Journey into the Future of E-commerce with Alec Berkley

Ever dreamt of establishing a successful start-up or yearned to better grasp the fast-paced world of B2B e-commerce? This episode is your golden ticket, as we navigate the entrepreneurial seas and the complex terrain of B2B commerce with our distinguished guest, Alec Berkeley. Alec, co-founder of the e-commerce startup Bundle B2B and now the director of global strategy at BigCommerce, offers a treasure chest of insights drawn from his journey of scaling up from a college side hustle to selling a successful startup.

We venture into the labyrinth of B2B commerce, unearthing the significance of aligning business divisions and understanding client needs for survival and success. Our conversation takes a futuristic turn, exploring how AI could revolutionize the industry. Alec then takes us on a backstage tour of the challenges faced by manufacturers and startups, revealing his secret strategies to overcome the hurdles. 

We conclude by diving deep into Alec's personal journey, where he recounts his experiences growing up in Southern California and building two successful companies by the age of 30. His tales are a testament to the power of turning business blunders into opportunities for growth. So come join us, as we uncover the grit, determination, and misadventures that pave the road to entrepreneurial success.

Looking to overcome marketing blunders and find inspiration from the experts who have been there?

Subscribe to Tales of Misadventure with Nicole Donnelly wherever you prefer to stream podcasts!

Get in touch with the team at Tales of Misadventure by visiting dmgdigital.io.

Don’t forget to enroll in our newsletter for more small business marketing tips and entrepreneurial inspiration! https://info.dmgdigital.io/welcome-to-dmg-digital

Episode Transcript

Intro (00:01):
Hey there, thanks for joining us for Tales of
Misadventure, a podcast allabout business blunders.
On this podcast, nicoleDonnelly, founder of DMG Digital
, talks to entrepreneurs andlearns how they turn their
lemons into lemonade.
Dmg Digital is a contentmarketing agency focused on
helping manufacturers attractnew buyers through digital

(00:23):
self-serve.
Nicole Donnelly is a fourthgeneration entrepreneur, a girl,
mom and an avid traveler.
Now let's head into a tale ofmisadventure with your host,
nicole Donnelly.

Nicole (00:36):
Welcome to Tales of Misadventure, where successful
entrepreneurs share theirstories of failure and how they
turned lemons into lemonade.
In today's episode, we are soexcited, I am so excited to host
Alec Berkeley, guitarist,husband, future dad and
entrepreneur, who is one of thevery few who built and sold a
successful startup.

(00:58):
Alec made waves in thee-commerce world where he
co-founded Bundle B2B, a SaaSapplication that offers
enterprise level B2Bfunctionality to businesses of
all sizes.
Alec is now the director ofglobal strategy at BigCommerce.
Alec, welcome to the show.
How are you?

Alec (01:17):
I don't deserve that.

Nicole (01:22):
You're welcome, it's my pleasure.
I have been so excited to haveyou on the show ever since I met
you at the good old MEPconference in Buffalo last month
and from that firstconversation I had with you I
was like just enamored by yourstory and I was like I got to
have him on the show.
He's got a cool story to tell.
So how's your week going?

(01:42):
It's Friday.
How you feeling Friday?

Alec (01:44):
I'm feeling good, spent a good week.
Yeah, I'm happy to be chattingwith you.
Hopefully there's some goodnuggets in here.
I just started listening tothis podcast, goldmines, that's
hosted by Kevin Hart, where heinterviews people much more
successful than you could everimagine, so I feel like very,
very fortunate to be talkingabout my small snippet of

(02:09):
e-commerce success that hasexisted so far in the universe.

Nicole (02:16):
You're too modest, you're very modest, but no, it's
pretty remarkable what you'vebuilt, considering what 90% of
all startups fail.
So not only did you build asuccessful startup, but you sold
it, and I just had a live showearlier today with a gentleman,
a good friend of mine, damonVestolka, who helps businesses
sell their business put togetherexit strategy and everything.

(02:38):
And 70% of all people who try tosell their businesses can't
sell them, and that's only thepeople who try.
So you are in a very eliteclass of people who not only
built a startup but actuallysold it.
So I think that's massively amassive accomplishment, and
especially at your age, whichyou're a pretty young dude.
So I'm just going to like justbuild up your ego as much as

(03:03):
possible, so by the end of theshow, you'll be a massive
narcissist.
That's my goal.

Alec (03:08):
Yeah, narcissist training with Nicole, yeah.
So I mean, where do you evenstart?
I guess how I even gotconnected to the other
co-founder, Dong, is aninteresting story.
I could maybe start there andthen you know see where it goes.

(03:28):
So I was at Chapman Universityin Orange County in Southern
California.
I had a side hustle fixingiPhone screens.
At that time it was like iPhone4 going into iPhone 5.
The iPhone 4s you had to takeit all apart, like from the back
, just to get to the screen.
It took a really long time andthen when iPhone 5s came out,
all you had to do is just pop upthe screen and you could do it

(03:50):
in like 15 minutes.
So really big shift.
I don't know if any listenershave ever fixed iPhones before,
but when I was in school,particularly in Southern
California, with a largepaternity and sorority
population, I had a lot ofclients and that side hustle
turned into a pretty successfulbusiness fixing phones, no
kidding.
And the president of Silk Dongwas really impressed with that

(04:15):
business that I had started incollege and said hey, you know,
I really want you to come andlead our business efforts with
Magento.
We just became gold partners.
They were really like in thebeginning stages I think it was
1.7 or 1.8 open source, and thiswas when Magento was owned by

(04:37):
eBay.
I had no idea what Magento was,but at that time it was kind of
the leading platform fore-commerce businesses and
Shopify and big commerce werekind of just starting out.
So anyway, yeah, that was kindof where I got.
My start was at a career fair.
I went to just the booth thathad the shortest line.

(04:58):
There was like Tesla and Googleand Hulu and all these huge
companies that had long lines.
I was like I don't want to waitin line and I'm pretty sure my
mom had called me to notify methat this thing was even
happening like an hour before.
So I just showed up and meetDon, but we totally hit it off.
And then, yeah, I didn't evenreally look at any other
companies.
I said this e-commerce seemslike something that will only

(05:20):
grow and even though I knownothing about it, I've shopped
on Amazon before and I felt likethat was the right sector to
bring my entrepreneurial spirit.

Nicole (05:31):
I guess you could say Well, definitely shows you what
a visionary that you are.
Even at that time you were ableto see the market and potential
there, because at that time itwas primarily fashion right.

Alec (05:43):
Yeah, it was a lot of fashion retail.

Nicole (05:45):
Yeah, and so B2B e-commerce was just very nascent
at that time.
So what a really smart andvisionary move on your part to
be able to see like, hey,there's a lot of opportunity
here.

Alec (06:00):
And still to this day, yeah, and how we figured out how
to crack the B2B code, I guessyou could say was integration.
So there was all thesedifferent ERPs out there.
The ones that we were targetingwere like SAP Business One,
microsoft Dynamics, great Plains, everest if you remember that

(06:20):
company.
There was like three or fourdifferent ERPs that we marketed
integrations for with Magentoand we just got all sorts of
leads because there was allthese businesses that were
buying into the e-commerceplatform as opposed to doing it
custom, but had no idea how tointegrate that.
And that was just an entiregoldmine for us to sort of.

(06:44):
Nobody just wants to dointegration projects, but that's
how you can start aconversation there.
Because this was before I thinkCeligo was just starting out,
when they had built somethingvery basic connector into
NetSuite, and so we're like,okay, we won't do NetSuite
because that's Celigo, but wecan provide a whole lot of other
integrations, interestingSolutions.
So we kind of started on theintegration side.

(07:05):
I remember doing demos with,like a virtual server with SAP
Business One and I would restartit before every single call
because it was always breaking.
But that was kind of where wegot our start and then we
realized, okay, maybe we couldmake this a bit more efficient
and productized and get out ofthe integration business,
because integration platformscan sort of satisfy a lot of
that or maybe other companies.

(07:25):
But how can we sort of take alot of these B2B tools that
we're building on Magento, opensource and productizer,
accelerate time to market for alot of these companies that
we're asking for the same typesof things quick ordering,
quoting order to cash withinvoicing and purchase orders
and things like that.
So kind of brought that intobig commerce and the rest is

(07:47):
kind of history.

Nicole (07:49):
So what made you decide?
You guys wanted to go to bigcommerce.
And I also have to give amassive shout out to your mom,
because Kudas to your mom,because if she hadn't reminded
you to go to the health fair,career fair, the career fair, if
she hadn't reminded you to goto the career fair, where would
you be today?

Alec (08:06):
I know.

Nicole (08:07):
Thank the Lord for overbearing Jewish mothers.
So I hope I bet every time shesees you she's like Alec you owe
me.

Alec (08:18):
Oh yeah, I mean she's a, she's a gem, yeah.

Nicole (08:23):
Oh, I bet, I bet.
Well, tell me more like whatmade you guys decide to move to
big commerce?

Alec (08:28):
Yeah.
So at the time, as I mentionedyou know, magento open source
was by far the leader.
Shopify was gaining a lot ofmomentum really fast,
particularly in fashion andretail, not so much on the B2B
side.
Big commerce was reallyinteresting to us because both
companies approached silk at thetime and said, hey, join our
agency program.

(08:48):
And you know we had evaluatedboth and we felt that big
commerce and the approach thatthey had, with like the openness
and less, I guess, fashion andretail and more non-traditional
business types, I guess,attracted us to the big commerce
platform also, maybe being abigger fish in a smaller pond,
as opposed to, like a lot ofagencies were jumping on the

(09:08):
Shopify bandwagon trying to, youknow, access that rocket ship
which it, you know.
I mean maybe if we had done bothwe would have been 10 times
more successful, probably wouldhave right.
But we just decided, you know,we really liked the folks at big
commerce and their approach andyou know Brent, I think, had
just came in and he had a really, really good vision for the

(09:29):
company and like where where bigcommerce was going to go, and
so we decided that it made senseto just really lean in first as
an agency partner to learn theplatform.
And then, after a couple ofyears of building up that agency
practice and I think there wasa couple of initial clients that
we had got that were on thelarger side, like Harvard
business publishing Harvardbusiness review was one, and

(09:51):
then Gilden with Gilden Brandswas another one you know
American Apparel, GoldToe,Comfort Colors they have whole
umbrella brands.
So a couple of those businessesand doing B2B for them, or
learning how those businesseswanted to do B2B, rather and
figuring out how we could thensolve it on a platform that was
rooted in B2C.
That was kind of the challengeand it took years and, of course

(10:12):
, many failures along the way.
You know we definitely signedup for some projects that were
we'll just call them overlyambitious projects.
What we really do at the timewith the big commerce platform.
This is before things likepriceless and cart APIs exist,

(10:32):
where you can override items ina cart or change pricing based
off of different customer groups.
So you know fundamental thingsfor B2B that were on the roadmap
and we were trying to sell withbig commerce, basically saying,
look, we can do this or we willdo this, but also trying to
pick up the pieces along the way, knowing that you know we were
bootstrapping right.

Nicole (10:52):
Oh man, bootstrapping.
So in hindsight, do you wishyou wouldn't have taken on those
projects, or were thosefailures critical?

Alec (10:59):
They were critical.
They were absolutely criticaland you know some of the
relationships are relationshipsI still have with business
owners to this day.
Others didn't work out as well,but all critical to you know,
pushing the vision forward whichwas like democratizing, you
know, b2b commerce and loweringtotal cost ownership, increasing

(11:22):
functionality.
You know, nobody ever wants tobe the first or the guinea pig.
I think as a salesperson,knowing that your client is the
first one, it's tough right.
Like how do you manage thatexpectation of like product
development while alsodelivering a project and doing
right by the client Like thatwithin itself is one of the

(11:43):
hardest things.
It's a balancing act right.

Nicole (11:47):
Oh, I can only imagine because you know I own an agency
and it's all about clientservice, client delivery and so
if you've taken on a projectthat, truthfully, there's so
much uncertainty on over whatyou can do, no, doubt is going
to take longer than anybodyanticipates.
There's going to be things thatyou can't do and to be on the
service side of that, to have togo back to the client and be

(12:07):
like, well, uncle, we can't dothis, that's really difficult.
But knowing that you needed totake those steps in order to
build the product, and alsothough the fact that you were
able to bootstrap it, I think isincredibly ingenious, because I
think so many people in yourshoes would have tried to do the
whole VC thing and say, hey,let's just get funding.
What made you decide not to gothat route?

(12:30):
Why did you decide you wantedto do it this way?
Is it because you needed thecustomer, you know, feedback to
help build it?
And tell me more about thatapproach?
Why did you guys decide tobootstrap it?

Alec (12:41):
Yeah, I think well, first off, I'm very fortunate because
I came into already establishedagency with developers and
resources and I was more on thebusiness, marketing and product
kind of vision side.
I guess you could say not somuch like bankrolling the whole
thing.
Those are my other partners.

(13:01):
So I think effectively what wedecided was the opportunity was
so large that we were willing totake a loss on X number of
projects in order to get thisproduct that we then could grow
and scale eventually into a SaaSbusiness model and then either
sell or continue to scale andetc.

Nicole (13:23):
Yeah, very cool, oh man.
So, tell me a little bit aboutlike you worked at the agency
first and then you founded, youco founded bundle B2B with your
co founders.

Alec (13:38):
Yeah, so what?

Nicole (13:38):
was that transition like ?

Alec (13:40):
Yeah, the agency side, the services business, is very
different than the product andyou know subscription model
business.
The mindset shift was you, youhave to.
I think this was something thatyou had mentioned before.
You have to say no a lot.
Right, there's guardrails,whereas the services business
you want to be a yes man or ayes woman, right, where you just

(14:03):
always placating the clientservices based model.
You want to build that.
I know this might not be theright custom module and you
might need this other thing, butif you're going to pay the bill
and use your allotted retainerhours toward this, who am I to
say that you're not able to dothis?
You are the one, you're theclient.
You're paying us.

Nicole (14:22):
You're the client, you're paying the bills, so
therefore.

Alec (14:24):
Therefore, we will do it where, whereby, in the
subscription software as aservice model, you have to be
really careful when you say yesbecause effectively, what you're
doing is signing up yourproduct development team to then
roll a feature into your corethat will then be rolled out to
everybody else.
So if customer base says Iwould really like this custom

(14:47):
CPQ feature for my t-shirtbusiness, and I feel like you
know that's good for the t-shirtbusiness but not good for our,
you know industrial distributorsthat are just trying to, you
know get orders quickly off theshelf and you know, have
inventory constraints and allthese other things that we need
to focus on.
So therefore, I will say no,but then I will refer that out

(15:09):
to the agency business or otheragencies right, it could be silk
, it could be others.
I'm gonna then say, hey, youcan still get that thing done.
I would still like you to useour platform for what it can do.
Just, we're not going to buildthat module for you.
It doesn't resonate with ourclient base.
This time.
That could change, right?
So that was the major shift wassaying no but then redirecting

(15:32):
that to someone that can say yes, yes, and then we kind of focus
on continuing to build that.
What we felt was the core.
You know what started out asmaybe 40 or 50% of what one
would need.
That I think ended up beingaround like 60 or 70% of what
maybe a B2B manufacturer,distributor, would need in terms

(15:53):
of the commonly asked featuresthat we had seen from you know
hundreds of these projects and Iguess you could sort of
bifurcate that, as you know,manufacturers and then
distributors, cause the needsare.
There's some overlap between thetwo and if I'm selling to a
business online, there's certainthings that everyone's going to
need.
But then I think, within thosetwo different business models,
you know, there are going to bespecific things that then you

(16:15):
have to look at, which wasanother challenge, because
you're gonna you're going to geta lot of requests that don't
make a lot of sense unless youunderstand the root of where
those requests are coming fromand you're then able to relate
that to a larger audience.
And then you say, yes, I willactually build that, because I
know distributors do businesslike that and I will get more
distributors if I built thisthing into my product and I know

(16:36):
you know, like for, for example, building the quoting tool for
a long time we didn't havequoting right.
We just didn't have it.
But ultimately we had to makethe decision to roll that into
the product because otherwisethey're just going to go buy
something else and they'd haveto integrate that in our system
and it was going to be toocomplicated for what they were
paying us.
It just made more sense to getthat feature.

(16:57):
So, even though it existed inother people's software that was
integrated with big commerce,we decided to do it because our
clients just didn't want to goto another vendor to get that
thing right.
So that's another sort of Idon't know example, I guess, and
product development.
You know, client requests andrequirements and how to scale a
business without goingunderwater.

Nicole (17:19):
Basically, yes, especially, you know, because,
let's be honest, running anagency it's it's like it's hard
to scale a service business.
Margins are tricky compared to,you know, other businesses.
But, when you're talking abouthow you're deciding, deciding to
decide, how you are decidingwhich features you want to add
to the product.
It sounds like there's just alot of nuance.

(17:41):
There is very subjective andthere wasn't really like a firm,
like okay, this is our listwe're going to follow to make
sure that this meets thecriteria of creating this
product right, Like it wasalmost like.
Just you know, you had to kindof like use your best judgment
based on the other use casesthat you had and just the other,
the other situation that youhad.

(18:01):
Are there certain features thatyou got requests for that, in
hindsight, you wish you wouldhave built into the product?

Alec (18:09):
That's a really good question.
I think a lot of those thingshave now been since remedied,
since built into the product.
I think one of the major Iwouldn't even call this a
feature, but one of the majorthings that we didn't get to pre
acquisition that now exists wasuniversal compatibility with
any big commerce merchant.

(18:30):
So the way that we had builtthe software originally was all
the code existed inside the bigcommerce theme, so you had to
then customize it all within thetheme, and the major release
that actually took place earlierthis year is now like with the
buyer portal it can just overlayon top of any big commerce site

(18:53):
, so it's no longer relying onwhatever code and everything
else that they've built to date.
They can just now enable me tobe login and they have their own
like kind of branded buyerportal.
Right.
So it's a lot more accessibleand easy to implement, I think
because we had the agency,business and people that could

(19:15):
write code all day.
We just never did that becausewe figured out we could just do
it, but that was definitely thething that needed to be done.
That has now been done.
That was a major, the majorlike elephant of development
work.
I think it was almost a yearafter the acquisition and we

(19:35):
John McCann and Micah and therest of the team kind of rolled
that out first as sort of theall right.
Now it's universally availableto everyone instead of, hey,
it's available if you do all ofthese things and customize the
code, which ultimately wasn'tthe right model for big commerce
overall.
So do I wish that we had doneit?

(19:56):
No, because it would have costus more than $1,000.
But what it helped a lot likethat was kind of the thing right
.

Nicole (20:06):
Yeah, no, kidding, like you have to like.
That's what's magical aboutthis story is that you
bootstrapped it.
You have to like, make a lot oflike judgment calls based on
financial need and based on yourcases and resources.
And you're still able to buildthis amazing product.
That, frankly, adds atremendous, a tremendous amount

(20:29):
of value for BDA companies now.
So, man, if you could likebottle that up somehow and
create a framework for otherstartups on how they go about
that process, like that would be.

Alec (20:42):
Yeah, well, there have since been, there have since
been a number of other companiesthat I've seen go from agency
to SaaS, and I've spoken with alot of those founders and owners
of those agencies and consultedwith them and provided my you
know, two cents of feedback andmaking the switch.
And you know, some some have,you know, gone through with it

(21:04):
after speaking with me andothers have stayed out of it
because they're just like Idon't know I'm ready for that,
right, I don't know if I want todo it.
So yeah, for sure.

Nicole (21:13):
Well, I have a.
I just watched something theother day that full disclosure.
I'm not a big Elon Musk fan,okay, but I saw this quote from
him that I just completelyrelated to as a founder and I
would love your take on it.
He was talking about someonehad asked him if building a
business was fun and he saidhe's like anyone who thinks it's

(21:34):
not fun to build a business.
He said there's parts of itthat are fun, but most of the
time it's like you're staringinto the dark abyss and you're
eating glass.
And he said and I thought itwas brilliant he's like the dark
abyss is that the odds arestacked against you.
You don't know, there's nocertainty about the future, you
have basically a 90% chance offailure, and you, it's this

(21:56):
black abyss, you have no idea.
And the glass part is that youhave to work on all of the
problems that the businessrequires you to work on, not the
ones that you want to beworking on, and so you're
basically just staring into theeating glass, and I found that
to be like, so like I listenedto it and I was like, oh my gosh
, I totally can relate to this.

(22:17):
It is so, absolutely true.
So what do you think about that?
Did you feel like somethingsimilar when you were building
Bundle B2B or do you feeldifferently?

Alec (22:28):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I think there are rewardingmoments along the way, yes, like
where you've really likesatisfied a client and they've
found tremendous value in thatthing.
That started from nothing,right, and that kind of keeps
you going through the toughtimes, which there are going to
be a lot of them While at thesame time, yes, you do have to
kind of fill in, like as apartner, as a founder or

(22:50):
whatever your percentage ofownership is.
The employees are only going todo as much as they're going to
do that you've asked them to do,and all of those gaps, which
many of them will exist.
The partners or founders kindof have to come in and fill all
of those gaps.
And sometimes I think that'swhen it's really important to
choose co-founders that havecomplementary skill sets and you

(23:11):
don't want to have anyduplication almost in any
category, and to the extent thatyou do, most likely one of
those founders is going to endup eating glass, to your point,
right, because they're going tohave to fill in for that thing
that they really hate doing.
So for me, I ended up doing alot on the finance side, in the
accounting side, because Dong isjust super technical and

(23:33):
product oriented.
So I ended up over time doingless and less on the product and
the technical side, doing moreon the finance and the
accounting, which I don'tnecessarily like, but I don't
hate it that much.
Accounting is accounting, it'slike those types of things.

Nicole (23:53):
That's such a great point about finding founders
that have complementary skills.
I completely agree with that,and I found that being a founder
, being an entrepreneur, is thiscombination, this weird
combination of intense joy.
It's incredibly rewarding andfulfilling, combined with this
intense pain and sufferinghappening off and simultaneously

(24:16):
.
But you feel compelled.
It's just so rewarding and so Ithink it's just this
interesting and you have to getreally uncomfortable, or not
uncomfortable.
You have to get comfortablewith the uncertainty, knowing
that it's always going to beuncertain, and you have to just
make peace with.

Alec (24:33):
Nothing's going to be Certain and just for a lot of
people, they thrive in that kindof dynamic.
That said, those same types ofpeople.
If you look at their personallife, not a whole lot is there
the majority of the time.
Right.
In the cases where, where youhave a fulfilling outside of
work life and you have that,it's like how have they done

(24:56):
this right?
It's so crazy to think that youcan scale this business and
take care of this like your own,basically, child and then also
have like real children, whichfor me it was like I think I
could probably do this again ifI wasn't to kind of full circle
moment to the intro, likewanting to start a family and do

(25:17):
all those other things.
So I think, for, for people thatreally want to have like
dedicated time and you know allthat for like personal things,
whatever your passions are right, like starting a business and
doing that whole thing might notbe like maybe that's why 70%
fail is because 70% of peopleactually don't want to make the

(25:39):
sacrifices that are actuallyneeded the 60, 70, 80 hour weeks
at times to keep things goingRight.
Or, you know, doing the red eye, meeting with the client, going
to another place, like the roadwarrior kind of life.
It's.
That's what you need.
You got a world tour to build abusiness, especially if it

(26:00):
operates globally, which oursdid right, so yeah, that is such
a great point.

Nicole (26:07):
I love it and it's really exciting because you're
going to be a dad soon, my goshyou're going to be a.
You're going to have a son soon, in a couple months, right?
Your wife, your wife ispregnant, so your first child.

Alec (26:20):
We're preparing the best that we can.
I've told the best, the mostcommon, talking about like
feedback from people.
Right, the most common piece offeedback is get sleep, get your
yes, but how do you actuallybuild up?
Doesn't it reset every day?
Like, how do you build up sleeplike I wish I could like it's
vacation time, like I build thisup and then right now I'm going
to use all this.

(26:41):
You know, sleep now that thekid is here is like no, you
can't do that.

Nicole (26:44):
Yeah, you just got.
You got to appreciate the sleepwhile you have it, so be
grateful for it.
And then, when the beat, whenthe baby comes, you have to just
take sleep when you can get it.
You know like just sleep whenyou can.
It doesn't you're and justexpect you're probably not going
to get a full night sleep for along time and just make peace
with it, but I'm sure you'reused to that.

Alec (27:05):
Like I can nap my wife can't nap, she just doesn't do
it.
But she can also function withless sleep than I can.
But yeah, I can basically shutmy eyes and be asleep within
five minutes at most pointsthroughout the day.
That's amazing.

Nicole (27:23):
So yeah, I'm lucky and the other thing I would say is
tap into that amazing Jewishmother of yours and have her
come and help as much as humanlypossible, so that you can get
some sleep, that is, and don'thesitate.
I remember when I had my firstchild, I honestly felt guilty
about asking for help.
I was like, oh no, I got totake care of all this and no,

(27:43):
just ask for help because peoplewant to help and it's better
for everyone if you have and canuse the help.

Alec (27:50):
We have actually started.
We're doing shifts right,because we only have one at her,
so we're gonna have.
Yeah, I think the first, likethree months are pretty much
accounted for, but yes, afterthat I think we'll be then the
time where.
Okay, so now, who's going tohelp after three months?
Right, but I don't know.

Nicole (28:11):
Oh man, so good.
Well, I have like so many morequestions for you, alec, I could
like talk to you all day long.

Alec (28:17):
What.

Nicole (28:18):
Let's talk about.
Let's talk about manufacturing,which is a very something I'm
very, very passionate about.
We we work primarily withmanufacturers at our agency and,
and we provide digitalmarketing services, primarily
content marketing, and a lot ofour clients are pretty new in
terms of like marketing maturityand definitely e-commerce
maturity, and we have some thatare on the you know the further

(28:40):
end of that, where they have,you know, pretty robust
e-commerce stores, and so wework with a.
We work across the spectrum andthere's some real challenges
for manufacturers to adopte-commerce because of the
complexity of the sales processand that so many of them have
custom manufactured products andthe sales teams and distributed
and all of that.
It's just not as easy as justsetting up your t-shirt store

(29:02):
and screen printing teas, youknow.
So tell me, like what is?
What do you think some of thebiggest challenges that
manufacturers have when it comesto e-commerce transformation
and how does big commerce isbundle B2B, this?
You know these.
How do you see that reallyfitting in and filling the gap
for that need?

Alec (29:20):
yeah, so it is a bit of a moving target, right, as things
evolve and you know the worldkind of changes, right.
But, like, ai is the biggesttopic these days and now we just
launched this AI like productdescription tool, which is,
which is cool.
So now you can spend less onproduct descriptions because
robots will do it for you, right?

(29:41):
So yeah as time passes, youknow there's more and more kind
of tools that can help with withthese types of things.
But fundamentally I think andI've said this many, many times
before is like alignment ofbusiness operating divisions.
So primarily it's like thecombination of it.

(30:02):
If it's a large enough businessto have an it with the IT
department, with sales andmarketing, right, because at the
end of the day, like how do you, how do you change management,
how do you like, how do you dothat right, and it and it's
going to be different dependingon really like what is like,
what's the main driver?

(30:23):
Like during the pandemic, itwas the pandemic was the driver
right now it's a little bitdifferent.
It's it's it's more centeredaround growth and efficiency and
profitability, right, but ofcourse, you have to make
investments as manufacturer.
You know what's the number onething that I'm going to put all
of my money into.
90% of the time is the productright, because I'm I'm a, I'm a

(30:47):
manufacturer, I want to keepbuilding stuff and like
innovating, and you know patentsor whatever it is that I'm
doing that's so unique.
That is the reason why I existin the first place, right, and
then after that, after product.
It's like these other things,right, and so it's after product
.
What is it right?
It's normally sales, right, soyou can sell the product.
Then, alright, how do you sellthe product?
Who do I sell the product to?

(31:07):
And that's when.
Oh, you know, we're going tohire this poor individual and
we're going to, we're going tohave them.
Read the marketing team, right,and I think you have probably
the most experience in dealingwith these poor individuals that
have been, you know, brought in, and it was very apparent.
You know, at the MEP conferenceas well, like some of these
marketing folks, and you know,the hands go up.
Are you the only one at that?

(31:27):
The man you've got thismanufacturer that does marketing
, or are you?
Do you have a team of two orthree, and I think the most that
I saw was like three, threepeople, right?
Which tells you, okay, this isa product and sales led sort of
model here, but you know what ise-commerce, right?
That's that's marketing thistechnology as an enabler to sell

(31:49):
more product, make more sales,or you know more education about
the product.
So what do you need?
You need good product data.
You need, you know, some sortof source of truth for that
product information.
That's hopefully not your ERP,because ERP is really bad at
data and asset management andyou know rich content that
Google likes, right?
So you know, enter PIM, whichdidn't exist when we started

(32:11):
doing this like, like, productinformation management systems
and digital asset managementsystems just didn't exist.
There was no real need for it,right?
But as a lot of these companiesstart thinking about, like, how
do I scale out my global youknow e-commerce business or my
global marketing strategy if I'ma manufacturer and I have, you
know, map pricing?
I've got this huge distributornetwork and they're all

(32:32):
reselling my products.
Where are they going to get my,my product images?
Where they're going to get thespecs, where they get all the
pdfs and all of these thingsthat need to be standardized and
then, from a languageperspective, translated content
right.
So more and more I've found,like for manufacturers, you know
, that centralized source oftruth for really like the real,

(32:53):
really like the rich content andproduct information that
differentiates your product.
Having that ready is step zeroor step one, and, and a lot of
the time, like, because you saidthere's various levels of
maturity, yeah, I think you,kurt, and I were kind of jamming
on the idea of like a maturityscore for a manufacturer.

(33:13):
Yeah, and you know my thoughtswere you know, if you're on the
lower end of that maturity, youprobably just need to centralize
all of your information, get itready to the extent where you
can just list a catalog, forgetabout pricing and bringing in
your distributor, services,claims, replacement parts and,
you know, sales, quoting onlineand invoice portals, like all

(33:34):
that advanced stuff.
You can forget about that, throwit out the window.
I just need a catalog and thenI would like that catalog to be
available online.
So somebody is searching for myproduct, whether that's an end
user or a distributor, theycould go and find, you know the
specifications that they need tomake sure that they can
continue on with their project.
Then, you know, maybe it turnsinto a sales qualified lead.

(33:55):
From there you can go aboutyour business with the offline
sales process and then decide atwhat point.
You know, now that you canstart bringing data online, you
can start bringing sales repsinto the e-commerce universe
where they might want toleverage some of these more
advanced tools that again existson, like the maybe higher
spectrum of maturity scale.

Nicole (34:14):
I love that idea of the maturity scale.
I think it's brilliant becauseI think a lot of times
manufacturers that I work withthey just don't understand
e-commerce there's like youmentioned.
They're so focused on productand engineering and sales and
e-commerce is like this andmarketing in general is like
this and they're like this issomething that they just don't,
frankly don't understand and soI think a lot of times what I

(34:34):
see with manufacturers is whenwe're trying to like understand
that you know they're they,they're so many of them are want
to do e-commerce.
They see it, they want to do it.
They don't realize thecomplexity of it.
So they'll come to a andthey'll show us a website of
some other competitors store andthey're like I want that and
you're like well, wait a second.
This site probably cost over amillion dollars to build.

(34:57):
Like if you look at the backend of it and this, in order for
them to build this, these 10things needed to have been done
first before they could even getthere.
And you're like way like overhere.
So let's start over here andthen we can maybe step it up to
there.
You know, like.
So I think that that is areally cool point.
I think for manufacturers toreally think about is

(35:19):
understanding where and foranybody who's working with the
manufacturer needs to understandand like, kind of like lower
the expectations a little bitand be really realistic with
them about where they should bestarting and taking that crawl
and we say this all the time,but you know, you starting here
and and being able to set up ane-commerce solution that will
grow with them.
Right, that's so important,because where they're going to

(35:39):
be today, it's not going to bewhere they are in three to four
or five years, which is a greatthing, right.
Right, they also need tounderstand that it's not a one
and done thing, like once youbuild the store.
It's.
There's ongoing evolution, thathappens as you're learning from
the market and all of that.
So anyway, I could go on and onabout that, but I love the
maturity model.

(36:00):
Yeah, like, what are the?

Alec (36:02):
inputs.
You know I've always and youknow no perfect formula exist,
right, but what I mean, ifanyone could do it, it would be
you and Kurt.
Right, to figure out, like,what is the line of questioning
that will allow us to figure outwhere you are and you know how
to at least you know insert theright messaging and solution

(36:22):
sort of path based off of that.
That progression, right,because it's going to be so
different and it's going toalways change as new things are
developed, like, like I said,with the AI.
You know hype and actualapplication of it.
It's it's sort of accelerated alot of the you know product
information, productrecommendations, personalization

(36:44):
.
You know a lot of the thingsthat were proprietary, like AI
driven search right, it's existfor a really long time.
Auto, complete, right, even.
You know if you are typing on.
You know the iPhone use autocorrect, guess what that's using
?
Right, so it's exist for areally long time.
It's just now become accessibleand reasonably democratize, for

(37:08):
you know all to kind of.
You know figure out how thisapplies to you.
How do you make this moreefficient, even for marketing?
To my wife, she's a contentwriter and as soon as I saw him,
yeah, she, she does she lookingfor work?

(37:28):
Yeah, not, not a moment.
But when all this stuff startedgetting released, I said you
know you should start using this, because I feel like you might
be one of the first ones to bereplaced.
He's like oh yeah, you'reprobably right.
So now she does kind of likeplug in.
You know a lot of these likegenerating captions for you know
Instagram and tick tock.
You know all of these thingslike just use it, right, because

(37:49):
everybody else is now using it.
But you know, apply yourknowledge to that, enhance it
from there, right.
If you're not using it, or youcannot at least get some value
out of it, then you're startingfrom a point of this.
You're at a disadvantage, right.

Nicole (38:07):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and we, you know we're
content marketing agency.
We are writing all the time andwe leverage a I all the time to
create content, and so what therole has become for the writer
is you're basically the editor,you know instead of right and
it's a beautiful thing and it'sinteresting to see, like,
because of how great the toolsare now they the more that you

(38:29):
train them to speak from thevoice of whatever, whoever it is
that you're writing for thebrand voice, you can feed it all
of the information, pastarticles, etc.
And say this is all theinformation about X brand.
I want you to take thistranscript from this interview
and create a blog post blah,blah, blah, blah it the more you
train it, the better it gets atspeaking from that voice and

(38:52):
you just become the editor andyou just basically treat AI like
a toddler, where you go backand say, actually I didn't, you
didn't get this part right, so Ineed you to go back and I'm
going to ask you to do it thisway, and so it's really quite
interesting to see how that isgoing to is playing out and how
quickly it's all advancing.
And I think it also for likemanufacturers getting into

(39:13):
e-commerce.
It does just like you mentioned, you got to get on now, and
it's so true for manufacturers.
The longer that you wait to tryto start this e-commerce
journey, the further behindyou're going to be when you get
there.

Alec (39:25):
So it's just so important to start it Higher and a colder
data start to embody your brand.

Nicole (39:34):
Absolutely.
But yeah, no, I think that'sgreat.
So let's talk about the futureof B2B e-commerce, all right.

Intro (39:42):
What do?

Nicole (39:42):
you think, like, what are you excited about?
What is the future of B2B?
I guess we've talked a lotabout AI, which is going to be a
lot of the future.
But where do you like you know,where do you see it going with
AI?
You mentioned productdescriptions.
That big commerce recently justrolled that out to be able to,
you know, create thosedescriptions through AI.
But, like, what other thingsare you excited about?
That you think is going to becool.
Going ahead, looking ahead.

Alec (40:02):
Yeah, there's.
There's a lot and I could breakit out even by category.
Like as a category, there's somuch innovation happening and
payments and fintech andtraditional banking and all of
that.
And then there's anothercategory which is, you know, the
enterprise resource planningand migrating from like on
premise to cloud.

(40:24):
I grade a lot of those core kindof you know supplier, vendor
management, you know inventorymanagement tools with your sales
channels to make sure that youcan get like better forecasting,
quicker turnover of inventoryand all of that stuff.
And there's sales tools rightLike like like better quoting
and invoicing.

(40:45):
And you know cash time, likefrom from when you send the
invoice to when do you receivethe money, and you know decrease
like.
There's tools in.
This actually relates back tofintech a little bit.
There's like tools that you canuse decrease that time from you
know when the order is placedwhen you receive the money,
because you know now I have youknow invoice reminders or I have
a portal that can.

(41:05):
Then you know go and you knowprocess payments or accepting
credit cards, but with L2 or L3data, which means I get better
processing rates because I'mselling to another business.
Or you know working withcompanies for in capital like
inventory funding.
So I was just at a conferencelast week I can't remember the
name of the company, but they'llbasically like pay for your

(41:29):
inventory if you have a contractwith like retailers like Target
or Walmart, to like help youbecause your margins are lower
when you sell a retail, but theretailers want your product, and
so there's companies that willhelp fund that turnaround.
from when you're like they'llbuy your inventory to basically
like the middleman.
Yeah, to go put on the shelves,and then you know you, of

(41:52):
course they're gonna take, takesomething a percentage, but you
the risk.

Nicole (41:56):
The financial risk is much less risk is less right.

Alec (41:59):
So tools like that, I think, are really unlocking a
lot for brands with goodproducts to get them out onto
shelves and really test see.
Okay, you know like I can morequickly validate how successful
this is going to be becausethere are these tools now that
can get me out into the universea lot faster, more efficiently,
more cost effectively thanmaybe has ever existed Right.

(42:22):
So I don't know if that'snecessarily the future of B2B,
but that is like one interestingkind of tool that I saw with,
like businesses selling intoretail, which is technically B2B
, is just big.
Retail is a whole beast withinitself, as opposed to, in the
traditional sense, manufacturersselling to different dealers
and you know those dealers areregional distributors.

(42:43):
Then you know adding theirvalue, service, installation,
assembly of those products orwhatnot, right?

Nicole (42:50):
No, I think it's definitely relevant for B2B.
It just seems like retail tendsto do things first in
e-commerce and then it makes itsway to B2B, because I mean
manufacturers, definitely they.
Cashflow is king, so if there'sgoing to be a solution for them
where they don't have to worryabout trade capital finance
things like that I think arereally interesting and there's

(43:11):
tools that have been doing thatfor a while.

Alec (43:13):
But I think a lot of businesses they don't want to
pay those little like fees orthings like that to free up the
cash.
But I think with extended leadtimes on certain products, like
particularly for distributors,you know they might they might
want to do that, those types ofthings.
But, outside of, just liketrading capital and freeing up

(43:34):
cash and these types of tools.
I've always thought like theseintegration platforms right?
I always go down.
Yes, I mean, there's so many ofthem out there now, but they
really have come a long way.
And I futz around in thesetools all the time, whether it's

(43:54):
, you know, mercado or Jitterbitor Boomi or Celigo, and I'll go
find, like, the big commerceconnector.
It'll bring in all theendpoints.
Then I'll go you know anacumatica or net suite, bring in
all that stuff and I'll juststart you know, doing stuff like
All right, can I get this dataover here?
What do I have to do in themiddle from a business process

(44:15):
point of view to then change themapping?
And I've always like nerd it outon that kind of stuff, probably
because I was doing demos onthese like virtual servers when
I was like 21 years old.
But these days it's prettyinteresting to see, like at
least in the B2C workflow, howsophisticated it is, how easy it

(44:37):
is to take like a credit cardorder, push that through to a
3PL that you know third partyright goes and ships it out
updates like I don't even haveto do anything as like a.
There's a lot of thesecompanies.
A lot of them are on Shopifysorry, big commerce but a lot of
these brands, these D2C brands.
All they do is marketing andadvertising.

(44:59):
Right, that's all they have todo Because everything else is
automated and they just pay amonthly fee and it's all there.
But that's B2C, right?
Like you said.
That's, that's the model.
Like, how do you then take someof those efficiencies of like
these, some of these companiesjust being like you, talk to
some people.
They have no idea about theirproduct.
A lot of them are in likesupplements and like vitamins

(45:19):
and, unfortunately now, pet food.
But there's a lot of people outthere that just kind of target
a market because they know howto advertise and they know, you
know, men, men at the agebetween 30 and 50, are going to
be looking at, you know, thistype of supplement to improve
their Y level of whatever it is.

(45:41):
Or like this, like mushroomcoffee that I keep seeing ads
for regular coffee, right, like,drink this coffee.
You're going to be not thattype of mushroom, but I guess
there's like some you know typeof energy derived from.
Anyway that's not the point.
The point.
The point is that I thinkthere's a lot, of, a lot of

(46:03):
integration efficiency that canhappen if these B2B businesses
are really to maybe change ortweak a process and then that
can drastically reduce theircost to going online.
Right, but I think that changethat's why I was talking about
change management and businessprocess, because I think
historically, a lot of thesecompanies are just you know,

(46:24):
it's worked this way for areally long time.
This is this is how it's set up.
It's cost effective.
I don't want to name anyspecific legacy ERPs, but there
are a lot of legacy or industryspecific ERPs out there that do
some of these things really well, whether I'm in, you know, food
and Bev, or I'm in promotionalproducts or any you know

(46:47):
specific niche industry where Ihave my requirements that I need
right, I think, as thosesystems either start to get
acquired by the largerconglomerates of SAPs and
oracles and others, or you know,they go.
They go create these cloudversions of their on premise or
older software.
I think, when it comes to thatbusiness process and how, how I

(47:10):
can easily get APIs and webservice calls, you know faster,
more efficient for things likepricing and inventory.
You know orders and invoicingand accounts receivable and
supplier vendor managementaccounts payable, like, as all
those things in the back officeare brought to the current time,

(47:31):
which is happening, then, likethese integration platforms will
actually be able to do whatthey do in the B to C world for
B to B, because now suddenly thecore is more readily able to be
automated into the front end.

Intro (47:48):
We're not there, yet that's going to be another
decade or two.

Alec (47:53):
But as that back office progression continues.
These integration platforms arejust going to get smarter and
smarter and, you know, even togo back to AI right as a
sequence of like taking an order, getting the line items,
transferring those line itemsinto a bill of materials and
then exploding that bill ofmaterials into six different
vendors and then fulfilling that.
You know those little robots inbetween can maybe take what

(48:16):
could could was a six stepsequence and just turn it into
one, because now the robot canlook at every single line item,
decide what vendor all thosematch to and then push that
thing and push that blob intothe order management system to
then more quickly fulfill itRight.
So we've got clients likeuplift desk that are able to
take an order, I got an upliftdesk.

(48:38):
Check it out, check out myuplift.

Nicole (48:40):
It's amazing.
I love it.

Alec (48:41):
That's the most those guys can have like hundreds of
custom lines on an order andstill ship it out the same day.
Right, that's just big.
That's the, with a bunch ofcustom logic in between.
So that bunch of custom logicin between wasn't necessarily
easy to do.
But I guess my point is it willbecome easier and easier for
that middleware and that custombusiness process and logic to

(49:04):
apply to these more bespoke B2Bbusiness processes.
Long winded answer, but I thinkthat's the future, truthfully.

Nicole (49:12):
No, that is.
I got to say that's excitingbecause I've been in a
manufacturer and seen how muchmanual work happened.
So these order type products,oh my gosh, like how many hands
are touching it and the back andforth between the supplier, and
you know all of the suppliersright, Because there's many yes.
Exactly.
And then the lead times and thelead times are different

(49:32):
depending on which vendor you'regoing to, and there's someone
on the team that has to followup and make sure and update and
all that stuff and what you justthe picture you just painted,
seems like a miracle.

Alec (49:45):
So all those suppliers that are higher up the supply
chain, what if they're more, youknow, more readily providing
their inventory in their leadtimes than my back end system
can actually read that?
So I don't have to go and check.
You don't have to have someonego and check that one that's
going to be available and thenthat requires an ecosystem,
though, right Like.

Nicole (50:05):
In order to do that, your suppliers are going to have
to be as advanced as you arewhen it comes to e-commerce
maturity, or please correct meif I'm wrong, but, like I would
imagine, in order for that tofunction the way that you're
imagining, it would go beyondone company, and you would have
to get your suppliers on boardto be able to adopt that
technology too.

Intro (50:25):
Yes totally.

Alec (50:27):
Yeah, and you know for us right, you know we can, and I
say us as in the context of bigcommerce now, but usually you
know we start out and we'll getsomebody maybe a little more
forward thinking on the loweryou know they're manufactured.
They're really just likebringing in like four or five
different things and likesmashing them all together,
sometimes even just putting fouror five different finished

(50:48):
goods into a bundle and sellingthe bundle right.
But as you kind of go up, up,up up that supply chain, you'll
find, okay, here's, you knowsomebody that's just supplying
the steel right and they sell to, I don't know, like Boeing
right for the steel that goes onto aircrafts like.

(51:08):
Think about, like Boeing's headof procurement right and like
the types of vendors thatthey're working with.
It's mostly all EDI right andEDI those types of transactions,
that's.
That's eventually going tochange.
I don't know how long, butthat's really old technology.
Eventually it will change andwhen it does, a lot of these

(51:30):
bohemiths that are like top, topof the food chain are going to
have more accessible data feedsand then, once those are
accessible, then the downstreamfolks, maybe the smaller than
Boeing folks, who don't have themeans to go set up their whole
procurement system with theother system that they've got
like these are you know theseare smaller companies now have

(51:54):
access to maybe data andinformation that only is
previously available to largercompanies and you got collective
bargaining within that.
So I've got all theseindependent now manufacturers or
independent companies that youknow because of the access to
the information can then, youknow, go and go and do stuff
like Alibaba is like one exampleof that like need to be
marketplace model right.

(52:15):
Where you've got all thesedifferent, you know, China based
companies, and I think therewas a sponsor for the MEP forgot
the name, but they were kind oftrying to do the same thing.
It was like a marketplaceconics, was that it.

Nicole (52:27):
Oh yeah, connects Yep, connects for for the internal
manufacturing.
Great idea, yes.

Alec (52:33):
Great idea US based sort of supply chain connectivity.
You know, send your data tothese guys and then the other
the other folks will be able tothen go and figure out if they
can use your products for theirprojects, and that's kind of
that's.
That's a great vision, right?
I actually still need to followup with that company.
I think that's a great.
I think that's a great vision.
I think that's a direction.

(52:54):
That's a direction that you'reheaded right.

Nicole (52:58):
Yeah, I mean, I think the vision that you've painted
is like very exciting, like it's, it's super, like I can
visualize in my mind how muchefficiency that's going to
create for the business and sothat they can be more profitable
and grow and scale much moreeffectively across the whole
ecosystem.
Right, and the benefit is goingto be obviously to the end

(53:18):
customer, which is, of course,what you want.
But, like, how do you like?
How do these?
Like?
I got to tell you I'm in theweeds with these manufacturers
that it's just like, it's like achore to just even get them to
just put up their just basicstock items on a store and you
know, and then build like justeven a simple configurator and

(53:39):
you know how.
Like to me, like I hear thatand I'm like my gosh, how do we
get there?
Like, how do we get these?
There's so many smallmanufacturers who are just like
wanting e-commerce and don'tlike you know, that's where I'm
like.
Well, how do we get there, alec, how do we like?
I'm rambling no.

Alec (53:59):
I think there's always going to be, there's always
going to be a percentage of thebusiness that will not go online
.
In some cases it could be 5%,in some cases it could be 95%.
I want to focus on what youthink, business, owner, that
could be brought online today.
Yep, even if it's just 5% ofthe business.
And then you look at thatpercentage of the business, you

(54:19):
create a model and you say, allright, this, this might, this
might have legs.
How can you then apply that tothe rest of the business?
Or do you want to create moreproduct lines like this 5% of
the business, that could thengenerate more bottom line to
your 95% of the business?
Right, so that's not to say youhave to go and sell finished
goods.
But you know, simplify it bysimplifying your process using

(54:42):
tools that are off the shelfalready there.
What does it cost you?
A couple hundred bucks a monthto go.
And you know, get a, evenShopify, I don't, it doesn't
matter.
Right, because I know if you goand buy their thing and you,
you test it all out and thenyou're successful, that you'll
be in the market for my thing aswell.
Right, because it's all a bitcommoditized.

(55:02):
At the end of the day, I thinkwe have the best you know sort
of value to investment typesolution for those middle what
we call middle market.
So anywhere from you know, 10million to 250 million in total
sales, I think we'll give youthe most bang for the buck.
If you're in B2B and you alsowant to do direct to consumer,

(55:22):
you don't want to do direct toconsumer or just B2B, I still
think we can do it.
But then you're going to belooking at maybe more expensive
platforms here on the higher end.
But all of that to say, I thinklook at what's out there, right
?
Don't you want to know, don'tyou want to know what's out
there, what these folks aredoing?
You know, that's kind of mypitch to to to these folks right

(55:42):
, and if and if and if they'vealready agreed like this is
something we should do, I justdon't know where to start.
That's where I think we need todo a better job.
Right Us as a platform, youguys, service partners there's
service partners, othertechnology partners At the end
of the day, like, what we needthem to be focused on is
building their product,innovating you know, creating
better more efficient tools.
You know, give me a fancykitchen sink that washes my

(56:04):
dishes, I don't care.
Right, you keep focusing onthat, which is, you know,
innovation on the product side.
Let us, you know, figure outwhere you are in terms of your,
your maturity, what kind ofsolution stack you have today.
You know, a lot of the time, ifthe conversation ends, oh yeah,
our ERP is just so old, doesn'thave APIs, we don't want to do

(56:25):
FTP cron jobs and spend all thismoney, so we're just going to
do an evaluation of MicrosoftDynamics and NetSuite or
Acumatica or whatever it is, andthen we're going to look at or,
if they're, you know,industrial supply, maybe looking
at Epicor or Infor right.
And their solution, and thenwe'll we'll circle back on the
whole e-commerce thing afterwe've, you know, transformed our

(56:47):
, our core business here whichnot the best answer for us, but,
you know, still steps in theright direction will eventually
hit a sales cycle with thosecompanies If they decide they
don't want to do the ERP and thee-commerce transformation at
once, which we've, of course.
I think we've all seencompanies trying to do the whole
digital transformation, wherethey've changed the back office

(57:07):
and the front end at the sametime, and it's just, it's just
crazy.

Nicole (57:10):
Pro Walk Run.
I swear I'm like a hugeproponent.
I think you hit the nail on thehead too and it's what I've seen
with some of our clients iswhat can you bring?
Like, like you said, start withthe few stock items that you
can bring online.
Manufacturers are reordering ishuge.
Everyone's like.
Your customers are reorderingall the time.
Get them to reorder through theplatform.

(57:30):
Elevate your sales reps tomasquerade as the customer and
get more of them to createportal accounts so that they can
be teaching their customers toreorder through the platform
rather than through them.
Then your sales reps can focuson those really complex orders
and I think that's what I'veseen work really well.
Because manufacturers are sotraditional and so like.

(57:51):
If you're anytime you're goingin and you're trying to, you
know, change anything, you gotto figure out like what can we
preserve?
What part of the tradition isreally important that we hold
onto through this transformationthat we can keep throughout, so
that they're they're not goingto be so like resistant and in
many of them, like I found thatsales rep relationship is like

(58:12):
the foundation that that companywas built on, right so, and so
they have.
Sales reps don't feelthreatened.
You have to position it as likeokay, how can we take this
store and treat it as a salesadmin, rather than a threat to
you.
You know, and that's, I think, alot of what manufacturers
struggle with is like they seeit as a competition, that it's
going to take their job away,when they don't, if they can

(58:34):
realize this is only going toelevate them.
Just to your point, there arecertain sales that are never
going to go online.
That's a reality.
There's, there's going to becomplex sales and manufacturing
Well, I could be wrong.
You know what 15 years from now, 15 years from now, call?
me and we'll have a conversationand follow up and I would love
for you to hold me to the, tothe what's it called the fire,

(58:56):
on that and see if I'm stillwrong.
But you know, there are still,there's always going to still be
, a need for a sales rep, I feel, for complex custom.

Alec (59:06):
It's just the role, the role of the sales rep.
This is another, you know,arrow in your quiver, if you
will right.
How do you deploy this tool toyour it's?
It's the same conversation thatwe're talking about at every
conference to do with AI.
Now that everyone's talkingabout AI, it's like oh, big
commerce, how are you guys usingthis?
How are you, you know,everybody wants to talk about?
How are you using this tool tonow make your business more

(59:29):
efficient?
It's like it's the same.
It's the same conversation, thesame thought process, the same
type of you know focus on anarrow portion, get some success
and then figure out if that canscale out right.
That's really what it isExactly.

Nicole (59:43):
So true, you just got to get in the game.

Alec (59:45):
Yeah, you have a really good point, though, because a
lot of these manufacturersthey're, they're, they've been
in business for decades,sometimes, like you know, a
hundred plus years.
So carrying on that tradition,I think, is really important.
So what?
What from that original kind oftradition?
The mission, you know stillthat authenticity of your

(01:00:06):
company holds through in thedigital era, now that you know
you're going to be bringing somethings into this, you know,
digital universe right.
I think channel conflict isanother one that we overlooked.
There's also the channelconflict component, which any of
any of these manufacturerswould call us out on that if we
didn't mention it.
So we'll say channel conflictis also there, but navigating

(01:00:27):
that can be done.
You can navigate channelconflict, right.

Nicole (01:00:32):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right With
manufacturers, and the thing isyou've got to respect that
tradition.
They built their companysuccessfully to this point using
those strategies.
So you do have to show somelevel of respect for them, for
them to you.
Show them respect for that andthey'll give you respect back.
Right, if you come in andyou're just like this is awful,

(01:00:54):
you've got to change it, likethey're going to be like hold on
a second, you know what's goingon.
We know what we're doing here.
So anyway, my gosh, we'realready like talking for a
minute.
I knew.
I knew when I booked you forthis podcast it was going to be
amazing.
I was.
I think we were going to haveso much fun.

Alec (01:01:11):
You'd get two of your prompts.
Yeah, I was looking at yourprompts last night.
Let's see if we can get throughlike half of these.

Nicole (01:01:17):
I know I'm the worst at that.
Everyone's always like Nicole.
You said way too many questionsand we never do them all.
We talk for hours and thosedrops.

Alec (01:01:25):
Next time we'll go to four hours slot and we'll cut it up
into like six different podcasts.

Nicole (01:01:31):
Well, let me see.
I want to see, like, whatquestion I feel like I got it.
I got three more questions inme and then I have a lightning
round.
Okay, how about this?
Two more questions and then alightning round.
Are you up for it?
Are you up for two morequestions and a lightning round?
Okay, all right.
So what is something I like?
This question?
What is something everyone inB2B commerce is talking about
that you feel the exact oppositeabout?

Alec (01:01:53):
Well, not everybody feels this way.
Actually, a lot of people wouldshare my opinion, but it's the
need for headless, the need fora headless site.
I think that's it's not reallyneeded for, like the majority of
it is needed in some global andlike international
implementations, for things likelocalization and payment,

(01:02:14):
shipping, tax, translated stuff,like that.
That's where I think headlesscan be really useful.
But for standaloneimplementation, I like any
agency saying go headless or usethis approach is probably not
not the one I gotta tell you.

Nicole (01:02:32):
I have a client who is, like you know, a small
manufacturing client, sub 20million, who worked with an
agency, who built a headlesswebsite for them.
I'm like what?

Intro (01:02:43):
That makes me cringe.

Nicole (01:02:47):
And the thing is is that they can't update like they
can't use it.
It's not usable in terms ofupdating the backend to create.

Alec (01:02:55):
That was the whole point.
Right, the whole point was tocreate something usable, right?
Yeah, that's the one thatgrinds my gears the most.

Nicole (01:03:05):
And I feel for them because they spent a putload of
money on this platform andthey're not sophisticated enough
, nor do they have.
They don't need it.
I cringed when I found out howmuch they spent on their, and if
you saw their website, it'sprobably like five pages, and
I'm anyway, so I actually agreewith you on that point.

Alec (01:03:27):
Yeah, maybe that's what.
I was going to say Maybe not alot of people disagree with that
, but maybe a couple years ago,when headless was the hype
before AI, maybe more peoplewould have disagreed.

Nicole (01:03:37):
Yeah, oh, man, okay.
So my other question is okay, Ilike this one because I have I
suck at this I say yes toeverything.
What's your advice on how toget better at saying no more
often?
What do you do to staydisciplined about saying no?

Alec (01:03:52):
Understanding, like the value of your time and how.
That is really.
The only thing that you cancontrol in the world is how you
spend your time, and that beingyour most valuable asset.
Well then, more than money.
Yes, understanding the value oftime and really understanding
it and valuing it will thenallow you to say no to a lot

(01:04:16):
more things.

Nicole (01:04:17):
That's so true and I think too, combined with having
a very clear vision of what itis that you want to achieve in
the world.
So, knowing what your vision isreally like preserving, like
cherishing your time and likeusing those yeah, your purpose,
yeah.

Alec (01:04:32):
You have to have you know what am.
I really here to do it.
You know whether that's in thebusiness world or outside of the
business world, and then, okay,given that this is my platform,
how do I then make sure I'monly spending time on things, or
90, whatever the percentage is,I'm going to spend advancing
this, and if the thing doesn'talign with that, then I will

(01:04:52):
then say no.
Or if I can't say no, then I'lljust punt it way down the road
and then figure out if there'salignment later on, which there
might be or might not be,depending on where things go.

Nicole (01:05:05):
That too, because not everything needs to happen right
now.

Intro (01:05:09):
Oh no.

Nicole (01:05:09):
No.
So I love that idea ofprioritizing in it.
And no now doesn't mean a no atnever.
It just means a no now.

Alec (01:05:16):
Yes, yes.

Nicole (01:05:17):
That's great advice, alec, and I think it really
speaks to your experience,because you've had to say no a
lot when you were building yourproduct, so I love that that can
go even at big commerce, I haveto say no a lot.

Alec (01:05:29):
There's so many partners that come to us you know whether
technologists, mostlytechnology partners, because
agency partners you know we'lltake them all.
But with technology partners,yeah, with technology partners,
right, there's just so manytools out there and, to your
point, a lot of them arestartups and, based off of
numbers 70, what 70% are goingto fail.

(01:05:50):
So if you spend time with everysingle one of them, knowing
that 70% aren't even going to bearound a couple of years from
now, then I'm doing a disserviceto the company by meeting with
every single one of them, and wealready know 70% of them are
not even going to be there,right, they don't even have a
customer base, just trying toattach to us, which, right now,
a bad move.

Nicole (01:06:11):
That was what I did, right, that said, but I'm sure
when you did that, though youhad to prove your value first,
and that relationship built overtime.
It wasn't like we're talking ontheir door.

Alec (01:06:23):
Yeah, we had clients, a lot of clients on the magento
side right, and so big commerceis actually courting us a bit.
They were courting a lot ofmagento partners at the time
because it was kind of the newtool.
But yeah, these days you can'treally get away with that as
much.
There's too much clutter,there's just so many technology.

Nicole (01:06:40):
There's so many platforms, yeah, yeah.
Well, as long as you don't sayno to me, alec Berkeley, then
I'm okay.

Intro (01:06:49):
Never, never.
I'm just teasing.

Nicole (01:06:53):
Oh man, thank you so much.
That was awesome.
So we're going to do a quicklightning round.

Intro (01:06:59):
Okay.

Nicole (01:06:59):
All right.
So you don't like, when I dothis lightning round it doesn't
turn, it ends up not being solightning.
So if it takes you more than aquick second to do it, that's
okay, totally fine, okay, butbefore I do, actually, I forgot
to ask this one question,because you were talking about
knowing your purpose.
So, I'm going to ask you whatdo you think your purpose is?
Why do you think you're here?
What do you feel compelled todo and bring to the world and

(01:07:23):
everything?
What is it that drives you now?

Alec (01:07:26):
At this point in my life it is different than what it was
when I was 22, wanting to makemoney, basically, primarily, at
this point it's not so much thatit's more, not that I have all
of the answers, but like takingthe little that I do know and

(01:07:46):
now kind of starting a familyand going through that whole
process of creating wealth in adifferent way.
I think fulfillment, yeah,fulfillment, I think.

Nicole (01:08:01):
I love that.
What I love about that is thatyour purpose doesn't always need
to be the same.
It can change.

Alec (01:08:05):
Right.

Nicole (01:08:06):
I think that's really important and I love that.

Alec (01:08:09):
Yeah, I think a lot of folks I went to school with
private school parents had acompany or they had a trust fund
or things like this.
So they don't have as much of afire motivation to maybe
support themselves, I guess youcould say, whereas I did not

(01:08:30):
have either of those things.
So I always felt, in order toget to this next stage where I
guess I am now, I have to buildthis baseline of being able to
sustain said.
I live in Southern California,so said barrier.

Nicole (01:08:47):
It's my hometown.
I grew up right here.
I grew up right here where youlive.
Chapman was right down thestreet from where my grandfather
lived.
He lived in Orange Park Acres.

Intro (01:08:56):
And.

Nicole (01:08:56):
I remember I used to work at the front desk of his
motel, which was in Anaheim,right across from Disneyland.

Intro (01:09:01):
It's very familiar.
It's a beautiful place.

Nicole (01:09:03):
Maybe that's why I feel like you and I get each other so
much.

Intro (01:09:06):
Yeah exactly, we're both from Southern California.

Alec (01:09:09):
It's an expensive place to live.
I mostly surround myself withpeople that are not from here.
I'm sorry, Nicole, Interestingbut it's mostly but you're good
because you left.

Nicole (01:09:20):
I left.

Intro (01:09:21):
You just grew up here and then left.

Alec (01:09:22):
The people that grew up here and stay.
I tend to avoid.
They just scare me.
It's like you've never left,like, oh my god, you've never
experienced the four seasons,you've never been cold?
No, just show me.

Nicole (01:09:37):
I mean once you do.
I mean I'm going to show you.
Just, you got to see my outsideright now.
Look at that, isn't itbeautiful.

Alec (01:09:42):
Oh yeah, I love the changing of the colors.
I can get on a plane for that.

Nicole (01:09:49):
Spoken like a true Californian.

Alec (01:09:51):
Yeah, exactly, I'm converted, I'm converted.

Nicole (01:09:54):
Oh, I love your purpose.
I think it's beautiful andinspiring and I think really
poignant that you mentioned thatthis is like after you've gone
through built this amazingproduct and everything.
What does it come down to Like?
The most important thing to youis your family and building a
wonderful, full life for yourfamily.
There's nothing in life that'sgoing to compare with that.

Alec (01:10:18):
That's it.
That's cool, and then I'llprobably later on, when they're
in college, do the oldentrepreneurship thing again.
I think I've seen people on theother side of that with the
empty nest and I want that Likeonce they leave, I want to go
back into the riskier.

Nicole (01:10:37):
More fun, I guess I have no doubt you're going to be
there.
You've already built twosuccessful companies by age 30.
It's only a matter of time.
I'm going to be watching forsure, I don't know if I can wait
that long We'll see.
I know after the MAP conferenceI was talking to Curt and I was
like that he's going places.
He's already been a lot ofplaces, but he's going other
places and I want to be next tohim when he goes those places.

Alec (01:11:01):
We're in it.
We're in it From.
Buffalo from the Niagara Falls.

Nicole (01:11:09):
Well, we'll always have anchor bar.
We'll always have anchor bar.
Ok, we're going to do ourlightning round and then I
promise I'm going to let you go,ok, ok, oh, and I got.
You know what?
I got to do this real fastbecause I got one minute.

Intro (01:11:22):
OK.

Nicole (01:11:22):
What's one subject you'd like to learn more about right
now?

Alec (01:11:26):
Farming.

Nicole (01:11:27):
What's your favorite song to play on the guitar?

Alec (01:11:29):
That's a really, really tough one.
One of the first songs that wasa favorite was Oye Komová by
Carlos Santana.

Nicole (01:11:38):
OK, if you were a spy, what would your code name be?

Alec (01:11:41):
Berkeley Warbucks, although that's not a code name,
because he's my last name.

Nicole (01:11:50):
That's OK.
Oh my gosh, I'm dying.
Ok, last one, who is your hero?

Alec (01:11:55):
I have musical heroes and I have business heroes.
I'd say, on the musical side,folks like Eric Clapton, you
know, I guess like PaulMcCartney, those Roger Waters,
and then on the business side,folks like Steve Jobs and others

(01:12:17):
that are really just trueentrepreneurs and visionaries.

Nicole (01:12:21):
Cool.
Well, I see you.
You've already followed thatpath.
I see you following it again.
This has been so fun, Alec.

Alec (01:12:27):
Sorry, I should say it was the Tim Ferriss podcast.
The four hour work week andthat first came out was like the
next level of like Tony Robbins, kind of like self-help.
That actually helped me a lotwith prioritizing time and
scaling business, listening tothat and the people that he
would interview and like morningroutines and things like that.

(01:12:48):
Not that he's a hero, but hedid have a lot of good nuggets
and that was before podcastingwas really popular.
He was kind of one of the majorones, so yeah, shout out Tim.
Ferriss.

Nicole (01:12:59):
I love it.
Well, Alec, this is a pleasure.
Will you come on the show againsometime?

Alec (01:13:04):
I would love to.

Nicole (01:13:05):
It'd be so fun.
All right, OK.
So as we wrap up this episodeof Tales of Misadventure, we're
reminded that withentrepreneurship, there's no
straight path to success.
It's the unexpected twists andturns that shape our stories and
make them worth telling.
So embrace the misadventures inyour own life and let them
guide you towards your ownblessings.
Thank you for tuning in.
We'll be back soon with moreTales of Misadventure.

Intro (01:13:26):
Tales of Misadventure is produced, edited and moderated
by Julie Bacello with BacelloMedia, music by Marcus Way.
Special thanks to our amazingguests and the entire DMG
Digital team.
Visit us at dmgdigitalio to getaccess to all our podcast
interviews and other helpfulresources, and if you'd like to
get updates on the latest andgreatest, please sign up for our

(01:13:47):
email newsletter.
We'll see you next time foranother episode of Tales of
Misadventure.
Until then, keep fallingforward.