Darin Lynch: Founder and CEO of Irish Titan

^{Joe Fox (00:01.148)}
Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain grow thrive, the grow wave podcast. I'm your host Joe Fox. Today I have someone very, very special and dear to my heart. Someone that I've looked up to in this industry for a very, very long time. I personally think this gentleman is an absolute powerhouse, not only in the e-comm industry, just, but just in the whole digital space.

a man who needs no introduction further than that. feel my good friend, someone I look up to as a, as a mentor, Darren Lynch, co-founder, sorry, founder and CEO of Iris Titan. Thanks for coming on down.

_{Darin Lynch (00:41.922)}
Well, Joe, thank you for that introduction. I don't know if I deserve that. I will immediately try to lower everyone's expectations after that introduction, but appreciate it. It's been a pleasure getting to know you a number of years now and watching you grow and blossom and become the leader that you are. So thank you for those comments. If I've played any role in any of that, I'm humbled.

^{Joe Fox (01:08.622)}
Absolutely, you have and I really, really appreciate it. mean, for me, like the awareness and the knowledge of Irish Titan, you know, started way back in the fast days. And, you know, we were always, you know, me being based in Australia then, only really traveling over to the US occasionally for work and fun. I always knew how respected Irish Titan was in this space and you in this space.

And I think it's a true testament, you know, what you've been able to achieve over the years and all of the good that you do, you know, not just for the e-commerce community, but for the business community at large, particularly with, you know, a lot of the events and the good events that you do and the team hosts. So Darren, for everyone watching, I would love it if you could just tell us a little bit about the Irish Titan journey, who your ICP is.

what problems you're solving, you know, kind of right now in the market and just a little bit about yourself.

_{Darin Lynch (02:12.974)}
Yeah. Well, again, thank you for all those comments, Joe. I don't take those for granted. So I tend to sometimes be a little bit self-deferential, right? But I appreciate those comments. So thank you. So Irish Titan is my baby, if you will. That's, guess, a full grown adult now because I started Irish Titan 21 years ago. So Irish Titan is now of drinking age in most states.

^{Joe Fox (02:37.861)}
Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (02:40.046)}
And although we probably would have been grandfathered in with a name like Irish Titan instead of Amish Titan to drink much earlier. But I started Irish Titan 21 years ago. even in 2004 when I started it, I had a significant amount of complex e-commerce experiences under my belt. So I used to say that I'm an e-commerce dinosaur because of all the experience I had. And when I first got into e-commerce and then I realized, well,

^{Joe Fox (02:44.591)}
Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (03:08.108)}
Dinosaurs went extinct, so that's not a great analogy. And now I refer to myself as a grizzled veteran. But not that this is a bio podcast, but to paint the picture, my very first e-commerce project was in 1997. It began in 97 when I ran the project to launch Office Max's very first e-commerce site. And we launched in 98. And I thought to myself, I think there's something to this e-commerce thing.

_{Darin Lynch (03:37.614)}
because I always knew I was gonna start my own business. I wasn't exactly sure in what. So this e-comm experience in 97 is what started to fuel that fire. I went to Wilson's Leather, which was a national leather apparel retailer at the time. Now they're wholesale behind the scenes. But I launched their e-commerce in 2001. Then Second Swing Golf that's still around and a really healthy online business.

^{Joe Fox (04:02.97)}
Wow.

_{Darin Lynch (04:07.288)}
But when I was at Second Swing Golf, we were the largest golf retailer in the country, launched their e-commerce. And at Second Swing, importantly, I had P &L responsibility for everything digital. I'd gone from having full operational responsibilities. And that kind of ran its course. I was getting tired of having just operational responsibilities. The reason I accepted the job offer at Second Swing was because they gave me P &L responsibilities as CIO for all the digital.

And so when that ran its course, I felt like I had checked all the boxes that I could. I felt like e-commerce was a burgeoning opportunity. And that's when I started Irish Titan. And I guess to close the loop a little bit in regards to one of the earlier comments you made when you very kindly said, you know, that not just a leader in the e-comm space, but in business community at large. think what really drew me to e-commerce is one,

It's digital and digital is the convergence of marketing, technology and design. Three disciplines that I've always had a passion around. I was a programmer by trade way back when. so digital, excuse me, design, technology and marketing are three disciplines that are fluid, ever evolving. They're hard for people to communicate effectively between each other because so much of it's ambiguous. There are no margins.

^{Joe Fox (05:31.298)}
Yes.

_{Darin Lynch (05:33.838)}
around the edges, you know, we're not restricted to an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper kind of thing. And so those disciplines compelled me to really lean into digital early. Then when e-commerce came along, I felt like it grounded digital in actual results, business. And you know, we're not just building websites. In the early days, we weren't just building websites.

we were building e-commerce sites that merchants expected to drive revenue and profit. And that I think is what bled into my investment in the business community because e-commerce is digital, really grounded in business. So fast forward to today with Irish Titan, we build and grow e-commerce channels. When I'm asked what we do, my elevator speech, if you will, my fast pitch version.

^{Joe Fox (06:04.664)}
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

_{Darin Lynch (06:24.726)}
is we build and grow e-commerce channels. And that means that we're building our merchants websites with a variety of platforms. We're platform agnostic. And we are working with our merchants to grow their websites through their e-commerce marketing activities. Those acquisition, conversion, retention strategies, loyalty, reviews, email marketing, paid search, SEO, analytics, social marketplace, all that kind of stuff. So we're building and growing.

Um, and I'll pause there. know I didn't answer every question, but I kind of went off on on a, on a rant. So I want to make sure to let you ground the conversation and keep guiding me.

^{Joe Fox (07:01.356)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that gives like the audience a really good, you know, kind of background. And I think speaking to that, it's really interesting, bit of a full circle moment, I feel, because, you know, I'll touch on the Shopify POS stuff and everything like that, and that unified commerce. But I really love that, you know, ability of you to be able to see that this is it. This is a big opportunity. This is where the market is heading. I want to help businesses.

but realizing that the operation side of it isn't just it. It's about the creativity. It's about the data. It's about pulling everything, you know, and converging everything together. So I like that. And I think that's a really interesting, you know, topical and full circle moment there, Darren is, you know, we look at everything that's happening, the messaging that's coming, particularly from Shopify. There was an interesting video.

that came out yesterday about the Gartner Qualtrics and everything like that around everything that Shopify is focusing on, on this unified commerce piece. I almost, I feel like almost every second piece of content that Shopify is putting out is around POS and it's around unified. What do you, like having seen all of that kind of transition and being a part of, you know, bricks and mortar that pushed into Ecom.

Where do you see that going in the future or what do you think is most important at the moment in that unified space?

_{Darin Lynch (08:30.776)}
Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (08:35.554)}
Yeah, I think that Shopify's unified commerce positioning and messaging and strategy, I think is really compelling. And I mentioned this earlier about the fact that we're platform agnostic because we're Shopify plus partners. We work with big commerce, work with shopware, work a little bit with Adobe. So we have a broad set of platforms that we work with. And I think that that gives us

some credibility from an industry prominence perspective where we are aware of different platforms strengths, their opportunities, their momentum, where they're really targeting the traction that they have, et cetera. And so I think it earns us some credibility in conversations with prospects and merchants around what the future looks like and what messages are taking hold, et cetera. And so if you drill down a layer, one of those messages and one of those compelling futures is Shopify's

Unified commerce. Um, I think that there is a swing happening and it might not swing my, uh, uh, present to, to, um, vigorous of a picture. So maybe it's a gradual swing or slide maybe from best of breed to best of sweet. think that's happening right now in the e-commerce space because, um, we've gone through a number of different errors, depending on how you slice and dice it. And I have lots of different theories around that, but we've been through an era.

^{Joe Fox (09:49.003)}
Yup. Yup.

_{Darin Lynch (10:05.356)}
where there's been an explosion in e-commerce tech partners. Rightfully so, because the technologies are now more interoperable. APIs have promoted that, just the way the data flows. More hubs are promoting that, whether it's a PIM or your platform or things like Fedonomics and channel management via Chanable that move the data around. And so it's been easier to plug in a variety of different technologies

_{Darin Lynch (10:35.352)}
to create and offer a compelling tech stack. Well, the challenge then is you result, you find yourself in sort of a tech bloat state where you have 20 different partners that you're managing for your channel, your e-comm channel. Well, I think that there's some of that swing or slide happening back towards the best of suite state where they're consolidating that tech stack, right?

^{Joe Fox (10:38.153)}
Yep, yep.

_{Darin Lynch (11:03.682)}
So if that's happening, which I think it is, one of the messages that plays well in that mindset is unified commerce, right? Because Shopify has a very compelling e-commerce platform. I mean, they've had a compelling e-com platform for a while now and that's picked up steam. They're picking up steam in the B2B space, which I know is a priority for them and there's a lot of opportunity. They have invested tremendously in their POS solution, right?

^{Joe Fox (11:12.492)}
Mmm, mmm.

^{Joe Fox (11:24.842)}
Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (11:32.718)}
the traction that they have in the POS space, it kind of caught me by surprise a year and a half ago. We've been a Shopify partner since I think 2017, and obviously I was aware of their POS, and I've used their POS at different stores. I wasn't aware until about a year and a half ago, or I should say I was caught unaware about a year and a half ago with all the enterprise level progress that they have made with their POS. And so,

^{Joe Fox (11:44.915)}
Yes.

_{Darin Lynch (12:00.692)}
It handles all the variety of in-store interactions and transaction types much, much more sophisticated than I was aware of. And so that really set the table for this unified commerce positioning where they have their commerce solution, they have their POS solution, the data that bird's eye view of the customer starts to emerge where you can personalize and segment to that customer way better than you ever could before because of AI capabilities now.

So I really think unified commerce is being powered more by their POS even than by their commerce because their commerce was ahead of their POS for long time. And now POS is catching up and I really think that they're running downhill with unified commerce.

^{Joe Fox (12:30.752)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (12:46.399)}
Yeah, absolutely. Darren, I think, you know, from a grow wave perspective, it's something that we kind of caught on to, you know, I feel relatively early is seeing that, you know, one that consolidation so offering more within our suite that is complementary to what we're already doing. We definitely don't want to get out of our lane where we're never going to, you know, offer like lifecycle marketing or anything like that. Whilst we feed into those channels like Klaviyo.

I do still think, you know, and there are features and different tools that we're looking at to do that. But I think to the POS point and discussion, that is something we've invested in so heavily. Like we've really focused on giving our bricks and mortar merchants a good level of input into that product development to make sure that it's aligned with what they're doing. And I think there's so much opportunity.

that's kind of untapped there because the amount of data and the amount of everything that you already touched on, I think we're only just scraping the surface of that when we employ tools like you mentioned that are AI related. But I think from a customer experience perspective, being able to actually truly do what was spoken about as a concept of omni-channel, know, years ago, right? Like I remember that was like the time and now it's shifted to this unified piece. But I think

that we truly are gonna see that real convergence. And I think it's amazing being able to hear feedback on that. And obviously there's things that can always improve, right? Like when you think about it from a barrier to entry perspective, there's gonna have to be systems in place to make sure that everyone's getting the most out of their POS and it's all talking. But I think it's all very minor barriers to entry that can be overcame. And I think we're only just getting started on that.

And on that note, we're super, super excited to do that event with you guys and with Klaviyo and Shopify, 4th of June, I believe. So not far away at all. So very excited for that. I think that's going to be a great opportunity for merchants to actually hear from the POS team, hear from the Klaviyo team, hear from you and all of the Titans about how crucial and important that unified piece is.

_{Darin Lynch (14:54.338)}
Mm-hmm. Right.

^{Joe Fox (15:11.882)}
and hopefully they won't get bored of my accent after I talk to them about loyalty reviews unified.

_{Darin Lynch (15:17.902)}
No, nobody ever gets tired of your accent, right? We love accents here in America, let alone Australian, Irish. There are a few accents that in particular everyone finds adorable. Grow Wave, you guys have such a compelling offering and have so much traction. if you guys go to market, I believe, as a retention platform. so if you think about it in those terms, then POS,

^{Joe Fox (15:25.906)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (15:40.701)}
Yes, yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (15:46.014)}
and commerce online, e-comm, like those are big time opportunities for you, right? Especially because if you can start to help create that bird's eye view of the customer across both bricks and clicks and create more lifetime engagement, all that value that the customers are looking for, the merchants are looking for, then you're solving a big problem for them. And so that's part of what we're looking forward to exploring at that Shopify POS event that you're talking about in June, teaming up with you guys in Klaviyo and

And we're really leaning in to building out this Shopify POS practice area because we think it has a lot of upside.

^{Joe Fox (16:23.589)}
Absolutely. I mean, Irish Titan is known as solving those complex commerce problems. And for some businesses, this is this is still going to be a complex commerce problem. But I think the practice that you guys have, the expertise that you guys have, we couldn't be more excited to go to market on it than with you guys. So really, really excited and grateful for that down. Couple of other things that I want to touch on.

You know, we're talking about timeliness. We're talking of what's happening in the market at the moment. I know that we even, you know, touched on this at our shop talk and it seems like it's just dragging out forever is this tariff situation. you know, you guys have a lot of different, you know, e-commerce and some different verticals, different platforms, you know, all different kind of, you know, sizes, shapes of business. What is the common

you know, kind of one piece of advice that you would give to your merchants, to people listening to this today. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of merchants who tune in of ours, but also a wider audience. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them around this tariff situation?

_{Darin Lynch (17:40.234)}
that's a really good question because it's sort of hard to boil it down to one piece of advice. And I say that because not as a cop out, but it depends, right? Like depending on the merchant, how long the term, what sort of lifespan are they looking at, in front of them? Where are they in their, in their lifespan? what sort of legacy business are they versus new to the market? What product are they selling? Et cetera. Because.

One of my overarching themes, and you've heard me say this at different conferences, and we've probably talked over pints about this too, but from an e-comm perspective, it's been a little bit wobbly the last few years. We exploded in pandemic because all this demand got pulled forward. The industry was already growing. Then all this demand got pulled forward in the early stages of the pandemic. And then merchants kept riding that, but then there was a little bit of churn in the tech space.

in the ecosystem as we call it. And then merchants started to pause a little bit because they're like, okay, we got our tech stack locked in. Where should we be spending our time, talent, and treasure now, et cetera? And so we've come through that and there's still a little bit of pause with where the energy should go in the space. And so before the tariffs became an issue, and they are, but before they became an issue, one of the things that I was encouraging in the e-commerce

space, whether it's the ecosystem, you know, how we refer to those of us on the provider side, whether it's SIs or the tech partners or the merchant is remember we are in a great industry. We are not fighting over printing presses or horses and buggies. We are building commerce channels, particularly if you think about it as commerce, not just e-commerce. We're building commerce channels. And as long as consumers exist, commerce is going to exist.

^{Joe Fox (19:22.322)}
Yep.

^{Joe Fox (19:29.33)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Darin Lynch (19:35.672)}
So there should be confidence in a bright future, right? If you step out and zoom out, then the trend line will be like this. Now there will be some ups and downs and we're either in a little bit of a down or a bit of a pause right now, partially for reasons I mentioned earlier, now sort of amplified because of tariffs. I think the only thing businesses hate more than tariffs is uncertainty. And right now they have both, right? We have tariffs, no we don't. We have tariffs, no we don't.

^{Joe Fox (19:59.195)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

_{Darin Lynch (20:04.866)}
Those are massively impacted by different industries. I'm speaking in a couple of weeks in Detroit at an e-commerce event. We were doing a little bit of a panel prep earlier today with my fellow panelists. Obviously some of them are in the automotive industry because it's in Detroit and they're massively impacted, know, apparel massively impacted. There are other verticals that are either intentionally sourced in the U S or are

^{Joe Fox (20:19.611)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (20:32.278)}
are verticals that more naturally are sourced in the US and not as impacted. So it's hard to come up with a single piece of advice other than maybe remember that we are in an industry with a bright future. We just have to figure out how to ride the wave a little bit.

^{Joe Fox (20:36.593)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (20:47.099)}
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. think that we the level of confidence that a merchant needs to have through this in order to weather this is supremely high. Like when they started the business in the first place, I think because you know, as entrepreneurs, you know, I've been there before obviously now a little bit of a fraction of it. But I think, you know, that level of of

The level of confidence that you have to keep pushing on just needs to be turned up. I think that's a brilliant piece of advice. I really, really, really respect that insight and sorry to cut it down to one thing, but I think you summed that up incredibly well, Dan.

_{Darin Lynch (21:30.402)}
Well, you did the right thing asking a specific question. I just sort of ignored it and, you know, ranted more randomly. It's just, it's so hard to come up with one thing, right? If we were talking, so we have prospects and clients in the automotive space. If they were to ask a question, you know, what's one thing you would really want me to walk away from, then I could tailor it for them. If it were beauty or apparel, then it can tailor it. But also it really does depend on,

how long have you been in business? Because the longer you've been in business, the easier it is to be in business, right? Because you have history, you have awareness, you have maybe a rainy day fund, those sorts of things. And so that can factor into how you can weather the storm. If you're new to the business, new to the industry, regardless of what it is, sometimes you don't have that scale yet. And so you might not be able to withstand some of those.

^{Joe Fox (22:01.734)}
Mm.

Yes. Yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (22:23.822)}
obstacles and overcome some of those hurdles. So that's why it's hard to narrow it down to a single answer, but hopefully I painted a picture about the bigger opportunity.

^{Joe Fox (22:32.923)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, for any merchants who are watching this, who are not currently, you know, engaged in working with experts and working with an agency such as Irish Titan, I also think now is really the time to strategically do that. And I don't just say that, you know, to promote our partners. I say that because I think exactly for the reasons you just said, Darren, you know, what is working for certain verticals.

You've seen what's worked in the past. You understand the data and you understand what's happening now. And I think, you know, if, if, if merchants are on the fence about jumping in bed with an agency at the moment, they need to jump in bed and get it done because you have a whole team of experts supporting what you're doing for a fraction of the cost of getting involved with having staff on board. And so that's my two cents to that piece, because I think

expert advice is one of those things that's really going to help us well. Cool. I know you and I can can chat forever, Dan, but I've got a couple of last few questions that I want to kind of get on to. so firstly, you travel a lot. You're literal. I feel like you travel even more than we all do in ecom and talking about bright futures. I think in ecommerce, we would have to be some of the most frequent flyers just in terms of

all the events, all the shows, everything. So in saying that, what is one thing that you can't live without when you're traveling and no matter where you are, you've got it close by. it a book? Is it something music related? What's your go-to sort of thing that you carry at all times?

_{Darin Lynch (24:19.172)}
well, I am an absolute music nut. and, sort of OCD about it. I'm a weird mix of that crazy entrepreneur who has certain outlets where I'm kind of OCD and detailed. and so I'm a hardcore iTunes library guy. like things that I really like and want to, keep my finger on the pulse of I buy and download, and then I rank the song. So I have all these smart playlists that.

^{Joe Fox (24:46.809)}
No way, that's awesome.

_{Darin Lynch (24:48.364)}
Yeah, yeah, so my music library on my phone would definitely be part of that. And I'm always working through like ranking songs and like I'm getting some old school Fleetwood Mac now and I downloaded a bunch of that and I'm ranking that. The other thing when I travel that I've become really, really attached to is, it's simple, but it's a multi cable charger that has

^{Joe Fox (25:00.787)}
yeah.

^{Darin Lynch (25:16.928)}
a watch, a USB-C, a regular USB and a micro USB cord. And the plugin end of it has, well, actually.

_{Darin Lynch (25:29.63)}
so it has the, these ends that charge your device, but then the end of it has the USB C and the USB. What's that? A. and so it can plug in to any sort of outlet too. so instead of all these different cords that I used to carry around, now I have just this one. so that's really handy when I travel. other, the other thing we need to keep in our pocket when we travel is patience. Cause there's so many things that are outside of our control and it's.

^{Joe Fox (25:38.181)}
Nice, nice, yup, yup, the original one, yup.

_{Darin Lynch (25:58.795)}
Halftime off the rails.

^{Joe Fox (26:00.803)}
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I'm have to pick your brain for where to pick up one of those cables because that is the bane of my existence. I feel like I start a trip where it might be multiple things and I've got all my cables nice and neat and all wrapped up in a little box. And by the end of it, I'm like, where is everything? So I need something like that. That's a great tip. Okay, cool. And next thing.

_{Darin Lynch (26:21.325)}
Right.

^{Joe Fox (26:28.928)}
Is there anything, bear in mind we've got obviously a lot of people in our ecosystem, a whole bunch of merchants who'll be watching this. Is there anything, know, particularly you want to offer to those merchants or how, and how can people, you know, get in contact with you and Irish Titan?

_{Darin Lynch (26:46.808)}
I'll answer the last question first because we're easy to find. Irish Titan is easy to remember and easy to spell. IrishTitan.com for the website. It's easy to get to all of us via our website and reach out to us via our emails or LinkedIn profiles. So we are a loud and bold kind of company, so we don't hide in the shadows. So find us easily. As far as things to offer,

^{Joe Fox (26:49.123)}
Yep.

^{Joe Fox (27:10.85)}
Absolutely, absolutely.

_{Darin Lynch (27:16.226)}
There are two things I'm gonna mention. One is a new program that we're rolling out that right now is, it's not quite, it's past primordial, but maybe it's walking around on the beach and not a fully formed mammal yet. Because we're calling it EcomSherpa. And it's a new program that we're rolling out where we'll engage with merchants on a real nominal monthly subscription fee.

^{Joe Fox (27:31.492)}
You

_{Darin Lynch (27:42.766)}
if you would call it that, sort of a retainer if you might be a more accurate way to describe it, where we work with them if they have modest budgets or have some level of internal capabilities. We work with them to provide a little bit of support, but more importantly, advice and input on partners that they should be talking to in the ecosystem. Because one of the things we hear from merchants, prospects, friends a lot is,

^{Joe Fox (28:03.467)}
us.

_{Darin Lynch (28:10.04)}
they can handle a lot of the things in-house. Sometimes they need a little bit of help. But what sometimes is really challenging for them is they're looking to expand into fill in the blank, reviews, or email marketing, or some shipping optimization. Who are the partners that they should be talking to? And so it's not just brokering that introduction, it's actually kind of sherpa-ing them, shepherding them through that.

^{Joe Fox (28:36.076)}
Love that.

_{Darin Lynch (28:37.634)}
conversation and insight and then brokering it if it makes sense. So that eComSherpa program is something that we're working on. So I think that'd be good for people to be aware of and help us frame it actually. The more interactions we have with clients on that, the more we can shape it. We do have an audit that we're offering that is free to all prospects and that ranges from including accessibility, which we think is an underserved

^{Joe Fox (28:41.655)}
Yep, yep.

_{Darin Lynch (29:05.722)}
need in the e-comm space. So accessibility, SEO, UX, and your e-comm tech stack. We have an audit that we can put together for all our prospects for free that sets the table on where they stand in our eyes on those situations which then provide some opportunity for where they can improve.

^{Joe Fox (29:07.297)}
Absolutely. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (29:26.499)}
That's incredibly generous of you. Incredibly generous. And just to touch on the Sherpa thing, that is a brilliant idea. That is absolutely fair. I mean, does not surprise me at the slightest coming from you that it's a brilliant idea, but I love that. think that's that kind of, you know, circles back to what we were talking on earlier. Like, brands need this guidance at the moment. So that's amazing. I really think that's very, very intuitive.

_{Darin Lynch (29:53.442)}
Well, I'm pleased to hear you say that because we haven't had too many external conversations yet. You you touched earlier on some of the entrepreneurial vibes associated with owning a business. And one of the things that I speak about frequently when I'm asked to speak is entrepreneurship and business ownership. And one of the ways I describe it is you have to be excited to go to bed terrified every night and wake up petrified every morning. And if that excites you, then you might be wired for it.

^{Joe Fox (30:16.79)}
Yeah

Yeah, yeah.

_{Darin Lynch (30:22.444)}
but part of that is like hearing consistent or repeated asks for things that you don't do. and, there's a prospect in particular, we've been kind of talking to for a few years, really like these guys. They have some internal capabilities and they're the ones that really prompted this idea after one of my last conversations with them at a recent conference. I said, you know what? There's an appetite on behalf of some of these merchants.

^{Joe Fox (30:29.941)}
Mmm. Mmm.

_{Darin Lynch (30:50.616)}
for someone to just guide them through the ecosystem and help close that gap. And if we do that and they grow, they'll become a client in the future when they have graduated into needing more complex work of more size and substance. And so that's what prompted me to come up with that EcomSherpa program. And I'm cautiously optimistic about both the value to merchants and how I think it'll help round out our business and reinforce what we're trying to do in building and growing.

^{Joe Fox (31:06.527)}
Absolutely.

_{Darin Lynch (31:20.17)}
e-commerce channels. We're not trying to bill for our work. We're trying to build and grow e-commerce channels and then revenue and profits a byproduct of that.

^{Joe Fox (31:28.903)}
Absolutely, absolutely. Now that's fantastic. And as I said, I know that we can talk for days on here. I really enjoy our conversations, as always, Darren. So thank you so much for coming on board, mate. Thank you. As I said earlier, for all your guidance. Thank you for being a real positive influence in this business sphere and in this ecosystem. Thank you so much for your time. I'll make sure that

that everyone can access the links in the show notes and everything like that. And yeah, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on board and thank you for the partnership. And one last thing is please get along to that event. We'll make sure that the landing page is included as well. Incredibly insightful event. You're going to hear from actual experts on everything that's happening in this unified commerce space. lot of the Irish Titan team will be there.

Klaviyo there, Shopify there. I'll be there and really looking forward to seeing you there. And thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Retain Growth Thrive. Thank you for coming on, Darren. I appreciate your time.

_{Darin Lynch (32:39.512)}
Thanks Joe, appreciate it. Congrats on all the success. Slash everyone.

^{Joe Fox (32:41.023)}
Cheers. Thank you.