Ideas Focused Podcast w/ Paul Drecksler

Record breaking numbers… lawsuits… company rebrands and reorganizations. I get to the bottom of it all in this week's 46th edition of Shopifreaks. This week's stories include: Record breaking shopping holiday week… or not? Shopify sued by five textbook publishers #SpotifyWrapped incorporates merch this year Square renames itself Block Alibaba is reorganizing Nestlé is doubling down on e-commerce Engine Capital is urging Kohl's to separation of its e-commerce business eBay fears that new tax reporting laws will curb casual selling Tencent is opening its WeChat groups to allow Tmall and Taobao shopping links PayPal's Buy Now Pay Later service will now be available to Wix sellers Plus 12 seed rounds & acquisitions of interest Thanks for listening to the Shopifreaks Podcast. Join my weekly newsletter at https://www.shopifreaks.com

I hope you had a great Black Friday weekend — whether you were deal shopping as a customer, running promotions for your business, or simply spending some time with family and friends. Some of my e-commerce clients had record breaking weekends, and it turns out they were not alone. (Listen to my Stat of the Week in the podcast.) I thought I was going to be deal hunting for home appliances, but I ended up not shopping at all — at least for the house. I did, however, buy some lifetime software deals on AppSumo, but that's about it. I kept reading stats about how most Black Friday deals were merely a combination of regular deals that were simply marked as “Black Friday Deal” and/or items that had been marked up for the weekend and then discounted back to normal price. So I decided to avoid the hoopla all together and spend the weekend painting my house instead. Either way, we made it through another Black Friday! Congrats to us all. And now, it's my pleasure to bring you this week's 45th edition of Shopifreaks. This week's stories include:  -Twitter tested livestream shopping with Walmart -Jack Dorsey is stepping down as CEO of Twitter -Introducing the Netflix Hub on Spotify -AirAsia is launching a parcel delivery service -An update on the Amazon Black Friday employee strike -Google and American Express's shoppable street murals -Ganja was discovered as being sold on Amazon India -Italy fined Apple and Amazon €200M -Stripe is expanding its POS terminal to five European countries -The CEO of the Iranian e-commerce site Divar, was sentenced to three months in jail for his platform being used for prostitution -France is banning the e-commerce marketplace Wish -Walmart's longtime CFO, Brett Biggs, is leaving the company -Plus 4 seed rounds of interest Thanks for listening to the Shopifreaks podcast. Subscribe to my newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Since I won't talk to you again until next Monday, I wanted to take this time to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends this Thursday and that you get to enjoy a long leisurely weekend (or a madhouse shopping extravaganza — your call). This year I'm incredibly thankful that my family and close friends have survived the COVID pandemic and remain healthy. I'm lucky to have experienced no major losses in my life due to COVID and am incredibly appreciative of that and I realize how lucky I am to be writing that. Beyond that, I'm thankful this year that my business Ideas Focused is busier than it's ever been as small businesses are embracing online technology more than ever before. I'm thankful to launch that Capital Cities book I told you about a few weeks ago with my community of travel creators. I'm thankful for my lovely girlfriend in Ecuador who's patient with me when I go back to USA for “a few weeks” and end up buying an investment property and staying away for several months to fix it up. And of course, I'm thankful for you, my Shopifreaks readers, for your support of this newsletter which I launched less than a year ago in Jan 2021. I hope you love the newsletter and the new podcast! What are you thankful for this year? Hit reply and let me know! I love hearing from you each week. And now, it's my pleasure to bring you this week's 44th edition of Shopifreaks. This week I cover: 1. Is Shopify becoming a bit more like Amazon — but without the unified customer support? 2. fabric introduces fabric Marketplace 3. Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards issued in the UK 4. Amazon employees in 20 countries going on strike on Black Friday 5. Is Macy's going to split up its online / offline businesses? 6. Consumer payment apps to report transactions larger than $600 to the IRS starting next year Plus 8 stories and 13 seed round & acquisitions of interest. If you like this podcast be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

We're just 9 days away from Black Friday. As a consumer and/or merchant — are you ready? Do the shopping events even matter to you or do you tend to avoid the crowds? When I was in high school, I worked at Circuit City and later Best Buy (after they effectively put Circuit City out of business). I remember the night before Black Friday events, having to retag products in the store. While computers and TVs were marked down, all their accessories were marked up! I remember retagging a $24.99 HDMI cable with a $49.99 price tag. An early lesson in life about the unscrupulous profit maximizing tactics of big box retailers. So be careful out there! Personally, I usually stay away from the shopping events. I'm not a big shopper in general, given that I've lived remotely out of a backpack and duffle bag for the past decade. But this year I just bought an investment property in Waynesville, NC, and for the first time in many years, I have a lot of things to buy. Washers, dryers, dishwashers, (yes, multiple — it's a triplex). The timing of this acquisition is perfect for the shopping events, so I'll be out there deal shopping with the rest of the world. Wish me luck. And now, it's my pleasure to bring you this week's 43rd edition of Shopifreaks. This week I cover: -Linktree partners with Shopify to add storefronts to its platform -Shopify and Ledger's class action lawsuit dismissed by California court -$72 billion spent on e-commerce in October, but 2 billion out-of-stock messages -Black Friday is back this year, Shopify predicts -Cart.com is going headless -SHOP hit an all time high -Plus 7 seed rounds and acquisitions of interest If you like this podcast be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Holiday shopping is already kicking off around the world this year. Consumers are getting an early start to avoid the digital crowds and purchase their gifts before supply chain issues deplete shelves and fulfillment centers. This year the early birds will truly get the worm, and the rest of us — well… we'll be celebrating Christmas in early 2022. My travel community and I just launched a hardcover coffee table book a few days ago called Capital Cities: A Journey Around The World Through 118 Capital Cities. The book is a collaboration between myself and 68 professional travel bloggers and photographers around the world that showcases 118 capital cities from every continent, including Antarctica! The book is truly a work of art, and we're excited to bring it to print. However, as much as we would have loved to have this book available for sale and in Amazon's warehouses for the holiday season, we also ran into some of the same supply chain issues that small business owners around the country are facing this year. We decided that rather than over promise and under deliver in regards to a delivery date, that we'd offer a discounted pre-sale for the holiday season and ship the books in April 2022. Like many small businesses and independent publishers this year, we're making due with what's available to us right now. If you love to travel, please check out our book below, and use promo code SHOPIFREAKS for 10% off if you'd like to pick up a copy. Check it out: https://travelislife.org/shop/capital-cities-book/ In this week's edition of the Shopifreaks podcast I cover: Google is promoting Deals in a new Shopping tab Q3 results are in for most of the big e-commerce platforms Singles Day in China is already popping off, and it hasn't even started yet! The great online-offline department store split experiment TikTok and BigCommerce partner on advertising coupon program Indians are burning effigies of Jeff Bezos Is e-commerce going Web3 in the next 5 years? Plus: 12 seed rounds and acquisitions of interest Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

We don't always get it right the first time in life. Sometimes breakups happen and we get back together. Other times we change our name hoping for a fresh start. That being said — I like the name “Shopifreaks” and I'm keeping it! Not the case for everyone this week though… In this week's edition of the Shopifreaks podcast I cover: Shopify & MailChimp are back together Facebook goes Meta Shopify doubled its GMV in 16 months India issues 202 notices to e-commerce firms for violating country of origin norm Wix is expanding in Miami Alibaba is ramping up in Europe and beating Amazon in some markets 24-year-old convicted of wire fraud for selling fake Shopify stores Plus: 11 seed rounds and acquisitions of interest Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Is everywhere and everything becoming a portal for shopping? If Shopify has it their way, that might be the case. This past year it's felt like consumers are standing on the sidelines of an online race towards a finish line where every app, platform, and device is a digital shopping mall (with a built in credit card) — and Shopify is the Usain Bolt.  In this week's 40th edition of Shopifreaks, I dive into PayPal's potential acquisition of Pinterest, Shopify and Spotify's new deal, and some exciting new Amazon Seller features that were announced during the Amazon Accelerate event. Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Greg Yagan joins me to talk about Amazon's upcoming POS system, the Shopify + Yotpo deal, the Apple / Epic decision, and what to expect with shipping this holiday season.

Social media is all about engagement nowadays -- it's a huge factor in algorithms controlling your reach. This episode is about what I call the Nah Uh Phenomenon and how it can be used to increase your engagement. But remember, with great power, comes great responsibility.

Hi I'm Paul Drecksler and this is my first episode of the Ideas Focused Podcast to introduce myself and the show. The Ideas Focused Podcast is a place to talk about ideas - your ideas, my ideas, and other ideas. Mostly about business and sometimes about life. I called my buddy Jared Paul over at Capable Wealth to hear his thoughts about my concept for the podcast and bounce a few ideas back and forth. We also spoke about podcasting best practices and how I can make this a great unscripted show. And at the end, we shared about our themes for 2020. If you'd like to be on the show to discuss your ideas, tweet me at @ideasfocused or e-mail paul@ideasfocused.com. All episodes can be found here: https://ideasfocused.com/podcast Daily episodes begin in 2020.