The Formula Rhode & Skims Use To Win (and how you can do it too!) Shopify President

Haley and the team in road. Hello, Jim Shark. In none of the box they were going to build a billionaire company. The only thing you actually need is just. Period. You coming on the show today? As the president of Shopify, it's not just a podcast recording. It's a statement. Sorry I'm getting a little emotional here. I met the founder of Shopify at a coffee shop. Now over $100 billion of market cash. I actually wasn't going to say this, but I'm going to. Why was rejected from Shopify 11 times to work there? I did not know that. What can everyone listening to this right now do to get to be the next billion dollar company on Shopify? I think. Is there something you're already doing or something that you're feeling in a very personal way that you think you have a solution to? That is almost always going to be the best chance you have starting your first business or your tenth business. You don't need to be Mr. Beast. I think people overestimate how many followers they require and underestimate the idea of. And the world of AI. Is there an industry that you would never start a business in? Oh there's no debate. Hi angels. Did you know that's describing to our channel is free? And it's the simplest way that you can support our show and help us grow. If you do this, we can bring you even more of the content and the guests that you love. All you have to do is just hit the subscribe button below. So please, if you wouldn't mind, subscribe to the channel. And thank you. [Music] In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich. So let's get into it. [Music] Harley, think of steam. Are you ready to get hot smart rich? Let's go. What does entrepreneurship mean if we really distill it down? I think for some it's status. They become an entrepreneur because they want to be an entrepreneur. They want to tell people they're an entrepreneur. For me, entrepreneurship is a way to solve whatever problem you have. And I think most people don't even realize it. And I get to see it every day at shop. Like every 26 seconds a brand new entrepreneur gets their first sale on Shopify. And when I look back across the millions of stores, everyone had a different reason for entering entrepreneurship. But every one of them made their lives better through that journey. When I was seven I started my first business, Maggie's pet business, taking care of my neighbor's pets. And like there was something about my journey, where whether it was like wrapping Christmas gifts with my sister during college, or doing calligraphy, or being a promoter in college. It was always entrepreneurial. But it was interesting because I went into the startup world, I went into the corporate world. And I think that title of entrepreneurship became so big in my head as a balloon. And something that was like almost unachievable. And it took me honestly until about six months ago to identify as being an entrepreneur. Why is that? So my story as a human being is a story of entrepreneurship going back generations. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. My grandfather gets to Canada in '56. He has no money, can't get a job, doesn't speak the language. The only thing he could do was to start a business. So he starts this little egg stall called the Kappy-10. He came to entrepreneurship through the lens of what I call now forced entrepreneurship. He had no choice. There's another segment which is that they don't feel like they belong. They feel like outsiders, like you're describing. You didn't feel like you could articulate or self-identify as an entrepreneur. Because in your mind, you had some other vision of what an entrepreneur was. And it probably looked like, I don't know, a Mark Zuckerberg or a Bezos or someone like that. And there's sort of a third one which is like, I have a hobby. On Saturday mornings, I make the most delicious pancakes and pancake batter for my kids. And on Monday morning, I go to a job that I hate. And all I wish I could do is I wish I can make that pancake batter business into my life's work. Instead, it's just going to be a hobby. And there's probably 10 other sort of categories of kind of pre-entrepreneurship. But the journey is exact same. They see something, they need something, and they use the idea of starting as a way to make their life better. And I think one of the things that you're doing, and I think, we'll get to AI later on, but I think like, two things have changed since my grandfather started that egg business till today. The first is the barrier to entry into entrepreneurship is as low as has ever been. This isn't a pitch for Shopify, but for 39 bucks a month, you can start a business, and that business could become a $10 billion a year company. I've seen it on Shopify. And because of the technology and the tools and the ability to scale is unlimited. So you have low-barred entry, you have unlimited scale opportunity. And if it doesn't work, you can try something different. In many ways, when you bring all these elements together, what you're left with is, this might be the golden age of entrepreneurship, and most people have no idea. With that thesis, do you believe that every single person should at least try to become an entrepreneur? No, I don't think it's for everyone. Some people have no choice, they have to do it, my grandfather. Some people want to do it, that was me. The only thing in the world that I wanted to do at 13 years old was be a DJ. And I applied to every DJ company that, frankly, I'd ever heard of. I literally yellow pages and asking friends and I applied everywhere and no one would hire me. My dad had this really interesting tactic. Every time I came home with a silly business idea from school or from whatever, my dad would immediately go to the home computer and he would make me a business card. And it said Harley-Finkelstein, you know, DJ or Harley-Finkelstein, owner of Lemonade Stand. He made these ideas throughout my life real for me by literally giving it creating like the physical manifestation of my idea in a business card form. So I'm 13 years old, I want to be a DJ, nobody will hire me. I end up telling my dad, the normal hire, man, he says, "Go start your own DJ company, hire yourself." So I do that. And I end up DJing 500 parties before the age of 18 years old. Every bar mitzvah but mitzvah wedding, birthday party, neighborhood barbecue, in my area, my community, in Montreal and Canada, I was involved. I was DJ. I didn't make a lot of money. I mean, I was literally, you know, like 17 years old or 15 years old or 13 years old when I was doing it but it was so incredible. It was like this mind-blowing experience that like I was able to turn a problem. I want to be a DJ, nobody will hire me into a solution-filled-my-own company. And what I realized then is I was entrepreneurial. You were entrepreneurial also doing stuff at seven years old. Some people are like that. Not everyone else is like that. And if you don't have it in you, I don't think you need to do it. But I would also suggest that for those that are listening that are in a job they don't like or they don't really know what their path might be. That even though entrepreneurship doesn't seem native to them the way that it was to you and I, Maggie, that it could actually be something for them. And I would suggest to them they should give it a try. If this was 50 years ago, giving it a try would mean taking a loan out from a bank. And if it didn't work it would mean potentially losing your house or going to some debt. That's not the case anymore. So long answer to a question. No, I do not think everyone should be an entrepreneur. But I do think more people should try it who probably don't even consider it. Why do those people not try? One of two reasons I think. The first is a thing that's too complicated or too expensive or they have people in their lives that are not supportive. We have millions of stores on Shopify to level set for a second. We are about 14% of USE commerce. Okay. So other than Amazon, we are the largest checkout on the internet in America, which is massive, right? Crazy. When I look at the top 100 merchants on Shopify by GMD, my sales volume, almost all of them, if I would have asked them when they were 20 years old, if entrepreneurs were building a company like this was in their manifestation journal or was in their vision board, I think they'd say no. Not a single one of them. And I'm talking about Aloe and Viori and Fashion Nova and Gymshark and Figs and on running. And I'm talking about like big, big brands. And I would say almost to a tee, none of them would say this is what they thought they were going to do. What does that do? That suggests that there are way more people out there that should start businesses, but are probably not because someone told them they're not good enough or can't do it or itself talk that they don't believe they can do it on their own. It's so interesting because I think there are so many people that genuinely feel like that. And it's like, what is that pivotal moment or that pivotal thing that everyone listening to this right now can take to get to be the next billion dollar company on Shopify? Pure group really matters. When I was in college, I'm McGill. My dad wasn't around anymore. I had to support my mom and I have too much younger sisters. So I started selling t-shirts, universities across Canada. It's not a great business, but I love how to pay the bills. A mentor of mine can mince me to go to law school. His advice was, you're 20 years old, you have this t-shirt business, you know nothing about real business, no sophistication, go to law school as finishing school for entrepreneurship. And so I applied to one law school just that school University of Ottawa. When I got to Ottawa, I asked where the entrepreneur's hung out and I was directed to a coffee shop. At that coffee shop, I would end up meeting Toby. I was a founder of Shopify. and I would become one of the first merchants to use Shopify and that sort of started our 20 year history and partnership and career together. So the first thing you can do is, I think if you are surrounded by other people that are entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial, there is this osmosis that happens. If you wanna be a podcaster, go hang out with other podcasters. If you wanna be an incredible shape, spend more time at the gym. Proximity does matter. If you're thinking about this, find a group of entrepreneurs, hackathons, like meetups, go hang out and we work, whatever you wanna do, but spend time with people that are on a similar journey. Maybe a different steps of the journey, but a similar journey, that's first. The second thing is, okay, I hardly, I now wanna be an entrepreneur, what am I gonna sell? This is way easier than people think. Almost to a tee, every one of those top 100 stores on Shopify, the business they created, solved their own problem. Trina at Figgs, had a friend who was a doctor in Los Angeles, who was wearing shitty scrubs, and she's like, I can do this better. Ben Francis, who created Gymshark, wanted to work out and he felt it was either body builder gear or his yoga gear. There was nothing in the middle. And if you go down all of those different brands, same thing with Danny and Al-O, same thing, like all the brands you're talking about, they were solving a problem that they had encountered on their own. So you don't have to go and like, go on some sort of mystical journey to the other side of the world to go, like have a vision quest to go figure out what you're gonna sell. That is almost always going to be the best chance you have starting your first business or your 10th business. And I think most people discount the pancake better. Or they say, well, yeah, but I make beautiful blankets, but I really just make it for my nieces and nephews. Like, no one's gonna want that. And it's bullshit. And that's bad self-talk. And you're right, maybe not everyone's gonna want it, but you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try because like, look what you've built. Like you started with an iPhone. Like, look at what we're sitting in right now. It's unbelievable. And it's simply because you believe that this thing, I think you enjoyed it yourself, right? But you also felt, hey, this could have some value. And there's a lot of people that started podcasts that didn't have your success. And that could be the case, but it may be that you started this podcast, it didn't work. But something, you know, you're like, actually, I made these pillows for the podcast. And now like, you have a million dollar pillow company. That's the best part of building right now in modern times that the cost of failure is almost zero. And you have unlimited potential to scale. That's not a pitch that is actually what is happening. I love reading your story because as someone who started a t-shirt business, you were literally one of the first merchants ever on Shopify. - Yep. - How do you still have the conviction and the passion to do what you do today? All these years later, when you've probably run into so many walls, so many problems, so many knows, how do you keep that passion alive decades later? - I think one of the great things about careers now is that if you're thoughtful about it, you can actually build your life's work into a career, which is very different than going back to my grandfather. He didn't care about eggs. He cared about his family. He cared about philanthropy, he cared about charity, he cared about his community. The egg thing was just a means to an end. I don't have two things. I have one thing, it's Shopify. I love entrepreneurship, it's my life's work. And I am able to lead a company that does more of that, causes more of that to happen. So I know what you wanna, you can call it, there's like the term "Ike Guy," which is, no, okay, wow. - Prepare it for you. - Wow. - Okay, I wasn't really excited about this. - So "Ike Guy," so can you actually articulate the exact, so-- - Don't look at my questions, Harle. You can look at that. - What do you love? What does the world need? What can you be paid for? And what are you good at? And when it all comes together, passion, mission, vocation, profession, that's "Ike Guy." So I learned that term years ago, and I love that term. But here's a better version of that, which is a little bit less, I don't know, pretentious. Life's work. Where the thing you love, and the thing you can make money for and the thing that the world will value for me, is the same thing. I think that is, and not for some people, my best friend is a big corporate lawyer, it's a big fancy law firm. And honestly, he found his "Ike Guy" at this big law firm. And every time we talk, I'm like, dude, like, what are you doing here? And he's like, this isn't, I love it. He loves being a consigliary. He loves being a coach and a mentor and an advisor for his clients. I think finding that as early as you possibly can is incredibly valuable, because the earlier you figure out your life's work, your "Ike Guy," whatever you want to call it, the longer you can practice it, and then the longer you get good at it. So, Shopify is the only company, in my view, that like, I could spend my life at. But also, it's really, really fucking hard. And I really like that, because it means that every year, my relationship to my work, my job, the craft that I have to develop, changes. We started as a tiny little company in Ottawa, Canada, four people. Now we're 8,000 people, we're publicly traded. We have a very large market cap, you know, over $100 billion of market cap. Now I have to be good at being a public company leader. I have to get good at storytelling. I have to get good at culture. I think I get good at enterprise sales. I didn't know these things. So, one of the reasons that I really love it, especially right now is, it's at a point where there's so many interesting problems to solve that I get to try all these new things. If for me, it's a little bit of a personal growth journey. The sky's as a company. I don't think I've ever said that before, but it's true. It's a personal growth journey for me that I have like different phases. Shopify is about 22 years old. I've been there for almost two decades. Every, maybe not every year, maybe every two years, it's a new phase of the company that requires a different skill set. And I love that. I love that I get to keep developing these new skill sets. And if you find something like that, your Monday mornings and your Saturday mornings feel exactly the same. And I think it's a strange thing to say, but like when your Saturday mornings, your Monday mornings feel exactly the same, you are onto something. Do you have a join me with that? - Completely. I, I'm gonna be very honest and I actually wasn't gonna say this, but I'm going to. I think you are changing women's lives more than you know. And I'm gonna tell you why. So I was directed from Shopify 11 times to work there. Hilarious. - I did not know that 11 times. - 'Cause I'm from Toronto. - Yeah, yeah. - I made a TikTok video about this when I got on the Shopify Masters podcast. I was like guys, I was denied 11 times. I kept trying and now I'm on the podcast. And I saw you a year and a half, two years ago. And I was so nervous. 'Cause I really wanted you on my podcast. And I was just about to launch it. And I was like, oh my god, that's hardly. And I remember took all the guts to go up to you and be like, hi, I'm Maggie. And like I have this company called Hot Smart Rich. And I had been met from a lot of other very successful men and or people that had worked at big family offices or big private equity that would hear the name Hot Smart Rich and would either like roll their eyes or say you can't send me an email because your email address is hotsmartrich.com. And you were so friendly and open. And like I didn't even have anything yet. And you coming on the show today as a publicly traded president, your market cap is over $100 billion. It's like $155.48 billion today. Standing behind the women that need Hot Smart Rich to exist to change their trajectory of what they can do in the workplace, it's not just a podcast recording, it's a statement. And I just, I was gonna skip over that because I think it's hard to be vulnerable like that. Like I feel I'm almost like about to cry, but I just have to say thank you because I think what you're doing and what Shopify has done and why I kept applying and kept applying is just like it does change people's lives. And I think it follows one of the principles that you have which is getting the attention of someone that you admire and want to learn from. I'm so interested when was the last time that you felt inspired by someone that you admire? - I had a chance yesterday to spend a couple hours in Barry Diller. Barry Diller created IAC. He was at 32 years old. He was the chairman of Paramount. IAC obviously owns Expedia and one of the most important entrepreneurs in the planet. And I've been trying to get time at Barry Diller for five years. I went through his wife, his wife is Diane, and first in Burrig, DVF, I've tried everything. I still have that hustle, whatever you wanna call it, just like you do. You applied 11 fucking times to shop. I did not know that, Meg, I swear. That wasn't my prep notes. So what does that tell me? You could have stopped at number two, three, four, all the way to 11. There is something about grit resiliency. And if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm not an entrepreneur, it's not for me, no one ever. I try to business it failed. Maybe all you have is grit to be very, very canon and honest. That's the only thing you actually need. And I don't know if you know this, but more than half of Shopify's merchants are women. True. And again, every 26 seconds a brand new entrepreneur gets their first sale. Since we've been sitting here, there's been a couple dozen first sales. At least one of those will likely be a million dollar company at some point. The difference between the one that will be a million dollar company, the one that will have this huge successile podcast, and once that won't, is just grits. Every time they get rejected or fail, does it reduce their energy, or can they maintain it? And ultimately, if you can just maintain your energy, eventually you become too good to ignore. You have become too good to ignore. That is the key to this whole thing. - I have this really good friend, John Hope Bryan, he runs Operation Hope. He says, "If you hang out with nine broke people, "you'll be the 10th broke person." Okay, well let me flip it. That's a little more of John's thing. My thing is, if you hang out with nine entrepreneurs, you will be the 10th entrepreneur in the group. And I think you have figured that out really, really well that not only do you have grits, do you not get discouraged, but also you surround yourself with people that you want to emulate. And I still do that now. There are still people that I'm trying to spend time with, who don't want to spend time with me. My email address buys me a lot right now because of Shopify and people know who I am. I feel really fortunate. But I still, like Barry didn't want to meet with me until yesterday, after years and years. And I'm okay. The meeting with him meant more to me because he didn't want to meet with me. I just kept going. I was polite. I didn't want to be disrespectful or obnoxious. But I made it very clear that he is someone that I really want to learn from. I think he said an incredible life, incredible career. And I just, I really admire him. And I do that all the time. There's a lot of brands that I think are iconic that are not on Shopify that don't have really good online shopping experiences. So I'm beginning now to spend more time with some of those luxury brands, the European luxury brands. And they don't care, they don't even know what Shopify is. They didn't get Spotify, a lot of them. I will get these brands on Shopify. Not only do I think our product is perfect for them and I can help them with their business and maintain their brand and culture. But I'm just gonna outwork everyone else to do it. And I outworked them 20 years ago. I'm gonna outwork them now. Give me other 10 years. I'll still be outworking others. I have no choice. That's my operating model. That's my blueprint. This is a weird term to use. But like there's a give a shit quotient. There's like EQ, IQ, give a shit. Like my give a shit quotient is really, really high. And what it does allow is I get to do cool stuff. But it also allows for a very, very fun life. And I think there's an internet meme about like it's tough to get people someone having fun. Especially someone who really gives a shit and is having fun. That's the type of entrepreneurship room trying to beat. I have a confession. Until recently, I had no idea that we've been using Fiverr Pro. Our sponsor across Hot Smart Rich because Katie, who you know and love, handles all of our operations. She has been quietly running HSR like a well-oiled machine. She delegates because she understands that our job isn't to do everything. It's to stay focused on what we do best and bring in the right expertise when we need it. So about a month ago, we had this really complex project that required specific skills. So Katie pulled in a hand-vetted freelancer from Fiverr Pro who delivered to such a high standard that I didn't even realize it wasn't Katie. Fiverr Pro connects us with the best of the best freelancers working across so many categories, including emerging skills like AI native expertise. They help us tackle big problems and they enable us to continue moving while we do. So if you're scaling a business, then you need to visit pro.fiverr.com. It's so true what you said, "Stronger, sub with entrepreneurs." 'Cause even like being around you, like I feel excited. You know, and it's like you wanna just go and work so much harder, and I think it's so amazing for you to even say, as the president of Shopify, like there are people that still don't want to meet with-- A lot of people really brings me to attention. 'Cause I think for so long, we have demonized the word attention. Like it's a bad thing. Oh, she just wants attention. She's an attention seeker. But I think you win in the world if you can garner people's attention. When you're trying to get someone's attention, what is the best way of formula, a framework, an email subject line? Like you are trying to get someone's attention. What is your go-to? Figure out what they care about. Know what you care about. No one cares about what you care about. In the case of the people that I've, you know, the names that I brought up in this podcast, the way that I've gotten in front of them was I found something that they wanted. It had nothing to do with me. And it's as easy as a quick search, which is like, you know, what was the last charity they gave to? Or what's something interesting that they've done the last couple of weeks? What's a movie they just put out? What's a business they just invested in? If there's someone you wanna meet, and they just gave a speech at some event, and you listen to the speech, there's one line that really matters, and you're like, wow, that line is like mind blowing. It's like living, rent-free in my head. Put that one line in the subject. And that's it. I'll tell you a interesting story. I haven't shared this in a long time. Years ago, like, 2011 or 2012. We had this thing called the shop play, build a business competition. Do you remember that? Basically, it was a new business on Shopify, whoever has the most sales after a year, wins $100,000. That was 2010. Turned out that the winner of these competitions were building a billion more companies, 100 grand, was it enough. So the idea was, let's give them something as a prize they cannot buy. Let's introduce them to really incredible people. And we brought in Richard Branson, and I convinced Tim Ferriskin involved and Seth Goatton, and but I really wanted Gary Vanerchuk. At the time, he was like peaking. It was like peaked Gary, right? And he wasn't getting his attention. And he just put out a book at that point called Crush It. I think it was called Crush It. It was 2011 or so. And there was this website that I don't think it's still available. It was called 1-800-CO-READS.COM. And it showed you how far every book was from hitting the New York Times Bessar List. And it showed the number of how many books is left. It was like a sliding scale. So I knew the Crush It was 3,872 books away from hitting the Bessar List. And I ended up emailing Gary with a subject line, I want to buy 3,872 books. And that was a subject line. I don't think there was any body-- there was no written body in the email. And of course, anyone who just put out a book knows exactly how far they are from that. And he responded, and we ended up having him. And he was a mentor for the Bill de Business Cons. For years, he became a friend. I think he's an amazing entrepreneur. I didn't necessarily have any additional resources relative to anyone else to get Gary engaged. What I had was just this idea that like, figure out what he needs and what he wants and how can I offer it. And we ended up buying I think 3,000 books at that point from him over the years. But I knew that if I would have asked him, if I would have created this beautifully crafted, articulate pitch about the Bill de Business, why it's so great, why Shopify needs him, and all that, he would have been like, yeah, that's another email I'm getting. But I knew that by focusing on the thing that he wanted, specifically, it would get much easier. That's the way I think to do it is. And I think that is available to absolutely anyone. One thing that I want to say here because I don't want to mislead anyone, those emails you send out to people that you want to meet, one, they're probably not going to respond to you for the first five or 10 messages. But second, you have to come like, I'm in LA now doing your show and I knew I was here. So I was like, who do I want to meet? And I knew I was coming here months ago. So I've been emailing people that I want to meet in LA for months now. But I also email a lot of people. And I think that is the work that's required to meet these incredible people. - Shot's on goal. - Exactly. And most people don't want to do that. - Being rejected is one of the best blessings I think anyone can ever have because you learn the muscle that it's not so bad. But you just said something so interesting that I think an expert can only answer to have a validated POV omnis. You said peak Gary. And I think there's a large conversation which we're gonna get into this creator economy. Is there a peak life cycle for a creator in terms of relevancy over a span of a certain amount of years? - No, I think there's a peak on a per phase basis. We are very close with Jimmy with the Mr. Beast team. I think Jimmy is amazing. I think Mr. Beast is incredible. One of the things that's most remarkable Mr. Beast and most people don't know is he effectively has like, it's kind of like these boxes. He's got like box one which is like scrap YouTube videos and he gets on the top of that box and then you're like, oh he's peeking in that. But then we don't realize there's another box here. And now he's at the bottom of this box and he goes to the top of this box and you're like, well he's peeking. Like no, there's another box. There are some creators, the best ones in my view who are constantly figuring out their next box. And this is very different than I think what it was like 10 or 20 years ago where athletes, for example. You have these sort of athletes that would have these incredible careers and then as part of their next phase, they would put their name on like, I don't know, toothpaste or something or some like random product. And it made sense kind of if you squinted but like, then eventually they kind of just faded out. I think actually what's happening now is you have much more of these creators, the ones that are entrepreneurial. These athletes, the one that are entrepreneurial, they have multiple phases of their lives. And I think there's an opportunity to keep reinventing themselves. So yes, it is true that at any one particular phase you can peek and there's not really any where to go. But the ones that are really good, that are really thoughtful, they find a new box. For Mr. Beast, for example, like the feastable stuff is really incredible. He just bought a Fintech company [BLANK_AUDIO] a bank, a new bank. It's so remarkable, his business partner, House Jeff, like the way they're thinking about the future of like beast enterprises, like they're already thinking about like the box up here. Therefore, if he's down here, he comes from here, but he's here now and they're already thinking about up here, they have so much room to grow. And I think those are the creators, the entrepreneurs, the makers that have longevity. And the ones that I think flame out are the ones that don't, the gets on top of the box and there's no second act. - Do you believe that every single person that wants to be an entrepreneur selling a company on Shopify needs to have the distribution and the audience, not necessarily even Mr. Beast, but someone to sell too? - I think people overestimate how many followers they require and underestimate the idea of a thousand true fans. My favorite blog posts ever written, Kevin Kelly's called 1000 True Fans. And I think it's like a must read for any entrepreneur. What Kevin Kelly articulates in this blog post is like, that's all you really need. 1000 people loving what you were doing is sufficient to create this kind of flywheel. And I think a lot of people look at their follower count or something and they're like, I owe 200 followers is not gonna work. Well, if half of those people who follow you are just, are betting on you, care about you, wanna support you, that's almost all you need. And it always starts small. I mean, you hear about all these incredible going back to Ben Francis, Jim Shark. You hear how big Jim Shark is now. Ben literally started just by sending Jim Shark t-shirts not to the biggest fitness influencers, but to people that had like 500 followers, 5000 followers and actually that 5000 to 50,000 follower band on Instagram for fitness, it's kind of been owned by Jim Shark because Ben couldn't afford the five million follower fitness people. I don't think you need to Mr. B stuff. I think people have built incredible companies. In some cases, billion dollar companies, in some cases, single million dollar companies just selling something to someone who really values it. And I had this thing, I started the pandemic called FireballeyT. It's, I started my best friend, David Seagull. So David's T and Shoff, we took our company's public at the exact same year, 2015. And I met David that year. So it was like 11 years ago. And he took David's T public on the NASDAQ and we met, they ended up leaving David's T. And he kept a bunch of T and like his drawer that only he was really consuming. Like it was like, literally it was like David's private collection. And in the pandemic, I convinced him to build a store on Shopify and him and I kind of partnered up and we built FireballeyT. And it's like, it's like very high-end green T. Like it's great T for people like me that are very high energy. I can't really drink coffee in the afternoon, but like sent you to use perfect for me. The story and the experience we've had with Fireballey is that you actually don't need Mr. Beast type followers. What you need is a core group of loyal customers. And David literally called everyone of the first customers of Fireballey, asked them what they thought, tried to figure out a way to make it better. And FireballeyT is not a huge company, but it's for the people that buy it, they love it. And I think we live in an era now where like, anyone can do that. Beast. You just have to over-deliver to those 1000 TrueFans. You know, direct to consumer as a business model. It seems like, it seems like a nothing. Well, yeah, we basically, we cut out the wholesale and now we go direct. It's actually a remarkable innovation in entrepreneurship because it means that nobody ever has to beg a retail buyer to put their products on the shelf anymore. Anyone can now just do it on their own. And if it works, you scale it. If it doesn't, try something else. It's so true. And it's like, from even working in the celebrity world in the past, I think people would be so surprised to see sales results from creator celebrities, specifically, that have millions of followers that do not get the sales as some of these like, homegrown brands that have a die-hard community that have a lineup out the door at the Shopify store. Like, there are so many of those success stories, which I think I'm so interested on your tape between traditional celebrity Hollywood brands and like the creator brands, the brand that start with 1000 TrueFans and why we've seen such success more so with the latter than the former group. - It's actually quite simple. It is all about deep empathy for their followers. Okay, so this is kind of the way business has always was built historically since the beginning of like commerce and retail. So thousands of years, the sequence was, build the product first and then build an audience or fight customers. That is swapped and that's only been very, very recently, like in the last 10 years. Because what happened was you had this concept of people of influence. I don't call influencers per se, but people that were, you know, were posting social media, people that were making videos, people with making content on their own in their living room, wherever. And they began to realize that this audience that they had was a very loyal audience. And they began to understand that audience and spend time with that audience. And they realized what that audience actually wanted. Everyone brings up Chamberlain Coffee, Emma Chamberlain. If you actually know the story of Chamberlain Coffee, it's very simple. Emma started by building this great community, deeply authentically connected and began to talk about coffee and began to realize that actually this community doesn't think there's great coffee beans out there. I'm gonna go do something for this community. I'm gonna create Chamberlain Coffee and obviously it's becoming a huge success. When you used to go to a concert as a kid, you go to the merch table. And it used to be shitty t-shirts with a shitty screen print. I recently went to a Drake show, we had this great partnership with Drake and the OVO team. And I looked at the merch table. It was a Canada Goose collab of Jacket. Why? Because Drake and specifically his team, Oli and Matt Bable, they know the OVO audience. They know the Drake audience. And they know that they don't want a shitty screen print a t-shirt. They want an incredibly well-designed, well-developed manufactured jacket, like a Canada Goose jacket. And they want the branding like this. And so the celebrities that have had the most success with their own brands, they're the ones that actually understand their audience better than anybody else. And it's worked really, really well. But some random influencer creating a coffee company and trying to be chairman of a coffee would never work. Jimmy created festivals because he himself wanted a particular type of chocolates. That works. People give Kylie a hard time, but Kylie Cosmetics is brilliant. And it has longevity. Why? Because she started by creating these videos of her trying other people's cosmetics and realizing she can do it better herself. That's why there's longevity. Same thing with Kim on skims and Emma on skims. Like skims was made because they wanted to do shapewear in a particular way. And they didn't like, they were spanks. And they were like, that's not for me. My community wants something different. Therefore, they created skims and it worked really well. There's this amazing teenager and named Salish Matters. You know, Salish? Oh, yeah. Okay. So you know her company? Yeah, since you were years. Since you were years. The reason it works is because first she built this authentic connection with this community of like, you know, preteens, like 10, 12 year old, 14 year olds. My daughter, who's nine, loves Salish. And then she's like, look, I'm gonna create this thing. And she also allowed them to follow the journey. Hey, I'm gonna go try this thing. Tell them what you think. Hey, I'm gonna try this other thing. Okay, guys, I have a prototype. Hey, guys, I have my first samples. Hey, guys, I just created my online store. Okay, guys, guess what? Relive. And by saying it, not only did she create pent-up demand for her products, and that she allowed people to follow in the journey by leaving these breadcrumbs, but she had an audience first and then built a product specifically for that audience. And it was deeply interconnected. And that's the first time in the history of commerce that you've seen this flip from product first, audience second. And this is the way it looks. That is very different than the old school Hollywood influencer sponsor. Like, you know, there's this famous ad in the '80s of Brad Pitt. I think it was Colgate, you know, like a deal with Colgate. It's taught in business school as something it didn't work. But the reason it didn't work because he is not connected to toothpaste. His teeth look fine, but like no one that likes Brad Pitt cares about what toothpaste he's using. And so I think at the core of all this is authenticity. The reason that your show works is because you're not acting. Like I've met you in random coffee shops. You were exactly like this. And that's why it works. And so it's inviting more people into entrepreneurship through this idea of I have a small community. I'm going to make something specific for them. And now it's ours. It's not mine. It's ours to share. Do you think that there are anomaly talents, celebrities, creators? So let's take Kim Kay, for example. Like she has one of the most successful creator brands in the world. But I would say it's just a global behemoth brand now on Shopify. She just launched update, like an energy drink brand. But Kim was so known for her silhouette and her shape. And like her look that it was a no brainer for those hundreds of millions of fans to go and buy skims when it launched. Do you believe that she will have the same effect with something like update because she's not necessarily known like the Brad Pitt example for energy drinks? If she did update because her community, the people that looked to her, for influence, have told her either directly or indirectly that they want an energy drink, then it's gonna work. And if they haven't, it won't work. But I think in particular when it comes to skims, which I think was called kimono originally, I think all of us kind of follow these breadcrumbs of the story. We remember when the name, I don't really follow all these things, but I remember when they switched name from kimono to skims. I remember meeting Emma and hearing about how that was gonna work. I think good American, another great example. Good American is an incredible business because it feels like it was built for the community that Chloe had cultivated. So I don't know if every one of them is going to work. What I do know is though, is that we are gonna stop calling them creator brands very, very soon if we haven't already, because they're just really, really great brands. And I think the ones that lack authenticity will almost always fail. They may have a bit of a spike quickly, but if you look back the ones that have been around for a very, very long time, those are the ones that have deep authenticity. And as they evolve, I love Sona's. Like I just have high energy and high anxiety. So I love Sona's. You know, Jesse, it's her. - Yeah. - So I love Jesse. He's a great guy. I had a chance to spend a lot of time with him. I did his race 29, zero 29, a couple of times. And I got some Sona. I've been loving it. It's been great for me and my anxiety. And I was like, I need a Sona hat. The first person I thought about, when I thought about Sona, I went to Jesse's profile on Instagram. And I was like, what is, 'cause I was even Sona hat. I was like, what is he wearing? What turns out all they Sona company is his company. So of course, like he, like knowing him on a personal level, of course he should create a Sona hat company. It makes total sense. He also owns all day running company because he also loves to run. That's not a promotional product. That's not a one time one and done type of brand. That will have longevity because it was built for him and his community in a very authentic way. And I also think about on the athlete side, you know, the conical example of athlete created brand is the Jordan brand. I always thought it was strange that Michael Jordan doesn't own the Jordan brand. I think he gets a royalty and he may own a tiny percentage, but it's owned by Nike. I think part of the reason why that happened in the 80s when the Jordan brand was being created, he did not have a direct to fan highway. There was no connection. Like he couldn't make something in sell to his fans. He needed distribution and Nike has distribution. And I think what's so cool right now is, distribution has been democratized. So now when you see these athlete brands, we did this thing with Luke Adoncek here in LA. It was during MBA all-star weekend. So we helped them do this, create this cool pop up where basically like you sold his shoes and his gear, but if you hit a basket, it was like a trick shot. You get a discount on all the products. - It's amazing. - And there was really, really neat, but it was so amazing because like, Luca has a huge following. He's very, very famous, well known, basketball player. He doesn't have to go to some big company. He owns 100% of it himself because distribution for these people is now direct. - When I was growing up, I hated being called a creative. When I was in business, like I wanted to be Chip Wilson when I was growing up, I wanted to be Chip Wilson so bad that you're Brian Hill. And when someone would call me a creative, I would be like, oh my god, like I do not, I am not a creative, I'm really gonna excel. I'm very smart. I'm very good at math. What I love about this evolution of entrepreneurship today is like being a creative is a badge of honor. And I think that couldn't be more important in the world of AI. Should entrepreneurs be scared or excited about AI? - Oh, there's no debate. Absolutely has to be excited. So first off, if you're an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. There's no doubt. There's that great quote that pessimists look smart, optimist, win. You have to be an optimist if you're an entrepreneur. There's no room for pessimism. You have to be realistic and you have to know, you know, when to pivot or make a change, you can be naive. But you have to be an optimist generally if you're gonna be an entrepreneur. I think in this current kind of wave of technology, you have to be a technical optimist. The reason is when you look at the, how fast things are changing a week ago, I installed OpenClaw on my phone, on Telegram. And I've been playing with it. It's really cool. It's new, like, I think they were just acquired by OpenAI, but it was like literally this thing that controls my whole computer and I'm able to, it runs 24/7. You know, when I shut down, like if you use chat, you'll be to close your computer and stops running. OpenClaw is just a huge evolution. And there was all these things I was frustrated about a week ago. On the way over here, I was playing with it. Half of things I was frustrated about a week ago. I've all been fixed. I mean, think about that in less than a week. Like, this thing has gotten materially better. Give me another example. I went out for dinner a couple of nights to go with Rich from Fashion Nova. And he was asking me about AI in general. And he said, you know, when have you had your mind blown with AI's, what did he ask me? And I said, okay, take out your phone. And he opened up the Shopify app. And I had him click on Sidekick, which is our AI tool inside of Shopify. Okay, so just be clear, Fashion Nova is a huge team. Like, they have a full day analytics team. They're very sophisticated, very, very smart. I know the whole team, like, they're smart people, Ricky and Roger are like, best of what they do. Is he know what? I think he said, I wonder what is the most popular first name of on Fashion Nova? Every customer ever. What is the most popular first name? And I was like, type it in. Hey, type it in. Got in a second. I said, okay, ask now, what is your number one customer? Again, this huge company. And he asked, who is my best customer? Give it right away. I said, great. Now ask a sidekick, what should I sell next to this customer? And he did it right away. It's like, this customer is about these things. Therefore, we think these skews should be sold to that particular customer. She is most likely to buy these skews. Two things happened. One, he was mind blown. This was happening literally in like milliseconds. But he also said he's like, wow, he's like, I have a huge team of people running my analytics department at Side of Fashion Nova. And this tool is available to everybody that uses Shopify. That is why I'm so optimistic. Because in the same way that we have democratized commerce in a retail, AI is democratizing leverage and information and insights. This idea that everyone has a co-founder, we call it Sidekick, that knows everything about Shopify, everything about your business, everything about retail, knows everything about the world. And it's literally in your pocket, anyone can leverage it. That is really cool. Because if we made it easy to start, AI makes it easy to grow way faster than ever before. So in my view, there is no way to be anything but optimistic about what is happening. Especially if you're watching podcasts like this and you're entrepreneurial. Even on entrepreneurial yet, looking at you, you should become one soon. But for those that are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial, this is a massive human leverage. And I think anyone who feels, I know there's the dooms that are worried about all that. I don't believe that to be true. I believe that this thing is such an incredible new tool that we all have that you may not be able to afford the massive team of data analytics experts that a big company can. But now you have Sidekick. Now you have these tools that are readily available. And I mean, I think that's so cool. I think the other term that I'm so interested to hear from you because I actually haven't spent that much time with this is agentic shopping. Yeah. First of all, what is that? So agentic shopping is just this new front door that you can go to chat to be tea or, you know, Gemini and you can start shopping there as a new surface area as a consumer. It's like having a personal shopper. And is it accurate? It's getting much better. I mean, we're helping to build a lot of that Shopify. So we're trying to make it so that not only is it accurate, but also it has real context of what you care about. If months ago you did a search for hiking boots and you typed in, I want really light hiking boots. In three months from now when you go looking for hiking boots, it should only show you really light hiking boots because it knows everything about you. And unlike a personal shopper at a boutique here in LA, it's not on commission. It's merit based. This idea of agentic shopping also means that you're going to be found even if you're a smaller business because, you know, on some of the search engines, it's whoever pays more gets found. What's the merit based shopping is part of the agentic advantage. And I think agentic commerce is actually like you have online, you have offline, you have like marketplaces, you have this new thing, I think, called that is it's already coming, but it'll get way better next couple of months called agentic. And I think from a consumer perspective, it's going to make shopping very enjoyable, a lot easier. From a merchant perspective, it means that it's one more place you can get found. More and more of the way that I think about Shopify is less about like an e-commerce company and more like a retail operating system where you have this hub and the hub is Shopify. And that's where you have your inventory, your customer, it's where you go to do all your work. And there's a hub is here. Then one spoke is the online store. One spoke is if you have an offline store, one spoke maybe pop up. Maybe you also sell on, you know, you have a wholesale business, you sell on other people's stores. But you have a new spoke called agentic, which effectively allows consumers to buy directly on all these amazing new tools. And I think it's going to be, it's going to be amazing for consumers. I think it's going to be really amazing for, you know, smaller merchants who may not otherwise get found. I like to describe as a personal shopper, but it's a personal shopper that only has one objective, which is to delight you as a consumer. That's very cool. What do you think that that means for influencer recommendations? I think there's always going to be a place for that. to the agent's side. If the chat knows that you you follow what's a good example. - Pagel runs. - Yeah, Pagel runs, she was an amazing store. - Lovefire. - Yeah. If the chat application knows that you like thing page is amazing and you trust her and you follow her stuff, the next time you try to find, you're searching for a sweatshirt or some sort of outfit for a particular outing, it should know that like, dairy boy should chill up and think about how incredible that is. So that's the idea of merit-based shopping with a gentick is that it's not about what it makes an assumption, I'm sure you're walking through a store and the store clerk says, we think like you should buy this and you're like, I would never wear this. That doesn't happen with a gentick commerce. A gentick commerce, a gentick shopping is all about what it knows you're going to like because of your entire history of searching for it. I think that's like, I don't know, that's really exciting to me. And it's also one more distribution channel. It's like one more way that any brand, even tiny little brands can get found. - So is it your thesis that it's not going to replace things? Cause I think that's why people are so afraid about this word AI. It's replacing me, it's replacing the influencer. Your thesis is what with AI? - It's a new channel, it's a new place to sell. Look, we have a partnership with Roblox where through Shopify, just like you can build an online store and you can sell offline, you can also sell on Roblox, you can also sell on Instagram, you can sell on any service area. The Roblox channel in particular, when it came out, I talked about it. And a bunch of people had asked me, I think what they did interview, who's ever going to use it? I was like, some merchants are going to find it to be incredibly effective. And others won't. And that's okay. And to Fenty's incredible Sapna who runs Fenty Beauty, to her credit, she's like, you know what? I'm going to get this thing a try. And Sapna and her team in Fenty built this Fenty store inside of Roblox. And we power the check on all that for making it really easy. It's an amazing new channel for Fenty. So, do most brands, should they sell on Roblox? No, not all brands should do that. But this idea that some brands will have their consumer spending time in different service areas. Like, we have a Spotify channel. Okay, so from Shopify, you can push products to your Spotify artist page if you're an artist. For most merchants in the shop, that doesn't make any sense. But Beyonce has Sacred, which is her cosmetics company. She's a huge following of course on Spotify. So the fact that now she can deliver her products inside of Spotify to her listeners, who also love her as an artist and love her as a brand, the more surface areas that exist, the more opportunity that exists. And I think what we're trying to do is, we know that with more opportunity in our service areas, the complexity goes up. Shopify's job in all of this, our role in all of this is to continue to simplify it so that you don't have to worry about it. We will future proof your business. We will make sure that whatever new service areas pop up, you can sell into with the click of a button. And I, again, you can hear my voice. I don't think there's anything to worry about other than not playing with these incredible tools. - Angels, I hope you are loving today's episode with Harley, the president of Shopify. I was so excited to have Harley on HRSAR and I wanted to bring you behind the scenes into the room where the future of commerce actually happens. I am so proud to have Shopify as a sponsor of Hotsmart Rich because this platform is all about empowering entrepreneurs and providing men with the tools to start, build and grow their businesses. Whether you want to sell online or in person, Shopify has everything you could ever need to make that happen. When everything else feels out of your control as an entrepreneur, Shopify acts like a reliable business partner, taking care of the entire back end for you, your inventory, payments, shipping, orders, and reporting. Literally all of it. So if you haven't already, sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/HSR. That's Shopify.com/HSR. I'm obsessed with anything that makes my money work harder without me doing any more work. Last month, I told you about our incredible sponsor built, which lets you earn points on every rent payment you make. To use on flights, hotels, liftfries, Amazon.com purchases, and so much more. Well, as of now, built members can now earn points on mortgage payments too. Crazy. So whether you own or rent your home, you'll get rewarded. And built benefits list is incredible. 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, just to name a few. The list goes on. This is the kind of low effort, high impact move that adds up fast, especially if you're investing and want your money working for you in the background. And it's not about spending more. It's about being strategic with what you already spend. If you're paying rent or a mortgage every month, you might as well turn it into something that fuels your lifestyle, 'cause it's expensive. So head to joinbuilt.com/HSR to sign up and start getting rewarded on one of life's biggest expenses. That's joinbuilt.com/HSR. Make sure you use our URLs so that they know we sent you. As the father of two young girls that want to be entrepreneurs, which I'm gonna ask you to read this little letter from your daughters. - Is this real? - Yeah. - Oh my god. - The last one is the entrepreneur, I think. - From Bailey, Harley's eldest daughter, nine years old. Dear daddy, guess what? I'm so excited to open a tap and accroge as dance class for toddlers. I'm gonna do with me and Frankie. I love you so much, Bailey. Wow. From Zoe, Harley's youngest daughter, seven years old. Dear daddy, I'm so excited to have a lemonade stand on them, 10. I love you so much, Zoe. - So as a father of two daughters that want to be in our entrepreneurs, how are you future-proofing them? To be able to build $1 billion, $100 million, $1 million, whatever they choose to build businesses in the future? - So one daughter here clearly wants to start dance class for toddlers. The other one wants to do a lemonade stand. Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional here. Um, I want to do for them my dad, what my dad did for me. My dad didn't have a lot of money. My dad was an entrepreneur and who probably see this and he won't love this, but it's honest. My dad wasn't a very good entrepreneur necessarily. He never made a lot of money. But what he did for me was he made me feel like I can do it. He made me feel like saying I want to be a DJ. He's like, you can do that. It was kind of blind naivete. It was almost ignorant from the saying that he didn't know, my father's no anything about DJ. But he gave me this confidence that like, that could be a real thing. And so rather than going back to my kids, again, nine and seven and say, you know, a dance class for toddlers is not a great idea or a lemonade stand is not, you know, like, the me the thing I think about, 'cause this is where my head goes, is like, well, what's her differentiation? Is it the best lemons? Is it going to be like, what's her distribution like? How do we accept payments? Is there a subscription? No, none of that matters. What matters for Bailey and Zoe is that I just say, yes. And how can I help you? And let them try and let them fail and just give them the, whatever you want to call it, the swagger, the confidence, you just go and try those things. That's the way to do it. Because that business, I still have the business card in my home office. Those silly business cards changed my entire life. It made me feel like these things were real. And I have friends who, when they've heard the story of the business cards say to me that when they had crazy ideas, their parents told them they were stupid ideas. And they weren't trying to be mean. In fact, their parents thought they were helping them. Don't get distracted by these silly ideas, you know, focus on studying, focus on sports because that's what their parents thought. I think this idea of defaulting to yes, defaulting to support his parents really, really matter. And I do that with Lindsay too. Lindsay decided after she had a bit of scabre at the Bailey. She's like, I want to be an ice cream entrepreneur. And I'm like, let's fucking go. Like, how can I help? What do you need for me? And actually, she didn't need anything for me. She actually wanted me to do, like, she wanted me out of the way. She's like, I got this. I want this to be my thing. I had a tough time with that because I was like, well, what if we, like, she's like, I want to open one store. I'm like, let's open 10 stores. Like, no. So I think the idea of like knowing how to encourage at the right time in the right way really, really matters. And I love this. This is amazing. Wow. - Harley, I have to do some Robin Farr. Last thing you put on your credit card. - But the soul cycle this morning. So probably soul cycle. Yeah. - I love it. - Okay. Last most expensive thing. - I love 11 tea. Do you know 11 tea? - No. - Great brand. - I don't know. I just bought a Jack at Balmer Jack from them. - Okay. - 11 tea. I, it's spelled 11 tea, T.Y. But amazing brand. - Shopify brand. - Shopify brand. It's not a pitch for Shopify. But yeah, I bought a Jack from them. I love them. I think they're amazing. I wear James Percy basically every day. I think James Percy is incredible. What else? I like watches, but I haven't bought a watch in a while. - Okay. - But I want to give you a fun one. - Do you tie expensive purchases like a watch to accomplishments? - My own songs usually. Yeah. Yeah. When something really special in my life happens, 'cause I find it's nice for a reminder, about this watch at the IPO, Daytona. And every time I look at it, it reminds me of that. You know, you and I are both skiers. - Yeah. - I just bought recently, I bought a helmet, a Pock helmet with Bluetooth built in, and I really love that. - Simulity. - Yeah, it's really good. I know it sounds like I use it for music. I love listening music when I ski. And it's a great helmet. So that's awesome. - Speaking of skiing or building businesses. - Oh, both. I don't think, again-- - You have to, there's no-- - And it's a roughifier. - Building businesses. That is my greatest joy in the world is building. - Is there a brand out there that doesn't use Shopify that you want to before the end of 2026? - Brinella Kuchinelli. - Period. - Both that every single entrepreneur should read. - Early entrepreneur, I think rich dad, poor dad, is really great. Not just for an entrepreneur. I think actually everyone should read for a support ad. If you are, like, I read that when I was 13, it changed my view of money and how to manage money. High output management, if you're running a company with a team is really, really great. And to grow who built hard things, but hard things, Ben Harlow is incredible as well. Yeah, actually, you know, I'll give you a controversial one. In our controversial, but a really important one. It's called anti-fragile. This until late. There's this idea that if you have something delicate and you drop it, it breaks its fragile. And if you drop it and doesn't break, it's durable. There's a third system called an anti-fragility system, like the immune system, where if it breaks, it actually reassembles better, stronger, faster. And actually, I think this whole book basically talks about the system with the anti-fragile system. I think it's an amazing way to go through life, to think about life, that if you look at failure as the discovery of something that did not work, you end up trying a lot more things and be more resilient. And the anti-fragile book itself, anti-virtuality, does a really good job of embedding that into your psyche. Beyond that, 1000 True Fans is incredible. It's so broad, it puts on a book, but I think it's really, really important. Those are the ones. I love restaurants where huge foodies. I don't know nothing about it. In fact, I can see myself wanting to get into the restaurant. This is because we love restaurants. My way of finding I love dining, it's our favorite thing in the world is go to a great restaurant, a great place, with a great chef, and have a great Saturday night, or Friday night, or whatever, but I will not get into it. That's probably the one that I would avoid at all cost. Mostly because I like it so much, and I know that I'll be very bad at it, because I will make bad decisions that are not objective, that are rather based on, like, let's expand, 'cause I want more people here, and they're like, no, no, no, no. So I'll stay away from restaurants. - Okay. One word to describe how revolutionary this product was on Shopify. - Brilliant, because what Roe did when Haley did is, this to me is more than just a piece of silicon, and a lip tint. This is empathy. This is Haley in the team at Road, watching millions and millions of customers all over the world at a coffee shop at a restaurant, having their phone here, and their lip kit here, or their lip tint here, and saying like, we can do this better. And saying, actually the way we'll do it is, 'cause the innovation is not just this, it's also this, right? It's how it actually all fits in together. It's the way it slides out. This speaks to me of like, they deserve all the success they've had, because this tells me that they listen to customers in a way that no one else did. Like, when you see this now, you're like, this is so obvious, but how come no one figured it out? Because they didn't listen the way they did. Road and Haley in the team, they deserve all the credit that they get for this. This is incredible. - For non-life saving products on Shopify, is that one of the most innovative you've ever seen? - Well, that's asking a lot. It's like, pig and my favorite child. This is pretty damn innovative. But you know, there are like, figs is also incredibly innovative. Trina has become a friend and she's in a credible entrepreneurship in her. She doesn't come from that world. It was a friend of hers who was a doctor and she's like, I can't believe you're this great doctor at this great hospital and you look like a shlump. Like, I can do this better. So I think that's incredibly innovative. I think, you know, there's some brands on Shopify. Like, I look at Birkenstock, built in 1700s. They're still innovative. Or I look at Mattel. I've got a chance to meet the two Mattel and Yunaan and everyone there. And Mattel has created in 1945. Somehow, like, they keep innovating. Like, forget the Barbie movie. I just, Mattel creations. They do drops. I was driving here today. I drove by the Supreme Storages on Shopify. The lineup at Supreme is still insane. What Kith is doing with Kith treats and their collaborations, absolutely insane. Walk into a James Perst store. You can hide all the logos. You can hide the name. You smell it. You're like, James Perst store. How does that happen? Thoughtfulness. People that really, really care. That's why, like, I started the conversation by saying I pray at the altar of entrepreneurship. I pray at the altar of people that have a really, really high give a shit quotient. And they make products for people that appreciate that give a shit quotient. And it doesn't have to be fancy. I like these bracelets from M. Cohen because like, he cares about bracelets. I know the bombas, the bombas stocks guys for a long time. I think bombas is so interesting because like, they thought about small things, like they're a little rubber inside of the sock so it doesn't slip off. I get to experiences every single day. Do you know what to COVID? - Yeah, the cowboy comes. - Yeah, so like, I spend a lot of time in Kevin's team to COVID. It's like, who would have thought that there was room for a modern cowboy boot direct to consumer business model in 2026? And here we are. Why? Because again, same reason. Will you walk into a to COVID store in New York City or in San Diego or in Austin or anywhere LA or wherever the stores are? You walk in, you're like, this is to COVID. Like you walk in, it's a bar. People are just having tequila shots or having a drink. They're hanging out there. This people just like, having conversations. Companies that really have a deep understanding of who they're serving of any size win. And those that don't lose. And I just, I don't know, I'm blown away by the people we get to serve every day. And that's like, it's easy for this to be my life's work. It's easier for me to support you when I first met you because I was so obvious that like, you just really cared. You wanted to have longevity, but you wanted to do it in a way that was deeply personal authentically to you. And people, the world, the public, the media, investors, and more important, your customers, we feel that, we see that. We want to vote with our wallets to buy from companies that we admire. Small ones and very, very large ones. It's the reason why Sony will go out of their way to go to their favorite coffee shop. Even though Starbucks is closer, they still go there because they know the person there just, the size of the ice cubes are a little bit different. And they really care about those ice cubes. And I think people notice these things. - Caramore. - Caramore. - If you could title this season of your life, what would it be called? - I am embracing my spiky object. What I mean by that is throughout my life, I thought I had to be well-rounded. When I looked up to see who were running companies of Shopify size that we are today, 10 years ago, I saw a lot of very well-rounded people. They were good at finance and product, and they were good at PR and IR, and they were good at business and sales and marketing, and they were good at technology and engineering. They were good at everything. And I thought that's what I have to be. And it was only a couple of years ago that, I think for Toby, this is the same thing. We both sort of embraced our spiky object. He is the greatest product mind, I think in the world and certainly in commerce. And I'm a storyteller. And so I'm embracing my spiky object. Not well-rounded, I'm like this, and I'm just trying to sharpen my point. So I think this is my spiky object, Aira. - I love that so much. Okay, last one. I do these things on Instagram. Have you seen my HSR love notes? So I do have a very toxic brain, and I have to retrain it every single day, this negative self-bad talk. And so an example would be like, I'm gonna crush my interview with Harley today, even though I'm very nervous and I'm very sweaty. I'm going to have an incredible night of sleep because I'm having trouble sleeping. If you could tell yourself, one HSR love note for the rest of your life, what would it be? - I am enough. I do this thing called Big Shot. It's this little weekend project, I'm creating an archive of the greatest Jewish entrepreneurs. And we interview these people in their 80s and 90s, in some case in their hundreds. Self-made billion errors that I really admire, people I deeply look up to. And one of the questions I ask at the end of the interview is when did you know that you made it? These are people like Linda Resnick, who created Fiji Water, or Izzy Sharp who created the four seasons, or Ike Drexler who basically created the gap and founder of the old Navy, like really iconic people. Can I just say when did you know that you made it? And none of them have ever said that they believe they've made it. And it's inspiring, but I also, I'm like, are you crazy? Like you created the four seasons, not one hotel, like the entire four seasons hotel chain, like the brand, the most unbelievable, I think the most legendary Lundje Run of the Planet is four seasons. - To a right. - And they don't know that they've made it yet. And I would like at the end of my life to say, I made it when this happened, or I felt like I made it when this happened, or when Bailey started her dance school for toddlers, or so I did this. And so I think a lot of this content of it enough, doing enough, being enough, having enough. And I think that's a double edged sword back to your question earlier, which is that ambition is really good. But there is a point where you have to be like, that's good. Like I'm enough, I've done enough right now. And I don't need that right now. I'm still kind of in my era where, my specky point era, specky object era, where I like, I want to grow on, I'm not the best storyteller in the world. And I'd like to be, it may take 10 years or 30 years. But by the time I am of the age that I would be interviewed for a big shot for my own show, and someone says to me, "When did you know that you made it?" I want to say, I was 65 years old or 75 years old and I was sitting on the porch with my grandkids and I look around and I feel totally and utterly complete. Okay, I have one more question for you. I think I would be so stupid to have one of the best storytellers that I've had on the show and from one storyteller to another. What is one thing that I could do to improve moving forward as an interviewer? Watch all your interviews. It's hard. I bet you have a tough time doing that. Watch them. Think about your voice and flexions. Think about your arms. Think about not that you do that, but like that's what I do. No, but it's good to get feedback. And I watch all that stuff too. And I shall say to this anyone who's watching, if anyone who's watching wants to become a better storyteller, you know, it's hard to get on the HSR podcast, but there are 700,000 other podcasts. There are plenty of people that would love to have everyone watching on their show. And if you go on someone's podcast, even a tiny little podcast, you get this memento. You get the video afterwards. It made it's on YouTube, maybe it's they sent you a file on Dropbox, whatever, you get to watch it. I actually think one of the greatest ways to become a better storyteller now in modern days is reps. And you can do high leverage low consequential reps by being on all types of random podcasts. Next time a high school tells you they want you to talk to their class about your baked goods business. Do it. But like ask your mom to come and record that and then watch that video. You know, every amazing athlete that I've met who like is like super star athletes all tell me they watch their tapes. They rewatch their tapes. We've been public now for 11 years. So I've done 44 earnings calls. Not only did I listen to all of my earnings calls that I've done, I listen to everyone else's earnings calls too. What they do differently here, you know, one of the things I started doing in the earnings calls, I repeat myself now. Q4 2025 revenue was more than all of 2020. I heard that status blown away by it. So I said that on the earnings call and I said, I'm going to repeat that. Our Q4 revenue was more than the entire year in 2020. Stop pause. Now continue. I learned that by listening to other people's earnings calls. Now a lot of the stuff I listen to other people's earnings calls are terrible. People are in articulate or they're nervous or but I am able to pick up these little things here and there. And just like an athlete entrepreneurs are athletes. We just have to train in a very different way. We can't just go to the gym. But watching the tapes things we've already done as smaller as large of they are, that is an incredible hack to just a true self improvement. Harley, I really meant when I said at the beginning of this interview, like I have a big vision and it's bold and it always has been but it really does take people like you to let me interview you without my shoes on. I'm just like truly so grateful that you made the time. So where can people find you? Where can they listen to big shot? When are you coming back on? I'll come back on. Then time you'll buy me. You know, Instagram, I'm just at Harley and like, everyone of those first name Instagram handles. You know, some people and yes, I was able to get that. And big shot, if you're interested, whether you're Jewish or an entrepreneur or both, bigshot.show, it's my weekend project. It's a labor of love. And let me say this, I think what you are doing with the show is more than just you creating a show. You are effectively, you've manifested this. Like, and there's no other way to describe you. You would manifest what you have here. Like, you said you want to do it and you're just doing it. But I think what you're also doing, you're showing people that this is possible. And this idea like, we cannot do what we don't see. The reason I want people to go to a local meetup, a local entrepreneurial hackathon, whatever it might be is because when you see back to what my friend, John O'Brien says, like, if you hang out with nine entrepreneurs, you will be the 10th. And if you hang out with nine complainers and pessimists, you will also be the 10th. I can't thank you enough. Thank you, Joshua, for coming on. Thank you so much.