CEO at CartStars | Cultivating an Empathetic & Resilient Community for eCommerce Leaders

Your team got smaller this year. Your decisions didn’t.

You need to know what actually worked at a company like yours before you commit. You don’t need another vendor pitch or another analyst report. You need the real answer from someone who already made the call.

That room is called CartStars. I started it with six people at a dinner table because I was tired of expensive decisions made on bad information.

Estèe Lauder, Steve Madden, Bombas, and MERIT Beauty are in it. So is the person who just solved the exact problem sitting on your desk right now.

It’s not a network. It’s the room you check before you commit.

If you’re making a high-stakes decision right now, your peers already made it.

Start at cartstars.com

Debbie Kemunto Pearce

Three versions of the truth.


Shopify says one thing, Amazon says another, and your ad platform says something else.

But Krishna P. asks one question first:
Who's accountable for what's actually true?

At Oracle, he watched companies pay millions for the answer.
Then, bootstrapped Saras Analytics with his cousins to bring it to brands who couldn't.

Today, it's 180 people. Working with brands like HexClad, Ridge, Athletic Greens, and KFC.

His take on being the calmest person in a messy data room?
Know that your tool isn't the problem.
It's that no one owns the question.

That's what Visionaries is.

Krishna Poda, Co-Founder & CEO, Saras Analytics.
February 24th in Palm Springs. He's in the room.

Who owns the question at your company?

Debbie Pearce

It’s a living room, not a ballroom.


No badge lanyard. No sad buffet chicken. No one on a stage pretending they figured it all out.

While you’re on the conference floor right now, there’s a Michelin-trained chef in a kitchen cooking for a group of executives who are just talking. Actually talking.

Breaking down how they think, not the version they’d give on a panel.

There’s also a photographer in that room whose work made me save his number for ten years. I waited for a moment worthy of him. Today was it.

This room doesn’t exist tomorrow.

Visionaries Day is happening right now, and there’s still a way in.

You can find it here: https://lnkd.in/gzRuHHqK

Steve has receipts.


He doubled revenue at NYDJ.
He 3X’d Kut from the Kloth in half the time with a quarter of the staff.
You ask him how things are going and the answer sounds like an earnings call.
He doesn’t do vague. He does results.

We had a conversation in the room once about identity resolution and whether it crosses a line. Steve didn’t miss a beat. “I’m head of growth, not ethics.”
I laughed. But that level of clarity is why he keeps winning.

This is someone who was building fan communities 23 years ago on Myspace. He was doing it before anyone had a word for it. He just understood something most brands still haven’t figured out: your customer has to believe they’re the only one in the room.

He’s funny. He’s real.

Everybody knows Steve. But do you know his best dad joke? Drop it in the comments. 🤣

"I don't expect to learn anything."


Esteban Restrepo said that from a hot tub. With three people present at the end of Day 1 in Palm Springs. Just one of those conversations that happens when nobody's trying to have one.

He wasn't being cynical. He was being honest. 
He's been at this long enough.... where you stop expecting someone to hand you a trick that changes your business overnight. 

But then he kept going.

"What I loved about today is that it was real. I watched someone actually share something that works for them. And it was a contrast to the big stages where it becomes performative."

And honestly? That hit me.
Because most people in this industry already know the difference. The stage version and the real one. They've been in both rooms. They know which one they walked out of and actually used something from.

They just don't have a place where the second version exists.....till now.

When's the last time you were in a room where you got what you really needed?

Most people listen to the women they admire.


Not enough people watch them.

Listening gets you inspired for a day. Watching changes how you move.

These 10 lessons didn't come from a stage. 
They came from paying close attention to what the women around me actually do when nobody's clapping, when the easier choice is right there, when stopping would be completely reasonable.

At the end of the day, it's the people in your life that make the life you live. 

If you're a woman in my life, I'm grateful for you. 

I'm learning from you, I'm inspired by you.

You flew home, and nobody said thank you.


You sat in someone's session, visited a partner at their booth, gave someone 10 minutes of real conversation, and flew home. Back to the inbox.

I think about that more than I should.

Colleen Waters did all of that at a conference. She won an all-inclusive vacation.
And for the first time in I don't know how long, she stopped. 
She came back and posted about how the pause gave her something the grind had been taking. 

I read it and thought, OK, so this is the room. The one where someone shows up, and it doesn't go unnoticed. This is where CartStars did something right.

I've been building this thing for three years, and Colleen explained it better in one post than I have in 300.

Showing up looks different every time. 
This time at Visionaries, it's about who you bring with you. Because every room like this started with someone saying, "you need to be here" to someone else.

Visionaries is next week. See you in Palm Springs, February 24-25


When's the last time you showed up for someone and nobody said a thing?

Never go back.


New company, new industry, new title. Because that's what gets the "excited to announce."
Nobody writes the post about going back.

Niva Singer, MBA keeps going back.

First hire at Native. Built the ops, the website, the emails with a team under ten. Then P&G bought it for $100 million.

She left. Then she walked back in.
Not for the title. Because there was always space for optimizations.
Worth a $580K annual revenue lift.
She tested the placement of one feature on the homepage. Build-Your-Pack, one test.
That's what going back looks like when you're paying attention.

Then she went back to the same category. MUD\WTR, now Auri Nutrition. Second mushroom wellness brand. Same lane but deeper.

Some people chase what's next. She goes back to what matters.

She brought that energy to fondue night at The Matterhorn in San Francisco.
Grateful to Klaviyo and Loop Subscriptions for making the night possible!

You make 100 decisions a week. You can't explain how you make one?


That's not a criticism. That's most of us.
We asked a small group of senior leaders to do something most people never take the time to do.

Write down the things they see before anyone else does. Their frameworks.

And I've been reading these Visionary questionnaires over the last few weeks.
We haven't even hit record yet, and it's already changing how I think.

Tomorrow:
Two chairs, a living room in Palm Springs, sixteen peers, a full camera crew.
No spectators. Real questions, real pressure.

I'm equal parts excited and terrified!

Visionaries, Feb 24-25.

Link in comments if this is the kind of room you want to be in.

Liquid I.V.

I lead the executional and strategic voice of customer for Liquid I.V, overseeing the customer support operations and providing crucial voice of customer insights while exceeding industry operational best in class performance metrics for efficiency and satisfaction by over 50%.

Director of Customer Experience

I brought Liquid I.V.'s Customer Experience department from 0 to 1, implementing full scale customer support operations and voice of customer analytics. 

I oversee the daily operations in chat, email, phone call, social media, and customer reviews. 

I developed a proactive hiring model to predict need for growth in customer support as the company scaled 20x in revenue. 

I developed the quality complaint reporting process, tracking trends and sharing customer feedback to improve packaging. 

I created all Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's) and training curriculum for all new hires (coordinators and managers). 

I introduced qualitative analytics for each product launch, sharing customer feedback about flavor requests, complaints, and product trends. 

I introduced CSAT and customer surveys as a part of our customer journey and product roadmap. 

During this time, I decreased first response time by 88%, improving customer satisfaction by 26 percentage points, and improving website user experience, increasing retention by 18 percent.

Senior Customer Experience Manager

FLO Vitamins

Customer experience, quality assurance, and regulatory expert for FLO vitamins.

Customer Experience Lead Consultant

Hum Nutrition Inc

Oversaw the daily operations and CSAT for HUM Nutrition. I owned and implemented all standard operating processes. Managed the customer quality complaint process and working with quality assurance to track product trends. Trained and developed team members on email, phone call, Facebook Messenger, and chat.

Customer Support Manager

Pullias Center For Higher Education

College and Financial Aid Advisor

Council for Advancement & Support of Education

Marketing Analytics Coordinator	

Daniel Atwater Strategies

Strategic Communications Specialist 

University of California

Student Lobbyist

RoTalent Management

Talent Management Assistant

Voice of Customer, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Engagement, Operational Excellence Leader

All things customer experience, customer support, and Voice of Customer data. Results driven and passionate about people.

Domonique Brown

So proud of this collaboration with Flip in supporting a full Liquid I.V. takeover for SuperBowl! 

Huge thank you to Sophia Velo for getting this live on time for the big day!

Customer Experience executive for hyper-growth enterprises, driving customer satisfaction strategies, retention, and operational efficiency, building brands that customers love.

SINGING TOILETS STARTED THE CONVERSATION,
THE PHONE KEPT IT GOING.

Liquid I.V.’s Super Bowl debut was built to get people talking -
So we worked with them to make sure their phone channel was flushed with the same energy.

Turns out, bold ideas sound pretty good.

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Debbie Kemunto Pearce's LinkedIn Performance

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