Welcome To Ops Unfiltered

Jared Ward 0:09

What's going on guys? This is Jared. I'm the founder and CEO of Luminous and we're here for Ops Unfiltered. So Ops Unfiltered, we have the dirty conversations of the really difficult ops, the operations that go on behind the scenes. So we have Hamish. Hamish here. He is the founder of Order Editing. Hamish, can you just give us a quick intro? Where are you at, man?

Hamish McKay 0:31

Yeah, I'm a colonan from Mexico City, but originally a Kiwi Kid, so from New Zealand. And I'm a Shopify app founder. We're doing seven figures a year on the app store. Started about just over a year ago. And um yeah, currently at the very start of a world tour to uh keep growing our app in the US and in Europe and in the UK.

Can Shopify Be The System

Jared Ward 0:51

Dude, you've been you've been crushing it. Um how many clients are you guys at right now? Just cross 1400. Oh my goodness. That is explosive growth. Congrats on that growth, man. I'm curious. I so Luminous, we're in the we're in back-end systems. So, you know, like it's like Net Suite, Fulfill, Syn7, uh Luminous, we're we're kind of there. I'm curious, there's been there's there's been this trend happening where people are trying to use Shopify as their back-end system of record and just sort of bolster it up with a bunch of different apps. Are you seeing that trend or uh what are you seeing there? Do you think somebody can actually run an eight, nine-figure brand with just Shopify and a bunch of apps?

Hamish McKay 1:31

Most of like the eight or nine-figure brands we work with have like, you know, ERPs or something more complex or like data's data warehouses backing it up. Uh, but there are a few founders I know who do like, you know, from the like zero to maybe 30, 40 million US a year range, GMB, that are running like extremely lean teams, extremely lean tech stack, and just like mega profit. And they're just running like almost on this like secret source, like other brand founders are cluttering things or e-com managers, like putting on all these different apps and hiring all these different people. And there's like a there's a class of founders, I feel like, that think that they're like, you know, they're running the leaner stack, like both people-wise and tech and just like general complexity, and it crushes. That is awesome.

Jared Ward 2:12

Do you think it's just a mindset thing? Like, is it just uh they just want to be as lean as possible?

Hamish McKay 2:17

I mean, I liken it like I don't know, I'm not I mean, I work brand side, but I've never been a brand founder. I liken it to like the software space where there are founders out there who want to grow like a two million dollar year company solo, and that is like entirely possible in tech, 100%. Uh be damn hard, but it's possible. And then there's the other side of those founders who are like trying to get to IPO or get to like a hundred million dollar revenues and grow this big massive business with the funding rounds behind them. Uh, and then there's probably like a sweet spot where where most of us sit. But I think there's something to be said about when you start a business like brand or tech, I think there's a there's a class of founders who just go out and do things and like ride the wave of we want to be as big as possible. That's difficult. And then there's the wave of founders who go, I'm gonna intentionally build the business that I want to create, which is like low head count, little politics. I don't want to manage people, that's not my vibe. Like I just want to have like three really close friends working on this with me and let's try and make as much money as possible. And I relate to that quite a lot, you know.

What Order Editing Actually Solves

Jared Ward 3:18

That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I've I've seen such a such a big change. I mean, you see like in the 2010s, everybody was fundraising. They were just doing this like unprofitable meta arbitrage where they're just pumping up revenue numbers. I'm really happy to see the shift in both e-commerce and in tech towards profitability, which I at the end of the day, that's all that really matters. So I'm I'm curious. I'm always I want to dive into order editing and first off, what what are the main use cases that you solve for modern brands? What what do you guys do?

Hamish McKay 3:48

Yeah, I mean we let customers make changes to online orders after checkout. And like the problem space of that is that somewhere between one and two percent of all online customers will make a mistake at checkout, they'll put in the wrong address, they'll forget their discount code, they'll forget the product they want to bought, they'll buy the wrong size or variant, and we let them self-service that fix rather than like interact with a chatbot or contact customer service, ring them up, those types of things, or just receive the wrong package. It was this gap that I stumbled on while working in customer service a couple years back for a um a merchandising studio for YouTubers. And like shit, you know, I I had a full-time employee editing orders every single day. Like that was all that they did was make changes to orders because customers were reaching out saying, like, hey, ShopPay filled out the wrong address or like that's my ex-girlfriend's house. Can you change it for me? And um, you know, I was 22 at the time. It was like a university internship. This was like an assignment that I submitted to like my New Zealand university was the order editing portal. What happens if we let customers do this themselves? Like, what would that do to our business? Admit that we could grow like 20 or 30% that year in our hiring four agents.

Jared Ward 4:57

Like our support team just didn't scale beyond 10 agents. Well, you you tell me my brand is back in 2019. I just remember a big part of the daily process was we'd go into ShipStation or Shopify and we'd just go through every single order and we'd see which okay, this one, this address looks correct. We we did customization, so we would also look through the like ah, but it looks like they mistyped this name. Is that also what you're talking about? Like those typically there's a brand daily, they go through the order queue and they just have to make the same edits over and over again. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Hamish McKay 5:27

Yeah, we do three things, right? We do self-service editing so you don't get support tickets. We do address validation so that like orders with incorrect addresses go on hold. They don't go to ship station until like the customer fixes it or you fix it. And we prompt the customer like, hey, your address is wrong, self-service to this. And then we do upsells. So we do like post-purchase, product upselling, trying to increase items per car in AOV. Because what we I mean, what we did was like we created this entirely new surface point post-checkout where the purchase is converted, it is finished. What happens if for 15 minutes they can keep shopping from the store, they can update their address, they can make any type of change to their order that the brand lets them, and then you send it to the warehouse, and then you send it to NetSuite or your 3PL or whatever it might be. That is like your app in a nutshell. So brands do all sorts of quirky things, right? They'll do 10% off for 15 minutes after purchase. Like browse the store, add those to your cart, like it updates the original order number, it ships out as one, it's address validation, it's it's everything.

Jared Ward 6:22

Something I tell I can tell you naturally do is you naturally sell the value instead of the thing. Like your your company's called order editing. So that's that's super straightforward, but you you're so clear on the value. Like we increase AOV and we decrease issues. We decrease order issues so you can grow your business. That's really cool. How do you think you're able to get so clear on that, even just you know, a couple years in? Normally it takes years to understand like the actual value you're providing.

Hamish McKay 6:48

You know, people will describe our product as as really simple. And it is, like it's it's simple to explain. And that's a big reason why we went with the name order editing and something like uh, I don't know, West Bam Bob or like some, you know, some creative flary word. It was like, well, if we own autoediting.com, when people Google customers keep reaching out to asking to change their orders or like self-service order editing will always be number one and you'll see the link and you'll always know what we do. And then I mean like you're a you're a founder. I mean, I've I've spent the last two years describing this to people, whether it's on sales calls, and invest things and lecture theaters, on podcasts, like it's um it's all it's all that I do. I I live and breathe this product. Me and my co-founder both do.

Jared Ward 7:27

Well, Hamish, you've had the opportunity to work with so many seven-figure brands, eight-figure brands, also nine-figure brands. So first off, nine-figure brands, they're not as common, uh at least on Shopify. They're not as common as people think. About how many nine-figure brands do you think there are out there? I'm pretty sure there's like a smudge over 200.

Hamish McKay 7:46

Yeah, we've heard the same thing. It's like a smudge over 200, and I know that because we work with about 10% of them.

Jared Ward 7:52

So what what do you think? I'm I'm curious to get your feedback on what has been the difference in diving into the operations of a nine-figure brand versus an eight-figure brand. Are there any things that that stand out to you?

Hamish McKay 8:05

It's funny because it's it's inconsistent. Some have tons of hoops to jump through and are like quite political and and challenging to get things on and you have to really advocate for a new technology internally like to get things adopted. And then some people just like move at the speed of light and you'll meet them and then the next day, like they'll they'll implement tech or they'll get signed off because the founder's super hands-on or whatever it might be. I think it's the same point of like different different brand founders built their brands in different ways. You can probably tell like Sean Frank at Ridge or like Jason at Xglad or like whatever it might be work phenomenally different to the founders at Rafi's or the founders at Tom's or like whatever it might be. Because it's just like a different they've built their company in different ways. I think the hierarchies are probably different. Um, like the internal leadership, like autonomy that people might have might change. And then I mean between seven and eight and nine figures, I think it's a feeling of abundance and confidence and and the feeling that your head is today. I think there's a lot of like anxiety or even purity or like rat racy type of vibes uh in some seven or eight figure brands because they're trying to go up that chain and they can see where this is heading to and the growth is still super fast and it can kind of change at the speed of light. Uh whereas the nine figure brands I feel like are are quite quietly calm or like are quite are quietly kind of growing and building in confidence. So at least how like I perceive it when I meet these people.

Jared Ward 9:26

Give us a sense for the size of this problem. What has been your best story of transformation with order editing? Like what impact did it make to the customer?

AI Summaries And Cancellation Debate

Hamish McKay 9:34

Yeah, I mean, the the best case studies are of the nine figure brands. They're the ones where they come to me and like I want to talk about fast shipping fashion specifically, like really high volume fashion, like Poly or Ameshki. They come to me and they say, Hey Hamish, we receive somewhere between two and three thousand support tickets every month from customers asking to change their order, right? That's like 3,000 anxious customers that are worried their order's gonna go to the wrong place or like with the wrong products. And they say, we ship out orders in like 45 minutes an hour. Sometimes we're not staffed 24-7. Sometimes there's so many tickets that we don't get to answer those tickets before it ships. And we like ring up the warehouse or contact them and they say, sorry, Penelope, like that order's already gone out. That customer is receiving the wrong item or that package is going to the wrong place. And as a CS agent and like the CX manager, when they're talking to me, they go, I ask them, what do you do? What do you do when the order's already shipped and the customer's asked to change their address? And you have responded, they sent it five minutes after purchase, and they go, Well, we do hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but this customer spent their pocket money on us. We're gonna send them a new package to the right place and like revive that experience and not have this be like a transaction that they never got the value from. And that's a huge net loss at like two or three thousand support tickets a month. The brand adopts us and the next day, you know, Lauren wakes up and she goes, Hey Hamish, we only got like 10 of those tickets today. Or we used to get hundreds or eight hundred. And so like the feeling is very night and day where you wake up and there's maybe 15% less work in the help desk. Because that's what it is. Like they just you just don't get the email. It just doesn't happen because the customer's using this product and it just like works in the back end. Flip side of that, there's also like the other things we do, right? And the upselling is probably the easiest metric to measure where a brand like Hexclit puts us live right before Black Friday before their peak sale, and they do a hundred thousand dollars of net new sales on like no extra discount, just Black Friday prices in the first two months. And it's alongside alongside like Michael waking up and having 15% fewer support tickets, both at the fucking same time. That is incredible. That's the magic. That's the magic. It's like it's a full-time employee's worth of work being saved that you can then reinvest into something else, and it's the actual paid for itself tenfold in revenue.

Jared Ward 11:54

I'm curious, in especially you you hear some of the use cases of AI being used in in CX. Have you guys dabbled in AI at all? I'm I'm curious if if you're exploring that.

Hamish McKay 12:06

Yeah, for product recommendation engines, and then there are features coming out soon which will like because we we log all of the actions the customer takes in the order timeline, and we're starting to write AI summaries of exactly what the customer did. So an agent can go in and understand how people are using the tool. Like, oh, like Jennifer came in, she swapped her like dress in small for a for a blue, uh, for a medium, and then she added like the socks to her order, and then she actually decided she didn't want the socks and she bought the heels instead. Like that type of thing will get agents that they can understand how people are using this. And that'll be really powerful when it comes to like we do self-service order cancellations, very controversial. Do you let them self-service or cancel? Um, but the neat thing about that is that we can collect the data on on why people are canceling, uh, surface that through like AI reports and summaries, and then pull out uh retention strategies.

Jared Ward 12:57

I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. What do you think is controversial about self-service cancellations? Like what is the debate there?

Hamish McKay 13:02

I mean, a fair of buyer's remorse, right? Like they've bought the product, they've seen the money go out of their account, they regret it, they cancel, and the brand is like, I know if they got this in their hands, they wouldn't return it. And so there's like a conflict of interest there. It's still something that we're like, you know, we're still in the in the place where we have like relative like strong opinions, but quite loosely held. Because I think there's still so much more data to collect here, especially across different categories. My opinion is if you get a lot of order cancellation emails to the point where it's like a burden on your customer service team, just self-service. Like that's uh you don't want to be doing all of that work manually, just let the customer do it themselves. If it's not a big issue for you, if you get maybe two a day, three a day, like I would continue to do them yourself and um dishandle those like in the way that you always have. But like big nine figure brands, um, they almost always have the feature turned on because you just get so many cancellation tickets and they're a pain in the ass and you don't want to answer them.

Jared Ward 13:56

Um then I'm guessing you can uh you were alluding to getting the data of why somebody would would cancel. I I I imagine that data is so valuable.

Hamish McKay 14:06

Yeah, I mean like but when we first launched, like when we first launched the product and we had the feature, the number one reason why people were canceling was because they forgot to apply a discount code. So we like in a few weeks built I forgot my discount code as a feature and they could like type in their discount code and get the discount code. And then suddenly the cancellations process through the app would half because people weren't canceling their applying the code. The same thing happened with like I need to switch my payment method, really common reason to cancel. So we put that feature into the app too. So it's kind of guiding our product development in the same way that like when we when we first started this product, you know, we built it off of our experience working in brands and CS. As the products evolved, like our early adopters, I asked to go into their ZenDesk or their gorgeous or their customer and like read through their tickets, see their reports, and then that guided the features that we built because in there would be like, you know, you get so many tickets for this, I think we could do that self-service. Why people really care about that? And it kind of shaped the core product.

Product Roadmap Beyond Editing

Jared Ward 15:03

That's incredible. Do you still feel like you guys are you're still early stage in the sense that you're iterating that quick still? Like you're still going into gorgeous and zendesks and asking your customers the next use case to solve for? Oh, 100%.

Hamish McKay 15:16

I mean like dude, we're like we're not even like six people. Where but like it's six people, we're doing like 1.1 million a year, like we're 30 months. Awesome. We're chill we're children, like we're literally just starting out here. We have a really sophisticated product, but there's so much more we can do with it. The way that I describe it is like I believe we've solved the core order editing issue, like the common tickets we are doing in the in the way that we could. Where the product like can and will expand is deeper into the address validation market. There's a lot of friction in that market at the moment with how those apps work and like the level of functionality that they have and order editing's unlock some like new value there. So we're like streaming down that path. Um, and then as well as that the upselling side of things, like how do you maximize this 15-minute remorse period or like self-service period to get customers to upsell because they're already converted, you're breaking the purchase into smaller chunks. How can we leverage things like free shipping thresholds or like you're not on the bundle yet, or like all these different types of offers? And then, you know, there's a whole world over there of some things you can't do self-service, but maybe AI could guide you through and you and you could go in the chatbot realm. But one of the things that I love that we did was when we started this company back in like December 2023, me and my co-founder sat down and we said, like, what do we want to build? What are we trying to achieve here? And like what is like the real what do we really have a lot of conviction on? And it was always that great customer experiences are of self-service when they can be, and and any other any other way they're a human touch, like when necessary. And so we're pretty centered on self-service rather than getting customers to like communicate and and type emails and things like that.

Jared Ward 16:54

Are there any cool you because you guys are still iterating like crazy. Are there any cool use cases that you're working on right now? Like, oh, this this is gonna be cool.

Hamish McKay 17:03

I mean, the most exciting one is like customer checks out. You don't have address validation in the checkout because you don't want to affect conversion rate, maybe. Reduce the friction. They go through checkout, our address validation flags that there's an error in that address. We immediately stop that order from getting downloaded from your ERP, your warehouse, your 3PL. You send the customer an email with the correct address, ask them to accept it, they click accept, their address updates in Shopify, and it gets sent down to the ERP.

Jared Ward 17:30

That's very cool.

The Five Year Vision And Exit

Hamish McKay 17:31

That's super exciting. We're doing a lot of work at the moment with high-end like furniture brands and other brands that do delivery dates and we're like letting customers reschedule the date of their delivery and like push things out in the future because they're not going to be home or whatever it might be, super valuable for pre-orders. The subscription space is super exciting. Like there's a whole there's a whole world of opportunity that's gonna unlock when we start doing more integrations with other tech partners, uh, particularly like in subscription space. Yeah, it's incredible.

Jared Ward 17:59

What is what's the five ten year goal? You talked about how you you guys inherently believe part of your core values is you think there's a lot of things that can be self-service in on order issues. Is there a a bigger end goal to this? Is it like, you know, I want to build a gorgeous competitor or like I want to change CX? Like, is is there something there or is it just like not? Just like this cool tool.

Hamish McKay 18:20

Yeah, I mean, the five-year goal is that I like wake up in the morning and whenever I buy something online, I interact with a version of our app. Like whether it's ours, it's some competing product, there'll obviously be other players in the space, and that's on every single online purchase. Like 15 minutes of grace, 30 minutes of grace to make a change to your auto check out is table sticks, and it's everywhere. And the world goes, I know the guy who started that, or like his name is Hamus, like he started that. I want that. Like that's my ego coming through. That's like a really important thing to me. In parallel to that, I will not be the CEO of that company. In five years' time, I'm not.

Jared Ward 18:54

I'm not running it.

Hamish McKay 18:55

Me and my co-founder, when we started out and we talked about what are we trying to achieve here, we said we're gonna build a $20 million acquisition target and we're gonna own the whole thing. Uh, we're not gonna dilute or or like raise a lot of money. We're gonna build a $20 million acquisition target and then someone else can go and scale it to like $10, $20, $30 million of revenue. And the reason for that is because in five years I should be teaching kids and lecture that is or like on the internet or running some form of like community with people that are my age currently, you know, like between 20 and 23. Uh-huh. And they want to achieve 10x, what I ever did. And I get a teach off the back of like this experience and potentially others. But this like quite frankly, I'm 23. When I'm 25, I don't want to be managing 30 employees. Like not my dream. Uh, that's not how I want to spend like my, you know, mid to mid to late th mid to late twenties. Uh I want to be doing like a more of a passion project type of thing and having that be funded by this like extreme period of hustle and and growth that we're going through at the moment. And like maybe the IPO company comes later in my 30s, but like this is such an amazing experience. I think it's really exciting have a very having a very clear end goal at and date and like understanding what my why is, like why we do this. And I don't know, I don't know about you or like people listening, but I really struggle to work at my best when the objective is unclear. And I find like be as big as possible to be super unclear. Whereas like, hey, I reckon we could build a $20 million company in three years, uh, that's very clear. You can just work back from that and go out of and do it.

Fundraising Based On Personal Goals

Jared Ward 20:25

Yeah, I can I can only do it one year at a time. Uh like I mean, I have a big goal at the end of the road, but like I can only really see one year at a time. I'm I'm curious, how do you how do you view fundraising? You talked about how you want to raise as little money as possible. Uh have you guys fundraised at all?

Hamish McKay 20:41

Uh we raised 75 grand. Um yeah, at like an average of maybe like a three mil val or something. So we've diluted diluted very little. And that was from brand founders, agency owners, people that could unlock distribution for us was a key part of our go-to-market strategy. I don't know if you've seen like icon recently, Canon's product. Yes on like massive scale, like all of the brand founders are invested and you can see how it works. Everybody is talking about it, and we we did that on a smaller scale. And I mean, my view on fundraising is like do whatever best fits your personal goals. I think my dis like if I if I was to have any distaste towards fundraising, it would be like uneducated founders not doing the work on what they want to achieve, like answering that question of like what do I actually want to get out of this? And if you say like I want to make a hundred million dollars, if that's your goal, like go fundraise. Hell yeah. Yeah, you gotta shoot the moon, like hundred mill is or like I want to go through an IPO experience, like yeah, go fundraise. But if you're doing this to like retire or build a lifestyle business or to like get to a point where you have kind of like ten people and you've got a nice culture and company environment and you're d doing a positive thing on the world, then like maybe you don't need money to do that and maybe it'll be a hell of a lot easier without the money. 'Cause like speaking From my experience firsthand, uh, the way that we've built our business has been extremely liberated. There's no external pressure. Um, it's all like the pressure that we put on ourselves. It's all very self-motivated. And I think it's a really like it's an experience that I've enjoyed a lot.

Jared Ward 22:14

Um I had a podcast with uh Parker Burr. He was the founder of Feet, one of the co-founders of Feet, is Feet Clothing. They're like a darling D Disc brand in in Los Angeles, it's like uh hoodies. He gave such a good story about the exact same lesson that you just said. He was just like, you know what? Like we fundraised like crazy for feet. And like we were just, it was always like, yeah, we're just we're gonna push, it's gonna be pelled to the metal. We're going for it, we're going for nine figures. And he talked about how like eventually one day he just got so burned out. And now he just asks the question. He's like, what do I want to do? And now he owns an agency. It's a super simple email agency, email marketing agency for D2C brands. He will never have more than five to ten customers, extremely profitable, just him, maybe one other person. That's it. And he loves it. And I agree. I mean, so many founders don't ask that question. They just think they need to go for like the $100 million exit, the billion dollar valuation. And yeah, I couldn't agree more. That's awesome advice.

Hamish McKay 23:16

I think what adults are really good at, like people in their 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s, that like they kind of teach downwards is like the ability to design your life. And they do it because you know they may have children or partners and they like design their life around them because that's where they get the most of their joy and it's important to them. It's really hard to do that in your early 20s because you have no responsibilities, like no nothing. Like you're just like in this like desert of trying to create something and it's quite it's quite hard to envision like what life could or like would look like and even feel like because you just haven't experienced anything outside of high school yet. I think the I one of the conversations that I was having recently with um someone in Mexico is just like once you commit to a decision of like how you're gonna build your business and what you go after, you do put yourself in a box. It's very hard to turn around from where you're at and change the objective. And I think that can't be discounted. If you raise money, if you like raise proper money, you are on that path. It's very hard to turn out of that into a lifestyle business. You know, like that's not okay. I don't know what happens if you want to do that. Like, what do your investors say? Are you allowed to? You probably get fired and they bring someone else in. The same thing applies to us. Like, I'm not building a lifestyle business. I work like 18 hours, 16 hours a day, I work on the weekends, I like travel non-stop to meet customers, and I'm like always relatively low energy. Fucking hard. And like that's not a life. I'm building like a big I'm building a medium-sized business. Like, that's my goal. And I have employees. I put food on the table for people we're actively hiring to continue to grow towards that goal. I can't just turn around and fire everybody and make like 500 grand a year with my co-founder. Like our company would die. Like we're in this box now. We have to go achieve that goal. And I think you want to make damn sure when you get like halfway there, you know, that you feel like you're still progressing towards the right goal. Could could you could you imagine doing two years of grind being halfway to where you like want to be and then realizing I hate this.

Jared Ward 25:20

That would that would suck. That'd be a hard one. Yeah. But you know what? Even if you do realize that, yeah, no, especially fundraising. I that's why I try to I've asked, I've had so many conversations with VCs, other founders, and what I've learned is to keep optionality alive. This is the general advice that I've gotten. It's basically if you want to keep optionality alive to be able to everybody's gonna be hi high-fiving and and celebrating for a $20 to $100 million exit in your space. Okay, you can't raise more than six or seven million dollars. That's it. As soon as you start getting above that, then it's kind of a hundred million dollars or bust. So that's where we've kept it so far. And our next raise is it's if we do it, we know we're what we're signing up for. It's like, okay, we're we're going for a hundred million or bust. Um yeah.

Hamish McKay 26:16

So and like these, like, you know, I I don't have any distaste for it. Like I think the you know how people took like the people talk about on LinkedIn, like the confrontational and that gets you all the likes. Like, I think anyone who shills the idea that like you're wrong for raising money or like you idiots, like the best way to build your business is this. I think it's like super close-minded. Like I think there are idiots for for saying things like that. I think the reality is like we all take fulfillment and enjoyment and purpose and want to work on different things for 10 years. Like that guides you. And just because you think like just because your dream is to run like a chill, profitable company does not mean like that's someone else's dream. And I mean that's the beauty of it. Like I look at I look at the guys out in SF, like the guys building pylon at the moment, it's named like Marty or something. I look at that with so much joy and excitement. I'm just gassed for it. Like they did like a 25 million round, they're growing like the speed of light, they have this awesome office content, and it's cool to watch, and you can tell they love it. Like, hell yeah. How could you possibly say they're doing it wrong? They had it so much fun. Exactly.

Tools Modern Brands Need To Win

Jared Ward 27:18

And they're gonna check what do you want? What do you want to do and reverse engineer that? And and apply a high level of scrutiny with it. Do you actually want that? I love it. So you've on a pivot to this is this will be one of my last questions. You've come into contact with so many brands and you've seen their tech stack. In fact, I see you post on LinkedIn about certain brands' tech stacks, and you'll list out the um everything they're using. What are some tools that you need to win as a modern commerce brand? Like, what are some tools you absolutely can't go without?

Hamish McKay 27:48

It's funny, like I I actually don't beg that question to a lot of people. But when I think about like designing my tech stack, and I only I only really have experience in in CX. I have no idea what the like the Ma tech stack looks like or types of things, but like Lord knows I would definitely have a self-service returns bottle. I would be wanting to sell cross-border. I'm a huge advocate for like growing globally. Maybe your US brand is a little bit different because you've got so much tan. Like if you're in the UK or you're in Australia or New Zealand, like start building your brand overseas and use cross-border to do it. Get your help discs sorted out and cleaned up. There's actually a really cool tool called Dixa, which is like a a help disk that I think they're based out of um Denmark, Copenhagen. And I learned about this on the weekend. Like haven't haven't like come across brands that use it, but the way that they describe it is you like for me as an agent, I thought this was really cool. When you're an agent, you just get like a stack of tickets in a queue and you just go through it out at the top and you work your way through to the bottom. And I used to manage like so many agents that would just skip past the hard tickets and they'd go, Oh, someone else will pick that up in the queue. Yes. Someone else would do that. Like I'll do the really fast high CSAT tickets because that's what I'm incentivized to do. So they send you tickets and you have to accept it. Like you have to work that I give you, and then you have to work on the next ticket that I give you. So there's no like hiding from hard things or like laying stuff off to other people.

Jared Ward 29:15

That's really interesting.

Hamish McKay 29:16

It's also um it's also very targeted what it what it gives you, right? Like if you're an expert on um materials or like production or whatever, like you'll get all those related tickets and and you'll work in your niche. I thought that was I thought that was really neat.

Jared Ward 29:28

Is there any material difference between some of the CX tools like Gorgeous and Zendesk? Or are they all about the same?

Hamish McKay 29:34

I think they're all like tailored towards different types of problems. Um it's been a while since I've like, you know, I I used to use Zendesk and then I moved to Gorgeous. Zendesk, I think, is like dying is is everything that I hear. Like everyone's just bagging on it, um, at least in e-com. And I mean I enjoyed it like I found like a really easy interface to use. I didn't find it super sexy. Gorgeous was quite sexy to use and it was quite modern and like they had the whole CSM arm built around it, which was really nice. You know, I think they do I think they like they built an AI, which is quite unique. I don't know how much AI the other tools are built in. They're probably all doing it now. I don't know. There's a lot of like heat-on help desk at the moment for what they charge, but at the same time, I mean, I think they are like seriously complex and robust tools and they deliver a shit ton of value. Like I think I don't know, I don't know.

Jared Ward 30:23

It's an interesting space. There's a tool that I interviewed, um, Bryce. He's so he's the founder of Xamo. Have you heard of Zaymo? Hell yeah. Uh super cool. That's the obvious more tech. So the the one that you just brought up, that was you said Dex Dexa?

Hamish McKay 30:36

Dexa, D-I-X-A, yeah. So that's a help desk. But I just found like it was a unique approach to how they do things. I mean, Xamar is like another great example of that, right? They took this like old, old technology of being able to like interact with emails and like brought it back to life, revived it and and modernized it and and like played it into e-com. And you can see the power that it drives. Like it's just so easy for the customer to turn that into a subscription or like um a I don't know, the full feature suite of what they do. But I think that's like genius. It was just like this again, like dead real estate or like this new service point that that didn't previously exist and then they created it and they and they rebirthed it. And now brands are catching on to you know the next the next opportunity to leverage.

Jared Ward 31:21

What about um any other Shopify apps that are awesome to use besides order order editing? Like bundling apps or like anything that that you've seen?

Hamish McKay 31:32

GiftNote is a really cool app out of Australia, so like quite close to home. They do they do like the gift messaging experience and they make it better. But the thing that I find really cool and marketing leaders find really cool is that if you're a gifting store and like let's say 40% of your revenue is from giftors, you don't collect the recipient's email. So you're sending ads to the person who like bought the product as a gift for someone else. Like I buy I buy dresses for my for my girlfriend or my wife as like a present, and I start getting ads from Meshkey and Baby Boo, and it's like, why are you sending me these ads? Yeah. That will give you my girlfriend's email so that you can send her ads after she receives the product as like a gift. And so you can start targeting the people who actually use it and collect their data, which I found really neat. It made me think like how you know, if you are a gifting brand, how inefficient is your ad spend because you're just like spanning. That's so true. Right, but not the ones actually using it, consuming it, enjoying it, who are gonna like pay it for to the next recipient, right? So I don't know about you, like when I receive a gift that's really good. Like nine times out of ten, I buy that gift for someone else. Yes. Thanks for yeah for next year's Christmas present. Like that's awesome.

Jared Ward 32:41

Awesome. Well, in anything else that you would add to you know this new modern tech stack? Anything out of the the normal players, clavio, gorgeous. Aside from Luminous? No.

LinkedIn Growth And Building In Public

Hamish McKay 32:56

I mean, I don't know, like like swap. I don't know how popular swap is in in the US, but that is a tool that is just like taken over the UK for returns and cross-border. They kind of planned that like consolidation of your tech off your post-purchase tech stacks piece, which is neat. The thing that I love about them is like, you know, I'm a I'm a SaaS founder, I'm not a brand founder. I I look relatively less intensely at tools and their value. I more look at like their go-to markets and how they're building it and the people that are working. Because I like, I mean, I'm trying to learn from everyone, right? Like I'm trying to learn how to be CEO and how to manage employees and how to build teams. And swap, I think, have done a really incredible job of that. They have this like amazing BDR team that posts videos on LinkedIn every single day and are building an audience just like take me like I'll take you through a life, like work like a day in the life working at Swap. And it's just like exciting to watch. The crazy thing for that, like for other tech founders listening, is I've been on calls with merchants and they go, oh, like I've been looking at swap, like what have you heard about? I want to use it. And they go, Oh, like I've heard really great things. Why do you want to use it? Like, why would you switch from what you currently use? And they go, it just seems like they're really cool to work with. It's like it's such an eye into you know the mindset when people say you partner with tech. Like people just want to work with good people. They want to have like fun in their job, an enjoyable day, work with like products that are fun and easy to use and like the teams behind it are part of that. And I think that's super interesting, especially for the the build-in-public wave that's going through at the moment. And like, you know, we're leaning into that as well. We build in public on LinkedIn and it kind of explains why it why it works so well. Because people are like emotionally attached to our product and and me, and that's that's why they want to use it for some in some ways. The point where like 80% of our revenue comes from LinkedIn posts. Wow, that's it's ridiculous.

Jared Ward 34:42

It's incredible. Wow. It's ridiculous. What have would have been your most effective LinkedIn posts?

Hamish McKay 34:46

Personal anecdotes. Like my my my mindset is that like people want to work with winners. Uh like I want to work with other like vendors who are winning and that are like enjoyable. And so a lot of our content arrols around like the successes that we're experienced and and just like openly sharing when we grow and and how we grow and um you know, traveling the world and things like this, because it just exudes a feeling of confidence and stability and that like everyone else is using this why aren't you, like a little bit of FOMO. The other posts that do really well are like, you know, we all have when you're like sitting at a bar and it's like late night, you're having a deep, meaningful conversation, you're a little bit drunk, like the the voice pipes are loose, and you're talking about like things that uh shaped your life. You know, for me it was like rowing in high school was where I learned how to work really hard, or like dropping out of high school was where I learned that I enjoy like being outside of my comfort zone and I'm a little bit independent and I'm like a bit of a life designer. Those stories, if you share those on the internet, uh you'll find that like a lot of people relate to them. Like I'd posted about rowing and how it shaped me as a founder, and I'd get like 20 or 30 messages from people in e-com or outside of e-comm, some like e-com managers saying, like, man, I think about this so often, how like my my experience as a D1 athlete like got me to where I was like head of e-commerce. And um those personal anecdotes where you let people get to know you, I think, are really um important and also just enjoyable to share, provided you're not like a closed book. Like I I like sharing.

Jared Ward 36:21

Um I think it's a nice way to live. That's awesome advice. Honestly, so Luminous, we build in public as well. And it's such a good reminder of because I've been going through a bit of a a dry spell on LinkedIn, meaning like I just I haven't been past post posting as much recently. Like there just hasn't been as much enjoyment. And that just reminded me, it's like, yeah, you know what? Like just be an open book, post about post about the random shit that they're that we're winning on re recently, or just post about the stuff that's hard right now.

Hamish McKay 36:49

I find it gets really hard when you're quite isolated. Um, but when you are like out conversing with people, especially like you don't want to post. I feel like the when you post something on the internet, you don't really want to like circle jerk with other millionaires or people who wait. Like I think it's really boring to to read unless you're like like us. Like I enjoy reading it because I I relate to it. But like 99% of people in the world are not running companies like you. Um they haven't had this experience. And I think what's actually really neat is just like letting them know how it feels, like what this experience is kind of like. Not just like telling them front on, like this is what is happening. It's like and this is what it feels like. And like trying to help them, you know, understand a little bit of the environment. And and you those those answers and questions come out when you talk to those people and they're like they're like, So why did you choose Mexico City? Like for some reason that's really interesting to people, or they're like, you know, why did you go like why did you raise another round? Like what what prompted that and how does it feel? Like what was the experience like? I think that's really interesting to people.

Where To Find Hamish

Jared Ward 37:52

This conversation's been so good for me. Like honestly, I've I've I'm getting back into LinkedIn. And it just reminded me the the why of my previous posts that I've done well. Um it's such a good reminder. Like honestly, it has been a great talk. Um appreciate the time, man. Seriously.

Hamish McKay 38:09

I was just gonna say it's it's been good good to meet you in Yan. I guess Americans Americans don't know what a yawn is. A yawn is like a chat. What do you say?

Jared Ward 38:20

Where where can the people find you? Is are you just LinkedIn? Do you do Instagram? Anything else?

Hamish McKay 38:25

Yeah, LinkedIn's the main one. Um Hamish Makkay is of course the name. And then I do post on Twitter as well, same thing, but Makai has okay. I probably shouldn't say this because then I'll be boxed in the YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and things coming soon. Um I'd love to start the story in like a video format and and hopefully like educating and inspiring more people would be a dream. Just need to find just need to find more hours in the day and the um the go nets to go out and do it. Yeah.

Jared Ward 38:54

I post it every day for a year on on YouTube. Really? Um I've been doing this podcast. Um, but this year, this is the year that okay, like I want to get good at YouTube. I don't want to just post like let's let's get good at this. So I'm about to post my first like video where I really tried to like script it and and made sure that's it's optimized. And so we'll see how that goes. I'll be it it was, yeah. It was. But I'm trying to I'm trying to set like like you said, like engineering your life. I'm trying to engineer my my business. Like I we're sitting in the studio in our office. I'm trying to just make it where I just pop in on Saturdays and we just script well. And like, you know, it's just it's just natural, so it's not like hard. Um that's the challenge right now for me. Yeah. It's like having the home gym. Um I I'm excited to see your YouTube video, man. Excited to watch this. I'm excited to see it. I'll I'll I'll keep you accountable on that. I'll follow up about it. Okay, well, awesome. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Um everybody, this is Hamish McKay, order editing, and that was our episode of Optims Unfiltered. See ya.

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