Bill Sedgwick on Entrepreneurship, the American West, and Ultra Commerce

[00:00:00] Welcome to Konabos, a conversation experience platform hosted and curated by Konabos Consulting. Konabos is a global technology leader and while this podcast will be connected by technology, the glue is human stories and narrative. Technology can bring us together. It can make our lives better and more efficient in myriad ways. But it cannot replace human discourse and the magic that can

[00:00:23] happen by the interchange of ideas. Hope you enjoy our podcast. Welcome to the Koniverse. This is Akshay Sura. And this is Matt McQueenie. Today we have with us our friend Bill. Hey Bill, welcome to the show. Morning, gentlemen. Thanks for having me on the show. Appreciate it. Thanks, Bill. So we always like to go

[00:00:48] back to the beginning with our esteemed guests. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up, Bill? I was born in Frankfurt, Germany, actually, a military family. I grew up all over the place. Spent a lot of time in Europe. Lived in Stuttgart, Germany. Lived in Key West, Florida. These are kind of the cool places that I lived. Lived in Hawaii quite a while. Lived in Colorado. Lived in Florida.

[00:01:17] Now I live in Oregon. So yeah. Nice. So you said military family. So either your mom or dad were in the military. What did your parents do when you were growing up, Bill? Yeah, so my mom was a teacher for 50 years. My dad and my stepdad were both officers in the army. So, you know, I grew up. My dad was, both my dad and my stepdad were deployed to Vietnam when I was

[00:01:44] very young. And I just kind of lived that, you know, kind of army lifestyle traveling all over the place and, you know, making friends in different places and keeping someone and having to let some go. And so it's kind of like my formative years as a, as they call us military brats, right? You know, the, the, the Vietnam illusion there, that must've been something that was, I don't want to

[00:02:08] say ever present, but it had to be a presence in growing up and hearing about that. And then even learning about it on your own. Oh, for sure. Right. And, you know, I mean, it's, I think veterans are famous for not really talking about their experiences and more time. And neither one of my dads really did. But, you know, later, later in the years, there were some stories that came out

[00:02:33] and, you know, obviously very interesting and sometimes very sad, but, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's affected them, you know, it always affects veterans when they've been in combat. And, you know, part of that is, you know, part of growing up and, you know, going through that is things are different today, right? Around PTSD and that sort of thing. And so, so, yeah, I mean, it was, I had a great childhood. I can't complain at all, but there was definitely some residual effects

[00:03:01] from, from their experiences in the military for sure. Do you have any siblings though? I do. Yeah. I have a brother and I have some step siblings. So we grew up in a pretty active household for sure. My brother actually runs an agency in Phoenix and my step siblings are kind of spread out all over the place. Some of them are retired already and, you know, doing what they want with the rest of their lives. And that's a good thing. So we, you know, you hear a lot about

[00:03:30] growing up as a military family, as a military brat, as you said, but not all experiences are the same, right? What did you, what did you take from moving around to these various locales? And, you know, I'm sure you take some things even to this day from that experience. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the best things about that lifestyle is knowing that you

[00:03:56] can make friends anywhere. Even, even when you're young, you know, you're sort of uprooted and taken into a new place every, you know, two, three, four years to kind of depending on the assignment. And so, you know, when you have to do that at a young age, you kind of get those skills to be able to just introduce yourself to people. And, you know, fortunately in that world, everybody's kind of in the same situation, right? So you're not running into people that aren't used to that. Although I would

[00:04:21] say when I moved to Colorado, my junior year in high school, I was moving into a suburb of Denver where the kids had all been together for their entire lives. And it was really hard to kind of break into that click kind of, you know, mentality, I guess. And then the other one is really that the world is such a diverse place. You know, being able to travel throughout most of my life and seeing different cultures and understanding how different people kind of interact with, you know, their

[00:04:50] partners and their friends and their culture has been an amazing way to kind of grow up and live my life. And I have an appreciation, but I think, unfortunately, people that don't travel really don't get right. And so I always encourage people to get out there and, you know, see new cultures and meet new people and just have fun with it, right? I mean, just enjoy the adventure. That's interesting that you mentioned that a lot of people would approach and be saying,

[00:05:19] it was harder. I had to do every single thing, but every time I had to readjust every time we moved and things like that, and it's common, right? That's, that is a pain point, but in the way you said it, it's more of a positive spin on it. Yeah, it is hard, but it also gave me this skill set, which I'm sure helped you out in the future of your life by driving sales, owning your own company, running companies and being able to understand it. Another curious thing that you said is,

[00:05:48] you know, I always feel traveling and eating different food from different regions makes you a better person. So we tried to do that with the girls. When you look back at it, like while you were going through, did you have the same outlook or while you were going through, you would be like any other teenager saying this sucks? I would say, you know, I never really was too, too much feeling

[00:06:14] that it sucks until I moved to Colorado. Um, that cultural change from going from interacting mostly with military kids to interacting with kids that hadn't really been out of their little bubble in suburban Denver was really hard because it, you know, it was hard to break into, um, you know, kid groups that had been together for so long. Um, I did, I played tennis in high school, so I wound up making some friends on the tennis team and, um, you know, that was great. But I mean, even today,

[00:06:42] my closest friends are my buddies from growing up in sixth through kind of 10th grade in Germany. And then going back to Germany, I went back there. My parents got assigned to the same base, um, after I graduated from high school. So I got to go back during the summers when I was in college and hang out with my friends and go year railing with them. And so these are the bonds that kind of endure. Um, even right now, like, um, I have a text group with like seven of my buddies from my, my patch high school, which is a patch American high school, which is where I went to and

[00:07:11] Germany. And, um, we're on it every day. I mean, we talk pretty much every day and we get together, we try to get together once a year and do something interesting. And so, um, so yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of the, the English, I guess the long answer to a relatively short question, actually. No, that's okay. The just out of curiosity, the Colorado thing living in the suburbs, what precipitated that? Cause it sounds like it was still military life after high school.

[00:07:39] How come that difference in living arrangement? When we moved to Colorado, um, my stepdad was assigned to the finance center at Lowry air force base. And, um, for some reason, my parents didn't want to live on base there. And so they were looking around at the burbs of Denver and they felt like that would be a better environment for us. I'm not actually sure that it was, uh, to be honest, like in the end, I mean, I, I did love living in Denver and Denver is a great place, um, to live.

[00:08:08] And I, I spent most of my adult life there actually. Um, but the burbs were hard to break into as a kid for sure. And it ironically, I wound up moving my kids there when they were very young into the very similar area of Denver, um, back in kind of early 2000, when I returned to Colorado from Arizona. So it's like, uh, history repeated itself to a certain degree, but they were, they were young. And so they still have friends from those, from those days as well.

[00:08:33] And so I would like to know which part of the Denver suburb I was on the west side in Littleton, near the, near the foothills, but it's, it's a beautiful town, but, um, growing up, did you know what you wanted to be or like, area wise bill? It's, it's funny that you asked that question, actually, because I, a lot of my friends went into some kind of military service. Um, when I,

[00:08:59] when I turned 18, I felt like I had already been in the military for 18 years, right? So my stepdad was pretty strict. Um, and so I was not interested in, in going into the military though. I have a ton of respect obviously for all of our services, but, um, I kind of, I've always wanted to be a businessman. Honestly, that was like weirdly, weirdly my goal, right? I didn't want to be a firefighter or a policeman or any of the kind of, uh, cliche things that little kids want to be. I always kind of wanted to be a businessman and that's what I turned out to be. So it's all good.

[00:09:29] Where did, uh, where did that come from? Do you think Bill and, and relatedly what, what were kind of the interests, you know, personal, private, even like growing up, what were the interests that you gravitated to? Cause I imagine that's probably really important in creating continuity between moving all these places. Yeah, I don't know really. I mean, I, I felt like the personal interaction, um, you know, doing deals, doing interesting things related

[00:09:58] to business, you know, not having been in that world. Um, I gravitated towards advertising and marketing and which is where I spent most of my career. Um, and so, um, so yeah, I mean, I think, I think the personal interaction part of it and the creativity part of it kind of what drew me in. Is that what you pursued in college Bill, um, more towards the business oriented studies?

[00:10:23] Yeah. My degree is in economics. Um, and I studied entrepreneurship in college and, um, you know, had kind of a, I didn't get a minor in business, but I took a lot of business classes and entrepreneurship classes. And that was definitely my, my focus. And was that in, uh, I could, I have Colorado state Colorado. Okay. The Rams, right? Is that what there? Yep. In fact, I'm going to the CSU OSU game here in Corvallis on the, I think it's on the

[00:10:49] fifth or the sixth week, week from Saturday. So, and some of my buddies from my fraternity that live in Portland are coming down and other buddies flying in. So that should be fun. That's awesome. And what was it like going there at the time? I mean, the, I know it's not like the top of the tier sec kind of school, but the sports are, you know, legit division one real. Was that something that sucked you in a bit when you were there to the sports? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I played intramural sports and, um, my fraternity was,

[00:11:17] you know, a lot of sporty guys. So, um, we were always at the games that we could go to and, um, the football team was, was reasonably good. One of the years that I, uh, went there, we went to CU and won, which was a big deal. And we actually took a double deck or bus ride down there with a bunch of people and that a big, made a big day of it. So we were, we were lucky to win that day, but, um, it's definitely a memorable experience. Is, is the one in Fort Collins bill or yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:46] I've never been to Fort Collins, but I heard it's gorgeous. They're looking at the mountains on one side and the flatlands on the other. Um, Bill, do you remember your first ever professional interview for a professional job? Uh, my first interview would have been for a job that I didn't get. Yes. And it was interesting in the sense that I was, um, I just graduated from college. I was in

[00:12:14] Hawaii and I was interviewing for a job, um, with a Hawaiian apparel company. Um, I won't say who they were because it didn't turn out to be a positive experience, but, um, I had an interview. I thought it went great. Um, I, I didn't get a call back. Uh, I was surprised. So I actually called the, the, uh, HR lady at the company and, and talked to her and asked her sort of, you know, what happened? I thought it was a great interview. And she said, well, we're just going to move forward

[00:12:44] with somebody else. And I said, well, I suspect that maybe it's because Malahini Hallie, which is essentially a newcomer white person, right. In Hawaii. And, uh, she basically said, didn't help. Right. So it was one of those things where I think, you know, not a lot of white people in the U S get to feel, um, discrimination, but that felt like discrimination to me. And it was, um, it gave me a perspective, right. On, on people, how people feel sometimes that, um, you know, aren't white and are,

[00:13:13] are involved in business. And so, um, it was, it was, I think a good learning experience for me. And was that, uh, you brought up that you lived in Hawaii. Was that when you were young or was that, you know, around this time, did you make it out to Hawaii as an adult to live there? When was that? I did. Yeah. So I was a little kid there. I think I was there in, uh, 68, I was like two. Um, and then

[00:13:38] when I graduated from college, my, my dad, my biological father had retired there in the military. And, um, he came out to my college graduation, invited me, uh, to Hawaii to see if I wanted to come try to find a job there. And the, the, at that time, the job market in Denver was terrible because there was a kind of a oil bust happening, um, in the late eighties in Denver. And so jumped on a plane, uh, Mac flight with my dad and flew into Hawaii actually in the, in the bottom of one of those

[00:14:07] refueling planes, which was really cool. Um, when I was, I guess I was 18, no, sorry, I was 21 at the time. I just graduated. So, um, so yeah, and I was there for almost six years for six years of my professional career. We're in Hawaii. So you got to be in a bunch of different places by the time you were in your early twenties. Like, what was the, like the coolest place you've been where you were really taken back by an experience,

[00:14:35] by the culture? Uh, so many, but, um, I, I did an immersive trip into Australia when I was in my early twenties. I went down there for six months. Um, and I spent a lot of time over in Perth. Um, a buddy of mine had, I was pretty into beach volleyball. And, uh, one of my buddies was a pro beach volleyball tour player in Australia. He invited me over there to help him run a sportswear company

[00:15:01] that he had founded with some other folks, um, uh, called Valley Road Sports. And, uh, so I went over there to help them. Um, and I didn't have the proper paperwork at the time. And so I was kind of helping, uh, do what I could for their business. Um, but I wound up not being able to do that because I didn't have the proper visa, unfortunately. And, um, you know, some competitive people found out about it. I wound up, uh, you know, getting threatened. So I didn't, uh, I didn't, uh, continue to do that.

[00:15:31] I did wind up getting a job with the Aussie sports program though, uh, which was amazing because I got to travel all over Western Australia, teaching kids how to play volleyball. Um, and it was a, it was a state run program. And so there was no problems around the visa situation. And, uh, it all, it turned out to be just an amazing experience because we were traveling with a troop of different kids, different, um, young people my age that were all, um, experts in different sports.

[00:15:57] And so we had tennis, we had volleyball, we had, uh, gymnastics, we had Australian football. We had two different types of rugby. Um, and so we all went together with the, with the coordinator and go into these schools and, um, you know, the kids would all come out and we'd all set up like in a big field. And each kid would kind of rotate with about a 20 minute rotation and then we get to go do a bunch of different sports and get exposure to by these different sports. So, um, yeah, one of the best jobs I've ever had, to be honest,

[00:16:27] like it was awesome. Nice. Well, when I look at, uh, when I look at LinkedIn, your first LinkedIn job, at least that seems to be listed is with travel file.com. And I like the line where you say, if Al Gore created the internet, I was one of its first salespeople. What do you take from that early, those early internet times? And then, you know, merging sales into just this, this thing that no one quite knows what it is. We think it's a phone book. We

[00:16:57] think like, well, how did you find those times? Uh, it was incredible. You know, I mean, I was definitely in the very early cutting edge days, um, when most companies didn't even have websites. Um, I had gotten connected with a couple of gentlemen, um, the Arcel brothers that created this company called travel file out of white fish, Montana, when I was in Hawaii and, um, they, they, we did a deal

[00:17:23] where I could go. And I was, I was going around to convention and visitors bureaus and hotel companies, um, and tour operators and trying to sell them, uh, information distribution on the internet, which was not really the worldwide web yet. Um, but they had done deals with Sabre and Apollo and world span where you could click into, um, with a change change. Or G was the official recreation guy at the time, um, and turned it into travel file, but you could log into their database and

[00:17:50] you could book tours and you could do things that you couldn't do on, on the GDSs. Um, and so uh, that was that job. And then the, about a year after that, I moved to Colorado. Um, and they want to give me kind of like the Western region to try to sell what was in travel file. Um, they had launched their website and, uh, so I was, I was traveling around trying to sell this, um, information

[00:18:13] distribution product to visitors bureaus, convention, visitors bureaus, um, hotel chains, that sort of thing. And, uh, it was an adventure. I mean, I literally have to, a lot of times unplug a fax machine, plug in the fax machine, uh, wire into my modem on my laptop and, and show them how the database worked. It was pretty crazy. That's, that's crazy that those were the days we started. I remember like

[00:18:42] when I watched Seinfeld and stuff and you hear the sound, I remember those AOL CDs, loading them up and stuff. Um, to build, you'd mentioned that you mentioned sales, you mentioned advertising, you mentioned marketing, and then depending on the phase of your life, you kind of went in between all three, like what kept you going back to those three and which of those three are your favorite?

[00:19:12] That's a great question. Um, probably sales, uh, uh, in this, in this part of my career where I'm selling ideas and I'm, I'm selling, um, you know, kind of big picture things is really my favorite thing to do. Um, I love advertising, um, you know, as, as a means to an end, to help a company kind of get into a growth stage and maintain a growth stage. Um, but, um, but really kind of selling big ideas and, and starting things. And

[00:19:42] that's really kind of where I've, I've migrated my interest over the years is, is in to starting new things, creating new projects. And then the sales part of that is really finding people that are willing to buy an idea, right. And to take it to the next level, whether that be investors or whether that be, um, just getting the constituencies that you need within a company to bring something forward. So, um, that's probably my favorite thing to do these days.

[00:20:08] So you go then to map quest, right. At a really, probably a very cool time to be there. That was like, and no one realizes now, right. Pre, pre Google maps and Apple maps. And that, that was everything. I remember printing the directions out and then figuring out how to get where you're going, but what I'm glad you guys are old enough to remember. Right. It's sort of like a lot of, a lot of the, uh, you know, quote unquote kids these days in the business, you know, they've never,

[00:20:36] they've never had to do that. Or I remember my floor of my car was just completely littered with, you know, eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper with printed maps on them. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I had interviewed, um, with company called geo systems, um, and met Perry Evans, who was, uh, the original CEO and founder of map quest, um, for, for a job selling kind of enterprise mapping, uh, to big companies. And I didn't get that job. Um, they went to somebody else, but, um,

[00:21:04] um, Barry remembered me. And when, when he, that was kind of pre map quest. And then when they launched map quest and he moved the company to Denver, um, he gave me a call or reached out via email. I can't remember and said, Hey, we got this company called map quest. Um, we think you're the only guy that I know that has any experience in kind of internet advertising. Would you like to kind of help us figure that out, you know, see what we could do. Banners had just started, um,

[00:21:32] hot wired had just put banners on their website relatively recently. Um, and so, yeah, I came in and helped them create that whole program of, um, you know, putting advertising product on map quest.com. And I got involved in IAB really early. Um, the fact that I, I was, uh, during the agency and marketer relations committee with Greg Stewart, who later became, um, the CEO of the IAB and ran it for many

[00:21:56] years. Um, and so those are really good times, um, creating, creating those products, going out to Madison Avenue, trying to explain what the internet and the worldwide web was to big advertising agencies and why they should start thinking about it as a place to put some media budget. Um, yeah, those were amazing times. That must be, I mean, I don't know what MapQuest says right now, but back then, like, like Matt said,

[00:22:22] I remember those sheets of paper and if there were turns too quick for you to react, then you missed the turn, but they were the company back then who, whoever was in the know, right. But how challenging was it to your last point? One, it seems like we are in the same circle, right? We're talking about composable commerce and all of that. Again, you have to educate. There's an education component to it. And then there's a belief component to it that they have to believe that this is what it is. And

[00:22:52] then they have to invest, which is spend money. How challenging was it? This, I mean, at least composable is palatable. It's tiny enough to grasp it. But back then internet was something completely different. It was between print and online kind of difference, right? How difficult was it when you were going to this meetings and did you focus on education? What did you, what was your primary focus in order to get the advertising sale?

[00:23:22] So, well, there was two kinds of parts of that one. The IB was very much focused on education. It was very much focused on educating the, the advertising community about what the value proposition of the World Wide Web was, what the future of it was, and trying to appeal to the innovators within that community to begin to invest in it. And so that was very much what that was about. On the sales side,

[00:23:51] we were working with DoubleClick, which was a rep agency back then, and a company called SoftBank Interactive Marketing, which was a rep agency back then. And they were really kind of doing the sales side of it. But then I would go into meetings like with agencies with them to try to get agencies to allocate money towards their network, which included MapQuest at that time,

[00:24:16] you know, for the banner advertising, right? For that was kind of the display advertising of the day. And then my other job within MapQuest was to go out to try to get companies to do things that were more interactive with our mapping product, right? So we created this thing called Map Brand Buttons, which allowed brands to pop their logos up into certain areas of the map where people were searching. So instead of saying, take a ride at Elm Street, it would say, take a ride at McDonald's, you know,

[00:24:45] on Elm Street, right? And there would be like a little golden arches there as an example, right? I'm not even sure that McDonald's was a customer. So don't quote me on that one. But that was the product, right? That was the idea of the product. And so that was a little bit different than the kind of display advertising. But of course, you know, I had to manage the the networks, but doing that cool stuff with the mapping and doing the more integrated deals was definitely more fun for me. And kind of a follow on to what Akshay was talking about, Bill,

[00:25:15] being in the early times of the internet, trying to educate while trying to sell. Do you feel any parallels to today with composable headless commerce and even with generative AI itself? Because it's waiting for its real application. There was a big economist article this week about that. But do you feel you ever get those like any deja vu kind of moments like that?

[00:25:42] Bill Hickman Absolutely. I mean, so Ultra is more in the B2B space, space, as you guys know. And so that part of the ecommerce industry is farther behind than retail is, right? And so there's definitely an educational component as to bringing some of those legacy systems over working with composable elements within commerce to put these transformations together is

[00:26:08] a huge part of it, right? And it's education, but it's also there's a level of convincing people that it's time to let go, right, of these legacy systems and move over to more modern systems, faster systems, more efficient systems. But it's a lift, as you guys know, right? I mean, it's definitely a lift. So, but yeah, 100%. Ayaan Ayaan Ayaan You're bringing back memories. I remember DoubleClick and all the ads having a little

[00:26:36] double click under it. And how that became, I remember DoubleClick when DoubleClick was nothing to when they were like huge in the mid 2000s, right? So Bill, from there, you've been working for different companies getting all of this wealth of knowledge in advertising, marketing and sales. What prompted you to start your own business? And why that moment?

[00:27:06] Ayaan Ayaan Ayaan It was almost an accident. So I had been working for a company called HomeFair, which got acquired by HomeStore. And so I was kind of in the media side of that business. I created the national advertising programs for HomeFair. We got bought out, my role changed. So I wound up moving back to Denver to work for a company called Indigio. And so I was running kind of media services

[00:27:33] for Indigio and they were more a web development company, right? And so when the CEO of that company decided that they wanted to focus more on the development and less on the media, it was an opportunity for myself and John Carpenter to spin our company out of that business. And so that was really kind of, I sort of accidentally founded my own company, even though in my life,

[00:27:59] I'd always wanted to have my own company and be an entrepreneur. So, but yeah, it was almost like, I didn't get kicked out, but it was not like aligned strategically with where the company wanted to go. And so we had a couple of accounts that we wound up taking with us. And those were kind of the original founding accounts of Thunderbolt Group. And what was that transition like for you? I mean, saying it's accidental to a degree, right?

[00:28:25] But you still have to then upskill really quick on like leadership capacity and running a company and all that. Were there pitfalls there? What kind of things did you learn about running a company? Yeah, I mean, going from always having that sort of company support with all the operational things

[00:28:50] that you need to creating a company and then being able to grow that company was tough, right? I mean, you know, I certainly had a background in entrepreneurship. I had started other companies before, so it wasn't like completely brand new to me when I did this. None of them had ever really scaled to be something big, but I kind of knew the basics of what you needed to do to found a company and get things up and running. John Carpenter, my business partner, is very operationally minded,

[00:29:18] which is great because we were sort of a yin and yang in business. And so he brought a lot of those skills to the table as well in terms of, you know, making sure that we had the back end of our business up and running. If I went out and closed the deal, he could get the implementation done and leverage resources to do that. We worked with a lot of contractors back in those days, and scale. And

[00:29:43] yeah, so that was kind of just everything seemed to flow, you know, you kind of get into, you need to learn something, you just jump in and learn it and then get after it, right? And sometimes you do great and sometimes you don't do great. And if you don't do great, you iterate. So yeah, just made a rhyme. Nice. I'm sure I'm sure you do great. That's a good one. We should use that. I'm sure

[00:30:09] you learned a gazillion things from owning your own business. But I'll ask a different question, because Matt's going to continue on this, but probably I'll jump on it too. But what are some of your hobbies right now, Bill? How do you spend your time that you're not working? If you spend your time not working doing other things? No, I do. So my favorite things to do, I live in

[00:30:34] kind of the central Valley in Oregon and surrounded by rivers in my little town. And so I love getting, I have a paddleboard. So we'll do full day paddleboard floats. We get out on the river. I love to fish. So I'll be fishing on my paddleboard. And then also, I don't know if you guys are familiar with precious, semi-precious stones like agates and jasper. But I have one right here actually,

[00:31:00] this is an agate. And so in the river, we'll find these, you know, anywhere from very small to pretty big. And you just kind of jump off your board and you're walking through the water and finding these stones. And it's like a little treasure hunt. So it's pretty fun. And then these are stones that you can actually work with, um, on lap dairy machines and put them into tumblers and make them beautiful. And so that's, um, those are probably my favorite hobbies is fishing paddleboarding

[00:31:29] and agate hunting, rock hunting, they call it nice. So it's actually nicely together here in Oregon for sure. I also love offshore fishing. Um, so I'll go, I'm going to be going on a trip offshore. Um, one of my buddies is turning 60 this year. So we're, we're going to do a trip down in, um, the East Cape of, uh, Mexico in November. So really looking forward to that, but I've, I've fished offshore all my life.

[00:31:55] Um, my dad was into it fish with my brothers. I have lots of buddies that are into it. So yeah, this is what they, this is what they would call a bit of a softball question on that point, but how important is it and experience in time allows you to do this, but how important is it to have those kinds of things that cut you off from this, this never ending, always on, always connected,

[00:32:22] always reachable, uh, uh, world that we live in. I'm sure. Cause I'm sure you put the phone. It's not near you when you're doing this stuff. How important is that to have that in your life? Uh, it's, it's huge, right? I mean, I think you have to have balance, uh, and everything. Um, and so, you know, being able to stick the phone in the dry bag, right where you can't really get

[00:32:47] easy access to it. Um, you know, I mean, it's, it's there on the river, if there's an emergency or whatever, you kind of have to have that, but, um, it's definitely, there's, there's huge value in turning off and just connecting right to mother earth, right. And the water flowing through your legs, on a warm summer day, you know, is, is an amazing feeling that you just can't get anywhere else. And it's, you know, if you take time to appreciate that, you know, the, the immediate, the first tug

[00:33:15] that you get on a fishing line, right. Or those little moments that you get that, um, connect you back to, you know, kind of who we were right as, as the human race before all this technology kind of came in and started dominating our lives is super important. So yeah, 100% agree with you on that. So then, um, Bill from having your company to pinnacle, what was that transition like,

[00:33:41] and how did that opportunity come about? Yeah, great question. So we, so we were running Thunderbolt group, which is a digital agency. And, um, one of my friends who I hired back at the home store days as a sales rep, um, he went on into entrepreneurship and wound up partnering, um, and becoming a founder of pinnacle cart. He called me up in 2018, asked me if I might know somebody interested in purchasing pinnacle cart, um, through my network. Um, Thunderbolt was

[00:34:11] really very much focused on SMB, uh, implementations. We had companies that were large, um, yellow page companies as our, as our primary clients back in those days. And, um, so I had a lot of contacts in the SMB sort of digital transformation world, right? So, um, index, um, Verizon super pages, uh, these companies that were helping small businesses either create websites or do digital marketing.

[00:34:37] Um, and so we were trying to help them, um, with solutions. Um, and I asked some of my contacts that were running, uh, product at some of these big companies, um, what they were doing for e-commerce and they really didn't have, uh, SMB e-commerce solutions in place, which is what pinnacle cart is.

[00:34:58] Um, and so my theory was that I could do a deal with, um, founders of pinnacle cart and bring that as a solution into these big sales channels, which would then open up sales for pinnacle cart, which had been stagnant in terms of sales for quite some time. Um, and so that's what we did. We wound up putting a deal together and wound up acquiring assets of pinnacle cart into a new, new company that we formed, um, and then went to market with, um, you know, some of these sales channels that were already

[00:35:28] heavy into the SMB space. Wow. It's very strategic of you. How long did that understanding and those kind of nodal connections take to, to come to life? Cause it's also, everything's always a risk too, right? Absolutely. I mean, you know, frankly, neither one of those channels worked out, right? And so, um, it's one of those things where you can be strategic all you want with the rubber meets the road as an implementation, as you guys know very well.

[00:35:57] And, uh, so, you know, I, I'll be first to say my, you know, what I thought was amazing strategy and a creative way to, uh, to grow pinnacle cart. Um, you know, we wound up with operational challenges, um, within one of the companies and then, and then, and so we were working through those and it was looking really good. And we were selling, I think 10 carts a month with, um, only 10% of their sales

[00:36:22] force. Um, they only, they had about 225 reps. Um, we, we only had 25 trained. So that looked like it was going to scale really well. Um, we had some operational, so we kind of paused it. Uh, we had to work out some operational, um, more, more about client communication and making sure that we got the assets that we needed to create, um, the online stores for these customers. Um, so we were on a pause and then they got acquired by a much larger company, uh, in that space, which

[00:36:50] completely put the kibosh on that as a channel for us, unfortunately. Um, and then the other one, just the onboarding process, uh, was cumbersome, um, with their single sign on it, trying to get a cart up and running and live on through their marketplace was difficult. Um, and they were internally more baked into, uh, WooCommerce as a solution because they were building on WordPress. So it wasn't, it wasn't like they didn't already have something that was easy for them to implement

[00:37:20] if they had a, uh, customer that wanted to implement commerce. And so that one just kind of, it's still there and it's kind of coasting along, but it didn't really become a great sales channel for us. So, you know, lessons learned, right? I mean, we figured that, um, you know, it's, it's a tough, uh, road to pave, um, in that world. Uh, but, um, but yeah, so now we're, we've actually retooled, um, that particular product and we're going back to market, um, in a mid market,

[00:37:45] um, category and we're, we're close to releasing that actually pretty soon here. So how was, so now you created another venture, it's going well, Pinnacle Card's doing has thousands of customers and then you get approached by ultra. How did that come about? I was contacted by a gentleman, uh, that they had contracted to find deals. Um,

[00:38:13] and so the, the, the idea would be that, um, because Pinnacle Card has some mid market customers that might qualify for enterprise solution on ultra, um, we merge the companies, we create an upgrade path for some of our existing customers to move up to ultra, um, which we have done. Um, and so that was kind of the idea. Uh, the bigger picture is we want to provide commerce solutions

[00:38:39] for companies, you know, kind of in the, in the medium and the M of the SMB, right. All the way up through large enterprises. Um, and so we've done that now. So the company, even since we've come on board has acquired a marketplace company, uh, which is an amazing enterprise marketplace. It was previously called Omnify now it's ultra commerce marketplace. And then also we acquired a company

[00:39:03] called Commistry, which is a, a PIM, uh, and channel solution that also has, um, uh, the, uh, sorry, um, Tim, uh, channels and, um, uh, fulfillment right on the backend. So, um, that's what Commistry does. So there we're still integrating Commistry into our overall product methods. This is why the, the, the acronyms aren't right on the top of my tongue, but, um, but yeah, so OMS, there's the word.

[00:39:33] I'm looking for, right. So it's got to know, I mess solution on the backend as well. And so we're, we're pulling that all together. So the idea then again, is to create this, um, full service commerce capability, whether you're a medium sized enterprise or a large enterprise, um, and be able to pick and choose from the products that we have. This might sound like a very silly question, but like, how did you know this? How'd you know it was real when it was happening? Cause I feel like

[00:40:00] everyone's always contacting us all the time for things that are who knows what, right? Selling everything and everything connecting through LinkedIn. Like, how did you kind of nurture this along? How quickly did you realize that it was like, this was something real? Okay. This Australian company is coming around and. Oh yeah. Um, well, so I hit it off immediately with Matt Highland, who's the CEO of ultra commerce.

[00:40:28] Um, and we were able to quickly kind of sync and strategize on, you know, what this could be. And of course, Matt has a broader vision of what I just kind of ran a little bit through in terms of being able to provide those different commerce services across spectrum. So I think that was always his plan was to kind of, you know, fill in these, these gaps in commerce where we could, uh, by being acquisitive. So, um, we were luckily, I think for us, we were early in, in that process. Um, and so,

[00:40:59] you know, it took a long time. Um, it was a fairly complicated, um, deal to put together. Um, but, I mean, I think we worked on it for about 10 months and we finally closed it about, you know, I think about 10 months after we had that first conversation. So we stuck with it. There was a couple of times where we didn't think we were going to get it done. I think around, you know, the first of the, we had met in October, I think. And then we closed it in July. Um, there were definitely some months in there where we didn't talk much because we just didn't think we had it,

[00:41:29] you know, it was gonna, it was gonna work out. So, but we stuck with it and it happened. So. Yeah. And it's, it can be a small process, right? I'm assuming it's pretty lengthy. You have to cross your T's, dot your I's everywhere and do due diligence. So it is, it is strenuous I would imagine. But now that you're completely on the ultra side, what are you seeing as some of the challenges, not just for ultra commerce, but

[00:41:56] in the industry right now with the market, the being the way it is. Um, so for us, I think, um, we, so for us, our challenges have been congealing these different technologies and companies together, right? And so you've got, um, every time you do an acquisition, you're bringing in senior leadership on one hand and you're bringing in teams, uh, behind them and

[00:42:25] gelling those personalities, gelling those product strategies, gelling those technologies together, um, is always a challenge. And that's probably been our biggest challenge over the last several months. Um, and we've lost some key people through that process. Um, and so kind of backfilling, um, you know, as you guys, I mean, I work with you on the partner side of the business. I mean, we're re-imagining our entire partnership program right now. Um, and so there's been a lot of work,

[00:42:52] um, that we've done over the past, you know, I've been with a company for about 14 months now. Um, and these things are coming together. We just acquired common street. I think about two months ago, we closed that deal about two months ago. So, uh, maybe three now, but, um, that's probably been our biggest challenge internally for the industry. You know, I think we just need to continue to educate companies in terms of transformation. Um, you know, helping them

[00:43:17] understand the value of the new tech that's coming out, um, figuring out to your earlier point, Matt, where, where does I, AI fit into all this? Um, and how do we provide value using AI and also preserving the human resources and the human capital that we have in the business? I mean, balancing those things, um, to make sure that we're not, you know, doing the wrong thing, right. By, uh, people that are, you know, living and working in this business, I think are really important things.

[00:43:44] Mm-hmm. Back to the locations real quick. The, so you talked about coming back to Colorado, right? I think you, did you say golden Coors banquet beer basically, or it was like, Yeah. So our company is actually now based in golden Colorado, not right in downtown golden. Uh, although I did have lunch there a few weeks ago. Um, but yeah, we're, we're in Genesee, um, which is just like the first kind of big mountain as you're coming out of, uh, the Denver metro area

[00:44:11] into the mountains. Um, actually, if you live there, you would know where the chart house is. Yeah. We're literally in Lakewood right down there. I was right there, right next to me. Okay. Yeah. And my daughter lives in Belmar now in Lakewood. So, um, which is the, I don't know how long, how recently you've been there, but I mean, the Belmar and Lakewood is a great, uh, you know, kind of revitalized area. Um, so, so yeah, it's just, it's about a 20 minute drive from the tasting room at the course factory, Matt, give you a sense of where it is.

[00:44:41] Preston Pysh Well, so I wanted to ask coming back to Colorado after all those years, after you had that interesting, you know, uh, fish out of water, fish out of military, uh, experience, and then, you know, kind of coming back, what kind of changes had you seen? And then I also want you to tell of living in Phoenix and now being up in Portland, like what's led you along those tributaries, if you will, with our water analogies. So yeah, so finished high school,

[00:45:11] went to college in Colorado, then was in Hawaii for about six years, um, back to Colorado and then live there, uh, bought my first house there. You know, I had my first child there. Um, loved growing up and living that part of my life in, uh, Colorado, you know, it's an, it's an amazing state with, you know, I I'm into fly fishing. So, uh, you know, being able to go skiing in the winters and

[00:45:35] fly fishing in the summers, uh, you know, beautiful scenery, hiking, you know, Colorado's awesome. Um, and then in that period, I moved to Phoenix for two years for, uh, that job at home fair after MapQuest. Um, and then, so that was only a two year stint living in Scottsdale at my second child there. And I love the Phoenix area as well. Um, summers, I didn't do it right. I moved there for about two years and three, three summers. Cause I moved there in like June or may, and then I,

[00:46:01] I left in September. Um, so I wouldn't do, do it that way again. If I had a choice, I'd probably like put the emphasis on the cooler months. Um, but you get used to it. Right. And then, uh, and then back to Colorado in 2000 is when I moved back to, um, to Denver area, um, and was there until 2013. So, um, and then Oregon is where my, my current wife is, is from and, um, she has family

[00:46:27] out here. So that's kind of how I wound up here, but it's funny because my dad, uh, was a Oregon state beaver. He was on the yell squad, um, or, you know, before he got his commission. And, uh, so I'm literally, I live about 15 minutes from the OSU campus. Um, and so I'm kind of back in his neighborhood and neck of the woods and, you know, it's, it's fun. I love Oregon. It's, it's got everything that I love to do. Um, and from an outdoors perspective and, um, yeah, it's a good

[00:46:52] spot. It's a good spot to be good Pinot Noir too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I live in, I live in the central valley and, uh, it's the wine country. Uh, yeah, there's a couple of wineries like within about five minutes of my house. Good ones too. Well, I'm at Valley is one of them. We should drive. I should drive up there sometime. It's a long drive though. So I'll, I'll see. Um, it is. Yeah. And if you do

[00:47:19] definitely, definitely give me, we gotta, we gotta spot for you. Awesome. Um, Hey, Bill, so what does the word community mean to you? Um, well, it, it means, um, I think being together with common goals, right? I mean, I think at the end of the day, community can be personal or it can be professional, but it, it's related to helping each other and, and sharing kind of a common vision and a common,

[00:47:47] um, a common goal, common outcomes, you know, positive outcomes that, that you want with a certain group of people. So I think that's probably the main thing is looking for positive outcomes, um, as a group together, leveraging each other's, uh, expertise and being there for each other when they need you. So we just have two more questions, Bill. The, um, the one I wanted to ask is a little

[00:48:15] back to actually always says I'm the more business question guy, but the, uh, as the leader of really a modern or one of the leaders of a modern, this headless commerce, um, coming from these legacy systems, even with a lot of the small and medium business things you've done, but thinking more heading up the chain towards the enterprise, what are some of the really common that famous sales word pain points? What are some of those common pain points you see with customers who are looking

[00:48:45] for your solution? So I keep going back to the, uh, you know, the legacy systems, not so much the legacy system, they're a problem. It's the, the idea of moving from legacy systems that are up and running and working, and there's millions of dollars running through them. Trying to take the risk to move those systems over to new technology is a massive pain point,

[00:49:14] right? It's, it's not only expensive, but there's a ton of risk associated with that. Um, and so in the B2B space, and we're dealing with, um, large companies that might have hundreds of thousands of products and just the idea of trusting a new technology to manage that data effectively, to deliver that data where it's supposed to go, um, all the way through the sales process, um, to their business customer,

[00:49:44] making sure that there's integrity in the supply chain, the distribution chain. And so, um, those are all pain points, right? For, for a company that might look to do transformation. And so, you know, you can put a pretty picture on the front end of it, but really the concern lives more on the backend and making sure that, you know, none of that stuff is dropped and that the order flows don't go down. Um, so uptime is a huge concern. Security is a huge concern.

[00:50:12] Um, and just data integrity and, and matching, um, sort of inventory capabilities, making sure that, you know, you have all these different distribution channels, right? That data has to sync up and live in a place, um, as a source of truth, and then get distributed back out and then ingested back in. Um, they're big problems, right? And none of them are, um, all of them carry significant risk,

[00:50:39] uh, for, for, uh, a management group. Um, and those are, those are what I say, the biggest pain points are for us, for our customers. Yeah. All right, Matt, I'm asking the last question. That's okay. I sold them. There were two. Oh, go ahead. As, as the other one. No, no, no, that was the two. That is the second one. You can ask it. Oh, perfect. Oh, good. There you go.

[00:51:04] Um, Bill, knowing what you know now, if you were to go give life advice to the young Bill who is, say, 14 years old, what kind of life advice would you give him? I would say follow your interest, right? Follow your heart. Um, do the things that, uh,

[00:51:31] maybe are a little scary, um, and, and enjoy it, enjoy the ride. Right. I mean, there's definitely been times where I've done both, right. Where I've, uh, I've done, I followed my heart and I've done the things that, um, felt right to me. And there's been times where, you know, I was afraid to do things, um, and, and didn't go down that path. Right. And most of the time, if I don't go down the path, it's a little bit scary. Um, you know, I feel like it's wasted time. I feel

[00:51:57] like it's more of a coasting situation as opposed to a growing situation. And I think our jobs here as humans on this planet are to grow every day and to do the best that we can, um, you know, with the situation that we have. And I feel very grateful and blessed to be where I am. And I've had the career that I've had and friends and the family that I have. So, um, I think, you know, taking stock of that and maybe, maybe enjoying and appreciating every day, the good things that you

[00:52:25] have, um, is really important, right. As, as a human. And if I could tell myself, my younger self, I would say, appreciate it more in the time, right? Look for the good things. Don't, don't feel the bad things so much. Um, so yeah, that's probably where I would land on that one. Thank you so much for your time, Bill. I think we learned some, some more stuff we can use against you another time, but this is really good stuff. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:52:55] I appreciate you guys very much. Um, you know, the opportunity to join you today has been awesome. And, uh, I think this is a great format. I think you're getting some, some interesting content for, um, you know, for people that it's not common, right? I mean, it's like, it's, it's not, uh, uh, you guys to get into a more personal, um, journey. And I think honestly, those are the things that are more important than, uh, some of the other stuff that we talk about every day, right? So it's,

[00:53:24] it's really cool. I appreciate what you're doing. Thank you for entering the Conoverse. We hope these discussions gave you something to think about, helped you learn something new, and provided a window into someone else's story. Everyone's story is worthy and important. Until next time, remember to be fair, be kind, and keep exploring.