He's a good guy, loves his Mama. Loves Austria and America too... 2 years ago, Mike Ryan wrote about Google marketing Live conversational campaign technology. "a new UI workflow using AI chat to simplify and accelerate campaign creation right in Google Ads.". Sounds pretty 2025. As a market leading practitioner and commentator, he wrote,

"𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿?

Everyone – probably."

"𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆?

The decisions to be made here will be about can vs. should."

"I want to be purposefully skeptical of this technology – not resistant, but thoughtful.

It’s not magic, though – it’s math."

He then wrote " I hope we’ll all linger and dwell at this point in the technology.

Let’s adopt, test, and adapt."

Fast forward 2 years and I pick up that conversation on the Struggle Bus. Trying to understand where the landscape is and I couldn't think of a better week to drop this episode than this week. Dust is settling on BFCM and we are looking longingly into the eyes of 2026 with care. His team delivered amazing results, with some real time pulse pauses too, as if they didn't have enough to do.

Mike travelled to Austria, powered by the love of his no wife, sounds like a Christmas movie. He lives there now but still works with brands like Miami Heat to name one. His intelligence and love of our industry is only matched by his humor (American spelling just for you Mike) and his commitment to fun through his commentary.

In our epsiode we cover the case for Google - the plucky legacy org.

Since we recorded, some of his wisdom came to pass. Google were seen to be passive in their challenge to OpenAI a mere month ago, but his observations on AI mode and Googles ability to distribute quickly have come to pass.

To follow Mike in general is to be in the midst of a brilliant thinker, curious mind and someone who gives back generosly, without wanting something in return. He is another real treasure in our world.

Mike is someone you want to follow, he is someone you should listen to and you will enjoy it, I have no doubt.

Thanks to Omnisend - still sending out emails without disruption as efficiently as elves in the North Pole.

ParcelPlanet Somewhere in the midst of all the BFCM madness is a pissed off customer not getting their parcel. That's the competition. Not on the Parcel Planet wathc.

Speaking of growth our other new sponsor Trustap have been doing this quietly for some time and have now found their voice. They even bonded with us earlier last week publishing the pod too. This friendship might last more than just for Christmas.

Episode Link here -

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. - Bill Hicks - Not what I was expecting when I sat down to speak with Alessandro Desantis on the Struggle Bus a few weeks ago. Then he hits me with the fact he loves Irish folk music - Officially, mind blown.

Someone whose work I admire from a distance and who has infused interesting approaches with a lot of humour in the last number of months. They are lucky to have this type of thinker over at Nebulab - an Italian man, into the comedic arts from an engineering background developing better commerce experiences.

Alessandro is incredibly self aware, self deprecating and has a challenger mentality without needing to seem like it is a burden. It is a matter of fact. He started writing code at 11. He grew up in Italy. And he arrived in ecommerce from the outside, via software engineering and product thinking.

He explains his path like this:

“My background is not in ecommerce. It's actually in software engineering… I started writing code when I was 11, and I kept at it for a very long time.”

Nebulab itself began as a pure software shop:

“Nebulab back then… was defining itself as an ecommerce agency, but the reality is we were, for the most part, just a software house.”

That outsider origin is important. He’s not emotionally attached to “how ecommerce has always been done.” He sees the industry the way a product person sees a messy codebase: full of accidental complexity, half-copied patterns and rituals nobody remembers the reason for.

Then layer on the culture. I wanted to probe because I find European friends to have interested and interesting minds and points of view.

He’s not shy about being Italian/European, and how that shapes his lens:

“More than anything technical, what being Italian or European maybe for us is… the ability to disconnect ourselves from the work…”

In a world of 24/7 hustle p*rn, that’s borderline subversive. He connects it to effectiveness, not laziness. Because he’s not fused to the work, he can actually see it:

“You actually, ironically, become much more effective at work because you still care about your craft… but you also have the time and the mental space to look at how you're executing and then try to optimize that.”

He even reaches for Bill Hicks’ It’s Just a Ride bit to explain his philosophy: if you stop believing the ride is the whole universe, you become more intentional about how you ride it.

He’s surprisingly optimistic and thoughtful.

“A lot of the playbooks and the best practices are basically a floor… they're not a ceiling.”

There was a lot here so I wrote more on substack.

Thank you to Trustap Omnisend and ParcelPlanet for making this possible- Happy BFCM weekend to you all.

Most people on LinkedIn only talk about growth once they’ve emotionally recovered from it.

Jeremy Levine talked about it mid-journey. Mildly bruised. Still curious. Fully honest.

This week on The Struggle Bus, I sat down with Jeremy (Client Strategy & Chief Revenue Officer at Maze), and instead of a checklist episode, we got something better: war stories, self-awareness, and the kind of career advice that doesn’t come wrapped in motivational fonts.

Jeremy’s worked with brands like Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors and Vitamin Shoppe. Impressive? Absolutely.
More impressive? How casually he admitted he used to be that guy.

You know the one:
✅ Always right
❌ Terrible at bringing people along

He talked about burning bridges early in his career, learning the hard way that being correct isn’t the same as being effective, and realising — far too late — that leadership isn’t about volume, it’s about velocity and direction.

One thing that really stuck with me:
Curiosity isn’t a personality trait. It’s survival gear.

In an industry that reinvents itself every 15 minutes, the people who last aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones who keep asking better questions.

We also got into the unsexy stuff no one wants to post about: foundations.
Clean data. Connected systems. Flexible thinking.
Not flashy. Just deadly effective.

Jeremy’s story isn’t about hustle. It’s about endurance.
Not about hacks. About habits.
Not about pretending it’s easy. About knowing it isn’t — and showing up anyway.

If you’ve ever been the “strong one” in the room while quietly Googling how not to combust… this one’s for you.