CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #035

Wait ... This IS the Email You’re Looking For, Overstock CEO Beds Russian Spy, The Future of Internet Pizza, and more.

August 27, 2019

Yo - 

Seriously folks … I never thought that one day I’d be including a story about myself. Which I do. And then I talk about billionaires and sexy Russian spies and Voodoo dolls and online pizza.

This could be our best email EVER!

Here are this week’s top stories.

1.  WOOF, WOOF, WOOF! (You Like Me, You Really Like Me!)

So, perhaps you notice something different about this email? It’s coming from a new domain –

CheckoutWeekly.com

. Don’t worry. TaskHusky is still your awesome Shopify development powerhouse of wonder. But this weekly email is getting REALLY popular and people are sharing it. We need a way to allow people to subscribe to it without necessarily opening up a TaskHusky development account and … yadda yadda yadda … CheckoutWeekly.com.

Cool name, right?

Same me, same you, same beer.

And same email of snarky respite from the seriousness of life as an eCommerce entrepreneur while actually delivering interesting news once in a while.

Let me know if you have any questions … or just get a beer for yourself and chill.

2.  Cross-Jurisdictional Tax Nexus Law is EASY! – Said no one ever.

Dang ... the sales tax thing is changing again. OK, where do we start?

Do you know what a “tax nexus” is? For us eCommerce folks, a “tax nexus” is the point at which you have to start reporting and paying sales tax in a state or county or city or whatever. It’s a huge pain the butt-cheeks because it's a little bit different in each state. Sometimes it's based on dollar amount, sometimes on number of sales, sometimes it’s one or the other, sometimes it’s both. Honest to Pete … it’s enough to drive a guy back to a normal job.

OK … it’s not that bad, but you get the point.

And those governmental Men-in-Black are just waiting for us to make a mistake so they can slap a fine on us and then skip off to a fundraising dinner for Senator Know-Nothing. Each election year the rules change, and some more changes are taking effect this October 1

. 

These 

 do a great job of trying to keep up on it.

Each time these tax laws change we get barraged with questions about ways to automate the tax calcs in Shopify stores. There are a few good solutions out there, but our go-to recommendation is 

. It's an easy one-click install in Shopify and they do a good job.

. If you sign up, they will support this email … which sounds fair to me because

beer does NOT buy itself

.

3.  Half-Baked Arguments and Overdone Compliance – the 

Future of Pizza on the Internet

Domino’s Pizza is getting sued because the cool pizza-ordering and tracking app on their website may not be ADA-compliant. When I read this story on TheVerge,

I thought my head was going to explode

. Here are some of the headlines I came up with:

“Here’s the Deep Dish on Domino’s”

“Supreme Court to Decide in 30-Minutes or Less”

“Domino’s Delivers Cheesy Appeal”

“Heated Arguments Over a Slice of ADA Law”

“Domino’s Orders a Supreme With Everything On It”

“Pizza Lawsuit a Recipe for Disaster”

Sometimes these things just write themselves. Actually, the only thing anyone should sue Domino’s for is putting pineapple on a pizza. But as naturally funny as this story is, it’s actually very important and the results will impact what websites and apps can and cannot do for a generation.

.

4.  Baggy-Pants Bezos Gets Nervous and Plays with Walmart Dolls

I imagine Jeff Bezos sitting behind a long, beveled-glass desk in dark while wearing saggy cargo pants and sticking little pins into a Walmart-shaped doll. But his MoJo must be a NoGo these days.

Remember back in the 1990s and early 2000s when Walmart was the big evil corporate villain destroyer of the retail world?

They ruled the universe like Thanos

by applying the best technological logistics system in the world to bargain retail.

Aw … those were the days.

Since then, Sears and Montgomery Ward are toast, along with hundreds of smaller players. J. C. Penney is on life support. Target got woke and started early with data analytics so they’re doing alright. But until recently, Walmart was a BIG question mark. They were resting on their techno-laurels and came super-duper-stupid-late to the eCommerce party -- almost getting shellacked by the Amazonian juggernaut. 

I don’t know what happened. Maybe the spirit of Sam Walton himself visited the dreams of the Walmart Board of Directors and kicked them in their ethereal butts. A few strategic hires and acquisitions later, things are stabilizing. Now, Y/Y online sales in the house that Sam built are up 37%.

.

5.  Billionaire CEO Beds Beautiful Russian Spy … maybe.

Man, you just can’t make this stuff up. Watch this … I’m just going to report this straight and you tell me if you don’t just giggle without me even trying.

Patrick Byrne – billionaire CEO of Overstock.com – released a statement that he was a part of a Deep State conspiracy to spy on both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. Part of the plan involved him seducing the scandalous and beautiful Russian Spy Maria Butina. Further, he was recruited into this plan by “Men in Black” from the FBI. He has since resigned from his company, “for the good of the counrty, for the good of the firm.”

Wait a second … before I finish this email I need to put on my tin-foil hat so the CIA death-ray scanners can't read my thoughts.

Hey … Patrick Byrne has a billion dollars, so he’s obviously doing something right that I’m not. And there are photos on the internet of him standing very close – all chummy-like – next to that Russian gal. I’m just not going to say anything more and let you read the story for yourself.

.

Like I said folks … Holy crappity crap crap! There is just WAY too much interesting stuff to talk about this week. Seriously, think about it. Where else

– ever, in the history of everything –

can you read about Corporate Voodoo Dolls, Supreme Court Pizza, Billion CEOs Bedding Russian Spies, and Tax Nexus events all in one place and it still all kinda makes sense and goes together?

This is freak’in awesome!

Everyone needs to hear about all this stuff. So, let’s try out some new email toys.

to forward this email super easily to people you like ... or want to like.

And if you're lucky enough to have a friend who likes you enough to share this awesome email with you,

to subscribe. They want you to have a better life. 

Happy Selling,

Zachary