Today's guest is Jake Karls, a co-founder at chocolate factory & DTC brand Mid-Day Squares.

Jake's job goal is to grow their brand by building genuine relationships – with investors, buyers, journalists, and their 80-person team. He's done that with a content marketing approach that he describes as "starring in our own reality TV show" that includes real life therapy sessions and inspiring others to be unapologetically themselves.

Though Jake was recognized as an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist this year, his self-proclaimed “greatest accomplishment” was learning how to be confident in himself.

• middaysquares.com
• IG/@middaysquares
• Jake Karls on LinkedIn

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
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• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

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Today's guest is Nick Disabato, a conversion rate optimization consultant who believes "Ecommerce isn’t a video game. It’s relationships with real people, at scale." In this episode, we'll learn how his customer-focused mindset has helped in improve conversion rates and shift company cultures at the same time for his clients.

You'll hear:

• Design Mindset & Cognitive Biases
• Customer Phone Interviews
• Scary Tests, Tools, and where to start

Through his consultancy, Draft, Nick Disabato conducts research-driven optimizations of online stores, so they can grow without needing to increase their ad spend. Rather than running the usual marketing playbook, Nick uses design research as the fundamental tool for optimization. He also wrote design best-sellers Cadence & Slang and Value-Based Design.

• Draft - Nick's design consultancy
• @nickd's twitter rant
• Google Optimize - Split Testing tool
• Store Design - Nick's new mini how-to guide
• Hotjar - Heatmapping tool

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

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• See our recent work at Ethercycle
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Scott Brown & Tim Swindle are the creators of PaddleSmash, a new outdoor active game that combines elements of Pickleball and Spikeball.

Scott Brown is the co-founder of Marbles: The Brain Store, a retail concept focused on building better brains through play, which eventually grew to 40 stores, a website, a catalog business and a proprietary product division.

Tim Swindle created Utter Nonsense, an entertaining card game that was quickly carried by several retailers and ultimately within all 1,800 Target stores. Utter Nonsense was acquired in 2017 by private equity backed, PlayMonster.

What did the learn and where are they going? Today is all about product development in the toys & games space.

• PaddleSmash
• Tina Seelig: Can We Control Our Own Luck?
• Kickstarter: Utter Nonsense

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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• See our recent work at Ethercycle
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Today's topic is PR...

PR or "earned media" is very attractive. Authentic content and engagement that you dont have to pay for. Its like SEO for press.

Sounds great? So why isn't everyone doing it? Because it's hard and expensive.

As the host of a moderately successful podcast, I get a lot of pitches from PR firms and they're mostly awful. Or we've had clients hire PR firms and feel like they flushed $10K/mo down the toilet.

So how do you do it right? Like many things, the answer might be Do It Yourself, at least at first.

The attraction is clear. Who wouldn't want to be featured in Wirecutter, GQ, Engadget, Techcrunch, Forbes, CNN, Wall Street Journal, or even huge YouTube channels like iJustine. Our guest today has, and he's going to tell us how to do it.

Our guest today has been doing PR for eight years as part of his role at NOMAD GOODS. We're joined by listener & recurring guest Chuck Melber. During his tenure at Nomad he has established a strong foundation in advertising, email marketing, affiliate marketing, PR, and influencer marketing.

• NOMAD
• Cision
• Streak

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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• See our recent work at Ethercycle
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Our popular 'Ask Us Anything' series continues

We open with news of a ponzi scheme, then answer your burning questions.

We discuss:

• Maximizing your advertising dollars
• Shopify's share price
• Building the perfect ecom team

and more_!_

• Overhyped & Under-Regulated: Zadeh Kicks, the Sneaker Arbitrage that Cost Customers Millions

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
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• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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• See our recent work at Ethercycle
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A cookie brand born in Farmer's Markets discovers their mission after a chance encounter with the lead singer of Imagine Dragons.

This is the story of Wunderkeks, an Austin-based baked goods company specializing in cookies, and building safe spaces with those baked goods.

We're joined by Hans Schrei, co-founder of Wunderkeks.

• Wunderkeks
• Wunderkeks: About Us
• IG:@wunderkeks_atx
• Republic.com/wunderkeks

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
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• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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Move over Unite, the big announcements are now happening twice a year with Shopify Editions, Shopify’s new semi-annual showcase.

CEO Tobi says, “With Shopify Editions, we’re sharing our big bets and latest innovations in commerce so that those ambitious enough to try their hand at entrepreneurship can start and scale faster than ever before.”

There's a lot to explore, every time I revisit Editions, I find something I missed before. In this episode, we'll talk through the announcements we're most excited about.

• Shopify Editions
• B2B on Shopify
• Checkout Extensibility
• Discount Combinations
• Metafields
• Shopify Functions
• Planet by Shopify

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
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• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

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In this episode, our guest packages more than a decade of knowledge and experience into just a handful of immutable laws that can help savvy brands convert more visitors into buyers.

We're joined by Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion optimization firm that has helped globally-recognized brands like Nike, Adobe, Xerox, and The Economist exceed their ambitious growth goals.

• Opting In To Optimization - use code GOODFRIENDS
• thegood.com
• jonmacdonald.com
• Google Optimize
• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• Wikipedia: Mechanical Turk - Trivia!

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
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Our guest today didn't know what he didn't know when he started an apparel brand in 2009, and only grew to dislike it the more successful he became, so he eventually exited the business in 2017 to focus on digital marketing.

Today, he's a go-to expert on Facebook ads, with a lot of unconventional opinions, and a no BS approach that's refreshing in the marketing space. That's the kind of experience we can benefit from.

We're joined by Jason Portnoy, owner of JPORT Media, a 7-figure agency that has generated over $150M in revenue for their clients.

• jportnoy.com
• JPORT Media
• WaPo: US consumer confidence slumps to lowest level in 16 months
• Perfectly Mentored Podcast

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
• Join Kurt's newsletter

• Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group
• Leave a review
• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

• See our recent work at Ethercycle
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
• Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store.

• Learn the Four Pillars of Value
• Which deal types are available (its more than just cash)
• As interest rates rise, why you want to be SBA qualified
• Why you want to use accrual accounting to clean up your books

Elaine is an advisor at Quiet Light where she helps online-based businesses exit. She has a background in e-commerce and a track record of success in online business. She started her first profitable eCommerce business on Etsy in 2009 and has built 3 more businesses since, including a content site, an online subscription service, and a multi-million dollar fitness eCommerce brand that she exited through Quiet Light before joining their team as an advisor.

• Quietlight - They offer free business valuations and help with exit planning for online business owners. Anyone interested can contact Elaine at [email protected].

• Free 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email [email protected] and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".
• Back up your store with Rewind
• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
• Privy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMS

• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
• Join Kurt's newsletter

• Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group
• Leave a review
• Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

• See our recent work at Ethercycle
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
• Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store.