Forward Looking Business

00:36 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show, Lee Schafer who speaks to his background as a business columnist and his thoughts on the concept of bureaucracy for good 10:34 – Lee talks about the importance of understanding opportunity costs and where your business’s money is going 15:53 – Lee expounds on the brilliant business model that Alfred P. Sloan created for General Motors 23:54 – The mindset of money and capital allocation as a business and an entrepreneur 32:35 – Kevin and Nick thank Lee for joining the showEPISODE QUOTES“If you go back to the nineteen teens and the nineteen twenties, Detroit was Silicon Valley. It was the Wild West.” (05:25)“Your line managers are always gonna be – or they should be anyway – optimists. They should be strategic. They should be looking for opportunities to grow their operation. But ultimately they do compete, and they compete for their parent company’s checkbook.” (09:51)“Which kinda makes the achievement of [Elon] Musk and Tesla pretty remarkable. That’s not a normal guy. You can tell that capital has been very much a part of their whole story…he’s the most interesting figure maybe in my lifetime.” (28:40)“And they [Target] still do that. You can still listen to those folks talk about investment capital and ask ‘are we gonna invest in our store or are we gonna invest in our distribution capability for online?’ This is the methodology where you go about doing it.” (32:06)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedInLee’s LinkedInBOOKS MENTIONEDMy Years with General Motors

00:40 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show, Aaron Keller and Marco Vriens who break down Proctor & Gamble’s success with brand management systems 08:15 – The significance and evolution of brand management systems16:20 – How companies and brands should be adapting to their ever-evolving industries 24:35 – The influence a brand manager should have on an organization28:15 – How brands can leverage innovation to survive the end of the ‘big product category’ era 35:40 – Kevin and Nick thank Aaron and Marco for joining the showEPISODE QUOTES“As your number of brands increase, and as your number of different products increase, managing becomes more complicated. And so, to keep that all straight and to manage that in a diligent way, really requires a very specific and well thought out brand management system.” (06:34)“If you look back on it historically you gotta give them [P&G] kudos for having invented something – not just a product but the way of managing the product. You don’t refer to them as a product management approach, it’s a brand management approach. And they were able to not only exit from only thinking about product, but also evolve beyond just brand.” (11:02)“P&G invented soap operas. So, if you think about the original content marketing, that was it right there. They created content for moms in the fifties to watch – watch soap operas – so they could have commercials around them. Brilliant, isn’t it?” (22:08)“For me, the brand is really meant to be the translation to the consumer benefits and to make sure that your brand comes to mind first in the consumer’s mind. That is really the strategy that I think all brands should have.” (27:55)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedInMarco’s LinkedInAaron’s LinkedInCapsule’s Website 

00:46 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show fellow business nerd, Jeff Cayley who speaks to his e-commerce bicycle retail business 07:36 – Jeff chronicles the decision to expand his business into outdoor apparel and the process of mastering economies of scale 14:14 – How fashion, trends and other brands impact the apparel market 18:47 – How Jeff leverages resonating content to enhance his apparel vertical 25:37 – Jeff speaks to how he plans on launching new products and the approach he takes to his company’s brand 29:00 – The decision to acquire the brand Kettle 36:37 – Jeff talks about the challenge of targeting and selling to women specifically 41:02 – Kevin and Nick thank Jeff for joining the show EPISODE QUOTES“I don’t wanna sell other people’s shit anymore. I wanna sell my own shit.” (13:10)“That’s kinda how we succeeded in the bicycle-retail world. We looked at where is everyone doing these old school marketing tactics – poor branding, poor consumer engagement in general – and we went the other route. We engaged people differently. We made people laugh. We paid attention to a lot more details that a lot of other people didn’t pay attention to.” (16:04)“Our team…we like to have fun, we like to travel, we like to meet new people, we like to get outside of our comfort zone, we like to adventure and try new shit.” (20:56)“Our outlook on it is that, like we just talked about earlier, we’re not going to be this fashion-forward brand, we’re more so a lifestyle brand.” (26:33)“It would be dumb of us to think that we can understand women’s apparel and sell to them when we’re just a bunch of dudes. And I think that a lot of apparel brands fail at that because they also are run by a bunch of white dudes and trying to sell apparel to women and just missing the mark.” (38:04)“Listening to Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia CEO, on I think it was How I Built This, it was like the stupidest shit ever. He just played it so cool like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m the CEO I just built the company and like the outdoors.’ No, no, no, there’s no fucking way on the planet you build a company that big without being an aggressive strategic capitalist. Like, spill the beans motherfucker. I was so pissed!” (42:17)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedInWorldwide Cyclery WebsiteKetl Website

02:53 – What it means to earn deserved trust 06:44 – What CEOs can do to communicate and execute a shared vision to their leadership team 12:23 – Differentiating the roles of CEO and CFO as it pertains to managing the budget 15:22 – Strategies for accurately assessing where your business currently stands EPISODE QUOTES“We live in a world where there’s an abundance of data, whereas twenty years ago that wasn’t the case. And so, what you have to start to do is organize your thoughts around where you want to go and figure out how you communicate that. That’s really the first step.” (07:58)“And that’s really what execution is about. It’s being nimble and having the data flow and the management team and the organizational structure to remain nimble as things happen.” (10:35)“The CEO’s job, as one of our advisers always says is, ‘All they have to do all day long is say the same thing to everybody.’ That’s what you want to CEO to do because so much information comes into your managers every day. If you’re not repeating the same stuff over and over and over again, people are gonna be lost.” (16:17)“If you try to do more than you’re capable of, you’re stressing the limits and you’re losing what you’re good at. So, if you’re on a team for a reason, do that job well.” (18:52)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedIn

00:41 – Kevin and Nick introduce today’s topic, transition 05:20 – Kevin analyzes the two key responsibilities of a great CEO and provides an ideal example for listeners to consider 12:34 – Best practices for CEOs to master the process of transition 16:09 – Kevin speaks to what success looks like for a CEO or an organization to undergo transition 21:14 – How to create a seamless web of deserved trust   26:19 – The importance of proper delegation especially when it comes to capital allocation EPISODE QUOTES“I like this concept. I like talking about this transition because I think it separates the ambitious CEO from the managing CEO. One that wants to grow and scale a business to capture a larger vision versus one that is managing a business.” (02:29)“You always want your CEO to understand the customers that you serve better than they know themselves. That way you’ll have unique insight into the market so you can continue to create value.” (06:36)“The business or business is a lot of little decisions every day mixed with a couple of really big decisions. And, those few big decisions should always come from the CEO.” (13:47)“In my opinion, success looks like a dynamic process. And what I mean by that is, there is this concept of a budget that you do once a year and then you kinda reference it but once you become really off budget nobody ever pays attention to it anymore. Or a concept of a strategic plan where you create this great big deck and then you stick it on a shelf, and it collects dust. To me, success is making those things come to alive in an organization.” (17:01)“You’ve created a seamless web of deserved trust. And, really what that means is you can go to sleep at night knowing that your team and their teams and your culture have picked up the slack. That there’s no stone unturned, that while you’re out there thinking about the future of the business and where you want to go and deals you want to make, the operators of your business have it covered.” (24:18)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedIn

05:09 – How to define Capital Strategy 09:32 – Explaining the practice of Capital Allocation 12:09 – The role of a great CEO and best practices for implementing proper capital strategy using capital allocation 16:53 – The fundamental purpose and intent of the stories told on this podcast EPISODE QUOTES“Generally speaking, capital allocation and capital strategy should be applied to any part of your business. But what we’re talking about is a segment of business in the orbital market that is maybe underserved when it comes to information like this.” (03:41)“Capital allocation is the practical implementation of your capital strategy.” (10:29)“I think increasing the value of your business is what every CEO wants to do. And that can take on many different forms: revenue growth, profit growth. Not all revenue and profits are created equal and that’s something CEOs should understand as well. Value comes in many different shapes and sizes.” (14:39)“Ya know, the stories that we’ll talk about, it’s not just about capital allocation or capital strategy. It’s as much about that as it is seeing a need in the market and trying to meet that need or seeing how the use of business changes the fabric of society.” (18:01)LINKS MENTIONEDAmpliFi Capital Corp WebsiteKevin’s LinkedInNick’s LinkedInBOOKS MENTIONEDThe Outsiders

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