Bawar Ahmad has bought around 70 ecommerce businesses in six years, and the first thing he does after the money clears isn't marketing. It's ringing the vendors.

Summary

Bawar Ahmad co-founded Ecomma, a Dubai-based micro private equity firm that buys, scales and sells Shopify businesses. Around 70 acquisitions and 60 exits later, with a team of 40 and a target of 30 to 36 more acquisitions this year, he has turned what most people treat as a once-in-a-lifetime event into a repeatable system.

He walks Matt through the 12 to 15 "value drivers" his team runs on every store they acquire, why valuation comes down to just two things, and the mistake that quietly costs sellers a chunk of their exit. He also explains how Ecomma gets from first questionnaire to cash in the seller's bank in 14 to 20 days when the industry standard is three to four months.

Matt, who has bought and sold ecommerce businesses on very different terms, pushes him on the other side of the coin, which is growth by acquisition. If you're turning over a million and want to get to five, should you double from scratch or go and buy someone?

• 00:00 — Welcome, and two ecommerce dinosaurs meet
• 03:22 — Seventy acquisitions in six years
• 06:11 — The first deal, a declining shoe brand bought before Black Friday
• 10:04 — What happens in a seller's head once they decide to sell
• 12:28 — Choosing an advisor, and the clean-financials red flag
• 16:02 — Normalisation, SDE and the tax conundrum
• 17:51 — Fourteen days from questionnaire to cash in the bank
• 20:09 — Asset purchase or share transfer on sub-$2m deals
• 24:06 — Profit, risk, and the value drivers that run on day one
• 29:11 — Voice marketing as the third retention channel
• 32:48 — Where to start if you want to buy a business
• 35:25 — Due diligence is for understanding, not just verifying
• 38:32 — When the brand is built entirely around the founder
• 41:09 — Buy for the audience, not the niche
• 46:52 — Structuring a deal when you buy a competitor
• 50:31 — What Ecomma buys, and the free exit-prep checklist
• 53:22 — Saving the best till last, get your data room ready

(Chapter markers aligned to the episode video.)

The Day-One Phone Calls That Move the Numbers (24:06)

Valuation comes down to two things in Bawar's model, profit and risk. Ecomma either grows one or removes the other, and about 20% of the time they add value without touching profit at all — building a team, adding backup suppliers, getting better contracts in place, removing the dependencies a buyer would discount for.

The rest is a standardised playbook of 12 to 15 value drivers, and the first one he gives away is negotiating costs down. On day one, the team rings every vendor on the account. The Klaviyo bill, the PayPal transaction fee, the supplier, the 3PL. Then they ask for better pricing.

"You'll be surprised how much of the vendors were like, we're waiting for this call for some time." — Bawar Ahmad

He reckons that alone moves profit by roughly 20% almost overnight. On the payments line specifically, his framing is blunt.

"So on PayPal, we've added 20% of valuation on the first day." — Bawar Ahmad

The next two drivers are marketing ones.

• Creative volume. If a brand is shipping 8 new videos a month on Facebook, Ecomma pushes it to 20 or 30 and expects ROAS to follow.
• Untapped retention channels. SMS flows and campaigns get switched on, then voice.

Stack enough of those small percentages and, in his words, before you know it you've doubled the business in 90 days. His stated average across the portfolio is a 150% uplift in 90 days.

Don't Assume the Sale (10:04)

Bawar says he sees the same sequence in about 90% of sellers. Life changes, they Google whether they can sell, they land on a valuation form promising a big number, they list, and the interest floods in. Then, 30 or 50 conversations later, the buyers go cold and the seller starts drifting away from the business.

That's where the damage happens. New creative doesn't get made. The influencer deal gets shelved. Inventory doesn't get reordered. Performance dips, and buyers can read a declining chart as well as anyone.

"You don't want to run the business as you're gonna sell it." — Bawar Ahmad

The example he gives is illustrative rather than measured, but the shape of it holds. A business doing $100,000 profit a year at a 3x multiple is a $300,000 exit. Let performance slide during the sale process and that same business might fetch $150,000. Two or three more months of running it properly is, on his maths, worth the difference.

Clean Financials Beat a Good Pitch (12:28)

Bawar's third seller mistake is the one he came back to at the end of the episode when Matt asked for the best advice he hadn't yet given. Plenty of brands doing millions a year are still run on Google Sheets, with the car lease and the Uber Eats going through the same entity as the stock.

"It's just a red flag." — Bawar Ahmad

Buyers at this level often aren't ecommerce natives, so messy books make a business hard to underwrite and easy to walk away from. His fix starts at least a full financial year before you go to market.

• Separate every personal cost out of the business
• Get a proper P&L, balance sheet and cash flow reporting in place
• Keep the bookkeeping current and the invoices tidy
• Have the SOPs, systems and team documented alongside the numbers

Matt raised the obvious British objection, which is that a limited company owner legitimately puts as much through the business as possible to reduce their tax bill, and in doing so reduces the profit their valuation is built on. Bawar's answer is normalisation. Costs that are genuinely personal get added back as seller discretionary earnings, or SDE, and the valuation reflects the real economics — but that only works if the books are clean enough to prove it.

"You have to start thinking as an asset. This is a business, this is a system, it's not a lifestyle business." — Bawar Ahmad

The preparation argument runs into deal speed too. Both of them have a phrase for it.

"Time kills deals." — Bawar Ahmad"Deals are like concrete — the longer you leave them, the harder they get." — Matt Edmundson

That's what the data room is for. If a buyer asks a question and the answer takes three or four days to dig out, the deal cools. If the answer takes five minutes, it doesn't.

Fourteen Days, Not Four Months (17:51)

From the moment a seller returns Ecomma's questionnaire to cash hitting their bank is 14 to 20 days on average. An offer goes out within 24 hours of getting access, due diligence takes seven days, contracts add a couple more, then handover.

Bawar is clear that this isn't standard. A normal go-to-market process runs three to four months, and Matt's own exits have taken six. The gap exists because most buyers don't understand ecommerce well enough to move quickly, so they compensate with time and paperwork. Knowing the model means knowing which checks actually matter.

One structural note for anyone selling. Around 99% of deals below $2m are asset purchases rather than share transfers, so the buyer takes the assets and leaves the entity, its contracts and its history behind. Matt's caveat is that the tax treatment differs between the two, so talk to your accountant before you decide.

The Third Retention Channel (29:11)

Almost every Shopify store has an abandoned-cart email flow. A smaller number have SMS. Bawar's argument is that voice AI is arriving as the third one, and that 95% of brands haven't turned it on.

The mechanic is straightforward. Someone adds to cart and leaves, and roughly ten minutes later an AI agent phones them. It might be one in the afternoon, it might be one in the morning.

"These agents, the softwares never sleep." — Bawar Ahmad

The agent asks what they were looking for, hears the answer, and offers the discount code. Ecomma sees it add around 5% to revenue. The side benefit is the recordings, because you get to hear a mother buying a toy for a ten-year-old explain in her own words why she was on the site, which is intelligence that paid ads and email don't give you.

He expects it to be as ordinary as email within three years. Matt's gentler on-ramp for anyone nervous about letting AI talk to their customers is the voice memo, sent over SMS or WhatsApp, recorded by an actual human on the team.

Buying a Business to Grow Your Own (41:09)

For an operator doing a million a year who wants to get to five, acquisition is the other route. Bawar's filter for what to buy is not the product category.

"I would just go with audience first." — Bawar Ahmad

A skincare brand serving 35-year-old women with acne shouldn't buy a phone case company for the extra revenue, and shouldn't buy a mascara brand either, because that's a different customer wearing the same label. It should buy the supplement brand those same women are already asking about, and build around the audience rather than the niche.

Matt's live example is a vegan supplement business whose customers keep asking for two things, electrolytes and protein. The electrolytes are developed. Protein quotes from manufacturers came back in the hundreds of thousands of pounds to get started, which makes buying or merging with an existing vegan protein brand the live question.

Three things Bawar would tell a first-time buyer.

• Set aside 5% of the transaction for advice. On a $1m business, that's about $50,000. Rushing to the wrong advisor is the second most common mistake he sees.
• Use due diligence to understand, not just to verify. The seller has three or four years of hard-won knowledge about which buttons, which suppliers, which price points. Go in blind and you'll be a step behind them permanently.
• Run strategy sessions with the team before any money moves. Sit down with the people who'll be doing the work and talk through what happens if the deal completes.

"Put emphasis as the owner or as the buyer more on the understanding and let your advisors do the verifying." — Bawar Ahmad

Two risks he's paid for personally. The first is founder-led brands. Ecomma bought one built entirely around its founder, kept her on a compensation package with everything on contract, and watched the money change her plans anyway — holiday, thoughts of children, video quality and involvement falling away. A two-month dip, then another month or two to recover after replacing her. Now they either ask the founder to make themselves replaceable and prove the business runs without them, or they leave it alone.

The second is culture. When you buy a competitor and keep the owner involved, put a call or put option into the structure so there's a clean way out if you don't sync. Matt spends real time assessing values and culture before a deal for the same reason. Bawar's own preference is simpler.

"I think it's cheaper than figuring out the culture." — Bawar AhmadToday's Guest

Bawar Ahmad is a Founder at Ecomma, a Dubai-based micro private equity firm that buys, scales and sells Shopify businesses. He co-founded it with Wieger Sietsma after running Young Metrics, a paid-media agency that worked with around 400 ecommerce brands. He holds an econometrics degree from Erasmus University. Ecomma has completed roughly 70 acquisitions and 60 exits in six years, with a team of 40 and a target of 30 to 36 acquisitions this year.

• Website — ecomma.co
• LinkedIn — Bawar Ahmad
• Email — [email protected]

What Ecomma buys — brands doing between $30,000 and $1m a month in revenue, not seasonal, profitable for at least a year, and trading for more than a year.

Free from Bawar — email him at [email protected] (that's .co, not .com) and he'll send over his due diligence and exit-prep checklist, covering how to get your business ready before you go to market and the pitfalls to watch for. There's also a valuation calculator on the Ecomma website at ecomma.co.

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver ecommerce WOW with real talk about building online stores. Matt Edmundson talks to experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Subscribe at ecommerce-podcast.com for a new episode every Thursday.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/hes-done-70-acquisitions-day-one-he-calls-paypal-with-bawar-ahmad

Amazon is shrinking product titles to 75 characters from 200, enforced 27 July 2026, and Carolyn Lowe explains exactly what to fix first.

Summary

Carolyn Lowe spent years at Dell — including running the consumer side of Dell.com — before leaving corporate life to build ROI Swift, an Austin agency that helps consumer brands grow profitably on Amazon. In this episode she and Matt dig into the single mistake she sees most often, which is founders throwing more money at ads when the real problem sits somewhere else entirely — a weak product page, a poor main image, or a listing the algorithm can't read.

She shares the numbers behind her thinking, from the 18–20% of ad spend most brands are quietly wasting to the 25% packaging saving she found for one client, and the clean rule she keeps coming back to, which is that the main image drives traffic while the content drives conversion. There's also a hard deadline every Amazon seller needs to act on, plus why she prefers affiliates over influencers and why Amazon Business is worth a look.

• 00:00 — Welcome and two ecommerce "dinosaurs" meet
• 06:13 — Why more ad spend usually burns money
• 13:12 — Agencies that think like owners
• 23:48 — Grading a listing A to F and the 75-character title cut
• 26:20 — Main image drives traffic, content drives conversion
• 32:00 — Why Amazon is shrinking product titles
• 34:55 — Launching her own brand with Vine and TikTok affiliates
• 40:05 — Where AI actually helps on Amazon
• 45:20 — Saving the best till last, SKU analysis to Amazon Business

(Chapter markers aligned to the episode video.)

Why Throwing More Money at Ads Usually Backfires (06:13)

Carolyn's view is that most brands reach for the ad budget when sales dip, when the fundamentals are what actually need fixing. If a website isn't converting at 2–3% with an average order value under $100, or an Amazon listing isn't converting at 15–20% or higher, more spend simply pours good money after a bad page.

"If your website isn't converting at 2 to 3% and your AOV is less than $100, go back and fix your product pages." — Carolyn Lowe

She points to the 18–20% of ad spend she routinely sees wasted. On a £30,000-a-month budget, that's roughly $6,000 a month set on fire. One example she gives is a women's fertility product whose automated software kept spending on "dog, cat, horse, pet" keywords, which is why ROI Swift uses AI to analyse the data but keeps a human in the loop to make the call.

The Amazon Title Change Every Seller Needs to Action Before 27 July (23:48)

The most time-sensitive point in the episode is Amazon's move to shorten product titles. Titles are dropping to 75 characters (including spaces), down from 200, with enforcement from 27 July 2026. The change applies to all categories except media, and it's largely driven by mobile, which now accounts for the majority of Amazon traffic.

What sellers need to know:

• Over-length titles get auto-rewritten by Amazon's AI if they aren't fixed
• Only brand-registered sellers get a 14-day review window to adjust
• Amazon has added a new Item Highlights field (around 125 searchable characters), so total indexable space stays close to 200

Carolyn's advice is to go back in now, rewrite titles to be compliant and intentional, and get the most important product details in first — before Amazon does it for you.

Why Your Main Image Drives Traffic and Your Content Drives Conversion (26:20)

This is the cleanest framing in the episode. The main image is what earns the click in a crowded search result, so it's a traffic lever. The content further down the page is what turns that click into a sale, so it's a conversion lever.

"Your main image is going to get you more traffic. Your content is going to get you more conversion." — Carolyn Lowe

Carolyn shares a worked example. Changing a main image from a pair of shorts on their own to the same shorts worn on a person — so buyers could see whether they were 5, 7 or 9-inch — lifted conversion by around 30%. A follow-up change to the content added roughly 12% more, with no extra ad spend. Her category-by-category tips include putting the product next to its box to signal a legitimate brand over cheap knock-offs, and showing the fruit a flavour is based on so shoppers can imagine the taste.

What It Means to Hire an Agency That Thinks Like an Owner (13:12)

Carolyn's differentiator is that ROI Swift thinks like owners rather than vendors, looking at the whole business instead of just the ad account. That's how they spotted a packaging change that saved one brand 25%, switching floss picks from a bag to a box and taking $1 off every unit across 200,000 units a month.

It shows up in how they charge, too — a retainer to keep five specialists working on each account, plus a share of the brand's growth, so incentives are aligned. Their four core values run through the whole approach.

• Care about what you do
• Make it better
• Always be learning
• Glass-half-full mindset

"We sort of are in the business of making other people millionaires and billionaires." — Carolyn Lowe

Before they wrap up, Carolyn's parting tips are to start with a SKU-level benchmark of where a brand is today, and not to sleep on two growth channels — TikTok Shop and affiliates (she backs paying on sale over paying influencers for visibility), and Amazon Business, where 96 of the top 100 Fortune brands hold accounts and over $30 billion is transacted.

Today's Guest

Carolyn Lowe is the CEO and Co-Founder of ROI Swift, an Austin-based agency that helps consumer brands scale profitably on Amazon. ROI Swift has worked with 150+ brands and generated more than $100M on Amazon. Before founding the agency, Carolyn spent years at Dell, running a large division and the consumer side of Dell.com. She is also the author of Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'ts and a licensed pilot.

• Website — roiswift.com
• LinkedIn — Carolyn Lowe
• Book — Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'ts

Carolyn has also offered a free one-page listing audit for any listener doing $5,000 or more on a single Amazon product page.

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver ecommerce WOW with real talk about building online stores. Matt Edmundson talks to experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Subscribe at ecommerce-podcast.com for a new episode every Thursday.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/is-amazon-cutting-your-product-titles-to-just-75-characters-with-carolyn-lowe

Direct mail to your warm customers pulls four to five times the response of email, and most ecommerce brands aren't using it at all. This week Matt sits down with Daniel Dunn, CEO and co-founder of Paper Planes, to make the case that the letterbox is the reactivation channel hiding in plain sight.

Summary

Daniel Dunn spent years working on Tesco Clubcard data strategy before co-founding Paper Planes, a direct mail platform built for DTC ecommerce. (For anyone outside the UK, Tesco is the country's biggest supermarket and Clubcard is its loyalty scheme, one of the richest customer datasets in British retail.) His argument is simple. Most brands lean entirely on email and SMS to work their first-party data, yet a big chunk of that database never opens, clicks, or responds. Those people are prime for something tangible in the post.

Matt, who cut his teeth in direct marketing in the late '90s, digs into how the channel has changed. Dan explains why mail to warm customers outperforms email, how a single abandoned-cart postcard nudges buyers back, why hyper-personalisation lifts basket spend, and the second-purchase problem that has become the biggest challenge in DTC since COVID. There's also the Clubcard truth that one loyal customer is worth thirteen who just trial your brand once.

If you're planning your channel mix around email alone, this conversation will change how you think about where mail fits.

Why Mail to Warm Customers Beats Email

Dan's core point is about saturation. In the hour it takes to record the show, your inbox collects twenty or thirty emails. The postman, meanwhile, delivers three letters and won't be back for a couple of days. That scarcity is exactly why mail cuts through.

"In the hour it takes us to do this podcast, we'll have received 20 or 30 emails, whereas the postman came and delivered three letters, and I won't see that man again for another couple of days." — Daniel Dunn

The results follow. When you send physical mail to warm customers, such as postcard follow-ups for abandoned baskets or A4 mailers to win back lapsed buyers, Dan says the response is at least four to five times higher than email. Email should still sit at the front of your strategy because it's a high-ROAS channel, but complementing it with something physical is where the value compounds.

• Email first, because it's cheap and personalisable and works for certain segments
• Mail for the people who've gone quiet and stopped engaging with email
• A multichannel follow-up creates more value from the same customer than any single channel

The Abandoned-Cart Postcard That Lands on Day Seven

Dan walks through the mechanic. A customer fills a basket, then life gets in the way. The usual email flow fires at two hours, twenty-four hours, and seventy-two hours. If they still haven't come back, that's the moment to trigger a postcard, roughly on day three, so it lands around day seven.

The clever part is the tracking. Because Paper Planes tracks off the Shopify or Magento checkout, there's no need for a QR code, a discount code, or a microsite. You know who you triggered and roughly when they'll return, so the moment they hit the checkout you can see it. And if they come back via email first, they're stripped out of the postcard targeting, so you never waste the send.

"The beauty of tracking today off Shopify and Magento is you don't have to rely on a QR code, a discount code, or a microsite." — Daniel Dunn

This answers the two big objections to mail in one go. Cost, because you're mailing the handful of people who didn't complete checkout rather than your whole list. And relevance, because digital printing lets you hyper-personalise the card around the exact products the customer looked at. On average, Dan says getting the right product combinations in front of people lifts basket spend by 25 to 30 percent. His favourite example is a pet-supplier surprise-and-delight card featuring the customer's actual pet, "Stanley, it's your birthday," using an image already on file.

The Real Prize Is the Second Purchase

Abandoned-cart recovery is where most brands start, but Dan thinks the bigger opportunity is elsewhere. Since COVID, the hardest problem in DTC has been moving one-time buyers out of what he calls the "nursery programme" and onto a second purchase as quickly as possible.

"You'd be amazed how valuable direct mail is at bringing people back for that all-important second purchase." — Daniel Dunn

Mail recovers these second-purchase customers at rates you can't match through Meta, TikTok, or email. From there, Dan loves a loyalty play, trading people up into tiers and telling VIP cohorts about a launch first to build buzz. And it doesn't have to cost margin. Reminders and status messages, such as "here's how many points you have" or "thank you for being a valuable customer," can work as well as ten percent off. The rule throughout is test and learn.

That connects to the Clubcard truth Dan keeps coming back to. One loyal, committed customer is worth thirteen who trial your brand once and move on. So don't turn your back on your first-party data, and if you follow up on it, use personalisation, because that's where the extra sales come from.

You Don't Need Scale to Start

The old barriers, a list of 100,000 people and a couple of million in turnover, are gone. Dan's advice now is to plan mail into your channel mix from day one, the same way you'd plan SMS, so you understand how it works alongside email before you need it at scale. Paper Planes is releasing a Shopify app this summer that lets brands set up campaigns on templates with a small amount of free credit each month to dip a toe in the water.

Today's Guest

Daniel Dunn is the CEO and co-founder of Paper Planes, a direct mail and postal marketing platform built for DTC ecommerce brands. He's Vice Chairman of the DMA Print Council, previously worked on Tesco Clubcard data strategy, and runs a monthly newsletter on direct mail trends. He's based in East London, originally from Birmingham.

• Website — paperplanes.co.uk
• LinkedIn — Daniel Dunn (search "Daniel Dunn Paper Planes")
• Email — [email protected]

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast with Matt Edmundson is a weekly show for anyone building an online business, whether you're just starting out or running a multi-million-pound brand. Every week Matt sits down with founders and experts to dig into what actually works, from marketing and tech to story, growth, and the day-to-day of running a store.

• Full show notes and back catalogue — ecommerce-podcast.com
• Join the free eCommerce Cohort — a free, application-only community with monthly virtual sessions and regional groups. Apply at ecommerce-podcast.com
• Subscribe to the newsletter — at ecommerce-podcast.com
• Follow Matt on social — @mattedmundson

If you're part of the AI community, ask Sam to put you in touch with Dan and to help you think through direct mail ideas for your business.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/can-old-school-direct-mail-beat-email-marketing-in-ecommerce-with-daniel-dunn

There are thousands of software companies chasing the same small pool of brands on Shopify, and AI is quietly dismantling the bloated app stacks those brands built. Neal Goyal has spent eight or nine years inside ecommerce software, leading sales teams at names like Tapcart, and he now advises five or six earlier-stage software companies on how to grow. From that vantage point he's watching the "uninstall rate" surge as founders ask a new question of every app they pay for. Do I even need a tool for this at all?

In this conversation Neal walks through how the ecosystem commoditised in three waves, why agentic commerce is about to change the rules again, and why the answer for anxious founders is bracingly old-school. Stop chasing the shiny object, do the Business 101, and invest in the human relationships AI can't fake. Matt shares how his own software subscriptions have roughly halved while the amount his team builds with Claude Code has doubled, including a mobile conversion rate now 400 to 500% higher after a few hours of work.

In this episode

• [13:38] How so many apps ended up chasing so few brands
• [23:04] The great uninstall and why brands are tearing apps out
• [26:26] Shiny object syndrome and the case for Business 101
• [29:30] What the app stack can't replace
• [45:02] Neal's single best tip for anyone in the ecosystem

How So Many Apps Ended Up Chasing So Few Brands

[13:38]

To understand why app stacks are collapsing, you have to understand how they got so big. Neal breaks the commoditisation of ecommerce software into three waves.

The first was COVID. Brands on Shopify went from two million to four million "in a hot second", and an equally fast race kicked off to build the software companies that served them. The count roughly doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 almost overnight.

The second wave was AI as an engineering tool, around early 2023. Suddenly four people in a basement could ship a compelling, high-quality product in 90 days and offer it cheaply. Every category, from loyalty to reviews to mobile apps, got disrupted by a player built almost overnight. The count climbed again, from 10,000 to 15,000 in roughly a year.

The third wave is the one we're in now, and Neal thinks we're only at the start of it. Part of it is agentic commerce, the idea that forcing a customer to visit a website, add to cart and fill in checkout details is already starting to feel archaic.

"We don't really know what it's gonna be today. All we know is it's gonna be different than it is today." — Neal Goyal

The other part is what's already on your desk. The ability for the average person, with no engineering background, to build their own software. The effect of all three waves is the same. There is an alternative for everything, loyalty is thin, and a brand can sign off a tool as fast as it signed on.

The Great Uninstall and Why Brands Are Tearing Apps Out

[23:04]

Most Shopify brands didn't start with a business background. They started at the kitchen table with a dream and a Shopify account, and they figured it out as they went. Neal describes it as building the plane while they flew it, "like putting duct tape on the wings as it's taking off." Every new challenge, from COVID to tariffs to iOS 14, was met by looking left and right and asking the person next to you what they were doing.

AI hasn't changed that instinct. It's supercharged it.

"We've all become superhuman in our own light." — Neal Goyal

The reflex that used to be "which tool solves this?" is now "do I even need a tool for this at all?" And the result is showing up in the numbers.

"The uninstall rate of software tools in the last 90 days is huge." — Neal Goyal

Brands are quietly asking of each subscription, do I really need this, was my business really suffering without it, what value is it actually giving me. Neal is clear this isn't a bleak picture. It's a shift in mentality happening across the ecosystem, and he expects that mentality to look different again 90 days from now.

Shiny Object Syndrome and the Case for Business 101

[26:26]

The ecosystem suffers from a chronic condition Neal calls shiny object syndrome, and AI is its newest and brightest object.

"You bat your eyes and all of a sudden, next thing you know, you have this incredibly bloated tech stack." — Neal Goyal

The temptation right now is to believe that if you're not adopting every new AI tool the moment it lands, you're falling irreversibly behind. Neal doesn't buy it. There will be early adopters who benefit and pull ahead, but the learning curve is going to be gradual, because this is not a fad passing through.

"At the end of the day, we are still selling a physical good here. We're still selling a t-shirt. We're still selling a supplement." — Neal Goyal

His advice for the anxious founder is the opposite of urgency. You're almost certainly not behind. You only feel that way because of the few loud voices on LinkedIn and Instagram talking about it. The danger isn't that you're too slow to adopt AI. It's that you chase the shiny object instead of doing the unglamorous Business 101 that actually moves the needle.

What the App Stack Can't Replace

[29:30]

If software is commoditising and stacks are shrinking, what's left to compete on? Neal's answer is the part most people assume AI makes obsolete. The human stuff. As tools get more similar, the decision about which one to buy comes down to something basic.

"There's a lot of similar software like this being built, but I like those people more. They're really responsive, they're really kind." — Neal Goyal

As budgets tighten, a lot of software companies are cutting exactly the customer-facing people who build those relationships. Neal argues that's precisely the moment to do the reverse. He puts his own money where his mouth is. Of the ten largest deals he's closed in recent memory, he went and met all ten in person. Ten out of ten. Email, meanwhile, "is eroding, or completely eroded already, as a trust channel." When thousands of companies flood the same small pool of inboxes, the inbox stops being a place anyone trusts.

So the bet he's advising his clients to make is the counterintuitive one. Give before you take. Win attention rather than compete on features.

"We're not in the business of competing against other providers in the space for that brand's business. We're in the business of competing against every other software company for attention." — Neal Goyal

His single best tip, saved for the end, doubles as the whole philosophy. Forget the textbook and go strike up 20 interviews with operators who live and breathe this work. Walk in their shoes and you'll learn more than any course could teach you. He should know. He has an MBA in marketing and says the 20 conversations taught him more than the degree ever did.

Today's Guest

Today's guest: Neal Goyal

Company: SaaS Class

Website: http://saasclass.io

LinkedIn: Connect with Neal on LinkedIn

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-ai-is-quietly-killing-your-ecommerce-app-stack-with-neal-goyal

Most Amazon sellers who try Walmart copy their listings straight across — same title, same bullet points, same ad campaigns — and wonder why it doesn't work. Andrew Deramo has spent seven years on Amazon and now puts 40% of his working time into Walmart. His argument is simple: Walmart is its own search engine, its own customer base, and its own opportunity. Sellers who treat it like a second Amazon are leaving money on the table.

In this episode, Andrew walks through the strategy he uses with his own products and his clients at SellTru — from building platform-specific listings to using Walmart's account managers to place products on virtual shelves, running flash deals and tentpole events to build organic rankings, and eventually cutting paid advertising altogether once those rankings hold.

Key Topics

• 06:11 — Why copy-pasting Amazon listings onto Walmart quietly undermines brands moving across
• 09:59 — Why Walmart is far less competitive than Amazon (and could win long-term)
• 18:16 — The Walmart account manager (something Amazon simply doesn't offer) and what virtual shelf placement actually means
• 26:24 — Flash deals, tentpole events, the commission rebate system, and why you can switch off PPC once you rank
• 33:12 — Importing Shopify reviews onto Walmart listings, and why conversion matters more than the algorithm question
• 35:54 — The wholesale opportunity — finding Amazon brands absent from Walmart and becoming their Walmart seller

Treat Walmart as Its Own Search Engine

Andrew's central point is that Walmart and Amazon are distinct search engines — different keyword volumes, different customer intent, different listing requirements. The titles are structured differently. The bullet points are structured differently. The keywords that perform well on one platform do not automatically perform well on the other.

The practical implication is that a brand moving onto Walmart needs to build a Walmart-specific listing from scratch, using Amazon data as a starting point to be checked and adjusted against Walmart search data. Andrew is direct about why this matters beyond just keyword matching.

"Set it up properly the first time. It's really difficult to change once you're already on there."

The Walmart platform is less mature than Amazon's, and making changes to live listings — even something as routine as updating a main image — can take weeks to process. Getting the listing right before launch matters more on Walmart than it does on Amazon.

The Walmart Account Manager Advantage

A significant difference is the Walmart account manager — a Walmart employee assigned to a seller's account, with no equivalent on the Amazon side.

What an account manager can do is called virtual shelf placement. A seller shares the keywords their product ranks for on Amazon, and the account manager manually places that product on the relevant virtual shelves within Walmart's platform. This effectively bypasses the organic ranking process for those shelf positions, giving a new or growing product visibility it would otherwise take months to earn.

In 2026 the route to getting an account manager has changed. Previously sellers could request one; now Walmart reaches out based on GMV thresholds. Andrew notes that if a brand is doing well on Amazon, a Walmart account manager has probably already sent them an email trying to bring them across.

"Take that gift and run with it because they can be very beneficial."

Account managers also facilitate flash deals — a minimum 10% discount in exchange for placement on a high-traffic promotional shelf — and give access to tentpole events around back-to-school, Black Friday, and Christmas. During those events, Walmart offers commission rebates to sellers running Walmart-exclusive discounts: if a seller discounts a product 15% on Walmart, Walmart may cut its commission rate from around 15% down to 6 or 7%.

Andrew is attending the Walmart convention in San Diego this year specifically to push for a clearer path to account manager access for sellers who qualify but haven't been contacted.

Running Ads on Walmart — and Stopping

Walmart's advertising platform is less developed than Amazon's. Andrew recommends no more than three to five keywords per campaign, running those tightly focused campaigns for a couple of months after launch to build organic rankings. The key difference from Amazon is what happens next.

On Amazon, organic ranking positions tend to decay quickly without ongoing ad spend to support them. On Walmart, Andrew finds those positions hold for one to two months after cutting PPC.

"Once I see that my organic ranking is page 1 in a good spot for specific key terms, I'll cut that off — because it'll maintain its spot for a while."

The strategy that follows is to sustain sales velocity through flash deals and tentpole events rather than continuous advertising. CPC is lower on Walmart than on Amazon, but conversion rates are also lower — the platform has less established consumer trust. Andrew sees returns of 4x to 5x ROAS on well-reviewed products once they have some history on the platform.

Reviews and the Shopify Import

Reviews affect conversion on Walmart just as they do on Amazon. What Walmart allows that Amazon doesn't is a direct import of existing Shopify reviews onto a Walmart listing — sellers upload an Excel file, Walmart runs a review check, and the reviews appear on the product page.

Andrew is honest about the limits of his knowledge here: he's confident the imported reviews lift conversion, but less sure how much weight the Walmart algorithm gives them as a ranking signal. The conversion benefit is the clearer win.

"I'll get a review later and they'll be like, 'Oh, I read the reviews and this product was great.' But how much does it actually help the algorithm when you upload those? I'm not sure."

The ability to port verified reviews from an existing Shopify store removes one of the biggest barriers for new products on any marketplace.

The Wholesale Opportunity

Andrew's closing advice is aimed at sellers who don't yet have their own product but want to build on Walmart.

His suggestion is wholesale. Find small brands doing well on Amazon that have no Walmart presence — either because they lack the team, haven't prioritised it, or simply haven't got around to it. Call them. Ask for a wholesale price. Then take their product through the same Walmart launch process described above.

"Go to Amazon, there's tons of small businesses out there that have great products, that do great sales on the Amazon platform, but just don't exist on Walmart. There's an opportunity right there."

The logic holds because a product with a proven Amazon track record is exactly the kind of listing that Walmart keyword data and an account manager relationship can accelerate. It is a lower-risk entry point than launching an unknown brand, and there are a large number of Amazon-only brands who have simply never had the bandwidth to expand.

About the Guest

Andrew Deramo is the founder of SellTru, where he helps ecommerce brands grow on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. He has spent seven years on both platforms, started as ecommerce director for a large beach-supply business, and now runs his own product accounts alongside his agency work.

• Website: selltru.com
• LinkedIn: Andrew Deramo

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast is hosted by Matt Edmundson. Each week Matt talks with ecommerce founders and experts about what's actually working — practical strategies, honest lessons, and the kind of insight that comes from running real businesses.

New episodes every week. Find show notes, transcripts, and links at ecommerce-podcast.com.

Sign up to the newsletter to get each episode delivered to your inbox, and if you want to go deeper, check out the Cohort Groups — monthly calls with ecommerce people from around the world.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-win-on-walmart-not-just-amazon-with-andrew-deramo

Leo Rodriguez has spent years watching ecommerce brands quietly overpay on shipping, sometimes billed for 18 pounds on a parcel that actually weighs two. In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, Matt Edmundson sits down with the VP of a Los Angeles 3PL to pull apart the unglamorous moves that protect your margin, one parcel at a time.

Summary

Leo Rodriguez, VP of River Plate, Inc., joins Matt to talk through the hidden costs sitting inside every order you ship. It starts with dimensional weight, where a small product in an oversized box gets rated as a far heavier shipment, so you end up paying for air. Leo explains how "cartonization" and carrier rate-shopping can claw that money back, saving $2 to $3 per parcel for brands doing hundreds of orders a day.

From there the conversation widens out to the messier stuff. Leo breaks down why smaller brands got hit hardest by the new tariffs while bigger brands used their buying power to get manufacturers to absorb the freight. He and Matt compare notes on international shipping gray zones, customs nitpicking, fuel surcharges becoming the new normal, and Amazon's ever-growing pile of fees.

• 00:00 Welcome and meet Leo
• 03:58 The inventory and replenishment problem
• 09:51 Tariffs, Brexit and customs gray zones
• 21:29 Why small brands got hit hardest
• 25:29 Fuel surcharges and the new normal
• 29:02 Cartonization, save $2 to $3 a parcel
• 33:07 Amazon's fees and dim weight
• 41:17 How to reach Leo

Dim Weight and Cartonization, Where Your Margin Quietly Leaks

[33:07]

Dimensional weight is the formula carriers use to rate a parcel by the space it takes up, not just what it weighs. Put a light product in a box that is too big and you get penalised for the empty space.

"If you're putting it in a, you know, 12 by 12 by 12 box and weighs only 2 pounds... it's not a 2-pound shipment. It's getting rated at an 18-pound shipment." — Leo Rodriguez

The fix is cartonization, where transport management software reads the net dimensions and weight of your products and picks the smallest sensible shipper. Pair that with rate-shopping across a multi-channel carrier network and the savings add up fast.

• Brands doing 100 to 300 orders a day can save $2 to $3 per parcel
• Shipping cost can be more than your fulfilment fee on a per-order basis
• Regional carriers and zone skipping can halve transit time and cost on the right lanes

"They're saving $2 per shipment. That adds up. That's a margin protector." — Leo RodriguezWhy Smaller Brands Got Hit Hardest by Tariffs

[21:29]

When the large tariff percentages landed, the brands with leverage came out ahead. Big brands could go back to their overseas manufacturers and renegotiate, and in some cases get the factory to cover the full freight bill, between $4,000 and $9,000 a container.

Smaller brands had no such leverage. Many were left holding inventory they had already produced overseas but could not afford to import, while retail partners cancelled or halved the very purchase orders they had been banking on.

• Lead times stretched from 3 to 4 weeks out to 8 to 12 weeks
• Brands shifted to smaller consolidated shipments, nearshoring, and alternate-country manufacturing in places like Malaysia and Taiwan
• Standing up a new supply chain takes time, so the relief is rarely quick

International Shipping and the Customs Gray Zone

[09:51]

Matt and Leo swap war stories on cross-border shipping, with Matt's running Brexit gag as the UK parallel to US tariff chaos. On both sides of the Atlantic, free global trade turns out not to be that free.

Country-by-country rules are strict, especially on cosmetics and skincare, with Italy, Spain and Mexico all flagged. You can send 50 or 100 shipments through fine, then one customs agent nitpicks and the product gets stuck, disposed of, and the brand cops the bad review.

"Free global trade is not actually that free... it does require quite a lot of joined-up thinking." — Matt Edmundson

Leo's advice is to build item-level profiles, get the harmonised codes and packaging language right at the point of manufacture, and register properly for tax before you fire away.

Fuel Surcharges, Amazon's Fees, and the New Normal

[25:29]

Fuel surcharges jumped roughly 18 to 20% in two months, and the historical pattern is that surcharges ratchet up and never quite come back down. Plastics and packaging climbed 20 to 30%, hitting shrink wrap, poly mailers and bubble bags.

Amazon comes in for a closer look too. Powerful, yes, but fee-laden, with per-unit charges, ageing and seasonality storage tiers, FBA percentages, marketing fees, and a quietly added fuel surcharge in early May. Leo's case is for channel diversification, so you keep some control and predictability rather than living entirely inside one ecosystem.

"I am optimistic overall still. I think brands, you get smart and then you have to be resilient." — Leo RodriguezToday's Guest

Leo Rodriguez is Vice President of River Plate, Inc., a Los Angeles-based 3PL and fulfilment company serving DTC, wholesale and Amazon brands. River Plate handles fulfilment, logistics and international shipping, and Leo is happy to take a quick call to see whether there is a fit.

• Website: riverplateinc.com
• LinkedIn: Leo Rodriguez
• River Plate Inc on Instagram and LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected]

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver eCommerce WOW. Every Thursday, Matt Edmundson talks with experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Subscribe and find every episode, with full show notes and links, at ecommerce-podcast.com. While you're there, take a look at the free monthly eCommerce Cohort and Slingshot AI Mentor.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/why-your-2-pound-parcel-ships-like-it-weighs-18

Emma Burke didn't set out to start a business. She was standing on the sidelines of her son's football training in the wind and the rain when a parent looped an elastic band around a boy's boots so his laces would stop coming undone. Everyone else's kids retied their laces three, four, five times a game. His didn't. That was the moment Laceeze was born.

Summary

This is a founder story about turning a problem nobody was searching for into a brand sold around the world. Emma had trained as a vet nurse on £80 a week, then built a 60-person contract cleaning company she quietly dreaded, before spotting that elastic-band trick on the touchline. She didn't invent it. She saw it work, asked the parents and the kids whether they'd buy and wear a proper version, and took the answer to market. Laceeze launched in 2017 at £6 and is still going today.

She and Matt get into the marketing problem most product founders never see coming, which is customers who don't yet know they need you. Emma explains how she built the UK with no marketing budget through an ambassador programme, why selling to an audience of children means treating safeguarding seriously, and how being honest on social media (the wins and the bits that go tits up) builds the kind of trust that ads can't buy. There's a brave call she made pulling her best seller right before Christmas, the supplier relationship she rates above everything else, and a complaint she turned into a five-star review.

Key sections by timestamp:

• 00:00 Welcome, Liverpool to Bournemouth
• 02:09 The elastic band on the touchline, how Laceeze started
• 03:47 From an £80-a-week vet nurse to a 60-person cleaning company
• 05:41 Throw away the business plan (she's never written one)
• 10:38 Going full-time, and trying to crack the USA
• 14:42 When customers don't know they need you, the ambassador programme
• 17:39 Safeguarding kids, and a TikTok violation
• 19:14 Grassroots community and giving back
• 21:38 Founder-led and honest on social media
• 27:35 Winning customers for life when things go wrong
• 34:45 Free market research, competitor sites and an inspiration folder
• 37:16 The one she wishes she'd known, pulling the best seller at Christmas
• 40:17 The most important relationship in the business
• 41:18 Rapid fire, Shopify, Klaviyo and getting into Claude
• 44:54 The dream, the US and a big brand collaboration

The Accidental Founder Who's Never Written a Business Plan (02:09)

Emma is clear that she's no inventor ("save that for Mr Dyson"). What she has is a little black book of crazy ideas and a habit of acting on the good ones. Before Laceeze there was a vet-nursing career she loved and a contract cleaning company she grew to 60 staff on the back of a Dorset property boom, knowing, by her own account, almost nothing about running a business when she started.

"I'm not your textbook kind of business builder. I've never written a business plan in my life." — Emma Burke

Matt's seen the same thing from the other side. He once had a would-be founder spread every form she thought she needed across his boardroom table, business plan and all. He swept the lot into the bin so they could actually start. The point both of them make is the same. Begin with a real problem and the simplest possible solution, and let the rest snowball.

"It was never done like, oh, we're going to create this product and it's going to go global. It was literally, there's a problem, here's a solution, and let's just take that to market." — Emma BurkeWhen Your Customers Don't Know They Need You (14:42)

The hard part of selling Laceeze isn't the product. It's that nobody wakes up looking for it. A parent watches their kid retie a lace five times a match and never thinks twice about it. Building what Matt calls solution awareness is the whole game, and in the UK Emma did it with no marketing budget at all, through an ambassador programme that started with a few mums on the sidelines and a £9.99 pair of bands gifted in exchange for a tag.

"You've hit the nail on the head, because we've got a solution to a problem, but parents don't go looking for the solution." — Emma Burke

That programme is now a points-based platform with monthly challenges, and she's rebuilding it by hand in the United States, where the brand-recognition gap is the real reason PPC on Amazon wasn't growing. Because the audience is children, the work comes with a duty of care. Laceeze only sends to parent-run or clearly flagged accounts, and Emma is candid about a TikTok post of the product on a pitch being flagged for "exploiting children", with the appeal auto-rejected by a bot in about fifteen seconds.

Honesty as a Marketing Tool (27:35)

Emma's case for founder-led social media is simple. Tell the truth, including when a container's stuck or a shipment's delayed, because that's the reality of building a brand and people connect with it. Matt backs it up with a story of his own. One of his sites had its best month ever after a totally honest email about a stock shortage, telling customers they'd get one of six now and the rest later at the company's expense. Sales went mental.

The same instinct shows up when things go wrong. Emma describes a customer who vented on Facebook without ever contacting the brand directly. She moved them into the DMs, apologised, sent product, and two weeks later they were asking where to leave a review.

"Take the more negative, unhappy ones and see what you can do to resolve that. Because let's be honest, they're the ones that shout the loudest." — Emma Burke

As Matt puts it, the angry ones are at least telling you what the problem is. Going out of your way to fix it is the secret marketing tool no one talks about.

The Brave Call That Saved the Reputation (37:16)

Asked what she wishes she'd known sooner, Emma goes right back to the first Christmas. The bands started snapping, a cutting and manufacturing issue, and rather than risk kids finding duds in their stocking fillers, Laceeze pulled everything at peak selling season. It was gut-wrenching, every instinct told her to keep selling and just replace the faulty ones, but the unseen risk was the customers who'd never complain and would simply decide the product was rubbish.

"It's not just a rubber band. There's a lot more to it." — Emma Burke

They switched manufacturers afterwards and have stayed put since. Emma rates that relationship above every other in the business, a supplier with a UK office and a China factory, on her time zone, close enough to pick up the phone. The brave call cost a Christmas. It bought the reputation that carried the brand worldwide.

Today's Guest

Emma Burke is the Founder and Managing Director of Laceeze, the elastic-band brand that keeps kids' football laces tied and gives back to grassroots sport with every UK sale. She spotted the idea on the touchline of her son's training, launched in 2017, and is now building the brand in the United States.

• Website: laceeze.co.uk
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emma-burke-5bb73826
• Social: Laceeze on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok

About the eCommerce Podcast

New episodes of the eCommerce Podcast land every Thursday. Join the free eCommerce Cohort, our monthly group for ecommerce founders, at ecommerce-podcast.com/cohort, and find everything else at ecommerce-podcast.com.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-elastic-band-that-became-a-global-brand-with-emma-burke

Two people who each host a top ecommerce podcast sat down and recorded a single conversation for both shows. Brett Curry runs OMG Commerce, one of the most respected Google and YouTube ad agencies in ecommerce, and hosts the eCommerce Evolution podcast. Matt buys and builds ecommerce brands. So they did the obvious thing and interviewed each other.

Summary

This is a peer crossover, recorded once and aired on both the eCommerce Podcast and Brett’s eCommerce Evolution. The conversation splits cleanly into two halves. First, how to run an ecommerce business the way an investor would, even if you never plan to sell. Matt walks through what he actually looks for when acquiring a brand (culture and the founder before the numbers), the three ways to grow any business, why a 5% price rise can mean roughly 40% more net profit, and how turning buyers into subscribers and members can take an exit from a 3x multiple to an 8x one. He also covers the roll-up play, why strategic buyers pay the most, and Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth.

The second half is Brett’s territory, which is YouTube ads in 2026. Half of all YouTube is now watched on a smart TV, which changes everything about creative. Brett explains the five things a YouTube ad needs, how to turn winning Meta creative into YouTube winners, the mashup format that consistently performs, and why measurement is the trap that makes most people quit too early.

Key sections by timestamp:

• 00:00 Two podcasts, one conversation
• 01:30 Buying a business, culture and the founder over the numbers
• 11:52 How a small brand competes with Amazon
• 13:25 Jay Abraham’s three ways to grow a business
• 16:49 The price rise founders are too scared to make
• 20:04 How a business is really valued (3x and EBITDA)
• 21:33 Turn buyers into members, 3x to 8x, and the roll-up play
• 25:53 What private equity actually cares about
• 27:59 Build a business that runs without you (The E-Myth)
• 31:12 Why half of YouTube is watched on a TV
• 37:34 Turning your best Meta ads into YouTube winners
• 39:15 The five things every YouTube ad needs
• 43:00 Where to start, mashups of your top moments
• 47:56 The measurement trap (incrementality and attributed brand search)
• 51:30 Where to find Brett (and Matt)

The Three Ways to Grow a Business (13:25)

Matt first heard this from a Jay Abraham lecture when he was 18, and it still shapes how he reads a set of books. There are only three levers.

1. Grow the number of customers (he splits this into new acquisition and repeat customers).
2. Grow the frequency, how often a customer buys. If someone buys once a year and you get them to twice a year, all else being equal, you have doubled the business.
3. Grow the average order value, how much they spend each time.

The clever bit is the maths. Grow any one of these by 10% and the business grows by 10%. But grow all three at once and the business grows by about 33%, because each lever multiplies the others.

“If you grew your customer base by 10%, your business grew by 10%… But if you can grow all 3 things at the same time, your business grows by 33% because you start to see this geometric effect.” — Matt EdmundsonThe Price Rise Founders Are Too Scared to Make (16:49)

Most brands Matt looks at have not raised prices in a long time, usually out of fear of losing customers. When he runs the numbers, the increase almost always wins. For his businesses, a 4 to 5% rise has a minor impact on customer loss but a major impact on profit.

“5% increase in price is something like a 40% increase in net profit depending on your profit margins. That’s a massive chunk of change right there.” — Matt Edmundson

The other lesson here is conviction. You need real belief in the product (and in its quality) to hold a higher price, and Matt argues for buying and building only in a lane you understand. Amazon, he points out, can beat a small brand at almost everything except being you. Own that, and it is the one thing a commodity broker cannot copy.

Turn Buyers Into Members, and a 3x Becomes an 8x (21:33)

A billionaire client told Matt years ago that you value a business by taking net profit and multiplying by three. That raises the obvious question of how net profit is really defined, which is why people reach for EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation).

But there is a number Matt thinks ecommerce founders underuse. Take a brand making £1m in EBITDA, worth perhaps £2 to £3m at a standard multiple. Change nothing about the sales, but convert those customers into subscribers, or better still paid members, and the same business can be worth closer to £8m. The revenue is identical. The mechanism makes it predictable, and predictable revenue is what investors pay up for.

Brett backed this up from a friend’s recent agency exit. What the private equity buyer cared about most was simple.

“Really, all the private equity company cares about is the durability of the revenue… subscribers, much more durable. It’s predictable… instead of 3 times multiple, we’ll pay you 5 times multiple. Or 8 times multiple.” — Brett Curry

Two more moves came up. The roll-up, because there are far more small businesses for sale than buyers for them. Matt describes the inverse pyramid of buyers, where bigger businesses attract more bidders and higher multiples, so merging four or five firms into a £5 to £20m group both finds you a buyer and raises the price. And the strategic buyer, the competitor who already has the warehouse and distribution, who values your gross profit rather than your EBITDA and so pays more. Matt’s beauty business sold that way. The underlying advice is older than all of it, which is read Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth and build a business that runs without you.

YouTube Is a TV Platform Now, and That Changes the Ads (31:12)

Brett has run YouTube ads since 2016 or 2017, and the platform has shifted under everyone’s feet. Somewhere between 50% and 60% of all YouTube views now happen on a smart TV, and that is the YouTube app, not YouTube TV. It is also the number one podcast platform. People engage with podcasts on YouTube more than on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

That matters because YouTube creative is its own discipline. The good news, which is new, is that winning Meta, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok creative can now work on YouTube if it meets the right criteria. Brett’s five things a YouTube ad needs:

1. 30 seconds or longer. Assets under 30 seconds rarely drive meaningful scale.
2. A voiceover or someone speaking on camera. People watch YouTube with the sound on, and adding a voice lifts engagement by around 30%.
3. A product demonstration, seeing the product actually in action.
4. Social proof, whether that is reviews on screen or UGC in the ad.
5. A clear call to action, because most people will not click on their own, so you have to tell them what to do.

The format Brett singles out as a consistent top performer is the mashup. Take the best moments from your 10 to 15 strongest videos and order them into a single 16:9 narrative, hook then demo then proof then desire then objections then a call to action. That landscape format also opens up all the TV inventory.

“What is consistently a top performer, or the top performer, is creating a mashup of those top moments… how can we weave those moments from these top 10 or 15 ads into one narrative?” — Brett CurryThe Measurement Trap (47:56)

The thing that makes most people abandon YouTube too soon is that it is genuinely hard to measure. In-platform metrics severely undercount it, and so do multi-touch tools like Northbeam and Triple Whale, because they are click-based and most people do not click on YouTube. Often they cannot, because they are watching on a TV. What they do instead is search for the brand afterwards.

So Brett measures three different ways. Incrementality studies through a service like Haus, which runs scientific geo holdouts. Conversion-lift studies that Google and Meta can run at the user level. And one metric you should ask your Google rep for by name, attributed brand search, which shows how many brand searches each campaign drove after people saw the ad. Haus found that a YouTube campaign showing a 1 ROAS in platform is, on average, actually delivering around 3.4x once you account for the incremental impact.

“If you just look at in-platform metrics for YouTube, severely undercounted… most people don’t click. Most people are on YouTube to watch their favourite podcast.” — Brett CurryToday’s Guest

Brett Curry is the CEO of OMG Commerce, a Google, YouTube and Amazon ad agency widely regarded as one of the best in ecommerce. He hosts the eCommerce Evolution podcast and is a long-time student of two questions: how to make marketing work, and how to prove it did.

• Website: omgcommerce.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry
• Podcast: eCommerce Evolution

About the eCommerce Podcast

New episodes of the eCommerce Podcast land every Thursday. Join the free eCommerce Cohort, our monthly group for ecommerce founders, at ecommerce-podcast.com/cohort, and find everything else at ecommerce-podcast.com.

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/two-ecommerce-podcasters-walk-into-a-studio-with-brett-curry

He runs five businesses with zero employees, and he's never written a line of code in his life.

Summary

Dmytro "Dima" Negodiuk calls himself a fractional AI officer, a title his own AI agent came up with. From New York, he runs five-plus businesses across ecommerce, B2B distribution, retail, education and AI consulting, all orchestrated by a single AI agent, and without a marketing, IT or sales department behind him. In this conversation Matt and Dima get practical about where an ecommerce founder should actually begin with AI, why Claude Code is the on-ramp even for people who've never touched the tech, and how to point it at the biggest problem in your business rather than treating it like a toy.

They dig into the difference between playing with AI and deploying it, the 24/7 use cases that hand small stores an unfair advantage, and why a human still has to stay in the loop. Dima shares his AI call centre running on its 44th version, the meeting "dossier" that knows what golf game you lost twelve years ago, and the overnight autonomous work that means he checks his AI before he brushes his teeth. Matt offers his own mobile-optimisation story, where one podcast transcript turned into a scoring tool and lifted mobile conversion by over 400%.

• 00:00 — Three takes and a fractional AI officer
• 04:00 — The AI that works while you sleep
• 09:24 — Letting AI run your real life
• 16:00 — Where is all this heading
• 18:35 — Start Claude Code today
• 21:00 — When AI gets it wrong
• 26:48 — Start with your biggest problem
• 37:46 — Mobile conversion up 400%
• 40:25 — The dossier and cleaning the mess
• 43:23 — An AI call centre that never sleeps
• 47:58 — The best AI tip, save it for last

Why a Fractional AI Officer Runs Five Businesses Alone

(01:00)

Dima describes a model that would have sounded impossible a few years ago. He runs more than five businesses across ecommerce, B2B distribution, retail, education and AI consulting, all sitting on top of one AI agent. As an entrepreneur who has never coded, he's replaced the departments he used to run with AI.

"I never wrote a line of code in my life. Never. So I had like marketing system, marketing department. I have IT department, sales department, everything. Now I'm like sole entrepreneur." — Dima

He points out that the title isn't just his invention. The big AI labs now hire for the same role under a different name, the forward deployed engineer, at starting salaries north of $300,000. The word that matters in both is "deploy".

"Main word deploy. So you need not only to know how to, for example, create it, you need to know how to deploy it and all the system need to work." — DimaWhy Claude Code Is the Place to Start

(22:00)

For founders who feel AI is passing them by, Dima's advice is blunt and encouraging at once. Start today, start with Claude Code, and don't be embarrassed about how little you know.

"When I saw my first video and it says open terminal on your MacBook, I ask ChatGPT like web version, what is terminal? And I'm not shy about it." — Dima

A few practical pointers from the conversation:

• Search YouTube for a "Claude Code for dummies" video and begin with the basics.
• Skip the cheapest plan if you intend to build. Dima suggests starting on the $100 plan rather than the $20 one.
• Treat ChatGPT or Codex as a reviewer sitting on top of Claude Code, sense-checking the work. A $20 subscription is enough for that job.

Matt agrees it's a genuine on-ramp, and adds that the choice between tools is a bit like Apple versus Android. Dima uses Claude Code for ecommerce; friends building crypto trading bots reach for systems that fire requests many times a second instead. Stick to what fits your niche.

Start With the Problem You Actually Have

(27:00)

The most useful starting point, both agree, is the biggest problem in front of you. No product? Ask for product ideas. A product that won't sell? Ask for marketing ideas. Then check the output, because AI gets things wrong.

Matt tells the story that makes the case. After Adam Pearce came on the show to talk about mobile optimisation, Matt fed the episode transcript to Claude, had it extract the key ideas, research and score each one, and eventually build a tool that audits a website against current best practice.

"Mobile conversion on our website so far is up almost 500%. It's definitely over 400% increase, um, on mobile conversion. You're talking about hundreds, if not millions of pounds worth of difference." — Matt

Dima frames the same idea around two questions worth asking of any business. Where are the problems AI could help with, and what are the repeated tasks you could automate? A one-off phone call is quicker to make yourself. A task you do every day is worth handing over.

"Now your knowledge and your ideas it's your best benefit because everything else will Claude do for you. But one thing he can't do, it's like, I think, to dream and to generate really brilliant ideas." — DimaThe 24/7 Use Cases That Give Small Stores an Edge

(31:00)

This is where the conversation gets concrete. Dima runs an AI call centre built on 11Labs, now on its 44th iteration, with Claude analysing each call and suggesting improvements. For his granite pavers business, where staff sometimes step away to help with a forklift, it means no missed call ever becomes a lost customer.

"If you will not answer immediately, the client will go to someone else who will answer immediately." — Dima

The point isn't novelty, it's the round-the-clock cover that small companies usually can't offer. A customer with toothache at 2am who can't reach a dental practice will phone the next one. The business that answers wins.

He also describes a meeting-prep skill he calls the "dossier", which spends hours researching a person from open sources and then advises on how to approach them. And for mid-sized businesses drowning in mismatched spreadsheets and systems, he makes the case that you don't need to rip anything out. You put AI on top, let it find the mess, and let it clean the data.

"It's how it works that each day you have some kind of ideas, new ideas, and you wanna make it live... It's like I call it like some kind of AI addiction." — DimaAI Is a Co-Pilot, Not a Pilot

(14:00)

For all the enthusiasm, both are clear that a human stays in charge. AI hallucinates, apologises, and moves on, but it doesn't carry the consequences. Matt mentions a man fined £30,000 by the tax office after letting AI file his taxes incorrectly. The AI says sorry. The person pays the bill.

"This is why I often talk about AI needs to be a copilot. It can't be in charge." — Matt

Dima ends on a characteristically direct note. The pace of change is so fast that even the labs won't forecast more than a couple of months ahead, so the only sensible move is to get in the water and start.

"You just need to sit and you just need to understand that if you will not spend at least 10 hours per day learning AI now, AI will— someone will control you who is now doing this." — DimaToday's GuestToday's Guest

Today's guest: Dmytro "Dima" Negodiuk

Company: Negodiuk

Website: https://negodiuk.ai

LinkedIn: Connect with Dima on LinkedIn

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/hes-never-written-a-line-of-code-in-his-life

Two founders, both wildly successful, just gave completely opposite advice about whether ecom operators should build a personal brand — and Matt is running a 90-day experiment to find out which one is right for founders like us.

Episode Summary

Davie Fogarty (the $200M-a-year founder behind The Oodie) reckons founders shouldn't bother with personal brand until they're past $10 million — the opportunity cost of a single YouTube video runs to roughly $3,200 of founder time, and that money tests paid-ads creative far more effectively. Daniel Priestley and Alex Hormozi argue the opposite. AI can now replicate most of what a founder does, but it can't replicate lived experience — and the window to build that moat is closing fast.

Rather than pick a side from the cheap seats, Matt is running a head-to-head test for 90 days. Organic Instagram versus paid Meta ads, with a real commercial outcome on the line — signups to Slingshot, Aurion's new AI-for-ecom membership. The methodology is borrowed from Matt's 22-year-old son Zak (the Nutritionist), who went from zero to 100,000 followers in seven months using a four-step loop — Find, Decode, Replicate, Iterate. The niche is deliberately tight (AI workflows for ecom operators under £5M), the lab is Matt's personal Instagram, and the numbers will be published either way.

Chapter Timestamps

• 0:00 — Cold open — Davie vs Daniel
• 5:18 — Welcome
• 6:03 — Act 1 — The £10M Question
• 20:44 — Act 2 — Zak's methodology
• 29:39 — Act 3 — What Matt learned from 15 videos
• 41:43 — Act 4 — The playbook
• 56:23 — Act 5 — The 90-day bet
• 1:06:58 — Wrap + the Lab Kit

Key TakeawaysThe £10M Question — Two Smart Founders, Two Opposite Answers (6:03)

Davie Fogarty's argument is built on opportunity cost. By the time a founder has planned, scripted, filmed, edited, and replied to comments, a single YouTube video costs roughly $3,200 of founder time — money better spent testing paid-ads creative until the business is well past $10 million.

Daniel Priestley's counter-argument is built on the moat. AI can write the copy, design the ads, even handle support. The one thing it cannot do is be the founder. Lived experience is becoming the only defensible asset a Digital David has — and Hormozi's 35,000 pieces of content a year shows what going all-in on that thesis looks like.

"Relatable beats impressive. Founders, when we're honest, have a real edge here — because we've been through the mess." — Matt EdmundsonZak's Four-Step Loop — Find, Decode, Replicate, Iterate (20:44)

Matt's son Zak grew from zero to 100,000 followers across Instagram and Facebook in seven months, built a recipe-book business off the back of it, and is about to launch his first app. The methodology is brutally simple — find videos that work in the niche, decode why they work, replicate with a personal point of view, and iterate based on real engagement data.

The lesson hiding inside that loop is the tea towel test. Same script, same person, same camera — but a tea towel on the shoulder lifted engagement. A few degrees of camera tilt lifted it again. Most founders make content based on what they think looks good. The audience always tells a different story, but only if someone is systematically testing.

What Transfers From Creator Advice And What Doesn't (29:39)

After running 15 top videos in the audience-growth space through MAGPIE, Matt found a clean split between gold and creator-economy fluff.

Gold:

• Kallaway's "pick one platform for six months" rule — commit fully before even thinking about expanding
• Chantal Leonhardt's audience-naming trick — naming the audience directly in the title (e.g. "for your small business") pre-qualifies the click and lifted her performance 15× over baseline

Fluff to ignore:

• Vanity-metric opens ("This month I did 32M views") — these actively repel founder audiences
• Daily-grind cadence advice — a recipe for burnout when social is the seventh priority on a founder's list, not the first

The 90-Day Bet — Real Numbers, Either Way (56:23)

Instagram-attributed Slingshot signups versus paid-ads benchmark, measured over 90 days, published openly. Phase 2 is taking the proven playbook into Aurion's other brands — Vegetology and Seven Yays — once the founder version has been pressure-tested.

Resources

• The Founder's 90-Day Instagram Lab Kit (free) — the Decision Sheet, the Tea Towel Test Worksheet, and the Founder Content Scorecard, all in one pack. Grab it at ecommercepodcast.net/resources
• Slingshot — Aurion's AI-for-ecom membership. The full 90-day playbook, plus SAM, MAGPIE, Prism, and Scout — all the AI tooling Matt is running this experiment on. Details at ecommercepodcast.net/slingshot
• eCommerce Cohort — free, application-only community where ecom founders solve real problems together. Monthly 90-minute virtual sessions, regional groups (UK, AUS-NZ, US). Apply at ecommercecohort.com

About The eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast is a show dedicated to helping you deliver eCommerce WOW with real talk about building online stores. Every Thursday. Join Matt Edmundson and guests, experts and founders who've been in the trenches, built the stores, and learned the hard way — so you don't have to.

Host: Matt Edmundson

Connect with Matt on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattedmundson/

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattedmundson/

Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/90-days-cracking-instagram-for-ecommerce-with-matt-edmundson