Paving the Way for Brand Growth in the eCommerce Landscape With Darin Lynch

Darin Lynch is the Founder and CEO of Irish Titan, which builds and grows e-commerce channels. With experience in corporate IT, he worked for companies, including Principal Financial Group, Wilsons Leather, and the Platinum Group. Darin is also a national speaker specializing in e-commerce, leadership, culture, and entrepreneurship.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

The genesis of Irish Titan: how Darin Lynch built the company
Darin talks about his most influential boss — and how he identified his entrepreneurial itch
What are the typical barriers to e-commerce brand growth?
Essential considerations for e-commerce integrations
How to improve your marketing to scale
Darin’s recommended tool for product feed management
The value of agency partnerships
Buying a beer for Clint Eastwood and meeting Simon Sinek
How growing up on a farm nurtured Darin’s entrepreneurial spirit

In this episode…

eCommerce trends like shoppable videos and headless integrations are sweeping the market, and brands stall their growth when trying to capitalize on them simultaneously. So what key aspects should merchants focus on, and how can they partner with an agency to accelerate growth?

As one of the early e-commerce adopters, growth leader Darin Lynch says brands must understand e-commerce basics like data management, omnichannel integrations, the path-to-purchase, and the user experience to remove growth barriers. When analyzing these areas, many merchants notice inaccurate product listings or descriptions on various channels, so updating keywords and integrating data to optimize profits is crucial. Darin also recommends partnering with an agency that specializes in areas you struggle to scale. This requires clearly articulating your business strategy, priorities, target audience, and supply chain management so the agency can build and grow your ideas.

In today’s Up Arrow Podcast episode, Darin Lynch, the Founder and CEO of Irish Titan, joins William Harris to talk about enhancing growth for stagnant e-commerce brands. Darin shares how to improve your marketing efforts, how merchants should consider e-commerce integrations, and his experience meeting Clint Eastwood and Simon Sinek.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the Show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everybody, William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt. And the host of this podcast, I'm interviewing the best minds in E commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond. Today, the guests that I have with me is Darin Lynch, Darin founded Irish Titan in E commerce agency way back in 2004. What he calls the E commerce Dark Ages, with clients like the Minnesota Wild every the Packers hammer maze center power sports many more. He knows a lot about what's working in E commerce. He wants brought or bought Clint Eastwood of beer, and he's a former and future presidential candidate. And he had the nation's highest score in Contra. There's a lot of fun stuff that we're going to unpack there. Darin, I'm excited to have you here.

Darin Lynch 1:00

Yeah. Thanks for having me, William. I'm looking forward to the conversation. And I think we could go deep on all of those irrelevant topics, like Contra, Clint Eastwood and presidential candidacies?

William Harris 1:12

Yeah, for it. We'll go deep on the irrelevant in the relevant stuff. We've got some good things planned for you guys today. And I was thinking about who introduced us. And I want to say it was years ago, Grant, Dickens was the one who kind of put us in touch. Does that sound right?

Darin Lynch 1:26

It is it is. Yep. Graham has connected me to many impressive people over the years, you've been one of them. And he has a good nose for that. He's, he's good at connecting people who both I think have synergy in their businesses and what they do and who are going to connect personally and professionally in general. Yeah, I

William Harris 1:45

completely agree. And Graham just being somebody who I've found extremely helpful in many, many ways, from connections, but also just helping with PR, you know, he's done some PR work for us, and just a very knowledgeable guy. And very helpful. Yeah, I

Darin Lynch 1:59

think very highly of him. Yeah,

William Harris 2:02

I want to get into the meat. Before I do. I do gotta announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 Art customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800 million won that recently IP owed. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world. By Adweek, you can learn more on our website@elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.com. That said, let's get on to the fun, interesting stuff here. Tell me a little bit about the backstory of what led you to founding Irish Titan. I've been to some of your events. And you've actually got one coming up here. And Robert Gilbreath, who was on previous episode here, former President over at ShipStation. I know that he speaks there. And he's speaking that again this year with you. So I've been to your events. You come out in a kilt. You've got bagpipes. It's one of the best events I think that exists in the E commerce space. And everybody who's been there agrees but what made you start this and how did you get to where you are? Yeah,

Darin Lynch 3:07

so um, quick sidebar, I'll I'll add a little bit more color on the event that your name checking there. So the name of the event that you're referring to is e-comm forum, we do two big events every year ones can all call our shenanigans for good, which is in March, just our general get together to where we raise funds for a charity of choice when we draw a raffle ticket out of my green leather top hat e-comm forum is the event that Robert has spoken at and that's high content, high energy, the spirit of it, the spirit of it, is to celebrate ecommerce achievements to date and inspire those yet to come. So that's on Thursday, October 12. Here in Minneapolis, you can attend in person at Hutton house, it will also be live streamed if you check out Irish titan.com You can get to more information or there is an event page e-comm forum mpls.com. Okay, moving on, though a little bit of the backstory about Irish Titan to answer your question. So I've been in technology for a long, long time. I grew up on a farm in Iowa, which may or may not get to someone that sort of personal background. But even with that sort of background, I got into technology pretty early and was exposed to e commerce very early pre historically, you might say so I ran the project to launch office Max's e commerce in 1998. And way back then I thought hmm, I think there's something to this e commerce thing. So then I was exposed to additional massive e commerce opportunities and rolling out Wilson's leather, e commerce and then the second swing golf, e commerce. And that's what led to me launching Irish Titan outside of our domain expertise I've always known I was going to start my own company. I think when I started, I was tightened. Nobody was surprised. I don't always take direction. Well, I tend to be often wrong, never in doubt, that sort of thing, which is a common trait of many entrepreneurs and founders. salutely. Right. And so I don't think anybody was surprised. And then through some good luck, and then some intentional decisions, that exposure and continued investment in E commerce is what shaped the early days of Irish Titan.

William Harris 5:31

Oh, that's great. I had to laugh, because you're absolutely right about that idea of what often wrong always sure, or whatever you said there and often wrong, never in doubt. That that is that's very true. To be an entrepreneur, you have to almost go against what makes sense oftentimes to just push through, because it's oftentimes not the most logical decision. If you're pushing forward for something that is the future and everybody disagrees with you. I remember even reading, you know, in the news, when the iPhone came out, people bashing it like, Yeah, this is really going to catch on. Nobody wants to video call somebody. And now we can't even imagine what it would be like if this thing didn't exist. And so sometimes you have to be able to push through all of the noise and chatter about the negative to negativity and stuff.

Darin Lynch 6:18

Right. Yeah, you know, I think that I think founders and entrepreneurs, regardless of industry, all share some of that willful ignorance of common sense, you know, because it really is, if you exclude most factors, it is an illogical decision to try to start your own thing, because there is far more risk to that far more doubt to that there are market uncertainties, product uncertainties, people uncertainties, all of that. But I think the those of us who are wired to bear those risks, whether it's that concept of often wrong, never in doubt, or jumping off the cliff and making a net on your way down. Those sorts of traits that we all share. That's what drives us, you know, I think that I knew I was going to do my own thing. I was, I didn't start my own company until much after I anticipated starting one. And that was sort of the good fortune of having had a series of really good, some great bosses that taught me a lot that invested in me. And I fell forward through enough of those in a good way. Where I didn't quite have that jumping off point that a lot of entrepreneurs do, where they're kind of like an Fu, I'm gonna go start my own thing. And instead, I just kept learning and growing and challenging myself until really, the natural step was for me to start Irish Titan back in 2004.

William Harris 7:55

I can relate to so much of what you said there. One of the things that cracks me up about this, and I can say that I had a lot of really good bosses that led me to where I was as well. And I started my my business much later in life than what I think anybody would have thought for me as well. But I often remember one of those moments when clearly I was not employee material, right? Like we talked about, like, eventually you're like, Yeah, you're an entrepreneur, you need to do things your own way. And one of those, one of those moments where it was, you know, you're talking about having good bosses that helped guide and steer you towards things. And I think about this, even when I hire people now, this was back when I was a nurse, and I started off an open heart. And they said, You know, I interviewed and she said, Well, we don't take new grads, I appreciate you applying and I said well, this is the only place I plan on applying to it's this or nothing for me kind of thing. And she called me back the next day and she said, Okay, I like your attitude. Let's give this a shot. That said, I'm 20 years old, you know, I'm not even legal age to drink and I'm passing out narcotics and taking care of people that just had open heart surgery. And I can remember this time when my wife came to visit me at the time, she was just my girlfriend, and then her mom had dropped her off and then she was there hanging out during you know, lunch or whatever, but then Mom left and so she didn't have anywhere else to go. And so I just had her sleep. Like underneath the desk there's a fever pillow is like your you sleep right here. And I remember my boss chewing me out pretty good about that the next day saying you're absolutely lucky that I don't fire you kind of thing. And I think potentially the only reason I didn't get fired is because I was I think I was the only guy out of like 95 employees in the unit right? And so they're like, Okay, we can't fire the only guy we've got right now we got to let him slide a little bit. But it was one of those moments where I realized that you know, I had a lot of good bosses and and she was one of my absolute favorite her. Her name was Tiffany good Whitmer, one of my absolute favorite bosses and taught me so much I grew a ton as a person then I imagine you've got a story that's similar, some kind of a story where you look back and you say clearly I wasn't all the way thinking through this or whatever is there anything like that, that you can point to? Yeah,

Darin Lynch 10:05

a couple stories come to mind with what you just shared. First, slight sidebar, the best boss I ever had. And I had a series of great bosses, was my first boss out of college, who didn't even have a college degree, he was very experienced and seasoned by that point at Principal Financial Group. But he taught me the differences between management and leadership taught me about the value in really assessing the people you're going to be working with, rather than the name on the shingle. And so I think one of the one of the lessons there is, you know, he's the best boss I've ever had. And he didn't have a college degree. And so I think that we can learn great lessons from people who are great leaders, right? Regardless of what credentials they might have. So when you talked about was a couple of your bosses that that came to mind. But in terms of when I really started to realize what, what was in store for me starting my own company, to two items. So when I was starting to explore options toward the end of my tenure at Wilsons leather, I interviewed with a few different companies. And I had a similar experience at Target and Tractor Supply Company. Both of them have personality assessment tools, I don't remember exactly which ones they work that was a long time ago now. And both of those companies, the HR person I was working through, came out to talk to me after those, after they received the assessment results and read through them, and said, in so many words, are you sure you're interested in working for a company like fill in the blank? Right? And I would kind of laugh and say, Well, what do you mean, it says, Well, it seems here that you're the type of person who is probably best wired to be doing their own sort of thing, and trying to start your own enterprise. Right. And I would laugh at that, because they were they were spot on. I think at that time, there was probably an element of Am I ready for this yet, and also an element of wanting to continue to invest in some of my own education in in the space. So I took the job at second swing golf really knowing full well, that was going to be my last stop, because that was an opportunity where I had full operational responsibility for everything technology as CIO. But I also had p&l for all of ecommerce, which didn't even exist when I took it. So I had this opportunity to build an E commerce practice with p&l responsibility. And that just felt like too good to pass up. And I felt like that was sort of the final tuition that I earned before starting Iris Titan, because by the time I ran its course there, there was nothing else to learn. Yeah,

William Harris 12:49

that's great. I love it. You've obviously you've done a lot. Now, you've seen a lot, you've learned a lot, you share a lot, you are a thought leader in your own right now in this space. And so I want to take some of what you've learned, and help people figure out how they can grow their own e commerce businesses. And one of the things like if I was gonna say, what's the overall theme of this? It's how to get out of your own way of success and or slash? How do we? How do you work best with a growth agency? How can how can those two teams work in house in agency work together? You guys do full service, right? Like, we focus just on the ad side of things you guys are looking at, from everything from the actual dev work itself to the CRO to the email to the ads of like full growth service. And so there's a lot of moving pieces there. One of the things that I feel like you and I have connected on and talked about before is just how some brands get in the way of their own success. What are some of the things that you've seen that are pitfalls of brands, that could be much more successful? If they didn't do this? Or if they did do this?

Darin Lynch 14:07

Yeah, I think that there are some commonalities there across businesses, and industry industries. That I'll circle back to that. But I do want to make sure to respect the area of focus that we're talking about around e commerce and digital right. And I think that the area in which merchants get in their way, and that's how we refer to our clients as merchants, that's how much e commerce focus we have, right? The area that we see merchants getting in their own way, excuse me, is usually one of two different spots, either not really partnering well with us in the sense of knowing their business and focusing on that and trusting us to be experts in our business and holding each other accountable, accountable. But I think that if you I find an agency whether it's on the build side, and when we're building the sites, or the growth side where either one of us is working with our merchants to grow their businesses, it's really imperative for a merchant, to be able to articulate their business, their strategy, their priorities, have a good handle on that have a good handle on who their customer is, what their supply chain looks like, all of those things that are really part and parcel of their business, so that we either one of us can take their business and represent that and grow that online. And merchants I think, frequently, the ones, the ones that we have the best relationships and results with focus on that focus on communicating that to us, and then let us do our job, so to speak, right. So that's one of the failures. I think that another common pitfall, maybe more so than failure is that tendency to either under complicate or overcomplicate common areas of focus. And so I think that that would be exemplified by things like data hygiene, integration, sophistication, sometimes the path to purchase and the user experience, those are areas that either a merchant might say, Well, why can't this just like why? Why can't we get it done this week? Right, and their data is in complete disarray? Well, we got to clean that otherwise, not only will it not be represented on your site, right, but let's think about this from an omni channel perspective, right? If we don't get your data, right, your site's not gonna represent right, Amazon's Amazon's not gonna represent, right? Facebook's not going to represent, right, et cetera. And so I think that that tendency to overcomplicate or under, oversimplify or, or under simplify, really can be problematic.

William Harris 16:52

Yeah. And one of the areas that I think you and I have talked about where there's sometimes some over complication that takes place is headless or not, and not that we need to get into that one as a specific one. But, you know, it reminds me of the meme that I think you've probably seen here too, or that's like the, the the bell curve, and then you've got, like, you know, like this dummy over here, that's like, you know, Shopify is all I need. And then you've got, you know, it's a good enlightened one that says, like, I need to go headless and completely customize everything. And then there's like the guru, and it's like Yoda, it's like Shopify is all I need. And I do feel like there is this this method, where it's like, a little bit of knowledge makes you think that you need to go headless and completely, constantly this wild thing, and then a lot of knowledge makes you realize that just use what works what's already been proven.

Darin Lynch 17:39

Yep. Yeah, I would agree with that. I do think headless has has a place. And quite honestly, I think headless is probably going to grow. As the technology grows, that enables and empowers it. I think that that will fund or excuse me, fuel headless growth, more than continued growth in E commerce. And I say that because headless to speak real simply about it, is the separation of your shopping cart and shopping engine, from your content management and presentation, right? There are more nuanced ways to say it, but in the simplest way, that's how I like to define it. Not all that many brands really need that from a consumer perspective right now. Some do if you're really brand heavy, maybe and have a lot of influencer content and thought leadership content, etc. Right, but not all that many actually need it now. But as the E commerce technologies grow, that let a more powerful CMS connect with a more powerful shopping cart and connect with a more powerful feed engine, like headless will, I think, grow and adoption as those technologies grow. But right now, I do think that, I guess I shouldn't say a majority. But a significant number of headless sites didn't really need to be headless. Because it was driven by somebody sort of that was attracted to the buzzword, or really technology driven and not market or consumer driven.

William Harris 19:20

Yeah. And so, you know, that's one area that people can end up kind of overcomplicating things. What are some other areas that you found merchants who are at that $10 million mark, they're trying to break through? They're trying to break into the 15 $20 million mark, what's something else that they tend to overcomplicate? You mentioned, you know, integrations? Is that Kylie like number two or?

Darin Lynch 19:48

Yeah, so integrations. I would say merchants tend to underestimate integration. Now I will also say integrations are pretty concise. distantly becoming easier than they used to be. And I can say that because in 2004, when I started Irish Titan, and we were doing e commerce sites right away, it was a goddamn nightmare to integrate e commerce site, which we were pretty early to Magento. So I can say, like Magento and 2009. And integrating that, with some ERP of the late 2000s, late aughts, that was a nightmare, it was a really heavy lift, it is astronomically exponentially easier today than back then. And it's still a challenge, because of either data hygiene, or ERP, e commerce touchpoints being from different eras, if an ERP maybe isn't upgraded yet, etc. Or there starts to be one of my concepts is this emerging thought and notion of commerce anywhere. And I think then, when I say that I'm referring to this emergence of not just Commerce on a branded site, and not just on a marketplace like Amazon now, but social, which we're all pretty familiar with. A lot of your clients do a lot on social a lot of ours do a lot, a lot of merchants do a lot on social. But so now there's branded, there's marketplace, there's social, I think shoppable video is going to continue to emerge overseas, it's already massively successful and popular, right? There are four massive channels that you need to integrate and make sure product feeds are accurate. Your customers and your orders are accurate, etc. that integration is pretty complex, even if all your systems are current, because you have to think about where's our one version of the truth, all of those sorts of considerations that come into play.

William Harris 21:46

Yeah, 100% with you there and you know, shoppable video being absolutely something that I think is taking off a lot more. Even you mentioned, you know, the social aspect, we're finally starting to see some adoption on, you know, people just checking out right on Facebook and Instagram, Tik Tok shops, I remember them pushing this, you know, years ago, and nobody bought into it, it just didn't happen. And it kind of seemed like it was a failed start. And I didn't think they were gonna come back to it. And then they've, they've kind of pushed and come back to it. And it seems like there's been a lot better adoption this time around. And to your point, it's that idea of I like you said, like commerce everywhere, where, you know, making sure that you can have that checkout experience that you need, and have that customer experience that you need. Anywhere that the customer is, that's a big part of it. Right? What about? Yeah, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Oh, looked at you're gonna say someone else. So what about if there was a, let's say, a brand that came to you, let's say I came to you today. And I said, Hey, we're an ecommerce store. We've done a lot of good things we're doing 10 million a year, we can't break through? What are what are the 323 things that you say, I can almost guarantee without even looking at what you've got going on that these are probably the problems that you're running into, and why you've stalled out on growth, and you can't figure out what to do.

Darin Lynch 23:04

So a couple things come to mind. I don't want to oversimplify things. But I think you and I probably both run across some super common low hanging fruit, right? So for example, one of the most common things that we find that merchants aren't doing a good job with our things like abandoned shopping cart, emails, SMS based marketing, which is a pretty easy lift, pretty easy plug in, a lot of merchants aren't doing that. Another common area that we're encountering, and I've mentioned it a few times, is product feed management. Because yeah, if you're around 10 million, you're probably selling on multiple channels, you have your branded site, and maybe Amazon or maybe on social. Well, what we are finding is a lot of merchants don't have a strong Feed Management System or approach. And so their products aren't being listed accurately on the different channels. So maybe it posts accurately on your own site. But then when you try to feed it to Amazon, your description is unnecessarily abbreviated, right. Or perhaps you send it to Facebook, and it doesn't have enough category information. So I think that that is one of the things that not as much low hanging fruit, let's call an abandoned shopping cart that they're not putting in practice, let's call that low hanging fruit. But that product feed management is one of the things that um, that a brand can examine to get to that next level. And frequently, it's pretty straightforward once you start to zero in on it.

William Harris 24:42

When I think about feed management, one of the things that I think about is you're you're trying to give the platform as much data as it can to make an intelligent decision and and you'll see something come over it's the product name and let's say that it's a very much branded product and, and let's just say that it's you know, a A product A and it's just Earth, like that's the name of the product is like Earth. And that's what you get. And it's like, well, there's no good keywords in here that Google can use to help it figure out what to show up for what searches in to show up for. And so sending that information makes a big difference in what Google is actually able to do. Now it can, there's still so much more they can do from crawling the site. But why make it difficult, in the way that I think about this is, it's like telling people how to get to your store in person, and then intentionally going over and covering up all of the street names. So it's still there. But you've just covered up all the street names is like why make it more difficult, make it simple, send the information you need. And not just product titles, and descriptions and images, like those are all really good parts. But what we're starting to do, too, is sending in profit data, let's let Google Optimize around what's more profitable for your business, not just what's driving higher revenue, right? There's a lot of more data that we can feed to make those feeds significantly more intelligent. Or is there a tool that you like that you guys do this? Are you doing this in house?

Darin Lynch 26:11

Yeah, so the tool that we're having really strong success with lately is speed and omics. So we are big fans of feed anomic. It was purchased by big commerce a couple of years ago. But what I love about how big commerce and feeding omics have worked together are the decisions that big commerce is making around feed anomic since they bought it is feed and omics remains platform agnostic, so you can be on Shopify, and still be using feed and omics. And big Commerce has been explicit about maintaining feed and omics agnosticism, and I think that is super smart on big commerce is behalf but super beneficial for merchants. Because from everything, we've looked at feed and omics is the best product feed optimization tool that we've been able to find. And we've used it for some ETL, extract transform. Load efforts as well. But we are finding that feed and omics is really helping our merchants make sure their product information is flowing to Google or Amazon or Walmart, or meta or their site accurately. It's almost pin link in so that's the tool that that we're very big advocates of advocates of right now.

William Harris 27:23

I love that. And we've used VT nomics and a number of accounts as well. And one of the things to your point that I like about it is it's kind of like a done for you service where they're doing a lot of that on their side, which is nice that way, you know, you don't have to be the one who's in the driver's seat trying to, you know, get really nitty gritty and manage it yourself. If you're someone you're like, I want a smart team that understands how to optimize this and I want them to do it. There's a lot of customizations and things like that, that the feed nomics team is able to do for you. The other tool that we like, is data feed watch, which was I think, acquired by cart.com. And if you want that more, hey, I want to kind of like, take control of this. And I want that manual approach, data feed watches, the one that I think that we gravitate towards the most for that. You

Darin Lynch 28:06

know, I think about your question, too, about if if a merchant is at 10 million, how do they get to 15 or 20. I'm sure you've encountered this too, because sometimes a merchant either has already done a lot of good work on their their e commerce presence, or we collectively work with them and get them to a spot where they're blocking and tackling pretty damn well and running some advanced downfield passes right to say on a football analogy, and doing some blitzes and end arounds and jet sweeps and all this kind of stuff. And they're they have a pretty good practice going. And then that's when we'll challenge our merchants a little bit to reimagine their business, because sometimes that's when product partnerships might make sense. So we've had apparel merchants that really specialize in let's say, green shirts, right? Because I wear a lot of green, you can't see all the green I'm wearing, but I'm wearing a lot of green even right now. Well, sometimes, if it's if it's a merchant that focuses and specializes in green shirts, they might have a great site with strong feed management, their integrations might be working well. They are running their Google campaigns really well abandoned shopping carts, etc. Right there blocking and tackling really well. Well, for them to get to the next level. Sometimes we have to challenge them with their product assortment, and they might need to form a partnership with someone that makes green kilts, right? And then they can decide if they're going to wholesale that etc. But sometimes a merchant does need to take a step back and examine their business and what they might need to do to get to that next level. It's what you and I deal with our businesses all the time to challenge ourselves to keep growing.

William Harris 29:52

Yeah. And so that reminds me of, you know, Collaboratory. Indy Hetal had him on the show before but that's the color aberrations between products. That being a big thing that I think a lot of times we overlook, because it feels more complicated than it should be. But there's a lot of really great ways to do it. But if I heard you like, there's two main things here, if we were going to transition, not the pitfalls, but what's the ideal setup for merchants and eight growth agencies to work together to find the maximum amount of success? It seems like there's two things, one, having that like re reimagined vision of the company and where you're going and what you're doing, and to having the right team and processes in place to where you can action on these different items. And that fits very well with actually Chris Carey, who was over at mA performance, had him on the show before. He talked a lot about like he was stuck at that 10 million mark, I think three years in a row just couldn't bust through that ceiling. And he implemented ELS and that was a game changer for him. That's the two real big things that I think I've seen happen. And so are there stories of people who or things that you would say, Here's tangibly how I see this working is it you know, you need a, an E commerce director in the business so that when they're feeling this, instead of going through the founder are or some other type of tactics or things are granular approaches that people can have for this?

Darin Lynch 31:16

Yeah, so to touch on a few points in there, I do think that things work best with a merchant when they have, if not a person, or at least a team on their side of the table that has expertise in digital and ecommerce. Now, sometimes, you know, if you're working with a startup, they might not have the funds for that yet. Or maybe they do. Maybe that is their background. But at least when a merchant reaches a certain size, having a resource or two on their side of the table is I think, a valuable piece of the puzzle, because that resource then can advocate and articulate on behalf of the business in a way that businesses like ours or partners can, can communicate with them better. Plus, they can hold us accountable, right. And we're all we're all better when we're held accountable. And with partners that we can talk openly and understand what each other is saying. So I think that that ideal setup does include advocates and experts on their side of the table. Now, we're working with switches switchback foods right now, which is a startup that is well funded, they have a great brand, a great vision. And he has assembled a team of people on their on their side of the table, so to speak, that have a lot of expertise, and CPG, in brand, and in marketing, and they can all bring a lot to bear to the table in a way that then helps us do our job more quickly. Because of how they're they're able to articulate things. So that team on their side is valuable. And then the other thing I would say to to bounce off of that and talk a little bit to let you build on top of this. Finding the right partner I think is is really, really valuable and a big part of a successful merchant, right, because we have merchants, you name check. Some of them at the beginning, some of our merchants have a hundreds of retail stores, some are digital first, some are in the sports and entertainment, like the Packers, the Minnesota Wild etc. And so we have a massive variety of size of clients. And so each of them, the ones where we have the deeper longer term relationships have assembled a team of partners that know their lanes, but play well with each other. So we don't mind being in each other's sandboxes. And sort of working in those. And partnering Well, and that's a big piece of a successful merchants composition.

William Harris 33:54

Yeah, 100% agree in to that effect, I'd say one of the one of the habits that I would like to see die in our industry is RFPs, I get them. But the way that I see so many of them done is that you are given some subset of data. And then your use, you're supposed to use that to put together the plan. But very likely, the whole point of this is you haven't given me the data that I actually really want in this because otherwise, if you already knew the answers to these things, then you you you would already know what to do to grow. And so I like to dig in a lot more. And so we don't like pitching people too much unless we get access to the back end of their accounts to say, here are the other things that we need to find. And here's what's actually missing. So you told me all this stuff about what's going well, but you haven't I mean, what you think is going wrong, but you haven't. You don't know which is why you're coming to us for help and I need to look in that data myself really be able to put that together.

Darin Lynch 34:51

I could not agree more with everything you just said we are also not fans of RFPs and I can't remember the last RFP we participated in where we did didn't at least have access to a conversation. If it's one of those blind, arm's length RFPs. We don't participate. I don't remember the last time we did. Additionally, we always ask for access to their back end systems, so that we can get an assessment of what's going on, make observations. And if a merchant is not going to provide that to us, unless there's some extenuating circumstance, that's not a good sign, like, why wouldn't they allow us to develop a point of view around what we are observing around their metrics, their performance, etc, and to really be able to do that we need access to their system. So totally agree with you on that? Yeah.

William Harris 35:40

And that's the key is, is you need to go into this relationship like you would a marriage where you need to be able to have some give and take, you need to be have some sharing of data, hey, do you want kids? I don't want kids Oh, that's good to know. Let's start thinking about this, right? Like there's like all of these conversations that need to happen to really establish a good relationship. And then when you move forward, you're moving forward on the same page. And I think that that makes for a significantly better situation.

Darin Lynch 36:04

Right?

William Harris 36:06

I want to switch into the personal side of who is Darin Lynch. And there's a lot here that I want to unpack. I don't even know where I want to start here. But I'm going to start with something that you had in your intro here. You bought a beer for Clint Eastwood. Yes, I need the story. So

Darin Lynch 36:27

the headline Clint Eastwood as a good firm, single pump handshake. That's sort of the punchline of the whole story. So I was living in Des Moines at the time. As I mentioned, I worked at Principal Financial Group in Des Moines before moving up here to Minneapolis in 97. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep were in the Des Moines area to film Bridges of Madison County, which was a big movie probably came out in 97, maybe 96. They were filming it. And a friend of mine was running a bar in West Des Moines. Went out there to get a bite to eat. And I started to hear this ruckus going on, not like people were screaming, just a little bit more bustling, going on the restaurant, and I turn around and there's Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. And I'd always been a big Clint Eastwood fan, like who didn't grow up with like Dirty Harry and all the cowboy, you know, like Josey, Wales and all the old westerns that he was in. But this was when he had started to become more respected than just being Dirty Harry, because he had won an Oscar for the Unforgiven and the line of fire had been in big movie, et cetera. So I think there was a different kind of buzz about Clint Eastwood. And I mean, Meryl Streep by that point, and probably already won, like 10 Oscars or whatever. So, you know, the bar restaurant was was abuzz. And I wanted to leave them alone. And so I got up to leave, and I got to the door and open the door. And then I'm like, I can't, I can't walk past this opportunity. So I turned around, I saw that he was drinking a Miller Lite, because back then, Miller Lite around Halloween would have the orange labels on the bottle that had a jack o lantern on them. So went to the bar asked him about he said, Give me two Miller lights. So I went over, I said, Clint, I'm sorry to bother you. But I'm just a big fan. I wanted to at least buy you a beer. And I gave it to him. And he said, thanks. And I gave him a good firm, single pump handshake, and then walked away. So that's my claim. Sorry. Yep. Yeah, that I

William Harris 38:21

mean, that's about as good as you need for Clint Eastwood city. Right. Like there's no pump, no circumstances, just like, here's a beer, here's a handshake, walk your own way. It's like, that's pretty cool.

Darin Lynch 38:30

Yeah. And I didn't like hound him with a bunch of questions, you know, or anything like that. I just felt like I needed to buy him a beer and shake his hand.

William Harris 38:37

I hope I have no clue. But I hope that Clint Eastwood would hear this. And if it doesn't, does he know like, does he remember like, Have you ever talked about this before in a way that we're like, maybe he knows who you are?

Darin Lynch 38:47

I don't know. I have talked about it on some podcasts and stuff, too. It's in my LinkedIn profile. And it's kind of one of my go to funny stories, you know? So I don't know if it's ever made its way back to him. I should I should see, sometime. You

William Harris 39:00

don't you should do you should literally just send him one of those. See if you can find that same beer that's like for sale or something. Right? With like, the same same design on the package or whatever, like, mail it to him or I don't know, I don't even know how you find his address. Right. But it's just like, hey, I wanted to buy you another beer kind of thing. Right? Just get his attention. Right. Um, you've met other famous people, though, too. You're telling me before about when you met Simon Sinek. And I love a lot of what I see from Simon Sinek. I quote him all the time on this podcast. Yeah. What was it like meeting Simon? Yeah.

Darin Lynch 39:32

So I guess to bounce off of the circling back to Clint, you know, and see if he remembers that. I absolutely sometimes wonder if it's ever made it back to Simon Sinek. My story about meeting him because I've done a lot of talks around that. So I met Simon Sinek in 2011. And if I recall correctly with the sequence of his content It was after his TED Talk had blown up around start with why, but the book was barely out, because I met him on July 11 2011. And it was a small group session, he spoke to probably 50 of us here in Minneapolis. And then about 15 to 20 of us went to a little bar, not not too far away. And I talked to him for probably five minutes, just one on one, and had an incredible conversation. He is absolutely my favorite thought leader. I've read all of his stuff, I listen to his podcasts, try to really follow him, whether it's little nuggets that he shares and five minute videos or longer form content. I love the way that he thinks I love how he challenges us, you know, with like, we get the politicians we deserve, was one of his talks that I liked a lot. And I think that that he is provocative with how he explains things and inspires us. Now what was what was especially inspirational when I sat through my conversation with him. Or I sat through his presentation to us before my conversation was, I was at a particularly introspective moment and Irish Titans history, things were going well for us. I was taking a step back, not out of the business. But in fact that whole on the business instead of in the business on I was taking a step up to focusing on the business, and trying to get a sense of why we were doing well what sort of framework I needed to put around that intentionally. So we don't, we didn't continue to do well, accidentally. And so I was talking with this sales consultant that I think really highly of then and now she was asking me about our competitors and how we position ourselves in the market. And I could talk about my own vision, and why I did things like our Titan only model or we don't use any contractors, freelancers, offshore resources, which drives up our prices. I could talk about that. But whenever she would ask me, Well, what about your competitors? How do they price, et cetera? I didn't really know as much as she wanted me to. Well, in my first Oh, also sidebar, we had already trademarked this concept of business first online second. And in our sales materials, I had made mention of the fact that we pursue partnerships, not transactions. Okay. So in the first five minutes of Simon's presentation, he talks about his golden circle, I drew our golden circle, because our why was business first online. Second, we already had it trademarked our How is partnerships, not transactions, and you can actually see if I turned my camera, I wouldn't. But here on my steel board, there's our golden circle, you can see the edge of it right there. Yeah, just at the time, we had a different what because Simon says that you're what can evolve over time, but your wife should really never change in your house probably shouldn't change you. So it was really impactful. In the first five minutes, I had drawn our golden circle. Additionally, in the first five minutes, and in his book, start with why he talks about if you know your why you don't really give a shit about your competitors, the same way that traditional consultants tried to tell you, you should. And so what I really felt like was if I had seen Simon today and met with this consultant tomorrow, I could have argued my point much more effectively about why I don't care about our competitors, you know, so that was a really big moment in Irish Titan history. Seeing him speak, drawing our golden circle, I still have the piece of paper with our original Golden Circle written on it from that meeting downtown Minneapolis on July 11 2011. And then talking with him for five minutes. So that was a that's a big moment in Irish Titan history.

William Harris 43:44

That's really cool. I love when you get to meet, you know, heroes a little bit like that. And they live up to what you were expecting. That's always encouraging. Yeah, like

Darin Lynch 43:54

seeing the Simon Sinek in 2011 Would it be some like somebody saying they saw the Beastie Boys play first AB you know, and like, share or something?

William Harris 44:03

It's like the business equivalent of it. I totally tracking with you there. Yeah, I'm speaking of the Beastie Boys. I don't know if that's even relevant to that. But like, tell me about your childhood. What was it like for you growing up?

Darin Lynch 44:19

Well, I'm not there, like three Jewish guys from New York. I'm the opposite of that. I'm Irish by American standards, a guy from a farm in Iowa. So you know, I grew up on a on a on a big farm about 700 acres. We had about 500 head of feeder cattle. I shouldn't say we as my parents that grew up my mom was a teacher data farmer. But we had a really good school. The name of my hometown was Nashua. It's an hour from Waterloo or Mason City, which were the quote unquote big towns of about 50,000 people. We were four hours from the Twin Cities, you know, but we had a really good school and I was exposed to technology early I think that my mom and dad knew I was was not going to grow up to be a farmer. There's a picture of me, like five years old on the tractor wearing a tie. So I think business appealed to me at an early age. But I did really learn a lot from both of them. Because my dad started the farm on his own. Most farms are family farms, or now they're, they're either family or corporate. But growing up most farms, when I was a kid, were family farms, multigenerational. And my dad started the farm on his own. So he had 40 acres and did well and got a little bit more money from the bank and did well and kept growing the farm. That's pretty damn entrepreneurial. So I learned a lot from him. I think, through osmosis, more than sitting down and talking business. In my mom, my dad was good with people. But I really learned the entrepreneurial spirit and the hard work from my dad. My mom worked hard. She was a teacher, but she was really good with people. And I think I learned those two things from each of them. So it was a it was a childhood and upbringing, I'm proud of I still go home to help mom and dad on the farm. And they're still there actually, not for too much longer. They get a little bit older now.

William Harris 46:11

Yeah, I mean, that's so great, though. Like you said, I one of the things that I've appreciated about even just talking to you, and just in my own life, as well as you can learn, even from situations that seem the opposite of what you're trying to learn from. And so it's like, you can learn a lot about like a technology business. On a farm in Iowa on 700 acres, there's still so much that you can learn that you can apply. And I think that that idea of like lateral thinking and transfer of knowledge from one discipline to another is one of the things that I feel, oftentimes we miss when we get too myopic in our studies, or our readings or our online communities or whatever that might be. I

Darin Lynch 46:48

absolutely agree. You know, there's this whole concept of echo chambers. And usually that's discussed more around like politics and social media and news and that sort of thing. But I think that exists with podcasts that we listen to, and places that we all look to for inspiration from a business perspective, because business books and podcasts are invaluable. Like I said, I'm a massive fan of Simon Sinek. Guy Kawasaki is another person that I follow closely, etc, right. But I also will readily admit, I still get comic books, Batman, I'm DC, not marvel. And I find a lot of comic books are more well written than I think people realize who don't read comic books. And for example, in an issue of Justice League, I have a picture of a little speech that cyborg gives that is the heart of teamwork, right. And so I think that we can find lessons and inspiration, from Songs from comic books from people that we work with every day outside of work that were exposed to, I should say, and interact with, I think we can find valuable lessons from people who aren't just in our industries or even just in business. Yeah,

William Harris 48:00

there are like, a ton more questions that I want to ask you. But I know they're at time. And I think that that's just such a perfect place to end it, which is that idea of, there's an opportunity for you, the listener, me, Darin to learn from every single person that we interact with, there are stories that we can learn from them, there are experiences that we can learn from them. And I hope that this experience and opportunity to learn from Darin has been, you know, very helpful to you guys. Darin, if there's somebody who wants to work with you, or follow you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you or stay in contact?

Darin Lynch 48:38

Yeah, I'm a very accessible guy. So you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm easy to find Darin Lynch. If you go to Irishtitan.com, you can get to our contact page, which comes directly to me. I'm also easy to find my cell phone is listed actually. So people can reach out to me via email darin.lynch@Irishtitan.com VR site via LinkedIn. I'm accessible, and I try to be responsive.

William Harris 49:06

Awesome, thank you so much for coming out, sharing your knowledge sharing your time with us today. Darinn,

Darin Lynch 49:11

this was great, William, I learned from you. So thank you for having me. Now likewise, thank

William Harris 49:15

you, everybody for joining in. Have a great rest of the day. Thanks, everyone.

Outro 49:20

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.