Why customer satisfaction is the metric that matters most #108

A warm welcome to a new episode of Zero to 100. With me, as usual these days, is Fredrik Ankarsköld. Thank you! New week, fresh start. I love being in the podcast studio with you. I've had so many comments since you joined the podcast that I've been sitting thinking and analyzing. Is it because we have a new style, a different conversational tone or a slower pace so people can keep up? Is it more practical tips, fewer practical tips or more health talk?

I don't know. But I know I'm getting an insane number of comments. It's positive, anyway. Yes, it's fun. It would've been worse if it were the opposite.

Yes, absolutely. As a percentage, it's a lot. But that's not what we're discussing today. Now we have the April figures. The Swedish Trade Federation has said the growth is there. E-commerce is up two or three percent; either way it's an increase. More people are shopping online than before and the macroeconomic climate feels stable. More people are also shopping from foreign websites, and that's where we see a large part of the growth.

Compared with last year's eighteen percent, we're now at twenty. Unfortunately some of the increase mainly comes from Shein and Temu. What do you think about that?

I think it's awful. I never shop there, not least considering all the scandals they're involved in. I get annoyed when Swedish colleagues do it. I think: How can people not see these are literally toxic products?

I don't think people know, because then they probably wouldn't have made those choices. I come from a family myself where the interests you and I have in health and awareness of the environment and chemicals weren't there.

But this is in the news all the time. They're caught with some new cheating, something legal or chemical, something new they're breaking. They don't play by the same …

… rules. You're waiting for clear restrictions at EU level, and those are due to take effect. But until we get there, shouldn't people understand a bit better themselves?

There is actually a law coming now to help within the EU. Textile producers will no longer be allowed to destroy clothes. For Shein and Temu it's been a thing that products bought and returned are simply burned. I don't know exactly how they're destroyed, but they're destroyed. With the new textile responsibility, you can't just destroy unsold or returned clothes. That makes things harder not just for them but for the whole fashion industry, the H&Ms, Zaras and Lager 157s of the world.

I can imagine they destroy quite a lot and burn things instead of sending them down. But even if the clothes are sent down … Did you follow Aftonbladet's big investigation last year? No.

They mapped out what the big companies do. Huge bales of collected clothes are literally sold to a developing country that's supposed to deal with them so we don't have to. Enormous piles of clothes accumulate there. Over ninety percent is unusable, but it's still there and just becomes mountains of clothes.

Extreme. I've seen clips about that, even if they weren't specifically from Aftonbladet. You think at least the clothes will be put to use in those countries. But no, it causes destruction there too.

Yes, totally. We live on the same planet, so it comes back to us too, and fairly quickly. We won't talk too much about it. I just raise my eyebrows when Temu and Shein account for this year's growth instead of Swedish companies producing here, in Europe or abroad but with a completely different manufacturing standard.

You can still produce in China, as long as you have chemical controls. Yes. What we discussed in the last episode, about the union, has escalated, by the way. Really? Yes.

What's happened? Now they're running a damn campaign on social media, and clips have been circulating on the radio. Not all over the country, but throughout the county there were roughly two-minute segments running for a week where they …

… demand that Västerbottenssåpa sign an agreement with IF Metall. They have absolutely no respect for the fact that most of our employees don't work in production. The majority never have. As things look now, an agreement with Handels would in the future …

… help both the company and the employees much more. It would give greater flexibility. We could grow in the town instead of having to discuss at board level whether we're forced to move production because the agreements cause problems. At the same time, we don't understand what consequences the agreements will have.

What happens if we sign? Do we need to change working schedules and everything else overnight? Meanwhile Temu and Shein run completely free. They have no collective agreements. No, they don't give a damn about that. Facebook doesn't either, but you're still sitting on Facebook protesting against a little company like ours. It's so awful, dirty and ugly …

… that a company trying to do the best it can, as well as possible for people and the environment, faces a hate campaign like this from political quarters. These are politically involved people and activists who now sit as internet trolls hating on us. Deep down I'm so sad. There's no describing it. I don't think you understand.

No, it's hard to understand. I'm trying, but I don't understand why they're painting such a dire picture. I remember a period when I geeked out on conspiracy theories, tinfoil hat stuff or whatever you want to call it …

Was it flat Earth? No, not at that level. I shouldn't laugh; there are surely people who genuinely believe in flat Earth.

I met one recently. But I reached a point where I looked at who owns most of the companies in the world and which products they own. Very few companies control a great deal.

There's a risk of falling into the idea that money is the root of all evil. When I geeked out too much, I noticed there's what's called false positives. Eventually you see the devil where he isn't, darkness in something that perhaps isn't conspiratorial at all. A YouTuber I follow says, for example, that people sometimes write to him: It's only AI. He replies: But I'm sitting right here. It's really me talking.

So false positives are when people comment that it isn't him in the video, just AI, and wonder why anyone listens. But it really is him. I wonder whether it's like that in your case too, with IF Metall seeing false positives. They see Västerbottenssåpa doing something evil, though perhaps you aren't. Or obviously aren't in this case.

No, obviously not. They'd need to spend a day at the office or factory and see what it's like. There's an incredibly lovely atmosphere. I've been there and almost nobody recognizes me, especially the first times I visited. People are happy and come to work feeling they serve a purpose in society. Some who previously had no job have found meaning and community. Then we're portrayed as the villains of the piece. We've created so many jobs in a place where it's traditionally been difficult to find work and where growth …

… doesn't exist. Statistically, Vilhelmina municipality has had the most people moving away in the whole country. I don't just mean the county. Looking at where people have moved from, Vilhelmina has been up there, and the main reason given is jobs.

They've found a job elsewhere or needed a job. It doesn't need to be a skilled occupation; it can be anything to survive, because there's no work in the town. It's bloody sad.

Now IF Metall comes and literally threatens us. But why can't you just choose Handels? We can't, even if we want to. We've asked Handels in the county. They've escalated it to a higher level where a decision is to be made, but …

… I don't know. Handels refuses to sign an agreement with us. When they talk to each other in the county, they say they think we belong with IF Metall.

Fundamentally this is warehousing, logistics and e-commerce production. We have employees in the office, warehouse and picking and packing. That's where the majority of our employees work.

What percentage work in production? A handful, not many at all. We're talking a low double-digit percentage, and it'll fall as automation increases.

When we get a larger machinery fleet, it's not like a chemicals-driven company. There aren't many chemicals, nothing. We add two ingredients to the product. It's not the kind of production you might imagine IF Metall's companies should have.

I'm not that well informed and perhaps shouldn't comment on what should belong to IF Metall. What I know is we belong, or should belong, to Handels. We've been talking with them for a while. They say perhaps we should belong to IF Metall, but they'll investigate the matter nationally.

How long that takes, I don't know. While waiting for an answer, I thought things were fine: IF Metall and Handels would talk it through and get back to us. But no.

Then they write [unclear in the Swedish source: Handels] that the negotiation is concluded. As if there had been a negotiation. They just came there and wanted us to sign. There was no negotiation.

Mafia methods. Yes, perhaps you could say that. I don't know how to put it, but they're definitely heavy-handed methods. It was awful. When they finish, they go out and start this. I don't even know whether it's legal, to be honest.

They haven't flagged or given notice under the Co-Determination Act, MBL, that they're going to do anything. But they're running an influence campaign on social media and going on the radio. They contact journalists and write letters to the editor everywhere …

… to get publicity. What's the goal? For a good, quality company like Såpa to be rejected? Should people choose Temu or Shein instead? Sure, there are other Swedish alternatives, but they're not as readily available. If you also want Swedish production and Swedish raw materials, the choice shrinks to a minimum. Most have imported raw materials that might be put together in Sweden, even for soft-soap-like products. Others have foreign production or strong chemicals shipped halfway around the world. That's given a small company like Såpa the opportunity to find a market that feels [sentence incomplete in source].

Do you have any opportunity to defend yourselves, or can they just run their media campaign? They have their media campaign. We can't get a word in edgeways.

Someone wrote they'd contacted the CEO, but they hadn't asked us for a comment at all. They haven't asked what's happening or done an interview to get the full background. It's a major source of irritation. The entire management team is discussing this instead of the next step, product development or how to become more visible and reach more people. I think the way the system is built is strange.

I have another story. An acquaintance works with health products. Expressen asked whether they could come and do an interview. So it wasn't about unions, but a newspaper interview, and she thought it sounded nice.

We'd had lunch beforehand and I was still there. They'd said they were going to record an audio interview and write an article. Then they came running in with a cameraman: Are you the one who's done this? You need to get your act together. This is a scandal, you're scamming people. They made everything up. It turned out the journalist belonged to an association whose aim was to expose people working with natural products …

… and there was no good intention at all. The atmosphere was scary and threatening. I sat beside her but wasn't allowed to be part of the report. That gave me a taste of the fact that not everyone has good intentions. Even if it's about good things, their aim can be to smear people.

Smear campaigns and influence campaigns. Yes, those surely exist. It's completely crazy, but some resort to anything. At the same time I think perhaps deep down they believe they're doing something good.

I think so too. Perhaps the people at IF Metall think this is the Swedish model and this is how it should be. Here's a company making money from Swedish production and labor. Then of course the employees are suffering, because we've seen that in other cases …

… and then they obviously don't bother going there, asking people or checking with the members. It surely comes from a good intention, but sometimes you go too far and too fast instead of sitting down, discussing and explaining. They've never even explained to us what choosing IF Metall and signing would mean.

That dialogue hasn't existed. They haven't come and presented what a partnership would involve: We work together, we have a representative and you get these things. There are obviously advantages for recruitment too. A workplace bound by a collective agreement can be perceived as more secure, and people might seek it out because they believe it's safer than one without an agreement.

There are both advantages and disadvantages. I'm not claiming everything is negative; there are surely advantages. But obviously making things up, saying things that are completely incorrect …

… and then going to the media like that, I don't think that's legal, to be honest. But we can leave that unsaid. Of course we're going to act.

The ball is rolling and we'll see what they've done. Perhaps we need to speak in the media ourselves to stand up for us small business owners …

… who face this pressure. The positive thing is that nine out of ten people commenting are extremely positive about Västerbottenssåpa and defend us.

A few say they won't shop with us, a handful of people, I'd say. The vast majority support us and say they'll buy even more from the little company creating jobs in Vilhelmina. That's positive. You should always try to see the glass as half full. In the comments on their Facebook pages, in their comment sections and on our ads, we see a very positive tendency.

People are better informed and understand more than you think. Perhaps they know someone at the factory, a cousin or relative who's spoken well of Såpa. We have employees who've publicly said they get higher salaries and better compensation than the collective agreement's standard.

We'll see. It's still tough. Since the sale became public on the fifteenth of April, an insane number of people have contacted me. If you're listening and have contacted me, I want to apologize; sometimes you can't keep up. Keep asking, call, text or write again. Not just two or three times, because it can get forgotten. Do it a hundred times. If you really believe in your idea, you have to be persistent. If you give up after one attempt, perhaps it wasn't that important. Often I read a LinkedIn message just before a meeting and think I want to reply to it.

Then I have the meeting, go home, pick up the children and spend time with them. The next day there's a new meeting and I've forgotten the message. Suddenly there are twenty-five new ones to deal with. Even if I managed half one day, I don't even have time to open them all, so a lot gets lost. If the person doesn't write again, they don't rise to the top of the list. Then I think perhaps it wasn't that important after all.

Quite a lot is spam and sales: Hello, you need this application for Porobic Group. Or the message starts with hello, my name is, and I work at this company. Sometimes it's a fairly dull intro, and then I skip it.

It's almost like practicing email marketing, but with LinkedIn messages. You need a captivating intro, a scrollstopper. If you contact someone with over ten thousand connections on LinkedIn, you have to expect that person gets lots of DMs.

If there's something you really want to get across, you have to be persistent. In 2012 or 2014, ten or twelve years ago anyway, I wanted to get in touch with Sean Ellis. He'd been CMO at Dropbox …

… at an early stage, then become head of growth and coined growth hacking. I thought it was such a cool and innovative way to work: more cross-functional, fewer silos and more agile. That's exactly how you should work in e-commerce, but nobody did. He'd worked with Dropbox, a SaaS company, then built Evernote or some other company. Two or three unicorns in succession, an incredibly successful guy.

Then he wrote Hacking Growth and explained how the work is done. I found it so interesting that I wrote all sorts of things on social media to make contact. I sent emails without getting a reply, sent postcards and tried everything, even phone calls.

I got his number through a roundabout route and eventually we connected. Today we have a good relationship, email and can have Teams calls about different concepts. In 2020 I organized a digital conference and invited Sean Ellis as one of the speakers. He shared his thoughts on growth hacking. I had about five hundred digital tickets and all were taken. They cost zero kronor …

… because I don't think you should make money from that sort of thing in that way. It cost quite a lot to put on. I had Neil Patel at the same conference.

Yes, he cost money. Sean and I had a good dialogue. He's been something of a mentor and I've learned so much. What I'm saying is, if I'd given up after one email, I'd never have learned what I went on to learn. Much of my methodology is based on his philosophy.

What are the three most important things you've taken away? Wow, now we're getting into broad methodology and processes. Fundamentally it's about testing quickly, measuring everything you can and working cross-functionally in growth teams with different departments represented.

You track a measure he calls the North Star Metric. It can be different things. For Netflix, for example, it's how much time people spend in the app. Facebook initially looked at the number of friend connections. When someone reached seven friends, they saw higher stickiness, the person being drawn back to the app. Those are some well-known examples. The measure doesn't need to be revenue or direct sign-ups.

It's indirectly linked to revenue. If you watch more Netflix and consume more content, you won't cancel the service. If you don't watch, they understood you'd churn. So they needed to track what happens before the customer leaves.

One thing Netflix did was autoplay. When you'd watched one episode, the next started after a ten-second pause, so you'd stay longer. We can call those things dark patterns in e-commerce. As marketers we can measure which metrics make you stay and use the app, product or service longer, buy more or buy larger volumes.

Those are some of the processes. Different companies can have different North Star Metrics but the same starting point. You need to find your own. At Såpa, customer satisfaction is important, because we know it drives sales over time. Each individual month's sales aren't hugely important, but customer satisfaction is incredibly important. We collect reviews on all platforms, not just one, and look at communication in customer service and comments on social media. We measure everything to do with customer satisfaction, because we think it's an extremely important metric.

You collect from so many sources. How do you bring it together and report it? If you go into all the different sources, it can get scattered. Collection is one thing …

… but then the information has to be presented so you can make decisions and take action. You need a KPI to track development. The customer service inbox, for example, can get hundreds of emails a day. Today we use Freshdesk, which can determine whether an email is predominantly positive …

… or negative after the purchase. Right now we have logistics problems and delivery times of seven to eight days. There's been a lot of trouble. We haven't been able to supply our logistics hub in Morgongåva, because so much has sold out.

Then there are lots of negative comments in the email flow. When logistics and production work, emails are more often about which soft soap the customer should choose. Those are positive purchasing questions where they want guidance, information and education. But if you already know logistics have been problematic or that you haven't been able to manufacture enough …

… how do you improve processes over time? That's a good question. Each thing needs to be considered both as a whole and as a separate part. We're in northern Sweden, which perhaps isn't optimal for shipping throughout Sweden or the world. That's why we started a central logistics hub in Morgongåva, near Stockholm. From there you can get same-day delivery if the order is placed before two o'clock.

If I ordered now, would I get delivery tomorrow? Technically you could get it this evening with, for example, Budbee or [unclear in the Swedish source: Willow Bikes]. It's one of the more environmentally friendly options. A lot from Morgongåva is shipped by train, and many electric vehicles are used in transport. They have good sustainability options for the last mile.

If I'm cleaning the decking on the balcony on Thursday and order a canister, are all sizes in Morgongåva or only certain products? The idea is for it to be the logistics hub with all products, mirroring the warehouse in Vilhelmina …

… and for Vilhelmina to ship to the surrounding area and northern Sweden. Morgongåva ships to its surrounding area, but also from roughly Uppsala or Gävle southwards. That's where the vast majority of the population is. About two million people live in Greater Stockholm alone.

Already there we reach essentially everyone the same day or the next day. That's the idea. But when products sell out, they go directly from the production line to the picking and packing tables in Vilhelmina and then out across the country. Then it takes a few extra days, because they have to be sorted in a hub in Gävle and forwarded.

We also have fewer transport options. Same-day deliveries don't exist in the same way in Vilhelmina. That was the idea, but execution has been harder than I thought. We haven't solved the problem yet, but hopefully soon. We're working on two key hires: CFO and Head of Retail. The CFO will support calculations, costings, production and things like that.

I recommended The Goal, which deals with production and things like that. Yes, I was actually summarizing it with ChatGPT to get a few points before I find time to read it. I haven't had time yet.

It's interesting. We'll see how much we can apply. Some principles feel very corporate. What's interesting about the books, which we can link in the description, is that the first The Goal was written by the father and the children later wrote sequels. I work more AI-native myself, starting from the premise that people shouldn't need to perform certain roles. Then those processes don't really work anymore. Previously all the details had to be in place from the beginning. Now it's so easy to create a …

… prototype with AI that it's almost easier to make several prototypes, user-test and iterate them further than to write a complete specification from the start. Yes, absolutely. It's become very democratized.

You mentioned cross-functional work between teams. What does that mean, and how do you work that way? Traditional companies often use the waterfall method: Production delivers to logistics, then on to delivery or picking and packing, and finally to the customer. We like cross-functional work …

… where all parts are represented in the same place. Everyone sits in the same meeting and talks with the customer in focus: What can we do to improve the purchasing experience?

That's the main heading. Then we divide up the work and each team lead works with their team. Everyone participates in the conversation: customer service, marketing, operational e-commerce, production, logistics and supply chain. It becomes a kind of management group. That's cross-functional. With a silo or waterfall approach, instead I sit in the production team's chamber and optimize based on what production looks like right now.

How much raw material do I need to buy, and how do we get as many bottles out per hour as possible? But wearing the customer hat, perhaps the question isn't about the number of bottles. The customer cares what the bottle looks like, how the cap is screwed on or the unboxing that affects satisfaction. That may matter more. The goal is for the customer to use the bottles produced, be satisfied …

… and return. If you aren't also wearing the customer hat and listening to that department, perhaps you only focus on your own KPI, bottles per hour. In e-commerce or marketing, instead it can become selling as much as possible, without considering whether production or logistics can keep up. Then you press the accelerator and get burned, because suddenly there's nothing left to sell.

When I choose cleaning products, I think about avoiding overly strong agents. Many people don't think about it, and I didn't know before, but if you kill the bad bacteria you're very likely to kill the good ones too …

… and that can create imbalances. It's a bit like antibiotics, as a rough analogy. You don't want it too clean. That's interesting; I haven't actually looked into it. That's how it is with oral hygiene.

I've read similar things about people washing their hands too much and being excessively clean. Of course you should wash your hands; it's disgusting otherwise. But in the study I read, there was a level where people with an overly sterile environment …

… tended to get sicker. We're not saying you should be unhygienic, but that the environment can become too sterile. I understand, a bit like the saying that a little dirt cleans out the stomach.

If a child is exposed to animals and nature, perhaps the likelihood of allergies decreases. Yes, exactly. Probably. I don't know and can't comment on it …

It's just what I've read. I'm neither a doctor nor a researcher, and it was one study. Yes, perhaps you should have ten, twenty or thirty before drawing a conclusion.

It's interesting. An example of things going wrong in the opposite direction is that doctors used to operate on someone and then go straight to a childbirth. The bacteria made the women and babies very sick.

It took an awful lot of years. The person who started seeing a link between going between them without washing hands and rising illness was mocked at the time.

It's interesting that someone made the observation, and the craziest thing is that he was mocked when he came up with it. Today doctors always wash their hands when entering a new room.

Of course you need a sterile environment there. What I'm talking about is more …

… the home environment. If you're at home, you can use Västerbottenssåpa instead of the strongest corrosive agent you can find. That's what I'm trying to say. We made some slightly mocking and joking organic content that later became an ad: If your cleaning product glows in the dark, something's strange. If you need protective equipment to use it, that's also a bit [unclear in the Swedish source].

If the product smells for three days after use, they've added a bit too much perfume, and so on. It shouldn't burn your eyes [unclear in the Swedish source: if you ingest it].

There were lots of things like that, and it was a bit funny. The post got lots of comments and shares. People thought it was fun. I thought it was funny too: If it glows, something's wrong.

Or when it says extra shine. Compared with what? A bit like when someone writes new formula. What does that actually mean? It feels new and fresh, but changing one ingredient can be enough.

Often it's about having made something cheaper. I read a controlled study, a randomized trial, comparing thousands of products. When they received the label new formula, it most often meant something had been made cheaper, outsourced or compromised in the product. Perhaps it had become smaller or had an ingredient removed, and then they try to sell that to the consumer.

You have to inform people, because some have been loyal consumers for ten, twenty, thirty or forty years, using the same product. They'll notice the change. Then you try to sell it as something positive: new improved formula, new properties or added X and Y, which might not be good at all.

My own basic rule is to be wary of things that smell extra nice. I try to avoid perfume of all kinds. If something is extra anything, I'd rather be suspicious and wonder what they've done to achieve it than immediately see it as positive.

Of course it can be true. But what I most commonly encounter is that they've switched to something chemical that isn't healthy at all. Unfortunately a large part of the industry looks like that far too often.

Do you have any tips for someone listening who wants to work cross-functionally with a KPI, a North Star? What should they do?

First and foremost, understand growth methodology. How do you do that? Ask ChatGPT. You can get a brief summary, read further and click your way through. Perhaps also read Sean Ellis's book Hacking Growth, a bestselling book [unclear in the Swedish source: New York Author] that's sold millions of copies …

… worldwide and is available in many languages. I can definitely recommend it. The methodology can be adapted to e-commerce teams. Instead of thinking in silos and only about your own function here and now, you work cross-functionally and in teams, with profitable growth as the engine. Perhaps you have a growth manager instead of an e-commerce head, an ecommerce manager who only maintains things. A growth manager should see that we're driving traffic, that this traffic must convert and that the customer should then return again and again. It's cheaper to work …

… that way than constantly acquire new traffic. A simple, strong tip for everyone. We could discuss so much more, but we've already talked loads. I haven't even got to one of the biggest things I wanted to raise: I've found a new project we might start in late autumn.

I won't say exactly what it is. But speaking of all the DMs on LinkedIn and the emails, this was the first time I replied to someone within ten minutes.

My reply was brief: Call me, 0722… Here's my phone number. The guy called straight away and pitched the idea. Suddenly I'd invited him home and we sat for a whole day, from morning to late afternoon when I had to pick up the children …

… brainstorming. It's a completely new startup. I thought it was innovative and exciting, something I'll use myself and am passionate about. Current revenue is zero kronor.

It could be a fun Zero to 100 journey to follow. As soon as we've sorted everything out, we can talk more openly about it. Perhaps at the end of summer or beginning of autumn. Consider this a teaser. I was going to say more today, but time has flown by.

Now I'm curious. Is it the thing I already know a little about? I sent it to you, because you're a health nerd too, to see how you reacted.

If you're skeptical, that's good, because we're the target audience. And I am skeptical. I haven't always been, but I've become so over the years.

It's fun. Since then I've told probably twenty or thirty people about the idea. More or less everyone has initially been skeptical and then become excited. I love that starting point.

Can you say anything more? Otherwise it feels a bit … It's health-related. Something in health, beauty, wellness, health, tech-ish …

… community-driven, of course, with a strong story. Those who've followed me know I have a weakness for good storytelling, and here it's storytelling like no other. There's an extremely strong reason to exist, as I usually call it. A company can be founded for many reasons: to make money, because you've invented something, want to change an industry, have a job or do something else in everyday life. Or you have a problem of your own that others might also have, there's no solution and you want to solve it. This is that kind of case, with a strong personal connection.

What made this particular person stand out, compared with someone who needs to write a hundred times? The email probably had a strong hook: clear, short, concise and data-driven. I immediately saw he understood how finance works. It wasn't: Now we'll launch and get ten thousand … a thousand customers, or we'll just press the marketing button and all the customers will come pouring in.

He understood the marketing machinery before contacting me, had a plan for scaling and had done his due diligence on competitors. There was a lot, but above all a simple tagline: This is like X for Y, something nobody else has solved in Sweden, or eventually in the world.

Was all that in the first message, or did it emerge in the call? Most of it probably came in the call. But the email had: This is like X for Y. In one line I understood the business model.

On the next line, what they want to do, and on the third, why they want to do it. Then I could relate.

It felt bloody great and I had a good gut feeling. I didn't even look the person up on LinkedIn and didn't know who I was speaking to. Initially I thought he was twenty-five to twenty-seven, because his voice sounded young on the phone …

… and then, fifteen minutes into the call, he said he was forty-seven. That was quite a difference. I was like: What? You sound like you're thirty.

At first he sounded even younger. Your voice gets younger when you … It doesn't matter to me, but I incorrectly assumed something based on his voice and the conversation. He felt young and hungry, like someone who'd been on one journey and wanted to do the next. When we met he shared more of his history, and it turned out he'd been on many journeys. Has he sold those companies, or what happened?

He'd sold one company, and there was some [unclear in the Swedish source: merger company]. I haven't looked into the whole picture. He's worked in different industries and ended up on the e-commerce sidetrack, without that being planned from the beginning.

We'll see how it goes. I promise to keep you updated, perhaps particularly during the first quarter when we have more figures and ideas to share.

Fun, I look forward to hearing more. I also looked up the person I mentioned earlier. Let's see if I can pronounce the name: Ignaz Semmelweis, who lived from 1818 to 1865, was a Hungarian doctor. In 1847 at Vienna General Hospital, he discovered that mortality from puerperal fever was three times higher in the doctors' ward than in the midwives' ward.

The reason was that doctors went from autopsies to childbirth without washing their hands. When he introduced handwashing with a chlorinated lime solution, mortality fell drastically. A tragic footnote is that his contemporaries rejected the discovery. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital and died there of an infection in 1865. Today he's called the savior of mothers.

Wow, I get goosebumps when you read that. Imagine someone like that ultimately ending up in a psychiatric hospital and later turning out to have been right.

We have a lot to thank him for. Yes, all humanity really. Very interesting trivia. It's fun that you look things like that up in the middle of the podcast; I love it. I remembered the story so strongly, and think about how many people, especially mothers and children, have survived because of it.

That's why I say humanity owes him a debt. He's the one people should put up statues of, instead of certain warriors who killed loads of people and are then celebrated. Whatever, that's not what we're discussing on this podcast. Great to see you and talk e-commerce again, Fredrik. I hope those listening get something out of the episodes. Judging by the comments, you do. Keep writing and commenting. Do you have questions, tips or ideas about our companies, your own or some other company you'd like us to discuss?

Share them with us, so we get inspiration for the next episode. One fun thing would be if someone wanted us to look at their ad library. Then we could bring it up on the TV and record the screen while we go through it. Facebook Ad Library is open to everyone, and we can give constructive criticism.

That's a bloody good tip. Let's do that in an episode. We'll post something on LinkedIn. Everyone who wants their ads dissected in the smallest detail can take part, and we'll do a whole, or nearly a whole, episode about it.

Shall we do it? Yes, and perhaps something similar with a website. Conversion rate optimization. We did something like that at the beginning of the podcast, around 2024. [unclear in the Swedish source: T Ravel] did a rebrand we looked at and commented on. We also visited Astrid Wild and talked a lot about them. They'd done a surprisingly large amount well for being so young, but of course there was feedback too.

I was a little worried about what Maria and the others running the company would think. But they got in touch and said it was fun that we'd discussed them and there was a lot to do. They'd been taking notes frantically. Then I thought: Yes, great that something positive came out of it.

So we weren't just tearing them apart and doing a roast. They took it well. You can take things different ways: personally and take offense, or see it as a chance to grow. Someone with a good understanding of e-commerce and data has taken the time and given loads of free feedback. Then you can sit down and implement some of it. Looking later, I've seen that they did.

Fun, hopefully it's worked well for them. Don't forget to share the podcast with colleagues, friends and acquaintances who could benefit from it. See you next Thursday. Bye …

… bye! Yeah.