YouSaid · the spoken record

Harley Finkelstein

lines on the record: 122
first: 2020-12-10
most recent: 2020-12-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Get a real kick out of. That's really cool. Timbo, thank you for this. I really enjoyed catching up as well. And hopefully for your listeners, they got some value from this. But this was really fun.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does, and actually because we are playing the long game, we want Shopify to be a hundred year company and we ourselves want to be doing this for a very, very long time. And if you use a lens of a very long-term perspective, whether it's 100 years or 50 years, you begin to reinterpret and reevaluate how you engage with people. You begin to think about things in totally different terms, even if I'm not going to get an immediate ROI next year. Who cares? If I can help someone now who eventually may or may not want to help me back later on, that's good enough. But I absolutely agree with you. This connotation or this idea that you have to doggy dog is the way to win. I don't think that's the case. In fact, I would actually say entrepreneurship is the opposite of that. The cool part about entrepreneurship is the more entrepreneurs that you help, the more people that want to help you. It creates this incredible virtuous cycle. And that's where things get really, really, I mean, that's the flywheel. That's where stuff gets really good.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just, you don't hear about these stories very much because everyone wants to, frankly, pattern match of oh, that's a mentor, oh, that's an advisor, that's a board member, that's a friend. But there's this other thing, which is a hybrid of all those things that is so freaking powerful”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those people, those companions in many ways, they are the difference makers. They are the ones that, it's not even those that raise the bar for you, although they certainly play that role too. But we have a few people, not very many, but we have a few people who have been these companions on our journey with us. And I'm not sure we'd be here without those companions. So I don't know how you're going to find those companions. I'm not suggesting that you show up at tech conferences and go to the green room and try to find them. But I am suggesting that when you do find them, that you marinate that relationship, that you work on it, that you continuously leverage and connect with them to say, hey, I'm thinking about this other thing. I mean, like I said earlier, as early as this morning, I pained you on something totally different about some development thing we're doing at Shopify on the leadership side and got your advice. Use that stuff because I think as much as I get value from it, at least from my perspective, you seem to really enjoy also providing that context and that advice. And it's just this amazing thing that you can find.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything. It allows you to, it enables you to do things that you can otherwise do, whether it's I'm going to give away $10,000 for a competition and that supporter says, no, that's stupid, give away $100,000. They push you to be better. They see a better version of yourself than you see. And I think those are the people that they help make magic and you certainly have been that for us. And I'm just, I'm very grateful for that.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In our lives, helping to support us, helping to lift us up when we thought things were a little bit tough and we weren't necessarily sure what direction to go into. I don't know if there's a term for that. Maybe it's just friend. Maybe it's just supporter. But for those listening, you find these people throughout your own journeys, whether personal or professional, that in some ways will change the trajectory of where you're going, that there may not be a term for it. It may not be obvious where you're going to meet them, like a green room with some tech conference, like RailsConf in your case. But these are the people in the story that are super valuable to have. And I just want to say just for a moment of gushingness or of emotion for a second that it's just, it's been an incredible honor and privilege to have you as one of our supporters the entire time and certainly in the last decade or so, Tim, it's been amazing for us and anyone out there find your group of supporters however you can. It changes everything.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably the full circle comment is that you and I are sitting here sort of midway through the year, a little past that 2020. One of the things that we talked about mentorship on this in the last hour or so, we've talked about people in our lives that have helped us and certainly we talked a lot about entrepreneurship. But one of the biggest things for us in our story is having not really mentors, they're not necessarily advisors, but people along for the ride that are fans, our supporters, are catalysts for those days that are challenging. And I remember this particular moment, we were, it was in 2015, it was May 2015. We were at the New York Stock Exchange. We were about to take the company public. And I remember looking down and our families were there and you were there as well at the stock exchange. And I remember thinking what incredible journey it's been not just for Shopify, but also to have people like you, Tim.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're the third person to recommend that to me. I've actually, I love tennis. I play tennis, but I've actually not read that. I'm actually going to write that down too.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To kind of show off about how great they are. What I loved about Sho Dog is there's this incredible modesty and humbleness about the story, which is this was not pretty. And there were like 12 different opportunities for this whole Nike thing to fall apart. And he goes into the details and tells the stories that, I don't know, I found it to be so fascinating. It's a great book. And you can get through it in like five days if you're interested in it because it's just, you can't put it down. But that's probably the best one that I've read recently on that topic.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is awesome. It's awesome for anyone who wants to build a company, anyone who's an entrepreneur. Or frankly, anyone who's just interested in the idea of ambition. One of the reasons that I have fallen in love with entrepreneurship and one of the reasons that I've dedicated my life to creating more entrepreneurs with Shopify as the vehicle to do so is because I'm fascinated with ambition. I'm fascinated with how people find ambition, keep ambition, increase ambition. And unfortunately, sometimes lose ambition. And the story of Shoe Dog and how Phil Knight was so determined. I just, I think it was, it's such an amazing story. And the cool part about it is I think because Phil is where he is right now and has really not approved anyone anymore. He was able to be incredibly candid. One of the problems I find particularly about autobiographies is that you end up seeing sort of the highlight reel of people's lives, especially people that are not sort of at the end of their life or close to the end of their life where they feel like they still have to flex a little bit.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure it's a biography, but one of the best books I've read it a couple years ago is Shoe Dog. I'm not sure if you. Have you read Shoe Dog?”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing that I've always found valuable, especially in the early days of Shopify, was if I want to connect with someone who I knew was incredibly busy and there's the likelihood of them responding was very, very low, I would figure out what is the thing that is most important to them right then. And in the case of, you know, let's say it's an author, obviously they have a book release coming up. I would figure out how I can be valuable to them. So asking someone, I live in some random city. I want to host a book reading or a chapter reading in my community and I'll buy 30 books or 50 books. Even if it's not 3,000 books, I find that if you can add some value to something that is so damn important to them right then and there. And with social media, it's easy to figure out who cares about what at what time. Man, is that an effective way to spend some time?”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Show like Shark Tank. How do you show up and how do you prepare and what kind of advice do you give, which is digestible but also doesn't come off as overly obvious? That's the way that I tend to do things when there's something that I want to get really, really good at. I'll find the three or four people who may not be the obvious experts in it, but I understand there's an angle to them that I really want to emulate. And then I'll just ask them. And it's pretty cool that I can do that now. That was something that for those of you listening that do email 100 people and you're always trying to get more advice and you're always trying to find someone who will give you some of their time or quote unquote so you can pick their brain. The neat part about doing that is if you send out enough of those, you eventually get a yes and that's how I connect with you and that's how I connect with Seth who's a big part of my life. And it was just, this is before anyone even heard of Shopify. It's been a really important part of my life.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The model that I'm trying to create now with mentors and advisors and people in my life are to take something special from each particular person and use that in my own day to day. I try to be a bit of a generalist as much as possible as opposed to a specialized in one thing. I think that there's a little bit of an anti-generalist theme right now, certainly in Silicon Valley, but I don't purport to be well-rounded, but I am trying to be well-rounded about the stuff that really matters to me, whether it's leading, whether it's the business, whether it's inspiring the future entrepreneurs of the world, or it's about, I'll give you a quick story. We have this new show that we just launched on Discovery called I Quit. And we have a studio called Shopify Studios with the single mandate to create the most inspiring and authentic content about entrepreneurship in the world. And you'll never hear as mentioned Shopify on the show because that's not what it's about. It's about entrepreneurship. And before I got on the show, I sat down with Damon and said, walk me through what it's like to be on.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really like, I really think they are doing it for all the right reasons. A lot of them are people that are in kind of the Shopify ecosystem, people we work with. Obviously, we're quite close to the folks at Stripe. You mentioned them earlier. Patrick and John, I mean, they're absolutely driven to do incredible things, but also build an incredible company. I think Ben and Pinterest is doing an amazing job as well in that way. A lot of the people that I really look up to, though, are not necessarily in tech per se. It's people that I just think, you know, one of the people that I really like, it's a mutual friend. I love talking to Chase Jar.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there's some obvious ones. I think one of the cool parts of being in my position, this is a new thing for me, but one of the cool parts is using my email address if there's someone interesting, I can actually get in touch with them. That's brand new to me. That's not a flex or some sort of humble brag. That was never the case. I mean, I would send out emails, 100 emails a day sometimes in the early days to connect with different executives and leaders just to pick their brain, just to get to know them better. And most of the time they never responded. And one of the great things now that I really do not take for granted, I'm really fortunate to have is that I usually get a reply back, which is so damn cool. And so I thought a lot about that. The truth is, a lot of the people that I admire, I sort of admire from afar like Bob Eiger. I've never met Bob Eiger. I just, I think he's incredible. Phil Knight, I think these are incredible humans. But there are some companies that I think are just run by people that I.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, actually, being meticulous with our calendars and our schedules, especially with two entrepreneurs in the house and two younger kids, that has been amazingly valuable to us.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I totally agree, which is actually one other thing that has been very valuable to me is the value of scheduling and being fairly meticulous about my calendar. This is going to sound totally lame, but I have family time blocked out of my calendar. I have walks with my wife blocked out of my calendar, which again sounds completely lame and unnecessary. But what it does do is that pop-up comes up on the right-hand top right screen of side of my screen and suggests, hey, like it's family time or, hey, it's walk, you know, my wife, Lindsay, who you know is also an entrepreneur. We're just very busy. We have two little kids. And like, so scheduling a walk together as ridiculous and silly as it sounds is incredibly valuable because also if we don't take that walk, it's staring ourselves in the face that we skip this walk to do something else. So the question is, was the thing we skipped that walk for as valuable as the walk would have been? And the answer is most times no they're not.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's easier on myself around my own version of what a successful sit looks like. And I think today a successful sit for me is really just the ability to sit for 50 minutes consistently every single day, no matter what I feel afterwards.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's some just trying to look at who else, Sarah Blondon. There's just some amazing guided meditation coaches on insight or frankly. I mean, you can probably do it on YouTube as well. And I actually have found that Guided has been, it's like a warm hug for me in the morning where I hear this really wonderful, calm voice taking me through a 10 or 15 minute sit. And I always end up on the other side so much better. And so I started with counting breaths. I'm now trying to do a little more mantra-based TM style stuff. But the truth is it really depends on the day. And I'm trying not to be too hard in myself about that experience. That if on a Monday I had this great sit and I come out completely mindful and relaxed and focused on Tuesday if I don't have that same experience. I don't want to forego Wednesday. And the way that I'm able to have consistency is just to, just”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's funny, I had been historically using just insight timer and just doing a 50 minute counter with a little bit of white noise to block out whatever is happening around me. But going back to my power extrovertedness, I have found that this pandemic has been kind of lonely for me. And I don't mean that in a severe way. I'm home now with my amazing wife and my two amazing kids. And I have my family around me. There's a certain lack of social interaction that is missing from me. And so early in March, for the first time ever, I ended up just going to the guided meditation tab in Insight Timer just because I kind of just wanted to hear someone else's voice. And I've actually been doing these guided meditations almost consistently since March now. And they range from courses, I know you mentioned, I know you've talked about Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzberg, David.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It has made me, I'm by no means, as you can hear from the tone of my voice, I'm by no means laid back or a chill kind of person, quote unquote, but it has made me more thoughtful about how I want to spend my energy. And it has allowed me to focus on the things that are most important both on my personal life, but also with our business. And man, like, I mean, I know you talk a lot about mindfulness practices and meditation on the podcast, but I am someone who for years just did not subscribe to it. And it was because I was looking for some sort of”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is maybe a personal thing, but even as a kid, I always had anxiety. I never had a term for it. I never understood exactly what it was. I just knew that I had this thing. And I knew it was anxiety because I was always thinking about what's next, the future as opposed to what people often talk about a depressive state, which is looking backwards. I was always looking forward. And I had experimented with some mindfulness practices and some meditation in the past. But because I was anxious in general, I was anxious about meditating, meaning I was always looking for some sort of quick fix that if after 10 minutes of meditating, I didn't find enlightenment. I thought it was broken. I thought it wasn't working for me, which sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? Of course, but meditation has also been something that I've committed to or last probably since 2014. So going on six years now, every single morning, it's either 10 or 15 minutes, depending on how much time I have.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find the ambiguity that most people bring into coaching is not helpful at all. And if you are clear about, here's what I want to work on, here's what I suck at. And please call me out on my bullshit with this stuff or hold me accountable to these things. That, I think, is where you get the most successful dynamic with coaches. And frankly, you may outgrow your coach every couple of years. It may be time to get a new coach who has a different skill set. But I have to say, you know, if I had to distill down one of the things that has allowed me to get to where I am at this point with my career and certainly help me lead Shopify, coaching is up there in the top three or four things that I've done.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To know where I want to get to. And then every two weeks, an hourly basis walking through, okay, give me some examples of how you've demonstrated more of that sensei type thinking and less of the Massad commander thinking, holding me accountable to that when I provide them with something that is challenging to me, having them workshop with me the right way to do it as a sensei as opposed to a Masad commander, man, that has been so, so helpful. It also feels like when you do bring them in, and I'm not suggesting everyone needs to hire a coach full-time because actually I have a lot of friends who have third-party coaches who just, they see each other every two weeks. The important part that I have seen is to be really transparent and incredibly clear about here is the development I'm looking for, here's what I want to work on. If you just go in with, I want to get better, I want to grow. Is that a personal thing? Do you want to get better in terms of leading? Do you want to get better in terms of your craft?”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was really insecure about hiring people better than me. I thought that if they were better than me, what role was I going to play, which was completely ridiculous. And now I see that. And so I had to work on some of that, some sort of personal issues. I had to work on the fact that this idea of trust but verify, what do I verify? What do I trust? You've talked to Toby about the trust battery metaphor at Shopify, where everyone starts at 50% trust battery through their actions. We watch them hopefully get to 100%, which is where they get autonomy. These metaphors that our coaches use have been incredibly instructive so that you don't actually know, I'm probably still not at the Sensei level yet, but I know that directionally, I'm going the right direction here. And that's not necessarily something that all coaches use. The coaching style that our coaches use is called the integral method, which is a bit of a hybrid of a bunch of different coaching styles. But that metaphor to know where I am right now.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing that the coaches that I have seen have one of the things that they have done, which I found very valuable, is they use a metaphor. So for me, I'll just tell you what the metaphor is because I think it's valuable for the listeners. My metaphor was I wanted to develop from a Massad commander who's always doing everything all the time and kind of a jack of all trades into more of a sensei whereby I can work with really, really talented people. I can explain to them what destination they need to get to. But in terms of the journey to get there, I can rely on them. I can trust but verify. I can provide them with some breadcrumbs to make sure they're going the right direction. But that inevitably they will get there on their own. And that may seem like an easy transition to make. It was almost impossible for me. I found that to be incredibly challenging simply on the basis that one, I think, in the early days.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Coaching curriculum. Everyone has their own version of progress and development with their coach. But by bringing them into the company, it allows them to have a much richer understanding of the type of place Shopify is and the type of development that is required. And it's been amazing. And to this day, I still see, I have a new coach now. Her name is Deb, and it's been an amazing journey for me. In fact, I kind of can't understand, I mean, I talk to a lot of peers who are running companies like Shopify. Coaching as much as I think it's just obvious that why wouldn't you have a coach? It's not something that is universally accepted. And I'm not really sure why.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't deeply understand the Shopify culture, the Shopify company, the people involved, it would put them at a disadvantage for actually helping us achieve this development that we were looking for. And so we ended up just hiring this one particular coach, Cam full-time, and he was coaching a few of us. And the epiphany there, I suppose, was that by having him much closer to the business as opposed to on the periphery, we immediately got far better advice and we were able to grow faster. And that eventually led to us saying, hey, what if we actually created a team of coaches at Shopify so that anyone who wants to or frankly needs to have a coach can do so? And the onus isn't necessarily on them to find a coach will have a group of coaches. They can sort of interview a few of these coaches that we have on staff, but that they work full-time at Shopify. And I don't know, eight years later, I think we have over a dozen coaches on staff at Shopify full-time. Everyone has their own.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really good at hiring and onboarding and managing people in many cases that are much smarter, faster, more experienced than I was. And so one of the things that we had figured out was if we were to bring coaches into the company full time, it would allow us to provide the coaches.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're seeing is correct, which is that not every coach is the same, and frankly, one of the problems with coaches in general is that nomenclature, that it doesn't take very much to call yourself a coach. There is no medical school for coaching. I mean, you can take a program or get a certificate, but generally not all coaches are going to be the right fit, the right match. They're not all going to be of great value. In fact, I had initially seen a coach, I just didn't connect with. He was a very smart person. I just didn't connect with him. For Cody in particular, he needed a way to scale his ability to manage a team at scale. And so his coach actually happened to be someone who ran a very large engineering team at IBM. And that was specifically the thing he wanted to acquire. For me, I'd spent my entire life as we've been talking about as an entrepreneur doing everything myself. And I had a real tough time transitioning from being this entrepreneur getting deeply into the weeds, doing everything myself to being.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, coaching is not anything new. I mean, a lot of leaders have coaches, but Cody kind of discovered this idea of a coach. And then he introduced Toby and I to it. And we really started getting a lot of value from it. And at a certain point, it became clear that we wanted to have these coaches around more often. So we ended up hiring our first coach. His name was Cam and bringing him on full time. And he really helped coach the exec team at Shopify. And then very quickly.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growing, I'm learning new skills every single year. But if I use the lens that The greatest chief operating officer in the world walked in to see the board of Shopify and said, Hey, I want to be your COO, I need to know that I am still the right choice. And this idea of requalifying for your job from a philosophical perspective has just been incredibly valuable because it means that if I grow at the same pace of Shopify, I still may not necessarily be the right person for next year. So I have to almost outpace Shopify's growth, which puts the onus on me and all of our leaders to grow this incredible rate. And whether you call it requalification or you call it disproportionate personal growth, that is something that is baked into the culture of Shopify unequivocally. And it's actually made for a really interesting environment to be at because you have people who so badly want to keep growing. And Shopify makes it difficult to keep up because it grows so fast on its own as its own entity. But that requalification thing I find is an important for”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think it's a very valuable personal growth sort of philosophy that this idea, and I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly speak for myself, and I know Toby feels the same way in his role. Every single year, I still have to be the best possible chief operant officer for Shopify. And if I'm not, that means that someone else should take my role. And the reason that's important is because the pace that Shopify is growing at and has been growing every single year since I joined, certainly. I have to keep up with it, but I also have to keep outpacing it. And so there's a lot in that. I mean, Shopify, again, went from Ming e-commerce provider for small businesses to being a retail operating system. We have a billion-dollar capital business. We have a fulfillment business now. We're cross-platform, we're publicly traded. And so it's a really, really wonderful model of which to gauge whether or not you are growing at the pace. Because if you say, well, are you growing every year? Most people say, yes, I'm.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Cody was original CTO and one of the first guys of the company, and certainly someone who's been a big part of the Shopify origin story. At a particular point, he was running engineering and he realized that his team was getting bigger and bigger. And he didn't necessarily have all the tools he needed to be the right leader. But in this sort of theme and this sort of lens of we always requalify for our jobs every year if we want to keep our jobs.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think will remain after this is the importance that what gives our cities and our towns and our community's character are the small businesses. But in order for the small business to survive, in some cases they have razor sharp margins. In other cases, they have larger margins. But we want as consumers to make sure that our money that we're buying, that the money that we're using to buy stuff with is going to the people that actually are behind those companies. In order for retail and commerce to thrive long term, it needs to be in the hands of the many, not the few, which is why we talk about this idea of like Shopify wants to arm the rebels. We want anyone that has some idea, some passion, some vision to build something to be able to do so and to own their business themselves as opposed to renting their business from somebody else. And actually, I think one of the great things that will come out of this is this consumer trend to support independent businesses as much as possible. I don't think that's.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the neat part about that is we actually don't want to sell ads, right? So we don't want to be a social media platform. We don't necessarily want to be a place where you're able to scrapbook your favorite products like Tinterest does or to organize your home furnishings desires like house or to do any of these things. The neat part about our positioning is that we simply want to encourage more people to try their hand in entrepreneurship and to become retailers. And the idea that To your point earlier on the pandemic I think a lot of consumers are thinking about their local small businesses. And I think we all are. I mean, our communities are now becoming far more important because frankly, like I spent 100 nights on the road in 2019, I'm going to spend, you know, five nights on the road in 2020. My community here in Ottawa is becoming incredibly important. So whenever possible, I want to support my local stores, my local restaurants, my local cafes as much as I possibly can. And one of the things that I”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Gymsharks, the Fashion Novas, the Bombuses, the Tommy John underwears, like these amazing, incredible iconic DTC brands. But we've seen Heinz Ketchup go direct to consumer during the pandemic. We've seen lint chocolate, snickers, shoe-in bicycles. Some of these brands are brands that I have personally been calling for five or ten years to try to convince them to come onto Shopify to sell direct to consumer. And they just never did it. And now they are because they have no choice. It's a really interesting time for retail and commerce and those brands that have been able to pivot and adapt, they are doing incredibly well. But there are those that simply haven't made it. And I think a lot of them were just waiting for things to go back to the status quo, to an old version of retail. And I just don't think it's going to happen.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Commerce has been changed forever. Now, will the growth rate of e-commerce continue to grow at this pace? Probably not. It got pulled forward. It'll probably stay around where it is right now. But fundamentally, consumers who never bought online before and have been forced to buy online over the last three, four months, there's no going back to the way it was. There's no way my grandparents are going to go out in February in Montreal to buy groceries when they know that they can now use their iPad to easily buy off one of the grocery stores, online stores. And I actually think this is one of the most exciting times for retail of the last, I don't know, call it 150 years. It is a tale of two worlds. And I hope some of these resistant retailers begin to simply wake up and realize that everything has changed and they don't have to be left behind. Here's a cool example. When you think about these resilient retailers, you often think of”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the demand side, you have consumers who want to buy directly from the brands, and now you have the brand selling direct to the consumer. And so you have this new retail model. And it's not necessarily just going to be online, nor is it going to be offline. The future of retail will likely be retail everywhere. And it's going to be about consumer preference, which is so different than think of when you were a kid and you wanted something. You wanted a video game. You would be forced to line up on a Saturday morning at some game stop in the mall at 9 o'clock in the morning and the doors open. You ran in to grab the video game and then you left. That's how it worked. The retailers have historically always dictated to the consumer how, when to purchase. And what's happened now is consumers are saying, no, no, no, I want to purchase in the way that it's most convenient for me. And a lot of that is online, but it's also offline and it's also across marketplaces and social media. Fundamentally.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vertical of ours are now signing up for Shopify and doing their top 12 most popular items and setting up a beautiful store. Chipotle has a store on Shopify right now where they're connecting Chipotle consumers with the farmers who are their suppliers. They're basically creating a Chipotle farmers market for consumers on Shopify. On both sides of the coin you see totally different stories. I want to focus on the resilience side because frankly that's the real story here. The real story is that consumers generally have now decided, and this is consumer behavior, that they would prefer to buy products from independent brands, from actual entrepreneurs, from the makers of the products, if they can. But for a long time, the supply wasn't there. So consumers had to buy through intermediaries. Well, the cool part about all this is that the supply side is now cut up. So now you have...”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But a lot of the big brands didn't, and they resisted this change, they fought it. But then you have this other category, these resilient retailers. We talked about Gymshark earlier in context of build the business. The day that COVID hit, they're based in the UK, they were told that gyms where people work out were going to be closed. They rebranded their homepage as Home Shark instead of Gymshark. They immediately changed their content and their distribution and their influencers and everything about that company changed within 24 hours because the world changed. Immediately people were not doing the same thing as they once were. And you see that across a whole bunch of different categories, across Shopify, these great brands that have just completely pivoted. You see restaurateurs that are doing meal kits and they're turning in their restaurants into wine shops if you can't go in there. You're seeing grocery stores that historically never even came close to Shopify.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And their online store may be a catalog for their offline store or their offline store, maybe a showroom for their online store. They are completely channel agnostic. They just want you to have a great experience.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm surprised by how quickly that happened. I'm not surprised where we ended up because I think we would have ended up here anyway. Two things have happened. The first thing that has happened is you see two types of entrepreneurs existing right now. I mentioned these terms earlier, but it's worth repeating. You have these resistant retailers and entrepreneurs and brands who simply did not adapt and pivot fast enough. And they are suffering. I mean, you're seeing iconic brands, whether it's Barney's or it's J. Crew, name your pick, that have gone out of business because frankly, they simply didn't see the future retail coming in the way that it has materialized. So for example, a lot of these brands that went out of business, they lamented the fact that their e-commerce efforts was hurting their offline commerce efforts, which is ridiculous. You talked to any of the guys at All Birds, for example, they couldn't care less if you buy it in store, online, or on social media. They just want you to buy their shoes.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so first of all, you said this earlier, but this idea that the year 2030 has been pulled into 2020, that's a real thing. And what I mean by that when I say it is that the retail dynamic that would have existed, meaning percentage of total retail that was done online, laggards that have began to digitalize their business from a commerce perspective. That has all happened rapidly in three months. And so if you look at e-commerce as a percentage of total retail, When I joined Shopify, it was approximately 5%, something like that. And last year, these are US numbers, last year, e-commerce was about 15% of total retail. So we've grown about 10% in like, I don't know, 10 years. We're now at close to 25%. So since March, the amount of acceleration in shifting total retail to online retail has been Has been dramatic. One is”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fundamentally did was it provided this catalyst to get started right now. And that is why I think it was such a powerful initiative and movement for Shopify. And we are forever grateful to you, Tim, for really bringing us that because our trajectory has been forever changed because of built a business.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out, and we brought on people like Seth Godin, and we brought on people like Gary Vee, and we brought on people like Richard Branson and Tony Robbins and Ree Forleo and Debbie Sterling and Tina Eisenberg. And we brought these incredible mentors aboard. And instead of giving on $100,000, we said, hey, the winner's going to spend a week with us and a bunch of really interesting people on Richard Branson's private island in Necker in the BVIs. And I think the last year we did it, we had over 10,000 contestants. And we've actually since then have done a build a bigger business competition, which is million dollar businesses who can actually grow the fastest, you know, 10x, 20x. And one of the winners of the last one was Gymshark, who as of last week is now a billion dollar brand. Now, these businesses may have started regardless and despite build a business competition, right? I mean, Ben from Gymshark probably would have started no matter what. But what the competition”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most beautiful iPad cases and ended up, you know, Obama was using one at the time and he was photographed using his Dodo case. And they also did some really cool stuff. They completely rejuvenated the book binding industry, which had been effectively shut down in San Francisco. And they brought these book binders together and started making iPad cases. But the neat part was the big takeaway from year one was some of these businesses were growing so big at the $100,000 or frankly any amount of money unless it was something absurd was not going to be enough of an incentive. And so as you recall, on year two, we changed the pricing to be once in a lifetime opportunities, to be things that basically money can't buy. And a lot of that was connecting the winners with some of the most interesting people in the world who were incredibly generous with their time and wanted to kind of help.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was ballsy, but the thing that actually is super interesting is that what you didn't necessarily realize at the time, you only have to pay it out at the end of the competition. So you don't actually need $100,000 when you get started. You just have to be able to acquire enough revenue over the period of six months to actually pay that out eventually. And that was sort of an interesting, oh, right. Like we don't actually need the money right now. Funny enough, there are certain states and certain Canadian provinces that require you to post a bond in the amount of the prize in advance. I think you and I have talked about competition law before in advance of it. So like we actually couldn't necessarily offer it everywhere because of some what they call sort of gaming law. But absolutely, it was bold. It was ballsy. It was an interesting thing that a small company was doing. And we had 1,300 contestants sign up for build the business in 2010. And the winner was a company called Dodo Case, which made.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the planet were created through Build to Business. So it's a part of our story. It seems like it was just a campaign, but it was so much more than that. It defined us both internally and externally as a company that thinks differently about entrepreneurship.”
2020-12-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #486: Harley Finkelstein — Tactics and Strategies from Shopify, The Future of Retail, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT