Bonus: Tomer Tagrin on Building a Retention-First Future with Data and Personalization - DTC Podcast

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[00:00]
Tomer Tagrin
Since the beginning of the year, I met with like more than 100 brands face to face. The best names you can think of in D2C. A lot of them are suffering and I'm just like so astonished by the resilience of so many operators. Yachtpo 2.0 was born from the realization that Yachtpo needs to change from the inside out. If you want to lead a category like we lead in reviews and loyalty, you need to lead with one place of innovation. Your culture is what you tolerate. And we stop tolerating like mediocre product, we stop tolerating mediocre marketing. We stop tolerating like a service that doesn't go above and beyond. Excellence demands focus. That's the only way. And if you want to be outstanding at something, you have to play the long term game.
[00:52]
Eric Dick
Tomer, it's great to reconnect. The last time we talked was I guess about six months ago in that really fun roundtable we did with Sean Frank and company. Oh yeah, do you remember that? That was excellent. That was raw. There's lots of great conversations there. But I feel like I didn't get like. I think you gave a little bit of your background and a bit of, you know, we were talking a lot about this idea of yacht PO 2.0 and I thought a really great place to start off would be the story of yotpo 2.0 and why you felt it was necessary to have a two from a one.
[01:26]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, yeah, thank you, thank you for the conversation. I'll say that I think yacht PO 2.0 was born from the realization that Yacht PO needs to change from the inside out and we need to change many, many things if you want to fulfill our dreams and fulfill our vision as a company. Because we were like one of the OGs of the Shopify ecosystem, grew with it quite substantially and of course beyond the Shopify ecosystem. And then I think the post Covid like everyone else, right? It's like get back to reality a bit of like, okay, we need to go back to the fundamentals and in Yacht board, the good and bad. We have like a lot of room to improvement in the way we build products, in the way we do marketing, in our pricing, in, in the way we do go to market in general. So we started from that, like, I'll give you that we brought like a lot of talent from the outside, from the brand side, from the agency side into Yacht for to make sure that we're building, serving the customer like, like they wanted to be built and served of Course, pricing was a big change for us Marketing that I think now marketing became a strength. Like our brand marketing and the marketing team have really transformed themselves. So it started from the realization that a we must change. Like I always say in the leadership that I'm so proud that on one end, we have the humility to say what we're not good at. Like, I meet so many different founders that tell me why their business now is different post Covid. And yeah, I get it. Like, interest rate went high, so everything is tougher also for us. But also, let's look inside where we became soft at that time. So one is like the humility, and the other thing is the conviction and the passion to want to change. Because I also know many companies that understand what they need to change, but then the founder doesn't want to do that or the management isn't up for the challenge. And you see those companies all die slowly or just not really transforming. And I think the nice thing or the thing I love about our culture is the humility and the courage and both of them together allow us to start this journey. We still have, like, a lot to walk through, but we definitely like the every change. Right. The toughest thing is the first step. We took the first step, and now we're just being consistent on the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth change.
[03:52]
Eric Dick
And this kind of mirrors a lot that you've kind of gone through in your personal life as well. You've kind of done this remaking of yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[04:01]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah, of course. So I had, like, in the last few years, I had like, two big, like, health issues, like, the same issue. I had, like, cancer. And that forced me first to stop and observe and what I'm doing wrong in my life. And then definitely the second time, which I went through, like, a process called, like, a bone marrow transplant that was, like, very, very, very tough. In 2022, it was very transformative for my life. I was reborn. I don't call it like Toner 2.0. It would be like, I think too, I don't know, scary. But definitely I was reborn as a new person. And, you know, I had my own first steps. And I change what I eat, change who I am as a father, who I am as a husband, who I am as a CEO, change how I exercise, change many, many aspects of my life in order to become a better version of myself. And I'm so happy that the universe on one end gave me the opportunity to look internal, and the second to give me the Opportunity to actually change. Because I've been to really dark places, and in the dark places, you're not sure if you'll get the opportunity to change or not. And I think this is why I always say in Yacht Pro, we shouldn't take it for granted that we have the opportunity. We have the balance sheet, we have the customer side, we have the culture, we have the management, the actual opportunity to change. Many people, I've seen it firsthand, don't have the opportunity to change, and many companies don't have the opportunity to change. And so we should be very thankful for that.
[05:37]
Eric Dick
But if you don't. Yeah, you really risk stagnation. I was actually listening to a podcast this weekend that was about America as a country, actually. And it was just talking about how America is one of the only countries who does this, who goes. Every 50 years they have a giant crisis and they kind of change things up. Whether it was like the, you know, the petrodollar in the 70s or going off the gold standard or what's happening now with tariffs, it seems like there's like things get kind of thrown into chaos to kind of create a new. A new way forward. And it's like. And it's like Europe doesn't really do that. In a way, Europe just kind of continues along in the same. In the same pathways. So it creates a ton of opportunity. I'm just back to like, what.
[06:18]
Tomer Tagrin
By the way, I'll just say on the weekend I heard like a super interesting podcast on empires and how every empire rise, stagnant and fall and us now is the current empire. And it's really interesting to see the patterns and like the Roman Empire and like a few other. So it's like, I agree with you. Like, we can learn a lot about what's happening in America and the universe. It's like a very fascinating topic.
[06:46]
Eric Dick
Yeah, I think so. We'll go into our meta. Our meta politics podcast after. But just what are the actual ways? Like, what are the most tangible ways that YOTPO has repositioned itself or reemerged from the cocoon as a different company.
[07:01]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one I think is. And then we still have a journey to do. So I don't want to pat ourselves on the back. I think, like, we're in the. In the middle of you changing the way we build products. Right. And if you want to lead the category like we lead in reviews and loyalty, you need to lead with one pace of innovation and the releases we released. I'll give reviews as an example in the last 12 months AI summary atlas that we're launching the syndication TikTok shops. We've been so much progressing and a lot of it is because the way we build products has changed. What does that mean? I'll give you very tangible things. We increased dramatically the number of UX designers ratio to developers. We changed a lot of the talent. We what else? I can another example, the use of AI into our engineering teams is another one. We just replaced people. There's many people that we just changed. Pricing is another very tangible thing today. If you don't want to pay a lot for reviews like I don't know we are definitely like very competitive and sometimes like one of the cheaper solutions out there. But if you do want to go for more value and more like a robust platform, we are definitely there as well. Marketing huge. I think I mean investor and I know if and I'm an advisor to a few of like SaaS providers I can tell like many of them has tough times in terms of like new pipe creation. I don't want to jinx it but we have the best pipe we had since October 2021 and a lot of it is because 18 months ago we decided to change marketing. What does that mean? First we had a decision, we stopped doing marketing. Marketing that E Com brands don't even want to know and don't even read. Just marketing for the sake of marketing. We replace people, we replace how we come up with creatives, ideas, all of that. And I think now we are really living with AI as well for production. So we're able to increase throughput as well. And marketing is another one. Service is a huge one in my eyes. We brought so many people from the brand side, so many people from agencies that can really help brands not just fix the or not just leverage the platform but really think more strategically about let's say loyalty is another example. Loyalty is a big. The incrementality of loyalty is the big discussion did they buy because of the loyalty or regardless of loyalty. So you really need a loyalty expert and what we call internally a loyalty specialist to walk you through on how to think about the value, how it change. That's another big thing that we change. I want to say definitely product pricing, service marketing. I can think about maybe others but maybe the biggest change is culture. I think culture is. I heard a good sentence that I'm using a lot in Yotpo that your culture is what you tolerate and we stopped tolerating like mediocre product. We stop tolerating mediocre marketing we stop tolerating like a service that doesn't go above and beyond and that really, really cares and I think so. We are meeting now in the midst of a huge transformation that Yotboy is doing and as a founder that's been, you know, for a long time, I find it like so exciting. I feel like I have a new startup now to do many, many things. So I love it.
[10:42]
Eric Dick
And how is the journey on the ESP side of things going on the email and SMS side? Because that's a big area of growth for you guys.
[10:48]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one I'll say like it's been like a very on one and humbling journey because you know a Klaviyo which is like the 800 pound grade is a phenomenal company. I just have to say just doing phenomenal work. So it's been very humbling and trying to go at it. That's one second. I think it's been surprising in terms of growth. I do think the market wants an alternative. Also in sms, in SMS you do have also phenomenal companies like postscript. It's a team I love and attentive. It's also a great company. I think in general it's on one hand very humbling and very satisfying and on the other hand we also now thinking okay, where we should focus, what's the strategy? It's also another thing I didn't mention but the reason I was five minutes late is we are doing every week now we have four or five hours of strategy session that what we should think about our strategy. Should we revisit the strategy because of the yacht port 2.0 as well and definitely the ESP side and the SMS side has been a huge contribution to that in like who we want to be, what's our vision to bring the most value to E commerce brands or to omnichannel brands in general. So it's going to be interesting I can tell you in the next few months. We have. It's a very, very interesting few months because we need to decide okay are we continuing the coincidence strategy or not. And a lot of it is because of what we've been seeing on the email and SMS site.
[12:26]
Eric Dick
We had a really interesting conversation at D2C on Friday where my co founder Jeff is very forward thinking. He's and he's obsessed with AI right now and so he started musing with the idea of like, you know, why shouldn't we be thinking about creating our own ESP in a way, you know where we can build it exactly for what we need. And I guess as a, as a SaaS founder you're having a lot of conversations about that, about how to build products that are for specific, very specific kinds of clients. But how, how not to go too far down that line. Talk a little bit about the thoughts you're having about AI and what brand should be thinking about.
[13:04]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah, so I'll say a few things on AI. One, it's an area I spend a lot of time, not as much as I wanted every time Toby puts like another another thing but I definitely like I think it's still under hyped in a way that it's going to really change our lives in the most profound ways possible. That and I don't think anyone knows really they put a lot of salt on everything I'm just about to say because you know the prophecy is given for the fools and I'm not a prophet and there are much smarter people than me that understand much better than me that area I can tell you in our universe I'm saying a few things. One before I move to the product actually our own operational efficiency and I do think AI for SaaS companies will make more linear teams that move faster that you don't need so many people to do mostly what I call the tedious work or the boring work and all of that. I'll give you an example. In our marketing campaigns what used to cost us, I don't know 200 grand and four months of work cost us now three grand and we do it in three hours. So really, really transformed production I think for good support is another area that we see a lot of AI usage into. We even have in our GNA now in finance, in legal, definitely in engineering the use of AI assistant code is really, really important. So that's one thing and I'm really pushing the company to really go through that gate of being an AI native company. The second thing on our product I can tell you a few things that we're seeing. One is you can provide really really cool value. Think about loyalty. When I think about loyalty today, most of the loyalty programs or most of the loyalty application, if you brought it to a membership and referrals and community, you and I are getting the same experience. But when we going to reach a point where it's going to be one to one loyalty campaigns like a very hyper personalized loyalty program for you versus me to get you to increase your repeat purchase rate. So that's one thing that I think in product there brings a lot of room for innovation. Another Very concrete example that today I can share. We have AI summary. We were the first one to launch AI Summary which basically we did an analysis. We saw that the average user reads a review for 11 seconds. You can imagine that on mobile if you have more than 5 reviews no one ever gets to read them. So we did an AI summary that actually take the relevant topics, knows how to basically to show you what you need in like five seconds. And in the beginning it took down conversion rate because we did like just a wrapper on ChatGPT and then we went deep with our data science to really go and build our own model and now we actually increased conversion about 3% which is massive for brands. So AI is starting to bring a lot of innovation to many, many areas that were stagnant before. And I would say that what your partner said, I don't see it AI writing full applications and replacing people altogether because you need to do code reviews and you need to maintain AI. You need to maintain the code because if you want to make change in some place, it affects another place. So the AI needs the full context but it's going to get there. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. For me this is why I think yeah, code and in general won't be a moat for companies and this is maybe a change that I can't even grasp. What does it mean when the technology is not the moat anymore, it's not a competitive advantage. A it means that like distribution is starting to be really really big and actually the go to market mode and for people that read a lot, Mark Andreessen he's really big on the mode of the network effect of distribution versus product. But the commoditization of code is going to be like crazy universe and so.
[17:23]
Eric Dick
Much of it would just be your ability to think creatively about your customers problems and deliver on them. I like that you were mentioning this. The idea of reviews getting down to one to one where you're like based on my profile there's a number of customer reviews that would be more impactful than others. Maybe they're looking at the same product, maybe they come from the same place, they're the same profile. Super, super interesting. And this kind of leads into an acquisition you guys made recently. You made your. And I just did a chat with Adil from Klaviyo at at Shop Talk CDP as well. Moving from ESP to cdp. Talk to me a little bit about the acquisition and where you see that going in this one to one marketing future.
[18:05]
Tomer Tagrin
So we acquired like an amazing group of people that they are very much specialized in CDP technologies. What does that mean is how do you build like the customer data platform that can be very actionable, very straightforward, very extensible. And why? Because your AI is as good as your data. Right. Again, when you think about like loyalty and now it's not just like a loyalty product or a loyalty platform, it's a loyalty platform with a very strong data foundations that you can do many, many things with it, inject data from other sources to create more engaging loyalty campaigns or you can export the data or you can pull the data if you want to look at the customer timeline really, really quickly. So there's a lot of advantages and in general, I think in order to prepare yotpo, that's one of the things to an AI native world. We need to make sure we have the strongest data foundations possible and we make an awesome team that has tons of experience and passion. They built an horizontal CDP and not specifically for ecom, but we think there's for us we believe there is an opportunity to rebuild something very actionable that most marketers are not deep on technology, they are not like engineers. So how do we take that deep technology and make it very accessible, very actionable for many marketers. So our plan is to incorporate it into the products so it will be very natively and be very, very freely to use. And this is why I'm very, very excited about what that team can do for, for the future of retention, marketing.
[19:42]
Eric Dick
And work across the whole platform not siloed into any individual one area. Right. I think that's the beauty with a platform like yours because you've got so many different areas where you can pull data from in order to create these unique customer experiences. One of the things I just saw you recently talking about and it's something that we're really focused on at D2C as well. We've been so focused as cause we're partnered with our agency Pilot House. So we've been so focused on brands and bringing brands into our ecosystem and all of our content is geared towards helping brands but we're also an agency and I think probably 40% of our of our audience are people in agencies as well. We're actually on the, on the verge of launching a community for seven figure agents. Seven eight figure agencies basically. And I saw you guys, you know, putting out your new sort of agency loyalty program. Talk about your focus on agencies as well.
[20:33]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one of the things we learned many in the many years that We've been to E commerce is that agencies are a huge part of what we build, meaning in multiple areas. One, they help us build products. Yes, we have our customer advisory board, but we talk a lot with agencies because they're one of the most advanced users of our platform. Second is agencies that help us work with brands, better serve brands. And we love partnering them together. And I think a lot of in our E commerce ecosystem, a lot of the SaaS providers, everyone has like a partner program, but it's more of a affiliate program. All of the SaaS providers are wanting to just get leads from agencies. And we've been really trying to do something a bit different is we're thinking a lot about advocacy from agencies in a sense that how we can just add value, how we can give agencies the most customers. So we actually building like processes and technology internally that knows to identify when we should send a lead to an agency. And we're spending a lot of time doing that. And we walk in on enablement a lot, a lot, a lot. And we have I think probably some of the largest teams and the most talented team in like catering those agencies and how we can help them understand better, how we can help them grow their business. Because it really takes a village and our partners and our agencies are part of our village. I would even say it's the same for tech partners. We have many tech partners that we partner together, that we love, that really 1 plus 1 is greater than 3. Usually Otpo is the larger company. So how do we bring them clients? How do we build technology with them together? We are now trying to invest more in our documentation, in our APIs to make it easier both for agencies and for tech partners just to be part of the yacht poor ecosystem.
[22:29]
Eric Dick
I also noticed a post you recently wrote about marshmallows and this is something that we. It's funny we talk about this at. We have something called the marshmallow moment. It's something different, but it's basically this idea of creating, you know, just creating value for our customers. Talk about the marshmallow experiment that you recently spoke about on LinkedIn.
[22:48]
Tomer Tagrin
People don't know. The marshmallow test is a, is a big test, very famous one that I think it was like in the 1960s, I'm not sure. And they brought a bunch of kids and for every kid, and I have three boys and I can tell you my boys would probably fail the test. You put them in a room and tell me, hey, you can all get now one marshmallow or you can wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows. Then they would step out of the room and see what the kid did and observe. Sorry. And the interesting piece is that I think they measure it like 20, 30, 40 years later. The kids that actually postponed gratification and waited for the two marshmallow did much better in life in terms of work, in terms of marriage, in terms of raising kids, overall happiness. And that was a very profound moment in psychology that we are machines that are geared towards immediate gratification. You want immediate feedback. This is why it's someone that started to do a lot of meditation. Meditation is very hard because you don't see any immediate feedback. And it's so freaking hard. So the marshmallow test and I think it's. And I as a founder, I failed at the marshmallow test. That's yachtboard 1.0, right? We wanted like fast growth. We wanted like, we thought the game is like, how do you grow this quarter, how much you grow this year? So that led us to like, we were very successful in short term growth, but that led us to like short term decision making. And I think we need like to be more of like postponing gratification as leaders as like operator or executive founders to understand that A takes time. And many times you need to choose the path that actually bumps on the short term. You need to say no to certain things, you need to say no to clients, you need to say cause from different angles. But long term, like infinite mindset, that's what's going to make you like much, much, much better. Because the individuals and the organization that have like the discipline to be focused and saying no because eventually excellence demands focus. That's the only way. And if you want to be outstanding at something, you have to play the long term game. So it's something that I keep reminding a lot of the executives in Yotpo. You ask me what is Yotpo 2.0. A lot of the time I need to talk to our executives and reiterating the importance and I use the marshmallow test as an example that let's not fail the marshmallow test. Let's make sure that we wait. And yes, maybe like this quarter is going to be less of a growth or this year we could have done better. I can give you an example in many of you. Another example in loyalty. We have so many clients that we're saying no to because we're not ready for them yet. And we will be at someday, hopefully. When? I mean someday, I mean Q1 next year. But I don't know. But I know that today, yes, we could have probably closed another like 300 grand of a deal and we said no to and you need to reiterate the marshmallow test with leaders until it's so ingrained into our culture. So I just had like a week that I used that like four different time I said, you know it, let's like put it out there and for other people as well and to see because I think it's such an important reminder to many founders and many executives.
[26:03]
Eric Dick
I think right now too there's a lot of brands in sort of forced marshmallow test where due to financial, the financial situation with terrorists, people have to maybe accept lower growth or accept squeezed margins with what's going on. What's your advice to brands out there right now who are feeling the pinch from the economy?
[26:22]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, since the beginning of the year, I met with like more than 100 brands face to face executive like probably the best names you can think of in D2C. A lot of them are suffering and I've seen like amazing, amazing, like resilient. And I'm just like so astonished by the resilience of so many operators and the changing factories and the changing pricing and they're doing so many layover, so many different things to live to fight another day. And first I want to say to everyone that's hearing it from the opera, it's hard. Keep going at it. It's hard and nothing too smart to say like your heroes, your superheroes, keep on going at it. If there's something that YOTPO can do to help, we did like a bunch of pricing stuff to free service stuff that we really tried to have relief packages for brand that's been affected by the tariffs. So reach out to us if we can help. But in general know that a many, many are in the same situation and like everything, it will pass. So you just need to make sure that you do whatever it takes to leave to fight another day. And no one really cares about this quarter's growth and no one really cares about this year's growth. It's more our emotional and our desire to compare ourselves to and leave that aside like just make sure you're building like a great business for your customers and it will pass at some point and hang in there and our hearts And I can tell you in Yotpo, I've been talking a lot about the importance of empathy that we need to have in these moments because these are like really tough moments. I had like founders that cried with me. I had like, executives that were starting to ask me if they should start looking for a job. And I think it's tough, but it will pass. I don't know when, but it will.
[28:14]
Eric Dick
And it's almost just like the state of this industry is constant flux in a way, right? There's always these challenges rear themselves so often, and it's just. It's just a matter of not quitting, just staying in the fight, living to fight another day. Okay, so Yachtboy 2.0. You are, you know, you're midway in the process and you're not ready to obviously congratulate yourself yet. What will we see when Yacht PO 2.0 is, you know, for 75 or 100% along the way of the process? Where do you envision Yacht 2.0 and what will that look like?
[28:46]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, we have, like, a few ambitious goals. One is to build the most loved company by brands and agencies in the E commerce ecosystem. That means first we need to have the best products. So you should expect the products to really become much better. That will. In the markets that we play in, we want to set the pace of innovation. We want to push brands to experiment and try new things. So definitely one is just like the pace of innovation and the value that you're getting from the platform. That's one. Second thing is really going above and beyond in terms of service and really be like an extension of the brand. You know, most D2C teams and most E commerce teams are very nimble teams and they're not big even. You know, we have like, massive customers, like some of the biggest companies in the world. Even their teams are relatively small. So you can imagine that our service should be like, much more helpful, much more strategic in many, many things that we're doing. Definitely should expect that AI should be more ingrained in the way you engage with the otpo. And there was a value that you get with the otpo and what else? I don't know. I think it's like, it's never. There's no, like, end goal. It's always evolving. If you haven't read the book of, like, Infinite Mindset of Simon Sinek, I'm highly recommend that, like, there's no, like, finite game here. It really is just keep on going and keep on going, keep on going. I also have, like, a personal goal that I want, like the Yacht for top people to be uber happy. I want them to be, like, financially independent and rich so they can really reach their own level of happiness in life. And so I want like for our employees to make a lot of money. I want our customers to make a lot of money from our products. I want our investors. So I have like also some sense of that the OTPO 2.0 will be such a great company, such a great business that it will attract more people, more great people that care about E Commerce and that we can bring more innovation to E commerce. To launch more startups coming out of Yacht Po I think Yacht Po X employees now launch like, I think it's like 15 startups already that at least like eight of them are in E Comm. That for me it's like amazing. So there's like I have like many goals for the future of yotpo. It's a very cliche and a douchey sentence to say. So I usually hate to say it by founders, but I really feel that like we have so much to accomplish, like the just getting started type of a thing. But we are really in like day one in, in our ambitious and in my ambitious at least for you.
[31:25]
Eric Dick
And then on a personal level, I'm curious with some of the changes that you've made to your personal life. What are, what are some of the most effective things you've done personally that have either really helped with your health or your mindset to get where you want to go?
[31:36]
Tomer Tagrin
We need like two episodes just for that. But I'll say I think one is like the understanding or bringing it to the conscious mind that if I'll take care of myself, if I'm in like peak state, peak performance state, everything is better. Like if you really care about your kids, you're a better father. If you really care about how you are in work, you're a much better leader. So if you take care of yourself and you have the energy and state of mind, you're just performing at a level that I wasn't able to perform. So what does that mean? You need to have the right energy. So you need to eat properly, you need to sleep properly, you need to exercise properly, you need to have a very good mind body chemistry. So I have like a crazy schedule now. Like my wife hates me. I don't eat processed sugar, I won't eat carbs. I prioritize my sleep, I prioritize reading. If you are truly in a growth mindset, you have to put yourself in a place that you can grow in that kind of pace. So I would say to anyone that really want to do that, just put yourself in a peak state. And that really means taking care of yourself, that you have the energy, you have the state of mind that you can grow. So definitely for me, it's like nutrition, meditation, sports, sleep supplements, ice bath. I'm like doing like, all that you can imagine. And I really think I'm a better version of myself today. I know there are many things I can say here, but I really think maybe the one tip I can give people if you want to create a big change in your life, most people always think about the how. If I go to the gym on Monday and Friday, or you know what, I'll do a diet like that. It's a mistake. Go to your why. Why you want to make a change. Because when the why is very strong, the how become like really, really easy. So keep on, like, reiterating yourself, like why you want to make a change, and make sure that the why is, like, strong enough. And for me, the why is so strong I don't want to die. Right? It's like the strongest why that you can think of. So the how is really easy. And every time I want to make a change now, I'm using that why as a tool, getting back to that feeling. And that's what enables me to continue growing.
[33:52]
Eric Dick
Start with the why. That's what Yapo starts with. So sounds good. You want to follow Tomer? Follow him on LinkedIn. You make a lot of great posts there. And I think just to follow your journey, follow what's new with yapo 2.0. Follow him there. Go check out Yapo. Tomer, thanks so much for coming on today. This was a lot of fun.
[34:11]
Tomer Tagrin
This was great and I'm a big fan. I'm a big listener on the way to work. So thank you for having me.
[34:23]
Eric Dick
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.

Summary7 min read

DTC Podcast: Bonus Episode Summary

Title: Bonus: Tomer Tagrin on Building a Retention-First Future with Data and Personalization
Host: Eric Dick
Guest: Tomer Tagrin, CEO of Yotpo
Release Date: May 14, 2025

Introduction: Yotpo 2.0 Transformation

The bonus episode of the DTC Podcast features an in-depth conversation between host Eric Dick and Tomer Tagrin, CEO of Yotpo. Tomer discusses the evolution of Yotpo into its next phase, Yotpo 2.0, emphasizing a retention-first strategy driven by data and personalization.

Key Points:

Yotpo’s Resilience: Tomer shares insights from meeting over 100 direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, highlighting the resilience of operators despite current challenges.
Internal Transformation: The birth of Yotpo 2.0 stems from an internal overhaul to better serve customers and innovate within the ecosystem.

Notable Quote:

"Excellence demands focus. That's the only way. And if you want to be outstanding at something, you have to play the long term game."
— Tomer Tagrin [00:00]

The Genesis of Yotpo 2.0

Tomer elaborates on the necessity of Yotpo 2.0, explaining how the company recognized the need to revamp its internal processes post-COVID to align with long-term visions.

Key Points:

Post-COVID Realities: Reverting to fundamentals revealed areas needing improvement in product development, marketing, pricing, and go-to-market strategies.
Talent Acquisition: Bringing in talent from brand and agency backgrounds to enhance product offerings and customer service.
Cultural Shift: Emphasizing humility and the courage to acknowledge and rectify shortcomings, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Notable Quote:

"We must change... we have the humility to say what we're not good at... and the conviction and passion to want to change."
— Tomer Tagrin [01:25]

Personal Transformation and Its Impact

Eric and Tomer delve into how personal challenges and transformations have influenced Yotpo’s direction.

Key Points:

Health Challenges: Tomer recounts his battle with cancer and a bone marrow transplant, which profoundly transformed his personal and professional life.
Renewed Focus: These experiences led to significant lifestyle changes, including diet, exercise, and mindset, reinforcing his dedication to Yotpo’s long-term success.
Gratitude and Opportunity: Tomer emphasizes the importance of seizing the opportunity to change and improve, a philosophy that permeates Yotpo’s culture.

Notable Quote:

"I had my own first steps. I change what I eat, change who I am as a father, who I am as a husband, who I am as a CEO... to become a better version of myself."
— Tomer Tagrin [04:01]

Repositioning Yotpo: Product and Marketing Innovations

The conversation shifts to the tangible steps Yotpo is taking to reposition itself in the market, focusing on product enhancements and marketing strategies.

Key Points:

Product Development: Introduction of AI-driven features like AI Summary, Atlas, and TikTok Shops, highlighting Yotpo’s commitment to innovation.
Team Overhaul: Increasing the ratio of UX designers to developers and integrating AI into engineering to boost efficiency and innovation.
Competitive Pricing: Offering both cost-effective solutions and premium, value-rich platforms to cater to diverse business needs.
Marketing Revamp: Transitioning from conventional marketing to strategic, AI-enhanced campaigns, resulting in substantial pipeline growth since October 2021.
Enhanced Service: Bringing in experts from branding and agency backgrounds to provide strategic, value-driven support to clients.

Notable Quote:

"We stopped tolerating mediocre product, we stop tolerating mediocre marketing, we stop tolerating a service that doesn't go above and beyond."
— Tomer Tagrin [07:01]

Embracing AI and Data-Driven Strategies

Tomer shares Yotpo’s strategic focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and customer data platforms (CDP) to drive personalized and efficient marketing.

Key Points:

Operational Efficiency: AI streamlines processes, reducing costs and time for marketing campaigns from $200k and four months to $3k and three hours.
Product Innovation: AI enables hyper-personalized loyalty programs and enhances review summaries, increasing conversion rates by 3%.
Data Foundations: Recent acquisitions in CDP technologies aim to build robust, actionable customer data platforms, integral to Yotpo’s AI-driven vision.
Future Outlook: Yotpo plans to integrate CDP capabilities deeply into its ecosystem, ensuring seamless data utilization across all platforms.

Notable Quote:

"AI is starting to bring a lot of innovation to many, many areas that were stagnant before... it's a question of when, not if."
— Tomer Tagrin [13:04]

Agency Partnerships and Community Building

The dialogue touches upon Yotpo’s focus on fostering strong relationships with agencies, recognizing their pivotal role in the e-commerce ecosystem.

Key Points:

Agency Collaboration: Yotpo views agencies as advanced users and strategic partners, contributing to product development and client services.
Advocacy Over Affiliation: Moving beyond traditional affiliate programs to create advocacy, ensuring agencies add genuine value and receive leads from Yotpo.
Support and Enablement: Significant investment in enabling agencies through comprehensive support, training, and collaborative technologies.

Notable Quote:

"Our partners and our agencies are part of our village. It really takes a village."
— Tomer Tagrin [20:33]

The Marshmallow Moment: Embracing Long-Term Vision

Tomer introduces the concept of the "marshmallow test" as a metaphor for Yotpo’s shift towards long-term strategic thinking over immediate gratification.

Key Points:

Delayed Gratification: Drawing parallels between the famous psychological experiment and Yotpo’s approach to business growth and decision-making.
Cultural Integration: Encouraging leadership and team members to prioritize long-term excellence over short-term gains, fostering sustainable growth.
Strategic Discipline: Yotpo’s willingness to say no to immediate opportunities that do not align with their long-term vision, ensuring focused and meaningful progress.

Notable Quote:

"Let's make sure that we wait. And yes, maybe like this quarter is going to be less of a growth or this year we could have done better. But long term, like infinite mindset, that's what's going to make you much, much, much better."
— Tomer Tagrin [22:48]

Advice for Brands Facing Economic Challenges

Addressing the current economic climate, Tomer offers empathetic and practical advice to D2C brands navigating financial pressures.

Key Points:

Resilience and Empathy: Acknowledging the hardships brands face and commending their perseverance.
Supportive Measures: Yotpo’s initiatives like flexible pricing and relief packages to assist struggling brands.
Focus on Fundamentals: Encouraging brands to maintain empathy, prioritize customer-centric practices, and build resilient businesses that can endure economic fluctuations.

Notable Quote:

"Keep going at it. It's hard and nothing too smart to say like your heroes, your superheroes, keep on going at it."
— Tomer Tagrin [26:21]

Future Vision for Yotpo 2.0

Looking ahead, Tomer outlines ambitious goals for Yotpo 2.0, emphasizing continuous innovation, exceptional service, and employee well-being.

Key Points:

Innovation Leadership: Striving to be the pace-setter in product development within the e-commerce ecosystem.
Superior Service: Aiming to act as an extension of clients’ brands, providing strategic and personalized support.
Employee and Customer Success: Fostering an environment where employees thrive and customers achieve significant growth through Yotpo’s platforms.
Infinite Mindset: Embracing a philosophy of ongoing growth and adaptation, inspired by Simon Sinek’s “Infinite Mindset.”

Notable Quote:

"Yotpo 2.0 will be such a great company, such a great business that it will attract more people, more great people that care about E Commerce and that we can bring more innovation to E commerce."
— Tomer Tagrin [28:45]

Personal Habits for Success

In the latter part of the episode, Tomer shares personal strategies that have significantly contributed to his health and leadership effectiveness.

Key Points:

Self-Care as Leadership: Emphasizing the link between personal well-being and professional performance.
Health Regimen: Incorporating nutrition, meditation, exercise, quality sleep, and other health practices to maintain peak performance.
Purpose-Driven Motivation: Focusing on the “why” behind personal and professional changes to sustain long-term commitment and resilience.

Notable Quote:

"If you take care of yourself and you have the energy and state of mind, you're just performing at a level that I wasn't able to perform."
— Tomer Tagrin [31:35]

Conclusion: Embracing the Journey Ahead

The episode wraps up with mutual encouragement and a reaffirmation of Yotpo’s commitment to excellence and innovation.

Key Points:

Continuous Growth: Acknowledging that Yotpo’s transformation is an ongoing journey with no fixed end goal.
Community Engagement: Encouraging listeners to follow Tomer’s journey on LinkedIn and stay updated with Yotpo’s developments.
Final Encouragement: Reinforcing the message of resilience and the importance of maintaining an infinite mindset in business and personal growth.

Notable Quote:

"We have so much to accomplish, like the just getting started type of a thing. But we are really in day one in our ambitious and in my ambitious at least for you."
— Tomer Tagrin [28:45]

Follow Tomer Tagrin:
To stay updated with Tomer’s insights and Yotpo’s journey towards Yotpo 2.0, follow him on LinkedIn.

Subscribe to the DTC Podcast:
For more insightful discussions on scaling direct-to-consumer brands, subscribe to the DTC Podcast here.

This detailed summary encapsulates the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting Yotpo’s strategic transformations, personal growth narratives, and forward-looking visions, punctuated with impactful quotes and timestamps for easy reference.

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Transcript28 lines

[00:00]
Tomer Tagrin
Since the beginning of the year, I met with like more than 100 brands face to face. The best names you can think of in D2C. A lot of them are suffering and I'm just like so astonished by the resilience of so many operators. Yachtpo 2.0 was born from the realization that Yachtpo needs to change from the inside out. If you want to lead a category like we lead in reviews and loyalty, you need to lead with one place of innovation. Your culture is what you tolerate. And we stop tolerating like mediocre product, we stop tolerating mediocre marketing. We stop tolerating like a service that doesn't go above and beyond. Excellence demands focus. That's the only way. And if you want to be outstanding at something, you have to play the long term game.
[00:52]
Eric Dick
Tomer, it's great to reconnect. The last time we talked was I guess about six months ago in that really fun roundtable we did with Sean Frank and company. Oh yeah, do you remember that? That was excellent. That was raw. There's lots of great conversations there. But I feel like I didn't get like. I think you gave a little bit of your background and a bit of, you know, we were talking a lot about this idea of yacht PO 2.0 and I thought a really great place to start off would be the story of yotpo 2.0 and why you felt it was necessary to have a two from a one.
[01:26]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, yeah, thank you, thank you for the conversation. I'll say that I think yacht PO 2.0 was born from the realization that Yacht PO needs to change from the inside out and we need to change many, many things if you want to fulfill our dreams and fulfill our vision as a company. Because we were like one of the OGs of the Shopify ecosystem, grew with it quite substantially and of course beyond the Shopify ecosystem. And then I think the post Covid like everyone else, right? It's like get back to reality a bit of like, okay, we need to go back to the fundamentals and in Yacht board, the good and bad. We have like a lot of room to improvement in the way we build products, in the way we do marketing, in our pricing, in, in the way we do go to market in general. So we started from that, like, I'll give you that we brought like a lot of talent from the outside, from the brand side, from the agency side into Yacht for to make sure that we're building, serving the customer like, like they wanted to be built and served of Course, pricing was a big change for us Marketing that I think now marketing became a strength. Like our brand marketing and the marketing team have really transformed themselves. So it started from the realization that a we must change. Like I always say in the leadership that I'm so proud that on one end, we have the humility to say what we're not good at. Like, I meet so many different founders that tell me why their business now is different post Covid. And yeah, I get it. Like, interest rate went high, so everything is tougher also for us. But also, let's look inside where we became soft at that time. So one is like the humility, and the other thing is the conviction and the passion to want to change. Because I also know many companies that understand what they need to change, but then the founder doesn't want to do that or the management isn't up for the challenge. And you see those companies all die slowly or just not really transforming. And I think the nice thing or the thing I love about our culture is the humility and the courage and both of them together allow us to start this journey. We still have, like, a lot to walk through, but we definitely like the every change. Right. The toughest thing is the first step. We took the first step, and now we're just being consistent on the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth change.
[03:52]
Eric Dick
And this kind of mirrors a lot that you've kind of gone through in your personal life as well. You've kind of done this remaking of yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[04:01]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah, of course. So I had, like, in the last few years, I had like, two big, like, health issues, like, the same issue. I had, like, cancer. And that forced me first to stop and observe and what I'm doing wrong in my life. And then definitely the second time, which I went through, like, a process called, like, a bone marrow transplant that was, like, very, very, very tough. In 2022, it was very transformative for my life. I was reborn. I don't call it like Toner 2.0. It would be like, I think too, I don't know, scary. But definitely I was reborn as a new person. And, you know, I had my own first steps. And I change what I eat, change who I am as a father, who I am as a husband, who I am as a CEO, change how I exercise, change many, many aspects of my life in order to become a better version of myself. And I'm so happy that the universe on one end gave me the opportunity to look internal, and the second to give me the Opportunity to actually change. Because I've been to really dark places, and in the dark places, you're not sure if you'll get the opportunity to change or not. And I think this is why I always say in Yacht Pro, we shouldn't take it for granted that we have the opportunity. We have the balance sheet, we have the customer side, we have the culture, we have the management, the actual opportunity to change. Many people, I've seen it firsthand, don't have the opportunity to change, and many companies don't have the opportunity to change. And so we should be very thankful for that.
[05:37]
Eric Dick
But if you don't. Yeah, you really risk stagnation. I was actually listening to a podcast this weekend that was about America as a country, actually. And it was just talking about how America is one of the only countries who does this, who goes. Every 50 years they have a giant crisis and they kind of change things up. Whether it was like the, you know, the petrodollar in the 70s or going off the gold standard or what's happening now with tariffs, it seems like there's like things get kind of thrown into chaos to kind of create a new. A new way forward. And it's like. And it's like Europe doesn't really do that. In a way, Europe just kind of continues along in the same. In the same pathways. So it creates a ton of opportunity. I'm just back to like, what.
[06:18]
Tomer Tagrin
By the way, I'll just say on the weekend I heard like a super interesting podcast on empires and how every empire rise, stagnant and fall and us now is the current empire. And it's really interesting to see the patterns and like the Roman Empire and like a few other. So it's like, I agree with you. Like, we can learn a lot about what's happening in America and the universe. It's like a very fascinating topic.
[06:46]
Eric Dick
Yeah, I think so. We'll go into our meta. Our meta politics podcast after. But just what are the actual ways? Like, what are the most tangible ways that YOTPO has repositioned itself or reemerged from the cocoon as a different company.
[07:01]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one I think is. And then we still have a journey to do. So I don't want to pat ourselves on the back. I think, like, we're in the. In the middle of you changing the way we build products. Right. And if you want to lead the category like we lead in reviews and loyalty, you need to lead with one pace of innovation and the releases we released. I'll give reviews as an example in the last 12 months AI summary atlas that we're launching the syndication TikTok shops. We've been so much progressing and a lot of it is because the way we build products has changed. What does that mean? I'll give you very tangible things. We increased dramatically the number of UX designers ratio to developers. We changed a lot of the talent. We what else? I can another example, the use of AI into our engineering teams is another one. We just replaced people. There's many people that we just changed. Pricing is another very tangible thing today. If you don't want to pay a lot for reviews like I don't know we are definitely like very competitive and sometimes like one of the cheaper solutions out there. But if you do want to go for more value and more like a robust platform, we are definitely there as well. Marketing huge. I think I mean investor and I know if and I'm an advisor to a few of like SaaS providers I can tell like many of them has tough times in terms of like new pipe creation. I don't want to jinx it but we have the best pipe we had since October 2021 and a lot of it is because 18 months ago we decided to change marketing. What does that mean? First we had a decision, we stopped doing marketing. Marketing that E Com brands don't even want to know and don't even read. Just marketing for the sake of marketing. We replace people, we replace how we come up with creatives, ideas, all of that. And I think now we are really living with AI as well for production. So we're able to increase throughput as well. And marketing is another one. Service is a huge one in my eyes. We brought so many people from the brand side, so many people from agencies that can really help brands not just fix the or not just leverage the platform but really think more strategically about let's say loyalty is another example. Loyalty is a big. The incrementality of loyalty is the big discussion did they buy because of the loyalty or regardless of loyalty. So you really need a loyalty expert and what we call internally a loyalty specialist to walk you through on how to think about the value, how it change. That's another big thing that we change. I want to say definitely product pricing, service marketing. I can think about maybe others but maybe the biggest change is culture. I think culture is. I heard a good sentence that I'm using a lot in Yotpo that your culture is what you tolerate and we stopped tolerating like mediocre product. We stop tolerating mediocre marketing we stop tolerating like a service that doesn't go above and beyond and that really, really cares and I think so. We are meeting now in the midst of a huge transformation that Yotboy is doing and as a founder that's been, you know, for a long time, I find it like so exciting. I feel like I have a new startup now to do many, many things. So I love it.
[10:42]
Eric Dick
And how is the journey on the ESP side of things going on the email and SMS side? Because that's a big area of growth for you guys.
[10:48]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one I'll say like it's been like a very on one and humbling journey because you know a Klaviyo which is like the 800 pound grade is a phenomenal company. I just have to say just doing phenomenal work. So it's been very humbling and trying to go at it. That's one second. I think it's been surprising in terms of growth. I do think the market wants an alternative. Also in sms, in SMS you do have also phenomenal companies like postscript. It's a team I love and attentive. It's also a great company. I think in general it's on one hand very humbling and very satisfying and on the other hand we also now thinking okay, where we should focus, what's the strategy? It's also another thing I didn't mention but the reason I was five minutes late is we are doing every week now we have four or five hours of strategy session that what we should think about our strategy. Should we revisit the strategy because of the yacht port 2.0 as well and definitely the ESP side and the SMS side has been a huge contribution to that in like who we want to be, what's our vision to bring the most value to E commerce brands or to omnichannel brands in general. So it's going to be interesting I can tell you in the next few months. We have. It's a very, very interesting few months because we need to decide okay are we continuing the coincidence strategy or not. And a lot of it is because of what we've been seeing on the email and SMS site.
[12:26]
Eric Dick
We had a really interesting conversation at D2C on Friday where my co founder Jeff is very forward thinking. He's and he's obsessed with AI right now and so he started musing with the idea of like, you know, why shouldn't we be thinking about creating our own ESP in a way, you know where we can build it exactly for what we need. And I guess as a, as a SaaS founder you're having a lot of conversations about that, about how to build products that are for specific, very specific kinds of clients. But how, how not to go too far down that line. Talk a little bit about the thoughts you're having about AI and what brand should be thinking about.
[13:04]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah, so I'll say a few things on AI. One, it's an area I spend a lot of time, not as much as I wanted every time Toby puts like another another thing but I definitely like I think it's still under hyped in a way that it's going to really change our lives in the most profound ways possible. That and I don't think anyone knows really they put a lot of salt on everything I'm just about to say because you know the prophecy is given for the fools and I'm not a prophet and there are much smarter people than me that understand much better than me that area I can tell you in our universe I'm saying a few things. One before I move to the product actually our own operational efficiency and I do think AI for SaaS companies will make more linear teams that move faster that you don't need so many people to do mostly what I call the tedious work or the boring work and all of that. I'll give you an example. In our marketing campaigns what used to cost us, I don't know 200 grand and four months of work cost us now three grand and we do it in three hours. So really, really transformed production I think for good support is another area that we see a lot of AI usage into. We even have in our GNA now in finance, in legal, definitely in engineering the use of AI assistant code is really, really important. So that's one thing and I'm really pushing the company to really go through that gate of being an AI native company. The second thing on our product I can tell you a few things that we're seeing. One is you can provide really really cool value. Think about loyalty. When I think about loyalty today, most of the loyalty programs or most of the loyalty application, if you brought it to a membership and referrals and community, you and I are getting the same experience. But when we going to reach a point where it's going to be one to one loyalty campaigns like a very hyper personalized loyalty program for you versus me to get you to increase your repeat purchase rate. So that's one thing that I think in product there brings a lot of room for innovation. Another Very concrete example that today I can share. We have AI summary. We were the first one to launch AI Summary which basically we did an analysis. We saw that the average user reads a review for 11 seconds. You can imagine that on mobile if you have more than 5 reviews no one ever gets to read them. So we did an AI summary that actually take the relevant topics, knows how to basically to show you what you need in like five seconds. And in the beginning it took down conversion rate because we did like just a wrapper on ChatGPT and then we went deep with our data science to really go and build our own model and now we actually increased conversion about 3% which is massive for brands. So AI is starting to bring a lot of innovation to many, many areas that were stagnant before. And I would say that what your partner said, I don't see it AI writing full applications and replacing people altogether because you need to do code reviews and you need to maintain AI. You need to maintain the code because if you want to make change in some place, it affects another place. So the AI needs the full context but it's going to get there. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. For me this is why I think yeah, code and in general won't be a moat for companies and this is maybe a change that I can't even grasp. What does it mean when the technology is not the moat anymore, it's not a competitive advantage. A it means that like distribution is starting to be really really big and actually the go to market mode and for people that read a lot, Mark Andreessen he's really big on the mode of the network effect of distribution versus product. But the commoditization of code is going to be like crazy universe and so.
[17:23]
Eric Dick
Much of it would just be your ability to think creatively about your customers problems and deliver on them. I like that you were mentioning this. The idea of reviews getting down to one to one where you're like based on my profile there's a number of customer reviews that would be more impactful than others. Maybe they're looking at the same product, maybe they come from the same place, they're the same profile. Super, super interesting. And this kind of leads into an acquisition you guys made recently. You made your. And I just did a chat with Adil from Klaviyo at at Shop Talk CDP as well. Moving from ESP to cdp. Talk to me a little bit about the acquisition and where you see that going in this one to one marketing future.
[18:05]
Tomer Tagrin
So we acquired like an amazing group of people that they are very much specialized in CDP technologies. What does that mean is how do you build like the customer data platform that can be very actionable, very straightforward, very extensible. And why? Because your AI is as good as your data. Right. Again, when you think about like loyalty and now it's not just like a loyalty product or a loyalty platform, it's a loyalty platform with a very strong data foundations that you can do many, many things with it, inject data from other sources to create more engaging loyalty campaigns or you can export the data or you can pull the data if you want to look at the customer timeline really, really quickly. So there's a lot of advantages and in general, I think in order to prepare yotpo, that's one of the things to an AI native world. We need to make sure we have the strongest data foundations possible and we make an awesome team that has tons of experience and passion. They built an horizontal CDP and not specifically for ecom, but we think there's for us we believe there is an opportunity to rebuild something very actionable that most marketers are not deep on technology, they are not like engineers. So how do we take that deep technology and make it very accessible, very actionable for many marketers. So our plan is to incorporate it into the products so it will be very natively and be very, very freely to use. And this is why I'm very, very excited about what that team can do for, for the future of retention, marketing.
[19:42]
Eric Dick
And work across the whole platform not siloed into any individual one area. Right. I think that's the beauty with a platform like yours because you've got so many different areas where you can pull data from in order to create these unique customer experiences. One of the things I just saw you recently talking about and it's something that we're really focused on at D2C as well. We've been so focused as cause we're partnered with our agency Pilot House. So we've been so focused on brands and bringing brands into our ecosystem and all of our content is geared towards helping brands but we're also an agency and I think probably 40% of our of our audience are people in agencies as well. We're actually on the, on the verge of launching a community for seven figure agents. Seven eight figure agencies basically. And I saw you guys, you know, putting out your new sort of agency loyalty program. Talk about your focus on agencies as well.
[20:33]
Tomer Tagrin
Yeah. So one of the things we learned many in the many years that We've been to E commerce is that agencies are a huge part of what we build, meaning in multiple areas. One, they help us build products. Yes, we have our customer advisory board, but we talk a lot with agencies because they're one of the most advanced users of our platform. Second is agencies that help us work with brands, better serve brands. And we love partnering them together. And I think a lot of in our E commerce ecosystem, a lot of the SaaS providers, everyone has like a partner program, but it's more of a affiliate program. All of the SaaS providers are wanting to just get leads from agencies. And we've been really trying to do something a bit different is we're thinking a lot about advocacy from agencies in a sense that how we can just add value, how we can give agencies the most customers. So we actually building like processes and technology internally that knows to identify when we should send a lead to an agency. And we're spending a lot of time doing that. And we walk in on enablement a lot, a lot, a lot. And we have I think probably some of the largest teams and the most talented team in like catering those agencies and how we can help them understand better, how we can help them grow their business. Because it really takes a village and our partners and our agencies are part of our village. I would even say it's the same for tech partners. We have many tech partners that we partner together, that we love, that really 1 plus 1 is greater than 3. Usually Otpo is the larger company. So how do we bring them clients? How do we build technology with them together? We are now trying to invest more in our documentation, in our APIs to make it easier both for agencies and for tech partners just to be part of the yacht poor ecosystem.
[22:29]
Eric Dick
I also noticed a post you recently wrote about marshmallows and this is something that we. It's funny we talk about this at. We have something called the marshmallow moment. It's something different, but it's basically this idea of creating, you know, just creating value for our customers. Talk about the marshmallow experiment that you recently spoke about on LinkedIn.
[22:48]
Tomer Tagrin
People don't know. The marshmallow test is a, is a big test, very famous one that I think it was like in the 1960s, I'm not sure. And they brought a bunch of kids and for every kid, and I have three boys and I can tell you my boys would probably fail the test. You put them in a room and tell me, hey, you can all get now one marshmallow or you can wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows. Then they would step out of the room and see what the kid did and observe. Sorry. And the interesting piece is that I think they measure it like 20, 30, 40 years later. The kids that actually postponed gratification and waited for the two marshmallow did much better in life in terms of work, in terms of marriage, in terms of raising kids, overall happiness. And that was a very profound moment in psychology that we are machines that are geared towards immediate gratification. You want immediate feedback. This is why it's someone that started to do a lot of meditation. Meditation is very hard because you don't see any immediate feedback. And it's so freaking hard. So the marshmallow test and I think it's. And I as a founder, I failed at the marshmallow test. That's yachtboard 1.0, right? We wanted like fast growth. We wanted like, we thought the game is like, how do you grow this quarter, how much you grow this year? So that led us to like, we were very successful in short term growth, but that led us to like short term decision making. And I think we need like to be more of like postponing gratification as leaders as like operator or executive founders to understand that A takes time. And many times you need to choose the path that actually bumps on the short term. You need to say no to certain things, you need to say no to clients, you need to say cause from different angles. But long term, like infinite mindset, that's what's going to make you like much, much, much better. Because the individuals and the organization that have like the discipline to be focused and saying no because eventually excellence demands focus. That's the only way. And if you want to be outstanding at something, you have to play the long term game. So it's something that I keep reminding a lot of the executives in Yotpo. You ask me what is Yotpo 2.0. A lot of the time I need to talk to our executives and reiterating the importance and I use the marshmallow test as an example that let's not fail the marshmallow test. Let's make sure that we wait. And yes, maybe like this quarter is going to be less of a growth or this year we could have done better. I can give you an example in many of you. Another example in loyalty. We have so many clients that we're saying no to because we're not ready for them yet. And we will be at someday, hopefully. When? I mean someday, I mean Q1 next year. But I don't know. But I know that today, yes, we could have probably closed another like 300 grand of a deal and we said no to and you need to reiterate the marshmallow test with leaders until it's so ingrained into our culture. So I just had like a week that I used that like four different time I said, you know it, let's like put it out there and for other people as well and to see because I think it's such an important reminder to many founders and many executives.
[26:03]
Eric Dick
I think right now too there's a lot of brands in sort of forced marshmallow test where due to financial, the financial situation with terrorists, people have to maybe accept lower growth or accept squeezed margins with what's going on. What's your advice to brands out there right now who are feeling the pinch from the economy?
[26:22]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, since the beginning of the year, I met with like more than 100 brands face to face executive like probably the best names you can think of in D2C. A lot of them are suffering and I've seen like amazing, amazing, like resilient. And I'm just like so astonished by the resilience of so many operators and the changing factories and the changing pricing and they're doing so many layover, so many different things to live to fight another day. And first I want to say to everyone that's hearing it from the opera, it's hard. Keep going at it. It's hard and nothing too smart to say like your heroes, your superheroes, keep on going at it. If there's something that YOTPO can do to help, we did like a bunch of pricing stuff to free service stuff that we really tried to have relief packages for brand that's been affected by the tariffs. So reach out to us if we can help. But in general know that a many, many are in the same situation and like everything, it will pass. So you just need to make sure that you do whatever it takes to leave to fight another day. And no one really cares about this quarter's growth and no one really cares about this year's growth. It's more our emotional and our desire to compare ourselves to and leave that aside like just make sure you're building like a great business for your customers and it will pass at some point and hang in there and our hearts And I can tell you in Yotpo, I've been talking a lot about the importance of empathy that we need to have in these moments because these are like really tough moments. I had like founders that cried with me. I had like, executives that were starting to ask me if they should start looking for a job. And I think it's tough, but it will pass. I don't know when, but it will.
[28:14]
Eric Dick
And it's almost just like the state of this industry is constant flux in a way, right? There's always these challenges rear themselves so often, and it's just. It's just a matter of not quitting, just staying in the fight, living to fight another day. Okay, so Yachtboy 2.0. You are, you know, you're midway in the process and you're not ready to obviously congratulate yourself yet. What will we see when Yacht PO 2.0 is, you know, for 75 or 100% along the way of the process? Where do you envision Yacht 2.0 and what will that look like?
[28:46]
Tomer Tagrin
So first, we have, like, a few ambitious goals. One is to build the most loved company by brands and agencies in the E commerce ecosystem. That means first we need to have the best products. So you should expect the products to really become much better. That will. In the markets that we play in, we want to set the pace of innovation. We want to push brands to experiment and try new things. So definitely one is just like the pace of innovation and the value that you're getting from the platform. That's one. Second thing is really going above and beyond in terms of service and really be like an extension of the brand. You know, most D2C teams and most E commerce teams are very nimble teams and they're not big even. You know, we have like, massive customers, like some of the biggest companies in the world. Even their teams are relatively small. So you can imagine that our service should be like, much more helpful, much more strategic in many, many things that we're doing. Definitely should expect that AI should be more ingrained in the way you engage with the otpo. And there was a value that you get with the otpo and what else? I don't know. I think it's like, it's never. There's no, like, end goal. It's always evolving. If you haven't read the book of, like, Infinite Mindset of Simon Sinek, I'm highly recommend that, like, there's no, like, finite game here. It really is just keep on going and keep on going, keep on going. I also have, like, a personal goal that I want, like the Yacht for top people to be uber happy. I want them to be, like, financially independent and rich so they can really reach their own level of happiness in life. And so I want like for our employees to make a lot of money. I want our customers to make a lot of money from our products. I want our investors. So I have like also some sense of that the OTPO 2.0 will be such a great company, such a great business that it will attract more people, more great people that care about E Commerce and that we can bring more innovation to E commerce. To launch more startups coming out of Yacht Po I think Yacht Po X employees now launch like, I think it's like 15 startups already that at least like eight of them are in E Comm. That for me it's like amazing. So there's like I have like many goals for the future of yotpo. It's a very cliche and a douchey sentence to say. So I usually hate to say it by founders, but I really feel that like we have so much to accomplish, like the just getting started type of a thing. But we are really in like day one in, in our ambitious and in my ambitious at least for you.
[31:25]
Eric Dick
And then on a personal level, I'm curious with some of the changes that you've made to your personal life. What are, what are some of the most effective things you've done personally that have either really helped with your health or your mindset to get where you want to go?
[31:36]
Tomer Tagrin
We need like two episodes just for that. But I'll say I think one is like the understanding or bringing it to the conscious mind that if I'll take care of myself, if I'm in like peak state, peak performance state, everything is better. Like if you really care about your kids, you're a better father. If you really care about how you are in work, you're a much better leader. So if you take care of yourself and you have the energy and state of mind, you're just performing at a level that I wasn't able to perform. So what does that mean? You need to have the right energy. So you need to eat properly, you need to sleep properly, you need to exercise properly, you need to have a very good mind body chemistry. So I have like a crazy schedule now. Like my wife hates me. I don't eat processed sugar, I won't eat carbs. I prioritize my sleep, I prioritize reading. If you are truly in a growth mindset, you have to put yourself in a place that you can grow in that kind of pace. So I would say to anyone that really want to do that, just put yourself in a peak state. And that really means taking care of yourself, that you have the energy, you have the state of mind that you can grow. So definitely for me, it's like nutrition, meditation, sports, sleep supplements, ice bath. I'm like doing like, all that you can imagine. And I really think I'm a better version of myself today. I know there are many things I can say here, but I really think maybe the one tip I can give people if you want to create a big change in your life, most people always think about the how. If I go to the gym on Monday and Friday, or you know what, I'll do a diet like that. It's a mistake. Go to your why. Why you want to make a change. Because when the why is very strong, the how become like really, really easy. So keep on, like, reiterating yourself, like why you want to make a change, and make sure that the why is, like, strong enough. And for me, the why is so strong I don't want to die. Right? It's like the strongest why that you can think of. So the how is really easy. And every time I want to make a change now, I'm using that why as a tool, getting back to that feeling. And that's what enables me to continue growing.
[33:52]
Eric Dick
Start with the why. That's what Yapo starts with. So sounds good. You want to follow Tomer? Follow him on LinkedIn. You make a lot of great posts there. And I think just to follow your journey, follow what's new with yapo 2.0. Follow him there. Go check out Yapo. Tomer, thanks so much for coming on today. This was a lot of fun.
[34:11]
Tomer Tagrin
This was great and I'm a big fan. I'm a big listener on the way to work. So thank you for having me.
[34:23]
Eric Dick
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.