CEO Peter. The Searchspring Story.

Foreign. Welcome to E Commerce Growth Stories. This is your hostess with the mostest, Juliana Jackson, aka the CLV lady. And also I am the Chief Evangelist for OmniConvert.

And this is Valentin Radu, CEO of OmniConvert. Thank you for tuning in today for a new episode of E Commerce Growth Stories.

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I like that river in the. In the city center.

Yep. Yeah, that's good down there. We were down there last night celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

Must be good. Must be good. Yeah. To be able to go places. So we are here with Peter Messana and I'm excited because I'm a big fan of him. You probably know him as CEO Peter. I know him also as the founder and CEO of surfspring, which is a really cool E commerce platform that I want to talk about today. But Peter, thank you so much for coming. And how are you feeling today?

I'm feeling great. Thank you for having me.

So, yeah, I'm happy to have you here. So I'm going to Kick it off by asking you the first question that I ask everyone because I'm secretly planning an ebook. How did you get into E commerce? How? Because I know most of the times it's an accident. So let's see if it was an accident in your case.

Total accident. 2005, bought a small retail company selling outdoor products, mostly kayaks. And we launched a website. So we bought it in May. We launched a website in December to highlight our product so that people would drive from further away. We didn't think we'd sell much online. I think we budgeted like 35,000 and for the first year and we did like 250,000 in that first year. And then fast forward 11 years later, we sold that company off to a private equity firm and it was doing about 82% or so was online. So totally by accident.

Cool, cool, cool. So you, you, you, you have, you're like, I don't want to say this, you know, I don't know how to say this better. So you're like a veteran ecommerce, right? So you have seen all the faces.

I'm old.

No, I'm not. See, this is, this is the problem. I didn't. You are versed, I think. Is that, is that a good word? Burst? Sure. Worse. You are very versed in the E commerce space. And actually this is a good opportunity for me to ask you what's like, because I'm, I'm, you know, you and Valentin is as worst as you, trust me. So.

Because I'm Europe, that's why. That's, that's the only thing.

So because I'm newer to E commerce in a way, I think, I guess like I have maybe like 5 years of e commerce because mostly was SaaS before. What are some things that, you know, you guys were doing back in, I don't know, like 10 years ago that were working and are not working anymore right now in terms of E commerce growth?

Yeah. I mean, back then, you know, like Google shopping was actually called Frugal and it was free. So there was a lot of, there were a lot of things that worked very well. What we didn't have to worry about back then was Amazon. That didn't really exist in our space. So. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I mean, PPC isn't really. It's tough now. It was a lot easier back then.

Yeah.

Now you truly have to provide some sort of unique service or offering that isn't about price or speed of delivery. So back then that's how you. We Sort of differentiated was we didn't have to worry about price back then that much. But yeah, speed of delivery was a big thing. Now you can't beat Amazon, so why bother trying?

This is actually a thing because a lot of this is what Valentin was talking about yesterday in another podcast or webinar. What it was, it was like, it's very hard to compete on shipping when Amazon is just right there delivering the next day. So if your value proposition as an E commerce brand is shipping, you have to start worrying about your, you know, your priorities in, you know, in terms of, of growth. So I'm, I'm sorry, Valentin, that I'm totally hugging Peter, but I'm a big fan right now. But I promise this is my, you know, I'm just gonna set up the, the stage for you. So tell us a bit about searchprints for who doesn't know what searchprint does? What does searchspring do?

So, yeah, so searchspring, we power or we give e commerce sites merchandising. We call it superpowers. So if you land on a site and you hit the search bar and you type in a search, there's a pretty good chance we're powering the results that are coming back to you. And we're providing the retailer the ability to augment those results, alter them, do whatever they might want to do. I equate it to the idea of like a grocery store where you're able to merchandise a shelf. You can put the thing at the 5 foot 4, which is the average height of a shopper's eyes online. We give the ability to change that PLP product listing page, that grid view to be whatever the merchandiser wants it to be. So we're essentially powering the anywhere product grid is displayed or recommendations for products.

Okay, so byentine.

So I wanted to ask you, Peter, about this pattern. I've also founded an e commerce company and then I got into the SaaS space for E commerce companies. I wanted to ask you how you've started the Search Spring story because we understood how you've started your own E commerce.

Yeah, I have to correct. I have to correct, Juliana, that I didn't found Search Spring. So I was brought in two years ago when the company bought it. So I didn't find. I wasn't a founder, so I didn't come up with the idea. But I did move from e commerce to SaaS. I love technology, so it was one of those. I wanted to be involved in E commerce and I ended up loving tech. So now I supply the tech to E commerce, so I'm one step removed. Sort of do miss the actual E commerce.

Okay.

Once closer to the customer is kind of cool.

So tell, tell me about merchandising. Do you think it's, I mean, merchandising, it's, it's an issue for companies from how many SKUs onwards from your, from your perspective?

Yeah, so it is. It's very difficult. So you're trying to transition from an offline to an online. So if I go back to the grocery store. You walk into a grocery store, typically you're walking into the produce section. It's colorful.

They.

They steer you. They get to walk you through however they want you to walk through it based on where they put the products. Milks in the back, so, you know, and in between is bread and. And they have the power of all that data where you're walking. And they get to make end caps and clip strips and everything. So we try to mimic that online. If you land on a page, we want to be able to sort the products the way that, you know, people would want to see them or how the merchandisers want to sell them. Maybe a high margin item, maybe high stock items, you know, whatever it might be at the top. So we try to mimic that exact. The offline experience into the online. But we don't get to guide the shopper online. You don't get to guide. You might land from a Google adword straight onto a PDP and just buy the product. And the only thing we can provide there is recommendations for other products to buy, but we don't get to guide them. So while we're trying to mimic that offline, it gets really difficult because online, you sort of as a shopper, you're in way more control. You're not having to walk through the store like you would in a normal store. And all the stores are like that. I mean, it doesn't matter what retailer you go into. They've laid it out in a way that they want. So.

Sorry.

Sorry. Juliana. Yeah, you, you go.

No, it's fine. I don't want to. You know, go ahead.

I was, I was wondering about guiding those, those visitors, let's say.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask too.

How, how you, how you decide over this merchandising, this product recommendation? Are you using any kind of algorithms? Are the retailers in need to, I don't know, set some rules or it's somehow purely automatically optimized for more margin or revenue?

Yeah.

So we give the power down to the merchandiser to choose. So we can, you can run it off algorithmic. Most of them don't want to do that. They want to do it rule based, you know, pushing out of stocks down to the bottom, high margin to the top, specifically pinning products in position one or two on a product grid. It is interesting because people want like personalization, like you know, they'll ask for it, which we have the ability, but then they don't actually want it because then they realize that they can't merchandise the way that they want it to go and they don't like the way the machine. So we recently recently released AB testing and now I challenge them all to AB test that human versus the machine and see who's smarter because the algorithm's probably smarter on a sales but it may not accomplish your goals. So I mean sales sounds like the ultimate goal, but it's not always the ultimate goal. In E commerce you do have margin, you know, policies that come into play. You know, you might have a policy where you can't show a competitor side by side type of thing. The algorithm struggles with that. And that's where so we give the ability for the merchandisers to override the algorithm. And most of them want to, they think they're smarter than the computer. They're probably not. I just don't tell them that.

You'Ve.

Just, I just did.

Cool. I, I, I, I want to ask you something. What do you think about the shopping experiences that you, you know, can see right now on different websites? Because you're a consumer too, Besides being a CEO, you're a consumer so you want to buy something and you go on a website and you are experiencing the shopping experience. How do you feel about it? Do you call them and tell them that they need your services After I.

Get thoroughly frustrated shopping online. Most are so terrible at it and I quite frankly like going to the store. But yeah, no, I, I send it to our sales team all the time when I'm shopping online. I just did the other day I was shopping, I was shopping on a website and I searched for, I was looking for a cart and the first two products were cartridges which made no sense. I'm like, what is going on here? Why would you do that? Like you did a wild card search. Like that is just asinine. Like just so then I send to the sales team and say, go get this and fix them, please help them fix them. Yeah, there was actually another company. If you search for bras, you saw socks and if you search for socks, you saw bras so we're now trying to win that customer. We gave them the example of their poor search.

I hope that's not a pie for you. Another pie that's coming your way.

I doubled down on the pies. They get two pies if they hit Q2.

Okay, cool. Valentin circumstances. This is something you shouldn't introduce our company.

Yes, there's a great.

The gif is great. The video is better. And yeah, I'm waiting on you to.

Post it so I can link it up in this podcast. So for who's listening, Chantel is the vice president of sales for Surfspring. So, Peter, based on his LinkedIn post, that didn't need narrative. So this is my imaginative narrative. He says that they, you know, he was expecting Chantel to. I can't believe I'm using this word. Crush the. The, you know, the quarter. Sales. And she did. So she went and, you know, what's the word? Hit Peter in the face with the pie. Pie. She pied him. She pied.

Yeah, she pied me. And she didn't do it like she was a professional. She actually grabbed. If you watch, she grabs the back of my neck so I can't move, and then she smears the pie in my face. So.

Sounds a bit fast and progressive.

Yeah, she. She exfoliated me with the graham cracker crust whipped cream.

That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, I'm gonna definitely try to link that. If you post that video. I'm gonna. I have to put it. It's. I, I like what you do on LinkedIn, but I want to talk about that later. So you mentioned Google Shopping earlier. So I think it was called Listings before or some. Before it was called. And I discovered the other day that a lot of people don't use Google Shopping as it is right now. But a lot of. I mean, I'm not. I'm talking about brands. Brands don't use that. They don't optimize for Google Shopping. But consumers, if they're looking for a pair of sneakers online, they will go and click the tab for Google Shopping. And I noticed that the products that are prioritized are the ones that have, you know, identification, the unique identification of a product. So I'm assuming when people like brands use search bring you guys optimize for that type of search too, right? When the. How do you call, you know, like there's like the specific product identification and SKUs.

Yeah. If you search for a SKU. Yeah. We would return just that product back up to the top.

Yeah. Yeah I think a lot of brands don't, don't understand you know I guess the algorithm of Google and how things are prioritized when it comes to search. Like I think it's a slip daunting merchandising and I don't hear too many people talk about this other than Rishi. You probably know Rishi the product guy. He's. Yeah. Besides you and him I don't know other people that are actually talking about much stuff in this space. So yeah, that's why I wanted to talk more about product pages if I may. I know shopping online is frustrating but do you think people utilize the product page as they should to its full extent? Because I think the product page in my opinion customer experience perspective, it should be like telling a story, you know, like it should be helping you to make a decision.

Yeah there's a, there's a conundrum you face with the PDP and when I was in retail we faced it is one is you want the fastest ability to add it to the cart like if I land there and that's what I want. I don't want to go through any hassle of any sort. Then the second part is all the information for the person who wants the information. So I'm a big believer in descriptions, you know, true written descriptions not just copied from the. The vendor. Vendor provides terrible descriptions of their products and you know, stuff that you want to learn about like and that's so my the online retailer was Austin Kayak.com and and they've. The site looks nothing or is nothing like what it was. So I can't speak to the last four years of what they've done but prior to that it was always about building you know, experts. So to be an expert so how do you compete against Amazon is essentially what we were trying to figure out or anybody Then it was to become a true expert in the space and be a domain authority for it. Not domain authority as in like the URL but truly understand and be the authority. So provide all the information on the PDP for that product as well as relevant cross sells to it which is what search springs technology can do on the cross sells is true recommended products not crappy like I want you to buy this but you actually want to buy this. There's two different things there. What the customer wants to buy versus what the retailer wants to sell them.

That's true. It's true and a lot of times the retailer doesn't know what the customer wants to buy. It's just I Mean, most of the times they don't, because I don't think they care. You know, that's like, if there's one thing that e commerce companies, direct to consumer companies, could have taken from Amazon, was what they're doing right, which is the convenience, which is the, you know, the great experience that they have. Instead, they just took the mentality that I gotta sell. Like, I don't care who's buying. I'm selling right now. Like, just, you know, 20% off, go. You go and buy this. So it's sad. It's really, it's really sad. And like, I don't want to go on a negative note. I mean, the purpose of this podcast is of course to talk about E commerce, but I also want to talk more about you and who you are, because I think that's super interesting. So on LinkedIn, you have created this. Again, I hate myself for saying this, personal branding, because you know my opinion about it, but you have created, you know, like a community around you. And you have this hashtag, which is CEO Peter. And basically you're sharing a lot of learnings about leadership, about how you're managing your teams and how you're approaching stuff you're not like, usually. And I think again, you and Valentina are the few exceptions. Like when you see a CEO of a SaaS company, they're always posting about their product, the company updates and that's it. But they don't show their personality. So how did you get started on LinkedIn? How did you start sharing more about you and your day to day? Because you have a lot of amazing content.

Yeah, I think I was just bored one day and, and I have to give the credit, the CEO Peter hashtag came out of a guy, CEO Adam, And I was like, how do I create a hashtag? He's like, you just type it. And I was like, oh, wow, that's easy. So. So I copied him. I. I was not original, which I'm typically not original or anything. I just copy good people. But yeah, no, I was kind of bored and I decided I'd start sharing. And I don't post about the company very much at all. And I get asked all the time, why don't I? And it's like, well, because it should speak for itself. Like, you should, like, I don't know, I don't want to be an advertisement, a walking commercial all the time. And really I'd rather people understand, like, how I lead or what I think, or at least how I think I should lead, that some might Challenge me whether or not I do as I say. So we won't ask my team, but yeah, it. I just, I like sharing interesting things. So I don't. I only share on whims. I don't pre schedule anything. I don't think about anything. It's just like, oh, I feel like, oh, I had a moment and then I go share it. So if I don't have a moment, I don't share anything. So that's just sort of the way it goes. But yeah, I like it. Back to boredom, I think.

I think boredom is really, really underrated because boredom really does make you do a lot of things which can become productive and successful out of boredom. And we actually have this poet in Romania that was talking about this, Valentin, you probably know him, Nikita Stanescu. And he was talking about boredom. And out of boredom, a lot of things, you know, might come to fruition. So let's talk a bit about leadership. And I want to challenge both of you and Valentin here to a leadership path. So. Because it's kind of cool to me. So what, what in like, what type of leaders you got? I mean, I know for Valentin, but what type of leaders you guys are, what type of leaders you were and where do you want to go? And this is a question for both, but I'm going to let Peter start because he's the guest.

I'll start with what kind. I was. I was a terrible one. I was angry, screaming, throwing things.

Sound like my son.

Yeah. But I was like probably 30, so I. Probably not appropriate that. No. Then I grew up, you know, now I'm pretty. I'm pretty hands off. Let the team do what they're hired to do. Give them a goal and let them go for it. You know, try not directing too much. There's the directing versus suggesting. So try to suggest things and let them go versus telling them what to do, which is super frustrating to watch sometimes, but that's a different story. Sometimes I just want to tell them because it's really easy and they're making it really difficult. But you let them do it. So, yeah, now I'm, you know, I joke, but I mean it. Like my job is to hire great people and do nothing. I haven't, I haven't fully made it there. So not that all of my hires aren't great, but I still do some stuff, so.

So for you, the secret of leadership is actually scaling outside yourself but doing it with amazing people that, you know, get it so you don't have to do nothing.

Well, yeah, I Mean, in reality, anytime if you hire somebody, you better hire somebody who's smarter at whatever you're hiring them to do than you are. So, you know, like my CMO I hired, he better be better at marketing than me, otherwise there's a big problem, you know, and I'm not very good at sales, so Chantal's got that in the, in the bag. So. But yeah, no, it is. You hire great people and they can do great things.

I agree. So what about you, Valentin? What type of CEO you are, what type of CEO you were and what, I mean, leader that you want to be?

Okay, So I think we're somehow alike and that's the, that's the path. The. I recall when I've been really attached about the results and I was putting a lot of time into working and hitting those, those numbers, neglecting who do I have beside me. And that was because my attachment, I mean, we're all in this life game where we are attached to a brighter future. But the trick here is to detach yourself from the outcomes so that you can see things how they are, not how you've planned them to be. And I think a lot of people in control positions are forgetting the fact that they are also human beings and they are broken, completely broken. And we are like puzzles. You know, we. We still find our, our way. And I think this job is not, is. Is a never ending story. Even though we have our Personas, even though we have this mask that everything is going great and that we've achieved this, this and the other, deep, deep inside, we're unsettled. And we are always looking for a new external challenge so that we validate the fact that we are worried and we are unlovable and we are okay. And this internal game is amplified if you're in a control position because you can see people outside yourself doing the shit that you are actually doing within yourself. And it's pretty amazing that you're attracting who you are. And I recall that I've been so attached about the results that my former teams I'm crafting company since 2001, I've seen that a lot of people around me were exactly like I was. And in this, thank God that I had this habit of meditating and journaling so that I could see.

In the.

Evening who I just ended up being during the day. And thanks to this habit, I realized how shy I was. And mainly I've started to put some distance between my dreams and my hopes and my aspirations. Because as a leader, let's say you are carving a new path through the jungle and you have this vision, let's say, say this urge, this attraction towards something that it's different than it is today. And if you are authentic in your passion and if you detach yourself from the result, but actually enjoy the presence of other people which are not, they are employee employees. So they don't have this aspiration to craft or to achieve this quota or this outstanding results. They are, they are even better human beings than the leaders are because they are more stable, more humble and they, they have a lot of things to, to share with you as the guru or leader. And I, when you, when you realize this, when I realized it in, in my own life, I've started to, to understand that every person which is around me is doing me a huge favor because they are following me in this crazy adventure towards freaking nowhere land. I mean there, there is so much uncertainty when you are building a company or when you are getting your team towards this goal. I mean, nobody knows anything about life. I mean if you, I mean we're, we're born here, we are following the advices of the grown ups, we think that we will reach some outstanding states, but at the end the game is over and that's it. We've just been old and we can end up being pointless. I mean, it's that great, great story from Clay Christiansen. How will you measure your life? You know, he's a fantastic leader. He wrote these books, these bestsellers, he advised top companies. And at the end of, I mean, in the latter part of his life he realized that all these numbers were pointless. I mean the, the true value is building authentic relationships and being helpful to the ones around you. And that's the kind of leader that, that I aspire to, to, to become. But it's freaking hard ever since you hired me. Yeah, exactly. It's freaking hard because you have, you have this person within yourself to, to, to, to score. You know, you have this leaderboard and you need to score, you need to outperform all these milestones, but you also need to, to cope with people's feelings, with their aspirations, with the fact that they have these moods. And it's not like you could hire machines to, to hit those numbers and.

You, you hit it. When you said there's humans. That's the part that most people forget that we have to manage humans and humans have emotions and robots don't. And if your decisions are based on like logic, you will fail miserably because emotions of the humans will take over. So A logical move in an organization suddenly becomes like an ordeal because there's an emotion that gets attached to it. I actually think emotional intelligence is probably the most underrated thing out there. You know, super intelligent people struggle. I struggled with emotions even the other night, I drafted a message I wanted to send to my senior leadership team and I decided to sit on it for the night. Normally, I would have just sent it and I ended up not sending it at all and instead had conversations with the couple individuals I needed to talk to. But that's the, the part where, like, you have to pause and deal with, like. Is the emotional reaction proper to the intelligent reaction?

Yeah.

Have issues with that all the time.

Yeah. The disability to stop and to re. Rethink it's. It's a never ending endeavor. Or. I don't know, there are these Buddhist monks or these characters in the movies. Like, it was in Kung Fu Panda. Shifu, right? That. That guy with the inner peace. Yeah.

From everyone you could have chosen.

I don't remember that one, so I'll.

Just go with it. It was Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda. It was that. He was like, impersonating Yoda, but it was in, you know, that company. You gotta watch cartoons, man.

Yeah.

Like, so what, what are my chances for becoming a CEO? Because I, I was here.

Slim to none. I mean, let's just be real. Well, I mean, first off, first off, I mean, it's a, it's a very, it's a very narrow pyramid. So there's, you know, there's less and less opportunity as you go up. But. But yeah, I think Valentino needs to die and you can take his place. We can do it that way. I guess that's kind of rough, though.

God, I hope.

You can take mine, but I'm not really going anywhere.

You know who I like from your team? She's from Australia. One second that I forgot her name right now. Yes, I like her. She's so cool. I mean, I like everyone from your team. I just want to congratulate you right now on live LinkedIn because I was about to say on live TV, I want to congratulate you on live LinkedIn that I think you have the most. Besides us, I think you have the most female employees, which I think is amazing because females are so underrepresented in this industry and in your company. I swear, I haven't seen so many amazing females in the same spot. And I want to tell you, are you. I want to just ask you, are you okay? Are you okay with, like, it's I, I just want to congratulate you because I think it takes a lot of balls to surround yourself with so many women that are clearly smarter than men. And I think you, you know, I'm sorry it's real. But yeah, I just want to congratulate you. I was researching, you know, the type of inclusion that most companies have in E commerce and is barely any. And Valentin has the same problem because there's more women in Omnicanberg than men. But I think I want to ask you guys, like, are we really smarter than you guys? And you should say yes because you're live right now. So I'm waiting.

Oh, absolutely. Sure.

By far. Yeah. I mean, emotional intelligence, it's something that we don't master yet, but mainly this is a skill that we have to train. And how else to, to, to get outstanding training than being surrounded by ladies?

Exactly. Good answer.

Yeah, we're, we're right around 35% which in technology is pretty freaking high. There's not a lot of. In women, in tech in general.

So yeah, I think it's amazing and I, I want to congratulate you for that because I think I'm connected with mostly everyone that works for you. And yeah, I think you guys are doing an amazing job on giving more women space to shine and I think it's needed. And I think a lot of technology companies, e commerce or whatever should look at you for doing this. And I also want to ask you right now, be fine. So tell me, Peter, tell me, what are like the biggest three ups you did since you're being the CEO of Search Spring?

None.

Exactly. Come on, it has to be some, like. No, the reason why I'm asking this question, I'm not trying to be funny.

Just to embarrass you, I mean, but I, I love. Everything's perfect. Why would I have made any fuck ups? I mean, come on.

No, I want to ask you this because a lot of people on social media tend to associate, you know, what they see, you know, only the exterior with what it is. But they don't think that behind the job, whatever the job is, especially you guys, as you know, being in the leadership of a company, they don't understand that even if on social media everything is nice and positive and polished, like behind you actually might go a lot of stuff to get where you are. So a lot of people I know because, I mean, they're in your comment section a lot of times I see that they look up to you. So the reason why I'm asking you what are some fuck ups that you did is just that I want to show them that even if you, you know, if you go through stuff, you can still, you know, emerge, you know, better at the end of it because there's no mistakes, there's just lessons. If you want to look at them like that.

Well, yeah, I don't know my various up. But you are absolutely right. I call it Instagram life. Like everybody posts only the pretty things.

Yeah.

Going on around them. They don't post the shitty things going around them. My buddy shared a picture one time. It was like an Instagram picture and then he zoomed out and it was like this really pretty picture of like a lime with a, with like a tumbler and ice in the tumbler and it looked like he was about to make a drink. And then he posted the zoomed out picture and it was like all the kids all over the floor like behind him and it was like Instagram versus real life. And I think online most people are fake. I try to be as real as possible. I do share a lot of things that people are surprised I share. I do have a lot of people who try to call me out on things. It's really bizarre. But, you know, I share all the time. I'm ADHD. The fact that I've stared at the screen for 35 minutes is painful. It's you, you both are lovely. It's just my attention span is. Is terrible and I have dyslexia and reading sucks. I hate reading. I don't read books. Why don't I read books? Because it's difficult. Why don't I listen to books on tape or audible? Because my ADHD then kicks in and I don't pay attention. I realize I've been listening for 30 minutes, but I have no idea what was just said.

So I relate a lot to that.

So, yeah, I don't read a lot. Pictures are great. If you can put a book in a picture. You got me. Or a quick blog, like one paragraph. So I blog every week and I ish, put an asterisk next to that. I missed this week.

And you are like Taylor Swift's biggest fan.

I am, I am. But I'm not. I was not this my daughter. When I went home, it was like last week she's like, oh, you came home. You're not the stalker who was arrested. So got that done for me. So apparently some stalker was arrested last week. So it wasn't me.

Oh my God. Good to know.

And. And I've shared a lot of Taylor, she's got hidden management nuggets in her songs. She doesn't know it, but I call him out. She has no idea. She wrote about an ex boyfriend. I heard a management thing. I don't know.

Sorry, I'm just laughing because it's. Your daughter said you're not the stalker. Sorry.

Yeah, it was. It was like last Wednesday. It was like last Wednesday or Thursday. I came home, she's like, oh, good, dad, you came home. You're not the stalker. And I was like, what are you talking about? It's like some stalker of Taylor was arrested today. So, anyway, I do love her. Her music is wonderful. And I do post about it quite.

A bit too much. I. I never even listened to her until you started posting. I was like, man, if Peter likes her, it must be something to this. To this person that I, you know, looking into.

So I. I need to get some royalties.

You should. You definitely should. Oh, my God. But listen, I totally. I totally relate with. I'm reading like seven books at the moment, all of them at the same time. And if I start reading, I start thinking about stuff and I just, like, completely forget everything that I read. And then I start doing stuff like nothing ever happened. And yeah, I. But, you know, like, neurodivergent people. We are awesome. And you know what? That's cool. I like that. So I want to ask you one for me because Valentin probably. You know what? I'm sorry, man. I was just too excited. I forgot. So, Valentin, please, your stage is yours. I'm done.

But why do you stop? No, continue. I haven't got anything to ask.

No, perfect. So I wanted to ask you, Peter, like, when. You know, because I live on LinkedIn too, a lot. So I wanna. I wanna ask you, like, do you deal? Are you frustrated sometimes? When, like, I get frustrated all the time on LinkedIn when, like, I work a lot to provide great content that's not boring. And it's educational as well, because it takes a lot of, you know, to write something good when it comes to you. So then, you know, you. You get. I get frustrated when I see someone posting the dumbest shit when it comes to E commerce. Like, yeah, just send this discount campaign and change the headline in the email. Score. Save this post. And then you're like, I'm here talking about cognitive dissonance. It's like, why? Why, like, doesn't. Like, this is what I hate about social media. Like, I love LinkedIn. There's some people that I really like. There's some boring people as well, but like, it's frustrating to me as the more you use social media, like, probably to discharge all these energies is like you get frustrated because the bullshit is pushed further than the quality content. So do you ever get that frustration? Because I'm sure a lot of people that I see on LinkedIn right now watching are relating to that.

Yeah, I try to ignore it. I laugh at a lot of people's posts and I don't laugh and like that. They're funny posts. I laugh in what they're attempting to do. I laugh when you mock them. That actually is the best. And I should post something like, the sky's not blue, what do you think? And like some stupid thing like that.

Or agree.

Yeah. You know, I think actually what's most frustrating about LinkedIn is I haven't quite finished like an AB test study on this, but hate is loved more than love is loved. So I did a post about recruiters and recruiters are terrible. In any recruiter, recruiter that hears this, that's fine, you can hear it. I hate most recruiters.

Sorry.

But I, yeah, I posted about it and like, next thing I know, it's like a half a million views. And. And then that opened up a whole wormhole of spam connection requests where then I had to shut off the ability to connect with me. And I was like, this whole thing is all. This whole algorithm is all messed up. I post hate, which gets a lot of love, then gets a lot of spam, and now I got to shut things down and, and disappear and try and hide because I don't know what, I don't know. I don't know what keywords that triggered. But yeah, most of the time I, I laugh at people. I'm laughing at them, not with them.

Peter, you, you said that you, you hate recruiters. How do you recruit? What's your. I mean, part of the growth of any company, e Commerce or SaaS.

We don't use recruiters. We do have, we do have one. We have an internal recruiter, but we don't pay external recruiters now. It's. So honestly, how we recruit is a lot of my. LinkedIn is doing great recruiting and referrals. So once we get the engine running and get a bunch of people hired on, they start recruiting, referring like crazy. So we have a massive amount of referral and, you know, we have an awesome culture. That's not, it's not mine. It's my entire teams. We built an amazing culture that people just want to. They want to work here. They seek Us. So I think it's interesting I, I watch it that I have more people wanting to work for us than I have jobs available. So I don't need recruiters. And that's just a function of my team being out there and being who they are and hiring great people who then want to advertise how great it is and come work here. So it sort of. It's like a flywheel just sort of spinning.

How did you get your team to be so active on social media? Because everyone from your company is like, they're not enough. The ones I'm connected to are like, super Escape. Especially, like, she has a great content.

Yeah, no, I. Nothing's forced. We actually created an internal channel like LinkedIn ideas or something, and. And I on Slack, and I actually archived it the other day because it wasn't being used. I didn't want. I told people I don't want to tell them to go post. Like, if you want to post, post. If you. If it's contrived content, it's worthless content. So if they want to do it, great. It just happens. They like doing it. They like sharing things, they like sharing stories. A lot of them post. Like, Kate posts a lot about the product and about deals closed and whatnot. That's fine. I don't post that way and. But I don't tell anybody what to do and they can do whatever they want.

I just saw you guys just got a prize from NORA Awards in Australia. I think you just got a prize. Congrats for that. Was awesome to. To see you there. I. I went and voted for some people. I, of course, I got you all the time.

Well, thank you. We won votes. That was you. I don't know if it was one.

Vote, but it was half a vote, maybe. No, I saw because I have a lot of friends in Australia and that's how I met Kate, through someone that I knew from Australia and New Zealand. I just think a big part of the culture is also. Back to Valentin's question with recruiting. I think it's bad if you. It's too bad if you have a great company culture, but you don't show it to the world. So you can. It can, you know, bring people you know in. And I know that you and Valentina are both. I probably agreeing with one thing because both of you like to have the team in the office more than it's at home. And I saw the smiles at the same time. Epic.

Well, there's nothing can be replaced. The collaboration cannot be replaced over video. And if you just take a meeting. So take a meeting of 10 people in an office. Somebody's talking, two people are on the corner, they're having a sidebar, probably about the meeting, hopefully coming up with an idea like, hey, have we ever thought about blah, blah, blah. And then they rejoin the meeting and the meeting goes on. And they, you know, add that in and all those side conversations and talking on top of each other can't happen on video. Video's like one way. It's very difficult to talk over top of somebody. And you can't have two people talking to each other while somebody's presenting. That just doesn't work. You can slack each other on the backside. And then when the meeting's over, if you just watch people, like half them leave and the other half sit around talking about things typically work related. So you can't mimic that. That's number one. Number two is trust. You can't build trust in if you can't hang out. And then number three is like that water cooler talk. So I call this the fuck off time. So people fuck off all the time in the office. Like, you're lucky. You get like six hours out of somebody that's like, probably stellar. They're probably more like five hours of work. So that time in between at the office is, you know, you're what I call fuck off time is you're talking with like other employees and you're getting to know them, you're personally getting them, you're building trust. And. And you're probably also talking about work now at home, in between the zoom meetings where that 30 minutes that you have, you go like pick weeds or put dishes in dishwasher.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And it's not the same. There's no team building, there's no nothing going on. So that's the part that gets missed. And you know, some people are very good at remote work and understand it and can find their way into the conversation. But for a majority of the people, it's just not good. It's not healthy for them. I don't think it is. Now we have, out of 105 people, we have 12 that are hired as remote. So we're not against the idea of remote. It's just not. It's definitely not for everyone.

I agree. And I miss the office as well. And I used to be a remote worker, but then I got hired here and the vibe in the office was so fun. And then I just got knocked out because it was Covid that I had enough time on my hands. So I had the baby. So now I'm at home and I'm just trying to find reasons to come to the office for no reason. And I was just at the office the last week for that. And I miss the vibes and I miss. I used to sit next to Valentin. It's most likely that he's not gonna let me sit next to him after this whole pandemic, but I was sitting next to him. It was so cool because, you know, I could have just like, you know, it's like volunteers. This is the idea. Stop everything. Because I'm the type of person that was gonna stop everyone from working all the time. So I think a lot of my colleagues are very appreciative because I just get an idea and I'm like, if one is to stop pizza Thursdays. Pizza Thursdays. You know, like something like that. So I missed the office and I'm looking forward to going back. I vaccine myself. I just want to go back and do some great content from the office. And it's. Yeah, I agree with you. And I know Valentin does too. We miss the office. Everyone does. It's a different dynamics and it makes you be more focused. And I agree. I do work less than eight hours when I'm at the office. But I love youth Valentine. I love that. I love my job, but I'm productive. Like, that's what it means. You gotta be productive. I think we would get bored if we stay eight hours. Like, I couldn't imagine myself stay eight hours and doing the same stuff. I think I would probably go crazy than I am. So thank you for being here. I'm sorry that I had no line of questioning. It's just that I think you're a really, really cool person and I enjoy getting to know you through your content and finally see you and talk to you like this today. This podcast was brought to you by Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated E commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades ever. So go ahead, check them out. Vtex.com.