298. Interview with Tyler Murray, Co-Founder of Ghost Retail: Reimagining Shopping with AI and Web 3.0

Susan Sly 00:02
This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, the show that brings the no nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

Susan Sly 00:16
So what is up, Raw and Real Entrepreneurs, wherever you are in the world, especially if you're, you know, underneath snow, depending on where you're listening to this. I hope you're having an amazing day. And I'm so excited about this interview. It's like one of those ones that I tell you about where we started talking and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to hit record because we were having the best conversation and so we were talking about everything from Drake, who I celebrity fangirl over, to the Toronto Raptors to The Tragically Hip. And if you're in Canada, then you know, you already know that you're going to give us a five star review on this show. Because we've mentioned so many, I'm just gonna throw in Timbits and Canadian Tire and we're all good. Anyway, depending on where you are, but this entrepreneur today is amazing. He is a pioneer. He is the co founder of a company called Ghost Retail and I was all over their site and I'm so fired up about it. It's the world's first one on one live video shopping platform for global brands. I can't even speak I'm so excited. And since the birth of the Internet in 1993, I know some of you all don't remember that, he has been leading digital innovation for some of the world's most recognizable companies and icons including Drake. Drake, if you're listening, I love you. You have no idea. Nike, American Eagle, Canada Goose,Universal Pictures, the NHL, who I vacillate over love and not love like, depending on striking, the NBA which I do love and McDonald's. He has founded and exited three tech startups including North America's first live pop culture shopping platform in 2017. He has also led the digital interactive campaign designed for some of the most successful movie franchises in history, including Jurassic Park, Fast and Furious, and James Bond, another love. His radical vision has always challenged brands to be first in emerging technologies and has generated billions of unique transactions globally across all mediums of web, social media AR and VR by hyper focusing on memorable customer experiences, specializing in global e commerce and viral product drops. He has helped retail brands elevate and deliver world class online experiences for decades. My guest today who is live from Toronto is the one and only Tyler Murray. Tyler, welcome to the show.

Tyler Murray 02:43
Thank you. Thank you for the enthusiastic intro.

Susan Sly 02:46
Okay, so my first question right off the bat, what was your first business? I mean, three successful exits, you're still an entrepreneur, you haven't like, dropped out of entrepreneurship after you know, one try, you know, or working for someone else. So were you a born entrepreneur, did you? What was the first business you started?

Tyler Murray 03:08
The first business I started was in mid 90s. I started and capitalized on a moment in time in history that's never really been duplicated before, which is the birth of the Internet. I had a kind of a knack for programming. I read a book on how to code HTML. And I was really into video games at the time. And I realized I had a knack for both creative and visual. So I started a web company in the mid 90s. The first website ever created was McDonalds.com. That was the first website they ever had in their history. And at that time, it was wild. Because brands for the first time were discovering this new channel, this new medium, called the Internet, not knowing what to do about it. And I took that opportunity to moment to start a company called Tigershark and that brand and that company has spanned over 30 years of interactive ecommerce. High availability, product jobs for some amazing companies and people. And then now ultimately taking all that knowledge and experience and piling it into our startup Ghost Retail, which is capitalizing on live streaming video with an elite e commerce experience. And for the first time you can shop online live with an associate in the store or at home or an influencer that knows about what you're buying, and recommend and show you the products in real time and actually check you out through the entire journey.

Susan Sly 04:38
Which is so awesome. And I keep thinking like where was the service in some of those purchases I made that I regret. Going back to the internet in the mid 90s. So as you know on the show I've had some great conversations with internet pioneers and I had the first, one of the first coaching businesses online 1995, I kicked it off. So I had, I had clients, Joey Votto was one of my clients. He's a Toronto boy, Major League Baseball player. And people found me and it was really cool. And I was one of the first health clubs when I had my gym in Kingston, Ontario. We had a website and my personal website was makingfitterbodies.com. And then we had the downtown workout site. The web was so different. And to your point it was something we haven't seen since. But I want to ask you a question. What about Web3? Do you think that this is the next opportunity in time for us to see something we haven't experienced yet or do you think it's something that is still more hype than reality?

Tyler Murray 05:48
No, I think the hype is very real. We're seeing the emergence of AI, which you have a master's degree in by now, The world is just waking up to what the possibilities of that are. What I what I believe is really happening here is that we've spent the last maybe 15 years making the online experience really convenient. Being able to check out with one click, get your products the next day, or within 15 minutes in some cases, and scrolling through this like really static, fast loading, get the job done, type of experience. And now that we've built all of that foundation, it needs to be more engaging, and interactive, which is where I think web 3.0 comes in, where you're talking about creating a memorable experience, not just something that's transactional, that you're trying to get done. I remember when, and you will, as well, where people used to talk about online experiences, you'd go to work and talk about these amazing websites that you visited, and that you saw. And we haven't seen that for many, many years since the downfall of flash, which made websites really interactive. And now it's time for that creativity to come back. And the personalization of that experience and the most incredible immersive technology that exists, which is your closest phone, your closest laptop, your closest headset. And we're just starting to see what we began so long ago back then of what the internet could possibly be. And that's what's happening. That's what I believe web 3.0 is the rise again, of creativity.

Susan Sly 07:25
Hmm, I've never heard anyone put it like that- the rise again, of creativity and then immersive experience, which Tyler and I were talking about, so depending, this will have already happened more than likely should it happen after the show is dropped. So on Sunday night, I was telling Tyler, I'm flying to LA. And I'm invited to this invitation only AI web 3 leader thing for 50 people. And we have the kickoff party at this place in LA called Red Pill. And everyone's going to, this is my understanding Tyler that everyone's gonna have glasses and we're going to go into like some like augmented reality, and we're going to have a party, but we're really going to be wearing the glasses and not interacting with each other somehow, right. So what do you say? I'm so excited about it, honestly, because I can't wait to pick an avatar, which as everyone knows, is going to be like Lara Croft Tomb Raider. But the the question I have for you is what do you say to the detractors of this VR experience that says, you know, we're pulling people away from reality, and it's not going to be healthy.

Tyler Murray 08:40
I think there's a deep rabbit hole there to start with. But, and I'd love the good matrix reference, by the way with the red pill. What virtual reality I believe is missing right now is the right piece of content, that content that makes people lineup around the block that they have to have it in their homes, they have to try it, they have to experience it. And I would bet to say that a lot of people listening to this show, many of them have never even had a virtual reality experience. And when you do have one and your eye is tricked into feeling and being in a place that you actually aren't, and those nerves and synapses are firing, making you feel like you're somewhere else, with the right piece of content, and as the hardware progresses, that moment is going to be a game changer. Now, it's not here yet. And I think we've seen, touched on the surface of what it will be. But if you extend that moment and that experience when you have that aha Virtual Reality moment that your brain is tricked down the road, five years, or sooner depending on how fast the technology evolves, you cannot deny that there's something special there.

Susan Sly 09:59
Yeah, and there are going to be so many use cases that are positive. I have a friend Dr. Brenda Wiederhold, who's one of the top AR VR researchers, and she's using it therapeutically to help soldiers with PTSD, to treat depression, to help people who have recovered from a serious attempt of suicide. I mean, not that all attempts aren't serious. But when they physically cause harm, they end up in the hospital. And she, she's looking at all these implications, even with autism and so forth. And, and I think that people are seeing the entertainment side, but they're not seeing the possibilities in terms of what you're saying, like a true immersive experience. One of the things I love about Ghost Retail is this human centric concept of bringing humans and technology together, right. And so from that vantage point, walk us through that, like the listener through an experience that if they're going to use Ghost Retail, like, what is that for them?

Tyler Murray 11:08
Well, the internet in shopping experience is broken and it's been broken for a long time. We're still using the very early prototype of what online shopping could be from the 90s, from the early 2000s, when it first became where you're scrolling through a static view, almost like a catalog or a newspaper, reading a ton of information to try to understand and inform yourself what you're buying. And then making a wish that when you click the Add to bag and checkout button, when it arrives, that's what you wanted. We see a massive gap in the problem there, which is people want this more human approach. That's why shopping in person is so powerful, you get the experience of the store, the vibe, the energy, you see beautiful displays, you're interacting with something that feels alive. And then you actually get to talk to people that are knowledgeable about the product. And this is where the evolution of live shopping is really coming into its own, which is once you have the experience and realize that, when you're connecting live with a person that knows what you're buying, and can recommend and guide you through the journey, and can also share products to your screen and add to your bag for you, this hands off, like bridge between the in store experience and the virtual experience is now more narrow than it ever has been. And that is being experimented across the globe right now primarily in Asia. And here in North America, we're seeing what the potential of it could be. And it's really early days, but what we're seeing is that customers really embrace this hyper personalization approach of having a one on one conversation. And it reduces return rates, because you know what you're buying, it amplifies basket sizes. And conversion rates, when you have an experience like this are like 30, 40% versus 2 to 5% of what their traditional e commerce experiences. So there's so much to learn, brands are just getting started with it, which I think is an important moment. You probably remember trying to convince your clients and customers to put their websites on a phone, which was the craziest idea that you could possibly have and probably got you laughed out of the few rooms like myself. But you can't deny what the power of that will be when you really keep your ear to the railroad tracks and see what's coming and follow the kids. And the kids, you know, at whatever age are consuming, you know, the majority of their day on any device on video. And when you power that with live video, you get something that's really special.

Susan Sly 13:48
I love that you said that, the live video, right. And to that point of laughed out of rooms. I just walked out of a two hour meeting where we're talking about edge compute and IoT, and all of the the data or data depending where someone is, that can be generated with these devices and that retailers don't know what to do with the data. And that's where AI and ML can aggregate that data and turn it into something meaningful and useful for the retailer, which is one of the things that we do at Radius, right. And so this convergence of humans and technology and the desire for the right data. I don't want to, in a shopping experience be shown things that I don't like. I don't want to be in a pressure situation where it's like I told you I want a black dress and you're bringing me green dresses or bringing me purple dresses. I don't want those, I want you know this. And there are the, there are some online retailers I think that are at least making a good freshman effort to create a more customized experience. And then there are those who are so far behind. Holt Renfrew, I hope you're listening. Like as an example, I, when I was living in Canada, Tyler, Holt Renfrew did not even have an online, like a portal to purchase anything. So I used to buy things from the US and have them shipped to Canada, as expensive that is that was, because one of my favorite retailers just didn't have you know, any online presence whatsoever. And so, there, I want to ask you this question, what do you want to say to retailers who are not embracing technology? Where are they going to be?

Tyler Murray 15:39
Well, I assume you're talking about Chanel, because they're one of the only retailers on the planet that doesn't have an online shopping experience. And they focus their whole entire business model on exclusivity, and it's working really well for them. I do think that every business can be amplified, whether it's culturally or creating hype for your brand, by having an online experience, even if that shopping experience is to come pick it up in the store. The gap between where you start, and I know we have a lot of different listeners here, the gap where you start from the entrepreneurship and starting something, maybe have a personal Shopify site all the way down through some of the brands you're talking about. Everybody's still trying to figure it out. And the knowledge that we have today changes tomorrow, which is kind of the chess game of tech meets brand meets culture meets AI and others. So it's a really interesting time. I think the realization that having an online experience is critical to a brand these days as more now than it ever has been, and bridging the gap between the social platforms where it's kind of a blackbox silo of the tiktoks and Instagrams of the world. Brands are trying to figure out now how to how to get people back to their site on that relationship again. Interacting with humans and hyper personalizing, that experience is helping them win. Personalization is not putting a robotic chatbot on your site. It's how do you use data, how do you use AI to power human experiences? And that mesh is where the magic happens.

Susan Sly 17:21
Yeah, and that's where, what it is GhostRetail is doing is that beautiful intersection and keeping people in the technology. Because I'm not sure personally like going back to that point about the Chatbot. Like, you know, but that person on the other side who gets me having my quote unquote, personal shopper who understands me understands my life. And you mentioned the black box. When we look at things like chat GPT there are some outputs that Chat GPT is creating, and they are created in a black box and an AI is, some types of AI are going to do that because you don't know how it's coming up with those outputs. But by putting a human in the loop, it's called Kremer's O-ring theory that the humans and the machines combined are going to create a better output and a more reliable, trustworthy output. Which is, which is awesome. Let me shift gears for a minute. So three successful exits, right, like 90% of startups fail. Can you walk the listeners through like what was the first company? How long did it take to exit? What was the second company? How long did it take to exit? And what was the third?

Tyler Murray 18:52
It's been a journey for sure I can, I can tell you know, as a fellow innovator, like yourself, you've been pushing the boundaries of technology for many year. We've been doing the same where we really have been hyper focused on the interactive experience of digital. And as we've evolved from becoming a small business, web, ecommerce startup to learning and going through the pains of all those decades of growth and knowledge and all those things, you get to learn a lot. So I think I took an interesting path personally by starting not necessarily with the biggest grandest idea, but an area that I knew that I was pretty good at, which is creating a business. We exited that business in 2018 with about 1000 customers. So that's growing, understanding small business needs. Shopify was coming onto the scene at that time. So that was really unique. The second one was the live streaming platform that we exited in, we're building it actually at the exact same time and exited and in 2018, which is the world's first live streaming culture, ecommerce experience. It's called Network. So we ended up creating the technology that is now powered by network, we created the first version of it and exited to a group of investors down in California, who've done an amazing job with the inception of what live video and ecommerce can create. And the other was a ecommerce marketing company that we exited in 2019. Ghost is our latest startup, which we are focused on this really amazing moment of live video. It's a phenomenon in Asia, and we're building off of what that potentially can be here in North America. Some of our early partners that are pushing the boundaries, like American Eagle, have been using this technology and rolling it out to their customers for the last couple of years. So we've been really grinding our product market fit and understanding what that experience should be like at the highest scale. And now we're rolling it out to the world, from small businesses and all the way down through to enterprises.

Susan Sly 21:14
So to do that level of scaling requires funding. So where are you at with funding and how did you get the funding to start the company?

Tyler Murray 21:24
Well, I think every journey, if you're a entrepreneur looking for funding, which it's hard to, to grow, and scale business without talking to investors, and VCs and founders, depending on your stage, is people invest in people. And the solution is a big part of it. But it's certainly at the very beginning, the most important thing is that you're investing in the team that you've created at the beginning. So you know, who are, what are the stories of the founders? What is the goal? What is the problem that you're actually solving, and being able to talk about that really well with a nice bit of polish is, I guess, been a secret recipe for us. For me, and our team, working for the past two decades, three decades with top brands, and learning all those experiences along the way was helpful for us, because we're used to being in front of people explaining ideas and hearing the word no. But the money raising side of things is, is really complex. And for myself, I surrounded myself with really thoughtful, experienced people that knew the capital game. And we partnered really early with American Eagle who became one of our lead investors. And at that point, we had an incredibly strong team, with a great leadership group, a key customer that was ready to roll out our technology, and somebody that believed in what we're doing. And that spun off into two rounds, we raised 17 million. And we've been growing ever since that was a couple years ago.

Susan Sly 23:04
That's awesome. And when the customer becomes the investor, it's huge, because VCs love to see that. They're like, Wow, they believe so much in what it is you're doing, that they're investing, and raising money from a complexity standpoint. So there's work, I have extensive experience in raising money, and funding, and all of those things. And one of the things we were talking about before we went into starting to do the show, was that there, I have a friend who's got a company out of Vancouver called Blocpal. And they've done several friends and family rounds, and they have an extensive customer base in India and South Americans so forth. And so they're, but raising money, that sometimes the US VCs or especially the big Tex VCs, they see a Canadian company, and sometimes there is a bias. Have you had any, I guess, country bias because you're not in Silicon Valley? Do you think has it affected your valuation? Has it affected your ability to raise money?

Tyler Murray 24:23
I think there's a certain amount of the stigma around being a Canadian company. I also think that recently, over the past decade or so there's a lot of incredible things happening in Toronto in Canada. We've seen Google come here. We've seen Shopify come here. We've seen some amazing, amazing artists come from Toronto. We've won a championship and the NBA in the last few years. So there's a changing of the tide. And what I can say for certain is I don't think geography is as much of a factor when you have a big idea and a strong team that has a proven track track record. So because we have a proven track record in our say do ratio of doing what we say, for so long has been solid, that you, you get a certain amount of credibility, at least certainly for us in the early stages. Now, as a small business, I don't think geography should be a limiting factor. Chapter one, page one of every single book, I think, that I've ever read, and I think this is maybe cliche, but I'll say it anyways is it's, every business is about people do. And it's having the right people in the canoe, rowing in the same direction with the right place in mind. And knowing that you're going to capsize that boat at some point is the key to not only showing up the right way in investor meetings, pursuing the plans with your team, or, you know, coming as a small business out of Toronto or any small town in Canada, US or otherwise, I don't see it as a limiting factor, I see a solid plan, the right team, and the ability to have faith in your idea to be much more important than geography.

Susan Sly 26:16
And because you've already had a successful track record of successful exits, that is very appealing. I do know a story of a guy. And I won't say which company it was, but he's had some much success. And to your point, like to be able to execute on what the promise was. The last funding round he did, he goes in literally with a piece of paper, I think it was a post it and he's like, here's the idea. And he was he had already had, I think it was three or four exits, and they were all substantial. So they were north of 50. And then one was 100 million and so forth. And he walks in Tyler with the post it and they're like, here's $10 million this year. And, and I would say that, that, you know, we have a listening audience all over the world. And there are people listening in Nigeria, there are people listening in New Zealand. Canada's fortuitous in that. To Tyler's point, there is a large tech footprint now especially in Toronto, even in Niagara on the Lake, sort of outside of Toronto. Meta has a big campus there. And so there's, there's more money, still it's a very interesting time to be raising money, because there is a lot of focus on what happened with crypto and then now it's like, okay, AI is very appealing. And then, you know, what kind of, what can you actually execute on from a b2b or b2c? You know, rollout. So for you with GhostRetail, so you had some early funding, you've definitely got some customers, you have this proven track record. So what's next for the company?

Tyler Murray 28:06
What's next for the company is to continue our mission to enhance the online shopping experience. We're rolling out some new products, we're rolling out the video stories, video shopping, where you can take any video and make it shoppable. To bridge that gap between the social experience where people are spending all their time to where brands actually want the experience to happen, which is down into their own house onto their website.

Susan Sly 28:30
So when you say any video and make it shoppable, like, can you give me a specific example of that?

Tyler Murray 28:35
Take any video that you're recording and posting online, or one of your commercials or anything on YouTube. And if there's products within that video, you can tag those products and put that experience on your website the same way that you see reels and shoppable stories on sale.

Susan Sly 28:53
Awesome. Got it.

Tyler Murray 28:55
So we're bridging that world between, we're bringing social back onto the site. And there's a lot of really cool opportunities when you can take that experience, that static experience of online and make it more engaging, and make it look like the experience that we know everybody's engaging with a massive scale right now, which is social. And the next product that we're releasing is live video shopping one too many, which means you can have one person broadcasting to 1000s or millions of people showing a product and make it shoppable directly from your website. That's gonna give us a full picture of what we feel that the market really needs right now, what we're listening to, from what brands want and how they're thinking about the evolution of their shopping is really video centric. And that's our mission right now is to extend that journey and push the boundaries of that technology as far as possible.

Susan Sly 29:51
What, in terms of deliverability, do you have any tech blockers that you have that you say this is what we want to deliver but the actual ability to deliver is inhibited somehow, technologically right now?

Tyler Murray 30:11
Well, a few years ago, I would say it's bandwidth. But we've overcome that. The current state of the Internet right now is based around a few browsers, right. So you've got Safari, you've got Chrome, got Firefox, those are the top guys. There's a very delicate dance that the browser's have to play now between the experience that you can provide, and then the security of protecting against all of the bad actors that want to shut your site down or take it over. And one of those things right now that's limiting the experience to its fullest extent is browser security. That will evolve. We're seeing the browser's ticket new stance of favoring now that the convenience is it's been taken care of more of the experience and interactive standpoint. But as with anything, especially in technology, the obstacle that you overcame yesterday, there's going to be a completely new obstacle as new devices, new protocols, AI technology. It really just never ends, which is what's fascinating about being in tech space, as you know.

Susan Sly 31:18
I'm gonna ask you is so not relevant question, but I'm curious to get your opinion on it. Because you mentioned browsers. So now that Bing has Chat GPT, do you think Bing is going to be a player in our, in vying for browser market?

Tyler Murray 31:34
I think they've always had a challenge vying for browser market to be honest with you. I think it gets them closer and makes them equally competitive. But in the same way that we call snowmobiling ski doing or we call it tissue pass me a Kleenex, like Google's done an incredible job of branding that thing as their company. And that's going to be a hard thing to topple over. We'll see. The landscape and, this has just caught fire over the past four or five months, really not sure when you're tuning into this show. But the rise of chat GPT is before us and brands and institutions are trying to figure out what to do with it. For me, it's exciting, because it's the tip of the iceberg of what this sidebar between humans and data can create. And your company has been on the edge of that for quite some time. So interested to see what this is going to create for experiences and knowledge. It's furthering knowledge, in my opinion.

Susan Sly 32:48
Well, I've got to throw a quiz out for the listeners. So the quiz is this: who knows what Google was called before it was called Google. So it's a quiz that I'm just going to throw it out there. So the answer, friends, is backpack. So we would have been having this conversation Tyler and I'm like hey, did you backpack that? Or with my kids. I can't remember what Emery, my youngest daughter was asking me Tyler, and I was like just Google the answer. Like just you know, you can search that. But I can't imagine a world where we're backpacking answers. But to that point, around the Bing and their user interface. It's not a browser I particularly use, I'm very interested to see, I'm interested to see, because there's this, you know, existing war with iOS, and Meta and all these different things going on. But at the end of the day, users dictate what they want. And when you have something that I feel GhostRetail is going to be that for the shopper for their experience, that it's going to be the tech companies, they're going to have to enable it because their users will go to the platform where they have the best experience with the tech that they want to have. So we're going to, now, because when I have a Canadian guest, Tyler, as you know, we have to talk about certain Canadian things. And prior to going into the show, we were talking about Canada's iconic band, The Tragically Hip. And that Tyler was telling me that he has something that the world hasn't seen in relationship to the Tragically Hip. So can you share what that is? Because I want to see it.

Tyler Murray 34:37
Yes, yourself and many others. So in 2016, we were really fascinated with virtual reality as it was coming into a place that can really be used by brands. So it's this dance between the software and the hardware and the bandwidth really came together. And what we were seeing as we were working with some of these live sports teams and entertainers was that that live experience of being there in person, whether it's at the sidelines or at the front of the concert, for the first time was something that people could put on a headset and experience and get really, really close. So we went really hard down the rabbit hole of what that experience should be, and created some of the first live camera rigs in virtual reality that existed. So we design a prototype that was used for Drake's summer 16 Tour, where we could put fans directly onto the stage with him at the concert. And after the success of seeing what that possibility could be, Insight productions, which is a major Canadian TV broadcasting company, was working on The Amazing Race and others. So we took it, we took this camera on an entire season of The Amazing Race, and brought people who are watching the show into the stunts. So by that time, we had really cut our teeth on what the rig needed to be, how it needs to work with the audio experiences, how it needed to capture making the quality high enough that it would be something that a brand could get behind and release to the world proudly. And that was about a two year journey, which really culminated in the Tragically Hip's last concert. Which if you look on YouTube was a major national event for one of our great, great bands. And we luckily had the opportunity to put this camera on the stage with them on Gordon on the very last concert. And film that footage is the last time we use the camera. We've retired it since and the footage has never been released. So it's really incredible when you get to be in feel and see that. The content still gives me shivers when I watch it. And we're waiting for the technology and the devices and the demand for virtual reality to catch up to that moment so that we can do the footage justice and that it will be seen by the most amount of people.

Susan Sly 37:07
I get chills when you tell that story. And then you know you mentioned Gord so I didn't tell you this part of the story but he used to call me, there was this like infomercial gal Susan powder back in the day and she had like shaved blonde hair and she was like a fitness trainer. And Gord used to call me Susan power. And as in like dance and power because you know, the the hip. And I remember one day I was at the health club that I owned and he comes running in and screaming in front of all the members. Susan powers, Susan powers, Susan power. And there was no one like Gord Downey and when that is released. I mean, I want to be there. I want to give a shout out to Matt Mulvihill who's now in the Paul Lanois band. I know Matt listens to the show. And a shout out to him because he'll definitely want to be there. And it was, and that was just such a an iconic time and Canadian music. And I love Tyler that you capture that and some of you might be thinking, Susan, how does that relate to Raw and Real Entrepreneurship and I'm going to sum it up like this. It's the ability to identify an opportunity and do something with it. And that's what an entrepreneur does is to look at this moment in time, like Tyler is with GhostRetail and saying, people want a different shopping experience. They're shopping, and we can see retail numbers are still going up despite the economy. They want something that's unique, they want something personalized, and we're gonna deliver it. And sometimes as entrepreneurs, we have to build the plane as we're flying it. Especially, that's why I asked about tech enablement, because, you know, it doesn't matter. There's there's always the speed of ideas and the tech to be able to deliver those, has to be able to keep up. Tyler, what do you want to say, final question that I have. If someone's listening right now, and they're thinking, I have an idea, and I think there's a market for it. What advice would you give them?

Tyler Murray 39:32
I would say use the power of the resources that are at your fingertips for free. Podcasts like the one we're on right now. Millions of hours of YouTube, Y Combinator, every book on business, it tells a story, tells a lesson. Fill your heart and your mind with all that knowledge. And when you feel like you've learned enough and you're ready to go triple it before you start. It's like, as a marathon runner, you know this, you have to be prepared when you start that those voices in your head, telling you to stop or quit or slow down, are going to, are going to start very, very early on in the race and carry you all the way to the finish. They don't, they don't actually stop. And that moment where your faith and your business and your ideas are going to be tested, you think is going to happen down the road. And actually it happens every single day. So the management of that experience and having that conversation in your head, about whether this experience of this thing is for you will be a question that pops up. And you have to have the faith and the understanding of sticking with your mission, being adaptive, and going. Because entrepreneurship at any stage and being, owning a company and creating a business are two different things. So knowledge is power, the more you learn, the more you earn, and more money is more problems.

Susan Sly 41:06
Well, Tyler, I want to thank you for for being here and sharing your heart. You're a person, definitely, when I'm in Toronto, we are going to meet up for sure. And I'm so excited for you. And even like, when you go, I'm saying this in front of like all the people all over the world. But when you go in that next funding round, you have to let me know because I have some people who love to invest in companies like yours. And that's the thing, like what Tyler just said, like, learn, learn, learn, learn three times as much. Like, I know, Tyler is always listening, he's always reading, he's always getting advice from mentors. And that's so essential, because as an entrepreneur, it can be very lonely. And you're gonna have challenges every single day. And that you never know when it's something you hear that isn't relevant at the moment, but it's going to be relevant, you know, two or three years down the road. So I'm going to cheer on GhostRetail all the way for many reasons, because it's you. And because it's a Canadian company. So because I'm 100% biased about that. So and if I'm not at that viewing party for the hip release, we're never speaking again.

Tyler Murray 42:31
Well, let me know how your red pill experiences goes. What you said at the end there is really important because I'm certainly not sitting here like I've got it all figured out. Even after such a long career of learning every single day, trying to figure out what the next step is going to be is just part of the journey and that actually never stops. So thank you for having me on. It's been a really awesome, awesome conversation.

Susan Sly 42:31
Thanks so much Tyler. And everyone check out GhostRetail. And if this show has been helpful, please share on social intake Tyler and I. All of his links are in the show notes. And we would love a five star review. So go on to wherever you review your podcast and then send a link to the review at reviews@Susansly.com. If I read your review on the air, I will give you a $50 amazon gift card and maybe you can use that to kickstart your business. You never know. So with that, I want to thank you again Tyler for being here. Go out and rock your day, everyone. God bless. And this has been another episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship.

Susan Sly 43:33
Hey this this Susan and thanks so much for listening to this episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. If this episode or any episode has been helpful to you, you've gotten at least one solid tip from myself or my guests, I would love it if you would leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcast. After you leave your review go ahead and email reviews@Susan sly.com. Let us know where you left a review. And if I read your review on air, you could get a $50 amazon gift card and he would so appreciate it because reviews do help boost the show and get this message all over the world. If you're interested in any of the resources we discussed on the show, go to Susansly.com That's where all this show notes live. And with that, go out there, rock your day, God bless, and I will see you in the next episode.

Susan Sly 44:26
Are you currently an employee looking to start your own business? Maybe you've been thinking about it for a while and you're just not sure where to start? Well my course Employee to Entrepreneur combines my decades of experience as an entrepreneur with proven methods, techniques and skills to help you take that leap and start your own business. This course is self paced, Learn on Demand and comes with an incredible workbook and that will allow you to go through this content piece by piece by piece. Absorb it, take action and then go on to the next module so check out my course on Susansly.com, Employee to Entrepreneur.