Episode 02 | Part Two: Bridging the Generational Gap

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.

Welcome back to part 2 of my interview with Ben Crudo, who's the CEO of Diff, an e-commerce company from Montreal. Ben, in part 1, we talked about how you got your Gen Z employees to to a new way of working during COVID-19 and this pandemic. But let's go back to the beginning. You started Diff 10 years ago, right?

Right. At Diff, I mean, on the surface it looks like we make websites, but I'd venture to say we go deeper and we help build businesses. We're in charge of the online channel, but we are really the experts that understand how to make a website work as well as possible and present that to an audience, but we're also extremely mindful of what's happening on the backside of the business, the logistics. Every time a sale is made over the site, we don't just see add-to-cart buttons, we also see a promise that's being made by a company to a customer that has to be made good on. And we recognize that there's also logistics and other overhead which need to be optimized in order for that company to be able to deliver on that promise So you take a holistic view instead of just looking at it as saying, okay, we're gonna create a website or an e-com enabled website.

We're looking at it as an experience, right? From the customer's perspective.

And also from the owner of the business's perspective, they need to also have the right tools in place to manage that customer experience effectively.

Right, right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you have this saying, your tagline, Log Live Retail.

Right. Right?

So when you look at that and you think about Amazon, right? I mean, this is another sort of obstacle that you've had to overcome. I mean, Amazon is like the retail version of a pandemic with 50-something percent of original type-ins starting in Amazon.

Yeah.

And a lot of people going into websites and then going into Amazon to buy the stuff.

How did you come up with a strategy or a war game or whatever to get through Yeah, so I mean, I'm really sick, frankly, of all of these articles that I read where like retail is dying, retail is dead, like, you know, the whole thing is changing. It's so discouraging and unhelpful, and I don't think that it accurately represents reality. As far as I can look around, there seem to be more and more people cropping up on the earth every moment. And everybody seems to have a smartphone or another way of transacting in their hands. So I'm a firm believer that retail is not dying. I just think retail is changing. And the retailers that are not keeping up with the times are going to become casualties, but it's not a reflection of the retail sector overall.

I agree with you 100%.

Yeah.

I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, it's like people are like, retail is dying. And I'm like, what? People stopped buying things? Are you out of your mind? I mean, you know, I mean, What happened is like the companies like Sears and these other companies just lost their way and they couldn't reinvent themselves.

Exactly.

And I think, and I would like you to talk about this, I think that those are the companies that Amazon's kicking their ass.

Yes, I completely agree. And I mean, there's a few dynamics at play there with Amazon where things are headed. And personally, why I love being aligned with Shopify, I see it as this sort of David and Goliath scenario. And I'm representing all the Davids of the world out there. And I've been to Amazon.com. It's not that good of a website. They just do a lot of basic things really well that a lot of retailers struggle to do, which I think is part of the friction. But, you know, I was speaking to the COO of Shopify as it relates to the pandemic. His coined phrase is, e-commerce just went from 2020 to 2030. And I couldn't agree with that more.

That's awesome.

If you didn't realize that you needed an e-com site before, I think you know damn well you need one now. And they've seen a groundswell of small local businesses that are just trying to get up online as quickly as possible. And I've personally also reached out to the community here in Montreal, restaurants, bakeries that I know these people are sort of the last on the list to take advantage of e-com. And I've been putting them up online really, really fast and helping restore their businesses to have some income during a time where they were completely locked, their registers were locked.

So I'm really connected. I spent like 25 years in that space, right? Building affiliate platforms and I mean, just a ton of stuff, compliance, all kinds of stuff there. And Shopify used to be known as sort of the small business entrepreneurs platform. And then it just turned into a monster. I think a lot of that has to do with the idea of being more of a developer environment. You know, like the platforms that have really survived and thrived are those that have surrounded themselves with channel partners. And if you think about the idea of a channel partner and what they do for the environment, it's like a hub and spoke model.

Mm-hmm.

And I thought maybe it would be helpful for people to understand what you do in connection with Shopify and how that relationship Enables Shopify to thrive? Because you mentioned it earlier.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, Shopify's goal is to be a product company. They're a platform. They're not trying to solve your problem. They're trying to solve all of our problems. But of course, every business and every person is a special snowflake and always requires a little custom tuning. So people for years have looked at Shopify as some small, you know, low-level type tool that big businesses wouldn't touch. And I've actually been saying the opposite my whole life. I'm like, trust me, everything you think you know about the platform is wrong. When you have a really skilled engineer who's looking at it and able to piece it together in more interesting ways, you realize that it's fairly easy to transcend the limitations of the platform and deliver great solutions to businesses that need them in a cost-effective manner. So, I've been beating that drum from day one. When Shopify was far less capable than it is today, and I continue to beat that. And so what our company does is we work with the larger merchants out there that have more complex businesses. There's just a lot more strategy and thought that needs to go into everything. Everything is a pain point, getting data loaded in, getting data out of it. You always need a process to support it. In a smaller business, it's more manageable for one person to do, but enterprises—

Yeah.

Just need a lot more backbone support. So that's what we do. We take something that on the shelf looks like it can't really help you, but we supercharge the hell out of it and we contort it and we make it in your image and then you fly with it.

So the cool thing about this company, folks, is that this guy that you're listening to here started this from vapor and he's got over 100 employees in 3 countries, right?

Yeah, right. We operate. Yeah. Yeah.

And he's managed to take a bunch of Gen Z folks, which is its own whole conversation, right? I mean, I've written articles on the whole situation with, you know, millennials. You always hear these things about millennials and Gen Zs and all this kind of stuff. And not only works with these folks, but makes them really super successful and puts them in an environment where they're set up for that. And then the pandemic hits. He looks out for his people, immediately sends them home, and then sets up his company to be successful in a pandemic. This is why I wanted to interview you because it's just— and you're also just a cool cat. So let me ask you a question. If you were sitting there and you have an entrepreneur who is sitting there going, holy shit, things are on fire. You know, my employees are at home, internet is slow, Zoom is busting. I'm trying to have a meeting, so-and-so's computer doesn't work. You know, all these little things that happen when people just all sudden spring up to work from home. What would you tell these people? Like, could you give them a list, a checklist of like, well, do think about this, do this, that sort of thing? I think of it as in terms of do, feel, and act, right? So what advice would you give them?

Well, if you are operating any sort of business right now that relies on a physical presence, the number one thing I would say is you need to Forget about your doors that you have at the moment and focus on reaching your audience. And the way that you're gonna do that right now is by being online. Do not go for perfect. Great is the enemy of good, and right now, good will be good enough for you. So be really scrappy. Don't think, if you've got a small local shoe store, and you're like, well, I've got 500 different styles and the work seems insurmountable. Yes, if you try and attack the whole problem at the same time, it will be. But let's dial things back. You've got 80% of your sales coming from 20% of your products. Let's focus on getting 20% of our products back online. You need marketing? You wanna sell to people in your local neighborhood? Print flyers, go put them in people's mailboxes right now. Every single person in your neighborhood is literally at home waiting to be marketed to directly and you can add that little extra touch.

So it's almost like seeing the opportunity, right? I mean, obstacles are what you see when you take your mind off the goal. So if you're like sitting there saying, the benefit is these people aren't all over the place anymore, they're all at home.

That's right.

Right, so it does add some advantages because there are aggregation points and you know how to reach them and they can't shop at work or at least they're not supposed to be shopping at work. But, you know, is that your point is to basically say have some grit, Reestablish yourself in terms of what you're after, right? Focus on the objective and then redeploy in unconventional ways.

And what we do in the software business, we're really good at thinking about like, what is the MVP, right? Because a software project is so complex and you can't see what's going to happen at the other end all the time with great clarity. So we get really good at thinking about breaking our problem down into digestible chunks and working in an agile method where we show consistent progress. So a lot of factors that normally you have to think about in order to make yourself accessible to your customers, like shipping times have to be precise so that the package is there exactly when the customer demands it because that's how Amazon is used to shipping to them. All these concepts are going out the window right now. People are literally sitting at home 24/7. If you need more leeway so that you can have your own delivery truck going around, you're literally going to load up your trunk and you might deliver those packages whenever you get to someone's door. I promise you they're gonna be there. So like, this is the time to bring back those guerrilla tactics, to be really, really gritty and stop going for everything. Just start with a few small things and be focused. And I think you're gonna find that the community around you is hungrier than ever to actually embrace you and support you.

Hey Ben, I really appreciate your time, man. I mean, this is a hard time for you to get on a podcast, so thank you so much. Let me ask you One more question in closing. If you are a software company and you are in this situation and you're used to working with like an agile team, right, where everybody's like right next to each other, a closing comment on how software folks can work together from home.

Yeah, absolutely. So like, you know, have as many video calls as you can with each other. Another thing that we're doing is we're obsessively reaching out to one another to stay connected. And I think that's really the best way that we're gonna make sure that the team Overall is healthy and ultimately productive. So go out of your way to be a little bit more of a human being to everybody else that you're working with and reach out and establish that connection. And I think you'll be repaid with a better team spirit, which will ultimately, I think, foster the results that we need.

Would it be fair to say connect and communicate?

Definitely. It's like connect, connect, connect. That's what my coach says. Just make sure you keep doing that obsessively, do that. And Make sure everybody at your company is being reached out to. Leave no man behind. This is not the time for that.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Ben. I really appreciate your time and your knowledge on this. Thanks so much and congratulations. And, you know, I wish you the best on this.

Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity and the interest to talk to you and looking forward to getting to your state.

Thank you.

Yeah. All right.

Thanks for checking out the BOSS Podcast with Gregory Shepard. Get more on Greg's Business Operating Support System, BOSS, at GregoryShepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books Radio.