Bonjour Millionaire, 

I'm not good at predictions. Have yet to win the lottery. Never considered skinny jeans could come back. 🙁

Due to that fact pattern, I avoid the "in 2026 I predict social commerce will be important also because no shit Sherlock."

I can't tell you what is to come. I can, however, tell you a lot about where we are right now. Seeing as I LIVE IT.

The State of Ecommerce will have 5 volumes, and this is the 1st. 🙂

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ON THIS EPISODE OF GO-TO-MILLIONS 

State of Ecommerce, Volume 1

Below you'll find my full 5-part State of the Industry. This is where we're going over these next 5 weeks. I'll warn you that this 1st item (today's focus) is highly-personal to me (will explain). 

State of Ecommerce
 

Vol 1. Pressure of AI/ unrealized dreams here / rash decisions  

Vol 2. Keeping up with the Joneses / copying everyone / saying nothing

Vol 3. Creative as the targeting / media buyers no longer have the reigns 🙁 

Vol 4. Tariffs are bad but not as bad as the mass panic let’s be honest people used it as an excuse to fire good people to make more $ omg who said that

Vol 5. Agencies do not get it. I can confirm as someone now on the inside. 

Vol 1. Pressure of AI

When I think about where we are as an industry, I have to say that I think we're lying to ourselves about AI. At this point, at least.

I say that as someone who has unique 1st access to just about every tool in our space. I say that as someone who has spent the last 4 years working alongside many of the hottest brands on the market.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is using AI in a way that allows them to wipe out half of their team. Nobody is using AI in a way that allows them to wipe out 20% of their team. But, so many choose to wipe out half of their teams in the name of AI. They always fail when they do so, like fucking clockwork. 

I've seen non-technical founders demo 1 tool (in beta, not fully flushed out), and then text their executives "We can fire the full performance team."

I wish those texts would come from founders who had access to the ad accounts, but they never do. 

The pressure of AI is very real. We all want to be savvy. We all want to weaponize it to move quicker. We all want to run lean teams. But we all need to be honest that where we're at right now is in the AI-harnessing stage, WHERE WE NEED PEOPLE TO WELCOME, ADOPT, AND LEARN the tools available to make them better.

We are not in the fire everyone and let greed take over stage. That rash decision-making (blinded by love of $) is actually what makes your team hesitant to use and love AI.

Because you've scared the shit out of them.

Unrealized AI Dreams

I am technical. And, I use AI throughout my day. 

I still do a lot of manual things. Like, many, many manual things that I could automate on a daily basis.

As an example, I pull reporting by hand every single morning, 7-days a week.

I could automate this, but I refuse to. Because I will not explain away my mistakes as my bot failed. I will not leave outcomes to chance as something was disconnected by accident. But mostly, I will not lose the rigor of looking at and studying and feeling that pain when a number you pull is lower than expected against a specific channel. 

That pain of pulling a # in the red invokes change. When you stare at it, you internalize it. When you internalize it, you get your ass in gear and you make some moves.

When I was running the agency my team would send reporting to clients and each # would have a colored circle next to it. 

🟢 = better WoW

🟡 = steady WoW

🔴 = worse WoW

When you show those clear indicators, you can't hide. The client might not understand the intricacies of every metric or channel, but they know red is bad. If your reporting is all red, you have to answer to that. Knowing you have to answer to that makes you not want to turn in red #s. It's good to face the music. 

The hand-pulling is 1 example of where we don't use AI. Throughout the day, however, #s are automated and we have AI agents that fire off our reporting to us. We use AI to analyze our creatives. We use AI to forecast. AI is part of the process, it doesn't live alone.

I titled this section unrealized AI dreams. Because at this point I thought I'd be closer to trusting and relying on AI as the relief from the manual work. But, I've decided that you need some of that choppiness to remain sensitized. 

It's like when you can tell a media buyer thinks of $ in the ad account as game-tokens vs. when you can tell a media buyer thinks of $ in the ad account as cash. I want to think of money as cash in business. This is real life and IMO the dream of manual work going away is faulty. 

It's good to have a little pain. 

Rash Decisions

Don't text your team and scare them. Don't demo a tool and buy it before you've taken over the mouse and have actually touched it with your own hands. Don't fall behind, but also don't forget that the brands you love and look up to sometimes have VPs of Ecommerce that don't know how to login to Shopify themselves.

I call for a calmness around AI. That's what I want. It's so productive and efficient to be calm. Let's you think. 

Warren Buffet strikes again. ^^^^^ 

I'm from a Scotchmallow family. You? 

Yours,

Ari 

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