.

**[28:42] Drew:** And, and so it gets into your head, you're like, I'm not going to share those because I know that's, that's how they're thinking. And I can't just brainstorm and go like this because for every single person I say it, okay, they have to make that come to life if they're on my team. And now I'm able to bring it to life without burdening them with that. And then, you know, and then can hand it off if I get it there or whatever. And that's, that's something that I think has— just to add a little bit more to why it's so liberating is because I'm not— my, my idea is not creating heaviness for someone on my team. And that's what I like.

**[29:12] Matt:** Are you almost handing them a finished product, aren't you?

**[29:16] Drew:** Yeah.

**[29:17] Matt:** Yeah. Like, here guys, I've done the heavy lifting. Let's, you know, and you're right. I mean, when I used to go away, like when I came to see you guys, I was away for like 5 or 6 weeks, I think in total. The team here, there's a part of the team, Mark, Michelle, and a few of the others, they're like, right, when you get back, please do not download every single great idea you had. Whilst you were away, right? We just don't want to hear it.

**[29:48] Drew:** They're already saying that. That's crazy.

**[29:50] Matt:** Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Because I would like— you would go away, you'd have like, you know, 25,000 brilliant ideas, and you come back and go, right guys, we're going to take this hill, this hill, this hill, and this hill. Let's go. And after a few years, they're just exhausted. Exhausted.

**[30:04] Drew:** Yeah.

**[30:05] Matt:** And they're just like, dude, please do not. We know. It's really funny, isn't it? But you're right, with AI now, I can go to the team and go, right guys, listen, this is where Like with Mark, this is where I think we should go. Here's code. I'm 80% there. I just need you now to go the 20%. And I've taken the 80% off his plate. And you could argue, well, why am I doing that 80%? Well, actually, I think by doing that with AI, it'll have taken me a few hours, but it was a hell of a lot quicker.

**[30:32] Drew:** Yeah.

**[30:32] Matt:** And we've got a much better outcome.

**[30:35] Drew:** And with AI versus other things in the past, like always trying to improve Marknology's branding, our assets, our things we're handing out. Uh, Mark, our own marketing would take a back seat a lot of times, and I've always been pushing that we need more on our own stuff. Um, is I think what's been amazing is I focused on one first. I did it for myself, like getting the agents to really help myself, where like, you know, it's helping me write emails and not, not drafting a generic thing. It's helping me pull all the facts from the meeting transcripts or whatever to be able to give them the best answer. I used to need to have a team meeting And so, you know, hey guys, I need— this client wants to talk to me. I'm not up to date on what's going on. Let's have a meeting, a meeting before the meeting, right? To get, to get my ducks in a row. Now I don't need them for that. I can get my ducks in a row kind of without them and save them that time, save the company time. And then once I started figuring out things for myself, my bookkeeper, the design team, like as far as things they used to help me with, I started helping them. And it wasn't to replace employees and save a dollar. It was if I was in their shoes, because I've done most of those jobs, what tools would help me be more efficient? What could I build for them that's going to make them better? So as far as getting them to adopt things, I think it's been easier too, because I'm not necessarily asking them to do more. I'm saying, here's a new tool. I found a drill for you or a new chainsaw or whatever, like, right? And so it's like, this is an easier way to get review aggregation, or this is an easier way to come up with new brainstorm ideas for PDP pages or, or concepts, or, hey, here's 8 different areas you can pull from to really get to the meat of why a listing's not converting. And, you know, handing them things that made their job easier versus handing them things that, like, they have to go build, you know. Yeah. Um, that's also made me feel good as an owner, as a leader, is like the work that I'm doing is making my team's quality of life better, or the work better, or one of those things.

**[32:30] Matt:** Yeah, everyone wins in that scenario, right? Everyone wins.

**[32:33] Drew:** Like, like a simple example, just because like, okay, the podcast episode comes out, right? Before, I had to almost get someone off of marketplace work. You know, I didn't have like 5, 6 people on my own team working on our own marketing. They generally were like on marketplace, Amazon or TikTok, creating content. And then we're repurposing our skills for, for Marknology marketing. And, um, you know, you'd have to If you sent me, hey, here's the podcast, here's some thumbnails, here's like when it's coming out, like send an email to your list or post on LinkedIn or share it. Okay, that's an action. So the email would come to me, I forward it to my team. Hey guys, can we get this loaded in the socials? Um, you know, maybe that's LinkedIn, maybe that's an Instagram post about it, maybe that's, uh, an email in Klaviyo, maybe that's a blog post, maybe that's a newsletter, right? There's like 5, 6 things. It's an extra— it's extra work. Right. And it was, you know, on top of their deliverables all the time. But there's some things that happen ad hoc. You can't plan out your whole year. You've got episodes and things like this, you know. So now it's an email comes through, I forward it to my agent that's in charge, right? And he automatically knows from a mixture of the routing rules and a mixture of like his own intelligence, right? Like how I like my Klaviyo emails built, or, you know, he knows that if it's a If it's a podcast, it goes, it goes on my media site, on my media page, it goes into a newsletter. We wait till I have 2 podcasts, I kind of blast them out. We create a blog on it. You know, I also check if I'm a guest, I check for backlinks on their site when they post it. And if not, I draft an email to request them for that, tell them I built a page and done the same thing for them. That's like, you know, 10, 12, 15 actions. And I cut it up into minis as well in case they don't come. And like, that happens with an email forward.

**[34:24] Matt:** Yeah.

**[34:24] Drew:** And that's like, to me, that's incredible because I'm just— I'm getting more out of the work I'm already doing. And that is like more, almost more exciting to me than net new, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**[34:35] Matt:** No, totally. I mean, we do the same here. Remarkable what it is. What are your AI tools of choice right now?

**[34:44] Drew:** Well, um, I went with OpenClaw. You know, I know there's Hermes, there's a lot of other ones that people can use. And what I also saw when I was really studying all of this was I was watching all of the YouTubes. I spent like a month just learning, ingesting before I started my OpenClaw. And then because of security, and that's what I went to college for, I did do it on a local network. And I started expanding it out to Slack through my— to my team could interact with it through Slack. And then I I kind of had some stages that I wanted to be safe and whatever. But, um, one was like, okay, I would read. And a lot of the YouTubers or the people out there putting out content, they're smart. They know how to create content. They know what subject is popular, but they don't have a use case like I do. I think that's a main game changer in what I'm doing versus other people is my use case is my everyday work. It's right here. It's 60 Brands. It's my stuff, right? And so watching the YouTubes was informative, but it wasn't the same as just jumping in. So I also got OpenClaw and then you see OpenClaw versus Hermes, OpenClaw versus Gemini, Gemini versus Anthropic. Like, and there's something lost in jumping. There's like a lot of time and whatever. Just even if this has a little advantage, like I need to deepen this relationship, you know? So I've kind of committed to that, I guess. I use Anthropic as kind of the backend and Um, but I have some local machine stuff and, you know, but, and then, um, and then I— OpenClaw is not, is not, uh, stuck to one or the other. You could have 8, 10 different, like, you know, memberships or APIs that you're connecting to. Um, so I'm using OpenClaw, Anthropic. Um, I have lots of little tools like gamma.app, which is like kind of a proposal builder, um, and moved away from them. Honestly, I, I've brought them in and then kind of moved away at the same time on a bunch of stuff. Needed it at the beginning to learn it, then realized like I can build that myself or, or I don't need that thing or I want to do custom. So it's a lot of custom as well. Um, and then I've got like, you know, the SQL servers and the, and all that kind of backend crap happening. That's like not necessarily AI, but it's, it's been integrating with AI. And so.

**[36:58] Matt:** Yeah.

**[36:59] Drew:** I think that's kind of where it's, it's at is like some of it's AI. Sure. What is actually AI and what is AI helping you build? Like the APIs has been the biggest leverage for me. Um, it used to need almost like a specialist in that API to get, to get stuff. And now you can just plug in, which is incredible. Um, but to that end, when something new comes out that I really like, like, like let's say Hermes or a competitor, that's like a switch. What I do instead is I go and I have the machine learn everything it can about that build. And then we determine kind of like, is that better than what we have? Is that something we should ingest? Is that something we should bolt alongside? Is that something we should try to replicate? Is that worth the build? And so instead of changing mine as these different good options have come out, I've just kind of custom built mine based on those new things, if that makes sense. So, um, some of them will be like, well, it's cheaper because it compacts the information so much better. The other one might have a dashboard. The other one might the agents better, you know, these types of aspects. And what I've done is just learned from those ideas and then built them myself.

**[38:02] Matt:** Yeah. Well, that's fair play because I think you're right. I think there is a, a massive opportunity cost when you move.

**[38:09] Drew:** Yeah.

**[38:09] Matt:** That we don't talk about. And we did the same. We would jump between Claude, ChatGPT, and it's just like, oh, now this is better, and ChatGPT-5 is better than Opus 4. And then you're just like, and after a while we're like, No, let's just nail our guns, you know, let's just nail the mast and let's just, let's just stick with one system and really get to know how that system works well for us and really hammer that thing home. Is it the best system? I don't know. I don't care. It's the best system for us right now. And the, we've just got really good at using that one thing.

**[38:43] Drew:** What, what, what I will say to that is there is a little like caution for me, which is like, if let's say Anthropic gets shut down by the government. Because it refused Trump on some stuff, and then Trump's coming down hard on him and he switches to OpenAI. And, you know, that's a lot of funding and a lot of change. What if I had built my whole system on Anthropic and then it just gets like its feet, you know, the rug pulled out? So with the OpenClaw system, or, or what I call Winston— my system is called Winston.

**[39:11] Matt:** Love that.

**[39:12] Drew:** Um, um, it's, it's, uh, it's AI, um, agnostic in regards to like, okay, if Anthropic went down, which is what I'm comfortable using, and, and, you know, we're all using Claude, whatever, I could switch to OpenAI and my system would be okay.

**[39:29] Matt:** Uh, yeah.

**[39:30] Drew:** So it has like fallbacks, if that makes sense. And that was important for me as much as I'm com— very comfortable with Claude and I've, I've built all that all into that, that I, that if it, if it did go, everything I've built wouldn't be for, for naught.

**[39:42] Matt:** Yeah. Yeah, so that's very wise. Very wise. Um, it's—

**[39:48] Drew:** I—

**[39:48] Matt:** have you played around with— so you've obviously got the frontier models, right? So like Anthropic, like ChatGPT, but you've also got the open source models which you can install on your own network, on your own system. Have you played around much with those?

**[40:05] Drew:** Yeah. Um, here's the thing. I do feel like sometimes people are pinching pennies when they— when I hear them talking about AI, and I'm just like, you're not really about it. You're talking about saving cents. Like, you know, what are we doing? What are we talking about? Um, and I just— I do— I hear people and I'm just like, we're talking about $20. What are we talking about? Or like this membership or this membership, right? Um, and the local models are great for like, for example, I, I pull all my emails, my meeting transcripts every night. Um, and I'm not using Opus or Fable 5 to do that. I'm using a local LLM on my server that's pulling those emails and ingesting them or pulling Amazon stuff. It's not using Opus, but I have a different process for what's getting ingested and tagged and organized in the system versus what goes out to customers or what's client-facing.

**[41:00] Matt:** Yeah.

**[41:00] Drew:** So cheap model in, expensive model out. When you think about like what, let's say it's helping me write an email or build a deck, like what am I doing using a cheap model to help me do the math behind like a proposal deck or the build? No, if it's recreating myself, I'm not going dumber. Like if that makes sense, right? So, um, I've always felt that on the, I try to get, that's why I try to get all the way through the rules, that example I gave you, the rules, the routing, the context. All of that is actually free, the pool. So by the time it gets to my, to my agent who actually does the, the reasoning, which is like the very final layer, so to speak, um, I do it at the basically the most expensive or the, the most suited, not, not every task. And then, but all of the work before that, the coding has to be built and all of that. But like once it's built, that context that it surfaces is actually a free call on my own machine.

**[41:56] Matt:** Wow.

**[41:57] Drew:** So that's, that's also what gets me excited about that context build I built is, is like all of that work is— it's not pulling the API, it's not searching the MCP, it's not searching my chats, my pro— it's like already there from my system. Uh, I think I use Ollama, um, locally. Um, but, uh, then it gets to the AI and I'm using Opus and I, and I kind of don't, um, compromise on that. I just think anything that's client-facing that's that's trying to be me is not something I want to go cheap on.

**[42:25] Matt:** Yeah, no, that's very, very wise. We're the same. I just use Fable all the time. Yeah, and I know it burns through your tokens, and I say all the time I don't— that's not true. Um, but the important stuff, I just turn it on. I'm like, I don't— I just want— I just want it done as best as I can with the model that I have at the moment, right? Why would I not?

**[42:42] Drew:** If it's saving me time, I'm— I'm not, you know, I'm not pinching pennies there. And the difference is drastic. Like, and I'm sure that's like the Apple iPhone when it comes out, right? They start degrading your old one, right? And I'm sure that that's the case in, in the AI models. Like, this is still business in the world we live in, right? Um, yeah, but how much time is that worth for me to sit there and let something like Sonnet reason, reason on, like, you know, the Sonnet model or something, reason on something very important to me? Or, you know, the difference I see it struggling, struggling, struggling, switch it over and it fixes it. You know, so, um, to me it's not just about, uh, I, and I am trying to be efficient there all the time, but I kind of go in spurts and it's like, go build. And then, you know, um, I think the biggest thing for me was, um, I built this OpenClaw system that runs through an API and it was acting like an assistant where it's always on. It's not like coding, but really just figuring out Claude Code on the side as well. And like getting, I was kind of doing one, getting really good at one versus the other. And just leaning on Claude Code to do a lot of my building, you know, like the actual coding of apps and my systems and things like that. And then using the OpenClaw system, which is like always on and it connects through, it's illegal to use it on like a max account.

**[43:59] Matt:** Got it.

**[43:59] Drew:** So you're using it through API, which is more expensive, but it can do a lot more. It's always there. It can kind of like, it's not gonna push back on you. And even in the few months since AI came out to now, um, the limits used to be crazy. Um, you know, and if you're doing— there's a big difference in if you're doing like proposal building. And where I really learned was like, okay, it just keeps compacting, losing my context. This is ridiculous. I'd rather just do the work myself. Like, you know, when it was compacting, uh, this is frustrating. It's losing everything I just taught it.

**[44:33] Matt:** Exactly.

**[44:33] Drew:** So then the, the, the mode is to say, okay, stop clearing the context. Which it builds, but then it remembered everything, but it was getting super expensive, crazy money, but it was remembering everything. And I'm like, oh my God, this workload I'm cranking out through this workload, this is amazing. But it was getting so expensive. So I'm like, I can't get it to remember everything. Think of it like us, you know, like the metaphors are crazy, but like, you know, our context, it's big. Okay, it's working, but that's not sustainable. I can't keep doing that. That's expensive. And then, um, and if you're like coding with that, that chat interface, it's like, uh, it gets confused if you're switching conversations and the compacting. So Claude Code and, and to build things out with GitHub and the branches. And for people that don't understand that, like, you know, work on a branch at a time and code and, and then come back. And, um, yeah, it just depends on what your use case is for, you know? And for me, um, Yeah. Creating high-level— like, I needed to do high-level things. Um, I think one thing I want to share is that, like, a lot of people talk about creating multiple agents, that, like, you know, you've got a CFO agent, you've got a design agent, you've got this, you've got that. And there is value in that, in having a prompt where you're giving them context about what they're doing. But I think with my rules and my code and the way I've built it, where, like, the AI is just really acting at the end of a lot of things Um, and inside smaller sessions. I've gone away from that. And instead what I've built is, is a, is a super agent, a Drew IQ.

**[46:03] Matt:** Um, yeah.

**[46:04] Drew:** Like that really has everything that I want in one super agent. And I've spent my time to get that agent like really smart and know where all my stuff is and really be able to help, help me instead of this idea of like, you know, 20 different specified agents that do separate things and jump in on, on separate things. I, I had the Discord where they were all communicating and arguing and chatting and Tried all of the things. I thought that was kind of the only way to do it was kind of have these specialist agents with names and part of a team. And that is, that's just like if you get on YouTube, if you start watching stuff, that's how everyone's doing a lot of things. For me, it was just easier to get one that was like as close to me or brilliant as possible instead of working on 20 different personalities and, and all the skills. And, um, it's worked a lot better for me.

**[46:50] Matt:** That's a really interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, what, what are you finding with AI and Amazon then in the Amazon space? What's working well there?

**[47:00] Drew:** So, um, you know, I think before there was like, before I plugged everything in, I've got Amazon Ads API, I've got Seller SP API, which is the other one. I've got Amazon Marketing Stream, which is the ad spend every 15 minutes. Amazon Marketing Cloud. So all the data points. Okay. Now, and I used to get them through software, other software. I still do in some aspects, like, right, I'm pulling through their APIs, they clean them up, they manage them. On the Amazon side, for me, first I started with my work, which was kind of different. And it's really been the last few months I've built something called Ecom Pulse. I was building it for 2 years before AI came out. Which is really grabbing all the data points from all the important marketplaces like Shopify, Walmart, TikTok Shop, Amazon, a P&L, for example, and pulling it all into one spot so you can see the halo effect. You can see like my margin on this channel versus this channel. You can see your Google and Meta ads. Um, and people say they have omnichannel, but they don't. There's not really software out there, in my opinion, that does it great, at least not with Amazon forward thinking. And so for me, I've been working to kind of pull all that together with AI on top of it. Because the truth is this, I always kind of lead with this. Drew, if you had all the time in the world on this thing, what would you do and how would you do it? Because I do believe that the real leverage pieces are the non-scalable things.

**[48:35] Matt:** Okay?

**[48:35] Drew:** Like in general, like if I could grab this report and this report, and I could do a Reddit search and I could grab all the reviews from me and all the reviews from my competitors, and I would know what pricing they're at today. And tomorrow I'd have a refresh and know what pricing they're at tomorrow. And I would have my margin information, my inventory information, my ranking report, my search query performance organic report. I knew what the Meta and Google team was doing as far as pushing off Amazon traffic. I knew what was happening in the economy at the time. I knew like when our shoppers were buying, what age our— if If I had all of that, like in a perfect world, if I had all the time in the world and I could cross-reference it, what would I do? You know, and that's what a good Amazon pro has been doing for years with spreadsheets is like, okay, I'm looking at this keyword ranking and we're advertising on this exact match. And at just at scale, building an agency past an operator of one, that gets very hard to teach. It gets too— that we don't get paid enough to do that at that level. You know, there's a million reasons why. That's like the rocket science that we can't do at scale. But at one, a one-off project, if I wanna spend 4 hours on an afternoon on a Saturday, I can get a lot of that together on a product, right? And so you say what AI is doing, I think it's helping me create what we would only do like as a pro, like once in a while when I can, to being able to do that more often. And really, really helped me like really troubleshoot and give people insights on their brand that I don't think in some ways they've ever had before. I've been having a lot of fun really deep diving some, some projects where the click-through rate's high, they're clicking on the main image, but they're getting in and they're not converting. And why are they not converting? And what are, you know, what's the difference in the keywords we're going after versus what they're saying on Reddit or what they're saying in our reviews or like the kind of the tech speak behind the products. And, um, just that layer of like knowing what questions to ask the system, you need to know all those places to go to get all that information and what it needs to think about, but being able to really pull that together and then put that into a presentation that's not just like, you know, ChatGPT agreeing with you. Okay. Like, 'cause it's got, you know, some pushback and really being able to find some killer insights that I feel like have always been there. I've just never had the time to get them. So that's a long answer, a long way of saying like, I think it's helping us do things that we couldn't do at scale before. And that's why Amazon and marketing and a lot of these things got so SOP driven and so Just templaty because we're cranking out work. No one wants to pay for that type of like almost like advertiser type of work to really bring a product to life. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really what it's doing is helping scale the unscalable.

**[51:18] Matt:** That's fantastic. Drew, listen, man, I'm aware of time and how it's rapidly gone. We've just got started, I feel. If people want to find out more about you, find out about Marknology, what you guys are doing on Amazon, TikTok, etc., what's the best place to go to?

**[51:34] Drew:** Yeah, you know, if you go to marknology.com, I have like newsletter signups throughout the site. So it's just easy if you want to kind of get in when I'm speaking or a webinar, blogs and stuff I'm putting out. I'm definitely trying to bring a lot more of that forward and kind of just share. I like sharing what I'm working on when I'm working on it because it's my most passionate content. You know, I think Versus kind of the, the old. So marknology.com. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram, Andrew Morgans. Um, Instagram's a little more personal and fun entrepreneurial type of thinking and, and sharing. And, um, LinkedIn is more of the business side for sure. Um, to me they're both, they're interconnected, you know, like, so, um, love to interact with anyone there. YouTube, whatever channel you guys are on, um, would love to hang out.

**[52:22] Matt:** Fantastic. Well, we will of course put all of those links in the show notes. Uh, so whatever podcast player you're on, you'll be able to see it in the description. If you're on YouTube, you'll be able to see the links for Drew in the description. Of course, if you're subscribed to our newsletter, which will not be anywhere near as good as Drew's, I'm sure, uh, but if you're subscribed to that, it will also be in that newsletter as well. But, um, Drew, listen, man, thank you so much for coming back on. We should do this again sooner. We shouldn't wait so long for the next one.

**[52:51] Drew:** I would love— I got about 50 questions for you. As well. So, um, we'll have to make it happen.

**[52:56] Matt:** Absolutely. Drew, you're a legend. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Thank you for coming on. Uh, it's been, it's been brilliant.

**[53:03] Drew:** Thanks for having me.

**[53:04] Matt:** Wow, there you go. What another brilliant episode of the eCommerce Podcast. What a legend Drew is. Uh, but that's it this week from me. Thank you so much for joining us. Like I say, make sure you like and subscribe and do all of that good stuff because I'll be back next week with another great conversation. But from me, until then, that's it. Bye for now.