Sharpen your Competitive Edge with AI

Curt Anderson  00:00

Much Parag, did you stretch out?

Parag Mamnani  00:01

I did.

Curt Anderson  00:03

Hey, Damon, we’re live. Hey, happy Monday. Man. How are you alright?

Damon Pistulka  00:07

Curt, I’m ready to go. Let’s get this thing started. Let’s

Curt Anderson  00:10

get this party started. So hope you had amazing, incredible, wonderful, phenomenal, relaxing weekend, because we’ve got a heavy we’ve got a heavy hitter today. Damon, are you ready? Are you ready for this? Yes, should we stretch out first?

Damon Pistulka  00:23

Let’s go get this thing going.

Parag Mamnani  00:26

So I got my stretches in over the weekend. It was my birthday. So, yeah, dude, how

Curt Anderson  00:32

old

Parag Mamnani  00:35

my wife says? I’m halfway to 90.

Curt Anderson  00:37

You’re halfway to 90. Damon, I think the shirt is like the seams. Is Prague, I’m not sure. But anyway, let’s dive in. So hey, we’ve got Parag, the founder, CEO extraordinary, of a wonderful, amazing and cutting edge company called Webgility. Parag. How are you? My friend? Happy Monday. What’s going on, man? Thank

Parag Mamnani  00:57

you so much. It’s exciting to be here. Really appreciate this opportunity. It’s been a wonderful weekend, celebrating with some friends and family, so I’m happy to kick off the week starting live, chatting about ecommerce and thank you for having me on the show.

Curt Anderson  01:15

Well, Dana and I, we were going to sing Happy Birthday to that was our plan, but

Parag Mamnani  01:18

we could skip that

Curt Anderson  01:21

now, for the record, Damon does. He’s a baritone. He does have a beautiful right, Damon, don’t you like, not

Damon Pistulka  01:29

even, not even,

Curt Anderson  01:30

okay, that was somebody else I was thinking

Parag Mamnani  01:32

of, yeah, probably a different podcast.

Curt Anderson  01:34

That was a, that was last week’s, that was, yeah, Damon has, like, this opera thing. He’s, like, the, you know, the secret opera guy that says that’s a side hustle, right? Damon, so, yes, alright, let’s dive in. So Parag, e commerce, you know, long time  commerce guy, Amazon alumni, founded your own company. I believe, 2007 but Parag, before we go there, I have a little question that, as a matter of fact, somebody sent this in for us. Parag, when you where did you grow up? Where

Parag Mamnani  02:02

did you grow up? Oh, boy, um, I actually was born in India, but I spent a little part of my childhood in South America. Nice, South America part. Yeah, I was in British Guyana. Oh, wow, nice. Okay,

Curt Anderson  02:15

so let’s go here, Parag, when you were a little guy growing up, when you were a little guy growing up, who was your hero? Who did you look up to? Who’d you admire? Who was who just showered Parag with unconditional love? Who was your hero? You

Parag Mamnani  02:30

know, it was, it was, it was always my dad. It’s always my dad. He was the, you know, he’s the one who’s been inspiring me along the journey. And, yeah, he, in fact, that’s how we ended up in South America. My dad was a banker, and he was the first in the family to get a double master’s degree. So education was really important to him, and he was in the was the first in the family. It’s 1986 he got an opportunity to leave India for the first time and go to South America. So, you know, he really brought us that exposure. And just, yeah, you always want to do more, and it definitely important part of my entrepreneurial journey.

Curt Anderson  03:09

Well, what a hero in dad’s name, please, yes. His

Parag Mamnani  03:13

name is kahea kanea. Well, hey, big

Curt Anderson  03:16

shout out to dad. One and then two. Master’s degree goes to South America, or, I’m sorry, South Africa, right? Is

Parag Mamnani  03:22

that what you said? South America, South America. Yeah, South America. Got it. Yeah, South

Curt Anderson  03:26

America. And so what a great Um, now, okay, let’s, let’s jump ahead. Now, if I’m not mistaken, I believe you are a Sun Devil. Did

Parag Mamnani  03:33

I see that correctly? That’s right. That’s right. Arizona State,

Curt Anderson  03:37

so take us on the tour. Take us on the tour. How did you end up at Arizona State? Yeah,

Parag Mamnani  03:42

yeah. So I, we were actually in South America, and that got sort of the itch started, where I have two elder brothers, and they both were, they both decided to get their higher education in America. I was the youngest one. My parents wanted to kind of take me back to India, and, you know, baby me. And did that, moved back to India for high school. But then, you know, as I finished up my high school education there, yeah, there was just an attraction to come to America. And one of my my brothers, actually established home based in Arizona, and that’s how, you know, it was like, Okay, do you want to come study here and live close to me. And yeah, so you know, the rest, as they say, is history, but yeah, that’s how I got into ASU. And excited to say that my my knees, actually just started ASU this past weekend. So yeah, wonderful career continues. Go devils. Well,

Curt Anderson  04:38

go devils. You know my that’s alright. How exciting is that my mother in law just left and she she lives right, just right near Arizona state. So hey, we’ve got a big hello here from Siraj. So Happy Monday to you guys. Drop us a note. Let us know you’re out there. Let us say hi to Damon. Say hi to Parag. Connect with Parag on LinkedIn. You’ll thank. Slater. He’s just a e commerce powerhouse. Wonderful. You have a little SAS thing that we’re going to dive into. So probably take us through the journey. You leave Arizona State, you you dive into eCommerce areas, Amazon alumni, and then you looks like you kicked off your entrepreneurial journey. 2007 take fill in that gap for us. Lead us up to webgility.

Parag Mamnani  05:19

Yeah. Yeah, you know. So I went to Arizona State, and I graduated in the.com bus. So entrepreneurship was kind of forced upon me. There was not really a whole lot of jobs out there, so had to kind of really figure out what to do. And while I was in college, I was, you know, dabbling and building websites. And so I during the summers, I kind of wake up at seven o’clock in the morning, start cold calling businesses to sell them, e commerce websites, and, you know, then during the day, build a website and manage the hosting and provide support. And yeah, so that’s kind of how I got my entrepreneurial wheels, and haven’t looked back since. Definitely enjoyed the ride building e commerce, software and sites for 1000s now of of small businesses, and then got an opportunity. Wanted to get some experience working in a large company and at scale, and I could see E commerce was going to be the tremendous opportunity. So 2007 actually, I joined Amazon and did a stint there for a couple of years managing a platform there called Web Store, which was Amazon’s foray into building e commerce sites for small businesses. And so, you know, was able to learn a ton there work with lots of large merchants built a developer ecosystem around the product. And, you know, I could see kind of clearly that there was a big gap in the market. You know, businesses were going to be moving to online stores and marketplaces, but they didn’t quite know beyond kind of getting up and running and selling to how to automate, kind of their operations, like, what was, how are they going to do their fulfillment? How are they going to do their accounting? What about sales tax? What about inventory? What about purchasing? So there’s just all these parts of the business that were undefined, and I could see a big pain, and that’s what kind of got me started with webgility, just seeing it firsthand with both small businesses and then looking at it at scale while at Amazon

Curt Anderson  07:25

now, so it looked like you started webgility And overlapped with your time at Amazon, was it? Yeah,

Parag Mamnani  07:31

I had the idea before I started and I was kind of dabbling in it, I had some engineers start to build the application out to just kind of see how it would perform. And you know, I was moonlighting like, like most entrepreneurs, you know, you kind of don’t give up your your it’s sort of a side hustle, and you don’t give up your day job. And so I did that for a few years, but then, yeah, things just started to take off. And, and I kind of had a choice. I needed to kind of keep moving up the ladder at Amazon or, or, you know, jump ship and really kind of build my own business. And that’s, you know, as you could tell, which path I chose, yeah,

Curt Anderson  08:15

and it looks like you jumped, like, right in the heart of the economic, you know, kind of fall down, collapse, 2009 ish, if you will. Do we have that correct?

Parag Mamnani  08:24

I’m a sucker for punishment. Yeah, I started my first during the.com bust, and I started my second at the height of the financial crisis. So it was really hard. But you know, one of the things that’s really crazy, I believe, you know, this economy runs on small businesses, and small businesses are so incredibly resilient. They’re just so creative. They find ways to survive. And as long as you’re delivering value, you can survive in any market. And so, you know, that was the mantra then, and still the mantra now. And yeah, we continue to poke away at deliver good value.

Curt Anderson  08:59

God bless you. Man, very inspiring. Just share if you could for anybody out there to you know, maybe they’re sitting on the sidelines, or they have a side hustle, or they’re like, you know, man, I would love to start my own entrepreneurial journey. If we could take you back in time 15 years ago, 2009 was there an aha moment? Was there a pivotal point where you’re like, I’m leaving Amazon, I’m that took a lot of courage to leave Amazon and you start your own thing. Do you remember what that mindset, scary, exciting, what was, what was going on there? Yeah,

Parag Mamnani  09:30

yeah. I mean, you know, it’s all of the above, right? It’s, there’s there’s usually not, like, there’s not going to be a big sign that says, go jump in and get started, right? There’s not going to be someone that is able to kick your ass enough to just tell you, go do it. You got to come to it yourself, and you got to look at everything and just get going. It’s funny, I actually had a conversation with a buddy of mine over the weekend. They were visiting for my birthday, and he was telling me about all these things. He wants to do, and he has this business idea, and it’s going to be but he’s just like, he needs to put together a deck, and he needs to think about funding, and he’s think about how he’s going to go big. And I’m going to tell you what I told him, he’s got to get started. You

Curt Anderson  10:16

just got, you got to get off the sidelines. You got to kind of field, man, right? Yeah, she’s got to get started. Gotta throw tackle, throw a couple blocks. Get dirty, get knocked down.

Parag Mamnani  10:27

Yeah. And if, if you think you’ll have it figured out a day one, no,

Damon Pistulka  10:33

you know that the old adages, you know, the the best battle plans, what, don’t survive the first shot, or something like that.

Parag Mamnani  10:41

You know, that’s right, like that, because everybody’s got a plan until they get punched. Yep, yep, it’s you will

Damon Pistulka  10:47

get punched day one in business. So, yeah, yeah, you just gotta get started this

Curt Anderson  10:52

great advice. Yeah, I love it. Hey, demon. We got another comment here from Marcella, from Atlanta. So Happy Monday says hello. So Happy Monday to you again. Guys, thank you for joining us. Drop a note in the chat box, let us know you’re out there. Connect with Parag, connect with Damon, connect with myself on LinkedIn. Love to hear what’s going on in your world. So Parag, let’s dive into webgility. Yeah. Who is Webgility? How do you and your amazing team make the world a better place. Yeah,

Parag Mamnani  11:23

yeah, no, of course. Love talking about agility. Been doing this now for too long. Webgility is again. The idea came about it from working with all these small businesses. I could kind of see eCommerce was going to be the future, and not only selling on one channel, but we’re gonna have this omni channel world. And I didn’t quite foresee how many SaaS applications would be out there and how many different thing, you know, systems customers would have to use just to make their business run. But you know, the at the core of the problem is that, you know, it’s, it’s now, especially in 2024 it’s so easy to get started selling online, right? Like you can spin up a store, launch some products in Amazon, pretty easily. But the big question really is, how do you make money doing it, right? How do you actually make money? And I think to make money, you you certainly need all the things around brand and creativity, and you got to have a great product. You got to provide great service. But ultimately, there’s such razor thin margins you cannot be doing things manually. And as an entrepreneur, your time is your you know, primary kind of lever, right? So you got to figure out where you’re going to spend your time. So you do not want to be spending your time doing all the mundane stuff. You don’t want to be managing your bookkeeping. You don’t have to worry about your financials being right. You don’t want to track kind of your inventory like things should just be automated, right? And by the way, those are the differentiators. That’s why the big guys are winning, because they’ve got those, all of those basics, down, they can think about new scaling strategies, and they don’t have to worry about any of the basics. So I could, you know, I saw sort of the gap in the market that businesses would need to sell on multiple channels. They would need automation. And so I kind of wrote on my whiteboard were three key letters. I said there’s going to be integration. We’re going to need to integrate things because too many systems and apps. We’re going to need automation, and then ultimately, businesses are going to need a lot of insights, because it’s just going to be too much data, and it’s going to be hard to see what’s happening. And so webglt has been, you know, developed with those three key pillars, and our focus is on helping small to medium sized businesses that sell online figure out how to automate and make more money. And we do that by, you know, connecting all their systems. We help them automate all their day to day inventory automation. We streamline their daily bookkeeping. Help them close their books at the end of every month, so that they know their financial systems and financial reports are accurate, and ultimately they know what their profitability is, so that they can start to increase their margins. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  14:11

that’s that’s so key. The three things you hit the integration, automation and insight are are so important, because most people, when they walk in, like you said, you can spin up a Shopify or other kind of big commerce kind of store, literally on a weekend, if you really wanted to do it right and throw some products on or get on Amazon, and in a very short amount of time and start doing that, but you soon realize that if you have orders and customers and shipments and all this kind of stuff, there’s a lot of data that has to move between, between a platform and you for like, shipments and orders and all that kind of stuff, and then between your financial systems, and just keeping everything updated becomes a huge load as you scale,

Parag Mamnani  14:56

yeah, yeah. And it’s a bit of the Wild Wild West, because. Because you have all of these channels, kind of formatting data, the way that they like. Yep, they also have their own set of rules in terms of how they do payment processing. Yep, they even have their own rules as to when they pay you. Yes, they do, right? So you’ve got to really find a system that can keep it all together and bring it into one place. And typically we see, for most small to medium sized businesses, maybe I wouldn’t call Excel a system of record, but you know, the only system of record they truly have is their financial system, right? QuickBooks is at the heart of most small businesses. That’s the system they don’t You don’t mess around with QuickBooks. It’s all clean. It has to be clean. Data. Has to know exactly how much money came in, how much money went out, and that’s kind of the only system that truly can tell you the heart of what’s happening in your business. And so, you know, we have customers all the way from, you know, startups that just getting started on a single channel, all the way up to companies that have, you know, 30 channels. They’re selling internationally with multiple currencies, and, you know, 10s of 1000s of products in their catalog, hundreds of 1000s of orders, you know, 50 million plus in in GMV annually. And they all kind of can use our system to just get their data flowing every day and get their books closed easily. Their inventory is updated. Their pricing isn’t always, you know, up to date throughout their different channels, and ultimately, they know exactly how much money they’re making. Yes, yeah,

Curt Anderson  16:27

I love it. So, all right, Parag, let’s go here. You know, how about the letters AI? If I say the letter AI, does that mean, meaning thing to you in your world? Is that a thing? Yeah,

Parag Mamnani  16:38

yeah. You know, it used to be all about intelligence, and now it’s gotten a bit artificial, but, but, yeah, AI has been, really, it’s been the talk of town, is what’s captured the imagination of the entire world, frankly, since the launch of chat GPT. And, you know, I’m no no stranger. I’ve been, you know, obviously, in technology for now a couple of decades. But, you know, when chat GPT came out, I think everybody was kind of thinking, How do I use this? And is it really going to be beneficial? What’s what? What’s going to change? And obviously, you know, there’s a lot of conversation about how it’s going to just kill so many jobs, and it’s going to, I don’t know, we’re going to have two person, you know, billion dollar companies, and you know, there’s a lot of hype, the reality is, there’s definitely some value in the app, in the technology. And, you know, thinking about our customers, and really small businesses, what can ai do for them? Right? And beyond, kind of, you know, a search bot, right? It a lot of people kind of just leveraging the technology as just a replacement for Google search, like answer my questions, right? But the reality is, there’s a lot of power in the technology, and so I’ve been kind of diving in to really think about, how can businesses leverage this technology, how can we really make it meaningful that I go back to those three pillars, like, how can we really help those businesses? And ultimately, it’s about kind of, what actions can it take? Can it truly be my assistant, and what real insight can I get using this technology? So I’m really excited. You know, earlier this month, we launched our webgility ai assistant, and, you know, we’ve developed it with kind of a few key things in mind. You know, first and foremost, it’s that businesses have questions about their data. So first and foremost, it needs to be able to answer questions about what’s going on in their e commerce business, who are their top customers, you know, how much revenue did they make this month? Which products are out of stock, like, basic questions about their e commerce business. And number two, it’s, you know, what actions can it take for me, right? Like, and so our AI assistant, it can, you can go on and just type in Hey, post all my orders to QuickBooks, and it’ll do that, right? And so it can take actions for you. And it’s early days. There’s definitely more to build here. But you know, the third thing is, what can this AI assistant, tell me about the future? What can it predict for me? And so going forward, we’re building more technology to really help businesses figure out, you know what’s going to happen in the future, and how can it kind of transform the way you behave, and how can it inform you about what’s coming down the pipe? So it’s early days. We’ve just launched our AI assistant in beta. It’s free to all of our customers, and we’re seeing it live. You know, as our customers ask it questions, what do they how do they interact with it? And we’re learning from it. But you know, as I see our team kind of spending time and building more capabilities, it’s really all about, you know, getting more and more automations. Happen through your assistant, and then for AI to really kind of give you some predictions about what’s happening in the future, which is really hard, by the way, right? Ai relies on such volume of data like you just most small businesses don’t have enough data to actually train a model, right? And so we’re now finding creative ways to really take, you know, get value from that technology, even for businesses that don’t have that much data. So early innings, early innings

Curt Anderson  20:34

love it. So Sebastian says, AI delivers valuable services that enhance the e Commerce Industry. Sebastian, thank you for your comment. And again, strongly encourage you guys. I’ll connect with Parag here. He, as you can tell, just AI expert, eCommerce expert Damon, I almost did like a little e, i, e, i, o, right there. Yeah. Okay, alright, so let’s go here. So combination things I just want to recap, and then what I’d like to do is, I want, if you don’t mind, you didn’t know I was going to do this, I like to do this. I like to pull up your website and just kind of give everybody an idea of, like, what is the power of webgility? What are some of the solutions that you’re solving, how you’re making the world a better place for small business owners? Damon, I know you’re just like, salivating over this conversation. What I love? Number one, if I caught this correctly, Parag, and I, man, this is, like, a great insight or, well, I’m using insight great three does your north star if I’m getting this correct integration, automation and insights. So through the longevity of your company 15 years, that’s really been kind of your benchmark. And so every solution that you’re delivering for your small businesses kind of hit that three point criteria is that, is that what you’re saying?

Parag Mamnani  21:41

Absolutely? Yeah. I mean, that’s the value we deliver. We gotta keep, make sure that we can automate your business and give you insights you didn’t get previously. That’s all. That’s what it’s about. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  21:51

it’s so critical. Because the things that you’re doing, there’s so many nuances that happen in an eCommerce business, especially if you’re if you got a high skew count, high number of transactions going on that you mentioned it a while ago. AI can see things that we can’t see as humans. And it’s going to be very interesting how webgility and others are really using AI to provide those insights that we just aren’t going to see without it, yeah, yeah.

Curt Anderson  22:20

And, and with that point, Damon, what I absolutely love is like, how do you have that trusted resource can, like, brag what I’m in picturing, you know, it’s kind of like you’re the trusted guide over my shoulder saying, hey, you know, I see a couple blind spots. Or did you happen to notice this? Or, yeah, just make sure that you saw this gap here. And so that’s the one. Or with your, you know your solution as you’re describing it. Let’s take us, take us on a little tour of your website. So if somebody is like, Man, you’re really peaking my curiosity. You had me at hello Parag, what are some things that they would want to explore or dive into? Is they’re taking these first steps with the relationship with Webgility. Yeah.

Parag Mamnani  22:57

Listen, if you enjoy talking to people, we have live humans, not AI, on our website so you can, you know, just pull up live help and talk to one of our E commerce advisors. It’s the best way to get started. If you are the kind of person that likes to just dabble in things directly, jump in yourself. We have a free trial so you could just get started. Connect your eCommerce, channel your QuickBooks. We also have a demo, so you can schedule time with one of our eCommerce advisors who walk you through the entire solution. There’s also pre recorded guided tour so you know, you choose your own journey through the website to see where. You know however you’re comfortable. But you know, in terms of the capabilities we provide, right off the bat, it’s for omni channel businesses. We work with all the major platforms, Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, WalMart. We integrate all of them, and we work with both online and brick and mortar. So we connect to e commerce channels and point of sale software. So even clover, Lightspeed square, we connect to, we’ve been approved by accountants. We’re partners with Intuit and intuits, you know, actively promoting webgility products for those that are in, say, the manufacturing space. We also work very closely with QuickBooks Enterprise. We’ve got some great brands like flaunt and rare form using our solution, and really all you got to do is kind of connect your website, your E commerce channel, to Webgility, connect to your QuickBooks, follow kind of some of this wizards, or work with our eCommerce advisors to get You set up in terms of all the automation we, pretty much on a daily basis, can bring in every single one of your transactions from your eCommerce channels, get it automatically recorded into QuickBooks. You can also, if you’re an Amazon seller, you just like to get data every two weeks with a settlement report. We can just put in a summary. We can grab the summary. Report at the end of every settlement period, and we bring that into your system. Obviously, we’ve got great service. All of our software solution includes unlimited support. We also provide free white glove onboarding. You can check out some of our customer reviews and definitely learn more about the product. Yeah, I

Curt Anderson  25:18

love some of these comments here. I mean, it’s just, it’s just, it’s wonderful to see what you’re doing, just making people’s lives easier. And I think you hit it on the head earlier. Parag with like that, AI, you know, there’s just so many myths that I love that you’re kind of dispelling. I had a buddy come over to my house, you know, recently, and he was from out of town. He was like, Man, I’m talking with his co worker. And he was like, you know, describing everything about AI, and it got me so depressed. And, you know, he’s just going on and overwhelmed and intimidated about what AI is doing. And I’m like, Dude, I you know, don’t talk to that guy anymore. Yeah. I mean, what? What you know, like it, just look at how it’s just such a game changer. I know Damon, you know we’re using it on a daily basis. Yeah, Prague, I don’t want to put you on a spot, but you know, you have all these wonderful testimonials, and they’re, they’re loaded all over your site. Do you have any particular wonderful case studies, success stories that you want to share? Mind blowing of like, you know, man, this company saved X,

Parag Mamnani  26:13

oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, one of the cases, one of the customers I always talk about, is Dan from bases loaded. We’ve worked together now over 10 years, and Dan’s started off with a kind of a sporting goods, baseball focused store. Yeah, there he is. Dan, wells right there. And, you know, he had a, you know, sporting goods store close to Sacramento, and they wanted to sell online, and it was like, Okay, well, I’ve got this brick and mortar business. How do I actually get my products online? And how do I make sure everything is working correctly, so that I can actually be successful selling online? Fast forward now a decade. It went from no online store to 15 different channels. They sell on. Wow. They’ve added multiple warehouses. There were one of the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies millionaires in a row, and they’re utilizing webgility and its capabilities to such an extent in their community, there’s now multiple sporting goods sellers that he’s actually supporting. Indirectly, he’s actually coaching them on how to use the application, and he’s actually, you know, managing multiple channels for them. So just incredible story. And you know, on average, 10 hours a week. You say 10 hours a week with webgility,

Curt Anderson  27:35

yeah, I’m probably, I’m sorry. I’m not a young guy anymore. I didn’t hear you. What did you say

Parag Mamnani  27:40

10 hours a week.

Curt Anderson  27:43

You know, though it was your birthday, you haven’t caught up to me yet, so I know you can hear it perfectly, fine. So 10 hours per week that you save by working with Webgility. Absolutely love it. Let’s dive in here. Let’s go. How about any other you know, if our folks, you know, if they’re considering e commerce. Do you work with a lot of companies that are new? Do they need to be more seasoned? eCommerce walk us through like, what level do they need to be to really reach out to you?

Parag Mamnani  28:09

Yeah, you can certainly get started. And there are some early stage companies that we work with. But typically what happens is, when you’re just getting started, you don’t have order volume, you’re just trying to experiment with your channels and see what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, and so you’re definitely spending a lot more time directly on the channel. So you’re either, you know, launching your products on Amazon, or you’re loading up a new website. So we can certainly help in some of that automation. But you know, there’s very limited data when you just get started. So typically, we work with merchants. They’re in the half a million to a million dollar of GMV per year, and we scale up from there. And you know, we have customers that do as much as 50, 60 million, but our sweet spots about the one to 25 million in GMV. That’s when, you know it’s, it’s incredibly painful to scale Yeah, you have to get your data right. You have to know what, where all your inventory is, what the price levels are, and you need to also have really good financial reporting right, so that you know, you you’ll be surprised how many people think that the Amazon deposit they get is the amount of revenue they made. Oh,

29:16

oh, yeah, yeah, right.

Parag Mamnani  29:20

So it, you know, they’re not even looking at their top line correctly and really figuring out all the expenses and fees and their misreporting. So there’s just a lot of things that you know you got to kind of get familiar with early on. And yeah, thinking about data, thinking about automation and systems early is definitely key.

Curt Anderson  29:38

Well, yes, I love it. Damon, our dear friend. Hey, hey. Glamis Lamas is here today. She’s doing business development center at Columbia University. Glamis, Happy Monday to you, my friend. Hope you’re having a marvelous summer, guys, I know we just crossed the top of the hour, if you just joined us. Boy, encourage you. Man, hit that rewind button on the replay. But we’re here with pride. The founder, CEO of Webgility Parag, I know you’re super busy saving all people all sorts of money. What takeaways you want to share?

Damon Pistulka  30:08

I just you know, we back up just a moment here to this 10 hours per week, because the saving the 10 hours per week is really important, because that those 10 hours are probably spent just moving data with spreadsheets or Google Sheets, right? That’s all you’re doing. Usually, because you’re moving data from the platform to you to QuickBooks, in and out, you’re using all these applications that’ll help you do that and but that’s what you’re doing. You’re moving data. So when you’ve got someone or yourself that is spending 10 hours a week doing that they are putting zero time into what you say. Or one of your pillars in the company is insight, which you take that 10 hours and put that into gaining more insight on your business, and it is multitudes more benefit to your business, because now I can say, Okay, how, how? What are my best selling products? Am I making money on all my products? Do I have a return problem on any products? You know, is my customer service level the way it should be, or my stuff? There’s just so many other things you can do with that 10 hours. Rather than simply going, Okay, I’ve got to download this and upload it there, and I’ve got to download this and check it, and all the verification you got to do. It’s like, that out.

Parag Mamnani  31:31

That’s right, that’s right, yeah. I mean, again, you know, most entrepreneurs, I think, start off with, you know, just focus on getting started making revenue and profitability is an afterthought. I think they need to really start from, how do I make money? How do I make profits? And you’ll find, you know, your time is best spent on your highest leverage tasks, right? Think about your business strategy. Think about your customers and release. Spend time analyzing the data instead of really mucking with it and spreadsheets,

Curt Anderson  32:02

yeah, and just unlock your growth potential. That’s my favorite line, right there. So this is phenomenal. So again, go to Webgility.com you can check out all the awesomeness, all the solutions. Connect with Parag and his incredible team just dedicated to helping entrepreneurs. And I’d even say, you know, for those early bird entrepreneurs, man, it’s never too late to get started, because once you can start getting these systems and processes in place, now, you know, now you’ve got to back out, you know. So start young, start early as you are getting into your E commerce journey, at least, reach out to Parag and ask, right? Doesn’t hurt to ask. We’re taking a look here. These are a lot of the things on the menu that Parag just discussed. And so Parag, as we start winding things down, is there anything else that you want to share before we wrap up for today? No,

Parag Mamnani  32:47

for all those, you know, it’s inspiring. Entrepreneurs just get started. It’s easy now or, you know, it’s easier now than ever to launch an eCommerce business and really capitalize on your strengths, your creativity, and launch your eCommerce business. And if you’re already out there selling online like continue to find new channels for growth and invest in automation.

Curt Anderson  33:13

Awesome. All right, project. We’ll start wrapping up last question for you of the day, my friend, as an entrepreneur, you dude, you survived the.com bubble. You came through and started your business during the financial crisis, and you have just absolutely thrived for 15 years. What has been the best for of your success? What is the best business advice that you feel that you ever received and or that you’d want to pass on to a young entrepreneur just starting

33:42

out, don’t give up. Man,

Curt Anderson  33:49

that’s awesome. Give up. That was all right, Parag, that might be one of the best answers we’ve ever had that question that was just don’t give up.

Parag Mamnani  33:56

Yeah, it’s, you know, Brazil, it’s, it’s, uh, that grit, that resilience, is what define entrepreneurs. Everybody kind of talks about all the fun stories of, oh, you know, I’ve created this ten million $20 million business, but it’s never a straight line. And you’re always going to fail. You’re always going to have issues. It’s going to be challenging. You just gotta fight through. Don’t give up.

Curt Anderson  34:18

Don’t give up. Absolutely love it. Damon, takeaways from the conversation today for you, no, I

Damon Pistulka  34:23

think these applications like agility. Here, he’s the product’s got ways to really save you time in your E commerce business, and when you save that time, then you can use it to get smarter about your business and actually make more money from that. It just you make better decisions,

Curt Anderson  34:39

and even smaller companies, just, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars. And like you’re saying, Damon, I know, like, we’ve talked about a lot, like, you know, passing that information back and forth just now, instead of passing that information now, even if you just spent that time maybe analyzing that information, yeah, at least look in the reports that you’re getting back from agility on how to make better decisions. So. Hey, we’ve got one more comment here from right. How do you say that? Damon, right? Rafe, hi from New York. Caught the last bit. I look forward to the replay. Rafe, thank you for joining us today. I agree with you 100% anybody out there to miss it, go back, hit that replay button. Parag, just, he just did it was a masterclass on combining e commerce, efficiency and AI and so again, as we close out, connect with Parag on LinkedIn. Go to webagility. If you have any questions, get a free demo, if nothing else, right? So Prague, we want to thank you, dude. We appreciate Thank

Parag Mamnani  35:31

you. I appreciate it. Thanks

Curt Anderson  35:33

so much for having a big round of applause for Parag.

Parag Mamnani  35:36

Thank you. I appreciate it

Curt Anderson  35:38

for us. So Parag, we wish you continued success. Keep us in a loop on anything that’s going on in your world, and we welcome you back. And so guys, have a great, amazing, incredible rest of your week. And Damon, we’ve got another great guest coming up on Friday. So yes,

Damon Pistulka  35:53

we do. Curt, we’ll be back again on Friday. Awesome. Congrats

Parag Mamnani  35:56

on a great show, guys.

Curt Anderson  35:58

God bless. Have a great day. We’ll see you soon. Thanks. Have

Damon Pistulka  36:01

a great day. Everyone. Bye.