Millennials and Gen Z in B2B: "75% of buyers on the B2B side are Millennials or Gen Z. They were born in the last 30, 40 years, and these folks have become the majority of the buyer. And their expectation is that the seller offers an experience that is easy for them to use." - Brian Beck
Commerce Famous Podcast, episode 24: Brian Beck on the state of B2B commerce in 2024
Welcome to Season 2 of Commerce Famous! In this premiere episode, host Ben Marks sits down with Brian Beck, a 25-year veteran in the ecommerce space, renowned for his expertise in B2B.
Together, they delve into the evolving landscape of B2B commerce, discussing how digital transformation is reshaping the industry. From customization needs to emerging trends, this episode is packed with insights that are crucial for anyone navigating the complexities of B2B ecommerce. Don't miss out on this engaging start to the new season!
Listen to the episode right here or subscribe to Commerce Famous on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast player
The B2B digital experience: "If you present a digital experience that doesn't make the buyer's job easier, you're not going to succeed." - Brian Beck
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Transcript of Commerce Famous episode 24, an interview with Brian Beck
Ben Marks [00:00:38]: Hey, everyone. Welcome to commerce famous. This is your host, Ben Marks. This is episode one of season two, and with me today is Brian Beck, a 25 year veteran of e commerce and an absolute legend in the B2B space. Brian wrote a book back in 2020, $18 billion B2B Ecommerce and curates since 2021, the master B2B community for B2B professionals, and is also managing director of Enceiba, the only agency focused exclusively on helping B2B firms grow on Amazon. Brian, welcome to Commerce Famous.
Brian Beck [00:01:15]: Hey, Ben, thanks. Thanks for having me. And it's great to be on a podcast called Commerce Famous. My goodness, that's a great name. I'm not sure you'll live up to the expectation there, but I'm glad to be here with you.
Ben Marks [00:01:28]: Well, this is how you know you've arrived. I know there was a big question in your mind, but you can just go ahead. I don't know if you evaluate your own KPI's, but you can just tick them all off for the rest of the year. Now, you were so in the B2B world. I mean, I think you're a really well known personality and value driver. I think you were in Chicago recently for the B2B form there. Yes, I'm actually. Because I'm really just jealous that I wasn't there.
Ben Marks [00:01:58]: What event? Like, I know my colleagues were all thrilled. I know my colleagues from other platforms were all thrilled. It seemed like just an amazing event.
Brian Beck [00:02:06]: Yeah, B2B. So, yeah, I think you're referring to the B2B online conference which happened in Chicago recently. And, you know, it's interesting, Ben, about that. I mean, it's been a fascinating journey, particularly over the last ten years, as it relates to how b two b is now coming to the table for e commerce and B2B, when I'm. What I mean, by the way I define it just so everyone we're on the same wavelength is manufacturers and distributors and some degree brands using digital channels to meet the needs of today's b two b buyer. Really, it's the evolution we saw in B2C. Now here in B2B. And the conference that you asked about was really an indication, I think, of where the industry is.
Brian Beck [00:02:54]: And we're getting now, you know, 1000 people at this, at these shows where, you know, just a few years ago it was a few hundred, you know, even coming out of the pandemic. So it's really, you know, it's exciting to see some common themes emerged around some of the challenges and opportunities companies are facing in B2B, e commerce it is, and I kind of define e commerce is kind of a, you know, kind of almost too narrow definition these days because it's really about digital and how it affects every aspect of the business. But it was great to see all kinds of companies coming out. And then, of course, the solution provider community is very robust these days and gives these folks a lot of options, which is exciting.
Ben Marks [00:03:34]: Yeah, I mean, one of the, it is interesting to see how sentiments around the digital evolution of b two b have unfolded. The prevailing sort of group think on this Washington well, you know, just as people who have grown up with the Internet sort of always there and always on and bringing their sort of their own personal b two c consumer expectations into their roles inside b two b organizations that, you know, effectively we're just, oh, b two b is just b two b is ten years behind where what b two c is. But I think what we're finally, people are speaking up about is, no, that's it's still a completely, or it's a very different beast in there because there are different needs. There are, there are different demands, expectations, and, you know, and that's, you know, from the platform side, which has been my expertise for many years, if we call it expertise, you know, I've always known that. And what we've seen is that platforms, the platforms that do well in this space, they're either part of a larger offering that the business is using to operate. So just, it's another channel inside some other vendors offering. But for me, the ones that have made the most impact are the ones that allow just the most arbitrary level of customization and adaptation. That's what can you.
Ben Marks [00:05:12]: So I'd really love to kind of dig into this evolution away from the B two B is just really slow. B two C, right.
Brian Beck [00:05:22]: Well, it's fascinating because there is so much, it's funny, the first chapter of my book, I say the time is now, and it's really the first part of your statement there, which is, look, today, 75% of buyers in the B two B side are millennials or Gen Z. These folks, they were born in the last 30 years 40 years, and these folks have become the majority of the buyer. And their expectation is that the seller have an experience that's easy for them to use. The other thing I talk a lot about in my book is the success in B two B is making the buyer's job easier. It's different than B two C. I spent 17 years, been in the B two C side. I think that's where we first got to know each other, around e commerce at harbor freight tools and Pacsun, a bunch of other places. And b two b is different.
Brian Beck [00:06:14]: I mean, it's about making that buyer's job easier. Right? But that expectation is there. And there's a lot of commonality with B two C in the sense of some of the best practices. But there's also, to your point, on customization, there is a lot of unique need that buyers have in B two B. That goes far beyond what a B two C platform or B two C experience delivers. Custom products, custom pricing configurations and configure price quote, where people need to build certain types and applications for their business use. And that introduces complexity that has to be handled in the digital experience that a standardized kind of consumer e commerce experience doesn't deliver. If you present that and it doesn't make the buyer's job easier, you're not going to succeed.
Brian Beck [00:07:06]: Yeah, there's the buyer's expectation, but then there's another level of complexity. The good news is, as you know, Ben, I mean, solutions have evolved in b two b, right, to accommodate a lot of these, which is fantastic. So you're seeing that it is now the walls are coming down related to the success of digital and how it can support transactions and research in really every aspect of the customer experience. In b two B.
Female Narrator [00:07:36]: Commerce, famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source e commerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants. More than 50,000 clients already process over $25 billion in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in e commerce@shopware.com.
Ben Marks [00:07:54]: Dot this notion that the walls are coming down, I guess, would it be fair to say that an example of this is that you have this evolution of platforms who are able to facilitate and empower, empower both the buyer experience and the seller's requirements, as nuanced as they might be. For me, I think a helpful context is that back in the day, Magento as a platform, before it even had a b two B offering, became a market leader in b two B. And that is no small feat. I've mentioned it before on the podcast, but it really, it still remains a fascinating outcome that there wasn't any offering there. And I think that's a function of both the evolution that was happening at the time. But also it's really damn hard. And you had agencies saying like, well, there's unmet need here, and we have the technical wherewithal to actually deliver and we're going to do that in spite of working with the platform that is inherently b two c, and there are a lot of challenges with that. The most notable, I think, is one you mentioned, which is custom based on custom like price lists per customer pricing.
Ben Marks [00:09:16]: It seems from a, I can see in a software, like in a development backlog, oh, well, there's something we can work on. But when you get down to it, that becomes incredibly complex when you add that in as another factor in indexation and a host of other problems, let alone needing to understand organizational hierarchy and privileges and then these different, oh, we have to introduce credit facilities. It really is this sort of level far and above what honestly what b two c platforms have to deal with.
Brian Beck [00:09:53]: You mentioned Magento as an interesting example. Harbor freight tools was on Magento. Now we were principally consumer, but we also had a lot of businesses buying from us. I think the reason that Magento really, in the early years, and I'm talking about a b two b, 1015 years ago, captured more shares because it was more of an open source, inherently platform. So it could allow for some of that flexibility and customization because, yes, I mean, think about, you're talking about pricing, customization and unique price books and things. Think about the complexity of delivering that. When a company, a b, two b company might have multiple thousands of contracts for each with individual customers, each one of those contracts has a different price book associated to it, and it's housed in maybe three or four different erps. You've got no one single source of truth on pricing.
Brian Beck [00:10:43]: And then the ecommerce system has to consume that, understand who that customer is, present that without slowing everything down. Then think about search, presenting, pricing and search results. I mean, the order of complexity, magnitude of complexity in b two b is much more significant. And if you look at the history too, Ben, back in the day, back in the day, still living with this, a lot of companies have e commerce platforms. They built themselves. Some of the big distributors out there. Think about the graingers and the fastenals and the mscs and motion industries and thermo fishers and all these companies that have significant e commerce platforms. A lot of them built those technologies themselves because nothing existed really, or they highly customized something that was in market.
Brian Beck [00:11:32]: But these capabilities now are much more commonly available because the opportunity is huge for these companies to digitally transform.
Ben Marks [00:11:41]: It's been a position for, for my current employer, Shopware, as well as some of our friends out there like at future commerce and others, that you have this unmet, you have this mid market of businesses, especially b two b, that are not noteworthy to talk about. They're not logos that anyone understands or is aware of, but they're literally in everything in your house. They make your life possible, yet they've been going at it alone for so long. I wanted to actually bring this out because your book, which we should not fail to mention the title, if I didn't already, billion dollar b two b e commerce came out in 2018. One of your highlights from there steps for selecting an e commerce platform. I want to pull out another topic in just a second, but first I wanted to say, what do you say when you're, when you're having these conversations and you have these businesses that they built up, they have a bespoke, truly purpose built or so heavily customized offering that it's effectively bespoke? What is that transformation moment like for them when they say, you know, what we are? How are we balancing what we've, the value and utility of what we built against knowing that the offerings are getting better and better? And what is that crossover point where we should make the investment?
Brian Beck [00:13:11]: Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that, but I mean, some of these big companies, and I talked to them, we'll talk a little bit about the master BDB thought leadership and community series that I've developed with some folks. But what we hear a lot, and I talk to a lot of those companies that are at that inflection point, actually, because what happens is when you get to a certain point in developing your own platform, all of a sudden you step back, even if you got significant revenue running through it, et cetera, and say, well, wait, I am recreating features and capabilities that exist in the market. I'm not a software company. What am I truly best in the world at? It's a very, very tough thing to say. If you've invested hundreds of millions in some cases or even billions in platforms that are yours, now you're managing them and you're trying to keep up with e commerce platforms and point solutions. And I mean, there's so much innovation happening everywhere with payments and search and AI driven content, CMS, hyper relevant experiences. How do you keep up with that. If you're an industrial distributor, for example, and the question is, should you? I argue you shouldn't in that moment when that reached, when it says, heck, we're not best in the world at this.
Brian Beck [00:14:36]: There's billions of dollars or hundreds of millions being invested in companies that by PE, private equity and venture capital to go in and build best of breed solutions and to keep up with and experiment with AI and how that's being used across all these different areas. You know, you make a decision to say, and it has to come from the top of the organization to say, okay, we're going to stop being a Sol or trying to be a software company, and we're going to start to become a really focus in on what we do best. Now, it could be a painful transition for some of these companies, which is why I say it's Ben. It's easier almost at this point if you haven't started yet.
Ben Marks [00:15:13]: Well, you were so mastering b two B. Actually, I'm going to interrupt my, my previous promise to dig into another bullet point from billion dollar b two B, no worries. But yeah, you invoked master b two B, the community that you've built there. And one of the public outputs from this is this fireside chat. And I think you just had one. You just had one. And I think you were chatting with the chief digital officer from us electrical services. And one of the big, the big topic there is getting executive buy in for digital transformation.
Ben Marks [00:15:52]: This is the thing. And I've been, maybe I'm way off, but I keep going back to, I keep going back to when I was in my teens and I had the first car, and you love that first car. You do everything to make that car yours. But then at some point, as you start to become a functioning adult with responsibilities and you start having more and more bills to pay and you realize, well, wait, okay, having to spend x amount just to keep the thing on the road, let alone benefiting from the new features that are coming out and new cars automatically just off the showroom floor. That kind of. Okay, build versus buy. But also, I think there's another concept here that we shouldn't ignore, which is that the smart buyers, the smart buyers in the space, they're the ones that, they're coming to the table looking at the very opinionated offerings out there. And then they're saying, you know what I can do? I can build better than I can buy.
Ben Marks [00:16:58]: And I'm going to ask you to take a position here. Do you think that that attitude is more or less prevalent in the b two b space.
Brian Beck [00:17:09]: Well, by necessity, it has had to have been more. I think there's a realization that it should be less, though occurring, and I'm seeing it in their conversations. I was just two days ago, Ben, I was in Denver for an executive roundtable. So Master B two b, we run, we're a community all over the United States and some in the world, around the world, and we share these discussions, the same discussions we're having today about platforms and executive alignment and should I sell on Amazon or not? All those sorts of things, you know, those come to the forefront in these conversations. And the conversation we had in Denver ties into what we're talking about here. And what's interesting is there's kind of a dichotomy. And you've got folks that are, that are, you know, that have invested in the past. They tend to be the distributors that have invested in e commerce and platforms in the past.
Brian Beck [00:18:02]: And those folks, you know, some of them still maintain this, hey, you know, I need to, my buyer's different. I need to meet their needs. To some degree, they're right that their buyer is different because buyers do vary from category to category in b two b, e commerce or industries. But as I mentioned, some of the ones who have done that investment at significant scale over the last 1015 years are now saying, I shouldn't own this. So I think you get a little more of that. Now, the folks that are, again, this came out of our conversation in Denver and other places around the country. We've done these roundtables in Dallas, Atlanta and La and Chicago and really all over the country. And those conversations also where the companies haven't yet started their e commerce journey.
Brian Beck [00:18:47]: And believe me, particularly amongst manufacturers, there's a lot of them. It still surprises me. They are more leaning into, hey, we're not going to solve this ourselves. We need technology. We're not going to build it ourselves. So that dichotomy, if they haven't started yet, they're definitely leaning into third party solutions. But at the end of the day, either, both of them, the common theme is we need flexibility in what we deliver because our buyers needs are always evolving. So thinking about a platform that gives them that flexibility to be able to add best of breed, it's a best of breed world.
Brian Beck [00:19:26]: Now I think in a lot of ways you referenced companies historically would go to where there's a best of suite, where there's, hey, everybody is best of suite means, hey, it's a full stack solution. I can get everything I need in one place. There's this real heavy trend in the industry to move to. The term for is composable commerce, where you can attach different components and really get the best search or the best Pim solutions or any of that kind of thing. Anyway, it's an interesting evolution happening. Again, it does fall behind where b two c is in a lot of ways because b two c is there. But again, we got more complexity here in this market with b two b.
Ben Marks [00:20:10]: Yeah, all very well said. I'm glad you mentioned composable because you were describing the use case and there is an imperative, actually I would just come back and even say there is an imperative to try and to set yourself up for best of breed because these solutions, one of the interesting things for me in this evolution that you and I have witnessed, and I mean you've been around, you've been around this business even longer than I have, building up in the early days of the early days of digital and then businesses actually going online and just sort of figuring out it's a great time because it was pretty easy to total the greenfield and you could do simple things that would make huge difference. And now we have this largely commoditized. The space is well established, commoditized. But what we've seen, at least this is my theory, we have some of these adjacent application scopes, things like customer engagement, payments, resource planning, warehouse management. These topics, the ones that have survived, come into being and survive the last ten years have grown into suites and platforms all on their own. So now you have a collection of platforms that you have to then get to agree on things. And so composable, I think is the strategy that has emerged, approach strategy that has emerged that says, hey, we can take bits and bobs.
Ben Marks [00:21:44]: If these things are properly constructed, we can take the bits and bobs from this thing, bits and bobs from this thing and we can pull them together in a cohesive app all our own. So our app is ours, but it really benefits ideally, and the theory is it benefits from the product development, the many ecosystems that exist around each of these things. So that like if, you know, if I have, I don't, as a business, I shouldn't always have to, I'll use some product language here. As a business I shouldn't, I shouldn't always have to be the one driving, innovating on customer experience. I should be able to at least benefit partially on customer engagement. The work coming out of a company that specializes in customer engagement, I do think we've lost the thread a bit. Or maybe this industry, my industry is when I always start, my hackles go up. When I heard businesses speaking in terms of architecture rather than their requirements.
Ben Marks [00:22:54]: I mean, I now, so whenever I hear a business, someone from business talking about, oh, we need to be composable, we need to be headless, we need to be. Well, what do you mean? What do you think you mean when you say that? And the reason I asked the question, and everyone should ask the question is what are the underlying requirements for that? Oh, well, we need to be able to pivot on customer engagement once we discover need. We need to be able to have that deployed within two weeks. Are these, do you think. Let me see. It's kind of a. Maybe it's a pregnant question for me, but do you find that we've gone from this world and b two b, we've gone from this world of bespoke to, okay, we're now invoking, we're benefiting from the evolution of platforms and then, oh, wow, we can start put all this together in this utopia of composability. But then, now the businesses have, have seen what is involved in that, that there's maybe still a need for curation there.
Brian Beck [00:24:02]: Well, yeah, for sure. So I think it's got to start, Ben, with the customer. Right. So, and I always, you know, I hear this from, sometimes companies don't really invest in digital the way they should until their customers scream at them. I've got a case study in my book. Seriously, I love it. No, I'm serious. I've got a case study in my book.
Brian Beck [00:24:25]: It's from a company called Illumina a few years ago, obviously. But that's what happened. Essentially, the customers came to them and said, and this is a $3.5 billion manufacturer of medical products. They're a life sciences company. And their customers came to them and said, hey, listen, Illumina, you need to make this whole process easier. Our buyers and our influencers, the procurement teams and the people using the product, they all want to transact with you digitally. If you don't provide it, we're going to an alternative provider. Basically.
Brian Beck [00:24:56]: It takes something like that sometimes to drive the decision. Now, we just did a survey at Master B, two B customers. So we surveyed customers, excuse me, on b, two b companies that talked about the level of investment. It's for our state of b, two b e commerce 2024. So we got 225 or 250 or so results from b, two b manufacturers and distributors. We asked them about how and where are they making investment decisions. One of the biggest takeaways from that was just the, the fact that the need for investment is now being hurt. I was blown away at the number of people that said, hey, I now have sufficient investment or financial resources available to me from my board and from my C suite and my CFO to make the investments I need to make.
Brian Beck [00:25:54]: I think it was about 60%. We're coming out with a study in the next couple of weeks. Something around 60% said they have the investment. But the thing that comes with that, and this feels so b two c is that there's fat now. There's a higher demand on time to value. So return on investment demands from that C suite, from the board are now higher than they've been in any time in the past three years. We asked that question as well. And so what I take out from that is that ultimately this translates down to customer need.
Brian Beck [00:26:27]: People feeling the pressure from new entrants. You know, we talk a little bit about Amazon business, if you'd like, and what Amazon's doing. I spend a lot of time on that side of the fence and, you know, working on and putting in, putting real pressure and particularly in distribution. You know, Andy whore, my master b two B partner, came out with a prediction, right? We said that this, that we said this in 23 and we see it coming through over the last two years. There is pressure. We call that the great distributor squeeze. And that distributor squeeze is coming from new entrants like Amazon business, vertical marketplaces, but also manufacturers selling direct. We're in a massive sea change right now.
Brian Beck [00:27:07]: In b two b, it's because the dollars are finally getting invested into digital and e commerce. And it's because, you know, the buyer has changed. And if you're not paying attention to what the buyer is doing and where they're looking, Amazon business, they're, you know, you're going to lose relevance. So it's, you know, it's one of these really fascinating parts. And Ben, I like to joke, it keeps me feeling young, right? Because, because I was in e commerce 25 years ago and, you know, 19 99 20 00 20 01 pioneering stuff in b two c commerce and, you know, this b two b world is experiencing some of the same disruption now that occurred then in b two c. And to me it's exciting and fun and companies that want to take advantage of it can create massive opportunities for themselves.
Ben Marks [00:27:56]: Well, yeah, coming off of the, for me, I was not a fan of zero interest, zero interest days because it really masked that. Really, I feel like there had been a bit of an ice age when it came to meaningful capital. I don't have a better term for it, but it seems like we've actually, what you're describing is this thawing of businesses actually deploying capital that they care about. And that is always a great way to recognize intent, recognize a moment. So I'll shift quickly just so we can talk about one of your other areas of expertise which you cited. And this is the work that you're doing, I think, at Insiba, just looking into, looking into the Amazon and really taking full advantage of Amazon. It sounds like this is quite the imperative at this point for a lot of.
Brian Beck [00:28:57]: Well, I mean, it kind of depends on your business model, right? So we argue and we believe and we started the business because we believe that b, two B manufacturers in particular have an imperative to control and manage their presence and take advantage of the opportunity that Amazon provides. Because let's be honest, man, I mean, look at where Amazon business did for over $40 billion in b two b revenue last year. And that's just what ran through Amazon business. It doesn't include small businesses using personal prime accounts to buy product. If you're not well represented on Amazon business, you're losing relevance with this new generation of buyers. Gen Z, you know, millennials, they are natives there. And so one of my most fun and scary activities been with a Civ. I'm sitting there with the CEO of a manufacturing company.
Brian Beck [00:29:49]: We work with a lot of very large companies, multibillion dollar companies. We'll do a search on their product name on Amazon business and we'll look at what comes up and they've never heard of any of these brands. And then you look at, you look at the volume, like we have tools that will pull how much revenue they're doing. Each individual product is doing three, 4510 million dollars. And you look at the price points in some cases and the quality of the product in some cases will order the product, it'll be a similar quality. There's a perception that, hey, just because it's coming out of, for example, China, guess what? It's the same factories coming out of products. I mean, I mean, hey, look, harbor Freight tools has a huge multi billion dollar business on this business model. They go direct into China.
Brian Beck [00:30:37]: They pull business in from China, products in from China, sell them in their stores and there's, you know, 1500 stores now. It's a wonderful business, the guys, this has been done before. B, two b is not insulated from this and b, two b buyers, you know, oh my customer is different. You know, they're not going to buy from Amazon. Well, no, they will, particularly if they know what they want. And the fact is, 74% of millennials avoid, actively avoid sales reps. Actively avoid sales reps. 74%.
Brian Beck [00:31:08]: Where are they going? They're ecomm natives. You're not delivering with your own e commerce. Your distributors aren't delivering with e commerce in an effective way. Guess where they go? They're buying other products. They're buying from Amazon. So the whole notion of our business was to go to traditional manufacturers and empower them to take advantage of this channel while avoiding channel conflict. Because the other complaint is, hey, I'm going to disintermediate all my intermediate, all of my traditional distribution. Well, if you do it right and don't sell the product to Amazon in a wholesale manner, and you manage it through seller central, which is a different way to sell on Amazon, you can then really effectively mitigate that conflict.
Brian Beck [00:31:47]: So anyway, there's lots to unpack there. But the point of the matter is Amazon business is here and it's growing dramatically and it's an important thing that you have to consider. And if you're a distributor, you also need to understand what they're doing because guess what? They're in many ways competing with you, but it's also an opportunity for you for private label and other products. So it's a fascinating area, Ben. Amazon is just so good at staying focused on the customer. And now the B two B customer. Right? So, yeah, we do a whole podcast and we.
Ben Marks [00:32:19]: And we may. So I'm going to. Regretfully, I'm going to, going to bring us to a close here, but I'm going to see if I can tie some of these threads into a bow here. So enceba e n c e I B a is the place to go if this. If what, Brian, not Andy, what Brian was just saying was interesting. It's interesting to you and I. Now I have to ask and see, but is this like a, like a partial anagram of your name?
Brian Beck [00:32:52]: No, it's actually, it's. The name comes from the Seba tree, which is the tallest tree in the Amazon rainforest, hence the logo. We help our clients stand out. There you go.
Ben Marks [00:33:01]: Boom. Okay. Okay. I mean, it is, it is actually a partial anagram of your name, but that makes a lot, that makes a lot more sense. And then we have. And then of course, your, you know, your, your, your seminal, seminal work, billion dollar b, two b e commerce lots do. There could be another podcast. But again, I've mentioned before how community comes up again and again, comes up again and again in this podcast.
Ben Marks [00:33:30]: Master B two B seems like who should be there.
Brian Beck [00:33:37]: Yeah. So it is a community. It's folks involved in digital transformation for their b two b business distributors brands.
Ben Marks [00:33:45]: Do you have any gate on sort of size of company or customer base?
Brian Beck [00:33:50]: No, no. I mean, we tend to get a lot of mid market to enterprise that participate, but it's open to everyone. We have an online forum. You go to masterb two b.com comma masterb two B.com and you can find, you can join the community. You join the forum there. We have that's practitioners only. We run events all over the country, roundtables. We welcome practitioners together for these discussions about issues like we've talked about today.
Brian Beck [00:34:18]: And we have an annual summit which is coming up at the University of Chicago's graduate School of Business. It's actually just in June and that's a gathering of 130 leaders in b two B. So these are vps of ecomm, directors of e Comm, chief digital officers, VPsheende and ctos, and it sector, heads of marketing and sales. If you're involved with digital aspects of your business, commerce or otherwise, digital experience, any of that, this is a place for you to share and learn with peers. It's a very trusted sort of transparent community to talk about the issues like we're talking about.
Ben Marks [00:34:54]: Yeah. Brian, in my experience, this kind of well curated environment where you're putting the people who are really having to make these decisions together, the value, you really, you can't put a price on it. One parting question, what do you do with all your spare time?
Brian Beck [00:35:11]: Yeah, that don't happen.
Ben Marks [00:35:13]: It's just this, folks, he is a man with a singular dedication. Brian, look forward to meeting you in person sometime. But for now, I have to say thank you very, very much for helping us kick off season two of commerce famous.
Brian Beck [00:35:26]: Been an honor to be here. Ben, thanks for having the conversation and enjoyed it.
