Wayne Stratbucker has seen both sides of the omnichannel equation. He's helped brands sell on Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop, and Instagram. He's watched clients try to modernize their frontend while their ERP runs on a green screen. And he's had it with the LinkedIn vaporware parade of "I built a full e-commerce app in a day."

Now, as Senior Ecommerce Strategist at Codel, Wayne works across the full stack of digital commerce — translating business goals into technical requirements, building omnichannel growth strategies, and pushing clients to fix what's broken before chasing what's shiny.

But Wayne's hottest take isn't about channels or platforms.

It's that the e-commerce industry is lying to itself about what AI can actually do today. Vibe coded checkout flows that can't survive an hour of UAT. Apps that look great in a LinkedIn post and fall apart the moment real money touches them. Wayne's argument: if you work in e-commerce, you know what a shippable product looks like. Start acting like it.

We also get into why your ERP is the single most important (and most ignored) piece of your digital transformation, the difference between first party and third party marketplace strategy, how AI is finally breaking down the data literacy barrier so non-technical stakeholders can actually use the insights they've been sitting on for years, and why personalization doesn't require a six-figure platform purchase — just Shopify Flow and some customer tags.

If you're a Director of E-Commerce who's been told to "do personalization" but can't answer basic segmentation questions yet, or you're staring at a backend system from the Clinton administration and wondering where to start — this one's for you.

Want any help Personalizing Every Customer Touchpoint? Check out https://Mobile1st.com

Interested in talking to Justin or getting on the show, find him on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinaronstein/

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