How To Level Up Your Search For The Ideal Influencers

Welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson, the e-commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver commerce.
And I am super excited with today's guest, who is David Perry from Kara.
Now, one of the things that I am wanting to start doing here on the podcast is give a shout out to past guests and.
And given that we are today talking about how to level up your search for ideal influences today.
I thought it would be great to mention a past podcast. So here we go. Cody, Wittick why giving away stuff always leads to more
sales and influencer marketing. Check out that episode alongside David , uh, why you should be
using micro influencer marketing and how to do it properly. Two great episodes.
The time of this topic and a big shout out to both David, uh, and also to Cody.
Yes, absolutely. Now this episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, which helps you
deliver e-commerce well to your customers. What is cohort?
I hear you say, well, I'm sure you've come across a bunch of folks stuck with their e-commerce businesses, or they've got siloed into working
on just one or two areas of their business and miss the whole big picture.
Well, and to the e-commerce cohort to solve this particular problem.
It's the lightweight membership group with guided monthly sprints, that cycle through all the key areas of.
The sole purpose of cohort is to provide you with clear, actionable jobs to be done.
So you'll know what to work on and with the support to get those things done.
So whether you're just starting out in e-commerce or if you're like me a well established e-commerce, uh, then I can encourage you definitely
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So there's some incredible offers that you can take advantage of. And you can also email me directly at Matt at e-commerce podcast.net
with any questions, because let me tell you, we are super pro. Of the e-commerce cohort.
Yes, we are. So let's jump into today's special guest David Perry, who is the CEO of Cara, which
Intro to David Perry
is a new e-commerce partnership framework. And it is remarkable. Let me tell you with over Shopify brands using the.
Kara helps brands get attention sales and new customers by partnering with
the brands in the network, Sony police station acquired Paris previous company.
Can you believe that? And he's, he knows what he's doing, right. To establish the leadership, uh, in the future of streaming video games from the
cloud, a service now called PlayStation. Now called PlayStation.
Now it's called PlayStation at anyway. David is no stranger to success. That's the bottom line.
That's what we're trying to tell you here. He has been one of the driving forces behind some of the most innovative
game and technology to date. We do get into this a little bit. Actually his work, uh, has helped shape.
The future of gaming as we know it. So you can't wait to see how he's applied his learning to e-commerce
and kero and all the clever things. It does stay tuned. Here is my conversation with David.
So David, thank you so much for joining me on the e-commerce podcast. Great to have you in the white, at least in the virtual room, uh,
I'm still flabbergasted by the technology that allows me to see you from the other side of the world.
Um, and talk, uh, very Chris and you were mentioning before we started recording that you've got AI voice processing on your audio.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really stunning. My, my, my mother lives in England. And so back in the old days, I would call her up and it would
cost me around $here in the U S just to call her up and say hello. And, uh, and here we are now with AI.
You know, voice, uh, cleaning. So you can't hear me typing or the dogs barking at me.
And, uh, you know, you've got this free data stream. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's, it is pretty amazing to think about what it's
going to be like in the future. Right? What are they going to do next? Yeah, exactly. I'm hoping for teleportation.
That would be my dream. Yeah. I think, uh, I think, uh, um, Matt is working on it, right?
They want to. Well, I'm going to be sitting here in VR helmets. Um, and that will be it.
We will never move again. You know, what's really funny is that actually happened to me. I was in bed one night, um, and I put on a VR headset and I was at a rave and there's
all this confetti falling and lasers and people dancing all around to me. And then I took the VR headset off and I was back in the bedroom and
I'm like, I'm going back to the re. That's what VR is going to do.
It's better there than it is adherence. So, yeah. And there's a, there's all those movies that have come out about this.
Haven't they? I mean, just creating these sort of virtual world environments, uh, where it's it's much better.
I've seen the one that I've enjoyed recent. Not recently. It's a few years old now is the ready player. One movie. I don't know if you saw that based on the book.
And I liked it because of all the. You know, references, basically it was basically an eighties film, uh, sort of bought forward, but yeah, you can see it coming.
You can see it coming now. I mean, my kids are glued to their phones as it is given the virtual reality headset that said they're never coming out, right?
Yeah, no, I was, I was literally always one time there was a person. Um, explaining about some, um, some sort of temple space in, in Syria,
some kind of, uh, very religious space. And this person kept walking around to me and was actually annoying me.
Cause again, I was sitting in bed going stop walking around the I can't, uh, you know, I just wanna, I just want to see this.
And then he said, oh, but we're going to go into this room. You know, in VR that people can't go into.
So wait, if I fly there, I can't see this, but I can from my bed, like, what is that?
That, you know, that, that idea of access is also very interesting, right? Yeah. That's incredible.
Isn't it? That's sinker. So basically it is your life just doing VR from, from bed raves.
Yeah, that's all I do. I do. I just DVR and connect to the matrix.
That's what I do, Nick to the matrix. That's brilliant. That's absolutely brilliant. Uh, um, well, I mean, I could wax lyrical about this or no, it'd be
quite an interesting conversation, but let's sort of turn our attention to, um, the main topic while we hit.
We're going to talk about influencer marketing. We're going to talk about your company and what it does. Uh, we're going to talk about.
Um, the different ideas and thoughts that you have around this whole thing. Um, but one of the things that I remember from our pre-call when we were
discussing this was your journey is not, it's not a traditional journey. Is it from sort of where you were to where you are?
No. No, definitely not. Um, yeah. I grew up in Northern Ireland.
Um, I, I got very interested in video games, but video games, wasn't really a thing there. And so for me to actually really get moving, I had to move to England.
And so I ended up leaving high school just to go straight to England, um, and start making video games.
And that worked out great. I mean, it was such a risk because what the heck was the video game industry at that point?
The games were that the Sinclair's Zedick city one was that with the video
games, we're talking about. Yeah, no, I was making games for the Zedick city one, one K of memory, right?
I mean, again, it's, it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. The whole game was one day today and an icon on the screen is three k.
Um, so it's just an icon. We somehow put an entire video game. We could put multiple video games, um, for that.
So that was that's just how insane it's been. The England was definitely a great choice because in, in, in the world
of video games, a lot of people were playing with consoles, um, where they just had joysticks. They didn't have keyboards in England.
The devices we had were very much focused on, on all having keyboards, pretty much Amstrad Sinclair's um, of course Commodore Vic, things like that.
They were all keyboard based. So we're all learning how to pro. And, uh, they call them bedroom coders because there was so
many of them at the time. And so I was one of those bedroom coders, but I ended up, um, realizing, Hmm,
this is going really well in England. Um, but I got an offer to do a contract in California.
And when you live in England, the, you know, as a kid, the idea of California was pretty romantic.
Right. And so I'm on my way. And, uh, and, and so once I got there and I, I sort of, I fell
in love with the place then I knew I didn't end up going back. Um, and so ultimately that's how I ended up in the U S but the
video game industry just exploded. And so I was riding that wave. And what I learned from the industry is branding was very important.
And that's sort of, a bit of a theme in my career is, is, you know, I always want to do the things I want to do, but at the end of the day,
you have to some, sometimes just go, you know, what is really going on? And what I found is when you watch kids purchasing games, their hands tend to go
towards the things they've heard about. It's just, it's just psychology, right? Yeah. Their hands like this and then boom, they go to some brand that you've heard of.
And, um, and so I realized that by doing branded games, it would help my career a lot. And, and so that's where I focused.
I ended up the first one I did was a teenage mutant ninja turtles went straight to number one and it's like a hit, hit driven industry.
So when you get it, people want to work with you. And so, you know, I did the Terminator for teams, Cameron, the, um, I did.
Aladdin for Disney, um, the matrix for the and Warner brothers. And so, you know, each time you do a sort of a hit brand thing,
your career, the skills mentally, are you doing lots of speeches? Lots of presentations. I even had a funny one when we were almost done with the matrix, I got a
call and this guy's like, oh, Michael Jackson would like you to drive up to Neverland and let them play the thing before it launches is that possible?
And I'm like, I'm on my way. So I go up there and, you know, I get to spend time with them.
We ended up agreeing to start to work on a video game together. So it was, it was crazy.
Um, how the game industry, um, when I first joined.
And when I first moved to America, most of the people who run companies are old and they don't like the video game industry. They didn't know interests.
They never grew up with it, but all those people have moved on. And now everyone in every position, uh, every sports, uh, celebrity,
you know, every movie star, all of these people have grown up through the ages of, of, you know, having arcade machines and things like that.
And so the game industry is welcome everywhere now that it wasn't before. And so I got to enjoy all of that.
My last. My last company was bought by Sony PlayStation. Um, the one before that was bought by Atari.
And so I got an Atari business card for a while, which is the best business card ever, wherever you go, wherever you go.
I remember once the funny thing is, um, when you, uh, in the U S if you want
to be able to travel very easily, they have a special sort of card for that. And we have to go on and get interviewed by the immigration.
And I, they, they, they want to do an interview and that you have to get prepared for this. And so I went to see them and they saw my Atari business card and they just
immediately started gushing about Atari. And then, then it was over the, the meeting was over and I'm like,
yeah, time and time again. It was just such a valuable piece of intellectual property.
Ultimately the game industry, um, you know, did sort of helps me out a lot, but I ended up sort of semi retiring and building this huge man-cave
with woodworking and metalworking and d printing and photo studio and arcade machines, everything.
Um, and that's where I was going to be spending my days. And I was so looking forward to that, but, but somehow I got very interested,
um, when I was taking pictures. Nobody really cared about them unless I took pictures of social media influencers.
And then, then you get lots and lots of feedback. Everyone wants to meet. And so I realized the power of these people is just so profoundly different,
which is exactly like the brand thing I'd learned about before, you know, this just, I could make a game called jumpy boy, and nobody cares, you know, but if
I, if I make something like the matrix, then boom, you've got a number one hit. And so this is the end game.
Just the name on the box changes time, right? It's everything. So it's the same thing with the influencers. The influencers are much more powerful than I think people
Authentic influencer marketing
really understand because a lot of the celebrities today, like they might've made a movie or something.
That's great. And they're really famous. But, but these influencers with, you know, million followers, we
have some million followers are talking to their audience every day. That's just such a profoundly different situation.
When you have that level that they know, they know them like they're friends, meaning they know their dogs and what they eat and you know, every what,
where they are for vacation right now. You know what I mean? They know they're on the beach right now. Cause they did saw the posts.
And so it's kind of fascinating too. To, to, uh, sort of see that space and I just couldn't resist it.
And so I ended up, um, I met an entrepreneur, um, uh, his name's Jason Goldberg and the two of us decided to, to have a go at this.
And the idea was to create authentic influencer marketing. That was our first thought. Um, and what does that mean?
Well, that means that instead of. Trying to, to sort of trouble influencers, like go on.
I imagine you'd go online and just start troubling influencers. Um, last time, nice people do it, right?
Yeah. It's not interesting to them. You must have influenced, will you please repost my post or can I send you a it's
worse than it's worse? They usually think of them like a billboard. So here's what I want you to say.
Here's what I don't trust you to, to come up with what, what you're going to say. So I'm going to tell you what to say. I'm going to tell you when to say it.
You can't use any of my competitors products anymore. You're going to post it at this time. Yada, yada yada, and, and, and it's at the end of the day, that
becomes kind of they're, they're misunderstanding what these are. These are content creators that are incredibly successful
because they're so good at it. And they're actually better than the. The brand doesn't have the same following that they have.
Um, and so to some extent, that's, that's the thing is that if you can, so what we did is we thought maybe there's a way we can help work out
which influencers like which brands. And we found a way to do that. And so ultimately the result was when you reached out to an influencer that
likes your brand, it's very different. The response it's because the makeup, your makeup is on their face.
Like they are. They love your makeup. They buy it all the time and now you're reaching out to them like, oh my God, I love your brand.
I've been buying your products for ages. That's an authentic relationship. And so we built a platform called C a R R O um, on Shopify for,
for all the brands on Shopify. There's about million brands on there. And, um, and the idea was just to make that absolutely effortless.
And Facebook ended up writing in, sorry. Metha ended up writing an article on it. Um, uh, they, they said it was a success story because.
It was authentic. And I think that's the key word that you really want to think about.
That was a little that jumped out to me when you were asleep. I mean, I, when you said, um, in influencer marketing, everyone's
used the phrase influence marketing, but then you've thrown this word authentic, which is quite a.
I want to say trendy word. Um, maybe slightly overused word a few years ago.
Um, you know, one's gotta be authentic. Yeah. Um, yeah. As an excuse for being lazy in some respects, but what I
mean, it was this kind of fad. Wasn't it? So when you talk about authentic influencer marketing, is that
what you're talking about? You're talking about actually reaching out to influencers that really care about your brand that are genuinely authentically interested in, in
what you're doing as a company. Yeah. That's, that's the core piece of it. The response is night and day different.
Um, one of the, one of the things that happens today is when an influencer writes about something that they've been treated like a billion.
And they're not happy about it. They end up deleting the post. The minute they illegally can. Literally, when the contract says, this must stay up X months or whatever,
then it's deleted immediately. Um, and that's because they don't want it in their feed. And sometimes you'll see them take a picture where they put their
face by something and just take the picture, which I think is funny. Like it's so they're so not interested. It's like, just take the damn picture.
And they just have to do it. They don't want to do it, but they're just doing it because they have to that's,
that's what we're trying to get away from. But the reason it's important is if I just went to a marketing conference on the weekend called geek-out and, um, and it's, it's a
room full of marketing experts that. That gives speeches. And I was like a fly on the wall, just like it's like
drinking through a fire hose. Right? Cause these, when you get into the right rooms, these people actually share what's really going on.
This is not some big mega conference where everyone's like trying to protect what they're up to. These are the guys literally telling each other, here's what I'm doing.
And here's how I'm doing it. This is what's working. This is not working. And each of them have a slide, which is the iOS.
slide and how that broke everything. And so when I was came out an apple started, uh, you know, stopped tracking.
Um, the idea was. You know, it's great for privacy, but it, it really hurts, um, you know, um, tracking.
So, so they realize that influencer marketing is going to become just a critical piece. And so what's happening is influencer marketing is about to change because
How influencer marketing is changing
it's becoming social commerce and social commerce means that you're actually transacting in the feed.
And so that you're seeing that today. But what you don't realize generally is you're just seeing the beginning of it. Like these are just the first people to get to do it.
And they're actually in a way restricting access. They're rolling it out. But in the future, you can just assume that the purchasing you do will be
in the feed and, and, and the idea is to make it effortless, right? Yeah. So if you've already got sharp pay, which most people have at this point,
um, you know, once you've paid, then, then completing a transaction is like click, click, and you're done.
Um, and so, um, this is a, an old concept, but, uh, years ago, it's funny.
Bill gates wrote a book, I think. Business at the speed of thought or something like that. But the idea was that that you're, you're able to, to, you know,
transact, um, you know, on an impulse basis within your social media
is, is really great for brands. And so that's, that's the future of how they work with influencers.
It'll be interesting. I mean, we've seen it, I guess, in the last year or two of them way with shopping on Instagram, you know, you can, you can start to do some
of these features now and Pinterest getting a bit more interested in it. And it seems to me, if I was going to be a social platform like Facebook, Instagram,
Marketing + social media
Pinterest, and I was the owner of that. I would, I would be like, I'd be looking at Amazon going,
well, one in two transactions are going through that platform. Yeah. I'm going to S I'm going to screw that up.
I'm going to go and get a whole bunch of those transactions because we can now do this on the social platform.
And you do, you just, it becomes another marketplace. It becomes another channel for any anybody selling. Doesn't it.
Um, Yeah, it does change then how you do marketing on that platform
or how you think about your brand and product on that platform? Oh yeah, it's a totally different world. And, uh, and so the marketing teams are going to need to
evolve to embrace this properly. Um, so what happened to us was we realized this is great.
We've worked out how to get attention for brands. Um, but sales are even more important.
So what can we do to get sales and sales? Um, we came up with this idea of imagine you're a marketing conference and every
single presentation talks about trying to get cost of advertising down the, they call it a row as the return on ad spend.
So can you get that down? What can you do? What am I most of my techniques and all the rest of it, but what we did
as a company, as we said, look, if you get brands working together, we have brands installed on our platform right now together.
They have million visitors. That's quite a lot of people, you know, and when we get to brands,
what, that'd be people a month or million people a month. That's a lot of people.
So what, what if, um, if you, if you make a product like a helmet, can you
put your helmet into a bike store? Who, who has their own traffic and get their traffic for free?
And so that's, that's, that's where our heads went. Wouldn't it be cool if he just partnered with people and then you get their
traffic for free, for free forever. Right for free wherever, as long as that relationship lasts.
And, uh, and the more partnerships you create, skateboards stores, anyone that needs helmets anywhere, um, you're going to end up getting their traffic for free.
It is literally, it's funny because even at a marketing conference, nobody talked about that. That was not.
The subject of conversation yet? I think it will be. Um, I think you're gonna hear a lot more about that in the next week.
I think, I think you are. And I think, I mean, again, uh, this whole idea behind what you're doing,
I mean, I do want to get into that and sort of pick your brains about it. Um, uh, the ability to, for the, for the guy to sell the
bike helmets on the bike shop. And we'll talk about that. Uh, but before we get into it, because it's really useful stuff now
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well, a big shout out big, thanks to, uh, show sponsors. I'm back here with David talking about all things.
So before we sort of started on this track of influencer marketing, buying on different platforms, and we've sort of moved on slightly now to, um, let's
Carro platform and influencer marketing
say you manufacture bike helmets. You can take advantage of the traffic, which is on that bike website over
there, and that skateboard website over there for free, as long as you maintain that relationship. And so your product through those, um, websites, which is if I'm
understanding this, right, I mean, that's where your platform comes in. This is a sort of an idea that you.
I guess you've sort of joined shipping and social media sort of influences ideas and a few other bits and bobs you've put them into a big shaker,
shook them up and out has come this sort of really interesting idea. Why don't you explain it? Um, in layman's terms?
Yeah. So, so this first idea is can you push your products into someone else's traffic? That means when they sell your home?
Um, what we'll do is we'll actually just because everyone's installed on our platform. When the helmet sells, we can actually generate the order for
you, the helmet company, and you can do the, the, the shipping. Um, why does that matter? Well, it's pretty cool.
If the helmet never moves until it sells. So today the market isn't very efficient because someone has to try to guess which
helmets are gonna sell, buy them from the, the people who create the helmet. Move them through freights to some warehouse somewhere, have people
touching it, which costs money. Insuring it, and then when it sells shipper from that location,
um, the idea, uh, which means it gets shipped twice, right? So it's, it's been graded and shipped and handled. Um, so the concept is it just, it saves more margin, but we basically broke
this puzzle down into two key pieces. One was, it would be really great if there was a way to, um, to get attention
for your products and get sales that are effectively coming out of nowhere. You didn't have this channel before this wasn't technically possible.
We call it virtual wholesales here. Putting your products into other people's stories. But the second part of it is let's say you're the bike store.
Well, you just got helmets, right? You didn't have those helmets before now. You do, you, you might've bought a few different colors in, in the,
in the, in the standard sizes, but. Um, with this technology because we're actually literally wiring the two stores
together what's actually occurring is now you have all the helmets and all the colors and all the sizes instantly without paying a dollar.
And so when, when you've, when you've done that for the first time and you
go, wait a minute, what this, I mean, actually works like you have suddenly all the helmets and all the Kellys and all the sizes and you can sell them.
So then you start going, well, what else do you have? Do you have gloves by any chance? Cause we think we need some gloves. And do you have any, any lights or locks or, or, and they start
adding category after category. So some bike stores have new categories because of this because they realize,
um, there's one called state bicycles. A great example. If you go there, you won't be able to tell what. What we're doing and what we're not doing on their store, they
just have tons of categories. Right. And so that's, what's so cool about it is because it's
creating this, this partnership. Um, our tagline is sell more together, but, but why does it matter is because
your average order value increases. If you add a helmet and gloves and alone, right. With the bike, if your average order value increases, that actually gives
more money to your marketing team. Yeah. Well, you know, it costs, I mean, that's the basic equation of e-commerce is
what does it cost to get a customer? How much money did you make from them when they arrived? It better be more, or if it needs to be differentiated tons and tons of
e-commerce businesses that everyone that buys helped kill their company more. Right. Because everyone that they bring in for, for, I dunno, $and
they spend $it's game over. So what can we do to help increase that average order value in the answer?
But by adding other products. And when, when brands start to get creative with this, we've seen some really clever ones. There's one that was a brand called blend yet who, um, who make a blender.
And, uh, and it's a cool blend there that you blend right before you drink. So that's cool. Um, but they wanted to sell what goes in the blender.
So they created a marketplace and we connected them to companies like Oatley who do oatmeal. And so you can have all these different ingredients.
They didn't have refrigerated warehousing, so they're not going to ever have all of this stuff.
Especially from, from big brands like that, the ability to suddenly have all of that in their own marketplace is very cool.
But then they added, then they had, it's funny. I see this time and time again with business is, but what about offering
a subscription to your favorite things that go in the blender and people will, will pay for that because they actually want the one thing I learned from the
game industry, people are always looking for the easier way to do something. They want to save time. Like, do you want to, do you want to.
Two miles or miles or miles, or do you want to ride a horse? Right. And you know, they want the horse.
And so that's, that's basically, if you can make it easier for people, they will do it. But if you sign a subscription, that's worth way more as a lifetime value
or as a, as an average order value. So it's the kind of thing that we were loving, sort of seeing how people do this.
Another example is let's say Halloween's coming or Valentine's day. What if you wanted to make a pop-up store in your own store with lots
of products dedicated to that idea? Without paying a single cent for any of it.
Right? So now you have all these products, which you've curated for your audience for that period of time.
And you can take the story down whenever the holidays over, but in reality, it's costing you nothing.
And so another example is black Friday. Um, I live by the coast in, in, uh, in California and.
Currently, there's a really bad supply problems in, in the ports, like trying to get ships into the ports.
And so they were all bunched up in long beach. Um, and, and there was aerial shots where it's were incredibly embarrassing
to the government because you could see all these shifts has piled up and all they've done is made them spread them out, down the coast.
And now you see these ships all the way down the coast. Um, but those, this supply team problems.
Our real, like, that's a real issue for brands. So imagine something doesn't arrive.
Well, what do you, what are you going to do? Like, it's just, you've got out of stock all over your website. That's terrible. So you can augment that by adding, um, um, brands from partners,
our products from partners. I mean, in some respects, it sounds really fascinating. You know, I, I, I'm the guy with the bike shop and now it's becoming
really easy to go and get products to, um, put on my website that I don't have to have in stock.
Uh, but I can put all of those products with some kind of technical wizardry. The whole interface becomes straightforward and easy.
And I get that. I understand that. I guess one question that is immediately obvious here, David, is how is that
different to say drop shipping? So me going and getting, you know, bike helmets, just taking pictures of five
new Alibaba or something like that. AliExpress, I don't know. Um, and putting those on my way.
Well, there's a couple of steps. So first of all, um, regular drop shipping tends to come from China.
Dropshipping vs Carro
It's just the way it is. Right. Um, and. It can be weeks before something shows up.
And it usually shows up in a little plastic bag, that's being beat up crazily and, uh, and the product is unbranded.
It's some, you know, you're buying a blue hat or something like that. Um, that's not generally what motivates people.
It, they're usually in love with a certain brand. There's a brand they really care about. Um, and you know, they like that company.
They want to keep using their products. And so what we've done effectively, Get real brands to actually work together,
not, um, you know, not unknown unnamed. It's not just the case of just trying to sell white socks.
That's more where Amazon's heading. I believe, which is, is there going towards, what are the cheapest
white socks you can possibly create? And we'll, we'll have them shipped directly from China and we'll, we'll put
an Amazon private label on them and no one will be able to compete against us. That's where Amazon, I think is actually.
And so this idea of the interest in prediction of, I mean, what should the space? I, I have some, I have to say I have some resonance with that, you know, and
it's becoming more and more like that. And, and the it's been interesting with your supply chain issues,
especially in the states, um, that it has, it has Amazon hard that, and COVID, they've not been able to staff the warehouses and get stuff out.
That seems to be quite a big shift in people's thinking now about Amazon.
Uh, which I find quite fascinating. So you can see the problems on the horizon. And I mean, the problems are already there and people are kind of going, yeah.
Amazon and customer reviews
Okay. Now, now we're sort of paying a bit more attention to them. Aren't they really well, what I, what I say to brands is, um, I found, um, an item on that.
Amazon is selling, which is, is leather stamps. If you want to stamp the letter a into leather, I mean, a little press
things that you can hit with a hammer and you got a letter, a Amazon now makes their own leather stamps.
And so what I say to brands is whatever category you're in, how safe do you feel now that they decided to go after leather stuff?
It's a good question. That's I mean, they make vacuum safe now, you know, you're doing really good with your white shirts.
Good luck with that. They're on their way and what they do, which is different. So in the United States, we have, um, uh, a store called Costco.
Um, that is just enormous. And Costco is so successful internally.
They they're actually making their own products and they put a brand on it called Kirkland. And so it's perfectly okay.
You're walking around Cosco and there's Kirkland all over the place and, and, and that's fine.
Uh, Amazon started the same path. So you saw Amazon basics and Amazon essentials and that's fine.
So they were doing the same thing, but then they got kind of smart about it and they started creating things like Presto, Presto, toilet
paper, and things like that. So they've, they've got all these private labels. They have a whole list of them now. So you can't tell anymore you actually, if they're shopping for
that, Yeah, you cannot tell if you're buying Amazon products, they are not signaling that to you.
And so, um, that's why, so the second thing that's interesting is they have. Um, uh, they have all of the reviews and see you go, well, what's,
what's the big deal about that? We'll hold on. Imagine you're in coffee presses and they want to do a, a coffee press.
What they do is they send the reviews to their manufacturer and say, fix all of these issues and we'll bring it out for, you know, half the price.
So, cause we're going to order a lot. Right. So ultimately. They end up using the reviews to, to give them leverage over the
people that are already there. And then they reduce it. This is, this is what the.
This is what I'm seeing and hearing is a, is, is concern that, that, um, and
I haven't personally no issue with it. Cause that's Amazon's platform. They can do whatever they like, but if you're a brand trying to build
your own customer base, et cetera, You can't actually do it on Amazon because they own all the customers.
And so that's really where the story goes with us is we had this epiphany that that's occurred with influencers too.
You go hold on a minute. So let me get this straight influencers, have a lot of followers. But they don't have customers.
They have followers, right? Followers are great, but customers are better. And then you go, well, which influencers of customers, Kim Kardashians does, she's
got skims, which is worth over $billion, Rihanna, Fenty, beauty, over $billion.
She's found a way to get her followers to turn into customers that she owns. Right. And that idea of, of having customers.
I think it's the game changer. That's the big chess move that's coming. So what that means is today, I would say less than % of influencers have customers
they've been off for all these years. They've been sending all their clicks off to somebody else who who's more
than happy to keep all their customers. So Amazon. Has been, has been getting influencer clicks for years.
And, and again, all those just become Amazon customers. Um, but even the merger deals, so I've talked to influencers and
they're like, oh, it's so exciting. I've got a March deal. And I'm like, but you don't have any customers. Right? Yeah. At the end of the day, the merged company keeps all the customers.
So this is, this is going to change and the way it's going to change again, it's social commerce.
So the influencers will sell in their feed. The one thing they're missing today is the technology to allow.
To actually keep the customer and to do that. You actually only need to sign up for Shopify and Shopify.
You know, it's $a month, you know, we're even, we're working on ways to get that down to less like $for what we need to do.
And ultimately the idea is just to give them somewhere to store their customers. They just need a storage bay to put all their customers into so
they can, uh, now imagine you are great at selling e-bikes and you've sold a hundred thousand of them.
You become so valuable in the e-bike industry, because now you've got, you're the only influencer, but the database of actual customers that buy e-bikes.
Right. And so they're literally going to squabble over it. So I see a bit of a wild west coming where, where you're going to be staking
out ground as influencers and brands are going to be fighting over being that that is the one thing with influences.
If you can't put in D bikes, cause that's not authentic, right. You have to stand by the ones that you really.
And so there's going to be a hole. I mean, think about that in every dimension for every product category
it's going to be, you totally can. And to be honest with you, as you mentioned, DBAs, David, I did a three
videos, I think maybe four, I can't remember three or four videos a few years ago on a particular e-bike, uh, it was a small little company at the time.
It's, I mean, it's blown up now and I really liked that bike. Well, those combined views, well, over a hundred thousand views on YouTube.
Um, a lot of questions, a lot of people interested. I'm like, well, If I'd have, if I'd have listened to you, I'd got a Shopify store.
I'd put those e-bikes on the store using your system because it's the brand that I was interested in. Put the bikes on there.
I don't have to pay for stock. The bike companies are going to ship them. I just have to review them, keep pumping the content out there.
Well, I there's, there's a fair chunk of cash in a, in an e-bike. So, you know, it would have been a reasonable source of income to make.
Um, so I can see what you're talking about. So you've got this system, which bridges now brands.
Influencers and their own eCommerce stores
With influences as well as bridging brands with other brands who are selling similar products.
Um, but I, I see what you're, where you're going now that actually influences themselves. Well now start to set up their own stores and retain their customers
and sell much more than doing what we used to do on YouTube videos.
You know, if you thought you're going to get a few flicks, this was recorded with this camera, here's an Amazon link and you get, you know, three PF, whatever
was bought or something like that. That's right. Isn't it. And it's just a question for an influencer.
Like, are you serious? Like you really want to be an influencer. Like if you're serious, you got to change gears.
It's time. You can't, you can't just keep doing that forever. You need to, if you want to end up with an exit, right?
Like you own something, you've created an asset of value. If you're just sending all your clicks somewhere else.
Um, you know, Affiliate deals. Aren't, aren't just, aren't the way aren't, aren't the future.
And so it's really powerful. I can see why you're excited by it, and I can see why other people are excited
by the possibility as long as you can keep getting the brands on board, um, and keep connecting the influencers.
I can see this as you know, it's a great win-win scenario. Um, a great win-win. So.
Yeah. So there's another thought is if you have a bunch of brands together, um, and in our case you have
So if you have that many together, it creates an organism. And what my sort of dream is, we keep saying, sell more together, but, um,
I'd love to maxi help each other to in every group, there's someone in the room that's really good at everything.
So like there's someone in there who's just an Jed. I at shipping, you know, and you please help that help the reps.
You know, with their shipping, can you please help the other people get better product photography? Um, because we can grow together if we do that.
And so that would be my ultimate dream for this collection of Francis. They actually start to collaborate with each other.
And, um, the reason that's interesting is if you're on Amazon and Amazon turns on you, um, uh, then you know, when you leave.
What are you going to do? Are you going to buy every click from Facebook and Google? Um, you know, that's, that just doesn't really work financially for you.
So therefore wouldn't it be killer if you could just join an organization or a group or a, um, uh, like a Federation of brands that are all working together, um, that
I think would be a really healthy entity. Um, and I'd love to see that, you know, that cause that started to
happen. A little bit. Yes, but, but not, we haven't, it's funny because I've been, I've been meeting
with multiple companies to try to find a technical solution that allows people
to communicate, um, Um, as a group. Well, so what I'm trying not to do is just have like Facebook groups
or something like that, or, uh, you know, some feed that you just post to. I would like it to be, there was a thing that came out clubhouse.
I'm sure you, you probably tried and clubhouse kind of showed that
it can work, but I would like it to be more so you can have, um, time shifting, you know, so, so effectively.
Uh, you know, someone could do a webinar or something like that. And other people could, you know, the derive months later can still see it.
So that that somehow gets some self service, uh, um, you know, sort of, uh,
system to it so that we're not having to have a huge team of people to, to do this. So I'm trying to find like, who's, who's really the tip of the sphere on
keeping this easy so that it doesn't turn into another company that we have to build, um, and do that.
And, uh, and so I've been doing that. Wow, that whole learning platform, just, um, that, that intrigues
me massively at the moment. And like Q I've, I've been thinking a lot about that, um, and how that can
work generally and just the general shift and the general changes that I think you see in the whole educational sphere.
So like, um, simple things like, uh, you know, people doing online courses, I've done online courses.
I've sold online courses. I don't know if you've got into that whole thing in the past. Part of me thinks that actually there's obviously still a lot of money to
be made in online courses and doing that type of thing, but it looks to me like it's, it's sort of moving on.
It's sort of evolving from that and people. People are sort of moving past the stage where they go, well, actually I'm not really wanting to spend bucks on just watching some guy on a video.
Uh, and I need to, I need to have something else. Um, and, and, and that I find quite interesting.
So how you crack this particular nut? David do let me know because I'll be very, very intrigued.
Uh that's for sure. It's um, it's a whole fascinating thing for me.
I think of a game to this tree always. So how would the game industry make a training course? Um, I can't tell you how many training courses that are out there.
Cause I'm into photography and lots of different hobbies. I buy all the training courses and people are proud of the fact that I'm
going to sell you hours of training. And I'm like, I don't want hours. I mean, seriously, I have no interest in that.
And so that would be my first suggestion. Is the thing that people are willing to pay for they'll even
pay more for us to learn faster. So I was on the board of, of a high school and I, I had that conversation
with the headmaster, like in a way you're teaching somebody math, but at what point are you the teachers getting together and saying, how can we teach it faster?
Like. You know, I call it time to a ha so time to go. I got it.
Right. I get it. I got it. Cool. I get it. And, uh, that's so here's a new concept. We're going to teach you today.
What's the fastest possible way to get a room full of people that go aha. And, and I think that's the future for online education is people actually
putting that effort in to get all of the words and time and wasted, nonsense out and just get to the point.
Just tell me, um, I think, I think you'll, you'll find it. That's compatible with where the world's going.
If you, um, you know, everyone with teenagers sees how impatient they are now. And, uh, you know, like tapping, like, you know, like give it, give the computer
is thick and it's like, come on next. Next, next. Yeah. You see this with Instagram reels.
I mean, just, you know, Instagram rules is blowing up as an organic way of social marketing has been for the last few years.
You want to be successful in real this. Now you've got to do it under seconds. Most people are looking at seven and you're like, wow.
Last year, it was seconds and now it's seven. I've got gentlemen and the whole thing is getting faster and faster
and children, children in span. And, uh, I, I can see that, you know,
the online training version of that. Yeah. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it from anybody.
Even audio books. Oh, this is hour audio book. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Take forever. How do we do that? I was drive to drive to Los Angeles just to hear this damn audio book.
It's you know, the answer is
to sit in the traffic hours. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm the same way I get in the car. I've got an audio.
Man, this is going to take four weeks to get through four weeks. You know, my, my commute is only minutes, so I'm, you know, I'm slightly
blessed in that area, but yeah, it's, it's um, I, I see what you mean though. I do see what you mean about, um, faster and in some respects.
That's that's what you've done with, uh, with, with Cara, isn't it, you've
you in effect, I've got products easier and faster in the hands of people that can sell them, um, whether that's influence or the sites.
And when you can bring those two things together, convenience and speed, everyone seems interested.
Um, but the third thing that you've mentioned, uh, Or the third thing that I've picked up is this idea then of building a community, a
sort of a community of people that can help each other along the way. And this is your dream. And to see that, um, and I, I, I see that in the gaming industry, um, every
time I walk into my concept, but just down there is my, uh, little, little
back cinema room at the house and the kids are in there playing games, but they don't like playing games alone.
Um, they, they want to do it with their friends now online. And so. That this, that whole community aspect of it, isn't it.
And it's like, how do I, how do I bring that into the whole frame? Uh, and, and so I, I, I just, there's some, there are going to be some big
shifts, some big changes, and I'm really curious to see what they are. Um, yeah, I think you're right.
I, community community will be interested in speed will be interesting. Ease will be interesting.
Kids and video games
Yeah. It's funny because you watch kids watch other kids play video games. I remember when that first, that behavior first began, you
know, it sounded absurd, right? You're not playing the game. You're just watching someone else play the game.
Why would you ever do that? And the reason is. It's because some people there's always incredibly talented people at
everything and that's, that's my point. Right? So in reality, there's a, you're, you're getting stuck on level five.
Well, just watch his video fast forward to level five and see how he does it. And you're, and it's like to you, who've been struggling with level
five and you just can't solve it. And then you see somebody do it. It's such a valuable moment to you as a gamer because the stress relief.
And when I talk about a hot moments, the aha is enormous, right? Oh, that's how you do it.
And once you've done that once or twice watching other people play video games becomes, you know, it's, it's a must, a must have, um, it's so valuable to
see tactics and strategies and skill. And, uh, you know, especially when you've played the game yourself.
And so it's, it's kind of an interesting thing. And so that's, there's a theme there. Um, again, it's not that they just want to, what, so they're not just
watching people play video games for hours and not playing themselves. They're watching because they're really interested in this individual and how
they play, what they're playing, how they're doing, what they do and the. In which they're dealing with really difficult situations in real time and
seeing how they handle it is fascinating. And so, um, you know, overall I'm a big, big, big fan of education.
So if anyone cracks this, um, I, I think they're going to be, it's going to be unbelievable.
Um, the impact that they can have on, on education. And I just want to be clear what I'm not suggesting as cliff notes.
I'm not saying take a book and create the cliff notes. It's not that at all. It's to try to think from the beginning, like, can we get a
hundred teachers together and find the fastest way to teach something? Because there's someone in that group that's really, really good at it.
Really good. And I've never thought of it like that either. I, I never, I never taught it like that.
I was doing it the old school way. And then. They realize that, that if you do it that way, the download is, is almost instant.
And so imagine, um, I would have loved my schooling, you know, for that
to have occurred in the background. So I tried to explain it to the, to the school in a different way, because of course it sounds like work.
And every time you pitch a work, they're like, I don't want to do that because we're all too busy. So.
I said to them, if a teacher leaves you lose the IP of all the years, that they've been learning how to teach that subject at your school.
If you get everyone to work together as a hive-mind and build how you teach math, that becomes the intellectual property of the school.
So when a new teacher comes in, like, They can teach this super efficient way. Um, that actually adds value to your skill.
At some point you could almost franchise the school. If you had that, then suddenly, suddenly they start listening.
Right now. It's a more interesting conversation here. It's kind of fun. I think it's the ability to reframe it and think like that,
which a lot of people don't have. Um, You know, they just see it. We're just going to get a heads down and get on with the daily grind.
The ability just to go hang on a minute, um, is a traditional route. These are the traditional problems.
I can't just do the cliff notes because that just the fundamental issues are still there.
And, um, you know, so to take a step back, put your head above the parapet, look around and think outside the box and all the other cliches that we
like to throw into this kind of thing. I think that is a skill, which is. Very sucky liking, uh, despite the rhetoric of a lot of people saying,
cause it's very trendy, isn't it to be an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. Um, but actually I think an entrepreneurial, someone who is
entrepreneurial has the ability to look at a situation in a very different way and see some incredible opportunities.
Um, And that's not just, you know, an entrepreneur is not someone who's just going to go to AliExpress, buy baby blankets and put them on their website.
It's just, it just isn't, I mean, that's an opportunity more than anything. Um, but to think about it and think about it differently.
Um, I think that's entrepreneurial and I think that's something that I don't actually see a lot of.
For me, it would make me jealous of what you do. So you're getting to talk to lots and lots and lots of different
people with different ideas. And so that to me would be really attractive to just that, that
continuous download of difficult. It's unbelievable. I genuinely think that every, I don't care what industry everyone is it, and they
should be, they should set themselves up for podcast and go and talk to every week. Just go and talk to someone from their, from their industry.
Who's got a very different way of thinking and spilled that night. So much. So I've not said this out loud.
I don't think we're planning our second party. So we've got this podcast, e-commerce podcast, I'm planning a second
podcast, which I've kind of got a name. I'm not quite sure I'm going to call it David, but you'll definitely be invited
to be on it because it's going to be talking about the other side of stuff a bit, like what we've done tonight.
So we've not focused loads on e-commerce, but we've talked about some really interesting topics around.
Life and business and learning for example. And I find that that actually is deeply fascinating.
And just to sit down with somebody and say, what was the biggest challenge you've ever faced? What do you think the biggest opportunity is at the moment?
What really excites you? Um, as opposed to tell me four ways how I can increase my ROI, which is great.
And it's essential if you want to do e-commerce, but I'm also interested in that other stuff. So we're going to do a second podcast and I'm gonna get to pick the brains
of some more, very incredible. I mean, it it's true like that that's marketing conference. I went to, um, I found exactly that.
And if you could, those are the kind of people that you're going to ultimately, um, probably find interesting. So you'll get a guy said he gave a really nice example.
He said he goes into, um, a Facebook group that he's not part of, but he wants to be important in the group.
So how do you make yourself important? And again, And he said, well, what I do is I know nothing about
the subject, like scuba diving. I know nothing about scuba diving, but I see everyone talking about scuba diving.
And what I look for is what are they doing? Uh, what are they talking about? That's, that's most interesting to them as a group.
And so he actually pulls all the keywords creates tag clouds looks to see them. They seem to be talking a lot about going on diving vacations.
Here's a list of the locations. They talk about the one they talk about the most is Mexico. The things they want to do when they go on these diving vacations, here's a
list of all the things they talk about. The number one right now is shark diving. So shark diving in Mexico, if you were to just look at all these conversations
together, is that the trend? So he actually calls someone in Mexico that does shark diving tours
does a zoom with him, records it, and then post it to that group. And the group goes wild.
I. Oh, my God, this is so interesting. This is that's brilliant.
Absolutely brilliant. That's that's very, very good customer research. That's what that is.
And so you could go in there and say, I like scuba diving too. Good luck with getting important in the group. Right.
But you can, the point is with a little bit of extra research and just thinking outside the box.
You can come in and become important almost immediately. And so, um, it's that kind of stuff that I love to hear.
I love to hear people that are actually doing things like, what are you doing and how are you doing it? Um, is actually, you know, really interesting.
And, um, I think the, in our case, um, the, this idea of sell more
together is causing, it's almost like an unlock saying to you creatively.
Okay. That's how you would have done it as your own brand, but how would you do it if you had access to other brands in every dimension?
So we've worked on a recommendation system and, you know, recommendation
systems have been around forever. They look in, in the store and they just choose products that are similar or go with the thing that you're selling.
So if I'm selling in likely toothbrush, it looks in the date and goes, Hmm. What other electrical things do you have that go with that?
You have an electric shaver. Boom. That's recommended. It's a terrible recommendation to go out and electric tooth price.
And so, um, we look we're like, well, what could, what could we do if it's sell more together, we have all of the brands, um, to look at.
And so one of the brands installed in our network is Kendall. Jenner's. Memorial care and she makes everything to do with, uh, you know,
toothpaste and everything else. If we take her toothpaste and put it with your electric toothbrush, that is actually going to be the highest thing that you could do, but
a brand wouldn't know that and they don't have access to even do that. So that's why I'm building this network and getting everyone to work together
starts to get really interesting because even recommendations. Interesting. And so now we have AI running on the data, trying to, trying to learn,
um, every time there's a transaction, so it just gets better and better and better, but in the future. And here's the joke to this in the future what's going to occur, which
is kind of going to be funny is the. You're going to want to add a certain snowboard and it's going to go, are you sure?
So as an example, uh, Elon Musk says this about his car. So his ultimate goal was to try to make the car drive safer than a human.
So people keep going over, but it's the self-driving isn't perfect, right? Yeah. Do you know how imperfect people's driving?
Yeah. Um, the cars are actually already better than human beings.
And so as that continues to get better, let's do more years. At some point, you're going to, if you touch the steering wheel, you're going
to add error into the, into the system. You're literally creating a problem by touching the steering wheel.
Um, and you know, it will be funny in the future and be like, please don't touch the steering wheel. Just let the car do it.
Cause I want to get there to figure it out. Right. And so imagine that in e-commerce where the data is.
Um, so accurate because everyone's collaborating at some point, it's like, You know, if you want, you can put that snowboard.
You won't sell as much as if you were to do this, this and this. Right. And to some extent we can help augment their ability to choose.
Like there's a, there's a big, um, uh, there was, uh, I went through a very expensive mall and one of the, one of the stores, everything
in the store was based on lemons. So I was like, oh my God, the buyers are going crazy.
I think like they think lemons are in, so everything is lemon print and, uh, that's quite the risk to take.
Right. Um, but given, given data, we would actually know what would be the, the, the, the best things to go in the store this week.
And, um, and one of the things we did at one point, we were talking to a major retail store who were interested and they said to us, can you suggest
some brands we should work with? And we looked, um, in the data to see what is the top selling stuff at that.
And the top selling thing was leg makeup. And we all literally went leg makeup. That's even a thing.
Like, I didn't even know that was a thing, but that's what the data allows you to see.
Right. And so people have never considered selling like makeup. Well, you should be selling it this week. This is the hottest thing you could sell right now.
There's something you can sell it for you. Yeah. This is who can do all the orders for you. Yeah. And that's because someone probably on social media has been doing some
posting that's caused a whole wave of Sandra Bullock, or somebody is talking about like makeup.
Oh, David, listen, I've really, really enjoyed this conversation and the
different tangents that it's gone. Uh, so I really, I genuinely have, it's been, it's been marvelous and fun.
Connect with David
If people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out with, if they want to find out about more, more about Kerry, for example, maybe they want to
put it on their side or maybe they're a brand and they want to get onto it. How do they do that? What's the best thing to do.
Yeah. If you're a brand or an influencer we're on Shopify. So just go to the Shopify app store and you'll see Cairo there.
Or you can go to our website, get Caro, C a R R o.com. So get Cairo. If you are going to install or going to.
Please reach out to us. Um, email us@helloatgetcarol.com and talk and tell them about this
podcast and they will, they will give you super VIP treatment. So just make sure to reach out if you, if you, um, if you interact with us.
Um, and yeah, it's for influencers. Um, I think.
You know, there's about, you know, if you start now, you're going to be ahead of the %.
And, and so my recommendation would be to do that. And one last tip is if, if, if you're like, but I don't know how to do this.
I don't know how to create a store. I don't know how to do any of this. Then there's a, there's a page called experts.shopify.com.
And there's actually people available that you can hire to do any piece of it that you want. I don't want to manage my store.
Okay. Somebody else? Well, I don't want to create my store somebody else. Well, um, whatever it is you need, but you think that that's the way to get started.
Fantastic. Well, David, thank you. We'll put all the links to that to you, to the, um, the carrier
and to the experts at Shopify. We put all those in the show notes as well. Um, but David, thank you.
So. So there you have it. What a great conversation.
Wrap up with Matt
Huge. Thanks to David for joining me today. Wasn't he great. Now don't forget to check out our back catalog, complete back catalog.
Uh, just head over to e-commerce podcast.net, a revamped website.
Yes. You can check that out and don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from, because we've got some great conversations lined
up and you will not want to miss. Any of them and in case no one has told you, you, my friend