Podcasts about pier one

This episode Londa and David discuss the restaurant Cedars at Pier One and being vulnerable in difficult times of your life. Want more of Londa and David? Follow us on social media! https://linktr.ee/sherwoodautinhomes?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=e70625ce-9250-44ba-a093-c56ee2f1a47e

Host Bex Scott lets you in on her process for going through her local Value Village thrift store in this episode. She explains the layout of the store section by section, how they're stocked, and what to look for in each. She explains where the good stuff is on the shelf, how to check items for damage, and where some of the hot items are hidden. If Value Village is new to you or you find it overwhelming, this episode will break it down into understandable sections and help you scour for the perfect vintage score that you're seeking. Bex also shares some key tips for collectors and resellers. Did you know that some of the best items are on the very bottom shelves in Value Village? Don't be afraid to get on the floor and look down there. Where do they hide the salt and pepper shakers? Should you skip the book section? If you arrive at the store first thing in the morning, is sneaking into the middle of the queue a good idea? Bex answers all these questions and more in this episode. Listen in then share your thoughts and tips with Bex on Instagram @PyrexWithBex. Resources discussed in this episode:Value VillageFind a Value Village near you—Contact Rebecca Scott | Pyrex With Bex: Website: PyrexWithBex.comInstagram: @pyrexwithbex—TranscriptBex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast, where you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat. Hey everybody, this is Bex Scott and you are listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. On today's episode, I want to take you through my process for shopping at Value Village. Now, where I live in Alberta, we have quite a few different thrift shops, antique shops, but I find that the one that I have the most success at right now is actually the Value Village in Red Deer. So for those of you who live in this area, I would be interested to see if you kind of have the same process as me for going through the store. Now, I know that everybody has their own sections that they really love to hit up first. I know that when I used to go thrifting every day before we had our daughter, I used to show up way before the store opened and line up at the Value Village, this was in Calgary, not where we live now, but you would see the same people there all the time. The same person was always first, and you would get to know the people who were shopping there, which was kind of fun. Bex Scott: [00:01:38] And you would watch as people who weren't regulars came around the corner and they thought they could sneak into the line or try and create another line to get into the store before you did. And these people were having none of it. So one thing to know for sure is to never mess with a die-hard thrifter or reseller because they stake claim to their spot in that line and they will not move from it. So back when I used to go to Value Village in Calgary, my first stop was always the Pyrex section because there were a lot of other people who went there first. You wanted to be the first one to get the fresh Pyrex that they put out. A lot of times that's how I got my full sets. And you do have to kind of fight people for different things because you can tell, right? As you guys both lock eyes on the same set, it's like whoever is closest to that, you grab it. So you put your hand on it and you just have to be assertive, which is something that I'm not good at. I've learned to be a little more assertive since I've been thrifting for a bit longer now, but it's definitely not in my personality to fight with somebody over something. It's not worth it in my opinion. Bex Scott: [00:02:58] If somebody is going to fight with me over a set of Pyrex, I will gladly give it to them because I'm just, I don't like conflict. I will miss out on a great opportunity just to avoid the conflict with a stranger. But some other people who are there that you get to know, there was one lady, I called her the Teacup Lady because she went and cleared out the full section of teacups at Value Village every single morning, and I would kind of creep to look at what was in her cart. I have no clue about teacups at all. Nothing. No knowledge about china, any of that stuff. So it was fascinating to me to see what she was buying. And I'm sure she was a reseller, because nobody can store that many teacups in their house. Well, that might be a lie because I have that much Pyrex. But anyway, there was also a guy that would go and buy vintage books and then somebody else who would buy video games and electronics. So those were the usuals who would line up with me on at the Value Village. So since I've moved out of the city, I frequent Goodwill, Sally-Ann, Value Village, and then a few of the smaller thrift and antique stores in our town. And Value Village is definitely a big store to search through. It goes in huge cycles of being amazing and just being totally crap for what's in there. Bex Scott: [00:04:33] A lot of it goes with the seasons, which makes sense. So right now it's not too bad because people are clearing out after the holidays. Christmas is over, they have more time. So they're focusing more on clearing out, maybe getting ready to sell their houses in the spring/summer. So there's been a lot of good vintage in the stores recently, but before Christmas, it was all Christmas. That's all you would find there. Everything else was kind of junky stuff. And then right after Christmas, it went through a phase where the shelves were, like, completely bare, except for a few things. So now if, now is February, if you're getting into thrifting or reselling, now is a great time, in my opinion, to start stocking up on your inventory and looking through things before the big garage sale season comes up, which I'm extremely excited about. Bex Scott: [00:05:33] Okay, so I avoid a lot of sections in Value Village when I look for my inventory. That is mainly because it's not my area of specialty. I don't know a lot about it, and I can't buy from every single category, or I would probably be kicked out of my house. Just kidding. But it would, it wouldn't work. So right when you walk into our Value Village, on the right, there's DVDs and board games. Now, I know a lot of people who resell DVDs and resell vintage, and not even vintage, just modern contemporary games, and they do extremely well. Bex Scott: [00:06:12] So I would love to get somebody on the podcast as a guest to talk about just board games, DVDs, music, that kind of stuff, because that is a section that I avoid. The first section that I do go to is the book section. I am a massive reader. I read every day. Right now my goal is to try and read six books a month. I did that for January. We'll see for February. But I have a problem with buying books for myself, never mind books to resell and to collect. But when I do buy them for my collection, it's the Little Golden Books. I love vintage Little Golden Books. Some of the newer ones are cute too, but I buy them for the illustrations and the artwork in them, and this might hurt a lot of people to hear, but I repurposed some of the pages in crafting, so I've been making little coasters and journals, covering journals with like Disney pictures and just really nice old vintage artwork, which I know is terrible to do to cut a book up. But I try to only cut the ones up that are really damaged. I don't ever touch a brand new pristine condition book. So I collect those for myself and to read to my daughter. So I'm trying to collect as many Little Golden Books for her as I can to pass down to her. I also have had great success selling the Little Golden Books. Bex Scott: [00:07:50] So if you can find them for like $0.25 each or a dollar each, they usually resell for like $3 to $4. So not a huge profit there. But if you get enough of them, you can sell them in bulk, you can sell them as a collection. And you might be able to find some good money in that section. Next, I always buy vintage Baby-Sitters Club books and Sweet Valley High, so right now those ones are really popular. I've sold quite a few Baby-Sitters Club books, and they did release, I think it was on Netflix, a Baby-Sitters Club TV show, which is actually pretty good, I'm not going to lie. So it did make a little bit of a comeback, but people are trying to complete their collections that they had growing up. So I always try and grab those books, especially the older Baby-Sitters Club ones. Next is Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. There are some extremely die-hard collectors here, and I know I've talked about this in a previous podcast episode. There are different types of the Nancy Drew, different time frames that they were released with different covers, artwork, that kind of thing. So keep that in mind when you are buying them if you were trying to complete a collection or you're trying to resell, that different ones will have different values just because of the time they were released and the type of cover that they have. Bex Scott: [00:09:25] Okay, so once you leave the book section in my Value Village, you go to this extremely overwhelming vase section where they've just crammed every single vase that has ever been donated from a florist shop. So you'll see a bajillion of them. They all look the same. They're all in there. I don't know why, but the same two vases could have two different prices. It drives me insane. But this is where I have had the most luck finding swung vases. And you need to be quick on these. Like this, when I walk in, I scan that section first to see if they've put anything really tall on the top shelf, because that's where they usually are. If I don't see any, I head to the books, but I've found quite a few amazing vases in this section. This is also where you want to look for pottery. Anything marked, I find is great to buy if you look it up with Google Lens. A lot of the potters marks are very hard to discern. So this is an area that I don't know a lot about, but I have lots of friends who have made great money selling especially German pottery. So if you can get to know some of the German pottery names, then this is the section you want to look for them in. Bex Scott: [00:10:47] Kitschy planters. Everybody loves a good kitschy planter. These ones can be from maybe it was like a vase that somebody got their baby shower gift from. They have the cute little lambs and the balloons and the blue and pinks. Lots of Easter around Easter time. So little chicks and rabbits, that kind of thing. So I always pick up the kitschy planters if they're in good condition. Make sure you touch every inch of them. Same with the vases. These sections are terrible for broken items. I don't know if they just don't catch them when they sort them or if they sell them regardless, but I've been so excited about finding something that I just grab it, throw it in my cart, and I get home and I secretly cry in my office because now I have to do something with this broken vase. Another thing that I often forget to look at are brass vases. So a lot of these are made in India and they're beautiful. These ones are always great to resell. They're also great in displays because they are so pretty. But keep an eye out for brass vases. Make sure you get them at a good price, though, because Value Village has caught on that these are valuable items and they have been jacking the prices of them. So next to the vase section is what I call the weird wood section. This is like a catch-all for anything wood that comes into the store. A lot of times there are broken shelves here, little knickknack things, but the things that I like to look for are the wooden knickknack boxes or jewelry boxes. Bex Scott: [00:12:35] A lot of them have really nice ornate carvings in them. Sometimes people's names on them. I really like these for storing knickknacks and jewelry, but also for reselling because they are a hot item. People love wooden boxes. Next would be wooden or carved animals. A lot of these things look like they might not have any value, but depending on the wood they're made out of, if you go home and research them, or you do a quick Google Lens in the store, it is definitely worth while. A lot of the wood is very valuable and the carvings have been done. There's lots from Africa or Mexico or places like that by the Indigenous people in the area, and they are very beautiful and great for collections, but also for reselling as well. Next up would be look for the little wooden knickknack shelves. These can be like the letterpress drawers or little mug holders that you put on your wall with the little pegs. Like the peg - peg, what's the word I'm going for? - The peg, the peg holder shelf thingies. Somebody, if you know what the actual word is, let me know. Not enough coffee today. But yes, look for those. I have seen some beautiful displays at Christmas where you have the accordion, peg hanger and you put Christmas decorations on them.That is a goal of mine one year to do with my vintage Christmas balls. Bex Scott: [00:14:09] Okay, so we've gone from the weird wood section now. I'm skipping over the strange candle, votive, school supply aisle. There's very rarely anything in there. Maybe sometimes old vintage photo albums. That is a good thing to always grab if they're in good condition. And always look for photos in them, because sometimes Value Village doesn't take them out, which is a really big score, but I usually skip this weird section, come back to it at the very end if I have time. Next is the plastic stuff. So this is your typical, I bought this plastic water bottle and now I'm donating it, and Value Village now has 10,000 of them, so avoid those ones. I find it kind of gross anyway to buy an old reused plastic water bottle, but that's just me. Some of you might love that section. What is good in this section though, is Starbucks to go mugs. If they are in near brand new condition or they haven't been used and abused, they will resell. Starbucks always resells. I've had amazing luck with it. Just be sure to open it because you never know what's inside. Still in this section, this is where you find your vintage Tupperware. Do not sleep on this section. People will donate their vintage Tupperware. Always do, this is so gross, but always do the sniff test. I have opened some in Value Village and there have been spiders and bugs and weird smells in there. Bex Scott: [00:15:47] To me, it's not worth it to take those home and clean them because I am creeped out by that. And it's, yeah, I would rather just leave that there for somebody else, which might be mean, but I would definitely check the condition and make sure somebody hasn't had spaghetti in it for a bajillion years, because that stuff stains. Look for utensil marks, make sure they're not totally torn to shreds and that they haven't been warped in the dishwasher or the microwave. So make sure the lids are nice and flat and that somebody also hasn't written their name on it in Sharpie. There may be a way to get it off, but just be cognizant of that when you're looking at the Tupperware section. Okay. Next we get into dishware. I love the dishware section. This is where I have found some amazing vintage Denby dishes. I'm not going to pronounce this right, but Le Creuset. I have found five Le Creuset mugs for 4.99. They are amazing to resell because they are just so valuable and expensive. Look for any Japan stoneware plates, Corelle dishes, those still resell like the butterfly gold that goes with the Pyrex. What else? Just keep an eye out. Start researching your dishware and just look at the bottom of everything, because you will be surprised at how many things you can miss just because you think it might be cheap. Bex Scott: [00:17:25] There's been a lot of Dollar Store or Walmart dishes that I think look like Le Creuset, and then I flip them over and they're not, and vice versa. So just keep an eye open. In the same aisle we have the teacup section. So I know that this can be a gold mine. This is one that I do skip over because I have such limited knowledge in it. So if you are a teacup collector, I would definitely check this section out. Look for chips. Look for gold that's been rubbed off. A lot of the vintage teacups, they do have a gold rim or a gold handle, and it's always the first to rub off. So just make sure you keep that in mind when you're looking through teacups. If, sometimes they put teapots in this section as well. Teapots can be very gross and stained on the inside, but if you put a dishwasher pod inside of them and let it soak, it will clean out all of that tea staining. On the other side of this aisle is the glassware. Another one of one of my favorites, because you never know what you're going to find here. So I look for vintage Libby. So if you flip it over, you'll see the little script L on the bottom. A lot of these dishes or glasses are the ones with the gorgeous designs. They can have sometimes metallic on them, gold Bex Scott: [00:18:53] Just make sure again that the gold isn't rubbing off. But they have the groovy flowers and the amazing patterns that you see in all the vintage catalogs. So this is a great section to look for that in. And try to find them in sets like four, eight, that always sells better. I've bought a lot of single glasses, which are definitely harder to resell. Sets of three are harder to resell as well, so you might get people asking to buy two of them and then you're stuck with one. But just keep that in mind when you're looking in the glasses. This is also where you're going to find the Dorothy Thorpe. So there's a lot of look alikes. So this is where there's the silver fade, like the roly poly glasses. I always buy those. They became very popular after Mad Men came out, the roly polys with the silver rim. Those are gorgeous. So I would recommend buying those. But always take a look at the silver. If it has scratches, if it's coming off, if it's fading. Because that will really hurt your resale value. Okay. We're still in the same aisle. This is a very good aisle. We are at the coffee mugs now and this section is usually a disaster. You have to dig. I have broken quite a few mugs in this section, because you're trying to reach around and get the good stuff at the back, so just be careful when you're moving things around, because I definitely need help in this section. Bex Scott: [00:20:26] This is where you're going to find your milk glass, so don't do just a cursory glance. You might want to walk down the aisle in one direction and walk back. I often get on the floor and look in the bottom shelf just because it's so easy to miss things. But Federal glass mugs, what else do we have in this section? Fire King, we have the Pyrex mugs. We have, what else, stoneware. Made in Japan stoneware and English stoneware. I always buy those mugs. Also pottery, makers mugs, that kind of thing. So look to see if they have a pottery studio signature on the bottom. And Disney. Disney and Starbucks, always buy the Disney and Starbucks if it is in good condition, do not leave them. I know it's not vintage, but people love them. You can oftentimes find really rare or not in production Disney and Starbucks mugs and those sell really well, especially on Marketplace. Okay. The next aisle is the random junk aisle. This aisle drives me crazy because most of the time everything is broken in it. It's pieces and parts of things that they didn't know what they were, so they just threw them in there. But it's still worth it to dig through. This is where you'll find your trivets. A lot of times they have nice Lucite ones with flowers pressed in, really nice brass trivets, some wooden ones. Bex Scott: [00:21:58] Placemats are here in the boxes. This is where I usually get my salt and pepper shakers, but make sure they are not chipped. It is so hard to find salt and pepper shakers that aren't chipped at Value Village. What else is good to keep an eye out? Marble rolling pins. I found quite a few marble rolling pins that do very well for resale, and I've kept a few of them because they are amazing to bake with. Recipe boxes. This is where I find the awesome recipe boxes from the 60s and 70s with the gross recipes in there. Those are always really fun to look through. After the random junk section, you have the serving dishes, and this is kind of a catch-all for anything glass. Lots of juice jugs, Pyrex percolators are here. But the best part of this section is the uranium glass that people don't realize is in there. So always bring your black light, because this is a section where it's usually stuffed in the bottom of the shelf at the very back. And it's the uranium glass platters, the milk and sugars, anything like that. Little bowls and dishes and trinket dishes. Make sure you look for anything that stands out as green. Stoneware serving platters. I found some beautiful floral print stoneware platters here and in my shop, weirdly enough, this is where the staff like to hide the valuable electronics. Bex Scott: [00:23:34] So I have laid on my stomach in the floor multiple times. Because if you go towards the end of the day when the store is going to be closing soon, they like to hide Playstation games, Game Boy games. I've had some Wii controllers and just some really amazing stuff hidden in this section at the back. So pro tip, get on the floor, don't care what people think about you, just look for that gold mine of stuff that people are hiding because it does happen. My most favorite section, the Pyrex section, it is dwindling these days. There's not a lot out there. Mostly what I find is super beat up, dishwasher damaged to the point where it's not recognizable anymore. It's really sad. When I started thrifting, there was definitely a lot more, but I am now in a population that is a lot smaller than where I used to live too. But every once in a while you find a good, a good score of Pyrex. They're usually on the top shelf, which is easy to spot. Other things you can find in the section are Wilton cake pans. I've had great success selling Wilton cake pans. You just have to make sure that they are a low enough price. I would avoid cornflower CorningWare. It, 3 or 4 years ago, it was a hot item. It was hard to keep it in stock, for me at least. And now it is a struggle to sell it. Bex Scott: [00:25:12] So spice of life, blue cornflower, any of that stuff. If you have success selling it still, go for it. But for me, I pass over that stuff now just because I found that it's not worth it. Jello molds. I love jello molds. These are the tin, usually rose gold or copper looking ones. They're so cute and a whole bunch of different sizes. I always grab those ones because they are fun in displays, to collect, and to resell as well. Okay, so now we are in to the strange bathroom section. My Value Village has a section where they sell hair clips, curling irons, what else do they sell there? Just weird random laundry baskets. But this section is amazing for vintage garbage cans. Also vintage jewelry boxes. So don't pass this section up if you have it in your store. This is where I find a lot of my velvet covered snap shut jewelry boxes, the smaller ones that fit little rings or necklaces. Those ones sell really well, especially if they are in good condition. If not, you can also recover them. I have a friend who does amazing and beautiful work recovering vintage jewelry boxes with new velvet, new insides, cleans up the little feet. So if you're interested in taking on a project like that, this is a great spot to look for them. Bex Scott: [00:26:46] Next up is the linen section. I could spend a whole day in this section. It starts off with aprons, dishcloths tea towels, and then it goes into fabric, sheets, duvets and blankets, and then pillows. So this is all a lot of personal preference when you're buying linens, what you like to look for. But I like to look for the groovy floral sheets, anything with like a bold retro pattern. Chenille duvets. Pillowcases with flowers. What else? Really cool tea towels with graphics. Those all seem to resell really well. Especially the retro groovy looking sheets. Just make sure that you inspect them for holes, stains, anything suspicious because they do sneak in there. I find a lot of, like, duvets and bedspreads that I really like, but our Value Village is ridiculous for prices and they can be upwards of $20, so to me that is not really worth it. If you're looking through pillows, look for anything that is latch hook. I found an amazing latch hook mushroom pillow the other day. Um, crocheted pillows do really well. Anything with florals. The funky, groovy patterns again. And if it's a seasonal item, Christmas pillows, Halloween pillows, pillowcases and covers from the fancy stores, like the modern stores like Urban Barn, Pier One, anything like that. Even Indigo/Chapters, they get a lot of those in there. Those are great for reselling as well. On the right hand side of the linen section is the sewing section in our store. Now, I don't buy sewing patterns from Value Village because I find that $2 to $3 each is what I can sell them for, and that's the same price that Value Village sells them for. Bex Scott: [00:28:56] So unless it's something really amazing, like a Barbie pattern, I always grab Barbie clothes patterns, Barbie furniture patterns, those ones resell at a higher price. Sometimes you can get about $10 or more for a pattern that is Barbie. But this is where I find my latch hook patterns, my cruels, my needlepoint, my cross stitch. They've had some amazing kits in this section, and you do have to dig through, because this is where they also put the baby diapers and the feminine products that are donated. So you have to dig a little bit, but they are in there. Next up we have the kids section. The kids toys and clothes. I have dug through the toys before to find Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, vintage Barbie. This is a section you really need to spend time, like, come to the store just to look at the toys, because you need to dig through broken toys that aren't working anymore and just really spend time to decipher if it's vintage, if it's modern. I don't buy clothes when I go to the thrift store because that's a whole other thing. I wish I had the had the time and the patience to search through clothes and photograph them and all that fun stuff, but I mostly stick to the hard goods. Bex Scott: [00:30:22] Next is purses. Purses and accessories I do like to look through because I buy the nice sequined beaded clutches, little handbags. Those do really well for resale and they're really pretty too. If you just want to dress up and go out for your own fun. So I do look through those. Sometimes you can find some good designer bags. I've found some Betsey Johnson, some Coach, but most of the time they separate those out in the Value Village and put them in the locked case. Next would be oversize items. This is usually where electronics, big furniture is in our store, and it's actually one that a lot of people I find skip because they think everything in there is too big. But there's been some really good finds in this section. I went with my friend not too long ago and we found, I think it was three lawn chairs with retro patterns on them. They were really cool. I found some awesome dressers, bookshelves, just really nice MCM looking furniture. Stools. And this is where they put lamps too. So you can find some awesome vintage lamps in this section to refurbish. Wine racks, couches. If you're really interested in refurbishing or cleaning something out like that, but make sure you take a look, just a quick walkthrough of the section because you can find some pretty awesome stuff. Bex Scott: [00:31:49] And last but not least, this section is so fun to look through. It is the jewelry section. It's almost like a game for me now, where I know that they've gone through and looked through the signed pieces, and most of the time they're pretty good at it, they know what they're looking for, but there are some awesome gems you can find in here. I would love to find a find a Sherman. That would be crazy if they left a Sherman on the wall of jewelry. But I've found quite a bit of Sarah Coventry. Butler. Vendome. What else has there been? Just a lot of random signed pieces that have been skipped over. I mostly look for brooches. Anything with a nice rhinestone, even if it's vintage and unsigned, I buy it. And anything floral. So the nice, what's it called? The coated flowers. I've lost the word for it now, but they're the metal flowers that are usually a brooch or an earring. People love to make arrangements with those and frame them in a shadow box. Anything that has a really nice old clasp that might have some faux pearls and lockets. I love to look for lockets. So this section, you could probably spend a half day just looking through the wall of jewelry there. And sometimes the prices are great, sometimes not so much. But if you can find anything that they've missed that says 14 karat gold on it, anything that's sterling silver or, what else is there, even you might even find some real pearls you don't know. So this is a good section to spend a good chunk of time in looking through. Bex Scott: [00:33:27] And last but not least, I think I already said that about the jewelry, but this is kind of an extension, would be the locked cabinet that they have. So that's where they keep what they consider the really good jewelry, the electronics, sometimes there's designer shoes in there. I don't spend a lot of time in that section because it is mostly overpriced and to me, not as fun to look through, but because there's a lot of people, I'm sure, like me, who don't go to it, you could find some amazing scores. So that is a quick walk through of my Value Village store. I'm sure that they vary a little bit with quality of goods, the layout, that kind of thing. But that is a typical thrifting restock run for me, where I'll go in and go through my process and hopefully find some goodies. So check out the show notes for my social media platforms. Find me. I am on Instagram at Pyrex with Bex. I live sell on Whatnot at Pyrex with Bex as well. I have regular shows on that platform and there are some really amazing Canadian sellers on there. We all sell vintage of some variety. So feel free to find us there and message me if you'd like to reach out and chat. Thanks so much everybody. 

Chief Chapo foreign correspondent returns to take us around the wide world of conflict. We get an update on the war in Gaza including the bombing of Rafah, the failing floating Pier, and the Biden administration's attempts to broker some kind of deal between Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia without gaining any concessions or movement toward peace in the process. Plus, we discuss the death or Iranian president Raisi, the situation in Ukraine, and what the hell's going on in French New Caledonia. For more Derek: The article on Germany Derek references at the end of the pod: www.foreignexchanges.news/p/whats-the-matter-with-germany Subscribe to Foreign Exchanges: www.foreignexchanges.news And American Prestige: www.americanprestigepod.com/

Kelly Cook does it all! She is a mother of five who plays the drums AND serves as President of Marketing, IT, and Finance at David's Bridal. Her love of learning and trying new things can be seen in her impressive and varied work history. From Continental Airlines, to Waste Management, Inc. to DSW, Pier One, Sears, Kmart, and now David's Bridal, Kelly tells us she learned a lot about herself and her craft by challenging herself in new industries and encourages other marketers to try the same.In this episode, Alan and Kelly discuss her unique role combining brand, tech, and finance and what those three aspects may mean for the future of brand experiences at retailers. Kelly also tells us how David's Bridal views their role in the wedding planning process, as well as how their unique omnichannel approach and crowdfunded loyalty programs help them connect with brides on a deeper level.David's Bridal sells 1 out of every 4 bridal gowns in the US, so they know brides, and they know brides are stressed out. That is why David's Bridal is on a mission to make every step of the process as easy as possible, expand its scope to fill gaps in the market, add more value for its brides, and help them keep costs down. It was the creativity of the brides they serve and the dedication of their employees through COVID that inspired David's Bridal's new “The Things We Do for Love” campaign. Even with the rise of AI, automation, and neuromarketing, Kelly and her team at David's Bridal know the in-store human connection is a part of their business that will never be replaced.In this episode, you'll learn:How is David's Bridal blending brand, technology, and finance to prepare for the future of retail brand experiences?How do they structure their unique omnichannel approach and crowdfunded loyalty programs?What inspired the “The Things We Do for Love” campaign?Key Highlights:[02:00] A mom of five on the drums[03:10] Her start and the stops along the way[04:05] Growing intellectually by switching industries[05:55] Brand, and technology, and finance, oh my![07:35] David's Bridal market share and value prop[10:20] Keeping wedding costs down[11:25] The omnichannel approach to being there when brides need them[14:40] A loyalty program? Like, for repeat weddings?[19:05] “The Things We Do for Love."[24:40] Mentorship in prioritization, communication, and paying it forward[31:05] Advice to her younger self[33:05] How to not lose humanity in technology[35:35] Brand-on-brand social interactions[37:30] We are often our own worst enemies.Looking for more?Visit our website for the full show notes, links to resources mentioned in this episode, and ways to connect with the guest! Become a member today and listen ad-free, visit https://plus.acast.com/s/marketingtoday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pier One Theatre players past and present talk about the current season and review fifty years of live theater in Homer and beyond.

This is episode 1,113 of the Arete Coach Podcast with host Severin Sorensen and guest Dominic Monkhouse. He is an executive coach, business coach, podcast host, and chief operating officer for Monkhouse and Company. Before entering the coaching industry, Dominic served as managing director at Rackspace. He also served as the Chief Customer Officer for Pier One. And in 2020, he released a book called "F Plan B." I'll let you figure out what F means.  Dominic has an MBA from the Sheffield Hallam University and has a variety of certifications, including the Six Types of the Working Genius Certification, the Culture Canvas certification with Fearless Culture, Clifton Strengths Coach with Gallup, the Certified 3HAG Coach with Metronomics, and Scaling Up Certified Business Coach. In 2017, he was featured in the Southern Daily Echo article, "Could This be Britain's best boss?" Dominic's coaching has helped business leaders in the UK, Ireland, the Americas, Australia, and the Philippines. During the interview, we explore how Dominic managed companies during turbulent times such as near bankruptcy and during recessions. We explore Dominic's favorite question about finding that brutal truth that ever company needs to address before it can change. And we discuss his several books, including his newest release, Mind Your F**king Business. This an much more is on this podcast episode. The Arete Coach Podcast seeks to explore the art and science of executive coaching. You can find out more about this podcast at aretecoach.io. This episode was produced on 23 January 2023. Copyright © 2023 by Arete Coach™ LLC. All rights reserved.

In this episode, Mark Baratto sits down with Pier One Yacht owner, Mike Mullinger and Scott, the owner of Bluesail Vacation Yachts & Sailing Academy (previous episode here). We talk about the benefits of having a Yacht brocker and the partnership between them and Bluesail. More on Pier One Yacht Sales Pier One Yacht Sales has multiple offices on the Southwest Florida coast with a charter division in Ft. Lauderdale. We are committed to “exceeding your expectations” as a great full-service yacht brokerage. We have access to yacht listings worldwide and can help you find the sailboat or power boat of your dreams! HELPING RESIDENTS BUY AND SELL THEIR BOATS OF ANY SIZE SINCE 2004 Pier One Yacht Sales sells pre-owned power and sail boats. No matter what type or size of boat you are looking for, let our professional team research our Worldwide Network and find you the best deal for the best boat that fits your needs for now and in the years to come. Pier One Yacht Sales is a member of the International Yacht Brokers Association, the Southwest Florida Marine Industries Association and the Marine Industries Association of Collier County – and can ship your boat worldwide. If you are looking to sell your boat, whether it is power or sail, Pier One Yacht Sales can not only help you determine the best possible selling price for your vessel, but we can market it through our worldwide network and advertising resources. We put our industry relationships to work for you. Website:  https://pieroneyachtsales.com/Instagram: https://instagram.com/pieroneyachtsales Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pieroneyachtsales PERRY HOTEL AND MARINA 7005 SHRIMP ROAD KEY WEST, FL 33040 (941) 639-7777

In this minute of Joe Johnston's 2011 film ‘Captain America: The First Avenger,' Schmidt commends the Tower Keeper for hiding ‘it' so well, discusses their beliefs, and reveals his strength as he easily shoves the lid off the sarcophagus. There, of course, is the... tesseract?

Driven by an ambition to learn from the very best, Rhys Connell spent much of his career under the wing of one of Australia's most influential chefs, Martin Benn. After landing the dream job of head chef at Society in Melbourne, a major shake-up at the much-hyped venue had him re-thinking his career. With renewed vigour he returned to Sydney to take on the huge role at one of the city's most iconic hotels.https://www.thegantry.com.auFollow Deep In The Weeds on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/deepintheweedspodcast/?hl=enFollow Huckhttps://www.instagram.com/huckstergram/Follow Rob Locke (Executive Producer)https://www.instagram.com/foodwinedine/LISTEN TO OUR OTHER FOOD PODCASTShttps://linktr.ee/DeepintheWeedsNetwork

The Sherose Show officially has our first guest!  Today's guest is one of my past clients, Nina Cornelison, who is the owner of Ninam/co. She is a photo editor who helps luxury wedding and branding photographers take the tedious task of editing off of their insanely long to-do list! She has worked for large corporations like Pier One and worked on projects for Hermès. I love having this woman in my network because she's encouraging hard-working and passionate. I had the pleasure of helping her create a long-term vision along with several other businessy things and I've been watching her achieve those goals one by one over the past few years!  She has a go-getter attitude and I just had to bring her on so that she could share her story with you so you can see what's possible when you put your vision and ideas down on paper.  Let's dive in!   FOLLOW US Sherose Instagram Sherose Tik Tok  Sherose Facebook Want to work with us? Click here!

Amanda and Sarah cover a misunderstood murderess and a fairytale with multiple versions. Amanda heads to late-1800s New York City for the story of Maria Barbella, an Italian immigrant woman who famously took the law into her own hands. Sarah looks at the possible origins and many varied takes on Rapunzel from throughout history. Other subjects covered include heartburn hassles, Pier One memories, and courtroom knives.  Recommendations: Amanda recommends two 80s slasher films, Edge of the Axe and He Knows You're Alone.  Sources:  New York Times (MARIA BARBELLA TO DIE; Sentenced to be Executed at Sing Sing in the Week of Aug. 19) New York Times (An American Tragedy) NY Daily News (Old World revenge -- 'Only a pig would marry you,' Domenico Cataldo says to Maria Barbella) Chicago Tribune (MARIA BARBELLA AND HER DATE WITH THE ELECTRIC CHAIR) "Maidens and Their Guardians: Reinterpreting the 'Rapunzel' Tale," by Laura J. Getty from Mosaic, An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, June 1997, Vol. 30, No. 2  Wikipedia (Petrosinella, Persinette, Rapunzel) Charlotte Henley Babb (Charlotte-Rose: Writer of Rapunzel) History Collection (The Real Rapunzel was Locked in a Tower and Beheaded By Her Dad) Tor.com (Forbidden Desire and Locked Doors: The Origins of “Rapunzel”) For updates on future episodes and other fun stuff, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out our Patreon. 

Hello hello! Hailey and Annie are spiraling this week. Annie watched the episode and somehow barely retained anything. But what did she remember? Insane quotes. The gals also gab about Hailey's secret life as the Pier One princess and limes. Oh, and they recap the episode.

The Pier One building is demolished. Dance 'til you drop on Halloween. Montana has a Loch Ness Monster?

WBZ's Jordan Rich talks with Matt Robinson of matts-meals.com about The Tall Ship restaurant at Pier One in Boston.

Kate Jarvik Birch is a full-time visual artist, author, playwright, and daydreamer. Her art has been featured worldwide in stores like Target, Pier One, and World Market, as well as in television series and major motion pictures such as Transparent, Medium, Glee, Twenty-One Jump Street, and Looper. She graduated with a degree in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah in 2005 and lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah.

In today’s Substack-fueled shout-out, would you like to use your tech, data, design, or research skills in the name of community service? Code for Charlottesville may be the place for you! Code for Charlottesville will be holding an orientation session on April 21 where you can learn more about their streetlight mapping project, criminal record expungement data analysis, or their pro-bono tech consulting for local nonprofits. Learn more on the Code for Charlottesville website. On today’s show:Charlottesville City Council gets an update on the current year’s financial shortaAlbemarle’s Places29-Hydraulic Committee gets updates on Boys and Girls Club, Charlotte Humphris park, and StonefieldEven though the Charlottesville City Council meeting from April 19, 2021 was the shortest in recent memory, the next two newsletters will include info from that event. They were finished with business by 8:30 p.m, something that almost never happens. Last week, Charlottesville City Council adopted a $192.2 million budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2021. Yesterday the five Councilors got an update on efforts to plug the revenue shortfall expected in the current fiscal year due to declines in meals and lodging taxes. “We’re now projecting revenues will come in at approximately $8.3 million lower than what our adopted budget amounts are,” said Ryan Davidson, a senior budget management analyst with the city of Charlottesville.That estimate is based on meals tax revenues that are $3.7 million less than anticipated and lodging taxes that are $2.73 million less. This is the last quarterly report of the fiscal year, which now means staff will have to identify ways to make up the shortfall. “We’ve talked about the COVID reserve of approximately $6.7 million and and on top of that there was also CARES funding from the first round of federal funding that came through that was previously authorized for FY21 operating expenses,” Davidson said. “We have some revenue decreases that should have some corresponding expenditure decreases.” The budget will be further reconciled as actual revenues come in, as well as the city’s first receipt of proceeds from the American Rescue Plan. Davidson said he would share more about that with Council and the public as more information become available. Charlottesville’s first financial snapshot as of March 31, 2021 (report)Council also got a preview of the United Way of Greater Charlottesville’s Envision campaign. Ravi Respeto is the organization’s president. “It’s really about looking to the future of what Charlottesville can be while we work together to look at reducing poverty in our community, working as nonprofit partners and peers toward a common goal,” Respeto said. The plan has two strategic goals. One called Financial Stability seeks to help 1,800 families out of poverty by 2026 by getting them to a household income of $45,000, which is considered the threshold for survival in Charlottesville. The second is a School Readiness goal to increase the number of kindergarteners who pass literacy benchmarks. “We’ve been doing school readiness in our community for many, many years but financial stability is becoming really our key focus and sort of the bedrock for all of the work that we’re doing,” Respeto said. Respeto also detailed the United Way’s increasing move toward providing direct services in collaboration with governments and other nonprofits. She said the Community Emergency Relief Fund helpline receives between 250 and 300 calls a day. “And we suspect that the need isn’t going to go away any time soon,” Respeto said. Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker noted that one resource known as the Pathway Fund is running out of money. She wanted the city to find a way to provide additional revenue out of a sense of urgency.  “One thing can set a family back and it could be some one thing as simple as a car repair but it has that kind of domino effect,” Walker said. “It absolutely does,” Respeto said. “Families who are already living under constant poverty, it’s hard for them to get out of it,” Walker said.Later in the meeting, Council discussed replenishing the Pathway fund. We’ll have more from that discussion in a moment. A slide from Respeto’s presentation to Council on April 19, 2021 (download presentation)At the same time Charlottesville City Council’s work session was wrapping up, the Places29-Hydraulic Community Advisory Committee was getting underway. They learned that the Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia is going to break ground in June on their new facility at the Albemarle County’s Lambs Lane Campus. James Pierce is the CEO.“We’re very excited about all of the county support we have received to this point,” Pierce said. “That means we have a target date for completion and opening with the school year of 2022.” The facility is expected to provide after-school education and activities for around 300 people a day who are between the ages of 13 and 16. A special use permit request will be made to turn the area into a community center that can be used by more than just the Club. The CAC also got an update on an effort to refurbish Charlotte Humphris Park, one of the largest parks in Albemarle’s growth area. Kimberly Swanson is a member of the Places29-Hydraulic CAC. “So the park itself is 23 acres without about one and a half miles of paved trails,” Swanson said. “There’s a forested portion. Towards the back is a meadowed, more open area and there’s also a wetland area.” Benches and a natural play area are two of the amenities that have been added to the park. Learn more about the park in this presentation The CAC also got an update from the manager of Stonefield, Samantha Strong. The commercial area’s main tenant is just about to reopen after over a year of being shutdown for the pandemic. “We do have a date for the movie theater,” Strong said. “We are less than a month away so we are working diligently away on getting everything ready.” Strong said Splendoras will reopen in Stonefield and is working on inspections. The space formerly used by Pier One will be divided into three spaces, one of which will become a Torchy’s Tacos franchise. “They’re out of Texas and this is their first location on the east coast area here,” Strong said. Stonefield was rezoned by the Board of Supervisors in 2003, but ground was not broken until May 2011 for many reasons including the Great Recession. The original developer had rezoned the land for a 65 acre development that was originally promoted to have more of an urban form, with multiple story buildings. A second developer brought the property and first built single-story retail establishments. A third development firm, O’Connor Capital Partners, purchased the property in late 2016 and has since returned to the original vision. Construction of new multifamily apartments has also led to more pedestrian interconnectivity to nearby streets. Supervisor Diantha McKeel had this description, though the handrails aren’t yet installed.“If you think about where the Thai restaurant is, down, there’s a staircase there you can walk down into Stonefield, which is pretty cool,” McKeel said. Albemarle County has agreed to participate in a partnership to build below-market units for people at risk for being homeless at the site of the Red Carpet Inn. Albemarle’s Office of Housing will commit 80 of its federal housing vouchers to Virginia Supportive Housing, one of three nonprofits working to redevelop the site in a project now known as Premier Circle. Virginia Supportive Housing worked with the City of Charlottesville on the 60-unit Crossings at 4th and Preston which opened in March 2012. Virginia Supportive Housing has submitted an application for low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) for their portion of the Premier Circle project, which also includes 60 units being pursued by Piedmont Housing. Last month, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation awarded a $4.25 million grant for the project. For all of the details on the project to date, there’s this article from Allison Wrabel in the Daily Progress.Enjoy the program? Want it to keep going? Ting is matching the dollar amount of subscriptions as a way of supporting my journalism. If you contribute $5 a month, $50 a year, or $200 a year, Ting will match this amount. Learn why on the About page. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to the party. In this episode, the Planners have an in depth conversation regarding who is most to blame for the crimes of the First Order. Sounds heavy, right? Well, if you consider discussions regarding Snoke's pimping gold robe and if Kylo bought the ashes of his "enemies" from a bulk sale at Pier One to be heavy, then sure...it's heavy! The Boys also talk about that Mando season 2 trailer. All of this and so many more random elements that reading is way less fun than listening. So load this bad boy up and give it a spin!  If you enjoy the show, please leave a review or a rating on Apple Podcast and share us with those other Star Wars fans in your life. Your support means the world to us. Thanks for listening!

For the first time ever, we recorded our monthly Mastermind Call with several experienced real estate investors across multiple asset classes. Joining us in this month's mastermind were Beth Azor, Victor Menasce, Andrew Lanoie, Todd Sulzinger, Christian Cascone, RK Kliebenstein. Each investor shares what they are currently going through in their specific situation, market, and asset class. Watch the entire recording here: https://youtu.be/-HUUIv1hDmA Read the entire transcript here: https://rb.gy/frif7o Steff Boldrini, Retail, Self Storage San Francisco is a ghost town. Nobody wants to quarantine in four walls with no access to work at a coffee shop or in common areas of their buildings. There are deals in the rental space that are completely unheard of and we would have never imagined they would be happening like one to two months off, and as much as 30% rent decrease. Andrew Lanoie, Mobile Home Parks In general have been down a little bit, not too bad. A lot of parts of our business have have been frozen, we sent our construction company home. And as everyone knows, some of the lending dried up a little bit, some lenders are back, and some stayed the same through all this. We're just figuring out how to get back into acquisition mode, and all of the Capex and all the projects and things that we have in our world for our portfolio. Todd Sulzinger, Mobile Home Parks In our parks, we've had some struggles with collections as well, I have parks in Georgia and Tennessee and we've had more issues with collections in Georgia. It has been a combination of some tenants who were affected by COVID related situations where they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. And in those situations, we reached out to them and said, If you actually were then please fill out this form, and get proof from your employer that your job was affected by the pandemic. In other cases, we've had people really take advantage of the fact that the courts have been closed. Beth Azor, Retail I own six retail shopping centers, we've had a ton of retail bankruptcies from Tuesday Morning, Pier One, Ascena is about to file, 24 Hour Fitness, GNC Gold's Gym, Starbucks will close 400 stores. The national dealmaking will be on hold until 2021 because of the inability to travel, anyone that owns shopping centers looking to fill retail space in the next 6-9months, will be focusing on local and regional players. Victor Menasce, Developer We are making some progress on getting debt for new construction and even some equity as well. It's tougher than it was. We're not doing anything in retail or office, thankfully. But in the multi-family and senior housing asset classes, we are able to find both debt and equity. For the moment, it appears as though rent collections in multi-family are pretty strong. RK Kliebenstein, Self Storage Our industry has always been regarded as recession resilient. Delinquency is now hovering somewhere between 5 and 7%. We look at it as not being devastating, but certainly as being cautionary. When money from the Cares Act runs out that will be a better tell. Christian Cascone, Developer, Multi-Family The market just has gotten too unpredictable at this point. There's capital being injected in the wrong places and we feel like it's causing some problems as far as the free market is essentially dead at this point. We're trying to see if there's going to be some opportunities down the road for high quality assets and great locations in the US, 12-18 months from now. We're seeing opportunity zones get hot again, as people have huge capital gains that they're able to deploy into, Join our newsletter here: www.montecarlorei.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. This episode Shaan and Sam talk: on being a wartime CEO, Bonsai Mirai and the relaxation industry, Tai Lopez's new company, and the great Twitter hack. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

EP224 - Cohort Analysis and CLV with Daniel McCarthy  Daniel McCarthy (@d_mccar) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University – Goizueta Business School, he’s one of the industries top thought leaders in the field of customer lifetime value (CLV). In this episode we discuss how CLV and customer cohort analysis can be be used operationally within e-commerce companies, as well as how customer data can be used to calculate a companies true enterprise value, customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV). Dan co-founded a predictive analytics company, Zodiac, which was later acquired by Nike. He’d made news several times by applying his CBCV to popular public companies using their public disclosures. Listen to this episode just to hear Scot say “Goizueta.” Dan’s personal website Theta Equity Partners – Dan’s current firm, focused on CBCV McCarthy, Daniel; Fader, Peter (2018). “Customer-Based Corporate Valuation for Publicly Traded Non-Contractual Firms”. Journal of Marketing Research, 55(5), 617-635. Link (download) McCarthy, Daniel; Fader, Peter; Hardie, Bruce (2017). “Valuing Subscription-Based Businesses Using Publicly Disclosed Customer Data”. Journal of Marketing, 81(1), 17-35. Link (download). McCarthy, Daniel; Fader, Peter (2020). “How to Value a Company by Analyzing Its Customers”. Harvard Business Review, 98 (1), 51-55. Link Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 224 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, June 25th, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 224 being recorded on Thursday June 25th 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners well folks we have a really awesome treat for you today it’s so good that I want you go ahead and pause the show here and leave us a five star review and then come back. All right welcome back, today on the show Jason I have to admit we are kind of fanboying here so we’re going to try not to giggle too much during this interview we are excited to welcome one of the brightest Minds not only in e-commerce and Retail marketing but just marketing overall so please welcome Us in bringing Daniel McCarthy to the Jason Scott show Dan is the assistant professor of marketing at Emery’s Gazeta business school Dan welcome to the show. Dan: [1:24] Thank you for having me Jason and Scott. Scot: [1:26] Did I say that right. Dan: [1:29] Pretty much. Scot: [1:30] Glue is that a little bit more of a quiz that kind of thing in there. Dan: [1:34] It’s like sweater but boy sweater. Scot: [1:37] We sweater okay I got it all right thank you. Jason: [1:40] That that is actually part of the screening process to get into the school there’s you have to be. Scot: [1:45] Yes this is why I’m not a professor of marketing at that school whose name I’m not great at pronouncing. Dan: [1:51] Let’s check number one for us. Jason: [1:55] I think in Dan’s case there might also be a math requirement that you may not like. Scot: [1:59] Yeah I saw you had some stats at his background there. Jason: [2:02] Exactly so Dan before we jump into what we do like to give the listeners a little taste of how you came to your your current professorship in your your case can you tell us a little bit about your background. Dan: [2:17] Yes I’d spent about 60 years working at a value-based hedge fund before coming back actually for a PhD in statistics at the Wharton School, and in the middle of the Ph.D program I made a pivot into marketing and so I actually I finish the PHD in statistics but half my committee when marketing people and half works this six feet below, and I ended up becoming an assistant professor of marketing at Emory University along the way I also was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug so in the, leave us in a third year of the PHD myself and my adviser had co-founded a company called zodiac which was a predictive analytic software as a service firm you basically, predictable customers we do and use that to help marketers it can acquisitions. [3:08] We grew that and then sold that in March of 2018 to Nike and then the following month we had also, co-founded a company called Theta Equity Partners which pretty much does nothing but what was the topic of my dissertation which we now in the early call customer base corporate valuation or CP CV for short so yes I kind of. Straddle Both Worlds and say 100%, you’re kind of a Quant marketing academic but definitely we appreciate. You know things that work in practice and and even participating in that myself. Jason: [3:50] Very cool and I did want to touch on a couple of things in your bio super quick hey I love the fact that PhD in statistics wasn’t challenging enough so you you pivoted to the the super complicated world of marketing. Dan: [4:04] Yeah it was a it was a tricky transition I would say on the plus side, you basically is doing the same predictive modeling that I was as of you know I’m just going to get a stat PhD and become a stack Professor sort of thing but now it’s just predicting what customers will do instead of predicting you know. Anything pretty much in stock prices or. Various things about sports teams or whatever else it was that we were doing pre-marketing pivot. Jason: [4:38] And I for sure want to compliment you I feel like you’re in the small percentage of people that did a dissertation on something that you could totally commercialize so I think that’s super smart and savvy. Dan: [4:50] Yeah it was weird how it kind of ended up that way but I really think it was yeah I kind of view customer base corporate valuation is really being at the intersection of, marketing finance and statistics like you really can’t crack that topic without going pretty deep into all three I think, and I think one of the things that Drew me to it was the fact that it allowed me to kind of do everything that, I just find it be fun so you had the buy-side hedge fund experience I could bring that in the statistics I can bring that in and then, obviously pretty King with customers will do bring in the marketing to. Scot: [5:27] Oh dear so why did you make that marketing pivot to was there you were in stats and you kind of like started to do something connected to marketing or what what was the connective tissue there. Dan: [5:38] I blame Pete fader yeah he is that a name that comes up a lot with the sort of things that I do but someone who actually had worked out of the stats Department, he said you know I think that you really get along with this to be fair guy and he’s a marketer but let’s not hold it against me. So yeah I basically went up to the seventh floor which is where the marketing department is and Warden and yeah we really just kicked it off I just really enjoyed the problems that he was working on and yeah I like them enough that I just said I want to do this, you know I want to do this all the time. Scot: [6:16] Yeah, very cool well you kind of raised us let’s jump into this so I’ve enjoyed your your analysis your analyses that you do on Twitter and your papers but let’s talk about CBC TV, let’s talk about the origin of it and how you are applying it to think about valuations. Dan: [6:38] Yes really yeah a lot of the early work that I had done was to use these marketing models to predict what customers will do in the future and use that to compute customer lifetime value and other related measures. And, typically in marketing that’s where the exercise ends you say alright you know we predicted well they are completely I’m done and, basically because of my work in valuation I was like we could take this a step further and use this to actually inform view as to how companies doing his whole and obviously I won’t say that I’m the first one thing about this you Pete had done some work in this area and, yes even some work going back to 2004 but it was mostly kind of proof of concept not super well validated models. And it was really. Yes saying let’s kind of peel back the onion a bit further with this and I think that’s really kind of one thing led to another and you know I now have, three academic Publications and other two along the way on the topic and basically there’s just so many different facets of the problem that I designed to be completely fascinating. Scot: [7:50] Well in my world of startups we think about valuations at a pretty simple kind of you know kind of multiples right so you have a revenue kind of calculation you have an ibadah kind of a calculation then it’s I’ve gotten into Wall Street analyst you know they’ll do a variety of discounted cash flow projections and these kinds of things how is this different like what what do you what is this take into consideration that those those kind of mechanisms don’t. Dan: [8:16] Yeah that’s the beauty of it it can really be all of the above it can be used to do an enlightened version of to come up with an enlightened Revenue multiple ebitda multiple, you know kind of straight up discounted cash flow valuation because ultimately if I were to kind of just summarized with cdcd is is it’s a way to, make a more accurate Revenue projection by really exploiting the fact that all the revenue has to come from customers who have to be acquired, retained make purchases and have spend associated with those practices and so a typical Wall Street analyst will, look at historical revenues the bring in macro variables and use that to help inform of view as to what revenues will be in the future and ultimately that revenue forecast will drive the DCF model or the ebitda forecast. And over saying is. If the company has a lot or even even a little customer data that they’ve disclosed let’s bring that into and in marketing, we spent so much time and energy building these predictive models for customers will do and it’s just basically saying it’s use those predictive models that are super well validated from within marketing. You do that Revenue projection just a bit better and do it from the bottoms up instead of doing it purely from the top down. Scot: [9:40] So you’re essentially bringing customers into the valuation discussion crazy, it’s amazing sometimes don’t you wonder like why no one’s done this before no offense but like so he sings seems so obvious in hindsight but no one you know it just like not a common thing. Dan: [9:55] Yeah that and this is video clip that will sometimes show of Jim Cramer talking about this work yet, he brought up and spent a bunch of time on our way Fair analysis and he’s like what’s so special about this you know academic research where these academics doing well they they try to put a value on the customer, and they compare how much you spend to acquire the customer to how much he get after the customers require you like. Duh seems kind of sensible to me but but it hadn’t been done before and I think I think that was the real opportunity. Scot: [10:30] Yeah I think the first time it hit my radar is you wrote a really good article about Blue Apron so they were one of the you know they have this huge valuation they had filed their S1 and then you put out you know I’ll use the word scathing but I think it was like, that that may imply something that’s not there a surprising analysis around their unit economics is that kind of the first time that that that really hit the the radar. For you. Dan: [10:56] That’s the first time it really got mainstream attention. Scot: [11:00] Yeah so for listeners that didn’t see that maybe give a brief summary of what you discovered when you kind of peeled onion on the customer metrics that were in this one. Dan: [11:09] Yeah basically the company was growing really quickly and it’s something like a hundred percent Revenue growth you know year-on-year and, they didn’t disclose a whole lot about customer churn and I was like huh that’s interesting for a subscription business you think they would put something about that in the filing and so, the interesting what thing was that even though they didn’t put anything about customer churn they didn’t disclose a number of other scraps and so, basically what I did was use the methodology that I just published and use that to kind of triangulate my way back into what the company’s retention curve Wise from all those different scraps that they put into their, cipo prospectus and and you’re right near the conclusion was kind of damning that something like seventy percent of the customers churn after six months. And you know obviously the implication being that they were acquiring a lot of customers I think on promotion and. [12:08] And they just weren’t staying and and the other kind of, even more damaging data point was that even though they were growing really quickly their marketing spend was growing even more quickly. Then that and so essentially what I had inferred from the model was that their acquisition cost used to be something on the order of 60 dollars, and it’s something like doubled you know in the run-up to the IPO. So yeah they were buying Revenue growth so they showed strong top-line growth but the underlying fundamentals of the business that gotten significantly worse that they were actually, reasonably profitable at you call it a $60 CAC but if you double that you know it just makes things a lot worse on a per customer profitability basis. Scot: [12:58] Yep losing money to acquire the customer and then making it up and scale is never you know I think we always call that the pets.com business model but somehow chewy got out of that we’ll talk about that later so I think the finish the story I think I think everyone said that you were crazy your analysis was dumb this is again me as a third party watching this from afar you know they had a huge IPO and then suddenly I don’t know how many quarters it took but suddenly the Dynamics you had anticipated came true and that must have been kind of self must have been interesting to be proven right by that. Dan: [13:35] Yeah it was kind of a surreal experience the most surreal was we were going on a vacation and I just remember looking at my phone you know we just were having lunch outside of a grocery store. And that post had just gone viral it ended up getting like. I don’t know we broadcasted whatever the term is unlike a hundred different websites and and, of all of the bases all sorts of like LinkedIn comments and all sorts of other engagement measures they were all kind of hitting at the same time and I had never experienced anything like that before. [14:16] Yeah so. Scot: [14:18] You’re like maybe yeah awesome so so I’ll kick it over to Jason I’m sure you have some follow-ups on this. Jason: [14:29] Yeah I’m always saying this tongue-in-cheek but like it turns out that the one flaw in your whole model is you didn’t factor covid into the blue apron. Dan: [14:40] Yeah I know I always say if we were in January there’s nothing that we would have not predicted covid so it’s no Magic Bullet. Jason: [14:53] But I do feel like they are one of those companies that has at least had a tertiary benefit from from the current climate. Dan: [15:03] Yeah I think that one other fish related point is there’s a distinction between the predictions and the framework, and I think at the end of the day no one can argue the framework has to be true. And even the covid Boost that they’re getting I think the framework can be super helpful in thinking about that is it coming from repeaters who are just repeating more or is it coming from a whole bunch of new people that are going to stay. So so the framework always has to be true it just provides this additional Dimension but our predictions that’s a function of the model of the data that’s available and obviously of, things like covid happening. Scot: [15:45] The thing that must be surreal is I got the like you I have a weird Hobby and that I love to read us once so I think I think the three of us kind of are probably only, people that have that hobby but so I was reading to stitch fix that’s why I was like you know I wonder what kind of churn they’re going to give and then they had all this cohort analysis detailed turn now since I was like wow the Blue Apron dude like totally has changed the disclosures around this stuff you know I don’t know if you viewed it positively or negative but it was like really fascinating where you can tell that people are like all right people are going to look at these, there’s no way for us to hide what’s going on in here so we might as well reveal at least what we think are the good aspects of these underlying metrics I thought it was pretty interesting that it felt like you had some role in kind of making that happen so I was pretty cool. Dan: [16:33] Yeah they put a lot more in instead of definitely hats off to them I would have wished and so after they had filed their ass when I have acid was Point through that thing very carefully to I wish that they had something like cohorted revenues over time if they put something in like that then, for sure you would have seen an analysis from for me / just the reason we didn’t do one was because they there, they’re non-subscription enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable modeling them as a subscription business and and it wasn’t quite enough data, to fully immuno account for all the facets of there being a non-subscription business. Scot: [17:15] It’s probably funny so on the other side that’s probably what they’re going for they’re like how do we how do we do this so that Dan doesn’t write a paper on, not not that would be negative or positive but you know there’s the the Blue Apron case study was not a on the other side of the table you probably wouldn’t want you know that happens. Dan: [17:33] I flip it around and paper number three so you know it is paper number one was all right let’s lay out the framework for subscription businesses so this nails down to telcos the Jim’s the blue aprons of the world the second one was all right let’s lay out the framework for non-subscription so these are all the e-commerce retailers, and then the third one was let’s lay out a model for. Businesses where we’re not only incorporating SEC disclosures like whatever we find in S1 but also, credit card panel data which the hedge funds are all buying consuming voraciously and now that that their credit card panel data is wonderful for Stitch fix in particular its. The panel seems to be quite representative of their customer base and in so, I think that that’s kind of one of the emerging Frontiers for this whole area is it can we be able to incorporate other data sources to, to be able to kind of do this exercise for more companies or you just have more confidence in the results because we have more data at our disposal. Scot: [18:36] Yet the thing I found so I did an IPO of Channel advisor in the thing I found really weird is you go public and you know you’re going to be doing all this transparency but all your advisers are telling you to be really careful with what you disclose because you know if you just there’s this feeling that all the stuff you disclosed and that’s one you’re going to have to disclose forever and there may be some reason where you want to wind down a business line or pandemic hits and some of these metrics kind of Swing different ways so so in the operation side everyone’s giving you this advice to minimize what you disclose which I found as a you know, as a private company it was oddly kind of the opposite of what I thought being public would be like so it’s interesting to be on the other side of the table from of that stuff. Dan: [19:26] Yeah we’re starting here bit more of that too and certainly we’ve heard the same thing like anything can and will be used against you and so so there’s kind of this risk-reward asymmetry that incentivizes companies to try and discuss as little as possible, so and certainly I think that there’s kind of a fine balance to be drawn where you know I’ll be the first to say this is a certain line past which it is competitively sensitive and you don’t want to necessarily open up the kimono so all your competitors know exactly what you’re doing but I think there is kind of a middle ground where there are measures that companies can put in that. They’re very not competitively sensitive but super informative they tell investors a whole heck of a lot of information about you know how the companies doing. And and there’s small in number so we’re not asking for you know a dozen different things you were just asking for like three things, I think that hopefully is how we can help kind of move the conversation forward that that. We put something out there but we make sure that it’s reasonable and it’s not overly costly to to the disclosure. Jason: [20:38] And I do want to double click on that just a little bit like it does seem like so there’s a, a fundamental part of your framework the customer cohort chart this III and it do I have this right like it does seem like some companies are starting to include C 3s in their disclosures. Dan: [20:56] It shows up a lot more than I thought that it either it’s that it shows up a lot more than I thought that it did or that, yeah maybe if you know we’ve had some small influence that more companies are disclosing because we’re yelling so loud maybe some combination of the two. Actually Scott I think it goes back to one of the other points you raised I would love to see more companies disclosing that data and non S1 filings I feel like, there is now at least a couple dozen companies that have put that in the S1, as soon as they go public and they start filing the case in the queues OR investor presentations I stop seeing it it’s like two companies I know of it still disclose it. Scot: [21:40] Yes so the advisors that give you all these case studies of where it has been companies in the but so classic ones Twitter right so so Facebook got out first and they started talking about it may use monthly active users so then Twitter launched and they just kind of went with that kpi and then that kpi slow down on them very quickly whereas Facebook’s accelerated and everyone always uses that as you know if they hadn’t disclosed that and then what happens is the other thing that I see that super surprise me first time going public was all the short hedge funds and some of the nasty tricks they do so they’ll take any of these metrics you put out there that could be cast in a bad light and they’ll use them against you to create a short trap kind of a thing so so there’s all these case studies of that and then you know we’ve fallen into, over the years you’re just shocked by the behavior that goes on with with some of these these crazy firms I guess I was super naive that I thought it was more like VCS but at this whole super high level where everyone’s going to be like you know I’m Fidelity and I’m really on board with your company for the next 10 years there is that but it you know right now it seems like it’s the minority versus the majority is a lot of these kind of long-short hedge funds that do all kinds of wacky stuff. Dan: [22:50] Yeah yeah it’s nice. Scot: [22:52] Yeah yeah. Jason: [22:54] But so Dan you know what would be helpful for some of our listeners that may not be as familiar with clv analysis and some of your work can you like, this is hard on a podcast can you paint us a word picture of what a cohort analysis is and what that C3 looks like. Dan: [23:13] Yes of course the first Steve this may be the easier one is the C3 that’s simply saying you know if you if you open up a 10K, it’s going to show annual sales year by year you know so 2015 16 17 18 19. [23:30] This would be the same except it’s in a chart format where the height of the bar is the amount of total revenue. But it’s tax that so you kind of brace it down by acquisition cohort so you know for a company that, imagine it company was the first went public in 2016 and now we’re here in 2020, they’re at here’s our sales in 2020, here’s how much came from customers that were acquired in 2016 here’s how much came from customers and required 2017 2018 2019 and so on. So it’s basically chopping up that Revenue bar into acquisition cohorts and showing that over time and what it allows investors to see is. When a company acquires a group of users. How much revenue is that company getting from those users in future years as it going up is it going down and if it’s a b2c business you kind of expect it to move move down. And hope that is that doesn’t move down very much in other sectors like software as a service businesses typically if you’re seeing a C3 chart, you probably seeing expansion over time they acquire a bunch of customers and then in future years to getting more revenue from those same customers than they did in the previous year. So yes it is a whole lot of information you can get from a C3 in conjunction with everything else that does companies tend to provide. [24:59] And it goes back to that I think to the first question of what is a proper cohort analysis and it really is just that it’s saying let’s look at let’s not just look at everything that happened in 2020. Let’s look at things by acquisition cohort you know let’s eundel together all the people who are first acquired in 2016 and say, how good were they and then let’s compare it to all the people that were required in 2017 you have good with a and if you repeat that exercise across all these years. This whole new level of understanding of how healthy a businesses. Scot: [25:37] So for like an e-commerce business where you’re not going to have a huge let’s take subscription e-commerce businesses out of it like let’s say a Macy’s or someone like that that has you know just kind of a more transactional model what are you expecting that for your to look like like what’s a really good looking at wind what’s a terrible one. Dan: [25:56] Yeah General generally in transactional business like Macy’s or any other you know B to C typically customers were melting Ice Cube and. And so you’d be pretty happy if you know four years out you’re still getting, twenty percent of the revenue that you had gotten when you first acquired those users. But they’ll drop off pretty quick so you know so certainly. My general Pryor is is that Revenue retention tends to be on the very low side unless you’re truly one of the exceptional retailers. Scot: [26:38] Have you ever done it for Amazon. Dan: [26:42] We have not because they have really Rain back there disclosures unfortunately. The other yeah the other issue with them yeah so they disclose like active users but they disclosed nothing about the number of customers they’ve acquired in different years. Obviously if we even if we did have the information probably right now it’s like zero because everyone’s been acquired but the other wrinkle with them is I think you many people would argue they’re making most of their cash flow from there, from the cloud computing business and so. Retail business is certainly it’s an important piece I think you know a lot of people short change it because they don’t take into account the you know- working Financial working capital position that they have. But still there’s so much else to their business that it is a little bit tricky. Jason: [27:39] And I like I do like obviously we’ve been focused on company valuations which is a super interesting use case and obviously quite important but. Company valuation is far from the only reason you’d want to be doing a cohort analysis if your acquisition cohort analysis if you’re a company right like isn’t it, even if you’re getting if you’re a private company and you’re not going to disclose anything it seems like there’s huge benefits to understanding the value you’re getting out of those Acquisitions and. Helps you plan future Investments no. Dan: [28:15] Oh tremendously so yeah and actually said for example the the marketing use cases I think are at least is compelling to marketers as yes it is from a valuation perspective to the CFO yes I kind of I think of this way of looking at the world is kind of like the the translator that allows marketers to speak with the finance people and have a common language between, and I think it can allow marketers to communicate the value that they’re creating, in a way that Finance people would would respect and understand. And in Reverse yes I think you finance people can then you communicate that on to their investors which increasingly they’re having to so so suddenly I think, as these ideas take hold a bit more it’s as if the CMO becomes a lot more powerful because they’re kind of the trusted advisor they can actually really explain. What the heck is going on with the customer base in a way that the CFO is just not going to be able to but at the same time they’re going to be a lot more accountable because suddenly, everyone is really obsessing over things like the retention curve which are probably a little high level for your typical CMO and they typically are thinking about. More tactical measures. Jason: [29:42] Yeah and I if you don’t mind I would like to double click on that a little bit just a side note for listeners it’s funny we often call those the visual cohort analysis we caught a wedding cake. Um which I think is like a good mental image right like because you you see all these new new colored layers of. Different acquisition cohort stacked on top of each other and if things are going well the layers get like thicker in the in the middle over time. Is that is that an industry term or did I make that up. Dan: [30:18] You know I had never heard of the term before. Jason: [30:21] All right well I we use it with multiple clients so I don’t know yeah so you. Dan: [30:26] I like it though. Jason: [30:27] Dan you can have it for free but in exchange you can settle an age-old question for me customer lifetime value clv lifetime value LTV, I hear people use those acronyms interchangeably like are they different and is there one that you officially prefer. Dan: [30:47] I yeah I think that there is a lot of questions about you know what should be defined as what I’ve traditionally defined those is being equivalent to each other. But distinction that I draw actually is one that I’ve I haven’t really heard other people draw which is COV or LTV versus the post acquisition value of a customer so. To me I think the to two key components of a customer’s value or how much you spent to bring them in the door and that’s the CAC. And then all the value that you get after the required and to me I call that the post acquisition value of the customer, and so if you take the P AV and you subtract off the CAC. That gets me the customer lifetime value but there’s just so many people who actually would say that clv is p AV and and they’ll have no definition for clv. So so I think you have one of the first things that I’m really hoping that we can do it’s almost the simplest thing it’s just, let’s agree on some common common definitions for these terms you know I think that everyone would benefit and to be a lot less confusion when we’re all talking about, these terms and and potentially having different ideas in our heads as to what they actually mean. Jason: [32:08] Yeah no I think that would be super helpful because that it is, I you know in the virtue of my job I go into a lot of different clients in the vernacular is totally different and this you met your eyes may roll in the back of your head but I would even say like a monk my client base. Dan: [32:29] Yeah one also clv I’ve so frequently see people Computing it just off of sales they’ll not even factor in causing. Jason: [32:37] Yeah it’s Revenue it’s like customer lifetime Revenue not customer lifetime value right there. Dan: [32:42] Yeah you know finite Horizon forecast and you know just the list goes on and still all the different ways you can kind of screw it up in my view. Jason: [32:52] So I have this kind of simple mental picture of how this whole discipline involved and I’d love for you to confirm that I have it right or correct me if I’m wrong, um but I sort of imagined that in the early days of thinking about COV that it was primarily a marketing kpi, and then it feels to me like it evolved into being in really good mature companies it evolved into being a corporate kpi, and then you know largely because of your your paper and and blue not Blue Apron going viral. Now it’s become a corporate valuation tool like is that is that the matriculation then it sort of food through our time I’m making that up. Dan: [33:34] I think it’s definitely the case that COV has been born and raised a marketing marketing kpi. Yeah and I think now we are seeing a gradual progression that it’s showing up more in investor decks which has been super heartening to see. [33:52] In terms of the link to cut the corporate valuation so our work will very frequently talk about customer lifetime value. But usually it’s kind of a summarization of like the unit economic health of the firm it’s obviously a really important one. But but actually we kind of focus on on this other thing that, I think some people will call it customer Equity you know I’ll call it customer base corporate valuation was really drawn this distinction between, you kind of a per customer measure of profitability and the overall value that’s being created and. In Canada the example that I often give is if you wanted to maximize the clv of your business. You should go after this super tiny Market where this is like a few super good customers in it and and they’ll all be great you know but there’s so few of them that you leaving money on the table you know so, it’s kind of what we want to maximize this kind of like P times Q you know like the quality times the quantity and. And so I’ll actually kind of have this notion of the five Horsemen of CBC TV. And that’s actually you know what would companies should be striving to optimize. Jason: [35:15] I love that and I I’m a big fan of those sort of false of using a metric as a kpi because per your point like you can just manipulate one of the variables and make it awesome. I frequently help clients in Pre increase their conversion by just dramatically reducing their traffic to their best customers for example. The so I and I do have a bone to pick with you and I’ve been really good about trying not to bring it up until now but I just can’t resist. I primarily work with marketers and in my world like even LTV is a metric is. A vastly superior metric to what a lot of my clients tend to live in like sadly like I have a lot of clients that. You have tpi’s around things like Awards and return on ad spend which. Find abhorrent right and so often we’re trying to move people towards more financial base, measure right rui measurable quantifiable metrics and you mentioned in the intro that you you started this previous company zodiac, which actually provided both tools and services that help companies, make that progression and you don’t know this but I actually prescribed zodiac to a bunch of clients and then you went ahead and sold the company to Nike and they promptly fired all of my clients. Dan: [36:39] Yeah that that was the most difficult part of the sale was honestly we. We’re academics you know so we we almost feel like this semi-religious you no desire to get people to use customer lifetime value to be using these models and benefiting from them, instead of kind of get these companies to buy in and then kind of you know have to we didn’t fire them we were forced to. Jason: [37:08] Sure sure no I’m mostly nobody blames you for doing, in your own best economic intro I’m teasing you but it was like it, useful tool and I am curious and it’s fine if you want to pass on the question but there are some other companies that have emerged. I wouldn’t say have the exact same offering that zodiac had but. Some sort of overlapping value prop and so I think if companies like ambition data or dynamic action and I’m just curious if you’ve ever looked at them or or even better review you’ve come across any other companies that you think are doing a good job and that’s. Dan: [37:45] Yeah thankfully a lot of them are friends of ours so so ambition data Allison heart cells the good friend they do some good work there certainly I think they’re more tactically oriented and zodiac was but I think their philosophies are you’re very consistent so both Peter fader and myself we’ve been on under podcast as well, retina that AI is another one that I like with the what they do they basically have a version of a probabilistic model for how customers behave and, and they’ll use that to help you know oftentimes marketing analytics departments you make acquisition retention decisions but I wouldn’t also leave out Theta so you clearly I’m not here to, that’s a pitch the company but I’d say about half of our revenue is actually coming from corporates directly and in while we’re not helping the marketing department make those tactical acquisition retention decisions, we do provide kind of the, a lot of the Machinery that we use to make the predictions is very similar or even better than Zodiacs we use it to obviously summarize how the business is doing in terms of. [39:02] Clv in CAC over time, but then also slice that by you know things like acquisition Channel and so to the extent that you want those very highly validated predictions to, to see where you’re getting the highest return on investment you say by acquisition Channel this would would give you that so. Jason: [39:23] Very cool okay, so and Scott’s chomping at the bit to get back into the conversation but I did want to I feel like I haven’t this limited window to learn some stuff. Eight sometimes a knock on the like so one of the things about the customer base valuation is it, it’s a very bottom of the funnel monetizing the customer and therefore this is how valuable that acquisition channel was or how they both companies or whatever else and, the old-school CMOS I work with like when we start talking about those kinds of processes, they quickly go to yeah Jason but that doesn’t really capture my long-term brand Equity like I’m building this value that doesn’t show up in that number, and I’m imagining you you have to heard that before and debunk. Dan: [40:15] Yeah I love that question because in general and this is where I will get a little bit controversial again all the revenue has to come from customers making purchases and so if you believe in that, accounting identity which hopefully that’s completely uncontroversial then, then you have to kind of buy into the notion that it all comes down to acquisition retention ordering and spend and then variable profits and so so sick to kind of flip it back on on the old-school CFO yeah I’d say. If they’re spending on things that aren’t generating any measurable effect on those five Horsemen if CV CV, then it’s worthless completely worthless but to then give you know a little hat tip to the old school or I think what what they may be trying to say is that. I can make an investment today and I may not necessarily see the long term effect of that until three four years from now and that you know. That the long-term retention of those customers will be better because of the investment that I’m making. I think that’s a very important distinction because it’s saying that you can look at and just focus a hundred percent of your attention on the CB CB framework. It’s just an empirical question of how we can be able to measure its effects rather than saying you know actually we need to focus on brand Equity to. Jason: [41:44] Yeah and ironically like that cohort analysis is, is validating like when you know when it’s done well it’s validating the Investments made in that long-term brand Equity right because they they show up in like subsequent years value for those cohorts. Dan: [42:02] Exactly yep. Jason: [42:03] The Indian one more totally wonky one so so again old school seeing those like me and where should we put our marketing dollars and in particularly like that we all have this debate. What’s what should we be putting above the line IE what should we be spending to build brand Equity versus what you know should we be spending to drive actual activation. Things got and I talked about all the time like e-commerce and those sort of things and like historically like I mean from the 1970s, marketers use this media mix modeling which is pretty archaic and lately like as I work with all these ad agencies, the the academics that come up constantly are these guys and I’ve never met them less Bennett and Peter feel they’ve are you even Vaguely Familiar with him. They ever. Dan: [42:56] No you’re not. Jason: [42:58] Well then we’ll skip it but suffice it to say they did a quantitative analysis of a bunch of companies in found that in general the best like, mix of investment was 60% brand 40% activation and therefore there are a ton of like quite large. Marketing Enterprises with very large budgets that Loosely follow that parameter and it just seems, too simple to be true to me so I was just curious but I’ll let you take a pass on that and I’ll let Scott jump back in. Scot: [43:35] Yeah this is so just kind of apply this to an interesting argument so two of my favorite followers on Twitter are web he’s been on the show and then this guy digitally native I forget his name he’s in Austin, they’re constantly going back and forth over well first of all they really focus on the realm of digitally native vertical Brands so I don’t know if you’ve dug into that there and fortunately haven’t been a lot of, IPOs in there so there may be a lack of data on it but the kind of go in the circular argument I’ll try to do my best of kind of figuring it out so digitally native dude will say the one metric you should focus on as a digitally native or co-brand is gross margin and then now then web comes in and says Nope it’s got to be so first of all he doesn’t like it when companies raise Capital so it’s like it’s got to be bootstrapped and the only way to bootstrap it is cackle TV and then they then the kind of wheel spins around and goes back and forth back and forth do you have a point of view on that. Dan: [44:39] Yeah I kind of go back to to me the ultimate goal is customer base corporate valuation now I would say that does kind of lean more towards cackle TV, but I’m not sure that the distinction needs to be that you know that big because ultimately you know a higher gross margin is going to drive. Higher lifetime value all else being equal so certainly. But even their gross margin is not the only, component of variable margin yeah I think that if you really binds the notion that lifetime value is important well the profit margin that you use in that calculation should be the effect of The fully-loaded effective variable, profit margin and so you should be factoring in, this is going to be probably very common knowledge to you both but you things like fulfillment expenses and merchant processing fees which often times they’re not included in cost of goods sold they’re included in. In an operating expenses, so we want to put those in as well but I’d also include effectively variable indirect expenses to so even things like. This is going to sound totally brutal and conservative but even things like accounting expense. [46:01] New companies as they grow they need to hire more accountants and even companies like Microsoft spend ten percent of their sales. On expenses like that and so so what I want is I want that lifetime value figure to represent. If it’s positive that means there’s a path to profitability and if it’s negative there is not a pilot at the profitability and you won’t get that if you’re using gross margin as your margin. So Scot: [46:29] So then so tactically how do I allocate that like I just divide by the number of customers acquired over that period and all my costs and that period. Dan: [46:38] Yeah there’s a few different ways you could do it yeah let’s say the kludgy is simplest way would be take all of the expenses that are not direct expenses. And in regress them against sales, and with that can help you get a sense for is the relationship between those expenses and how they grow as you Revenue grows obviously if you’re inside the company though oftentimes companies especially if they’re young, they’ll kind of pre build and so you may see operating expenses grow quickly then but it’s not because those expenses are variable they’re just kind of building for the future so that’s really where I think if, if you’re an inside operator you have a much better view of that, as an outsider I think conservatively most any company can simply at least at the very start just knock off five percent of sales and just say, you know probably at least that much is going to be effectively variable indirect expense and. And then just you know kind of continue to run the analysis is you may otherwise have done. Scot: [47:47] Got it so sokak is easy to get your head around and then LTV you’re essentially saying LTV should almost be like cash flow. Dan: [47:54] High LTV should be the net present value of all the future variable profits after a customer’s acquired yeah so yeah as having to kind of peel that one back but I know. Scot: [48:08] I don’t think anyone’s calculating it that way that’s why it’s funny. Jason: [48:11] This this is why I like Theta is b or zodiac is because they do it for you they provide the mathematical. Dan: [48:19] And will you know we’re totally an open book you know will show you the academic papers so hopefully I’ve been kind of by into exactly how we’re going about the you know the calculations that were going about but, yeah I mean at some point I think the math it’s a very hard prediction problem yes a to be able to have someone. We’ve now done probably 250 different you know paid engagements on behalf of 250 different firms. So you kind of develop that dirt under the fingernails that could be hard if you’re just a really smart operator who’s building a business and don’t don’t even have the budget necessarily for you know much or any data science team. Scot: [49:02] Yeah I’m a big study of Amazon if you haven’t figured that out yet and it’s always funny because, people always ask Jeff Bezos these things he always comes back to cash flow and I almost wonder if he kind of like intuitively got to a similar place where you have where you know one of his answers will be customers you know I can’t take a gross margin to the bank you know I can’t take fifty percent to the bank when in the early days when people accused him of being a super low margin business and or like with Amazon Prime they thought he was crazy and I think he was thinking I think he was way ahead of the thinking here, what do you think about do you agree with that. Dan: [49:46] Yeah I think a lot of people they’ll look at these highly free cash flow negative digital companies often times, and I’ll say well you know yeah but but Amazon and if you look back carefully at Amazon, typically those comparisons are very bad you know that I think it was in the Amazon second year you know maybe it’s there that it was operating cash flow positive and, it’s the even the even though it took them a while longer to become Gap profitable. Who cares about Gap if you’re bringing in the cash flow you know that that’s ultimately what what drives the value of the firm and keeps the lights on so, so I think they did a lot of things right that are still under appreciated and have still led to a lot of confusion with this emerging crop of, fast-growing money-losing companies. Scot: [50:42] That one random observation is you so I think you said in your bio you were at like a hedge fund doing analysis of things but Jeff Bezos was to write wasn’t that where you kind of started is there is there something that you think cut came out of that where you both kind of saw this this kind of light bulb moment that you know this is the ultimate metric for for these kind of businesses. Dan: [51:05] You know that I think it was a de Shaw and I forget what role he he was at the firm butt, I would say there is something that actually this goes back to zodiac Theta, Finance people we’ve often done in the questions that you find the comparison yet selling to a marketing person versus selling to a finance person and I’ll often say selling to the finance person is easier actually, even though you’re presenting them with this Mark ostensibly marketing way of looking at the world ultimately its Net Present Value, and they just live and breathe that you know they’ve been doing that for probably since they were an undergrad you know whereas marketing people sometimes have sometimes happen. And it’s to a finance person I think they will get a lot of this and they’ll immediately see the analogy to project finance that project financing the you spend money on a project you’ve got this, you know you think about payback periods you think about the net present value of the project you think about the internal rate of return, that’s just how they think about their project and so if you just replace project with customer Suddenly It’s like a light bulb goes off and they say oh you know that that totally makes sense the customer is my project. Yes I think that to them this is all quite natural, to marketing people there could be more of an education that that’s required to kind of get them where they need to be. Jason: [52:31] I will totally buy that I do have to point out early in the show I complimented you on monetizing your academic background but now that Scott’s comparing you to Jeff Bezos you probably have a little ground to make up. Dan: [52:43] Definitely a loser there to him. Scot: [52:47] Jason builds you up I tear you down it’s part of its are good cop bad company. Jason: [52:52] Pivoting a little bit I’m curious like if you so a bunch of the company is in our space we talk about all the time, and you know where there is some debate about how sound the unit economics are we talk a lot about companies like Shopify and, Peloton and chewy why do you like look any of those companies do any of them provide enough data that you kind of formed an opinion. Dan: [53:21] Yeah actually all three I haven’t done a formal customer base corporate valuation of Shopify but I’d love to and, and they’re actually one of the firm’s where I’ve seen a customer cohort chart outside of the s-1 filing and as you can imagine. As you were alluding to Scott when companies disclose these things it’s probably because it looks good and and I definitely was the case with Shopify that there there C3 looks amazing, and in there an interesting case because you know they’re kind of a business in a box whatever the, terminology is now they’ll have a lot of companies that, yeah they go kaput they go out of business but they get so much incremental business from those who survived that they see very strong Revenue retention over time. So you know I haven’t I’ll be the first to say I haven’t been out the math is to say what their marketing Roi is but but it must be quite good. Jason: [54:31] You know I don’t know how like how close you father but like their CAC is actually quite low so that helps too. Scot: [54:38] I don’t think they do any marketing that’s another thing that they’ve always said that they let the product do the marketing and yeah. Dan: [54:44] Yeah so even better you know it’s really it’s it so I think you then it does become a question of valuation but even the valuation question you become some really hard I was actually just tweeting about this a couple days ago that. If you have very strong Revenue retention presumably you’re earning a very high return on your marketing investment and, and is a very strong analogy between marketing Roi and the return on invest the marginal return on invested Capital to business. So for business like Shopify I be astounded if their marginal return on investment wasn’t, at least an order of magnitude higher than their weighted average cost of capital like the required rate of return that investors demand of them to supply them with the capital that they have. And in theory if you are if your return on invested capital, is permanently above your whack there’s no you would deserve an infinite valuation. Scot: [55:51] I think they’re getting there. Dan: [55:52] Yeah it’s so so I’ll be the first to say that but I would say for Shopify there is a valuation question that we all know mean reversion is is a reality and so when, you know when those economic start to kind of go back to levels that are more in line with competition. You know that is that on that out and so I think that’s kind of the open question there so yeah valuation it’s. It’s not purely a function of current period clv you know I wish it was that easy but but it’s not. Jason: [56:33] It was super easy everyone would be doing it so where would the fun in that be. Have you up to Peloton at all maybe free covid or assume post covid there now like the next trillion dollar. Dan: [56:47] Yes I again yeah I’m kind of an s-1 geek like you both so when they drop the S one I looked at that one really carefully and especially because there was a lot of controversy I know if you are following this the time, that that their churn rate was just about to spike and, and they were timing the IPO it just at the point where a whole bunch of these, prepaid you know customers are locked in for two three years boom you know now they IPL all those things are going to move to month-to-month contracts and a whole bunch of people are going to turn in there you know. Average turn rates going to quadruple or even more and. [57:32] Yes I felt obligated to kind of jump in to see what the heck was going on and it’s I posted this analysis on LinkedIn hints and fully transparent not even provided the spreadsheet showing all of the calculations just so that people could, see or point out if I’m wrong and, in the main conclusion that I came to was now you know they’re their turn seems pretty low and there’s no Smoking Gun it should probably stay low and. And I would say even pre covid thankfully that seem to Bear out as being true. So we didn’t go all the way to I didn’t go all the way to valuation but it certainly you have I’d run like hardcore statistical models on them. Jason: [58:18] Gotcha and then I’m assuming about 400 billion dollars in value transferred from Jim’s to them as a result of the shelter in place orders. Dan: [58:26] Yeah they definitely benefited so. Scot: [58:28] It’s just a bike with an iPad strapped to it who would have thought. Dan: [58:32] Yeah there’s still it’s amazing in this thing again it goes back to Blue Apron there they’re always the haters. And and for Peloton there was still a whole bunch of people who argued that you know because of the economic contraction unemployment 15%. Is this super expensive bike are people that are pay two thousand three hundred bucks for a bike you know. And in that has I was on the opposite side of that trade yeah I was openly in webinar saying. Don’t be surprised at how many how many wealthy people are retaining their jobs and buying peloton’s now and and yeah it seems like that that’s that’s played out as well. Jason: [59:18] Oh yeah and and now they all those wealthy people have the capex invested in that bike and they’re presumably less likely to renew their gym membership when they’re able. Dan: [59:29] Yeah yep and I think that’s one of the arguments for why why their turn should remain generally quite low you know is that people are paying $2,300 for a bike, you know are they willing to Pony up the 30 bucks or whatever it is a month for the you know for the subscription. Definitely you know they’ve huge sunk cost fallacy but you know still people fall for that that’s the oldest trick in the book. Jason: [59:58] Yeah yeah I think that’s going to be our next podcast is all about those cognitive biases so that’ll be a perfect transition there and then chewy have you acted chewy at all. Dan: [1:00:08] I have not looked at you we personally so I have it’s been nice to see they’re now more and more people are kind of doing their own cbcb analyses and so there was one super smart person who had. Done some interesting analysis on them it ended up his conclusion was bearish that. Things did not look good and I also I do agree that the way that they Define the proportion of people who are unlike auto-ship or whatever they call that program is is is very aggressive but. But I actually I haven’t done a CBC analysis. Jason: [1:00:48] Okay mildly interesting like they had their their first earnings call Post. Covid and you know of course reminder like, their revenue growth has been wildly awesome and they’re one of the few direct to Consumer companies that you know his vastly exceeded a billion dollars in sales they’re really struggling to be profitable, the covid quarter was their first quarter where they had a profitable ibadah but earnings was still negative but which is why I was curious if you see, like you know are they just on this Wayfarer style treadmill where they can never make money or or you know is there a model where they scale out of that but one of the things that was interesting they mentioned is, me and 1.6 million new pet owners adopted a pet in covid and we think the covid cohort for us is worth 90 million dollars this quarter like I just that was it like it wasn’t so much I mean it was, they were they didn’t provide data but they had a narrative around an acquisition based cohort in there there. Dan: [1:01:54] Wow yeah I was about to say that they’re going to argue with all the pets parts of the world shut down that all that business is now increasingly going to the chewy but. Jason: [1:02:05] Yeah well I think there’s some there is some data there right like pre covid 22% of, of pet spending was e-commerce and you know in covid it’s like 35% so like all those new pet owners who I clearly you know were born digital, you know suppliers for their pet food and all that stuff. Dan: [1:02:25] Yeah that’s like a free gift that covid has given to these companies. Jason: [1:02:28] Oh my gosh yeah there’s a lot of free gifts and a lot of free I don’t know what the right. Dan: [1:02:34] Fold in the air colder in the star. Jason: [1:02:36] Yeah exactly that have been like disproportionately handed out its kind of kind of brutal with the winners and losers. Dan: [1:02:44] Not just disproportionate but in some sense random, is that a lot of otherwise great companies and you know just so happens well you were a mobile gaming company so you will be a winner you were you were an underwear Stellar you will be a loser but you. Jason: [1:03:01] Except if your underwear seller that also sells lettuce in which case you’re you’re a winner. Like that those are the weird distinctions right like. Dan: [1:03:10] Yeah the milk is to go back to Blue Apron. Jason: [1:03:14] Yeah I feel like I saw you on one of the new shows talking about Wayfarer and covid did you like you want to recap your your thought process there. Dan: [1:03:25] Yeah yes it’s obviously I’ve been falling Wayfarer for a while now and, you know I’ve been probably as much press on them as with blue apron and. And they had first finally it was as if the writing was finally on the wall they said they. The CEO had even said we were growing too quickly and we’re going to now lay off a bunch of people and move to more you know sustainable growth. [1:03:54] And then covid and basically you know I was speaking with someone from CNBC it’s ended up being featured in her article but it’s something like 86 percent of all home good sales, had been brick and mortar and so suddenly covid you shut all that down and you know this little slice you know the other 14%. Sunny they’re the only game in town and not only that. Wayfarers biggest competitor with in HomeGoods had been Amazon and Amazon now is prioritizing essential Goods so there are not focusing a lot on HomeGoods. So they’re not only kind of the only game in town when you compare them to the brick-and-mortar players but they’re also one of the only games in town even on online so so they’ve seen their growth go from something like. 20% or 25% to 90% And presumably that’s all, I would imagine it’s quite profitable growth that there’s just a lot of people now who are organically coming to Wayfair and making the purchases are because they they want that new chair to put in their work from home office, so yes they really they benefited on all sides from from covid which you know hats off to them I’m happy that it’s been. It’s been good for them. Jason: [1:05:20] Yeah it’s going to be in a mean I obviously we all wish all these companies the best it’s going to be interesting like, hey they’ve got to be able to be get profitable on that on that revenue or like certainly it’s going to be scary and hopefully they can they can leverage all those new customers into a long-term viable. Dan: [1:05:38] I think the long game is the big question that I have and still to me now it’s just an open question I feel like you thankfully. Yeah I feel like our thesis was validated the stock actually fell to within our valuation range before you know things went crazy with covid so I feel like I don’t have a whole lot of skin in the game right now, but I do still wonder those stores will eventually come back online some of them are closed permanently like Pier One is not a company called Tuesday they are liquidating you know so so that Supply is not coming back on the market but, you know we will still see a lot of you know home goods stores reopening and then Amazon is going to reprioritize furniture and so, I think there is a question of how much of the growth that we’re seeing Wayfarer how much if it’s going to stick. And how much of it will go back to what we had seen before. Yeah I kind of think it’s a question of how severe covid it’s going to be yeah they did a certain variables that I just don’t have a good sense for right now but I think that that will be a big part of the valuation story. Jason: [1:06:46] No I think you’re right like I you know it’s going to be interesting because I feel like a lot more competition than we realize right now is going to go away like of the traditional competition because. There’s a bunch of Independence that you know have become insolvent and we just don’t hear about them but I mean aggregate their 25% of the furniture market there’s a lot of regional chains that. You know just haven’t bothered to file bankruptcy yet because they can’t run a liquidation sale right now it’s kind of hard to declare bankruptcy at the moment so that’s going to happen but then for your point, Amazon and you know the most healthy well resource of the surviving retailers as you know are all going to want to grab that share nobody’s going to want to just advocated. The Wayfarer so it’s going to be a, interesting battle to watch play out but Dan that’s going to have to be a good place to leave it because we have slightly exceeded our allotted time but we were enjoying our conversation so much that. You thought it was well worth it so we really appreciate you taking the time and really enjoy the. Dan: [1:07:47] Yeah thanks thanks again so much for thinking of me and having me on the show this is this is a stuff I stay up to talk about this to anyone who’ll listen so so so thank you it’s been a lot of fun for me too. Scot: [1:07:59] Thanks and we really appreciate it and I think you know my goal is to learn a couple things everyday I think I’ve filled up at least the rest of the month and maybe July so really appreciate it. Dan: [1:08:11] Being too kind but thank you. Jason: [1:08:12] And until next time happy commercing.

EP223 - Covid-19 Deep Dive Episode 223 is deep dive into the retail impact of Covid-19 pandemic over the next 18-24 months. COVID-19 TIME MACHINE Covid-19 is a time machine, propelling commerce five years into the future. New Behaviors: Shift to Digital Brand Agnostic Pantry Stocking Nesting Health & Safety Recession Changing Retail Landscape How Will it End Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 223 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, June 18th, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24]Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 223 being recorded on Thursday June 18th 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason I know you have been doing non-stop 12 hour a day zooms to help your clients understand the impact of covid and we thought that since most of our listeners are kind of now and what I would call and falling state so there their local environments are hopefully opening up and they’re getting back to little bit of a normal see if you will I’m excited report I’ve had a haircut that was those very delightful we thought it’d be a good idea to start looking at the pandemic and what it’s going to mean for retail and e-commerce and we’re fortunate enough to have you as the co-host on the show because this has become an area of expertise with you because you’ve probably literally talked to hundreds of folks about it so I’ll point out that your clients pay somewhere around a bazillion dollars for this so again our listeners get this information for free which is great but if you’re if you’re kind of Jason still pay the bazillion so you can keep podcast going and as I’m a couch Economist and Avid CNBC Watcher so I’m kind of excited to hear where you land on the shape of the recovery I’m sure we’ll get to that so this show we’re skipping news and this is going to be a deep dive and the title is deep dive post pandemic impact on retail so with that set up I’ll turn it over to you Jason. Jason: [2:07] Wow Scott that was a like I feel like I was supposed to have the announcer voice of us that’s impressive you know. Scot: [2:14] Ben it’s taken 223 episodes. Jason: [2:17] Yeah I think most westerners are career that you can pretty much do all of my roles like you’ve said you’ve stolen happy conversing before now you stoled my like fake radio voice. And like just to remind any listeners that don’t know as well, I talk all day long about covid impact on businesses you actually run businesses that have been impacted by covid so I feel like there’s a pretty valid perspective there as well. Scot: [2:47] It’s a yeah I’m a little bit country here little bit rock and roll. Jason: [2:50] Exactly and I’m regretting that we didn’t make this a live video show because we both got haircuts and we’re looking good I feel like we were camera-ready. Scot: [2:58] Yeah next time. Jason: [3:00] Yeah something that’s what we call a teaser in the bids for the. For the audience at home what for that next video show to see that Jason and Scott’s new deuced so jumping into the deep dive. I’ll give away the plot in the the first minute of the show my perspective. Like that’s really formed from talking with o over a hundred clients retailers and Brands about the various impacts they’re seeing an expecting to see from this is that covid really isn’t. Creating some dramatic new behaviors or fundamental changes to have people shop what it’s really doing is dramatically accelerating. Trends and behaviors that we were already starting to see of all so I’ve kind of landed on this metaphor of a time machine and essentially my premise is that covid has. Pushed us five years forward in five minutes and so what we’re all dealing with now is ordinarily we’d have a nice graceful ramp for all these changes and now we’re having to deal with the very abrupt version of them that we’re getting. [4:14] And so with that being said I like to break the impact down into three big buckets one bucket is. Customer behaviors that have changed as a result of shelter-in-place so we’ll talk about that first, the second bucket is the economic impacts of covid and how that changes shopping Behavior so we can talk about that, and the third big bucket is how the competitive landscape for Brands and retailers have changed and how that potentially impacts all this and then tie it up in a nice little bow talking about how it’s all going to end, and how it might play out and you and I can debate our premise are various premises about the shapes of the recovery. Scot: [4:58] Yeah we’ll call that alphabet soup. Jason: [5:00] I like it. So let’s start with the new behaviors the First new behavior that we’ve seen as a result of covid or acceleration of a trend that we were already seeing to me is the most. Universal and most prominent and that’s the shift to digital that. You know fundamentally we’ve seen a way higher adoption rate of digital shopping experiences so in categories that were already well penetrated, we saw the percentage of penetration go up, in categories that were not very well penetrated like grocery we’ve seen like significant penetration and we’ve seen a lot of new customers come into the digital echo system. Couple of data points to kind of make this real for people like if you everybody has a slightly different definition of retail and therefore slightly different numbers, Forrester would have said Pre-K covid 16 percent of all retail was e-commerce and based on their April data 25 percent of all retail spending was e-commerce, so before covid ever hit the forecast, for that digital penetration would have had 25 percent penetration in about 20-25 so five years from now we saw it in April now. [6:21] Totally open question whether that’s permanent does that revert all the way back to 16% or does it partially revert somewhere in the middle I’ll be curious to get your your thoughts on that Scott but before we do that I just a couple of other similar data points, Bank of America there they’re steady 16 percent digital penetration pre covid, 27% digital penetration in April. Brian Cornell the CEO of Target talk to enter F this morning he said that he felt like it was, covid was accelerating digital adoption of their platforms by three years. [7:03] And the one that I think is most interesting Forester has this really interesting data set that they use called digitally influence sales and so what that is is. Hey of Sixteen percent of sales are online there’s another 37 percent of sales that happen at a cash register but you used your mobile phone to decide what to buy so you use Google Maps to find the store and the hours you read reviews on, Amazon you went to the manufacturer’s website to read about the ingredients in the product, and so you add up the e-commerce sales in the digital influencer sales and pre covid Forrester would have said 52 percent of all consumer spending was digitally influence, and of you kind of run the numbers mid covid where we are now that would be 70% so so that’s the kind of, shift to the digital channel that I’m seeing and I guess a Scott like does that surprise you at all and do you think it’s. Likely permanent or what’s your forecast. Scot: [8:05] There’s something so you’re a fan of the Forester day that I haven’t looked at that I saw a JP Morgan report and I’ve been trying to get the underlying data but it kind of it was in the context of raising the price targets for a bunch of companies and essentially saying hey we thought the US was kind of on a track to 30% kind of, e-commerce penetration now we’re going to raise that to 35 to 40 so to your point we’ve accelerated pretty dramatically through there and then they called out some categories so like obviously grocery has been like hugely impacted by this and I think that’s going to stick it is the big question right as you know how far is the pendulum going to swing back you know and then this also ties into the shape of the recovery and what happens with the pandemic if if this thing’s around for years then that’s going to drive it if there’s you know some kind of a either treatment of some kind or it’s very much for a. Jason: [9:06] Therapy or vaccine. Scot: [9:08] Vaccine vaccine then that could cause the pendulum to swing a different way so it makes it hard I think, I kind of try to put myself in the shoes of our listeners you know what what do you plan for I think you got a plan for you know, how do you get your company to 30 to 40 percent and if you don’t get there you have to have a plan for that you kind of have to keep a leg in both world because it’s hard to know what’s going to happen. Jason: [9:33] Yeah the phrase I have uttered more than any other phrase in the last two months is called scenario planning yeah and that’s basically it right like like what are we going to do about these digital penetration numbers we’re going to do scenario planning and we’re gonna we’re gonna have a play for for that that shifting permanent we’re going to have a play for partial regression in you know the same story what are we doing for Holiday right are people gonna travel and buy gifts or are they going to send their kids out on Halloween like they’re all kinds of. Unknowables right now so scenario planning is a big part of the mix. Scot: [10:08] The thing I find most interesting is I agree that all the stuffs accelerated but what’s actually decelerated and I would argue apparel has just like taken it on the chin and I don’t know, you know I don’t know how to percent why because I guess if you’re Sheltering in place you don’t need new clothes so I guess that’s a factor but does this indicate that. Maybe that category doesn’t get as High online as we thought because people need to go out see it touch it try it on it’s hard to separate out the inability to get in a store from the being sheltered in place so that one’s one that felt like it went backwards and everything else accelerated so yeah it’s a tough one. Jason: [10:51] So I my art so I would argue the my premise that covid is accelerated all these Trends is equally true for apparel because I would say that there was a pretty significant trend, before covid, that apparel sales was decelerating and there were a bunch of headwinds against apparel right and a couple of them, quality apparel is less expensive like there’s all these stats that that most people have about the same amount of clothes in their closet they always have but they had to invest, significantly Less in them than they did in 1990 for example, um the bifurcation of the economy is people have spent more on Healthcare and more on education the category of consumer spending that’s most gone down is apparel, so that has kind of worked against them nobody pre covid, everybody was going from to wardrobes a work wardrobe in a casual to one work wardrobe and so that was hurting apparel and free covid, like if you go back to the 90s there was this Cadence that we were used to wear tastemakers had this big fashion show in Paris. [12:02] And it generated a buzz and they had the world’s slowest supply chain that then took like nine months to make all the clothes and get them out in the market and and like the hole, the whole apparel industry was based on these global fashion trends that turned every season, and increasingly none of that happens anymore people are way more likely to be influenced by their favorite micro influencer on Instagram than they are by the Paris fashion show and the weed time from, design 2 shelf is like 6 weeks for most apparel and, they’re just wearing a global Trends and so a lot of the old-timers in apparel where like oh man you know we’re just having a horrible low wool because there hasn’t been a new trend in a while and as soon as the new trend comes as soon as skinny jeans come back we’re all going to make money again, and I used to say bad news there’s not going to be a new trend ever again what they’re going to be is a thousand simultaneous trends that are each. You know I’m not smaller a lot meant of demand so all of that was I would argue is already happening to apparel and then you put that that super Badness in the time machine and fast forward it five years, and apparel is more bad like I would argue malls is the same thing we talked a lot about how they were decreasing in popularity, covid is accelerated there decrease in popularity. [13:26] And then you put those two Trends together and there’s an awful lot of people that sell clothes in malls that’s just not an awesome business right now. Scot: [13:34] The other one interesting exception seems to be athleisure specifically Lulu Lulu Lemon so you know their stock is just kind of hitting a new high every day so they seem to have, been relatively immune and or enjoyed the acceleration factor in the fashion category. Jason: [13:51] Yeah yeah no I think that I think that’s generally true I think they’ve taken a hit and covid as well but I think they’ve largely been the winner in. [13:59] And that the sort of apparel head wins, I would point out like so I am advising clients that while we should scenario plan for this that it’s a safe bet that a significant chunk of this digital penetration is permanent like I’m, I’m very confident it’s not going to regress to pre covid levels the, like the couple of points I think about are SARS in China in 2002-2003 was very similar to covid now like a bunch of five tier 1 cities in China had shelter in place holders and tooth in late 2002, retail sales fell off a cliff, and two companies Ali Baba launched a b2c e-commerce site after the shelter in place orders were put in place so, Ali Baba was a pure B2B company when SARS hit China, and they pivoted B to C or C to see when. [15:01] SARS impacted them and in the same way JD.com was a brick and mortar retailer that was selling CD-ROM drives out of bazaars and had no e-commerce sales and they started selling their inventory on WeChat, once arse kicked in and you know just two years later Ali Baba sold 1.5 billion dollars b2c right like China rapidly adult adopted e-commerce because of SARS, and never look back like before covid China was at 38% e-commerce penetration and so in some ways. [15:32] The same thing is playing out now and particularly in new categories like you mentioned grocery. [15:38] Pretty under penetrated before covid like depending on how you count maybe three or four percent of Us sales were digital its, again depending how you count 11 to 14 percent right now but what’s most interesting is the majority of those customers are first-time digital grocery Shoppers they tried it for the first time because of covid and. That you know they’ve on-boarded to the new these new skills and new experiences and it’s a good bet that a big chunk of that will stick. The counter-argument Scott though is, that nobody was in a position to plan for all this demand so we all like are delivering the absolute worst digital experience we’ve ever delivered like websites are following down delivery Windows suck service levels, shipping accuracy socks in so there’s a little bit of like hey whatever percentage of customers you would have you know got to become permanent new customers. In normal times the percentage is likely to be lower now just because the the experiences is suboptimal. Scot: [16:47] Yes so does that are you arguing that maybe those bad experiences actually make it not stick. Jason: [16:55] For some so I think that that reduces the the amount of grocery that will stick I still think grocery is going to dramatically stay forward so if it went four percent if it peaked it. 14%, it might revert back to seven or eight percent partly because of those experiences but then I could tell you those Grocers are going to, having met those customers and collected data on those customers they’re now going to market the heck out of try us again when we have a better, service level and better experiences and another phenomenon because. Digital is so much more significant and at the same time digital grew and became way more significant, brick and mortar had this huge temporary low as most retail had to shut down so so digital temporarily became a way bigger percentage of the total sales for a bunch of Brands and retailers and guess what they all did, they all got more serious about digital right like the joke in our industry is you know the VP of e-commerce at any brand. Got like hired and was you know heavily recruited by the CEO and told how important their role would be and how they you know have a seat at the table for all the future decisions in that brand and in most cases that. First day of work was the last time that the VP of e-commerce ever saw the CEO. Because you know things went back to normal and now all these vp’s of e-commerce are telling me that the CEO is literally sitting in their office all day. [18:23] And so what does happen then is you start investing in digital you start you know doing more things and it it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy a little bit as, as it gets more awareness from more stakeholders at all these businesses that that facilitates its ticking. Scot: [18:42] Yeah one one observation and I think we’re a little bit ahead of you guys so we’re in North Carolina and you’re in Chicago. Jason: [18:49] Your head of us in most things. Scot: [18:51] And opening up yeah the retail experiences of taken a huge step backwards so, you know my wife needed something for from Container Store went to the store there’s a line to get in because they’re severely limiting the number of people that can go in there, and then when you go in to workers in the store the store is understaffed which I’ll pull a Strokes on and then they’re having to do curbside pickup and help people in the store and, they’ve been doing curbside pickup for three months so they’re favoring that over the people in the store so the store experience, no yes we’re not having great digital experiences but the store experience is like 30% even worse than it kind of was before so then my wife had to get something else and she just did online curb pick up and it was actually. [19:38] They had she was able to get her item and cut the line and some sleep it’s almost like mobile ordering at Starbucks right now where you didn’t have that dichotomy before it most places the online experience was dramatically worse than the insert experience it seems to flip it’s anecdotal at this point, the Asterix on hiring is we’re in this really weird environment and we’re really struggling with this my company spiffy. That we can’t hire people so in Employments crazy but no one will come to work in this kind of we have what I would call that kind of how early retail type employee that’s Buffy that are our technicians. They’re making twice as much on unemployment than they are in jobs so there’s there’s they’re making a smart economic decision too, you to take care of that so it’s gonna be interesting I think through July you’re going to have these really bad retail experiences so online. I think you’ll see it at least continue and through July to have a better customer experience. Jason: [20:35] Yeah I think there’s a lot of aspects to that that labor thing a bunch of retailers have discovered the loophole in the tax code on that problem. So it’s bring back employees under a job share. And so under a job share you the employee gets less hours you pay the employee you know for the last hours but they’re still eligible for a prorated portion of their State’s unemployment. But they’re eligible for a hundred percent of the federal subsidy on unemployment. Scot: [21:09] We see jobs are just part-time not full-time sorry. Jason: [21:12] Yeah but then there’s and I I’m not advocating this I’m not a Tax Advisor and I. Scot: [21:18] Jason guarantees this orc. Jason: [21:20] I understand it but there’s something specific about this debt and this is the loophole that I imagine will get closed or it won’t matter because the program will end in July but. There’s something special like if you just cut back someone’s hours then everything gets prorated but if you, chain there’s some formal status of a job share where two people are sharing a full-time job. That that continues to make them eligible for this Federal benefit that. Scot: [21:49] I’m going to go I’m going to leave the podcast and to look into that right now bye. Jason: [21:54] Working at that and then we’ll start the recording again when you come back welcome back Scott so get spiffy just got a bunch more employees it’s amazing. Scot: [22:02] We just implemented a job sharing program. Jason: [22:04] I like it congratulations people give value and they pay the billions of dollars that’s all I’m saying. That aside you’re seeing everything like Walmart is Shifting stores to self checkout only which would obviously have a substantial impact on the labor required to run a Walmart store, Target just permanently raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour to try to get more important like they’re all these interesting. Second-tier effect because of the labor issue so you’re absolutely right to point that out. I want to Pivot though so the digital is a huge deal it’s top of mind for most of my clients when they’re talking about the. [22:45] The systemic changes as a result of covid you know is this shift to the digital channel and what the ramifications are. For a lot of brands that means man we should be investing more in digital marketing right and so I think you pointed to a L’Oreal article that came out this week talked in and they talked about how we went from 50% of our spend. On digital the 80% of our Spin and got a great Roi because of that’s now where the consumer is that’s the front door or the brand experience, but speaking of brand I want to Pivot to the second Trend which is a little bit of a Debbie Downer for a lot of my clients we’re seeing customers have a lot less brand loyalty, um during this pandemic and so that manifests itself in a couple of ways one way is as we’ll talk about later in the in the show we’re in a deep recession and. In a recession people tend to trade down and be less brand loyal but unique to covid or shelter in place. [23:49] Customers have had all these forced product substitutions like you you sent your shopping list to Whole Foods and they sent back, you know they made a bunch of substitutions and in previous times you might not have been happy with those substitutions you might not have even accepted them but during covid you’re mostly like just thrilled to get any brand of toilet paper for example right so you, you ordered charmian and you got Amazon Presto toilet paper in your you just keep the toilet paper and you’re thrilled to get it and there’s some evidence that when people are forced to try all these brands that they didn’t intend to buy that 20% of them stick with the new. So so we’re seeing you know brands have to be more worried as customers get a little more promiscuous, I personally have been tracking, um some of the funny substitutions that have happened and so I have like all these examples of someone ordering like cottage cheese and getting Christmas ornaments ordering peanut butter and getting glue sticks, but my all-time favorite substitution is Tesco in the UK a customer ordered baby wipes and they got a bottle of bells whiskey. Scot: [24:59] Boom nice. Jason: [25:01] I feel like I would order baby wipes all the time if I knew that was a possibility. Scot: [25:04] Yeah I think that’s so that’s a win. Jason: [25:08] So but here’s the interesting thing about that brand promiscuity at the same time people are more open to shifting brands. People are also flocking back. Established traditional Comfort brands in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time right so pretty covid the big Trend in food was I want only natural food I want organic I don’t want any dies in it, and and you know cleaning products for example something I think you know well like everyone only wanted the the organic cleaning products with no quote unquote chemicals and I always put the quotes in there because I’m pretty sure water is a chemical. The now that we’re in covid everyone only wants Clorox right and in fact like. Marriott and United Airlines have brand Partnerships with Clorox and everybody wants Kraft mac and cheese and Campbell Soup, and like they’re all drinking beer in there drinking dad beers they’re drinking like Coors and Miller and like, all of these traditional Comfort brand so it’s been an interesting Resurgence for a lot of those brands. [26:20] So the third behavior that we’re seeing this kind of interesting is this phenomenon I call Pantry stocking. And a couple of people on the internet misheard me and had memes about panty stocking which is a whole different thing. The pantry stocking like the most visible version of this is like everyone rushed out about a year supply of toilet paper early in the pandemic. And that like you know people superficially your I go man I’ll bet you the Procter & Gamble is thrilled to sell all that that extra toilet paper and the reality is that was kind of a bummer for them right because. [27:00] They sold the year Supply in q1 customers aren’t using toilet paper at any significantly greater rate and so they’re going to their comps for the rest of the year going to suck and they sold that you know toilet paper and, high cost will margin environment that you know there’s there. [27:21] They didn’t create any new demand they just like pulled their demand forward. And so there were a lot of products like that but as the pandemic has played on we’ve seen a related phenomenon. People are buying a lot of shelf-stable food items so the the like fastest growing sales item at the grocery store are like dried pasta, canned foods evaporated milk tomato sauces, and they’re buying those things in substantial multiples of what they used to buy and almost across the board in every product category. [27:55] People are shifting the bigger pack sizes. So they’re you know they used to buy 12-packs of soda and other buying cases of soda like all of those sorts of things and so it’s created this this whole new, phenomenon you know you. The big packs didn’t sell that well in grocery stores before and so you know now everybody’s having to change their supply chain to carry more of the big pecs, when they put the big packs on the Shelf they have less room for other products oh so retailers are actually having fewer product facings as they leaned into these big pecs. And the most the funny most interesting thing is once a customer fills their Pantry with Kraft mac and cheese, you now have to run new marketing campaigns to get people to consume the mac and cheese so that they’ll trigger a replenishment event right so, suddenly you have a lot of Brands like leaning into teaching you other recipes and other uses for the products you Pantry show stock and so my premise is I keep pitching this, to the toilet paper Brands no one’s taking me up on it yet but I think we should really be running a Halloween campaign where we encourage kids to toilet paper their neighbors houses. Scot: [29:01] We’re just says The Mummy. Jason: [29:03] Yeah that would work too that’s a good one I’m gonna I’m gonna steal that and it’s. Scot: [29:07] Taco Bell time. Jason: [29:09] But it has become a thing across every category chewy have their earnings call earlier this week and, and they literally cited in their earnings the amount of Revenue which was 90 million dollars that they attributed to Pantry stocking, and they went on record as saying they don’t expect that to Abate so they think that’s a permit this new Pantry stockings going to be a permanent behavior in the customers aren’t going to revert back to, the smaller bags of dog food for example I’m not sure they cited any specific evidence for that but that was an interesting POV. Scot: [29:43] But if you guys spend Pantry stocking. Jason: [29:45] Yeah well yeah so we think our rapid over Pantry stockers just anyway and we live in a condo so arguably like. We don’t have the luxury of space for all of those things but by far the most important Pantry stocking item in my household is jugs of Starbucks iced coffee. Scot: [30:08] This is this is funny there’s a the guy that started Barstool Sports is doing day trading now his name’s Dave Portnoy and he does this thing called. Davy day trading Global DD t– G and he so when the Stock Market opens he doesn’t live stream he’s so it’s like I’ve had 15 coffee then it’s like nine eight it always reminds me. Where the time for some of see you partying 20 coffees so you’re the only person that I could give him a run for his money on his coffee. Weapon stockpile in the coffee over here yeah the ramen Ramen is very popular with my crew. Jason: [30:50] Yeah and are you consuming any of that or did you just put it in the in the stock the pantry and call it a day. Scot: [30:57] We have last I looked we’ve been to a pretty good. Jason: [31:00] Okay cool so the fourth behavior is a broad category I call nesting and this is all the things we’ve learned to do for ourselves for the first time because we’re at home so turns out a lot of people didn’t know how to cook. And have developed cooking skills as a result of covid. You know people belong to Jim’s now they bought peloton’s people like used to go to a salon to get their nails done now they’ve learned how to do their own manicures and pedicures and things like that, and in many cases and we all used to work in an office and now we’ve all learned to work at home, and in many cases we make Capital Investments to support those new habits right so. [31:44] A lot of people stopped at Best Buy on their way home from work on the last day and bottom monitor for their home office and they ordered a comfy office chair. Employers had to buy Zoom accounts for everyone and VPN accounts for everyone and so you know once. All the health risks from covid of abated and it’s safe for everyone to go back to work and there’s no more you know. [32:04] Um barriers the hypothesis is fewer people will go back to work I mean a lot of people go back to work but, we won’t revert to the same level of office work because some people have learned that they can work from home and we’ll just like it better and other people have, Capital Investments that they want to leverage so they’ll work from home or occasionally and all of those behaviors, have created huge winners and losers in the retail economy right so if people drive to work less, the McDonald’s and Starbucks take a huge hit when they don’t stop for breakfast in the gas stations take a huge hit when they don’t use as much gas in the convenience stores take a huge hit because you, you go to convenience stores when you stop for gas so like all these economies shift you know Peloton wins the gym losses based on these new behaviors we’re learning, and the grocery stores for example have a huge vested interest. You used to get forty percent of your calories from restaurants and 60% from grocery stores right now you’re getting 90-plus percent of your calories from grocery stores. They desperately want to lock in as big a percentage as they can so they know they’re not going to get 90 but they’re running all kinds of campaigns to keep it at 70 for example in remind people to use those new cooking skills they acquired so so lots of, um micro battles in the nesting space have you learned any new skill since you’ve been at home Scott. Scot: [33:30] Enough. I kind of wonder how sticky this is going to be the because everyone talks a good game but then what happens in the office environments is you know some I my forte is like a soccer as a service kind of company it what’s happened is the telesales group is wildly inefficient working from home in the sales team so then you have this desire to get the sales team back to work but then now, now your this kind of when everyone’s remote it works but then when you have one set of people at the office and the other aren’t then like whenever you need to meet with like someone in legal you have to do a zoom meeting which is kind of strange, I talked myself into I think like five percent is going to stick but then you know if you read any of the Silicon Valley stuff everyone’s getting rid of every office and they’re never going to use offices again so it’s gonna be interesting to see where we land on that you have a so I’ll plant a flag at 95% we revert to kind of our old behaviors how about you. Jason: [34:36] So the word from home when I think is the toughest to predict and I agree, more people will go back than are necessarily expecting to right now I think it it might be a lower percentage than 95 and I don’t mean because I don’t think it’s binary I don’t think you exclusively work in an office or exclusively work at home I think there might be a lot more people that go to the office four days a week and one day at home now that they’ve learned that they can be semi productive at home but. And I can certainly tell you in my industry it’s going to be funny like one of the biggest expenses in my industry is travel right so like while there’s all these negatives like one thing I’m sure the CFO is thrilled that right now is, the tiny amount of money he’s paying to the Airlines and hotel Industries the. [35:24] And so I think you know there’s going to be some some natural inclination to sort of continue the virtual work, in this like agency model but then here’s what’s going to happen over time one agency will decide to travel to the client site for the pitch while all the other people pitch remote. And when that agency wins every other agencies going to be like oh they had a slight Advantage from the human internet you know and suddenly everyone’s going to be back on planes and it’s pretty you know it’ll it’ll eventually, get back to the old rebel so I sort of them with you on the work at home I spent a lot of money on a gym and we bought a Peloton bike and like we’re not sure we’re going to renew our gym membership right I think stuff like that is going to be a lot more calm. Scot: [36:10] Absolutely agree. Jason: [36:11] The cooking one is another interesting one like what like you know I think. Percentage of calories consumed at home is going to be permanently higher but not anything like what we’re seeing at the moment. Scot: [36:23] Yeah. Jason: [36:26] So the the fifth and final Trend are all of these behaviors related to people’s concern over Health right and so we’re seeing stores literally get designed differently like they’re all these consumer sentiment studies just to throw some scary data out there, seventy-eight percent of women don’t feel safe testing beauty products in a store anymore so you probably aren’t going to go to Sephora, and try on lipstick and so all the cosmetic companies are leaning heavily into virtue of augmented reality try on right and we some news this week, Warrior which has this really Advanced augmented reality Cosmetic System called Model face that they bought, they just deployed it on Amazon Amazon and let them put their code on Amazon to do these cosmetic trials because. You know again that’s going to be the new way people are going to shop for Cosmetics 65% of people don’t feel safe trying clothes on a dressing room right now so that has. Significant ramifications you know you talked about some reasons why why a parallel might not be. [37:36] Might not dropped online as much like if people aren’t going to be able to use dressing rooms and don’t feel safe than that you know is a reason that you might see more online shopping but also higher returns and things. And 66 repeat, percent of people don’t feel safe working with the sales associate right and so you see more self-service experiences and we see these Walmart stores testing, stores with all self-checkout and Walmart wasn’t super high on self checkout prior to covid so that’s interesting and then you have all these. Experiences in the store that are going away like nobody’s opening salad bars or self-service hot food or bulk nuts in the store, I really controversial one is you know that stores aren’t doing sampling right so you know that’s kind of a signature thing at Costco like. You know will people want to go back and take a sample off of that tray and take their masks down to eat the food in the store right like. Stuff like that you and I have talked for years about contact us payment and how no one was really adopting in the u.s. now contact us payments blowing up, in fact I call the gas stations are adopting it because no one wants to touch the pump quite full service gas may come back because people literally don’t want to touch the. The gas nozzle and we now have at least two different websites out there that are rating retailers based on their safety procedures. [39:05] And so is that you know is sort of trust and reputation in safety like a you know a new differentiator that that you know becomes part of the brand promise for some retailers. Scot: [39:17] Yeah yeah it’s going to be interesting to see how that Lance. Jason: [39:20] Yeah are you you think that like people are going to get over all that and and all those experiences will come back I feel like South Carolina or North Carolina is a little more open than Chicago so it seems like. Scot: [39:33] Yeah I would say that we have kind of a 50/25/25 thing here we have kind of the bulk of people so half the people are kind of following the rules and if the store says it needs a mask they’re wearing it otherwise they’re not driving around in their mask then we have a quarter of people that are just disregarding everything, and then we have a quarter of the people that are super fly freaked out and they’re they’re wearing a mask while driving alone in the car so you know just give you an idea of kind of the spectrum there so I think I think you’re going to have 30 to 40 percent cohort that super tuned into this there’s probably a high correlation to exposure to older folks or you know some kind of a you know compromised situation or they’re just you know. Freaked out but which is fine so so I think that that’s going to be enough that that it will be a factor I think it’s going to stick around for a long time. Jason: [40:29] Yeah and then usually at this point in the presentation I’ve been totally Debbie Downer and everyone’s like really depressed and mad so I usually sneak in a six Trend that’s not on the outline which is that every pet in America has been adopted while we’re all at home, and so I joke about that but literally there’s like the largest cohort of new pet owners in the history of the US and chewy and earnings report talked about they got 1.6 million new customers this quarter, and the interesting thing about all those new pet owners is. They all learned how to get their dog food and their cat litter and their toys online right like none of them you know drove to the pet store and went inside to get their stuff so, so like it’s a huge Nucor whole cohort that was born digital we talked about digitally native Brands now we have these digital native shoppers. So that concludes the longest and first section of the my sort of feel like the second section is about the recession and. For those that don’t know where I think now officially in a recession and it very likely is the deepest recession since World War Two. [41:44] And so you can you know they’re all kinds of conversations about the behaviors we typically see in a recession and what the learnings are from from the last couple of recessions. Super high level like it’s not stuff that would surprise you like, in a recession people shift to more value oriented products they trade down in Brands e-commerce tends to go up in in recessions ironically one of the recessions is called the.com bust, and yet e-commerce grew all throughout the.com bust as people shopped online for better values in the recession, people kind of pivot their their spending from wants to needs, you know there’s a huge credit Crunch and that has a significant impact on a bunch of retailers we saw Sephora this month like roll out installment payments for Cosmetics which is. Sounds like a economically bad idea, but you know you’re going to see retailers break out their layaway programs and and all these non-traditional financing and things like that and I would remind listeners we had KC. Robot from Dwight on a couple months ago and he talked about like a study that Deloitte had done kind of looking at the last couple recessions, and saying hey you know there’s likely one coming and I you know I don’t think any of us knew then that it was coming a lot sooner than we expected. [43:10] So potentially and like the long-term impact of covid is mostly felt because of this this recession. [43:23] Like does that it’s something like spiffy would you guys think about like changing your packages to add more value oriented packages if people are more cost-conscious or. Scot: [43:35] So having lived through 1809 while the data says its source recession from a GDP growth perspective like the macro stuff isn’t tracking it right so unemployment is but it’s kind of weird unemployment it’s like it doesn’t people aren’t really they’re actually learning more being unemployed so so that’s not impacting you know and we’re we’re we’ve pushed out like four plus trillion and another three or four behind it through PPP and all that stuff so yeah and in the same time also the stock markets hitting new highs so there’s this really big disconnect is really hard to get a read on what’s going on because there’s been so many levers that have, so it doesn’t feel like a recession right and then there’s just some data out today this really timely with this where retail sales. Maybe maybe we save this do I save this for the how long it lasts or do you want. Jason: [44:30] Although you’re like so I would certainly agree like there’s no precedent for this recession like it is the deep it right so 2001 bust unemployment 6.3%. 2008 Great Recession 10% unemployment 2020 depending on you know how you count like we’ll call it fifteen percent unemployment, I’ll come back to your point about the unemployment a second, in 2001 retail sales never went negative like they the rate of growth slowed but it was always positive in 2008, retail sales dipped 3% at worst and in 2020 we last month we had this or April we had this like 15 percent dip unprecedented. Um so um. Scot: [45:15] It’s apples and oranges that would be. Jason: [45:16] Well that’s yeah so so here’s the problem like that’s. Scot: [45:20] Stores were literally closed due to a pandemic. Jason: [45:23] They were literally closed and in any of those other recessions like whatever the dip was, it’s slowly came back like we already know now from the the April data that the retail sales already came back right so it was the it was the, this the it was a deep crevice but very narrow, and per your point unemployment is it Derek Thompson at the Atlantic he wrote an awesome article called we are living in the weirdest economy ever and his main point was, earnings in the United States of America are at an all-time high because, while there is that unemployment like the stimulus checks that everyone got in the extra unemployment benefits like really like like income for the average American like, is the highest month that we’ve seen on record and spending was at an all-time low because all those stores were closed. And they’re like we’ve never seen that in the economy before like we have this huge huge spike in earnings and a huge drop in, in spending and it was the highest Avis savings rate we’ve ever seen since we recorded it so a hundred percent agree with you, it’s not really valid to use those other other economic events as strong indicators here. Scot: [46:43] Yeah yeah so it’s going to be fascinating to see. Jason: [46:47] And then briefly because I want to get to the how it in stuff but the other impact here is. Did the landscape probably changes there’s clear winners and losers right so by category there’s winners and losers if you were online Grocer in New York IE Fresh Direct. Best thing that ever happened to you if you were Disney plus you couldn’t have launched in a better time right but if you were away luggage or Marriott Hotels or 24 Hour Fitness. [47:17] It was a you know a devastating blow to you and at the same time it disproportionately advantaged the, the largest richest retailers and the retailers that are the biggest General Merchants right so the way to think about this, if you are a specialty shoe store if you are DSW Shoes you are not allowed to be open you are non-essential but you are allowed to buy shoes at Walmart because Walmart was essential because of their groceries right so there was this huge, shift of like 250 billion dollars of spending the disproportionately went to retailers that had a grocery component and very large well capitalized, retailers. At the other end of the spectrum independent retailers which is about 25 percent of all retail had on average 19 days of cash on hand so they’ve now ran 60 days with less than 10% of their usual Revenue. They’re totally financially insolvent in a huge swath of them are likely to never open again, and so we’re just going to have to have this this cataclysmic event where we’re just going to see way less retail stores in the US. Then then next year than we had last year. [48:39] And so a way that plays out is let’s say 25 percent of all the stores don’t open let’s say you look at the grocery category pre covid Walmart Kroger and Albertsons represented 40% of the grocery category, when a bunch of independent retailers and some some Regional Grocers go out of business, the likely outcome is that Walmart Kroger and Albertsons represent sixty-three percent of the grocery industry. Scot: [49:07] Yeah you know why some of these policy is kind of strengthened. Market share so so if Walmart’s only thing open and everything else is closed I mean like you’re essentially putting coffee you know Nails in the coffin of some of these small Independence it’s going to be kind of kind of sad. Jason: [49:24] Yeah so it’s always had and then it’s I insult to injury it’s really hard to declare bankruptcy right now so like we haven’t even seen it all. Scot: [49:32] Line. Jason: [49:33] Yeah I mean you got to get in line like the courts just open for the video bankruptcies your lawyers are you know extra pain and usually you know usually you tried to declare chapter 11 you try to raise some some new lines of credit liquidate a bunch of inventory and do a restructuring plan, right now you can’t liquidate any inventory and so you know a bunch of people like Pier One that probably hope to restructure have had to throw in the towel and they’re going to close all the doors. Scot: [49:58] Yeah. Jason: [49:59] So that brings me to the last section which is if and how this all ends and I’m eager to hear your perspective, but I’ll throw out just one important fact beforehand I like to talk about the fact that they’re really two different endings there’s a psychological ending when our Behavior revert Stu, pre-pandemic levels of concern and there’s a medical end right and. The Debbie Downer news is the medical Outlook is not particularly awesome like the. The science is pretty clear that we’re not going to be way safer from covid, in January of 2021 then we were in March of 2020 when we shut down all this stuff whoop will be a little safer there’s a few things that have improved, but like herd immunity is not realistic in the next two years on the horizon like there. [51:03] A therapy that has a meaningful effect on the on the Comfort level of Americans is not likely to be on the horizon in the next two years and the fastest of vaccines ever been developed as five years, scientists are going to work miracles and if it’s possible to develop a vaccine that of up at way faster I would remind people a lot of stuff. Vaccine never works like we still have to deal with the cold we still have to deal with measles and other things. The. [51:35] Once we develop That vaccine we’ve got to distribute 7 billion doses which we’ve never done before and we have to hope that one dose is enough to give people a long-term immunity so it, from a medical standpoint. Customers are still going to be at risk in December of 2021 and so the magic question to me is not when the medical risk goes away its. When people say hey you know what I have to live with this risk and I have to you know revert to my my old behaviors are not so to me the psychological end is. Probably more economically relevant than the medical and. Scot: [52:11] Yeah yeah and just kind of frame it there’s a lot of schools of theory here so you have one school would be there’s a v-shaped recovery so just like you’ve seen the retail sales kind of have a really deep Chasm and then come right. Jason: [52:25] It’s almost that I recovery for the retail sales but yeah. Scot: [52:28] Yeah yeah and then there’s a u shape where we kind of like Bounce Around the bottom and then come out of it slower and then there’s a w shape where we come out of it in a V and then in the fall there’s a Resurgence as cold weather sets in there’s a lot of Science and you keep I know more about this than I do that that would indicate that these things tend to kind of Spike like the flu does in the winter so then that would be that W shape so we were down we’re up and then we’re down again I’d be super depressing, and then kind of the most popular one I think with pundits now is kind of the L so so you come out of it very very slowly it kind of went down deep and then you kind of come out of it so it’s more of a long tail L shape and this is where I kind of am on the V shape of this because. To your point I don’t I don’t think it’s going to look like the medical side but mentally once things have opened up. People have just gone into it Whole Hog it almost could be a problem because we’re we’re seeing the bars the younger folks around here are like just totally. [53:30] During that 25% of, you have just don’t follow any of the processes or procedures here in Raleigh they had to kind of like get pretty Stern and now they have a you have to wear a mask outside all the time policy but people are just ignoring that too so you know, but but it’s gonna be interesting to so mentally people are really burnt out on the whole shelter-in-place thing and ready to get back to normal so there’s that and then I think you can automatically, all these policies are designed like once this unemployment stuff comes off you can see the jobless Spike very very quickly because you know, there’s a lot of people that want to hire a lot of people don’t want to work and I think that’s going to fix itself pretty quickly I think it’ll still be it’s not going to go back to pre covid levels but it’s going to fix itself largely pretty quickly so yeah so I’m a but yeah, full disclosure I’m a entrepreneur so by definition we have to be kind of like irrationally optimistic to do what we do every day so so put me squarely in the v camp for now. Jason: [54:29] I like it and whether I could show I want you to be right number I’m rooting for you it is interesting the. [54:39] So we’ve been Consulting with this epidemiologist that wrote this really scary book about there being a huge coronavirus pandemic in 2007 he wrote the book in 2017 and imperfectly predicting all of this, and. [54:56] Side note he’s like a w-shaped recovery is a total possibility like he doesn’t think it w shape is likely to play out in the u.s. because he’s like. There’s never been a dick is this point like like Behavior has changed but the cases have continued to like go up like there you could argue the rate has gotten better or worse but like what people are perceiving as like. You know we had a significant abatement and then it might come back he’s I really like we’ve just been living on an incline and not notice that, but that that antidote aside my my feeling is that we’re going to have a check mark shape, recovery or what some people call the Nike Swoosh recovery where. It is going to take longer to recover than it took to fall because we were so, and but and some parts of the the economy will recover pretty quickly while other parts like have very long lingering. And so you net out to this shape where you have like a steep down and a more gradual return as opposed to you would be more more symmetrical. Is kind of my position. [56:15] Hundred percent with you like there’s a real dichotomy out there right now there’s a bunch of evidence that people are super conservative and are not going to spend as much. Even without the the. Like government-mandated shelter and places so I in China where you know they’ve been 99% of retail has been open for two months, retail still down 20% in Taiwan that never closed retails down 20% and Sweden that never close retells down 20% and so though that means retails down because people are afraid, or either of the economy or their health or both, but at the same time not only are all your bars full Scott but Carnival Cruises is a hundred percent book for August. Scot: [56:59] Yeah yeah yeah. Jason: [57:00] And so you do have this weird Behavior where you see some signs that people are being extra conservative and some signs that people are like you know just fed up and open and maybe the answer is for your point that they’re not the same people. But it it is really interesting and hard to predict that the two things I like to leave retailers with on this recovery is that. [57:24] I do believe that stores are not going to return to their pre-coated levels of foot traffic for two years. In some cases that’ll be consumer fear and that they’ll try to minimize their trips and we’re seeing this huge Trend towards. Tripp consolidation for consumers they’re buying a lot more stuff in fewer visits. In some cases it will be because there’s a legitimate health risk and of the store being too densely populated and the store self-regulating its own traffic, and then a bunch of cases there will be local ordinances, that will limit the Maca maximum occupancy so you know the easiest mental model is to think of a restaurant, you know in a lot of places restaurants that are just now starting to reopen but they’re only allowed to use 1/4 of their tables or 1/2 their tables, and so in the retail world if you’re not if you’re let’s say Costco and you have 3,000 customers in your store on a busy Saturday afternoon, and now you’re only allowed to have 1500 customers in your store the only way you can get close to your pre Cova to levels of Revenue and comps is. [58:32] You have to sell more stuff to each customer that goes in the store you have to get the customer in and out of the store faster right so instead of focusing on dwell time and instead of having like, unqualified traffic in your store you only want the best customers in your store and you want them to get in and out quickly so you can open up that slot for the next customer and most importantly you have to sell a bunch of the stores inventory to people that never go in the store which is curbside and so to me, for the next two years like the most important play in retail is going to be how you survive this prolonged dip in foot traffic. And you know I think every retail you know there were retailers with systemic advantages there like you know that. Had weaned into like a Target had you know heavily leaned in a curbside or a Walmart before covid and so again you know they have a huge Advantage versus, a dollar general which you know ordinarily you think would be really advantaged in a recession but you know they don’t have near the digital chops or the curbside pickup chops that a Walmart has. So that that is. Scot: [59:41] What are the top questions client ask you after you. Jason: [59:45] Yeah that’s all great Jason. Scot: [59:46] Punch them in the nose with this terrible news. Jason: [59:51] Well so I mean a couple of things right so so you know they have like. Which of those Trends you know do you feel confident our long-term versus short-term and why and how do we predict right and so we talked a lot about that scenario planning that we open the show talking about. A tactical question that customers are still really concerned about with right now is holiday right and and I’ll be honest I don’t have a great answer, it’s a very difficult holiday / to plan for like for all the reasons we just talked about like I don’t think customer demand is going to be at pre covid levels like I think it’s better than it’s it’ll be much better than it was in. In April when everything was closed but I think it’s going to be a challenging holiday like I think a lot of the occasions that drive purchases around holiday, are still not going to be happening at the same rate so that’s going to be a challenge but like how consumers respond like if they just all decide that they’re just fed up with all this and they want to celebrate Christmas how they always have, um you know maybe it ends up being in unexpectedly good holiday right it’s really challenging and then layer into that, what the heck is Amazon going to do like Prime day is now in October. [1:01:10] And so is that going to kick off holiday early and is Amazon just going to like Run Holiday from October through December, you know a bunch of retailers tend to try to lean into singles day in November does that kick off holiday you know. The it’s really tricky are our kids gonna go trick-or-treating and so you end up doing these scenario planning right in if you’re a candy manufacturer like, you know maybe you ought to be selling variety packs for families to you know in lieu of the candy they normally would have collected, going out trick-or-treating or things like that you have to start thinking about. Scot: [1:01:49] Yeah yeah seems like Amazon’s run scenario planning and they’re like hmm if this is a w we should run Prime day before the holiday in case it’s stinky and get you gotta go get the win early. Jason: [1:02:03] We’re running up on time Scott but I do like an interesting question like so. It’s totally obvious to me why they didn’t do Prime day like in summer right they had this huge supply chain disruption and and consumer spending is downright so, they didn’t feel like the right time October it was kind of a weird place to land and one. Um dearie I have heard about October is because. Like does that potentially coincide with some new product launches from Amazon and did they decide that like the next tent pole after summer. Between into 4 Prime day is to support the launch of some new new Echo products or new products any what do you think about that. Scot: [1:02:49] Yeah I can see that and then you know they don’t really look at competitors but Apple should have a new phone coming out in that timeframe right isn’t there a I think it was September but then I’ve read it’s been pushed back. Jason: [1:03:02] Yeah it would ordinarily be September and there’s a lot of rumors that Supply chains a little disrupted so that could be later there. Scot: [1:03:09] Yeah. Jason: [1:03:10] There’s a lot of theories that this month they’re going to announce a dramatic new laptop based on their own chips instead of the Intel chips. But nobody thinks they’re going to ship it right away so that that could be shipping in that time frame as well. Scot: [1:03:24] Yeah yeah yeah I think that’s valid, I think if you think about it November so so you have kind of singles day out there is kind of another interesting data point but it feels too late you don’t want to interfere with Halloween because that’s a good song thing so I think by kind of pegging it every day and we do we know when in October. Jason: [1:03:44] I am. Scot: [1:03:45] Note to his opinions. Jason: [1:03:46] In my mind I think we may have now ended on on dates and I just don’t remember what they are. Scot: [1:03:52] I want to see 1010 there’s some symmetry to it if I recall. Jason: [1:03:55] That’s an ironic pivot from from from Singles day then right oh yeah you have 11 and then we have 10 10. Scot: [1:04:03] Yeah don’t be smart also very popular radio station in New York the yeah so we’ll see I think it’ll be I think I’ll be clever. Jason: [1:04:14] Gadget for our listeners radio is a way people used to get sound before podcast existed. Scot: [1:04:19] Yeah yeah the other thing is you know so let’s say you’re one of these folks that have really you know this has been a huge win for you the pandemic what do you do next year when you turn a when you have to lap this thing you know that’s going to be the cops next year, are going to be huge for some people that were the most negatively impacted and then hard to calm for those that have been most positively impacted. What do you what do you say those books. Jason: [1:04:44] Well so we I brought this up with Mark when he was on the show a couple weeks ago I actually think it’s a get out of jail free card for most retailers on comps like I think that you know retards that had a struggle here like are gonna. You know have a ridiculous we High comp and people aren’t gonna give them credit for it and retailers that had an unexpected boom here are gonna you know really struggle the comp and people aren’t going to completely penalize them for it so I think there’s. A lot of smart CEO’s that have like you know painful course Corrections and and austerity measures and things that they’ve, they have like probably known that they should put in place but we’re you know difficult to do it in a quarter to quarter investor environment and I think now is their window of opportunity to do it. I actually think that’s why another reason a bunch of reasonably healthy retailers will close stores underperforming stores because. It’s going to you know they have this semi get-out-of-jail-free card. Scot: [1:05:46] Well I think if you believe it you should put it in your annual prediction show and we’ll see how it goes well however that’ll make us follow it closer. Jason: [1:05:58] Yeah well this is got we’ve used a little bit more than our allotted time so we should probably leave it here but as always if folks want to, continue the conversation on Twitter or Facebook we’d certainly love that as always jump on iTunes and finally give us that five star review. But we sure appreciate everyone’s attention and despite the fact that there’s some negative predictions in this. I’m wishing everyone a nothing but the best and I hope all of Scott’s a wild optimism comes true. Scot: [1:06:31] Thanks for sharing this super-secret client briefing with the the world and may all your pandemic recoveries be v-shaped. Jason: [1:06:40] Exactly and until next time happy commercing.

Pier 1's flagship Mars store is swarmed by Karens.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/degeneratenation?fan_landing=true)

1. Weekly jobless claims was +2.43 million. This number is now decreasing and that is a good sign for a recovery. As the economy starts to slowly open up and people get back to work this number should fall even further. 2. Many retails stocks are holding up very well right now. Home Depot, Lowes, TJC Co's, BBY, WMT, COST, TGT and others are all doing very well. Just think about if the economy was allowed to fully open up. Things could get much better. Keep an eye on Dicks Sporting Goods, LuLuLemonNow there have been some retailers that have filed for bancruptcy too, but these companies were already in trouble. The virsu shut down just put the nail in the coffin for these stocks such as JC Penny, Pier One, J Crew, nieman Marcus and several others. 3. Gold and silver are correcting today. Don’t chase it. They’re setting up for the next entry point. Don’t buy highs. Buy when they’re on sale. SLV down nearly 4 percent. Mining stocks selling off as well. 4. McDonalds pulling back slightly, it could retreat for a few days but here’s a pretty good point to go in. Hotel stocks also pulling back today. It’s doing exactly what Nick expected. Marriott and Hilton forming great patterns. Be on the look out. It’s all about the chart pattern and patience. 5. Airlines have taken off. Southwest nearly $30. Alaskair up a buck. Delta looking good. United up $1.18. Oil is up again. We passed Nick’s $33 target and are currently at $34. Look for the sideways pattern. Always remember, the charts don’t lie. If you know how to read them they’ll take care of you. Insider buys/sales can be worth paying attention to.

Competition from online retailers plus Target and Walmart seems to have spelled the end for Pier One after 58 years. Listen to more of us at DJVshow.com or follow us on social media at Facebook.com/DJVshow!

Dr. Brian Domitrovic, economic historian and colleague of Larry Kudlow (director of President Trump's National Economic Council), joins Kim to discuss unprecedented levels of unemployment, bailouts, the HEROES Act, Federalism, and universal based income. John Kellner, District Attorney candidate for Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln Counties, is running for office because he firmly believes in the rule of law. Kim asks Jason McBride what happened to Pier One, a favorite store of hers.  The post Th Economy and the COVID-19 Response appeared first on The Kim Monson Show.

And do we really need "Legally Blonde 3"?

Have you considered the impact you could have on the photography industry when it comes to diversity and inclusion?In episode 378 of the Bokeh Podcast, George Mitchell joins us to discuss how the photography industry as a whole can take steps towards providing more inclusion for all people, and how you can take those practices and apply them to your own business. If you're ready to help our industry become more inclusive, this episode is for you!The Bokeh Podcast is brought to you by Photographer’s Edit: Custom Editing for the Wedding and Portrait Photographer. You can also subscribe to the Bokeh podcast on the Apple podcast app, follow on Spotify, add to your playlist on Stitcher, or listen on Overcast.Brand Position: Food, Beverage, and People (5:52)Standing Out: Developing a unique style for your niche. (7:09)Customer Experience: Flexibility, Timely Communication, (10:58)Technique for Time: Take personal time and vacations to decompress. (16:32)Delegation/Outsourcing: Handing off color correction, composite, and retouching that takes up time. (20:19)Inspiration: Liquor stores, grocery stores, Pier One, Crate & Barrel, online shops, etc. (24:14)Cinnamon Twists: https://www.instagram.com/p/BWP3VsJFcLV/Book and Content Recommendations: (28:24)Bokehpodcast.comphotographyspark.comproedu.comPlanet Money by NPR - npr.org/sections/moneytheknot.comBusiness Wars - bit.ly/bp-businesswarsRoad to Certification - bit.ly/bp-roadtocertificationFood StylingDiversity in the Current State of the Photography Industry (33:21)Inclusion in the Photography Industry (44:58)Three Ways to Improve Inclusion:1. Pull in more representation in demographics for your brand or conference.2. Connect with people outside of your inner circle.3. Reach outside of the "normal" talent pool.Mentioned in this Episode:Kesha Lambert - keshalambert.comKimberly Lee - kimberlyleephotography.comLinksgmitchellphoto.cominstagram.com/GMitchellPhotoKesha's Episode - bit.ly/bp-272Multicultural Association of Professional Photographers - welovephotographers.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pier One, Boys Scouts, and McClatchy are on the chopping block. Bankruptcy expert Andrew Dawson handicaps the odds of survival. Recorded on February 27, 2020.

Another one bites the dust: Pier One has filed for bankruptcy protection and will be closing all Canadian stores. Guest: Bruce Winder, Retail Expert, Speaker, Consultant, Professor and Entrepreneur

On this edition of Boogie Zeits Jack and Miles discuss Rod Blagojevich getting his sentence commuted, Rosario Dawson releases statement on perceived coming out via Instagram, Pier One has filed for bankruptcy, and Kaitlin Bennett, Kent State gun girl and alleged pants pooper, visited Ohio State and was not welcome.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

"Rob Black & Your Money" - Radio Show January 10 - KDOW 1220 AM (7a-9a) Rob Black talks about recessions, pensions, portfolios, life insurance, and Pier One.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy Friday! On today's show: The Detroit News has a new report out that says that many City of Detroit homeowners have been overcharged at least $3,700 a year in property taxes since 2010. Find the story here.  Could the Federal Government take over the United Auto Workers? According to U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider, it’s a possibility.  Pier One is downsizing, and it looks like its location on Woodward is on the chopping block.  Bottom Line Coffeehouse has set up a GoFundMe appeal to help raise money to reopen the Midtown coffee shop.  Illinois based Cooper’s Hawk is opening in Troy this spring. It will be its third location in Michigan. A new Chic-Fil-A opened in Allen Park on Thursday.  People lined up around the restaurant and down the street to get chicken sandwiches and lemonade.  Up in Birmingham Hazel, Ravine’s and Downtown will be rolling out a new pop-up later this month. Hazel’s Crab Trap will celebrate all things crab from January 21 through February 16.  In Eastern Market News, Mike’s Coney Island has closed and one of the loft’s in the former Detroit Fire Department building is asking for $470K.  The Kroger in Milford is open again after having an extensive renovation.  And Randy Walker shares some of the new restaurants and places that he’s looking forward to trying this year.  Don’t forget we’re in all your favorite podcast apps, including: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-detroit/id1220563942 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1Yhv8nSylVWxlZilRhi4X9 Although the show will always be free, our members help make it available for everyone else. Become a member on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/dailydetroit

"Rob Black & Your Money" - Radio Show January 10 - KDOW 1220 AM (7a-9a) Rob Black talks about recessions, pensions, portfolios, life insurance, and Pier One.

Twitter trolls making Kenny and Jason crazy; Cat loose in a car; Macy's and Pier One closing many stores; Just Sayin - Ubers are expensive from MSP airport

Getting ready for their visit to see Oprah at the Xcel on Saturday. What's this about a workbook? Pier One is closing hundreds of stores. Things you need to be able to do by age 30. Brad Pitt admits he has had a terrible personal life. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler might be back hosting the Golden Globes. Is Duchess Megan pregnant? Oh no, a Masked Dancer show?

Style Crimes - oh there are many! No one is innocent! Anita & I included... Tune in to hear a multitude of style crimes - laugh along with us we call them out, fess up and defy the law! Not going to list the crimes here because it is so much more fun to listen to us dish about them, hear us come clean and plead guilty ! Here are a few other episodes we reference in this episode: Faux Flower episode HERE (https://www.decoratingtipsandtricks.com/319). Scale & Balance episode HERE (https://www.decoratingtipsandtricks.com/80). If you are guilty of out dated hardware or shy of crime, you just need a refresh then visit our friends at D Lawless Hardware for beautiful hardware at terrific prices. HERE (https://www.dlawlesshardware.com/). Crushes: Anita shares stunning French Cheese Knife set HERE (https://www.macys.com/shop/product/french-home-laguiole-blue-neutral-3-pc.-cheese-set?ID=6640130&pla_country=US&CAGPSPN=pla&cm_mmc=Google_SH_PLA_Tabletop-_-GS_Dinnerware_PLA_French_Home-_-293719128156-_-pg1050693324_c_kclickid_fa0b7dce-54de-41fa-a684-d4bfc1024a28_KID_EMPTY_1546922795_61770736787_293719128156_pla-705844624512_692786816625USA__c_KID_&trackingid=509x1050693324&m_sc=sem&m_sb=Google&m_tp=PLA&m_ac=Google_SH_PLA_Tabletop&m_ag=FrenchHome&m_cn=GS_Dinnerware_PLA&m_pi=go_cmp-1546922795_adg-61770736787_ad-293719128156_pla-705844624512_dev-c_ext-_prd-692786816625USA&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2ITuBRDkARIsAMK9Q7Or8d3jt0mdy8gzSf8lrWt9J7eZnJNQB_FMzErAXVW8A5mYbU__HwwaAgidEALw_wcB). Kelly is loving matt black salad plates from Pier One. Check them out HERE (https://www.pier1.com/matte-black-stoneware-salad-plate/3748691.html?scid=scplp3748691&sc_intid=3748691&s_cid=pla%7cGoogle%7cSC+Shopping+-+Brand+Retention&&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2ITuBRDkARIsAMK9Q7PtSCVrhgEyZzLCs53EzSUr2fJkWzMxBWvrsWrfJXxgFC5yiPw08j0aAm48EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds). Thanks SO much to those of you have left us a review on itunes. We really appreciate each supportive, encouraging word! If you'd like to leave us an itunes review that would be AWESOME - click HERE (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decorating-tips-and-tricks/id1199677372?ls=1&mt=2) to gift us with a review! xx, Kelly & Anita

EP189 - Code Commerce and Grocery Shop This episode was recorded right after Jason & Scot received their iPhone 11 Pro Max's.  Jason mentioned a new iOS feature to take full page screenshots.  Here is how to take full page screenshots in iOS 13. Event Recaps: Code Commerce - Sept 9 and 10 in New York City Groceryshop - Sept 15-18 In Las Vegas Amazon News Amazon orders 100,000 electric vans from Rivian Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products Other News BDO reports more than 7k stores already closed in 2019, which is already more than any other year Some contreversy over store closure numbers. IHL disagreed with Coresight methodology and findings.  Coresight store closure tracker IHL score closure study Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 189 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, September 22nd, 2019. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode 189 being recorded on Sunday September 22nd, 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. Jason it was we got a lot to cover tonight we'll see what get a couple trip reports before we jump into that I'm dying to know did you get your iPhone 11 on new iPhone day was September 20th. Jason: [0:58] I did I was traveling during the week that it was an out so I was like at code Commerce secretly listening to the announcement. In the audience and then that Friday I was still in New York so I super convenient for my Apple they made it 5:30 a.m. 8:30 a.m. East Coast time so I got to pre-order. That that Friday and I my phone arrived this is Sunday my phone arrived on Friday. Scot: [1:30] Look at it all moved over and everything's rocking. Jason: [1:33] I did I think. Scot: [1:35] Pictures senior pictures. Jason: [1:36] So I suspect we got similar if not exactly the same models I got the 11 Pro Max screen. Scot: [1:46] I got the same thing yes you have impeccable taste sir. Jason: [1:50] Yes twinsies and I would say the upgrade experience continues to get smoother and less glitch free so, in general it was super easy one wrinkle I was using a unpopular feature of the 10 which is dual Sims. And so the way in the the US they don't have two SIM ports so one of your Sims is virtual and one of them is a physical Sim so I had to a work phone account in a personal phone account and in the upgrade Apple convert your former esim to a physical Sim so now I have two physical Sims and I can't fit them both in my phone so I'll have to go back to an AT&T store and get a new esim. For all those people that want to have have a new definition for first world problem. Scot: [2:47] Watches get two phones. Jason: [2:50] Yeah not a fan I've carried a lot around a lot of phones and it's much easier to have to I mean I have one in the to send feature actually works quite well. Articulated there different carrier. Scot: [3:01] How to upgrade. Jason: [3:03] Except for this week I mean I'm still fine I'll I'll still be able to travel with the with the once a mint I can swing by and AT&T store last time I did this no one in the AT&T store never heard of any ECM but I have a feeling they've got it all I'll Donald in by this time. And so I don't think we need to cover a lot like it's you know mostly well-known, new features like you know why she related to camera but there is one secret e-commerce TV feature that I'm I'm kind of happy about 4 maybe only be relevant to his nerves of the show. Scot: [3:40] I'm trying to block what is it. Jason: [3:43] So in the the Safari screen capture so when you you do the combination of buttons to take a picture of your screen. You can now and now gives you the option to grab not just the visible part of the screen but the entire webpage all the way to the bottom. Scot: [4:05] Nice so you can get your lung checkouts. Jason: [4:09] Yeah yeah and so when you're taking pictures of mobile experience is to illustrate two teams or clients or things like that which is something we do a lot in the old days what you had to do is take a bunch of pictures and Stitch them together. And so now this is super seamless in it actually works in Safari and male and a couple other programs that weren't as relevant but they're for web pages that's a handy little feature. Scot: [4:33] If I'd call that an e-commerce feature as much as it Chief digital strategy retail officer feature. Jason: [4:39] Fair enough fair enough a ux, u.s. benefit I guess and on the flip side I feel like the last three years I've been waiting for the stupid true vision camera to go in the back so that we can finally get our shoe size right but I'll have to wait at least another year for that was. Scot: [4:55] Did to get the little pixels and also that we can. Jason: [4:59] So that front camera that does your your face recognition has it's an advanced measurement device that measures in 3D in it in the few retailers that are they use that for clever e-commerce experiences like Warby Parker will measure your face and recommend frame specifically for your face and it it it's like millimeter accurate so we're there to be a camera like that on the back of the phone you could imagine measuring a space to make sure that the refrigerator would fit the opening in your kitchen or the sofa would fit in your living room or exactly what size shoes you should order from a particular vendor Nike watch that feature without the fancy camera but it would be much better with this this hyper accurate camera. Scot: [5:47] Yeah he agreed and while you were traveling will you get a pretty cool recognition. Jason: [5:52] We did we did that must have been you because I was busy not focusing on the podcast. Scot: [5:57] It was snot me I think it was it was so it was just people someone out there likes our content. Jason: [6:05] Are the Luminous body of work. Scot: [6:07] What is a if you know how many hours that people have to listen to us. Jason: [6:11] We we yeah we're about 200 hours. Scot: [6:16] That's a it's a lot of us out there in the universe. Jason: [6:21] Yes yes so if you ever have The Misfortune of hearing me speak in person I usually open up by saying in the highly unlikely event you don't get enough of me in the next 30 minutes there's 200 more hours of me on the interweb. Scot: [6:31] Google I got a lot to cover let's jump into it first when I get a trip report from recode decode that was held in beautiful New York City September 10th how's the show. Jason: [6:46] Yeah it was awesome so we waited to that in the last segment but this is code recode the the publication which is now owned by box them a very fancy show that I went too early in the year that they call code conference and Jason Del Rey there has been enough that show a couple times is the Commerce correspondent for them and he is started the series of events called code Commerce so used to be, like an evening event on top of other shows where he would have like three speakers and now for the, third year in a row he's had his own Standalone two day event in New York city so this is the third annual code Commerce, and I like it it's a conference more than a trade show so there there's a few exhibitors but. [7:38] It mostly is a single agenda of speakers everybody sits in the room with since to the same speakers, there are no presentations that are all interviews with journalist mostly Vox journalist interviewing the the gas so it's a pretty dynamic. Dialogue and you know sometimes people you know that stuff out that maybe they didn't plan to, the audience is allowed to ask questions and so I got a little fired up at some point and ask some some questions and some of the speakers, and so I just really like it they get a really good collection of speakers. And I feel like the format lends itself to getting really useful stuff it's small and intimate so the networking was great I got to meet and talk to a lot of. Listeners on the show I got to meet a couple of guests that we've had on the show that week we did not have in person so. That was fun so all-in-all a good thing that one other thing I should say is in addition to that, that's her speaker format they also have a half-day of off sites where you pick one and let you choose your own adventure of these I ate different offsides and they take you behind the scenes of a of a retail or e-commerce business. And know that those can be cool to I had a complex so I didn't get to do that this year but in. [8:57] Let's see what's hot in 90 seconds or less there's probably 18 speakers at the event so there, there's a guy Kim Downing used to be the chief creative officer at Neiman Marcus he moved to a mall of group in the New Jersey called triple five and they're they're famous for having taken over this mall development in New Jersey called The American Dream It's At Nigam all owned by the same folks that own Mall of America I've been trying to open it for 20 plus years it's supposed to open next month don't hold your breath based on their past track record openings and not doing it and I have to be honest like like these guys seemed totally disconnected from reality like there just talking about what a great experience it is and how everyone in Manhattan is going to want to go to New Jersey to escape Manhattan and you know go shop for other necessities at this this giant mega mall and it's you know it's the anchor tenant in the mall is Barney's who's already bankrupt you know all the other tenants are tenants that have eight other stores in Manhattan and it just it just seems like, yeah he came up there pitching a small development like half an hour after Scott Galloway did 45 minutes on why malls were dead. [10:14] So not super exciting. They we had Jason Drogi who's the vice president of uber everything so that's all the services at Uber besides the car-sharing so he does all the restaurant delivery that you know food is a particularly interesting area for me it was an interesting interview at the end I got up and asked him if his service was good for the the restaurants because I like, there's a lot of evidence that. That all these delivery services are disaster for the restaurants cuz the margins are super low the customers are super opportunistic and the restaurants can't sell liquor in most cases which is where they make most of their profit so I had a premise that. That these services are a disaster for the restaurant and the services are not 20% of all restaurant consumption so that's a pretty big. Inflection points and Jason did not have a kid a very good satisfying answer for why he was he was good for the restaurant business. Scot: [11:15] Do you lease disagree with you. Jason: [11:17] Like she did not make a strong argument we were talking about that after the fact he kind of like pivot away from the question. And talked about you know what like you know how they could be good for restaurants but not like the underlying economics of it being tough. Scott Galloway did a couple things he recorded a podcast the final episode of Land of the Giants with Jason Del Rey and he did a 45 minute presentation I most enjoyed it I've sometimes been critical I think Scott is super funny and has a lot of insightful things to say, but he has a tendency to be highly repetitive so if you seen him once and then you see him a bunch of other times. [12:01] It's a lot of the same content which is maybe something all I'll public speakers struggle with but I would actually say most of the content in this show. Mabon thoughts I'd heard of his before from Twitter or what. That was the first time you put them together in a presentation so I thought that was good and interesting and he was. You know he's been super negative on the wework IPO and you know so we spent a lot of time talking about those guys. He's eating a kind of a bullish on breaking up Amazon so he shared his POV on. And that whole thing and you know just. Had some sort of interesting controversial povs which is what he's he's usually known for he also pointed out. That light from his perspective the mall business is just totally dead and the specialty apparel business is next to go after that. That voted poorly than for the American dream project which is a mall full specialty apparel. [13:04] So next up Jennifer Hyman from Rent the Runway so that's, awesome story she's one of the three really well-known female entrepreneurs in our space and that was an interesting conversation talking a lot less about the the original model and more of their. Their monthly rental model and and you know some of that the new competition that's emerged in the rental space so that was an interesting conversation. David Kahn the CEO of Birkenstocks Scott you'd be familiar with him because he's he's had he's been one of those outspoken controversial positions on Amazon they were selling a ton of shoes on Amazon. Century pulled off the platform completely because they felt like they couldn't protect their intellectual property. Now they're they're back on Amazon in a very conservative mild way they've authorized a few resellers to sell an Amazon but they don't sell Direct. And David was prominently featured in the episode of Land of the Giants that focused on. Why Amazon could be bad for companies and potential should be broken up so is interesting to hear from David and I was joking with you before the show. You know what brand like Birkenstocks you you kind of expect that hippie would like long hair and Birkenstocks to walk on stage and he can't you know he's like a witch I could bank or in a in a like custom suit so it's kind of funny. [14:25] So then we had your favorite brand on a BofA Steph Korey and Jen Rubio from away until they talked a lot about their. There a growth strategy and and you know some of the success they've had in their retail strategy moving forward and that was all. [14:45] Someone interesting Max Webb Gin who's the founder of a firm which is an interesting payment model that a lot of e-commerce sites use their. Sort of an interesting financial model they're there like a no fees lending system so you get charged no late fees. There's some really interesting novel things about it and he he was sharing that we had Marie. Myrna Levine who's the VP of global Partnerships at Facebook and so she was mostly talking about Instagram and in Instagram checkout which is. Something near and dear to do e-commerce smokes and a little bit about the Facebook Marketplace. And again you know she painted a pretty Rosy picture I got a chance to get up and ask her a couple questions I asked her you know if. I said hey there's a bunch of from my perspective yqx problems with Instagram check out that make a not very appealing to Brands like most notably you can only sell one product at a time. And ask if they plan with all of that and she she said that yeah they still consider Instagram check out a real early beta and that they would expect it to evolve a lot before General release, and I said you know bigger picture you talked about how important it is for consumers to have stored payment information to make things like this work. [16:08] You know is it realistic that customers are going to ever trust Facebook with their payment information by giving your your track record and she totally dodged that question and talked about like all the great security features they were using for payment. Which was not the point right like obviously I'm sure Facebook is using the best. Encryption technology in tokenization but it's at the point is there there a damaged brand when it comes to trust in. It's going to be really interesting with it I can get a bunch of consumers to give him payment information and give her a chance to answer that and she she was not a very compelling enter answer. [16:45] And then wrap it up probably the big Marquee interview was Mark Lori who's the president of digital at Walmart Jason did written, that's somewhat negative article that was like super popular a few months before so. How to take props to mark 4 for coming into the lions den and facing him. And I not shockingly well polished Walmart exec did not break a bunch of news in the interview. But it was interesting to see him there and you know there are few questions where would say like. He did not seem as enthusiastic as you would expect someone to be that was, I'm super fired up about the role like I think Jason you know like tried to grill them on whether he was going to leave Walmart at the end of five years and you know Marge answer is it like absolutely I live like committed to be there and she seems like wait are you staying because you love it or because you made a commitment. [17:44] So that that was really interesting generators one of the co-founders of Harry's that's a great idea to see story Julie rain Wainwright is the CEO of Rio Rio was. One of the most colorful interviews of the show so that was cool and then Tara walpert who's the VP of agencies that use Google who's mainly focus on YouTube and so she talked a lot about like how how there, they're expanding influencer marketing and expanding Commerce features on YouTube so pretty rich robust lineup that had a in a bunch of different stuff for different people and I thought it was well worth the time. Scot: [18:27] Code to seems like Lori had bet a lot on grocery kind of going to show with the pickup and then also all those Acquisitions they did on digitally native brands for loose stool kind of your gear just harder or had the blue kind of come off that Rose. Jason: [18:44] I think the answer is yes or no so I think they're Walmart is Super Bowl champs grocery part of Jason's article was Mark tends to get a lot of credit for digital Grocery and apparently that's creating some conflict because most of the digital grocery work actually happens in the stores and you know Mark was like hey it like that's totally fair like this the stores are killing it on digital Grocery and yeah we probably do get disproportionate amount of the credit totally understandable that digital groceries going awesome so he like I would say he had a good answer and double down on digital grocery digital native Brands if it was a little bit like yeah I originally we bought some Brands and that's no longer the strategy that were much more bullish on incubating brands from scratch in house then we are buying Brands and he confirmed the rumor that Jason Delray had heard that. One of the Acquisitions ModCloth that they're there might even be discussions going on to sell it back to someone else. [19:42] So I think Mark like with Express that he was still bullish on the space, but that's why you know they had to learn at Walmart that like buying a brand and integrating it was was probably a challenge so he pointed out he pointed till I come all is well home which is a de jure need a brand that they incubated in house and then there was kind of a third category that they were talking a lot of a little bit about and you may have seen some news sort of you know turning up the the focus on the marketplace which is probably near and dear to your heart and I think they've announced the pilot of fulfillment by Walmart which for the first time there duet they're not that helpful products for some of the third parties and that they have an interest in dramatically improving their tool set and you're improving the experience for third-party sellers so. Scot: [20:33] Seems like a one theme with Rent the Runway and maybe a way would be diepio Market to that come up because diepio Market's been somewhat open with Chewie getting out and, real real and a couple of other folks and those guys are kind of both could be on in the pipeline the Jason drone to a month. Jason: [20:54] He did yeah yeah so there was in the pre-ipo companies were mostly pretty koi which You is kind of what you would expect the date you know they're open to it in aren't you know I'm close but that they don't need to go public and that's not that you know they didn't start the pump the company to necessarily go public Julie Wainwright you know who's at the real real and they they finish their offering already right am I. Scot: [21:20] Yeah they been out for all the done really well. Jason: [21:23] Yeah and so she you know she had a lot more sort of insight about what either the the pros and cons have been on the other side and. And you know how there was some interesting conversation about. [21:40] The impact of competitors and their successful IPO you know bringing more people out of the woodwork she also has a totally fair an interesting POV about being a, female entrepreneur and some of the challenges raising money and she's like you know she talked a lot about how like. Should have been a lot of time convincing every male investor why, that the business use case was even appealing to women and she's like you don't know nobody that we work at Uber ever had to explain to an investor, that white small businesses need office space or people need a ride right but but she often would have to convince someone that that. You know that women would benefit from buying these used luxury goods and that often authentication was a super important thing in so she she told some funny stories and, I felt was a sort of appropriately cocky she talked about 1 BC that like. So I didn't get the pitch and like felt like all the money they were investing in in selling authentic products was was a waste of time and now that they've had the successful IPO that VC has funded a new competitor and is like publish blog post talking about the importance of authenticity, and I think she's like whatever dude we were here before you and will be here after your death which is kind of nice in both. Scot: [23:07] Yeah I've heard the Rent the Runway and the Stitch fix lady's house somewhere story where a bunch of mail DC's wouldn't invest because they didn't understand the concept or they would say I don't know if I don't think my wife would use this. Jason: [23:18] Yeah and I think that sounds like the common Trend right is that everybody's market research as they go ask their wife and that you know that's pretty small sample size. Scot: [23:26] Yeah cost of the new zip from there had a mini Starbucks and went to Vegas for grocery shopper. Jason: [23:33] I did I would load it up on Starbucks order my phone and Jen it out to grocery shop which is in Las Vegas so is reminder this is the second year of grocery shop grocery shop is a a show by the folks Miss founded, shoptalk that's focused primarily on grocery in cpg and so. Drew really fast it was maybe 1,500 people last year was 3,000 people this year that it was at the Venetian and felt a lot like shop Taco Shop talk and grocery Shopper moving to Mandalay Bay next year for people that care about their Las Vegas venues there Starbucks at both so it's kind of neutral to me. [24:17] The end it was also a good show I'd say it in a different way so most of the the Keynotes at this show were Marquee brands, but the content was less interesting to me because for the most part their brands aren't allowed to come up and just give a commercial for their, their business and that you know there weren't like critical questions or necessarily new content so well. You might have been interested in a lot of the companies in the Keynotes there are folks like Target and, beyond meat and honesty and ortado in Procter & Gamble that were giving key notes Coca-Cola Sam's Club. [25:04] Either wasn't a ton of like interesting new useful takeaways in that contents but the the 3,000 + people that attended the show where all industry insiders there a lot of the breakout panels that were where super interesting and they were just that I just had a ton of useful conversations, at the cocktail parties and you know at the Starbucks between sessions and just felt like that the networking was super valuable for me so. Kind of the opposite of a recode it was less about content and more about networking. [25:43] I did host a couple of panels so I was the MC for two panels I did. A panel called preparing for grocery Commerce that was kind of targeted at people grocer that are just getting into e-commerce and I had three panelist on that session I had to, a Stephen Raymond who's the VP of e-commerce at Hain Celestial which is a house of brands most notable for their Celestial teas, I had Wayne Dewayne who's been on this podcast he's the VP of e-commerce at constellation brands. Which is a bunch of alcohol and Spirits brands, so we actually drink some Coronas on stage while we were chatting so that was a big hit. And then I had to Dan Bracken who's the VP of consumer Insight at Church & Dwight which is a. A big cpg so they each kind of gave their their learnings and best advice for new people entering the e-commerce grocery space I got good feedback that that was useful. [26:38] And then on the second day I did a more advanced panel on connecting customer data points so far this one we had kind of to Keynote panelist. We have to bring in a retailer so the retailer is a Steve Henning who's the VP of digital. For Wakefern Food Group which is a big Co-op of of Grocers. And talked about where they are and in data and what their customer data strategy is and got an all the bits and bytes of, add emps and. All those sorts of things and then for the brand perspective we had Doug stranton who's the chief digital Commerce officer at the Hershey Company so got got his perspective and Doug has a bonus that was also the chief digital officer at Unilever for number of years so so it was kind of their in a lot of their formative so a lot of interesting insights from both of those guys you know when you're getting into the hardcore management of data and activating that data for customer experiences. Scot: [27:43] The so. What's kind of the meta Topic at grocery is it still curb versus home or is it Amazon jump the shark with Whole Foods or more. Almost feels like maybe Brands going direct his kind of. Jason: [28:03] So this show like so it is. Like there's a lot of groceries at the show but there's a lot of cpgs at the show so one big thing is the whole disruption of cpgs right that the there's a lot of digital native brands that have lines that are like competing with income in cpg, and you know I'd say a year ago the dialogue was like this is a huge disruption in this year like there's more evidence that those brands are, you can achieve a certain level of success but then are really sort of plateauing, the the incumbency Bee Gees have not successfully launched a new a lot of new products and so there's a lot of dialogue, about how those companies are doing things to get more customer intimacy and get better connected to the customer and watch products that are more relevant to customers and then they're there was an awful lot of talk about the sort of third approach in this whole thing which is retailers launching brands, and how those those retail brands have been successful and how they've evolved a lot from the original, start a private label and in fact one of the the Keynotes Stephanie winquest use the EVP of food at Target. You know they launched a major new grocery brand for Target but basically at the show so. [29:24] So her keynote was a lot about this new food brand in that. The that the Retailer's sort of competing with the the incumbent and Challenger cpgs is was a big conversation at the show. Scot: [29:37] Yeah and then I'm watching your Twitter feed it seems like there is some interesting Target kind of talking going on there with what did we learn from Target. Jason: [29:46] Well I talk about that you like so Target is maybe the poster child for being the most successful at that strategy so they want to strike 5 brands. Now sell over 2 billion dollars but one place where they haven't been big as in grocery and so in fact, like grocery was a newish strategy for target maybe we'll call it seven or eight years ago and well a lot of categories at Target or any kind of known for surprising and delighting customers and having these. You know premium products that that the customer wouldn't expect. Grocery was always sort of the me to category for Target like like if you needed something that they may have had it but it wasn't something. [30:24] You were excited about acquiring. Inside out you know a lot of this conversation was about Target doubling down on Grocery and you know trying to get to the point where they're surprised is. And Delight for grocery in the same way that they they are four other categories and they said they launched a new owned brand for food called good and gather they kind of retired a lot of their older brands. And you know this is a a focus on. Simpler products fewer ingredients non-GMO mostly Organics in so it's not so much a knock off of a of a national brand but you know what a set of products that they think I'm particularly targeted at the. Target guest and they're forecasting this will be the the biggest. I'm on brand that Target has which is pretty big because you know some of that apparel brand cell cell 2 billion dollars each a year so. [31:27] So if they hit that forecasts that that will be somewhat impressive so that was a lot of the the target conversation I would also say you like shipt. You know there is a lot of conversation about curbside pickup & Home Delivery Target owns the company in that spaceship. And there's a lot of talk about how successful that's been for Target but ship still is in the business of providing the services for other party so shipped had a big. Presence on the trade show flooring was a big sponsor and said there's there's a lot of talk about Last Mile in the Bears pros and cons of the different meth. Scot: [32:00] Code for their highlights from grocery. Jason: [32:06] For me those were a bunch of big takeaways I got to sit sit down with a couple bucks and record a couple podcast that will get out of here in the weeks to come so I mentioned Doug Stratton who's the chief digital officer at Hershey you and I are both chocolate Advocates so like we wouldn't miss the chance, to get a podcast with him and then I also got to sit down with a zebra car while who's the VP of Shopper marketing at the Coca-Cola Company in, can I talk about how coke is thinking about digital and what what they're doing in in digital which is interesting you know it is interesting like we are now. Grocery is a very low margin business, the average sale price for a lot of these products or the Brand's is super low and so historically these have not been very digital categories you you don't think of. A big digital investment to sell dollar candy bars or cans of soda, but you know now these guys are you know front-and-center focusing on digital because it's really starting to impact their business. Scot: [33:09] Wrinkle in the other Megatron to uncover before we jump into some news. Jason: [33:13] Nope nope I think that's a ton but if you're in that space I would definitely think about putting that on your on your wrist for next year and come visit us at Mandalay Bay. Scot: [33:22] I forgot to ask when you're in New York did you get to see the new Apple store or did you miss me. Jason: [33:28] I didn't sit at the Apple Store at you open this Friday so I've done some video walkthroughs you and I are going to be back in New York Knicks next month together so maybe if schedules permit would be super fun we should go visit the store together. Scot: [33:43] Awesome I look forward to that Coldwell wanting to lose last couple minutes to talk about some news and it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without some Amazon news. Jason: [34:00] Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [34:10] To a lot of news out there on Amazon some of it I was going to put into the political bucket before we talk about that though you're one of the things that kind of hid in my world it was interesting was they made a big investment and Order of electric vehicles Tesla has competitor called rivian, and ribbons coming out with trucks with electric platforms so Amazon announced not only they invest an undisclosed amount that they were part of a $700 round and they were listed first which kind of flies are the largest but they ordered a hundred thousand electric delivery vehicles from Caribbean and they're saying they should have prototypes in 20/20 start volume out in 2021 and have them all on the road by 2024 this is kind of interesting because Amazon has not really said much about a green lot of Amazon employees have been. [35:09] Rallying internally Jason Del Rey has written about this so it was kind of a pretty big vote for our insert limit their carbon footprint as a company and then it's also interesting because they are propping up a big rival to two, Tesla in the form of rivian and you know Elon and Jeff are going at it as latest Rockets So Alive people kind of said this is kind of another way for Bezos to really kind of get under a Elon Musk in by supporting a competitor. Jason: [35:41] Interesting so we might see some Amazon high speed trains in the near future to them. Scot: [35:49] Whatever the Rival to boring could be. Jason: [35:55] Exactly the thing that toy strike me about this which seems like Amazon's exact Playbook is I want to say they made this huge announcement the day before there was a big scheduled like green demonstration and a bunch of Amazon employees were planning on walking out to Tess art of advocate for Amazon embracing adrenal footprint and so do I get Amazon has historically been very good at these like proactive PR moves and it seems like this was they were totally able to leverage that this time. Scot: [36:29] Yeah yeah. They have a picture of the Prototype van will link to it and show notes it looks really good so it's going to be interesting that the big question is really the range on these things so, you know the I don't know how much it typical Prime band drives a day but I see him on the road constantly so be interesting to see if they have to come up with some clever way of rapidly charging these things are or they're going to ship them in a different way or something. Jason: [36:54] They each do half a day's delivery so that's why they had to get so many. Scot: [36:57] Yes it could be it could be part of it so I don't I don't know the ranges. Jason: [37:00] Quick clarification question for me so like obviously Tesla makes a bunch of electric vehicles and I know they've talked about business vehicles and trucks but as far as I know they don't they don't have a, like a van form-factor I feel like Amazon's about Sprinter vans in the past which is the big, Mercedes V8 like is it obvious that this is a trivium's a direct competitor with like is this worse news for Tesla or is it worse news for Mercedes. Scot: [37:26] I think it's probably worse news for Mercedes Elon if this is a tweet or live interview I've seen him talk about how he really likes the Mercedes Sprinter and they should work together on the electric one he always has little twinkle in his eye and you can't tell if he's just basically crazy or if there's something going on there I think Mercedes a Tesla have crossed licensed a lot of technology to I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't Force something go on there between Tesla and Mercedes to get the Sprinter platform Electric. Jason: [37:59] Got you and I assumed that like the Des customer will then be FedEx. Scot: [38:05] What FedEx use it so UPS actually has a big electric thing going already and I don't know who they are platform is on that it's, maybe I don't know I don't know what UPS uses but I've seen them them talk a lot about getting to carbon-neutral pretty quickly and they have some electric fans out there. Jason: [38:30] That's going to be an interesting space to watch if only to a podcast about that kind of stuff. Scot: [38:34] We will will keep track of it here and then also on the vehicle to podcast where it's been even more time talking about that Scot vehicle Trends going on how about on the political side there's been a lot of negative stuff out there on Amazon and so I'll turn to you for this the highlights on that. Jason: [38:51] Yes I know. Scott loves talking about the political stuff it's his favorite thing to do so it's a big big, generosity on his part time to pass it over to me. [39:05] So you know there continues to be a bunch of Niger negative sentiment you got all these Democratic candidates talking about breaking up Amazon without. [39:16] Necessarily obvious reason why the last couple weeks there were some actual that government announcements about like looking into antitrust issues in the one that affect an Amazon was that the FTC was talking about probing some of the 3p practices and in the one that comes with the most is, Amazon, disadvantaging third-party sellers in favor of their own practices so essentially like the The Narrative goes you can't both play in the game and be the referee it's not fair, that you're selling products in competition with your Marketplace Sellers and you, control things like whose product shows up in Search and how visible every product is and so, that's a big narrative like the counter narrative is like this is in a remotely new idea retards have been selling their own products for over a hundred years they always put their own products and favorable positions and they charge brands in order to have have good positioning in the store said that like there's, there's nothing particularly new that Amazon's doing that Walmart and Woolworths before then, didn't do but it is getting a lot of visibility and one of the the big articles that came up there was kind of interesting is Wall Street Journal. [40:46] Actually like ran an article where they they talk to some Amazon Engineers that like, confidential confidential admitted that Amazon had changed their search engine to intentionally by us their own products and so again debatable whether that's, illegal or immoral in any way and I'll leave that to others to decide but one way it's interesting is Jeff has always talked about being the most customer-centric company in the world and wanting to have the best experience for customers and it's super controversial if you search for Energizer batteries like pretty obvious what your intent is and you would imagine the best experience would be too quickly get you to Energizer batteries but when amazonbasics batteries have higher visibility on that search term then Energizer batteries, like arguably like you're trying to boost your own profits at the expense of being customer-centric and so it's kind of a. [41:49] A pretty tangible example of of where Amazon might be drifting from their their idealistic morals, and so that that's been a little interesting to follow that, that exact issue is one of the episodes of Land of the Giants and a former guest on the show Charlie Cole who's the the chief digital officer at to me and Samsung by cheat he very explicitly said it is like look, I don't mind competing with Amazon that's totally fair they can make products to compete with me that's totally fair but when people search for my product on Amazon and they intentionally put their products in front of them that's not a good customer experience and just don't lie and say you're trying to be customer-centric when you're doing stuff like that was gonna as blunt as Charlie put it so an interesting space. Scot: [42:39] Yeah I guess cleaners and go to watch them navigate through this stuff and you have the counter argument would be well retailers for doing it for years and. Old Roy, dog food in a Walmart is in front of the Purina dog food that kind of thinks sometimes you know these the physical arguments don't really translate to to the digital where you know it customer is clearly expressed a brand new you should get them their quickie soap to be a lineman. Jason: [43:08] Yeah yeah like a little less controversial but like you know there's some labels like Amazon choice and and some new labels that they're testing and people are like is Amazon gaming nose and I I may have made a smart a tweet at some point where I showed like staff picks from Trader Joe's and I'm like oh my god do you think some of these might not actually be stabbed pics. Scot: [43:29] Go in any other needs any other Amazon usually cover. Jason: [43:36] I think those those were the big things I know we're running short on time so let's let's get to our last genre. Scot: [43:46] We haven't talked to her about Mulligan lately but I was reading some reports that a we've already had over 7,000 store closures heading 7300 as of September 1st I think that's more than we've ever had in any previous year and we still got three to four months ago, another world retail you kind of if you can make it through October you you're probably not going to close for December that thing's going to be pretty pretty bad if you're going to close for those two months so I think it will slow down but I think we have a chance of hitting 8 or 9 K hear some of the this is based on data from video so some of the top store closures are Payless with 2,300 stores Gymboree with 750 Charlotte Russe. And then on the watchlist they have several companies that are our kind of they look at this kind of load of ducks to assets and then also are they losing money making money in kind of protective time when there may be a chapter 11 events Forever 21 is on there a JCPenney at send a Pier One in Francesca's chokes, I'm surprised this didn't include more mattress worse cuz around me you know we still have like eight thousand mattress stores just in Raleigh-Durham and they're pretty much all closed all the sudden I wonder if this is under-reporting a little bit and I was kind of surprised that mattress stores weren't one of the big contributors. Jason: [45:15] We'll see that's a great point because it's something funny came out about all this so I think the macro points are totally true like that we are seeing more store closures in a single year than we ever seen before there are actually like we'll see if they come to play or not but like that on that watch was the one that they're like strong rumors are really preparing for a a bankruptcy which would be somewhat surprising at this point is Forever 21 because prove your point like. You know you really wouldn't want to go in a bankruptcy right right before the holiday season and there are there rumors that, if they did that the malls might be a potentially bail them out as they have, I've done for at least one of their apparel retailer in the past Aeropostale so that's kind of interesting but I I see the inside baseball I found an interesting study also, so this instead of you just said it is from video and they did a bunch of their own research so most of their store closure information came from, public disclosures so it's public companies that said in a 10K or an investor call that they're planning to close X number of stores. [46:28] And so that's that was their data source for the store closings and like I'm sure all the stores are closing video also cited the source that we see most commonly for tracking these store closing closings and openings which is core site which is a research firm that does this really useful can a weekly tracker on how many stores are closing and how many stars are opening a bunch of stores have open this year not enough to offset the closings and that that would also be a first so while there been a lot of closing in the last couple years that I've actually been more openings than clothes XO, this could be the first year we had a net negative and course I may have had a net negative last year even that now that I think about it but. Here's what's interesting about that so all of these companies are arbitrarily picking a list of well-known retailers in tracking. [47:20] The opening and closing and said there's another market research firm out there IHL that does a bunch of retail research. And they conducted a lot more comprehensive study and they said hey we are going to look at every retailer that operates 50 or more stores in North America and track how many they've opened and closed. And we're going to estimate where they don't have public disclosures or we're going to call them and ask and we're going to use real estate records and so instead of just kind of. Tracking press releases we're going to really do the math on all this and, they not surprisingly they found more store closures then then video or. [48:02] Coresite but they found way more store openings than either of these companies so pretty this IHL research that came out, there are still more stores opening then closing it just interesting to think about like I, I think our macro points are totally true that retails not going away that were way over stored in the US that we we do need to be closing stores in our closing stores in there that's a a necessary adjustment but it is interesting I feel like in the Echo chamber of our space like this coresight research gets its reported and recited and blended into other people's research on the time and was kind of funny to see this I shall study come out and explicitly point out that. Coresight research is not particularly rigorous and somewhat random so it was like a little inside baseball research fight. Scot: [48:56] Yeah and I wish square footage is what really matters right because you know Closing one JCPenney is is like I don't know. Jason: [49:04] Yeah you have to open off a lot of the way stores to make up for a JCPenney. Scot: [49:07] Yeah yes that's what really matters and I've never seen anyone really be able to track that very well unfortunately. Jason: [49:12] No no and I unfortunately like we've all seen the summaries of the IHL I'll confess it's inexpensive study to buy so I haven't actually. Bought the research but I don't think they have the the net square footage in there but just anecdotally if you look at the list of stores that are open and closing you're absolutely right like in general there's there's more bigger stores closing in smaller stores open. Scot: [49:37] One one last thing to make sure you put on your your calendar the Disney plus subscriptions it opened up so you can go ahead and pre buy that so on November 12th, and they have exciting new Star Wars TV live action show called The Mandalorian that off and up is pretty excited about to make sure you sign up for that Jason. Star Wars fan listeners. Jason: [50:02] And before any listeners Panic Scott and I promise to pre-record a podcast so that we don't have to skip a week while Scott is binging the Mandalorian. Scot: [50:12] Yes sadly I don't think they're going to do a bench so I think they're going to do it's hard for traditional TV people to get their heads around it but they're going to have kind of really someone a week or something so I have time to podcast. Jason: [50:25] Good news good news in like slightly related there is this interesting thing Target in Disney have announced that they're opening these permanent shopping shops and so you're going to see a bunch of unique Disney merchandise at Target I think that is potentially going to be beneficial to you Scott but I seen speculation that the Disney plus service could be one of the things that's heavily merchandised in that. In that assortment. Scot: [50:55] Cool hopefully I'll have more Star Wars Target exclusives those are those are the good ones. Jason: [51:00] Exactly what was in that is a great place to wrap up this new show cuz we've come out perfectly use the a lot of time as always if if I wasn't Earth have a question or comment feel free to hit us up on our Facebook page or on Twitter as always if you have time we sure would appreciate if you go to iTunes and finally give us that five star review that we've desperately been begging for but we have a we sure appreciate your time today and we have a bunch of great shows in the pipeline so appreciate you keep listening. Until next time happy commercing.

As a business leader, I have hungered for wisdom in many circumstances. Proverbs provides it. Dan and Drew bring to life this ageless guide and how you can lead conscientiously and courageously so that your company can flourish and perform. Take it with you to work! - Cheryl Bachelder, Former CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Board Member at Pier One, Chick-fil-A, and Procter & Gamble, and author of Dare to Serve Through their own entrepreneurial ventures, and in their work helping thousands of business leaders grow--personally and professionally, Dan and Drew help you: -Understand timeless leadership principles of Proverbs with application for today -Gain clarity on how to make wise decisions -Accelerate business growth and remove needless limitations -Become a better leader of yourself, your business, your employees, and your community

We are giving faux flowers & plants a closer look ~ and guess what ... ? We like what we see. Today's faux are a vast improvement over years gone by. That being said, all fauxs are not created equal. ( Dont forget to enter the $250 D. Lawless Give Away! Enter HERE (https://mailchi.mp/bespokedecor/dl)) We found the best, have loads of tips & suggestions on how to incorporate fauxs ~ and as always share it all with you! Always love a preserved boxwood wreath - find the one Kelly has HERE (https://amzn.to/2TLVhBZ). In honor of opening our minds to fauxs we are offering you a 15% discount on the beautiful handmade balsa wood and birch bark Everlasting Arrangements by artist Heather Pando. Find them HERE (https://bespokedecor.store/products/copy-of-handmade-everlasting-floral-design-works-of-art-for-your-home) and use the code Floral15 to receive the discount. Even Kelly, who has been decidedly no faux for years, has come around! Listen in to hear which faux branch she has allowed through the door... Also find out the faux collection she had high hopes for but was disappointed by in person :( Kelly has a DIY faux forced branch tutorial HERE (https://mysoulfulhome.com/faux-flowering-branches-tutorial/). We cover all the pros and the con of fauxs. Tell you what to look for in a good faux and a great faux. Give tips on how to use faux in your home to the best advantage, how to care for fauxs ... and more! Here are few faux that we think pass muster: Orchids (https://www.jamaligarden.com/38in-pink-phalaenopsis-orchid.html) Succulents (https://www.cb2.com/faux-succulent-stem/s499467) Forsythia (https://www.crateandbarrel.com/forsythia-flower-stem/s659710?localedetail=US&gclid=Cj0KCQjwyoHlBRCNARIsAFjKJ6Do2ST6kXvpDL9ZDYhxtz8SGUuhOIz2IqbN_9IF_uqI5T7zChhIPTcaAteYEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) Olive trees (https://www.shopterrain.com/products/faux-olive-tree-49090335?via=Z2lkOi8vdXJibi9Xb3JrYXJlYTo6Q2F0YWxvZzo6Q2F0ZWdvcnkvQzFBNDY0NjY) Eucalytpus (https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shop/eucalyptus-faux-plant?category=floral-decor&color=031) Allium (https://www.cb2.com/purple-faux-allium/s508886) Sources for faux flowers and arrangements that we really like: Abigail Ahern (https://abigailahern.com/collections/flowers) Crate & Barrel (https://www.crateandbarrel.com) Pier One (https://www.pier1.com/yellow-faux-forsythia-branch/2361490.html?cgid=stems_sprays#start=0&sz=120&showAll=132&origin=gridswatch) CB2 (https://www.cb2.com) Terrain (https://www.shopterrain.com/products/faux-lavender-flower-spray?via=Z2lkOi8vdXJibi9Xb3JrYXJlYTo6Q2F0YWxvZzo6Q2F0ZWdvcnkvQzFBNDY0NjY) Ikea (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80335773/) Diane James (https://www.dianejameshome.com/) McGee & Co. (https://www.mcgeeandco.com/collections/faux-stems/products/faux-quince-blossom0stem) Crushes for today: Anita - Defensive Driving Class (http://myimprov.refr.cc/anitajoyce) Kelly - Stick vacuum (https://amzn.to/2YNzuxA) - if you can love a vacuum, this little powerhouse has my heart! Sign up for the DTT email list so we can send you an ocassional newsletter with insider content, photos, product discounts and more. Sign up HERE (https://mailchi.mp/8791ceb431db/dtt). xx, Kelly & Anita

Genie Thompson Mack is one of those people you LOVE to tell folks that you know. Her beautiful heart shines out through her eyes, leaks out in her laughter and sparkles in everythign she puts her hand to.

We are on the cabbage soup insta news diet and we are making it into a meal baby! But don't worry, we've got some vague news about a "new" (???) fragrance to tide us over, and an incredible throwback photo that can barely contain the Pier One of it all, and features Britney's biggest celeb crush.  We also visit Jamie Lynn's feed to find an old dad family tradition of visiting graves in your Monster hat. Hey, we don't make this shit up, we just somehow find a walk to dissect it for 40 plus minutes at a time. 

Natalie and Rachel are big fans of "The Bachelor," but they were shocked to learn that the decor of the mansion changes with every new season. With the premiere of Colton Underwood's season on Monday, it felt like high time to discuss the inside of perhaps the most famous mansion on television. Spoiler alert: we're not impressed. We also dive deeper into the first three episodes of "Tidying Up With Marie Kondo," and we discuss the little things in your bedroom that may be stressing you out big time. In the category of bizarre news stories of the week, we discuss the Salinas doorbell licker. (At the time of recording he was still at large.) Plus beautiful jumbo bungalows and this week's real estate winners and losers. Enjoy!

Get hip to this! On today's episode of You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam analyze Christian McBride's solo on his new groovy tune "Pier One Import." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

My guest this week is Jennifer Priest from the blog, Smart Fun DIY, and the social media marketing firm, Smart Creative Social. Jennifer shares awesome advice about how to get more Pinterest traffic by crushing the Pinterest algorithm. By putting yourself in Pinterest's shoes, you can understand what they're looking for, and how by giving it to them, you will grow your traffic. We talk about optimizing your overall Pinterest strategy, using hashtags on Pinterest, what Pinterest communities are all about, and so much more! If you are trying to grow your Pinterest traffic, this episode is a must-listen! Plus, Jennifer is one smart cookie!   Resources: Smart Fun DIY Smart Creative Social MiloTree Catch My Party Sharer Brothers Social Media Examiner Smart Fun DIY Instagram Smart Creative Social Community MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Transcript: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:10 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I'm really excited to introduce my guest. Her name is Jennifer Priest. And she started 15 years ago in the online space as a DIY blogger. She has been doing that for this long, she's still doing it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 She has a digital marketing consulting firm. So we're going to talk about both of those sides of her business. So welcome to the show, Jennifer. Jennifer Priest 0:45 Thanks so much. I'm really glad to be here. Why going to conferences is good for bloggers Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:48 We are trying to figure out when we met, but we have been circling each other. We've been at a variety of conferences. We definitely met at Vid Summit last year. We both believe in conferences and like going to conferences. Jennifer Priest 1:04 Yeah, oh, my gosh, conferences are like one of my favorite, favorite things to do. Jennifer Priest 1:11 I think, you know, one of the things is we work from home alone. And so it's nice to go and see other people and interact. And it's nice to put a face to the name. I've heard of MiloTree for so many years, and to be able to then go and like meet you in person and talk to you. There's nothing that can replace that face to face connection. Jennifer Priest 1:31 Even if we're doing Facebook Lives, it's so different to actually interact with someone in person. So I love just the networking aspect of it. And then there's also the learning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I so agree, and it's funny. It's exactly what you just said. As soon as you meet somebody in real life. It is like that friendship is so solid. Jennifer Priest 1:55 Yeah, you feel like you're like absolutely friends. And you're like, we literally talked for five minutes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:00 But it's like, I would trust you with my child. Jennifer Priest 2:04 Yeah, I have a friend that we've actually been friends online for two years. And a couple years ago, or we were friends online for two years before we met in person. And a couple years ago, we planned this retreat, where like, six of us were bloggers and artists decided to go on this crazy trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it was really fun. Jennifer Priest 2:22 And we met in a restaurant, and then we're going to carpool from the airport the rest of the way, to the place where are camping, and I was like, this is the first time we've actually met in person. And she's like, no way. And I'm like, Yeah, because we've known each other online and through texting for two years. But, you know, that's one of the great things about doing conferences is you can meet these people in person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:44 Yes. I think it's kind of what you were talking about. We work alone at home. And there is something to meeting another online entrepreneur that you're, you have this feeling of like, I understand your world. Jennifer Priest 3:03 Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone in my town who does anything remotely like what I do. I'd probably have to drive an hour to find someone local, that would even understand. Jennifer Priest 3:14 My family, my husband and my kids get it. But like my extended family, they're just like, you do something on the internet. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:20 Right, right. So there is that sense of what it's like to sit at your computer in your pajamas, you know, working on something that needs to get done for tomorrow. Jennifer Priest 3:34 Yep. Yep. Or getting up at five in the morning. Because you're like my blog post due today. I didn't finish it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:41 Yes. I think there is that kindred spirit element to when you meet somebody in real life. And you can say, hey, let's talk SEO. And you both know exactly what that means. Jennifer Priest 3:55 That and I think too, when you meet in person, the guard comes down. So we were talking earlier that we had we had been to the Adthrive Conference together. And while we were there, a blogger that I have known online for years, I have seen her conferences, but we never really talked, we had a mutual friend. Jennifer Priest 4:11 And so the three of us, we went out kind of adventuring in Austin. And it was the most fun tim. We started talking about family and our lives, and I feel so connected to her. And it's like you, you can't replicate that. Jennifer Priest 4:26 It's the commonality that we have that kind of breaks down the barriers, and then the conference gives us that opportunity to get those deeper connections. That's not even about blogging anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:36 Right. It's why I say, I trust people, I would trust you with my child. You know, it's weird. And there is an intimacy to it. Jennifer Priest 4:47 Definitely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:48 Let's hear your story. Because I don't know it. Jennifer Priest 4:53 So it starts quite a long time ago. I've always been entrepreneurial, like when I was nine years old, I had my first craft fair, selling earrings. Jennifer Priest 5:03 I've always been crafty, always been entrepreneurial, always kind of a busybody. I used to organize the kids in the neighborhood to like, gather cans and bottles to recycle. And then we would amass the money together and go buy candy and stuff. I was always an organizing kind of person. Jennifer Priest 5:24 And so when I had my daughter, I started doing scrapbooking. And I got a mail order kit. And I got really into it. And I started teaching classes. And I joined a direct sales company. And the direct sales company kind of came at the time that I had just graduated from college, and two bachelor's degrees, and I could not find a job because the economy was really bad. Jennifer Priest 5:46 So I joined this direct selling company and I worked my way up the ranks. And within six months, I was like the number two consultant in California. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:53 Now wait, what is a direct selling company? Jennifer Priest 5:55 So it's like, Stampin' Up or Tupperware it's multi level marketing where you order from catalogs, you do parties in people's homes and that kind of thing. And so that was kind of my entry into it. Jennifer Priest 6:08 I started doing email marketing to promote that. So previous to that, my online experience was to get through college, I used to sell like my daughter's baby clothes. And I would go and buy things and sell them on eBay for a markup. Jennifer Priest 6:22 So we'd go to like estate sales or yard sales and find something really expensive, and buy it for a good price, and then resell it. And that's a lot of how I got through college was was doing my eBay business. Jennifer Priest 6:33 So then I was doing this online thing with email marketing, because I was like, I don't know how to build a website. And so I did. I built that online business with email. And I was teaching in scrapbook stores. Jennifer Priest 6:44 And meanwhile, I ended up getting a job working for the local county. And I was doing grant writing, a mix of grant writing and contract management. Jennifer Priest 6:55 Working with all of these different contractors who provided substance abuse services for the county. I ended up losing my job, they're very crooked. And the day that they fired me was when they're being investigated bya grand jury and I was turning over records and they're like, No, you're gone. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:11 Oooh interesting. Jennifer Priest 7:13 Yeah. Very shady. So I was devastated because I was going to school to get my masters. And I thought that I would work in government for a long time. Jennifer Priest 7:23 I tried to go to class because I was getting my masters. I tried to go to class my professors, like you're a mess, you need to go and so I went to the scrapbook store, because that's where my friends all hung out. And I had I had kind of taken a moratorium from teaching because I was commuting really, really far. Starting a blog through teaching scrapbooking Jennifer Priest 7:42 I go in the scrapbook store. And I'm like all teary eyed because I lost my job and wounded my pride and stuff. And they're like, good, you can now teach classes here more often. And I was like, seriously? Jennifer Priest 7:53 And so my husband, he end up getting a promotion the next week, and because I was making a lot of money doing what I was doing and, you know, his promotion didn't equal to what we were making before. But He's like, you know what, stay home, do your thing, go work this business, I know you're really passionate about it. Jennifer Priest 8:11 And so that's what started it all. And that was back in like 2005. So I started teaching at all these different scrapbook stores and still doing some different direct selling companies, and making kits and selling them and making things on eBay and selling them. And I had clients in like Japan, and they were just order stuff over and over and over. Jennifer Priest 8:36 And then as at this one store in 2007, that was a pretty big scrapbook store in Southern California. And telling people about my classes in my emails. And they were like, you know, we really would love to be able to share this stuff, can you put put it on a blog, share your classes on a blog, and then we can tell our friends. Or, why aren't you on Facebook? Jennifer Priest 9:00 I was a technophobe. And I was like, I don't need all that I don't need a cell phone. I didn't have a cell phone forever. I didn't have texting forever. But if I needed it for my business, I learned it. Jennifer Priest 9:12 And so I was like, Okay, I'm going to get on Facebook. And so my intention with Facebook from day one was a business thing. And my intention with the blog from day one was to promote my offline business, which was sell these craft kits. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Are those craft kits you were putting together, or was this these companies? Jennifer Priest 9:33 I was putting them together. So at that point, I had transitioned over to ordering the supplies wholesale, you know, going down to the garment district in LA and sourcing all these like, really unique things, making some of the supplies like die cutting paper and, and sewing little applications and stuff like that. Starting an Etsy shop as a craft blogger Jennifer Priest 9:51 And I would put these kits together in mass, and not only teach my classes with them, but then I would sell them on Etsy. And so in 2007 is when I learned about Etsy, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like eBay handmade. For me, that was my reference point. And so I also started promoting my Etsy business in my emails and on Facebook. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:14 And where are you collecting these emails? Jennifer Priest 10:17 I was using Constant Contact. So I had a paper notebook that people would fill out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:26 When you were teaching, you said, Here, give me your email address? Jennifer Priest 10:29 Yeah, I would have them fill out this paper notebook while I was teaching or like, if I did a booth at a craft fair, or scrapbook expo or whatever, I would have this little thing, you could sign up on my email list. And then I actually started making those and selling them to other people. And I would decorate it for their businesses. Jennifer Priest 10:48 And I would sell like the printable. I'd be like, oh, I'll make it custom for your business. I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Jennifer Priest 10:55 And so I had a paper book. And I remember this one time as using Constant Contact at that time, because they were the gold standard. So anytime Constant Contact was like, hey, do you actually have that this person signed up and, and they're like, we're getting a few spam reports. Jennifer Priest 11:09 And so I sent them photos of my book, the pages we used to have to do that. I mean, can you believe that we used to have to keep a paper record that they gave us their email address. Jennifer Priest 11:21 And so everything kind of evolved. In my circles, I started becoming the go-to person for blogging and social media advice, because I was using it for my business. Getting into social media management as a blogger Jennifer Priest 11:31 In 2009, I booked my first corporate client, and so somebody where I manage their social media and for their company, and posted the things and manage their design team, and just did all of that stuff in the craft industry. Jennifer Priest 11:46 And so from there, I've gained more and more knowledge because I'm learning it for my business anyway. Jennifer Priest 11:54 I gained more clients and then workin in social media on different client accounts, really eye opening to see like, how different things can be, you know, between a multimillion dollar company and my small little blog, but also to see the commonalities in there. Jennifer Priest 12:11 And the challenges that they still face, like money is not the answer to everything. And it's given me a lot of really interesting insights into how to work social media. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:23 What are the commonalities? Jennifer Priest 12:29 Yeah, so to break it down as far as the commonalities, that's like more than a podcast. But I think one of the things is the methodology that you have to use, and looking at things that's the same. Using analytics and creativity to grow a business online Jennifer Priest 12:46 So you kind of have to approach it from more of a scientific mindset, where you're looking at the evidence, looking at the data, really analyzing it doing, you know, some level of creativity, so you've got to have both sides of your brain working. Jennifer Priest 13:01 So you look at, you look at the data, and you're really good with analytics. But if you you can't think of creative ways to then get to your goal, you're not going to be successful. Jennifer Priest 13:13 So I do a lot of studying the numbers, looking at what the platform is telling us based on how does our content behave, what happens to it when we post something on Facebook? And then what happens after that point. Jennifer Priest 13:26 But also looking at stuff like the signals that they're saying in the news, what their press room says, what is on their blog, what is Pinterest posting on their engineering blog,on Medium that gives us signals as to where they're going, and how the algorithm is performing. Jennifer Priest 13:44 And then I can take that information and also be some of my experience and the trends and say, Okay, this kind of content is going to perform well. If we put the content out in this manner, based on all this evidence, I think it's going to perform well. Jennifer Priest 13:58 And so every piece of content that we put out on social is an experiment we're trying to see, like, okay, I've hit check on these boxes that I think are going to make it work now. Let's see how it performs, and then go back and reanalyze it. Jennifer Priest 14:14 And so it's this continuous process of analysis and testing, analysis and testing. And I think that's where a lot of people get in trouble. Wwe go to a conference, or we take a course, and we're like, awesome, this person gave me a checklist of all the stuff I gotta do. Rainbows and unicorns are going to shoot out of the sky, I go home, I put it in place, everything's amazing. Jennifer Priest 14:37 And then tomorrow, the algorithm changes. And that stuff doesn't work. Because those are tactics, those are steps, those are tasks. And we're not learning how to think about the platform. Think about the platform and the algorithms of the platforms you're using to promote your business Jennifer Priest 14:50 And so that's the major thing that I've learned through all of this is just thinking about the platform and realizing the algorithms are here to stay, because there's just a fire hose of information. And they have to be there in order to give us a good experience on the platform. Jennifer Priest 15:05 I mean, if I saw everything that my family members were posting on Facebook, I would just delete it, delete it, because it's just too much. And so the algorithms have to be there. So we got to accept that they're there. Jennifer Priest 15:18 But then the second thing is what are the algorithms there to do? They're studying our behavior, and then making rules that help them get the outcome that they want. So we can do the same thing. If we study the platform's behavior, we can make rules to get us the outcome we want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:38 I think that is so powerful. In fact, the thing that I always say is, so Pinterest is very valuable for Catch My Party. It drives a ton of traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:49 And I say, when Pinterest says something, I pay attention. If they tell me, okay, we don't want these long pins anymore. And this is like, they come out and they say, 600 by 900, it doesn't matter if I don't like that. I'm not going to second guess what they say. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:12 I'm not gonna go well, my long pins have worked so well. I know they're saying this, but I'm not gonna listen to it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be the first one listening to it. Jennifer Priest 16:23 Yeah, when you think of these companies, they don't do things flippantly. And there's this huge machine behind them that then it's almost like, I think of like, a big alligator. Like, they don't move that fast. They're kind of or a dinosaur moving so slow. And so everything they do is very deliberate. And there's meetings after meetings and focus groups. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:49 And testing. Testing everything. Jennifer Priest 16:54 Yeah. And they're not making those announcements, because they just decided we're going to make it hard for bloggers. But that is that is the thinking that is pervasive in many Facebook groups with bloggers, is this idea of the platforms are just out to get us. The platforms are not out to get us as bloggers Jennifer Priest 17:13 They don't care. They just that is not their purpose. Like every single platform that's out there. And I feel like Pinterest is so good about being transparent about this, they have a mission. Pinterest's mission is to help people discover new ideas and go out into the world and try them. And so that's at the heart of everything that they're doing. Jennifer Priest 17:33 So if they're saying that this needs to be a two to three ratio pin, we can go and say, Okay, why is it that they're saying that because 80% of their users are on mobile, and they look better on mobile? Jennifer Priest 17:45 Have you tried to look at a giraffe pin on mobile, you can't see it. And so if that is what they think is going to help them get back to their mission to help people discover new ideas. Awesome. I'm going to help people discover my new ideas on their phone. Jennifer Priest 18:04 And so I think that the thing is, kind of a little bit of a mindset shift in how we think about these platforms. They are not out to get us, they absolutely know they need content creators to be on there putting stuff on there, whether it's Facebook, or Pinterest, or YouTube or whatever, but they have a mission. Jennifer Priest 18:23 And so if we accept that, and we stopped fighting it, and just take the signals that they're giving us and and then adjust our strategy to those signals. Jennifer Priest 18:33 First, we can have an ever evolving strategy. So that saves us a lot of grief. But second, we're going to have more success, because we're not wasting time. Jennifer Priest 18:44 I hate to kind of sound like I'm on a soapbox, but we're not wasting time with stuff that doesn't make any sense. And that is somewhat a level of immature thinking in our business to think that a platform is going to care about a blogger, even a 5 million views a month blogger to say, I'm going to make this change and platform to make that blogger's life hard. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:03 Yes. And again, you have to think that these platforms need to monetize, these are businesses. So you have to put yourself in the mindset of Pinterest, or Facebook or Instagram, and they're trying to give the best experience they possibly can to their visitors. Jennifer Priest 19:24 And they're all still free. They're not charging us and people say well, it's just pay to play. There are always outliers, always people on the fringes that are all of a sudden they're going viral, because they're doing something that captures people's attention. They're doing something that works within the algorithm. How to work the algorithms to your advantage Jennifer Priest 19:46 And sometimes people don't have a plan. They just have some kind of magic touch. But really, a lot of the people have a plan. Like if you look at these guys, the Sharer Brothers they are two college brothers, they decided we're going to start a YouTube channel. Jennifer Priest 20:01 They're very methodical and how they did it. They started in January of 2017. By October of that year, they had over a million subscribers. You can totally work the system to your favor. And I think it takes a mindset shift of instead of seeing a difficulty, a roadblock, first looking at it as a challenge. But then looking at it as an opportunity. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:27 Absolutely Jennifer Priest 20:30 A differentiator. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:31 Would you say that Pinterest is where you focus your time or where you are the biggest expert? Jennifer Priest 20:39 So you know, one of the things that's been a challenge, I had this discussion with Michael Stelzer from Social Media Examiner. And this is something that I'm going to share the story because it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's also something that we need to think about in our businesses, especially as a lifestyle blogger. Jennifer Priest 20:58 You asked me what kind of blog I'm like I say, DIY, because I'm doing stuff. We're kind of all over the place, right? Where I do recipes, I, I fixed my house, I make crafts, it's hard to communicate. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:09 Do you have travel? Jennifer Priest 21:11 I travel, Disney, Mexican food, there's a lot of stuff in there, right? And so we're trying to be all things to all people. And so I was talking to Michael Stelzer because he was like, Hey, you've kind of been on my radar for a while, but I didn't understand what you do. Jennifer Priest 21:29 And that was such like a heartbreaking but also revealing moment, because you can't be all things to all people. And so I think for us, when we're talking to people about what we do, if we can communicate like one thing that we're really solid on and that could be like our entry point. Jennifer Priest 21:48 And so I say, I'm DIY craft because that's something I'm really solid on. And that's an entry point into my craft blog. But I have recipes on there, too. Jennifer Priest 21:59 And so as like the Pinterest thing, I'm really solid on Pinterest. I have a course on Pinterest that makes sense for people to understand and know. But it's not the only thing I do. Jennifer Priest 22:08 I have a YouTube channel. I've had virals on Instagram. This year, I doubled the size of an Instagram account within a couple months and hit well over the 10,000 mark with it. So I can do stuff on lots of social media platforms. But I needed something that made sense for people to understand that, okay, she gets Pinterest. That's something bloggers need. That's something that businesses need to get traffic. Every blogger needs a niche -- a point of entry Jennifer Priest 22:31 And so that's like my entry point. But it's not the only thing. And so something for any of us that are like lifestyle bloggers to think about is like, what is our entry point that we can get people in and then they can learn all this other stuff. Because if we just say, I can do everything at the beginning, there's nothing for people to attach to. And they don't understand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:51 I get that. When I was at Mom 2.0 this last year, I went to an Instagram talk and I forgot who was leading it but she said this that I thought was really powerful, which you'll relate to. She said "lifestyle" on Instagram is not a niche. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 On Instagram you want to niche down and just how you said you know, Pinterest is kind of your way in, like if you are lifestyle blogger, pick your lane and really dig deep in that lane. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:25 Maybe you do more food than travel, or you like food better than travel, or like travel better. Go so that somebody can see you and go oh, travel well then you can add some food and stuff, but you do want to in the world of the internet, it's so easy to get lost. And so do think where could I... where's my comfort place? Where is my sweet spot? Jennifer Priest 23:51 Yeah, and I think you know, the idea to of having this one branded Instagram I mean I'm up against this too, I have a Smart Fun DIYs Instagram it is slow is slow growing. And I know why that is. It's because you look at it,and you're like I don't know what this is about, and people in less than a fraction of a second are making that decision and assessment where I have other accounts that are niched way down, and those are growing crazy. Jennifer Priest 24:22 Like in the same time period of three months on Instagram, Smart Fun DIY, this summer grew 1000 followers, it has 29.1000 followers. So not a lot bigger thousand in the same time period, I grew a niche to count from 7000 to 13,000. Jennifer Priest 24:42 It's going to be more than Smart Fun DIY before the end of the year. And it's because people look at it, they get it they're either in or they're out. They don't have to think hard. Their lazy lizard brain is like, I get it, I want it, I don't want it. And then they're in or they're out. Create niche Instagram accounts for your other content as an influencer Jennifer Priest 25:00 There's nothing that says and this is something I'm experimenting with. And I know other bloggers have experimented with this too. There's nothing that says that you can't take that and create other niche accounts. Jennifer Priest 25:10 So if I am doing let's say, food crafts and Disney and I have three different niche accounts that in interact with my lifestyle branded account, and I'm putting that content out in multiple places. Now, again, this is more of an Instagram thing. But why can't you do that. Jennifer Priest 25:28 And if you think of Pinterest, we have boards for different sub topics, you could treat Instagram like your boards to and have different sub topics. Now you need to be maintaining those. So there's a question of scale. You can't do it on 84 topics. Jennifer Priest 25:44 But it's something to think about of how do I get people in the door and then I get them to follow my main account just like I'm using Pinterest to get people in the door. But I do all kinds of other stuff for companies. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:57 Right. And I would say for Catch My Party, guess what if you go to our Instagram account, we're going to show you beautiful dessert table after beautiful dessert table and and we have over 150,000 followers. But you like it or you don't. Jennifer Priest 26:14 It makes sense to people. They have to understand it. You know Walmart's confusing, it's big and huge. You don't know what they do. You go into Pier One. You're like decor. I got it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:24 Yes. And by the way, I get overwhelmed at Walmart. Jennifer Priest 26:28 Right, Costco, the same thing. It like hurts me a little bit. Like, I have to figure out how to get my cereal and my motor oil. Like it's too much. Jennifer Priest 26:38 I go to Target. And I only shop in one side of the store. I'm like, I'll shop in the grocery side for groceries. And then I'll make another trip to go get candles and notebooks and like, it'll probably be a different trip to get clothes. Because it's too much. Why the Pinterest pop-up from MiloTree can help you grow your Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:55 As a blogger myself, I know that there is a lot asked of us. And sometimes it's too much. If you're trying to grow your traffic, then you definitely need to grow your Pinterest followers. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:08 There's a direct connection to active, engaged Pinterest followers and growth in traffic. Because those are the people who are going to interact with your early pins and Pinterest is going to show it to a larger audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 If you have not tried MiloTree head on over because we will help you effortlessly grow your followers. In fact, if you have a friend who's using MiloTree asked them what they think. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:36 The best way we've grown, our business is through word of mouth. And also if you sign up, you get your first 30 days free. You get added to my newsletter. I send weekly emails, sharing actual tactical tips, but also some ways to think about your business and manage the different things that we struggle with as entrepreneurs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:02 So again, head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up, install it on your site. If you have any difficulty. Reach out to me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. And now back to the show. What are Pinterest communities and what are they for? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:16 So while we're talking about Pinterest. Right before we recorded, so this is October 5, when we're recording this. And two things I want to talk about with regards to Pinterest. One is hashtags and one is communities which have just launched on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:34 You have a Facebook group which I saw you talking in. And what is your Facebook group called? Jennifer Priest 28:42 It's called Smart Creative Social Community. So not very original name. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:48 Definitely join her Facebook group. Because I saw you in there. And you were talking about communities. And I was like, oh, and then you are going to be on the podcast. I was really psyched about that. So, definitely join the Facebook group. Secondly, let's talk about hashtags and communities. Jennifer Priest 29:11 Yeah, so you've got to date it. Because like everything we know about social media today is a snapshot in time, and it could change tomorrow. So that is the challenge, right? Jennifer Priest 29:23 So first, let's talk about communities. Communities are relatively new. They talked about them, Pinterest did like this kind of a town hall conference where they invited people up to their headquarters this summer and told them about all these things. And communities was one of those things. Jennifer Priest 29:42 And luckily for us that didn't get to go. There were people who went who came back and share that information like, Alisa Meredith and Kate Ahl. They shared a lot of that information, which is really nice. Jennifer Priest 29:53 And so communities was one of those things. So we knew it was coming. We knew it was in beta testing, you could email and ask Pinterest to start a community. So now they've turned it on, essentially. And so the gist of it is, it's like if a Facebook group where you can talk and chit chat had a baby with a group board on Pinterest, it will be community. Jennifer Priest 30:16 So you can stick pins in there. They don't want it to be self promotional. They don't want it to be like a group board where, you know, I feel like bloggers come in and they break things. Jennifer Priest 30:26 So it's like, Hey, we started this new, beautiful thing called a group board. You can collaborate and their intention is something like my group board called Dream House, where my husband and I and my daughter are putting stuff on there that were like, Oh, I like this. Jennifer Priest 30:41 And bloggers were like, Hey, we can game the system. We're going to put 800 bloggers on here. We're just going to slam it with all our stuff. And we're gonna get it like a ton of traffic. And so Pinterest was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we wanted this like, collaborative thing, like, what's going on here. Jennifer Priest 30:55 And not that bloggers are bad for breaking it, I think it's really good to push the boundaries of what something can do. Because Pinterest answer to that is, oh, we still want this mission, we still have this thing that we want to do, we need to put that in a different package. Jennifer Priest 31:11 And so they didn't take group boards away, which is nice. So they've got communities, and communities, they're like, we don't want self promotion, we want this to be a place where you can discuss things, where you can share things, where you can connect with one another over the Pinterest platform over those visual search results within the Pinterest platform. Jennifer Priest 31:29 And so if you think about it as something the way you're going to manage it should be a lot like a Facebook group. You need to nurture it, you need to curate the people that you're inviting to it, you need to go in there every day and check. Jennifer Priest 31:43 I started a community. I've been in there once in like three days. So I definitely need to make sure to make it a priority. Jennifer Priest 31:50 I wouldn't start a community just because you're like, I want to snag the name or I want to snag that topic. I wouldn't start a community for that reason. Jennifer Priest 31:59 I would start it because you genuinely want to be there, experiment with it, experience it and build this additional community, additional resource for your people where you're going to be connecting, because it's not about just dumping pins. It's more about let's talk about this thing, Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:17 So I started a MiloTree Mastermind Community, and I kind of don't know what to do with it. Jennifer Priest 32:23 Yeah, so you can start discussions in there, you can ask them questions, you can share information, you can pin posts, which is basically like a sticky note, you can sticky note the post so it stays at the top. So like, I made some guidelines for my community and, and put those at the top. Why you want to be a social media early adopter as a blogger Jennifer Priest 32:40 So yeah, you can put pins in there, etc. But it's still pretty unclear. It's still pretty new. And I I've heard some people being kind of skeptical of like, well, we don't know if they're going to still have communities, and there's glitches and I don't know if it's useful, so I'm not going to be on it. And I think that's fine if people want to do that. But I think they're missing the boat. Jennifer Priest 33:00 One of the great things about adopting something early on is that you learned early on. You learn and evolve with it over time. So it's the same thing as like kicking myself, because I did not start that YouTube channel back in like, 2010. And I started a couple years later, it was harder and trying to start a YouTube channel. Now, I don't know how anyone would do it, because it's so complicated Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:25 And crowded. Jennifer Priest 33:26 Yeah. And if you learn early on, you can navigate it. And as they add new buttons and new things, and you're learning it incrementally as it as it evolves, instead of it being this really complicated thing. Jennifer Priest 33:40 So the other thing is people that are skeptical, going, like, Oh, this is a dumb move, and they should have made more research. Like I said before, it's this big, slow animal. And Pinterest has a reputation for doing things really slow compared to all the other social platforms. Jennifer Priest 33:55 You know, Facebook's motto is like, let's break stuff. Like, that's literally their motto. And Pinterest is like, we want everyone have a good time. And so they're just going really slow and they're very like methodical, and really intentional with everything they do. Jennifer Priest 34:12 So if they think this is a good thing to do, it is worth paying attention to, because they didn't make that decision lightly. And it is an extremely expensive decision to make, it cost them a lot of money to do it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:28 What would you recommend for somebody like, let's say me, so I heard about it. I went on, I created my MiloTree Mastermind. I also have a MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group, anybody out there wants to join, please find it. And you know, and sign up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:46 And so what would you say, now? I've got now I go, Oh, God, headache. I now have to have two groups that I have to manage. So what would you say to somebody like me or somebody out there. When to start a Pinterest community as a blogger Jennifer Priest 34:58 I would not start a community until you are ready to put the time in to nurture and grow it. I would just go and be in other people's communities and talk to them because you don't want people to join your community and have it be a ghost town. That same with the Facebook group. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:13 Okay. So people don't join my Pinterest community until I'm ready. Jennifer Priest 35:21 Or get a couple people who are active in your current Facebook group. If you have a thriving Facebook group, ask a couple people who are active in there and say, Look, I've got this community, would you guys like to come over and kind of help me keep it going. Jennifer Priest 35:32 I don't have the time to be in there every day. But I would love for you guys to be like moderator types. And I don't know if that's a setting or if that's if that's something that would be coming, but but engage those other people to come over and help them bring their energy to your community. If it's something that you're like, I want to grow it. But literally, the holidays are coming up. I cannot do this. Jennifer Priest 35:55 So that it's there. But you know, and know that if it's there, and you're not using it that it may be I don't know, it may be removed, it may just sit there and die. But I think at a minimum joining other people's communities and being active in it is a good idea. Even if you're like, I'm not sure I need one. Go be familiar with it. And get active with it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:14 Yes. Get your feet wet. See what people are doing and copy best practices. Jennifer Priest 36:20 Yeah. And I mean, sometimes something someone else is doing will spark an idea for you. That's totally different, which is awesome. So go try that. Jennifer Priest 36:28 There's no, there's no real rules right now, other than the one thing that I would say to do is Pinterest has community guidelines, which has nothing to do with communities. It's the same word. These are guidelines for overall Pinterest. Rather, they want you to do things. Jennifer Priest 36:43 So just google Pinterest community guidelines, and they tell you what to do, what not to do to be authentic. Don't spam don't incentivize people to like, you know, artificially boost your numbers, blah, blah, blah. So read those. And they just kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you are doing things in your community to make sure that it fits in with what Pinterest wants on their platform as a whole. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:07 Got it. Great. I think that's all great advice. And we'll keep kind of checking in to see what happens if people have great ideas about their own communities. Please email me Jillian@MiloTree.com. I'd love to hear what you're doing. So that I can get Jennifer back on the podcast. And we can talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:27 Yeah, yeah, that would be really fun. And just kind of leads into the hashtag thing. How to add hashtags on Pinterest pins Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:32 Let's talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:33 Yeah, so last year, hashtags. Hashtags, just had their one year birthday on Pinterest. And recently, last year, Pinterest, turned on hashtags. And again, the naysayers were like, Oh, that's dumb, it doesn't work. No one's going to use those. Jennifer Priest 37:47 And again, it's like for them to be able to turn that on, they had to pay a lot of developers to do it, they had to do a lot of research. And it makes sense, if we look at hashtags overall. And I've kind of become somewhat of an expert on hashtags. I also have a course on hashtags. Jennifer Priest 38:03 It was just serendipity that I had this membership, where I provided research, hashtags, lists, hashtag lists to people last summer. And they were like, I was giving them these lists, and then realizing they don't know what to do with them. Jennifer Priest 38:18 So I was making a course and then Pinterest turned hashtags on. And so I had this captive audience that was like, hungry for hashtag info. And I was like, Okay, you guys, let's test it. And they were so awesome, because they all jumped in and started testing. And we found out a lot of really awesome stuff about hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 Now, first, when you were creating this course, and sending people list of hashtags, was it all for Instagram? Jennifer Priest 38:40 It was. The list of hashtags were Instagram focused. And then I realized people didn't know how to use hashtags. The basis of hashtags really, is it's a tool to index content yet, if you remember, back when we had books like encyclopedia you would have an index at the back end, then you would say, okay, the banana shows on page 17, 21 and 842. Jennifer Priest 39:06 And really, that's what hashtags are for. Hashtags are a way to index that content. So you put hashtag banana on something on a platform, you click the hashtag, and that thing shows up for people looking for that topic. Jennifer Priest 39:22 That functionality is the same everywhere, from Instagram, to Twitter, to YouTube, to everywhere, that has hash tags, and that's the thing, Pinterest turned hashtags on last year, LinkedIn turned hashtags on two years ago, YouTube very silently rolled out hashtag functionality, there is a reason that these platforms feel that they need to make content easier for people to find. Jennifer Priest 39:47 And so not just this move by Pinterest as a signal that, hey, they've invested a lot of time, money thinking, mental power, etc, to figure out if they should do this, but that all these platforms are doing it. Musically has hashtags now. Jennifer Priest 40:01 So there's all these apps and platforms that are that are putting hashtag functionality in place. So and Instagram was stories. I mean, it's just, it's just all over the place that we can use them. Jennifer Priest 40:13 So it was like, okay, Pinterest, how do we use hashtags on there, because it is different than how we use them on Instagram. And so my first thought, like, we're trying to do hashtag searches and stuff, and it wasn't chronological. Jennifer Priest 40:25 Now, hashtag searches on Pinterest are chronological, these still are missing things. So I would think of it a lot like in that way, a lot like Instagram, you search for the hashtags, you're not going to see everything in the results. That's for that hashtag. But you're going to see the vast majority of stuff show up chronologically in real time. Jennifer Priest 40:47 So that's the same as if you search the hashtag on Pinterest. But where it gets really interesting, and where I feel like the power of hashtags is, and I have a free guide on how to do this on my site, you just get to a right from the front page of site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:00 I'll add it in the show notes. Jennifer Priest 41:02 Yeah, so the real power is in keywords. So making hashtags out of your keywords, not thinking about, okay, I'm putting this hashtag on here, because somebody is literally going to type in hashtag cauliflower recipe. I'm putting this hashtag because I want my cauliflower recipe to show up in searches for cauliflower recipe, not as a hashtag. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:28 Wait, say that again. Jennifer Priest 41:29 Yeah, it's a little complicated. So if you take a keyword and turn it into a hashtag that is like an additional signal to Pinterest about the topic of your content. Jennifer Priest 41:43 So if I want my content to show up for searches for like buffalo cauliflower recipe, I'm going to put those keywords in the description. I'm going to put those in the title of the blog posts, etc. And also a new thing on Pinterest this month is you can edit the titles of your pins, so that it's different from the metadata on your site. Jennifer Priest 42:04 So I could split test different titles with different keywords. Like there's some cool stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:11 That's very cool, yes. Jennifer Priest 42:13 Yeah. So let's say that I'm giving all those signals to Pinterest what the content is about, but the hashtag seems to be like a jab, like a like a double whammy of, Hey, if you don't know that, this is about buffalo cauliflower. Here's hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag cauliflower recipe, like putting those hashtags on. There's like this extra punch that really make sure that Pinterest knows it's about that content. Jennifer Priest 42:41 So no one out there is searching for hashtag buffalo cauliflower recipe, they are searching for buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower recipe, easy cauliflower, vegetarian cauliflower recipe, they're searching for those things. Jennifer Priest 42:56 And so the hashtag is a way that that keyword, very specific the hashtag is a way to make sure that that content shows up in Pinterest, search for the keyword. And when you talk to normal people, like Pinterest says, and I've heard them say this at multiple conferences. They're like, use broad hashtags. Use keywords as hashtags on Pinterest for search Jennifer Priest 43:15 So in that case of the buffalo cauliflower, Pinterest would say use hashtag recipe, use hashtag cauliflower, which cauliflower is probably a little more specific than they would go, and that will get you if people are searching hashtags. And they're searching these very basic ones that'll get you in the chronological search for that. But if that recipe showed up in a search for #recipe alongside a blueberry pie, who knows what they're looking for. Jennifer Priest 43:45 So there's that. But there's also that every single non marketer, non online business person that I talked to, doesn't even know how to use hashtags. They think it's a joke that you say, like, hashtag funny or whatever. And they don't notice they're on Pinterest. And they're definitely not searching for them. They're searching for best sangria recipe. Jennifer Priest 44:11 So that's how we were doing hashtags back in the beginning. With my group is we were like, less hashtag keywords. Let's try different things. And we found that when you put the keyword as a hashtag, it shows up higher in the search. Jennifer Priest 44:25 Now, I don't have any numbers that say it shows up higher in the search other than evidence that's somewhat anecdotal. Like I put my keywords as hashtags on a sponsored blog post two weeks before Thanksgiving. And it was about Thanksgiving, so it should have bombed and it went viral. Jennifer Priest 44:47 There's those stories that we have for that, but there's nothing that I have that says, Like, if you put hashtags in your pin, it's going to show up 20% higher in the search. I don't have that kind of data, and my brain starts to hurt when I think about doing that. I'm more from the angle of try it, test it, refine it, test it again. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:09 So would you then recommend the broad hashtag, if I'm doing let's say buffalo cauliflower recipe? Would I do a hashtag of recipe like Pinterest says, would I do cauliflower? Would I do cauliflower recipe? Would I do buffalo cauliflower, hashtag buffalo cauliflower. Like, how would you parse it out? How to come up with the right hashtags on Pinterest Jennifer Priest 45:27 I would brainstorm and also search on Pinterest, all of those things. First, I look at the keywords and then I would brainstorm my hashtags. And so those will be usually be about 30 hashtags or so. Jennifer Priest 45:41 I only want to put like five or six on a post. I mean, if I'm being like, really aggressive, I'll put more but you want to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing. It's very easy to do. But there have been some indications from people whose accounts have been suspended. Jennifer Priest 45:57 Now Pinterest hasn't come out and made it a formal announcement about any of this, but there has been some indication that there was a level of keyword stuffing with hashtags and to where you know, it's like 30 hashtags of like cauliflower, buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower buffalo, they don't want that kind of thing. Jennifer Priest 46:15 I would take like the 30 that I have and then split them up and maybe sets of five, so I might have hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag recipe, hashtag vegetarian, hashtag Quito, as the hashtags on one post, and then the next post might be slightly different hashtags. Got it? Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:34 Yeah, that's smart. Jennifer Priest 46:35 So I'm still hitting all those hashtags. Yet, I'm not doing it in a spammy way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Yep. Yep. And again, think about it from Pinterest's point of view, which is they want the user experience to be good. They want those hashtags to help inform the searcher not annoy the searcher. Jennifer Priest 46:55 Yeah. And I mean, if we look at the hashtags, we are putting the hashtag to help people who are looking for that content. Discover it. Yeah, that is straight up all we're trying to do. What is a fresh pin strategy? Jennifer Priest 47:06 And so there's another strategy that I use, I call it my fresh pin strategy, okay. And so this is where I have more than one pin for post. That's how I'm able to take that block of 30, sometimes at 50 hashtags, and I am rearranging them and putting them on lots and lots and lots of different pins, and then putting them out over the course of time over the course of the year, usually, to see how they perform. Jennifer Priest 47:33 And I've been doing this strategy since February. And again, I say, pay attention to those signals that the platform tells you Pinterest engineering blog, well, it will make you go cross eyed, because you're like, Oh, my gosh, they're talking about UX and UI. And also, I don't know what all this stuff is. It gives you all these amazing signals about what the heck they are doing. Jennifer Priest 47:54 Back in February, they started talking about a new AI, artificial intelligence they were using to read images into read posts, and help Pinterest generate fresh content based on like, the other content you've looked at, etc. And so this topic of fresh has come up multiple times when I've seen Pinterest talking on Facebook Lives or at conferences, or in some of their announcements and documentation. Jennifer Priest 48:21 And I think it's coming from there was a while there on Pinterest, where you would go and your home feed would have the same pins and data over and over there were the same like most popular pins, but you're like, dude, I've already seen that cleaning hack like six times, your house is clean. Jennifer Priest 48:38 So yes, yeah, we were annoyed. And so I think this is a response to that. Because now when you go to your feed, it is different every single time. And vastly different. I'll be like, wait, I saw that pin I wanted to pick and I didn't pin it like, you know. And so it's like, it's vastly different. Jennifer Priest 48:56 And so how can we capitalize on that? Because we have the same old content four years ago, that still amazing good content? I've updated it. I've done all this stuff. How can I keep that going? Well, you need fresh content. So fresh is new. But fresh, could also be maybe new graphics, maybe new descriptions, maybe new hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:16 Are you then putting these new images in the post, or you separately uploading them? Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:21 Let's say you do a post on January 20. And then, like you've created some images, and you post one image, let's say in January, and then you wait two months, and then you're going to post another image. But is that image already living in the post? Are you adding it separately? Jennifer Priest 49:42 No. So what we're doing is we're taking what we think is going to be the best performer and we're putting that at the bottom of the post. And then we're putting the rest of the pins out through Tailwind or through Pinterest. And then through Tailwind, because there's a little bit of a strategy there. And then I'm putting them out at a different frequency. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:02 But you are uploading them directly to either Tailwind or Pinterest? Jennifer Priest 50:06 Yeah, yeah. And then we do split testing and paying attention to how is this performing because of something rises to the top, that will now become the image on my blog post, because of this one image is driving more traffic, I want other people pinning that too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:21 So you're going to put that at the bottom. Jennifer Priest 50:23 Yes, And I don't do this for like, every single post. I'm not watching 500 posts, and going Oh, ok. post 499, we got to change the pin. I'm just looking at the cream of the crop at the top. The 80/20 rule in blogger and life Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:33 Great. Yep, yep. And again, remember, like the 80/20 rule, which is this idea that you can chop up things in terms of it usually takes 20% of the effort to go 80% of the way. And then it takes the last 80% of the effort to do that last 20%. But it works in all these different scenarios. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:57 So most of your traffic, 80% of your traffic is coming from, say, 20% of your pins, or 20% of your blog posts. So you want to take the cream of the crop and you want to optimize the hell out of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:11 And you do not want to optimize the hell out of the stuff at the bottom. That's not really driving any traffic, because you're not getting any value from that. But you're getting a ton of value from the stuff at the top. Jennifer Priest 51:23 Well, and then you also can use those signals, right? So like, what content do people want from me, they're telling me and the same, not just on my blog, but I've a YouTube channel. They're like, Hey, lady, we don't want your recipes at all. Only 40 of us watched it. But if you put up a craft room tour, 10s of thousands of people will watch that right. And I don't want to listen to their signal. I'm still making recipe videos. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:48 Right? That's funny. That's funny. Okay, and why are you not listening to their signal? Jennifer Priest 51:55 Because sponsors want me to make recipes. So if they're gonna keep paying me money, and and you know what I've thought about taking those recipe videos, and slowly moving them over to a recipe only channel, which I have enough content that I could probably do that for a new video every week for two years, and not run out of anything. Jennifer Priest 52:15 And seeing if it performs better, because, again, niching it down, they don't understand what Smart Fun DIY is about on YouTube, because it's all over the place. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 It's so interesting, how much of your time are you splitting between Smart Fun, DIY, and then also your consulting/social media management company. Jennifer Priest 52:38 So I'm first Smart Fun DIY, if I have a sponsored post and probably spending like maybe 10 hours on the the blog a month. And if I don't have any sponsored posts that month, usually I do have one. But if I don't have any, I'm literally working on it, like three hours, maybe four hours. Jennifer Priest 52:59 I do have a VA, she does a lot of submission stuff. For me, really, what I'm focused on this year with that site isn't so much making new content, but really dialing in on my SEO and, you know, making those those fresh pins and making sure that the content, when they get from Pinterest to my site is valuable. And you know, there's meat to it, and that it's going to give them some good information. Jennifer Priest 53:23 So I have, you know, there's I'm always up for trying like crazy stuff. So there are some low quality posts on my site that, you know, I was trying something out and it's just is not a good experience for people when they get there. So I'm, I'm really working on fixing that stuff. Jennifer Priest 53:37 But Smart Fun DIY, literally is a part time gig compared to what I'm doing at Smart Creative Social. So I've got two courses there, and a membership. I have corporate clients where I do strategy for. Jennifer Priest 53:53 I do have one client I'm still doing management for, but that is a service I phased out. So I only do strategy consulting, because I'm not here enough to do management, you know, management, you need someone that's available 24/7 or has staff available 24/7, you know. Jennifer Priest 54:12 So they can email you on Friday, have a holiday weekend and be like, I need these 50 pins up now. And you can do it and I don't think that lifestyle was super fun. And I know people that like love it. It was super fun for the years that I did it. But I'm like I'm retiring from management. Jennifer Priest 54:28 Because I feel like I can't do that service well, and there's a lot of people who can, but what I do well, is strategy. And so I also have some coaching clients. I have group coaching and that kind of thing, that I do where it's not just social media. I mean, there's so much stuff that we know these interlocking pieces, and that's more what I do in those areas. Jennifer Priest 54:45 And that is more than 40 hours a week. Just because I really like it. I have a lot of fun. You know, I'll be on the phone with clients at night. Or, you know, especially if it's a coaching situation or doing group calls with my course people. And that part is super duper fun. So I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:07 So Jennifer, if people want to reach out to you see what you're doing. What is the best way to do that? Jennifer Priest 55:14 they can go to smartcreativesocial.com. And you can get to everything from there. Or hit me up on Instagram. If you go to Smart Fun DIY on Instagram. Let me say it slower. Smart fun. DIY on Instagram. You can message me anywhere if you find me on Facebook or anywhere you can message me and that Facebook group that you had talked about. I mean, I'm pretty easy to find. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:44 I love it. Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show. And I hope to run into you at a conference in 2019. Jennifer Priest 55:53 Yeah, definitely. And thank you so much for having me on. It's been so much fun. I totally love dishing about this stuff. Please rate The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:59 If you're enjoying The Blogger Genius Podcast, please do me a favor, head on over to iTunes and rate us or write us a review or both. I would so appreciate it. Okay. Until next week...

Zack gets to talk with Patty Trusel from Pier One Yacht Charters at the Yacht Miami Show 2017 to find out how the charter business is nowadays. You can check them out here https://www.pieroneyachtsales.com/

Kristen Call, for the love of technology, has over 20 years’ experience in the retail and payments technologies and has served in a variety of capacities. Achievement highlights include several patents and has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal and Nightline for entrepreneurial endeavors. Out of the ashes of her years of entrepreneurship she took her lessons achieved to continue to build a successful career in software implementations at corporations including NCR, American Express, Pier One and PetSmart. She is also the current residing president for IIBA’s local Phoenix chapter. She is honored to have the privileged of working with so many brilliant people.Her expertise includes intangible assets such as team building, corporate culture disruption, applying the scientific method to project implementations, infusing agile techniques in waterfall environments, and creating the game of winning. Tangible assets include a degree in philosophy, sociology and a global MBA. She holds certificates as Scrum Master and Product Owner.Carrie Van Sickle is a Sr. Program Manager with GE Digital. As a member of the Strategic Accounts Delivery team, Carrie is responsible for helping customers worldwide achieve desired outcomes through development and deployment of digital transformation strategies. Carrie received her PMP credential in 2007.Before joining GE Digital in 2016, Carrie was with SAP in a variety of roles including five years as a Director for the Data Science & Analytics organization and several years on the commercial side of the business as a Services Sales Manager. Prior to SAP, she held positions with several Fortune 500 companies including leading global delivery for Amkor Technology and consulting for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Welcome back to Glee on the Rocks: an unofficial Glee podcast.  This is Episode 2: Just Some Fake Pregnancy and Some Sadness Today we cover S1Ep2, "Showmance" and talk about the lack of anything in episode 2, how Terri deserves a happy ending at Pier One and Anastasia the Klaine Musical. Also, Emily and Mav both have one strike (Mandy has none). Here's what you missed... --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

My guest on the podcast this week is Rachel Hollis. Rachel Hollis the brilliant founder of the Chic Site, head of the #chictribe and one of the most authentic women I've ever met.         I've followed her site for almost a year now and I can tell y'all that every single time I read a post or watched a #RachTalk I thought, 'This woman is practicing Shalom in such a profound and important way' so I knew eventually I'd invite her to come onto the show. Then last Christmas, I attended a holiday party with a purpose at the Chic Site's headquarters just minutes from my house and I KNEW I needed to have her come teach us how to #PartywithPurpose and how she practices shalom in her everyday life. It was an incredible conversation. We talk about everything from her upbringing as a PK  (pastor's kid) and how that inspired her to see the sacred in gathering people together.  She share with us the how the ChicShows Up Christmas Event came to be— which I have to say, y'all was a highlight of our first Christmas in L.A.   What I loved most about the event was that is was crazy festive, (I got my Mariah Carey "All I want for Christmas" sing on, for sure), but it was SHALOM IN ACTION.  All of us worked to create a Christmas care package for families transitioning from homeless into their new homes. CRAFTS for the babies.  Rachel thoughtfully planned these packages to love on every single person in the family.  What an amazing Shalom Sista!   I was working at the pumpkin pie mason jars station.  I smelled amazing at the end of the event!  Pier One partner with the Chic Site by providing cute aprons for the care packages.  Even Rachel's family showed up to party with a purpose.    Here's Rachel's Shalom Steps to help us ease into gathering and loving people with a purpose.  On the episode we talk about: How Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker that changed her life Her favorite coffee shop is Priscilla's in Burbank, which since we tape the show (back in March) I've visited at least once as week, y'all.  I have a problem :). She's involved in Door of Hope, a faith-based organization in Los Angeles whose mission is to equip homeless families and rebuild their lives.  and her book series, "The Girls" was a spark of joy and Jesus' way of saying, "I see you, Osheta.  You need to laugh right now" for me when my mother in law died last fall. She also mentions these homeless care packages that she keeps in her care.  I'm so moved by the needs of the homeless community and I'm always asking God how to practically care for them, especially in this season of mothering, these were genius. Go to her post on it for a video walk through how to do these packages with your kiddos...methinks there's a #SummerofShalom Instagram party op here... Finally, we're kicking off the #SummerofShalom Instagram Challenge next Monday so don't forget to download (or claim) your FREE SUMMER GIFT here. Follow me on Instagram @OshetaM to see how I practice Shalom this summer. https://www.instagram.com/oshetam/ Shalom in your earbuds Sistas,   Osheta  

John Delley is the President and Owner of Win Win Sales and Promotion and former Dallas Cowboys Executive, based in Dallas, Texas John Delley is an independent businessman and entrepreneur. He’s the owner of WinWin Sales & Promotions, a multi-cultural sales sponsorship sales agency founded and launched in 2008. WinWin connects its clients to their end-users via sponsorship opportunities in sports, the arts, events, cause marketing and entertainment. In addition as a 10 year veteran of professional sports marketing as a corporate partnership sales executive, Mr. Delley is able to facilitate both athlete and celebrity endorsement/representations for his clients. Mr. Delley is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin where he holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Advertising. He has been nominated as a Who’s Who among African Americans and is a member of The Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He is an Executive Director and serves on the board of T.A.B.Y./The Ambassadors of Black Youth. Mr. Delley has worked with many national brands in conducting sponsorship sales and marketing campaigns. Included among them but not limited to are The Dallas Cowboys, Frito-Lay, McDonalds, Bank of America, Lumber Liquidators, Pier One, 5-Hour Energy, Home Depot and various NCAA accredited bowl games. Mr. Delley is active and involved in empowering others to become more entrepreneurial minded while working with those who are already entrepreneurial minded in championing them in becoming financially free and independent thus losing total dependence on jobs and the 9 to 5 corporate world thru collaboration, team work, networks and systems with other like minded individuals. Mr. Delley is married to his wife Valerie of 20 years and they are the parents of four and the grandparents of seven.

TEAPOTS. Just waiting for the TEA. To be put. In the pot. Teapot. We may be launching this episode on April Fool’s Day but this is podcast is no joke! By and large, anyway. This is more an excuse to show off Doug’s extensive (and still growing teapot!) collection. If you have ever wanted to know about teapots, what to look for in teapots, or just general teapot knowledge, this the podcast for you. For teapots. TEAPOTSnotes SURE we talked about some teapots but if you want to SEE the teapots well guess what we got some pictures of Doug’s teapots right here! And did you need some Time Cues? We can do that. Basil even went out and found as many relevant links to buying your own as he could. SUCH A GENTLEMAN, THAT BASIL. We start the TEAcast!ing – 00:00 General Gabbing – 00:45 Tea Questions – 02:10 Actual Questions – 19:40 MOMENTS OF TEA – 28:16 Earl Grey – 28:36 Oolong – 29:55 Harney and Sons – 31:48 Teapots – 35:30 The White Ceramic “Chinese” Teapot – 35:51 The  Blue Koi Fish Teapot – 37:20 The  Doctor Who Tardis Teapot – 38:45 The  Tetsubin Cast Iron Black Hobnail Teapot – 42:20 The  Sun’s Tea Borosilicate Glass Teapot – 46:40 The Zazen Stoneware Teapot – 49:45 The  Pier One’s Tomoko Teapot – 51:45 The Royal Patrician Bone China Teapot – 52:35 The Clay Teapot – 54:00 Where to Find Teapots Online – 55:30 Teapots Out of Teapot – 60:58 UNTIL NEXT TIME