Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to check in to Checkout, the E Commerce growth podcast for mobile first, my name is Justin Ehrenstein and alongside me is my co host Honor Burke.
Welcome to check in to check out Today our guest is Chad Greider, director of digital product at Simon. Chad, that's a role that can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different places. What do you do every day? What's your expertise? What do you bring to the table?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Nice to be with you guys. Hey Jonathan. Hey Justin. Yeah, as digital product I do think that can take lots of different forms depending on an org, the org structure. I've sat on technical teams, I've sat on digital marketing teams and then just fully E commerce coe, you know, very isolated groups that report back into those other groups. I have always been the more technical leaning product person I think coming from a background of front end development, front end design, that was my start of my career. It definitely trains you I think to be successful in today's web environment like you kind of need to have a little bit of all those things to build a great product. So really in my day to day it's just checking clarity and other session recording tools for those pain points in a product. I do oversee web app and digital directories in my current role. So it is a very different Persona or audience. I'm you know looking to cater, you know the environment to so out of little things I'd say is like the daily grind.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: So I know in the past you've managed ecom teams.
Uh, if you had to choose to set up a team in any way, what do you think the perfect setup of an E Comm team is and what's that look like? What do you hire in house? Where do you bring in agencies?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a, a good question. I would say like keep all the data and analytics sides like the core of that not so much operational but just from my thinking really keep that as that internal engine and as you expand not just in your like growth goals and vision. I think that you really then would begin to look at an agency support model like you guys. I think know in a Shopify ecosystem where I've had a lot of experience, I think you have as well. There's so much of a app environment available to you. So it could really take two forms. It could be plug and play type things your internal team is bringing on because you have the expertise or for those trades where you need the strategy, you need the white glove service like a more you know, enhanced MSA and really bringing in expert level pieces to build the pie. And I do think it's. That's always a balance. It comes down to every SaaS contract we negotiate. It's like, I think I could build this. You know, I'd have more fun building this myself. But should we be looking at like deploying, you know, funds for this to. To save on, you know, bandwidth elsewhere? Like it's very much a trade tit for tat thing.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: As someone who comes from a software development background myself, a. I mean I've built an internal CRM at a company, e commerce company before when we really shouldn't have. Like we, we should have built or just bought Salesforce.
It would have cost less, but we're like, oh, we'll just build it. Like it'll be specific to us. But I think some of those equations are actually changing with AI of build versus buy. Just as an example, last night in four hours I tapped out a Shopify app. Is it perfect yet? No, but another 12 hours it will be. So it's like there's something there. So how have you seen that change, that build versus buy equation maybe especially around SaaS kind of change?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, for sure. I think you can be the product mind or someone who is not just doing. I think the first wave of that was just like prototyping and using things like Figma make and other tools to get it into some visual for an engineering team. I do 100% agree with you, Justin. Now we can go and build that little web app that does this obscure process. It could be the, you know, the thing that's wasting five hours of your day of looking at spreadsheets or in. I think in my current thinking it's more like evaluating more complex systems like full360, like composable, you know, marketing, like the Salesforce type products. Why do you need to go that way? If you could really pick the best of breed and do the piping yourself, I think five years ago most teams would be daunted with that task of the piping piece like having a vents layer and everything working as you want. Now I do think with just literally going off copilot and other cloud code type products like you're teaching yourself and you're doing it in a more intentional way because like you have the vision or strategy right behind your product versus a large consultant model.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: So branching off that a little just. Do you have a perspective of where directors of E commerce product management leaders should be leaning on AI?
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that, that's awesome. I think, I think it is like it's a, it's a delicate balance, right? Cause like we're seeing, you know, you want to train your people up to be using it. But on the same other side of the coin, like you can't push things too fast in that space today in my mind because of things that are really not production baked. That is hard. I think the spot where I do feel like it's very doable is like this proof of life requirement. Like we know AI search algorithms and the way where your product or brand shows up in AI, like that's changing. So now we have to shift harder into like authenticity and showing that a human actually thought of, of this idea because otherwise like you are just a, a PDP page with taxonomy on it. That's what the, the, the engine will look for. I think we're shifting towards AI can actually help us pull out and get the data and analytics and stuff. But we're actually seeing a push back towards authenticity. So the good use of AI is using it as a internal check system and then doing more thoughtful and rapid prototyping and development like we've talked about with app building. I think that's like the perfect synergy is not over investing in it. And some have, I think said they've done full, you know, frontier firm type innovation on AI and like I don't think we've seen the long tail of that. Like what, what, how it's going to play out. Like I think where that is partially the hype, the hype phase we're in.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: I think that's right. I think one of the things like I think you've really touched on is the prototyping like a director of E Commerce to be able to take a product details page as an example and say actually what if we reimagine it this way. But if when they're telling it, the developer, even the creative, like hey, this is what they want, something's lost in translation. The developer doesn't know it. But if they can use AI to actually make a prototype of what they want, it's even clickable and they can do that in an hour, they've actually saved four hours of time. Because in the back and forth between the developer and the director of E Commerce or even the creative, like all those meetings that were going to be necessary just to get to that prototype, they've done on their own. And I think that's life changing. Like I've seen it in my life.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yes, for sure. I think that also turns into Just like this idea that we are freeing up. You talk about the meeting fatigue and everything that I think is a part of all, you know, F100 type companies and beyond. Like we need to use this new tooling for that. Good. Because I think like the burnout potential, like we have all these opportunities in front of us, but how much time are you able to put aside to even do those prototyping activities? Like there has to be that infusion back to almost like the people and culture side of things where we understand you need no more time to experiment now and like get good at these tools so you can save the time later. I think like right now it's almost just added on to existing workloads and expect it to work. I think like it's more of the people and like work culture issue that you're probably trying to solve for your example, Justin, is like what everyone's doing. I still think it's like one of 10 people on a dev team who's like really pushing hard. At least what I've seen.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
I agree. Go ahead, Jonathan.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Find your background really fascinating that you know, one end you'd say, you know, you're, you're a specialist or a generalist in many areas but you know, you really are deep and you've obviously spent your time wisely. So I'm curious to know what is in your past experience where you've experienced a really, you know, terrible fire. Like something has gone terribly wrong. But you seem extremely measured. So I'm curious to hear what, you know, if you've had one of those and how did you handle it?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think I've had a lot of shit moments like mostly link thankfully in early career where like they did become the foundation for like just obsessive QA cycles. Like things that I've now built into kind of my routine like. But like probably the biggest one is just literally like an environment issue. We were launching Samsung developer conference website like a, you know, at a boutique web dev agency I was at. And that's just a perfect example where we did everything great in dev and test and we knew this was production ready but the final switchover was in their tenant, you know. So it was like this idea that you can hand it to the finish 99 percentile, but are you sure it will turn on with DNS everything else? So that was one where we were being extremely scrutinized along the process and it didn't work. It failed. When we got live on prod, it was not resolving. So that's one of those things where you're sitting there in a room with you know, two or three other devs and like the stress level and getting it live the only thing that matters in life. And we got through it and I think like there's obviously a lesson to be learned and you kind of come out of that like how can you stress test things better? And I think that kind of has created my like sentinel type, you know, approach to things. It's very much grounded in like tests. Look at this as full system architecture and don't just be like an ivory tower leader. Be in the weeds. And fortunately like you do need some tech background to do that to operate in today's world. But yeah, I've been fortunate to learn, you know, from things like that.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Yeah, good offense and defense makes for a good path forward.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: So what's your E Commerce hot take?
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, hot take. Probably like just thinking how we've seen this shift towards like the temu ification of sites like very pop up driven. We're seeing this has been for a while like the sms, you know, sign up intent modals. Like that's on every site that I visit. So the brands that are doing I think great are like the ones going in the opposite direction. They're very intentional. The offer you might get that would show up is based off your favorite product views. It's highly personalized. Like they're waiting for that, that right moment. Whereas there's still this rapid fire push I see on 95% of sites. That's just like information overload. How do we, it's the same that we talked about with like just how AI is changing search. Like we're, we're overloaded with information when it comes to design, when it comes to like product descriptions and the richness that you could add there. Like the more we can go experiential versus just a spinning, you know, deal wheel on your landing page. Like that's what I, what I would be pushing for and where I think we're kind of in like a good transition period for 100, 100% agree.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I think uh, it's so easy to launch that deal wheel and see a quick bump and you're like oh this is working. But what is that actually doing to your brand equity long term? How do people view you at. Because now you're offering a deal for everything. But how does that impact your ltv? How do people actually view your brand and it. And it's harder to measure. It's something that you actually have to have vision and you have to like, hey, this is not who we are. We are a luxury brand. We what we sell is luxury or that's not how we want to offer ourselves. So a hundred percent agree. I think the interesting place, I think for pop ups to go, which you see like kind of really in the D2C side kind of on the frontier is the zero party data. And how do you nicely ask for that? Zero party data? Yeah, like, yeah, how do you drive personalization based on what you told us that you like? Because where you browse, where you landed is good, but that's like, okay, great, you landed on golf clubs but like what do you actually do with that? How do, how do I know what you actually like, how you're going to use these clubs?
Yeah, I think is an opportunity.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: I've seen some good products pop up in that space for basically the pseudo anonymous type stitching that you mentioned, Justin. Like I think you could do that with your own homegrown solution. But this idea that when that pop up or call to action gets triggered like it's got the weight of the world behind it to say this person, it's the right time to present this. This could be location level, this could be user attributes that you've, you know, either got first party or augmented. Right. With like more of a AI layer. I think that's what AI will do as well, is help stitch that for us so you're not struggling to do it.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Hey Chad, you've got this wonderful background, not just of just generalist experience, but you're a technical expert in many of these areas. You've been in the trenches is the phrase you used. One area that I think a theme in check into check out is our E commerce directors are those that are sort of on the front line building these systems and environments for our audiences to engage with. How do you manage your leadership or any leadership that you're dealing with? Um, I imagine you have greater, you're given greater respect given you're a technical expert. So what advice would you give to other E Comm directors to be better prepared and suited to be able to defend a position, defend a point of view or with data that gets you a result as you were just describing, rather than having the, you know, wheel of death kind of promotional stuff, but get to more thoughtful environment engagements that you know is better for the long term brand.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good one, Jonathan. I, I think it's a combination of like you have to lean on your engineering peers and really come to that POV grounded in almost like all discipline areas now. Like that's how hard it is to get things through as you know like as a feature with a large team. Like we're talking you know, sprint cycles and things that are so overloaded you really need the justification. So I'd say for that like if you're, if you're non technical then it becomes like building those bridges and, and really relying on your peers to help formulate an opinion in terms of like managing up and selling that in to the executive suite and, and whatnot. Like I, I'm always one to advocate for like awareness on the technical debt that comes with these things and that does take like foresight and insight from the past to, to do well to do it now. I'd say you could almost piece together like we all. There's so many great SaaS tools that like in Shopify Stack, getting it through triple Whale and seeing like here is all my metrics at any time like you will, you'll be armed with more. So I do think it's like it's hard right? There's so much noise. But you have to bring that all in and then make sure you've done you know, the, the trade off like the pro and con list and use that as your barometer.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: Yeah. There's no shortcuts. You have to build the fortress, you have to build the, the, the, the you know, the foundation for good data that tells a story isn't about selling, it's about demonstrating, improving. I'm with you man.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Awesome. So you just discussed trade offs and talking to you, one of the experiences you have is actually balancing the trade off of the legal team. As someone married to a lawyer, I'm fairly intimate with versus growth and my wife's lawyer, so she's always like hey, this is the way we do it. And I'm like it's just, that's a suggestion. And so that is some conflict. But how do you deal with that balance in a corporate environment?
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean data privacy is the nexus of that. I think we all as people and consumers and humans want a privacy first world. Right. And that is what I advocate for as like a marketing person, but also need to drive revenue and loyalty and all, all these other important metrics. So unfortunately a lot of that comes through like ad maybe, maybe short term gains in an ad ad environment where you're deploying across every possible social platform, but do so in a highly regulated environment. And I think like that's where I Have expertise and threading the needle. Right? Cause I do think it's like you need to know what state laws are, but you also have to gauge like internal risk barometers. There's, there is nuance to this as much as it's like, hey, we know what the rule of the law is.
There is a lot of ways to basically I would say augment like what you're doing in a safe way. And that's really by standing up like stronger data layer, like not, not going outside the realm of what is, you know, mandated by law, but saying, all right, we know this is the minimum viable, you know, wording and language to use here. Let's not go over the top and scare people with the cookie banner. The preference center pop up, you know, a disclaimer while you're checking out. Let's, let's do it in a human way. Let's follow the letter of the law. But also really back it up with I think really intentional data architecture. It comes down really to that technical piping, I think, to say I'm compliant so I know I can actually play in this space safely and can deploy, you know, highly targeted ads, but in a way that's not gonna offend or bother the end user.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: And how do you like guide someone who maybe is in a less corporate environment? Maybe they're working SMB doing 10 million of figure out like what, how do they figure out that balance? How do they thread that needle, what conversations? Like, how do they work with that lawyer who's giving them very scary advice like, hey, you could be sued and close the company? It sounds like so scary, but how do you, how do you balance that? Or what would you tell someone in that role?
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's a tough one because I don't think there's a proper product market for like kind of an all in one solution there. Like we know there's the one trust, the trust arcs. All these tools that like, they help you implement the core of it. The bare minimum essentially of like, here's how you deploy the thing. It's really left then to the internal teams to become experts. Right on, like categorization of cookies and server side tracking and like that is hard. So in the E Comm world I would rely on good partners. Like there's a massive ecosystem there with like elevar little data. Like there's really strong minds who are doing this for the SMBs that you mentioned. Justin. I think when you do start to scale up and like the risk level and everything that comes with this gets scrutinized so much more. Or that one lawsuit that could, you know, scare you into shuttering your business. Like I do think there has to be a self education exercise done there to get a little bit technical and understand these laws. I don't. I think that's where you mentioned there's, there's a gap.
Can't, you can't just listen to what the lawyer says Face value. You need to also weigh it with the business justification and use because every strong business is doing both. They're not like scared and pushing, pushing one way. They're picking, you know, they're doing it compliantly but then being just very intentional with. I think how things get displayed is, is the where the magic is made.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: I love it. Is there anything that you either in your current role or looking at the past that you wish executives, the VP of marketing, the Chief Revenue officer, the executive team as a whole understood about being an E Comm leader?
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think because I lean technical like I'm more in the weeds than many who would be in like a similar role. And like E Comm you have a lot of like operational, you know, excellence needed. So you might not have, you know that, that vertical because of that like what I've seen is there's just lack of recognition of like how the tech debt and decision may look, you know, may look palatable in the context of like speed. So I think we, we're always pushing for go to market on that new feature or new you know, platform integration but in the process in moving so fast, forget to actually look at like the big picture. And I, I've seen that time and time again where like the platform someone is inheriting might be good for the three to five year roadmap but like is not going to give you what you need today. And I think like that's, that's easier for an executive to you know, digest when you actually have that backing behind it. So I guess it's again more of like the self awareness and working back with your peers, the engineering and marketing and CRM like really checking the box and validating before you push into something new that you're trying to sell.
Sell to executives because you need a true book of you know, reasoning I'd say to sell the right thing in versus something that we'll all pay for. Right. In a year.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: I was curious. More like I'm thinking about the future now. We talked about past and present. I'm genuinely curious what brings you joy. But maybe it weaves into this question, you know, what do you see over the next, let's just say year. There's so much happening so fast, but something that you can see that's coming that excites you both personally and professionally that you feel, hey, this is an exciting time that I know there's a deluge of stuff that we have to do every day, but this is, this is exciting.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it is a perfect example because it's kind of like pet project type thinking but also crosses over the E Comm and just web ecosystem is like I am very much a crypto person. So like following where are the industry's heading in the US like we are having some stability for the first time as much as the geopolitical tensions. Like it's going to go up and down and we're not going to see it. But there's this roadmap for like defi apps where you know how, how we consume product will change on one side in terms of like this idea of web3. So I think like that's a combination of us having different methods of buying and selling things. But on the same token like you or I might not know that a Solana blockchain is powering like the proof of work or proof of concept for this really cool app that you're using. And I think now we're seeing more social good type of initiatives come out of that because at the same token where it's being used to build like a system for our financial worlds and models is also just creating innovation for all these new productizing things that have struggled for, you know, millennia basically. So that's where I'm at. This is, it's an exciting time.
[00:23:59] Speaker C: That is awesome. Yeah, I, I had not heard that to that positive degree, but I love that you're, you're enlightening us. That's, that's something that's coming and it's got a, got some sun rays on it. That's great.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Do you think E commerce leaders need to be paying attention to. I mean crypto market's huge, but you go on any E commerce store, there's no mention of. Is that something that they should have on their horizons even if it's three to five year?
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think it's like it's almost getting like Trojan horsed because you will see like visas actually moving. They're tokenizing like you know, payments on their network now on Solana and other blockchain technologies. So this idea that like it's first going to come as the institutional thing, but like white labeled. And you're not going to know that like payments are faster and more efficient and that could be peer to peer or on an E Comm site, like it becomes more frictionless. And we've already seen great advances with like Apple Pay and Klarna and all these things that make it easier. I think like that would be the first wave. But then I think more to your point, Justin, the exciting part is when like our use of technology and apps and shopping are all so seamlessly integrated that that payment piece is. I'm not going as far as like biometric tracking, but like the idea that it is no longer. There's no friction point on the payment in very much the same way like Amazon's cut it down to like, you know, nothing to get your buy in place. Like I think all boutique E Com will get that out of the box from platforms like Shopify. Like it will, it'll be so native that we really are in like one unified digital ecosystem versus like these two sites could have completely different payment. Payment options.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's right. Yeah. I mean with Shop Pay already, it's, it's so close to that.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I love Shop.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm like, well, how do you have my credit card? And I'm like, oh, it's Shopay, obviously. And as someone who like doesn't, I actually don't use Amazon. I've unsubscribed because I don't like the corporate overlord.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: I'm like, oh, I actually have as well. So. Yeah, I hear you on that you guys.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: I love that you two against the world.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm making a difference.
Awesome. What are you reading, listening to? To enlighten yourself either in E commerce or to make yourself a better person or. What are you enjoying?
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a big like self help book, guys. And it transitions right to like just leadership autobiographies and things. And I think like a good one. I always like to mention is Trillion Dollar Coach by Bill about Bill Campbell's life. Just massive Silicon Valley, you know, mind who's passed away, so rest in peace. But like this idea that had that boom of Silicon Valley, like you could think of it as very heartless. It was a time where just rapid innovation was happening without the ethos behind it to actually balance it. And Bill was close with so many of like the big tech leaders that we've all known like Steve Jobs and others where I think like it's this idea that as an E Comm leader or Someone who would be listening to this is kind of going up the ranks and getting to a position of power where they can be intentional about like not just the technical roadmap, like how am I just making my own people's lives better in this company? Like it's rooted in that and you get the trillion dollar output by actually prioritizing the people.
Saudi and Adele is a good example too at like Microsoft, like you're hearing that Microsoft is struggling with like their roadmap for AI, right? It's getting hit in the stock sector of like are they really building like the same products that Google and Open and OpenAI have done and now others? I would argue he's actually better positioned as a leader to build the future because he's looking at it from a, from a holistic view. He's like, I actually do care about humanity. This is not, you know, I don't want to build a blood sucking product.
And of course there's balance there of like, you know, the AI hype is real and it can very well be a takeover of all things. But yeah, people first. And those are the leaders that I'm trying to, you know, read about and use as like my own internal measuring system.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Amazing, I love that. Well Chad, thank you so much for the insights. This was an amazing interview. Amazing insights. Where can people find you?
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Yeah, LinkedIn, I'd say is my spot active in viewing and sleuthing on great, you know, business insights. I think that's how we've met. And yeah, just I think there's a lot of good tidbits that you don't pick up. Like you may be on other social platforms but in reality like you're getting their algorithm's good. You're gonna find the best of the E comm and digital marketing stuff on there.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: You're a unique talent. Simon's lucky to have you and congratulations to you and all your successes and what's to come. Well, will be watching.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Thank you.
