Matt Edmundson (00:00)

Well, hello, welcome to the e-commerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you today. It's well, let me just tell you, it's not great weather here in the UK. And before I was saying to our guest Vlad today that I had a little bit of a power outage. So hopefully we're going to get through this one. Okay. But it's great to be with you.

Talking about all things e-commerce, talking about how to grow your business, how to do all of that sort of wonderful stuff. And for those of you new to the show, a very warm welcome to you. It's great to have you with us. And of course, if you're a regular, it's great that you're with us too. If you don't know me, like I say, my name is Matt. I've been in e-commerce since 2002, almost as long as Vlad has been involved in digital marketing, who's today's guest. Now I've been around a little while. I call myself the e-commerce dinosaur.

to which I do get comments from our readers, our listeners. Someone emailed me the other day about me calling myself the e-commerce dinosaur. But yes, been around a while and so we just love to talk about e-commerce, love to share the things that we've learned. And we're going to hopefully give you some great value on digital marketing today, which is today's topic on everybody's lips. So we're going to get into that. But before we do, let me give a shout out to the e-commerce cohort. If you haven't...

checked it out yet do so go to the website ecommercepodcast.net click on the ecommerce cohort link it is a free to join community of like-minded ecommerce entrepreneurs like yourself leaders managers a range of people from startups to people that have been involved in ecommerce for a little while we just get together once a month on a zoom call no agenda just have a conversation about how we can improve our businesses support one another

have some fun together and then, well, we do a little WhatsApp group as well. We're going to stay connected and just great to hang out with people also running e-comm businesses and share stories and hear what else everyone's up to. So do check that out. Come join us. It'd be great to have you. We've got people from Canada. We've got people from Australia, New Zealand. We've got people from the UK. I mean, all over the world. So do come and connect with us. I'm sure we can find something on work for you.

Uh, but more information about that is at e-commerce podcast.net. Be great to see you in there. I'm in there. So do come join us. Uh, anyway, that's enough about that. Let's talk about, uh, digital marketing, Vlad. Welcome to the show. It's really great to have you on here now. Um, you've w w before we hit the record button, you said you've been in digital marketing. Slightly longer than I've been in e-commerce. I was in e-commerce since 2002. You started in 2000. Is that right?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (02:48)

Yeah, true. It was quite, let's say 2002 I was paid, sorry, 2000 I was paid for doing digital marketing. I started probably even earlier.

Matt Edmundson (03:01)

Yep. ⁓

very good. How did you get into it? Just decided one day or?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (03:07)

It was an interesting discovery process. Imagine it's like 1997. I'm being a student working late night shift design student being an evening receptionist. And I see a sticker on the modem, do you Yahoo? And what people would do in 1997 when they see a brand name? Yahoo.com. That's how I got to a big internet. First time.

Matt Edmundson (03:20)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (03:36)

So, some days, weeks, I don't even remember, I stumbled on to click that. And I was reading through it saying, you know what, this is what I want to do. It was around 1998. And I never looked back. So I started to learn and then I quit Ersnt & Young. I got my first job in digital media startup. Everybody would think I was crazy quitting Ersnt & Young for digital marketing.

Matt Edmundson (03:54)

Very good.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (04:04)

but here's where I am now and I enjoy the ride

Matt Edmundson (04:09)

Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Very good. In 1998, I got married, ⁓ still married now, which is great. So I know it's 27 years ago because we just had our 27th anniversary. ⁓ And I just got into, I'd been maybe about 18 months into website design at that point. Cause I remember designing a website for me and Sharon, my wife, Matt and Sharon.com is what it was called. ⁓

And I designed this website, it one the first few websites I ever designed going back a few years. And what fascinates me is how... ⁓

sort of your journey, my journey all started off with something quite innocuous, something quite small, something quite, I just started designing websites because a friend of mine asked me to do it and I understood how to write computer code. I just say, it's really fascinating, isn't it? How these journeys begin, how people thought you were crazy for leaving Ernest and Young and yet here you are.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (05:09)

You know, I guess it's not a coincidence. Just some people fall for their passion and the circumstances of their life support them in keeping with their... It's not a hobby. It's actually enjoying every day of easy days, hard days, dull days, intense days, but doing things you enjoy.

Matt Edmundson (05:30)

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (05:36)

almost every day of course there are days when I cannot stand the ads. Yeah, it's why we're here and sometimes just stumble on that and keep going.

Matt Edmundson (05:39)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm reminded of the title of the book by Cal Newport, which says become so good that they can't ignore you. And that was this whole premise, wasn't it? Find something that you want to do and just become so good at it that people can't ignore you. ⁓ and I sort of stumbled into websites. I stumbled into e-commerce, but I found something actually that I could be quite good at, ⁓ and devoted, I suppose the last 20, however many years to that process, 23, 24 years e-commerce.

And I guess you're the same with digital marketing, right? You've just, this is what you did and you just become so good that people can't ignore you.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (06:23)

I'm not sure, can't ignore me, but getting better every time.

Matt Edmundson (06:28)

Very good. Very good. So Vlad, is at the time of recording, we've just come out of summer. I might argue that we're still in it. It's start of September. And if you live, if you're regular to the show, you will know that during September, during August, I take the whole of August off, right? So I just, just down tools for the whole of August, the team are magical. give me the space to do that.

And so this is in effect my first day back and my first podcast recording. ⁓ well, I think, thank you. ⁓ it's great to be here. And, I was, I was, I was really looking forward to it because we're talking about digital marketing because here I am start of September. ⁓ with the e-commerce businesses that I own, ⁓ I just had a quick conversation with, ⁓ ops director. every business is growing and growing quite.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (06:58)

Welcome back.

Matt Edmundson (07:23)

rapidly at the moment, which is good. And I think we need to capitalize on that. So I think this is a great conversation to have digital marketing. Let's get into it. Uh, it is September, 2025. What do you think is the biggest single lever in digital marketing at the moment? As in, if I could, if I had just one lever to pull, what would it be?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (07:49)

⁓ I don't think it has changed much, at least in my perception. I say that is data. It's just that for the last sort of like five years maybe, ⁓ the data became a real lever for you. Because now as an e-commerce operator, you can actually own and leverage that. Because before that, hey, you just put somebody's pixel like Metas or Google's.

Matt Edmundson (08:06)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (08:18)

they have all your data, you don't even control it. Now they wish they could keep that going, but they cannot. And you have all your data and you decide how to leverage that. And if you do try it, you feed this data with all the proper rules and regulations back to Meta, back to Google, back to whatever other ad networks you're using for paid ads, if you're doing paid ads. And this...

Matt Edmundson (08:20)

Yeah.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (08:46)

becomes the source to train their optimization. And as on the one hand, yes, they want to come to a point where they just give us your data feed, we'll do all the rest. But at the same time, they keep innovating, you can't rely on like Meta doing the job for you or Google doing the job for you. You need to understand how they operate, that's also data.

and apply to your campaigns. And sorry, I'll be talking more about paydays when marketing overall because otherwise digital marketing is too broad. Now, second thing, which is also data but we're a different type. The pattern of how people search for information is changing dramatically. It really depends on of course who are your target audience for your e-com business.

Matt Edmundson (09:38)

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (09:44)

But for example, TikTok is growing to become a search engine. It's a well-known fact, although a lot of people ⁓ kind of keep it out of their attention that YouTube was to be search engine number two. But because it was run Google Ads, so sort of like covered, which is not true because it required different approach. Now, TikTok is growing to become a major search engine just because how many people use it. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (10:04)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (10:14)

AI is replacing the search engine functionality by itself by just suggesting people what to do because they just ask the questions, they get the outcomes, they go buy the products. So getting the data as to how they operate, getting into that game if search engine traffic is important for a business is critical because doing what we used to do for ⁓ Google bots

to get to good ranking is not what you do for chart GPT or perplexity or Gemini or whatever other bots we have out there to be recommended by them. And we stumbled into there by chance, but now we try to extract the data out of those chains, out of all this knowledge and leverage it. So data would be your key leverage. Now that data you turn into, I don't know,

Matt Edmundson (10:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (11:12)

feeding something to meta or having knowledge into how the AI search operates or just knowing that TikTok is now considering themselves also a search engine and will probably launch search campaigns anytime soon.

Matt Edmundson (11:33)

That's a really interesting point you said there about TikTok because...

For the longest time, you're right. YouTube was classed as like the second largest search engine in the world. And e-commerce has, I think have ignored that at their peril over the years. And YouTube ads now are a big deal. I think if you want to be successful online, you've got to look at YouTube ads. Not everybody, but most people. But it's interesting you talk about the rapid growth of TikTok here. Also a micro video platform in essence, isn't it?

A very, very addictive, very clever algorithm, ⁓ that seems to have worked and they've, they've done something that no other social media platform, I know Instagram tried it, but they've integrated the ability for TikTok shop. ⁓ and so you kind of get the feeling they're coming after search engine traffic and they're coming after Amazon, you know, a little bit as well. And I think, I think it's interesting. The rise of TikTok plus

coupled alongside that, like you say, you've got the rise of AI. So consumer data is changing, isn't it, in terms of how people are shopping. how do you keep track? If you've got, if before I was just monitoring search engine data, and possibly YouTube data, now I've got to monitor, say, search engine data and TikTok and...

AI. How do I go about doing that well?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (13:13)

It really depends on the stage of your business or your resources. Because with all of our due intention, nobody can be ⁓ good at everything. Well, maybe some people are, especially claiming that. ⁓ But in reality, you may know a lot about other things, but you'll still be really good at something. So for you, as somebody who leads the business,

I you probably should be aware that those things are happening. And then you just have to either let your team know or find people to team who can capitalize on that when the moment will be right. Because should you consider TikTok now as a channel for search type of things? I don't think so. When they will roll those things out that they're most likely brewing because I mean,

They're just building the same set of operations as any other world guiding company like Google, Meta, Amazon, they are going the same way. So pretty much a lot of things they will do are out there already. They have a blueprint, they just copy it. So ⁓ unless they pull out something, we don't expect. But for now, this seems to be copying that blueprint with degree of success in some things, and we don't know about the other things. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (14:18)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (14:41)

Can you be good at everything? No. You just mentioned, hey, you acquired some of the key skills in the last 22 years. You should stay, well, you should, you can stay with those skills. But what your experience gives you is the broader perspective. And some of the things are changing. Now, okay, things are changing, time for the business to change. We need to be ready for that. Like, I can again pull this paid ads.

⁓ Meta did amazing innovation. They pulled out this Andromeda algorithm or graph or whatever they call it ⁓ to ads. And now ads take into account not only the message, but the medium of that message, like the formats, the type of the creatures, everything.

If people understand that and change their testing to capitalize on methods under MedEngine, they get amazing results. If they don't know that and keep doing things as they used to do a year ago, they get the same good results probably, but they don't get those excellent results they can get if they really got to deeper understand how ⁓ they can structure that test in such a way.

Matt Edmundson (15:43)

Yeah.

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (16:03)

to extract the knowledge from the test in the world of ⁓ this Andromeda, I don't know how to write code, but let's say Andromeda update for meta ads. And that's just one platform. Now, how many platforms you focus in your business? I don't know, but you probably need to make sure that the people who are responsible for these or that ads are aware and consider should they change their practices. Maybe, as you said, the business is growing.

Matt Edmundson (16:12)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (16:31)

and the good rule of thumb, if it's growing, don't touch it.

Matt Edmundson (16:35)

The trouble is I'm like, if it's growing, let's make it grow faster. ⁓ That's my problem.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (16:40)

Of course, yeah, I just

figure out the part that you don't touch and the part you touch. And just play around there, like make yourself a sandbox.

Matt Edmundson (16:45)

Hahaha

Yeah. then ⁓

that's a good idea. That's it. And then I'll write a book telling everybody what I did as I'd figured out the magic formula and what's touching what not to touch. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (16:58)

Exactly. That's the next step. Additional channel

for monetization.

Matt Edmundson (17:03)

I love that. That's so cool. What do you, ⁓ I mean, this is all great. And I, I think data is one of those conversations that can be very dry and it can be very boring. ⁓ and I think it, think partly because it can be quite confusing because there's a lot of data out there, isn't there, which you can get access to. ⁓ and we've had people on the show before talking about metrics and different metrics that you should track, ⁓ in e-commerce and. ⁓

Um, so on and so forth. I'm, I'm kind of curious as to how you go about understanding metrics. What, what data do you track? How do you, how do you distill all of this data into something that's meaningful as opposed to something that's just sitting on a spreadsheet and not really helping me.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (17:55)

⁓ Well, given the point that the whole business we found it is about doing that, it's a broad question. But in essence, ⁓ it's...

Matt Edmundson (18:03)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (18:11)

two things about being able to do still something. ⁓ It's not about what, first, it's about what you can actually measure. Because somebody can come and say, hey, we measure of this, whatever KPI. And look at your tools, but just don't know how to measure it right. So it gives you any number and just don't measure it. I mean, because ⁓ you got to this point somehow business is growing. So focus on things.

you can actually measure, B, you can actually influence, and then pick up out of them, I don't know, one or two.

that you need to address. Of course, there is a whole, like, ⁓ I know, Christmas light of things that stick one to another. Like, you start with reach, impressions, CTR, ⁓ stickiness of the page, like ⁓ add to carts, initiate checkouts, conversion rates, average value per order.

like repeated orders, time between repeated orders, like so many things you can stick together in huge chains and get bogged down. But now out of all those data points, probably just couple actually pushing the needle of the business and make it grow. And figuring that out is the, in my opinion, is the goal of the person responsible, either for the process or for the business. If they know what drives the business now,

Matt Edmundson (19:25)

Yeah. Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (19:48)

they just focus on that metric. Now, if they did what they could do to dramatically improve the metric or say, hey, we can do anything about that, switch to another. Because ⁓ you can measure a lot, but you can focus and apply pressure just a couple of things. Which one should be the top priority for the business? ⁓ I maybe can tell that ⁓ if we sit down, open the...

all the books, see all these Christmas lights of data, thinking to oneself, look, if I were you, I would look at him. And I'll just give an example. I have a good friend who used to be a leading sales coach and turned to be a jeweler and he came to me and said, hey, Vlad I see like leads dip in August. Can you tell me what's it's wrong So I let's check your website. So we open his website.

Matt Edmundson (20:18)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (20:45)

and ask him, hey, what's your typical age you're dealing with here? Let's say 30 something, because he does this bespoke wedding jewelry. And I look, where is your chat button? What's your first call to action? Yeah, they can book a live visit to my workshop. I'll show them how it works. Say look, if you accept people in that age demographic to commit to go somewhere in person,

on a scheduled time, just to more information, that's quite an effort on their website, on their site. You expect them to really, really commit. Of course, each visit you got turns into customer. But, back to the chat button, because people nowadays, they want to ask questions before they go anywhere.

And that I figured out after just looking at his website. Probably it was an evident decision the way I described him. But I never knew that until we started talking. Just when I asked a couple of questions, I said, okay, your metric is not your conversion rate. It's metric as actually generation. And you removed one of the key channels for people to get in touch with you, this chat button. Do that.

Matt Edmundson (22:05)

Yeah, that's really good. Really good. It's interesting, is it? I guess my observation, Vlad, is you can, you can look at certain metrics that you hear other people talk about. if you, if you've listened to the show for a while, listening, you'll know I wax lyrical about things like average order value, average order frequency.

⁓ and as well, the number of customers we've got repeat customers and new customers, the things which I, I'm sort of old school. These were things that you tracked before the internet in some respects. And, ⁓ what happens is you, you, you, hear someone like me talking about these numbers and think, they're the numbers that I need to track. ⁓ because obviously Matt's been around and he knows what he's doing and he's asking these questions. My experiences.

And I think I'm hearing you say the same thing that actually each business has a unique set of metrics. There are some common denominators, I guess, across businesses, but there are some things which will be peculiar to your business. And it's the job of your data controller. if you're a startup, then you are the data controller, right? Or the data scientist, it sounds much more impressive, doesn't it? Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (23:23)

data scientist sounds were impressive but I mean

Matt Edmundson (23:27)

It does. And unfortunately, if you are your own business, you have to wear all of these hats. But in effect, it's the job of the data scientist then, isn't it, to find out these metrics, which have the key difference for your business.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (23:40)

I would say first of all, I would slightly rephrase what you said. The metrics might be the same overall. Of course, they deviate a bit in a good way towards different types of businesses. The key ones or the combination of the key ones will be unique. Of course, again, given the number of businesses, there will be repeated cases, but some that works for you, maybe less relevant for somebody who is in, let's say, emotional driven decisions.

Matt Edmundson (24:08)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (24:09)

where

he doesn't even expect to see somebody returning back. If he did, awesome, but that's not the goal of the business. ⁓ And ⁓ is data scientist, unless that's my other head here, then yes, I would agree. But ⁓ the data scientist to find that metric out needs to get a fairly good understanding of the whole business. The data scientist can extract the data.

Matt Edmundson (24:34)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (24:37)

make it visible, make it measurable, make it usable. Sure. But to pinpoint the metric, think data scientists like skills and understanding of the business. Otherwise, he would probably be on a different role in the company.

Matt Edmundson (24:52)

Mm.

That's interesting. Do you think AI is becoming the new data scientist for a lot of people? They just take the data, it into AI and ask AI to analyze it.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (25:06)

Because it's the easy way. It's like whatever, right, people, was it right? ⁓ The point is if they don't know how to process the answers and just take them for granted, it's turning to lottery. Like AI, what is the lucky ticket today?

Matt Edmundson (25:18)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (25:27)

I can win. But it would be a guess. the challenge with AI is that ⁓ you as a consumer of AI response need to be able to independently validate that data and ⁓ make a decision if the response is applicable or not.

Matt Edmundson (25:28)

Mm.

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (25:55)

because you'll take it for granted. ⁓ It may be a good answer and it will work for you. Or maybe it will be a good answer for somebody else. It will not work for you. And then how is to blame AI? Fine. But he just gives... It's not AI at current stage. Whatever people describe is still an algorithm that makes a way to parse words in such a way.

Matt Edmundson (26:07)

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (26:25)

that seems to be more intelligible. It doesn't really matter when we get the results we need, as long as we can verify these are results we need.

Matt Edmundson (26:33)

Yeah. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, I agree. It's, ⁓ AI still needs a lot of handholding, doesn't it? In many ways.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (26:43)

I feel like all the technology

Matt Edmundson (26:45)

Yeah. Do you think we're over relying on AI at the moment?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (26:49)

I don't know. ⁓ I think we, look, we both were there. ⁓ If you just do a mental jump back to around like 1999, 2000, there was this internet companies. We don't have it now, right? So now there is the same thing as like AI companies. My bet we won't have that in two years from now.

Matt Edmundson (27:07)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (27:19)

⁓ And it will repeat the same, like internet changed the way how we access and consume information. And then nothing else came forward. Everything just became a bit more accessible and then really accessible. So AI is changing how we access and consume information.

Matt Edmundson (27:34)

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (27:46)

That's the biggest difference. It will be really... Are we over-relying to the Internet? Yes. Is it bad? I don't think so. ⁓ The question is how each of us as a human being ⁓ consumes the information of the Internet. For somebody it may be the same as was it to switch it on and consume whatever the channel is feeding. Somebody does research...

somebody can write a PhD thesis using it. Is it about intent? No, it's about us as humans consuming data. Same will be with AI. You will always like everybody will bring on the forefront. Hey, you know what? We are like AI, like almost killed the person by suggesting him to use those bromium salts to improve his health.

Matt Edmundson (28:22)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (28:41)

fine. That's a bad story, but it's most likely that everybody will now carry it around. Then nobody will talk about how people actually saving hours of their life, just making some really mundane things quick with the AI. Like me as an example, whenever I have a complex set of questions, I used to type all this in. Do a of copy paste things just to prepare the answers.

Now we just say, hey, whatever, chat GPT, please ask me all those questions one by one, record my answers as they are, provide a short summary of my answers as a separate line, and ask me all those questions one by one, just start using voice. Now I have a secretary that does amazing job and answering like 20 difficult questions takes me 30 minutes. Also just talk. And then, okay, now make it a PDF or make it a table, boom.

Matt Edmundson (29:26)

Yep.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (29:40)

⁓ 30 minutes out of three hours. Amazing. I want to be over-reliant on such technology, but I wouldn't ask AI what pills should I take to my health. Although I may ask it about, hey, ⁓ what would be the good alternative to this exercise? But then I'll go and double check some other guys and do my own decision.

Matt Edmundson (29:43)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Isn't it? You talk about that because I, ⁓ we were talking about this, ⁓ on a few episodes ago about the fact that, ⁓ AI is becoming in effect more and more trustworthy. People feel like, like if the example that was used was, let's say you're on a, ⁓ you know, you're, you're a lady buying clothes and the computer says, what size are you?

Uh, you're much more likely to put that into the computer than you are to say to somebody over the phone, Oh, I'm a size, you know, what, whatever. Um, because then you, if you give it to a computer, if you give it to AI, you feel like it's going to be less judgmental for AI. It's just a fact, but you never know if the person on the other end of the phone is going to, that's what I mean about that number. And that intrigues me, uh, with AI. And, um, as you were chatting away, I, I, I,

Based on what you said earlier, Vlad, you triggered a little thought in my head, a little rabbit trail I had to follow. So I went on to Perplexity and with the Perplexity Labs feature, which is just something else. I said, how do I optimize an e-commerce website for AI search? Specifically, how do I get you Perplexity to recommend my products to users who search for them using AI? And I won't bore you, that's a very long answer.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (31:09)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Edmundson (31:29)

you with that and I've not had a chance to read it. What has stood out to me though is this one number which it says, most importantly for e-commerce businesses, 39 % of consumers now use generative AI for online shopping with 55 % using it for product research and 47 % for product recommendations.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (31:30)

Of course.

And first thing I would do, would double check those numbers. Anyway, whatever they would be, I would double check because whenever I get the numbers, always, especially with perplexity, he's good at that. Although, ⁓ just ask, hey, provide me the source for the numbers. Click the link, check them. Because what people currently do is that they are not hesitant to provide statistics.

Matt Edmundson (31:57)

Yeah, I mean they seem quite high.

Yeah, yeah,

Wild

Vlad , RedTrack.io (32:26)

And me, being a sociologist by education, I always remember the phrase one of my professors told me about political research. He said, well, in sociology, in political research, in all those studies, you ask the client for the answers and then ask the right questions.

Matt Edmundson (32:29)

Mm.

like my wife. Yeah. ⁓

Vlad , RedTrack.io (32:54)

And that might be the same trick with GPT because it genuinely wants to give you the information you want to see. He knows what you want to see. So if you allow that trick him to feed you the data, then yeah, it will become dependent on the feed. Because it's nice to have the confirmation of your assumptions. Or in some opposite world, like somebody wants to always get like, let's say, confronted. He'll learn that when he start...

confronting all your assumptions. So for me, I turn that into just ask me questions. I'll build my own answers. So now questions that I'm being asked when I just exploded are awesome. I would never thought about those questions, but answers are mine.

Matt Edmundson (33:38)

Yeah. Yeah. That's very good. Very good. I'm intrigued in terms of where you see, where you see it all going, Vlad. I mean, we've got more data than we've ever known what to do with. We've got more sources of data than we've ever had in many ways. So from a digital marketing point of view, you're set here 2025.

And let's say you're just starting out your econ business. What should I be thinking about? Where's this all going to?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (34:12)

I would not be thinking where it's going to because then I can spend all the time. If I would start an e-commerce business, I would think of what and how I want to sell online. Should it be the physical product or the digital product? How would I manage my inventory if it's a physical product? What are my investments? Like, what would happen if I got less orders that I need to, more orders that need to? Because for me, it's...

That first part is the key one. If I want to sell something, what do I want to sell and why?

Like what is my hidden advantage to selling that? Do I have an expertise? ⁓ Do I know how to sell this particular product really well? Do I have a message to my potential customers that you'll buy from me? Or have I built something unique that nobody else does? ⁓ If I have all those questions answered, then I'll start selling. And then I'll start refining the product I'm selling.

If I want, and then I'll ask my question, another one, ⁓ why I am selling this product? Is it a side hustle? Am I creating a job for myself? Or am I making a business? And the difference is side hustle, you can always drop. Job, you can always change. Business, at some point you can sell. And you build for those outcomes. And it's not that they're stones. It's just that...

Matt Edmundson (35:39)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (35:52)

that you start on and use it as to drive your decisions. Because if I would be doing a side hustle, I would never pick up a physical product. For example, because it's just too much hustle with physical product. If I would build something as a business, I would first probably go and work for somebody who done that and probably spend least couple of years.

Matt Edmundson (36:05)

Yeah. Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (36:23)

because it's easier to learn than to recreate your own mistakes.

Of course, I mean, you can, but what is your level of resistance? Like how long you can allow yourself to make mistakes. So if you want to actually do a business, which is large, need to learn from somebody. If you want to have a job, same, just go work for somebody and then see if you want to do that for yourself with all the extra weight and responsibility.

Matt Edmundson (36:57)

Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. ⁓

Vlad , RedTrack.io (37:00)

And then,

only then product goes.

Matt Edmundson (37:07)

Yeah. You touched on something that I appreciate this is not to do with digital marketing, although in some respects it could be. You touched on something that I did that I don't see many people doing. And that is if you want to build a business, go and find someone that's doing that and go work with them for a few years. Go get, I would use the phrase apprenticeship, right? Go, go get apprenticed. And I think actually the...

I'm desay there's some research that we could validate behind this, but I think it's one of those things that we don't talk about a lot these days. And actually I knew when I left university, I graduated in accounting and law. The last thing I wanted to be was an accountant. not, apologies if you're an accountant listening to this, nothing against accountancy. was just not going to be for me. And I went and worked for a friend of mine.

for very little money because he ran a successful business. And I thought, that's what I want to do. And so I ended up working for him for a few years and then tried to buy the company off him when he was ready to sell. it's, I mean, that's a whole story in itself, but there's something quite powerful about this whole idea of apprenticeship that I think we've probably missed in the digital decades.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (38:25)

We did not. It happens naturally. It just never been taught as a path to follow because this is something we learn or at least used to learn from being kids. We observe adults or used to observe adults how they do things and we start to copy them. Then we take same approach, hey, I want to be good at this so I'll ⁓ work with someone who is good at that or work for someone who is good at that.

Matt Edmundson (38:34)

Mm.

Mm.

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (38:55)

learn from him. And in my opinion ⁓ the power of and that's a big bigger gap between like Eastern European, I'm coming from Ukraine approach to education and Western European, that in my days the purpose of the school and even higher school was to train you to learn.

not to give you knowledge. Of course I had knowledge, yeah, but the ability to learn new skills was more essential than the skills I learned. And a lot of things, if I look back, were built around that. Well, to my limited knowledge, the West Indicators focused more just giving people personal skills.

Matt Edmundson (39:31)

⁓ Yeah.

Yeah.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (39:45)

You're really good at that, we trained you for four or seven years to do that. Now go do that. Take the skill and you go do that or you actually take the skill and thank you, I'll go take a skill from somebody else. And then you start to learn.

Matt Edmundson (39:57)

Yeah.

It's a really interesting take on it. We should do an education podcast. I think it's just a really interesting take isn't it?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (40:03)

weekend.

You just gave me two excuses to discuss really, really kind of in-depth topics. I usually kind of hope on a person on the balance, hey, do you want to talk about education?

Matt Edmundson (40:14)

Yeah.

Hahaha

That's true. ⁓ That's why podcasting is great. You can just jump on a podcast and talk about whatever you want. It's great. Now, it. Love it. Vlad, listen, we've got to the stage of the show where I like to ask my guests for a question for me, where I take the questions and I will answer it on social media. So Vlad, what is your question for me, my friend?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (40:28)

almost.

and you'll be laughing. My question would be how do you set a podcast?

Matt Edmundson (40:50)

How do you start a podcast?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (40:51)

I have a mic there on the shelf. I know it requires time, which I don't have, but how do do that?

Matt Edmundson (40:53)

Hmm.

Yeah. Very good. Very good. Well, once we've stopped recording, I'll tell you, but I'll also give the answer. How do you start a podcast on social media? ⁓ Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, ⁓ it's definitely worth doing. ⁓ but how you do it, it's actually quite simple, but, ⁓ we'll talk more about that in the social media tape, but great question. Very good question. Cause I'm a big fan of podcasting. I've got about three of them at the moment. thinking of starting another one as well, but that's another story. ⁓

Vlad , RedTrack.io (41:07)

I'll check that in social media, that's fine.

Matt Edmundson (41:28)

And the other thing, Vlad, before we sign off, why don't you tell the good folks at home listening to this in their cars or in the office, wherever they are, or watching during YouTube, how do they reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do that?

Vlad , RedTrack.io (41:42)

Well, probably the easiest thing would be just Google for my first and last name or the company name like Vlad from Redtrap. And here it is if we do the recording. And then they reach out to me.

Matt Edmundson (41:56)

Very good.

Yeah. Vlad from redtrack.io. We will of course link to Vlad's information in the show notes, which you can get along for free with the sort of the extra notes we're starting to do now with our email newsletter. If you're signed up to it at ecommercepodcast.net. If you haven't signed up to it yet, go to it now. Cause the new newsletters will be, will be hitting out now. And of course, if you're listening to the podcast or you're watching this on YouTube.

You will also note that there are descriptions underneath said videos. We will also put flat to contact details in there. If you want to reach out to him, I'll find out more about what red tractors and how it helps you ⁓ grow your business by helping you track your data. Now, ⁓ one of the things that I said, Vlad at the start of the show is for those that make it to the end of the show, we do this thing called saving the best tool last. ⁓ and that's where I asked guests for a final tip.

for the listeners that have made it this far. Super high value, something that's really gonna help them in under two minutes. What would that be? The mic is yours.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (43:05)

That would be a very simple thing. Just go to a tube and search for the poem by Charles Bukowski. And make sure you check the exact name. If I remember correctly, was Will if you want to be a writer.

Matt Edmundson (43:20)

Yep, so you want to be a writer.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (43:22)

So you want to be right. just search for that point. If you can find the video by Bukowski himself, even better. And just listen to it. And then ask that about your business. Because actually, if you run the business as a founder, a startup founder, as an e-commerce startup founder, because still a startup, you're putting years, hours of your day.

Matt Edmundson (43:31)

Mm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (43:51)

and then years of your life. And especially in the beginning those not be easy days or easy years so understand why you're doing that. And if you don't have a good answer and he gives a good answer then consider maybe you should go for apprenticeship somewhere and get the same outcome.

Matt Edmundson (44:11)

Mm-hmm.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (44:15)

this will be my observation. And just listen to the poem. It's not an easy one, but it's a beautiful one.

Matt Edmundson (44:19)

Very good.

Yeah.

No, I definitely will check it out. Before we started chatting away, I had not heard of it, but say you want to be a writer by Charles Bukowski. If it doesn't come bursting out of you as the first line, in spite of everything, don't do it. ⁓ Unless it comes unmasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your guts, don't do it. If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter,

⁓ searching for words, don't do it. I, and it obviously goes on like that. So do check it out. ⁓ but love it. Yeah. No, it's great. If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. And you're right. I think when it comes to running a business, I mean, you've got your agency, I run econ businesses. I think you have to have a tenacity. You have to have a resilience because it's not straightforward. ⁓ and to be able to do that well, you have to understand why you're doing it.

Um, and it has to be more than just to make money. I think that's a very shallow purpose, uh, in life. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm very much looking forward to reading this poem, uh, and, uh, and, asking myself those questions, but Vlad, listen, man, it's been great to connect with you. It's been great to meet you. Thanks for coming on the show, talking to us about data, um, talking to us about AI, which I think is a very topical conversation and TikTok, uh, and, all those kinds of things.

It's been absolutely wonderful chatting to you,

Vlad , RedTrack.io (45:55)

It was my pleasure, thank you very much.

Matt Edmundson (45:57)

Well, there you go. Another fantastic episode of the e-commerce podcast. Warm thanks again to Vlad for joining me today. And of course, make sure you check out the website, e-commercepodcast.net for all the things that we've talked about today, whether it's the show notes, whether it's signing up for the newsletter, whether it's e-commerce cohort, whatever it is, even if you just want to reach out to me and connect with me on LinkedIn, everything's on there. The website is e-commercepodcast.net. Do go check it out. And like I say, do come join us in cohort. It would be great to see you in there.

But that's it from me. That's it from Vlad. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. No problem. I will see you next time. Bye for now.

Vlad , RedTrack.io (46:33)

Thank you.