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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous Add to Cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave. Leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features James Johnson, otherwise known as jj. He's the Director of Retail at Shopify Australia and New Zealand. JJ shares the one online shopping goal that he set way back in 2001, the Melbourne brand that he can't stop buying bags from, and the AI tool that's seriously leveling up his coding game,
Nathan Bush: even though he describes himself as a crappy coder. JJ welcome to the checkout. A very special in person checkout here in the Bush residence. Recording Add to Cart. But we are here to learn more about you. We've heard all about Shopify editions that just dropped. Very exciting. And you blew our brains on that main episode around the future of commerce and where you see it heading, especially as we enter into that new AI era. But we want to learn about you. Five quick questions. Are you ready?
James Johnson: Let's do it.
Nathan Bush: All right, number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
James Johnson: So maybe not one unique weird thing. But as we shared in the main episode, I had the great fortune of completing a Bachelor of Electronic Commerce and graduating in 2001. And so I had a very specific goal at the end of 2001 to purchase all of my friends and family's Christmas presents online. So I achieved that goal. Maybe the presents weren't the most amazing presents that anyone could have had because the Internet, they all got years ago. Yeah, gift cards and a few other things that maybe wasn't amazing, but I achieved my goal and definitely have been an early adopter from that online shopping mindset from then and continued that journey forever.
Nathan Bush: It's amazing that you finished that degree in 2001 at 12 years old.
James Johnson: Thanks, mate. Looking fresh.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
James Johnson: So just like my kids, I don't have favorites, but I do have favorite retailers and do have favorite kids, but don't tell them that. Yeah, I've got a number or a real affinity for local Aussie brands. And I shared in the main episode talking about Crumpler, so maybe let me geek out on that again. So amazing brand. They started off making bicycle courier bags. The way they actually talk about their products is you can literally fit a slab of beer in this bag and, like, sign me up, I'm cycling. I've got a slab of beer. I can put it on my back, ticking all the boxes. It's a great Aussie brand. They talk about their products. They're super passionate. They're handmade in Melbourne. So I love the business, love the brand, love also that they're using, unsurprisingly, Shopify online and in store. And so their experience is amazingly quirky online. So I encourage people to check that out. And also amazing in store and a great combination of the both as well. So crumplr would be my pick.
Nathan Bush: I love that we don't hear a lot about Crumpler, but I've got a feeling that if you're a Crumpler fan, you're a big Crumpler fan. Like, they don't try and be for everyone, right?
James Johnson: Definitely not. And I think I am that fan. I have at least 12, maybe more bags in the collection. Imelda Marcos, eat your heart out.
Nathan Bush: I love it. All right, number three. Oh, God. This is a bit of a gimme, isn't it? Name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.
James Johnson: Am I allowed to say Shopify?
Nathan Bush: No, you're not.
James Johnson: Oh, okay. So if not Shopify, I'd say Cursor. So for those that don't know, Cursor is an AI coding platform. I share that example because it's helped me level my game up. I'm a crappy coder. I know my way around broadly what I'm doing, but it has helped really amplify my output and honestly help me learn what I need to learn. So we have an internal value at Shopify about staying curious. And the way that I'm staying curious at the moment is using Cursor to help build functions in Shopify to help build stuff outside of E commerce. And it has this richness of Context because it understands a code base, understands the context of what you're building in, and means that I can level up. So I'll say cursor.
Nathan Bush: What's the project or the piece that you're most like? Hell yeah, I did that.
James Johnson: There's probably two things. So one, I built a really relatively complex promotional rule for in Shopify functions, which is Shopify's extensibility for a retailer to be able to do a demo. So to prove we could do a point, they had this really complex and bizarre, frankly, promotional setup. And so able to use cursor to go. Here's what it would look like and here's how you do it. So professionally it's tick box and nice. And then personally built a calculator with my kids. So we actually built a kids calculator that was super bright and colorful and that was an exercise of, again, me learning the tool, but also helping them to learn some of the concepts and tools as well. So it was nice from a personal level.
Nathan Bush: And then you showed your kids and they're like, dad, calculators are. So last year we just talking to GPT.
James Johnson: Can I turn it upside down and spell something inappropriate that was.
Nathan Bush: I don't know what you're talking about. What do they spell?
James Johnson: Neither do I.
Nathan Bush: Okay. All right. Interesting. Number four. Can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should get into?
James Johnson: Yeah. So I read Nexus by Yuval Harari last year. The subtitle, for those that don't know, is A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
Nathan Bush: Just rolls off the tongue.
James Johnson: It's amazing. So if you don't know him, he's the author of Sapiens. Sort of foundational book in that space.
Nathan Bush: See it on the bookshelf up there?
James Johnson: I do. There we go. The book. So it covers the power of information and the importance of understanding our role in information networks. And the bit that really resonated with me was the historical examples and contexts and how that compares today. So he looked at what the churches were doing thousands of years ago, what the Roman Empire was doing, how the Soviet Union used information in what they were doing. And so I think we naturally think that whatever's happening today is really unique and it's never happened before. The reality is that there are historical precedents here. Yes, it wasn't using AI, but there's lessons we can learn in terms of how we respond to information and how we can amplify its impact. So really love that as a read.
Nathan Bush: Has it changed your perspective? Because I Can imagine that there's a lot of pressure on you as a senior leader in an organization like Shopify to keep up with the change and to, you know, to a certain point, spread the change. I don't know. That doesn't sound right, but it's like you are the one who's, like, talking about all this new stuff that's coming down the line. Has that helped give you perspective on how to position that to people? So it's not so overwhelming that it feels like too much?
James Johnson: Yeah, I think maybe not that book specifically, but broadly, yes. And it's about understanding the human amplification opportunities to come. So usually it's a discussion around here's a thing that's going to make you more efficient or mean you can do. Remove the drudgery, to do the thing that's more impactful and more exciting, because that's usually the discussion. But it is helpful Nexus as the book to talk about what that information framework is and how you should think about some of those constructs.
Nathan Bush: All right, very good. Last one I've got for you, jj. What is your biggest challenge today?
James Johnson: We just kind of spoke about a little bit of it, and I'm an opportunity guy rather than a challenge guy, so it's a bit of a cliche, but personally, it's keeping up with all of the things that are going on in industry. So industry is changing dramatically, AI is changing dramatically and accelerating those pieces. Frankly, Shopify continues to change at a rapid rate. And so it's how do I encourage teams and how do I do that myself to keep up with that change? And so we have values around that internally, culturally, within Shopify, which are great, but there is a volume of change that is implicit there. And so I guess my tip, or my takeaway from that would be find people in your network that you can have a real chat with about how they're doing those things and maybe a plug for your community. You know, use the community that is available there because particularly in retail. And we. We found this at our dinner a few weeks ago. Great discussions happened because 90% of the problems that everyone has are the same across the industry. There are people that have either stubbed their toe and figured it out or are going through the same thing.
Nathan Bush: That's right.
James Johnson: And so how do you share those problems to really amplify the impact is the real opportunity.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And I feel we're really good at in our industry, especially in Australia, and I reckon Canada is probably going to be pretty similar about being open with sharing because and we have this conversation all the time. It's not so much what you know or what you're ahead of. It actually comes down to implementation as well, Right?
James Johnson: Absolutely. Execution is everything, right?
Nathan Bush: Exactly. I've got a six question for you. This is a first in the checkout, right? We've never done a six, but you're so good, jj.
James Johnson: I'm sitting down.
Nathan Bush: I'm excited. Ready? Number six. If you were to pack up your family, three kids, wife, go in a caravan, travel around Australia for six months, what would be your biggest tip to people who might be considering that adventure?
James Johnson: Ah, great tip. So, again, we've literally just done that thing.
Nathan Bush: It wasn't a random question, very specific.
James Johnson: We were super fortunate to be able to make that happen. You know, made sacrifices to make that happen. But also, you want to acknowledge that we're very fortunate to do that. I guess the tip would be that not everything was a perfect Instagram moment, which is probably not surprising, but we are definitely closer as a family unit and bonded in many ways. Part of that is having three boys in a small caravan and the smell that's associated with that. Your poor wife, she's very lucky to have us all. I'm sure she thinks that every day, but I think it's being very intentional. And again, everyone's version of that will be different. For us, it was experiencing that travel and the Australian landscape. For others, they won't have the opportunity to take such a big chunk of time out or to be able to travel. But whatever your version of that is, lean into that would be my tip. And be very intentional with it. Because to be very deep, you know, life is short, and you need to have a bigger view of your impact in the world. And how you can have that ongoing impact, I think would be the key point.
Nathan Bush: I love it. Jj, thank you so much for joining us on a special six question version of the checkout.
James Johnson: Thank you, Nathan.
[Ad]: You want more, JJ, head back to the main episode. That's episode 524. Link in the show Notes here, where we break down the latest Shopify Editions release called Horizons. We explore what AI really means for e commerce teams, and we ask the big question, will websites still matter in 2030?
