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Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Eric Kohn. Eric is the Director of Marketing & Communications at the Acton Institute. Check him out on Twitter at @iEricKohn.Eric's Music Pick: Huey Lewis & the NewsDo you believe in miracles? Yes! After years of lobbying, Jeff has proven that anyone will fold, given enough time and pressure. Here is the Huey Lewis & the News episode of Political Beats.Those of you with us for a while will know that the band is a favorite of Scot's while Jeff previously has taken any opportunity to vow never to cover Huey and the boys on the show. Well, recently he had a change of heart (Track One, Picture This) and we wasted no time in finding a guest. Did we end up talking for three hours about Huey Lewis & the News? Of course we did. Did we change Jeff's mind? Listen and find out.Scot's love of the band started at a young age, and much of his knowledge of the early story of the band's history comes from a mass-market paperback that he still has to this day. Huey Lewis & the News: A Biography is a 142-page chronicle of the rise of the band and its origins on the San Francisco music scene. It's out of print, obviously, but check your local used bookstore for a copy.Huey Lewis & the News essentially was the merger of two big local Bay area bands -- Clover and Soundhole. Huey and keyboardist Sean Hopper played in the former, while drummer Bill Gibson, saxophonist/guitarist Johnny Colla, and bassist Mario Cipollina in the latter. Clover (sans Huey) were perhaps best known for being Elvis Costello's back-up band on My Aim Is True. The band then picked up a 21-year-old kid in 1979, Chris Hayes, to play lead guitar and were off. The next year, 1980, brought the little-noticed self-titled debut. Here's the thing: It's quite good! This album, and the early sound of the band, is the commercial follow-through on the wonderful music made by the pub rock artists of the U.K. This record is heavier on Mario's bass than later entries, but those trademark backing vocals are there from the start. It didn't sell. At all. The next album would be make or break. Huey's face alone is on the cover. Harmonies are tighter. Little did they know they had an ace in the hole: a song written by Mutt Lange. "Do You Believe in Love" would explode to #7 on the charts. The band had a hit. A follow-up would be tougher. Three other singles from Picture This failed to break #36, though one, “Workin' for a Livin',” has endured as a blue-collar anthem.The band went back to work with a taste of success and a thirst for more. The mission for the next album was simple: every song a hit. Easy, right? With Sports, they pretty much pulled it off. You know virtually every song on this album, including “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “If This Is It,” and more. There was no thematic goal other than producing hits. Synths, drum machines, massive hooks -- whatever it took. Outside writers? Sure! A strength of the band was taking other's material and making it sound like their own, as they did on “Heart and Soul” and “Walking On a Thin Line.”Sports was a monster. Massive headlining tours followed. Two major projects before the next album would drop. First, Huey would take a lead vocal spot in "We Are the World,” filling in for Prince. Second, some work on a little film called Back to the Future and the band's first #1 hit in “The Power of Love.”Huey Lewis & the News is on top of the world. But 1986 is approaching and a new album is due soon. One problem: No one hears a single. One of the engineers calls up Chris Hayes at home and says, "Chris, we need a hit.""Stuck With You" was what he came up with, and it was the lead single for Fore!, which would also hit #1 & sell 3 million+ copies. That said, Fore! is a bit of an odd duck. Fully half the songs were from outside writers, including the album's other #1 single, “Jacob's Ladder” (written by the Hornsby brothers)Next? Well, whatever the band wanted. And what they wanted was not necessarily commercial in nature. A socially conscious effort full of eclectic musical themes, Small World. As far as I've read, the band loves this album. They got to stretch their legs as musicians. They had earned the right to make a project of their choosing. The record-buying public was not impressed. Small World barely scraped 1 million units in sales. The band did have one last bullet to fire at the charts. “Perfect World,” a song written by Alex Call, a former Clover bandmate of Huey and Sean, hit #3 and clearly sits aside their best.Afterward, the band had some well-earned time off. In the time span, though, the rock world was changing quickly. Huey & company dropped the weirdness of the last album and returned to the blueprint -- rock, R&B, a love song, and a tune by Mutt Lange. All on Hard At Play. There would not be another album of new material for ten years. Four Chords and Several Years Ago, an album of 50s-era covers, came in 1994.Plan B, an album of new material, arrived in 2001, followed by Soulsville, a Stax covers album, and finally 2020's Weather. The last record was released following Huey's diagnosis of Ménière's disease, an inner-ear disorder, which means he can no longer hear music frequencies or hold vocal pitches. The result is no touring and no more new music from the band. It's sometimes hard to hear Huey Lewis & the News on the radio. Living on that weird line between rock and pop in the 1980s means there's not a great format for those songs now. It's a catalog well worth further inspection, though. You won't regret spending three hours with us and the band.
Everyone loves a cross-over!This week Casey and Dave are joined by their responsible big-brother podcast Toy Power Podcast to tackle a film that Dave ensures everyone is a classic.Ben, Scot, Trent and Frank say goodbye to good sense for the week and let Casey and Dave ruin their reputations to discuss a film that doesnt deserve their time.Scot is furious, Frank is amused, Ben would rather be watching Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Casey doesn't care and you better beileve Trent wants his money back. So Join Dave as he does his best to subdue the mob into seeing Streetfighter The Movie as the classic it is. Listen to us on itunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.or direct download the mp3 from the link below:https://www.buzzsprout.com/186739/13655009-streetfighter-the-movie-with-toy-power-podcast.mp3?download=trueSupport the legends at: www.toypowerpodcast.comStalk us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or send us your sweet nothings at davesvideograveyard@gmail.comSupport DVG and become a patreon supporter:https://www.patreon.com/DavesvideograveyardSpecial thanks to Ben Sachse, Brett Owen, Zombie Joe, Tony P, Alexis Clarkson and Those Guys Podcast!
Hosts Yash Thakur and Kanita discuss Caroline Weir's injury and what it means for Real Madrid and wish the Scot a speedy recovery. Talking points: Caroline Weir out for the season with ACL Losing last season's three top goal scorers in a snap What is the plan B for Toril now? Where will the goals come from? Maite's role in absence of Weir Big opportunity for Athenea and Linda Caicedo How does this impact Signe Bruun Problems with the press and defense now Cross and inshallah to be our go to? Games coming thick and fast Svava's role with Denmark during the international break Did you enjoy this podcast? Please consider supporting us through Patreon for more bonus content: Patreon.com/ManagingMadrid Managing Madrid is a hub for all Madridistas with updated news, op-eds, tactical analyses, artwork, and of course, podcasts. It also serves as a means for Real Madrid fans to connect and discuss the team. We would like your support so that we can continue to produce podcasts for you. The site is run by a small team that works tirelessly around the clock to make it into what it is today. Your contributions will allow us to continue to have a real and full-time presence in keeping this website, and its podcasts, going. Hosts this week: Yash Thakur (@Odriozolite) Kanita (@KaniFroh) Las Blancas (@Las_Blancas) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“I think the most amazing thing we see is the softening of the skin, which can occur during the first two weeks of the conditioning regimen. The nurses on the floor see it, and I think it's just a tremendous gratification for them to see the results of something right before your eyes,” Tanya Helms, PA-C, from the division of hematological malignancies and cellular therapy at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, BMTCN®, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a discussion about what oncology nurses should know about transplantation for patients with non-oncologic conditions such as autoimmune disease, how the transplant process differs for non-oncology indications, and the clinical pearls oncology nurses should consider when caring for patients with autoimmune diseases during the transplantation process. You can earn free NCPD contact hours after listening to this episode and completing the evaluation linked below. Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 Earn 0.5 NCPD contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD), which may be applied to the early post-transplant management and education, treatment modalities, diagnosis, staging and treatment planning, or coordination of care ILNA category, by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at myoutcomes.ons.org by September 29, 2025. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. Learning outcome: The learner will report an increase in knowledge related to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for scleroderma and other autoimmune diseases. Episode Notes Complete this evaluation for free NCPD. Oncology Nursing Podcast: Episode 173: Oncology Nurses' Role in Stem Cell Transplants for Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease Episode 148: Stem Cell Transplant Nursing in the Home Setting ONS Voice article: What Oncology Nurses Need to Know About Vaccination and Cancer (and other immunocompromised diseases) Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing article: Early Intervention With Transplantation Recipients to Improve Access to and Knowledge of Palliative Care ONS course: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation ONS Huddle Card™: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation National Scleroderma Foundation New England Journal of Medicine article about the SCOT trial: Myeloablative Autologous Stem-Cell Transplantation for Severe Scleroderma Systemic Sclerosis as an Indication for Autologous Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: Position Statement from the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation for Systemic Sclerosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities. To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library. To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email pubONSVoice@ons.org. Highlights From Today's Episode “The goal of treatment for patients with scleroderma is to reset the immune system, and there are three main components of the regimen used at Duke—that's total body radiation, cyclophosphamide, and ATG. This targets all the areas where the immune effector cells live. We also use CD34 selection, which is a process that separates CD34-positive cells from the stem cell product that's collected prior to transplant, to eliminate the possibility of reinfusing activated immune cells back into the patients.” TS 3:18 “For patients with diffuse scleroderma, you want to offer transplant when they have evidence of significant disease, but they're not so compromised that they can't tolerate or have increased risk of complications from the conditioning regimen. Understanding the patient's rate of disease progression is key when determining to transplant.” TS 6:45 “When a patient is referred, we call the patient, and we talk about how the transplant conditioning regimen works to reset the immune system and stop disease progression. We explain the workup visit and go over an example of the timeline needed to collect the cells, admit to the hospital for conditioning, and the recovery process as an outpatient. We want patients to understand the big picture before they ever come to Duke.” TS 7:57 “Some patients come to us significantly disabled by their scleroderma. They may be in a wheelchair, so they require special vehicles for travel. Patients whose hands are severely involved need assistance with their ADLs [activities of daily living].” TS 11:43 “There have been three clinical trials that show autologous transplant improves event-free survival and overall survival and has been shown to decrease all-cause mortality. But it does not repair damaged gastrointestinal, pulmonary, or cardiac tissue. Any fibrosis that has happened is permanent.” TS 12:22 “The most amazing thing we see is the softening of the skin, which can occur during the first two weeks of the conditioning regimen. The nurses on the floor see it, and I think it's just a tremendous gratification for them to see the results of something right before your eyes.” TS 13:01 “Social media has been a huge contributor towards patient self-referrals. Patients are telling their stories on Facebook; patients are asking other questions about how to get referred to a transplant center; and patients whose rheumatologists have not referred them will seek out transplant centers to learn more about transplant for scleroderma.” TS 13:48 “For people with hematologic malignancies, it's all about getting that patient to remission and then transplanting them. . . . These patients have experienced chemotherapy and the adverse effects. They know about low blood counts and fatigue and recovery. They know about central lines and transfusions. The scleroderma patients come to transplantation with progressive disease. They've typically not had blood transfusions, but they are now going to receive total body radiation, chemotherapy, and a stem cell transplant over the next six weeks. And it can be overwhelming. . . . Every day is something new for them to process and learn.” TS 14:56 “Patients become pancytopenic, and they are heavily immunosuppressed. They are on steroids during the conditioning regimen to prevent scleroderma flares during conditioning. These patients have a central line so monitoring for infections, such as assessing vital signs for signs and symptoms of infection, and being aware that steroids can mask a fever.” TS 16:49
Have you ever wondered about the hidden struggles that first responders face on a daily basis? We sit down with Keith Hanks, a retired firefighter EMT from Massachusetts, Scot Ruggles, a former football coach and actor, Corey Moss, the co-director and producer of the documentary 'First Responders in Crisis'. We delve into their experiences, shedding light on the mental health struggles they contend with, and how they find resilience amidst the challenges. We also pay homage to the brave men and women who put their lives on the line. On this journey, we unpack the importance of mental wellbeing in the lives of those who are often seen as invincible. Keith, Scot, and Corey share their personal journeys with mental health, discussing various therapy modalities and coping strategies they have found beneficial. We take a moment to emphasize the need for regular mental health checkups, in similar fashion to annual physicals. We also discuss the documentary 'First Responders in Crisis', a critical documentary that brings the real, raw, and vulnerable experiences of these brave individuals to the forefront. In addressing the elephant in the room, we tackle the stigma of mental health, especially in the first responder community. We explore the "tough guy" mentality and its impact on mental health, with insights drawn from Gabor Maté's idea of doing certain jobs to "repair our past". So, tune in, engage, and let's spark a discussion on the critical issue of mental health among first responders. We believe in the power of shared stories and experiences to drive change and break stigmas. Let this podcast episode be a stepping stone in that journey."First Responders In Crisis" will be released October 3rd, 2023 and the trailer is available here. YouTube Channel For The PodcastCoaching Program
Search ‘Ryder Cup' on the internet and it won't take long before you find an image of Sam Torrance, arms raised to the sky after holing the winning putt at The Belfry at the 1985 matches. The Scot is the son of one of the game's greatest coaches. Bob, but also a pivotal figure in both the Ryder Cup as we know it today and the European Tour. On the eve of the 44th matches between Europe and the United States, Torrance sits down for a fascinating conversation with The Thing About Golf host John Huggan, to talk all things Ryder Cup as he reflects on a career spanning more than 40 years.
We're using our YouTube for something new!Today we bring you this new episode of Scot's Great Idea Show, where Scot grabs the driver's wheel from Adam for an episode and guides the topic.Today's topic is all about bugs, and how eating insects and other tiny creatures can help solve problems big and small. With a strong nutritional profile and a low carbon footprint, the pound-for-pound resource cost for bugs versus other types of meat like beef, pork, or chicken, saves water, saves carbon emissions, and saves space. But none of that would matter if it also didn't create a spectacle, pushing against your mental image of what is and isn't food, and gave Scot an opportunity to formulate this all into a game to film for YouTube.So listen to us talk about bugs and our bug experiences, and then head over to https://www.youtube.com/@SolutionsFromTheMultiverse and see the video we made right after the episode. Direct Video Link Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfRIQ1v4lsQ&ab_channel=SolutionsFromtheMultiverseHelp these new solutions spread by ... Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts Leaving a 5-star review Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference) Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.comAdam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.comScot: @scotmaupinadambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)The Numey (inflation-free currency) Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
Axel welcomes fellow podcaster Scot Eric Candiotti to talk the Hollywood strikes, Perry Mason, Justified:City Primeval, Survivor and much more. Check out Scot at: Scot Forgot The 80s Serious TV Drama Podcast Get tons of ad–free exclusive pods and an archive of all our pods at Patreon.com/DVR We would love to hear from you! Email us at DVRPodcast@gmail.com Thanks to Dave for the music: https://invisibletoengines.bandcamp.com/releases Join our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DailyDVR Check out … Continue reading "Strikes, Perry Mason, Justified: City Primeval, Survivor and More with Scot Eric Candiotti"
Sam welcomes father-daughter duo and theologians Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer. In their book “Pivot,” Scot and Laura help churches to implement practices, establish priorities, and cultivate gospel-centered qualities that form goodness cultures. Scot is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. Laura is a teacher and coauthored “A Church Called Tov” with Scot. The post Pivot: An Interview with Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer appeared first on Church Answers.
Alex is a Narcissistic Trauma Healing Coach and though her programs, 1:1 coaching and educational content she helps thousands of people heal from narcissistic abuse and break cycles of toxic narc relationships & attract soul aligned love. This episode is so interesting but please note it maybe triggering to those who has experienced different types of trauma. Alex shares why narcissism is such a hot topic these days, her own story of experiencing trauma and healing it, how we can spot a narcissist, gravity of emotional abuse, first steps in healing narcissistic abuse and so much more. Doesn't feel like I should say "enjoy this one"....but i hope we can learn from Alex together. Connect with Alex: Website: https://alexscot.com/#/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thealexscot/ TIkTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thealexscot FREE “Heal Anxiety Lingering From The Narc” masterclass series: https://alexscot.com/freebie Alex's Healing Hackers community is: https://alexscot.com/hh Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annamaluskitzmann/ Pranic Healing session with me: https://calendly.com/thiiy/pranic_healing_session?month=2023-09 Breathwork session with me: https://calendly.com/thiiy/breathwork-session-1?month=2023-09 Support small sustainable business: https://goodgoodsstore.co/ This podcast is intended to inspire, and support you on your journey towards inner peace, healing and growth. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthegoodcompany/support
EP311 - Video Commerce with Qurate's Brian Beitler Brian Beitler is the Founder and General Manager of Live Shop Ventures, a video commerce initiative within the Qurate Retail Group, which is the parent company of HSN and QVC. Brian has also served as the CMO of Qurate Retail Group, in addition to many other interesting marketing roles in the retail world. We met Brian at Etail Boston and arranged this interview. We cover video commerce, differences in adoption between Western and Eastern Markets. The role of livestreaming, and the benefits of being a "commerce platform with video" vs. "a video platform with commerce." We also explore the origin on Live ShopVentures, it's first video marketplace on a mobile app, Sune, and the benefits on incubating a start-up within an established company. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 311 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, August 31th. 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: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 311 being recorded on Thursday August 31st 2023 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 and Scot show listeners Jason as you know one of the most common questions we get from our huge listing audience is about live streaming with e-commerce is it a big deal why is it seem to be growing faster in the East versus the west and how important is it to live live streaming so we thought we'd get a expert on the show as a guest that could help unpack that for us all and you better than someone who's LED marketing for numerous historic Brands and served as the CMO for the mother of all video shopping sites QVC / HSN and so that's exactly who we found, we're excited to welcome to the show Brian beitler he is the founder of mobile V Commerce app called soon and the general manager of live shop venters both part of the Keurig group. And I'm not sure Jason but that's a lot of words in the title but I think it's maybe half of the words in your title but welcome to the show Brian we're excited to have you. Brian: [1:36] Grateful to be here and I'll work on trying to lengthen the title so I can keep up with Jason. Jason: [1:41] Set your set your goals higher Brian. Brian: [1:43] Thank you for having me. Jason: [1:48] Brian we are thrilled to have you and as our listeners will quickly figure out and we are eager to jump into all this video Commerce stuff but before we do we always like to give the listeners a little bit of perspective about our guests background and where they're coming from and in your case it's a super impressive retail / consumer background so can you can you give us the version that your mom would share with her friends in the elevator. Brian: [2:15] Happy to do so so I'll back up a decade or two but I started well where I consider I started my career was at Mattel that huge toy conglomerate in fact they're very popular right now coming off of a I think a major hit movie. It's doing very well. Yes I think so has the rest of the world at this point but I started my career there and fell in love with the toy industry and thought that's where I would really spend. My entire career when I left Mattel. In the early 2000s I at the time was leading the core part of the Hot Wheels brand a dream job as a father and a former young boy. [2:56] But I thought I would give myself a taste of retail in the toy industry so I actually left metallic thought I would spend a couple of years on the retail side working with it. A brand I knew we all knew and loved at some point in our childhood called Toys R Us and truthfully I the reason I'm here today is I fell in love with retail there, and what was different for me about retail versus consumer packaged Goods was just the speed of retail it felt like it moved at light speed compared to kind of course EPG brand management, and you know I often tell the story you know working in those days to change you know the package on a five car pack took a couple of years to get it to Market and. I joined Toys R Us and we had this idea to launch a birthday club and. At the time I went to the CEO of the company John I learned and it was how quickly could you get it in Market could you do it in a couple of months. And that and I was often running and in love with retail and so spent a couple of years there and then just continued to be given these remarkable opportunities to work with, really amazing Brands and helping them reshape their narratives with their consumers or and or finding new Pathways new emerging ways, I could grow I was you know there at Bath and Body Works when we launched e-commerce we redesigned the site as a marketing site decided oh we might be able to sell something. Through here and that's been my journey so from from Bath and Body Works to Kohl's department store. [4:24] Then my hand in the bridal industry and private Equity with David's Bridal and then women's apparel and you know fast forward. A few few years and here I am at curate Retail Group. Working in what I think is an exciting future for digital Commerce. [4:42] All of those roles you know usually leading the marketing you know the marketing or e-commerce function for those various Brands and learning a lot making a lot of mistakes a lot of mistakes I'm getting a few things right every now and then, and you know kind of Landing in a pretty exciting place here at grea where we think we're going to do something you know again interesting a new in the digital space. Jason: [5:04] Yeah and a couple of fun facts brand you've LED marketing for for a bunch of those Brands you just mentioned and while you were doing that I was nominally helpful in building a bunch of the the backend e-commerce functionality for those same Brands and so I think without knowing it you've hated me your entire life for all the the features you wanted and didn't get or the the the pace of evolution so I just wanted to apologize publicly for all of that. Brian: [5:34] I appreciate that. Jason: [5:35] But one of the things I particularly love about your career is is I have this theory that, you know though all of retailers has been profoundly disrupted by digital but not all at the same time and so there were there are industries that are disrupted a long time ago and there's you know if you're a grocer or a car dealer you're probably getting disrupted you know right now and I feel like you serendipitously or maybe intentionally have have been in a bunch of Industries. Right at the peak of their disruption so your Toys R Us when when shopping online became a thing and then urine Beauty when that became a thing and then you are you are in the the the heat of the the apparel Wars online and now you're you're squarely in the v Commerce space and it's you know one of the things we talked about the most on the show so whether you did that on purpose or not congratulations on on surfing that digital disruption wave. Brian: [6:32] No I appreciate that I think much much of it was serendipitous I would say that the pieces that probably weren't was my desire to always work for, brands that were leaders in their respective category or industry and as I look back and reflect that's probably one of the things that has been the most rewarding and probably given me the best. Growth is being able to work with you know brands that were at the Forefront Mattel at the time was the leader in in toy manufacturing still still are. Toys R Us at the time was the leader in toy retail Bath & Body Works was the largest kind of. Bath & Body brand at the time Cole's was it was a chaser of you know kind of the discount Department space and ran past JCPenney's and Sears and its competitors and so that for me has been exciting because you know I think being with those who build powerful platforms, let you learn from the best and you know here I said today with curate retailgeek which owns QVC and HSN. You know the largest livestream platform on the globe by far the industry, leader having changed the landscape of how you could use television to shop you know some 35 years ago and continued it for nearly four decades now so that part of trying to work with brands that, I felt were really leaders in their space because I thought it would be a great place for me to learn has certainly been intentional and then this digital Crossroad just happened to kind of line up and almost all of those places at the time I was there. Jason: [7:56] That is awesome and today I sort of perceive you you are on the Leading Edge of the curate retailgeek Roop with your current responsibilities and I definitely want to talk about those but if I have the story right before you took on your current role you also had broader marketing responsibilities for the core QVC HSN Brands is that. Brian: [8:19] I did I did that's that's right I joined you know curate retailgeek rupe. And 20/20 is the chief marketing officer for QVC and HSN are two largest video Commerce businesses, at the time and you know fast forward we obviously are in the midst of those businesses are in their own form of transformation and disruption right for. In some ways you know you talk about a Crossroads, ask for businesses you know having come through retail when e-commerce was exploding and and Retail foot traffic was being affected as people. Spent more time online and less time in stores if you look at where accurate retailgeek Roop you know is today right streaming has remade the way we View television and so we've had to remake our business, there as well primary our audience used to be almost entirely on. [9:07] You know on cable or we reach over 100 million households in the US we used to reach all of those almost on cable and over the last several years is as people have migrated from cable to streaming services we've migrated our business we still reach 100 million households, but today we reach many of those through streaming services because they don't have cable subscriptions any longer and so, you know joining another business who was in the midst of transformation again was was somewhat serendipitous I was excited about the future video and video Commerce had use that, extensively at kind of my two preceding roles and so part of the excitement of joining curate was joining someone who is at The Cutting Edge of this but to your point that's been migrating, and then as we look at the future we said Gee what places do we really own, from an e-commerce perspective and we own the 10 foot screen the screen that you see in front of you from a living room perspective. [9:58] We do really well on the laptop you know the desktop for for e-commerce shopping like most traditional e-commerce retailers but as we thought about the small screen that wasn't a place where we had really built, for the future yet we thought were really well positioned we could certainly see what was happening in in Asia and the explosion of Live And mobile driven Commerce. And realize that that was going to happen here in the west as well. And felt like we were in a position to innovate around that but we needed to put some real Focus around that so you know about a year ago I stepped out of my role as Chief marketing officer of QVC nhsn, to build live shop Ventures and ultimately to launch the soon platform that we're going to talk about today. Jason: [10:42] Amazing and and I for sure I'm going to get into that but I did think you could help us clear up a few just basic questions about the industry first a I now have some some Envy because your TV is 10 feet at home I'm kind of jealous but the. You you call that V Commerce and I'm just curious like I hear all these different phrases all the time I hear people kind of talk about live streaming when they they don't necessarily mean live and video like is there a preferred label that you guys like to kind of describe this, this industry. Brian: [11:18] For sure we love the V e-commerce label in fact we think V Commerce will be the new e-commerce and what we mean by that largely is that, more and more consumers shopping experiences will be driven by video in fact if you look at today's youngest consumer right gen Z or the Next Generation Rising almost all of their Discovery happens in a video experience. If you think about it and it could come from one of the well-known video players right who's in this space Instagram which has become largely video Tick-Tock who obviously has led the way there YouTube. All of these places if I think about and I have so fun fact I have six kids, the youngest is squarely gen Z 12 years old the oldest is Millennial 29 years old and I watched their journey and most of their Discovery right the new trip they're going to take. The next meal they're going to make the next product they're going to buy the next television show they're going to watch is all coming through their video feed. Yet in the e-commerce space we're still largely dependent upon static images and or in the physical space on boxes and shelf talkers and that's just not the way that the rising generation discovers. Anything new. Scot: [12:34] Yep ingredient it's interesting you have a built-in test bed is that was that part of your strategy. Brian: [12:40] I think that that if. Scot: [12:42] We need more kids I need to get another generation. Brian: [12:44] If you went back in math my career I did a pretty good job landing at the right Brands and price basis for my for my kids ages the only one they might say I got wrong was the bridal industry I was a bit premature on the bridal industry, but but you know as I look back so we do we talk a lot about be Commerce and that for us means live it also means pre-recorded, right it can mean you know things that are that are behind the scenes it's anything that really leverages video to help tell the product and Brand Story to a consumer in a way that helps them make better decisions and get to yes faster. That's where we see the Innovation going that's where we see all brands needing to play we think it will look different in the west than it looks in the east. And that's because different consumers and different markets and different level of kind of retail development but we think it'll be globally relevant over the course of the next you know five to ten years. Scot: [13:37] Brickell as the entrepreneur host on the program Jason's a big company guy he's a you can tell by his title. He's corporate drone and he doesn't know who he works for half the time over there there's like he's like I think I have a boss but I don't know I don't know who approves my expense report Seymour, that's how big is a company and you know one of my favorite books is the innovators dilemma where and I'm sure you're familiar with it where you know most companies like tear you they were super Innovative and really did a ton in the category and you know a lot of them don't make it it's interesting to me that you're now working for a company that you know obviously. Is working to not get caught in that in most companies don't kind of sounds like and I may be reading too much in this you you either put your hand up and said I want to do this or they said we need someone to incubate this and you volunteered I'd love to hear the story of how your kind of like starting this company inside of a bigger company that that's interact to excuse you know the extent you can share our what you want to do that that's always interesting to hear because a lot of a lot of big companies don't do that. Brian: [14:39] No I appreciate that you know we feel, you know we I feel honored to kind of be in an organization and part of a company that's trying to lead that way Forbes just named, secure it retail one of the you know the country's top three hundred Innovative companies right so we're recognized for having thought about this space and we've innovated over the course of the last, 35 plus years if you were to look at what QVC nhsn looked like 30 years ago they look very different than what you see today both in the way that we reach interact with customers and so you know the story here you know I'll keep it relatively 34 for time sake but we were looking at you know the future of curate and looking for where we think, you know girls could come from I was obviously looking at that in my core role as Chief marketing officer I let our you know our insights and analytics team and we were looking at the consumer and we're looking at the businesses and the ages of and cohorts of consumers where we did really well and where we felt like, there was opportunity for us and one of those that was clear was we had an opportunity with the younger consumer and unlike many many brands that will often make the decision to go how do we stretch our brand younger it's one of the hardest things to do our view was to say. [15:49] We have a core customer we love our QVC and HSN customers 50-plus their affluent they have disposable income they love to engage with us and Us in this way as we think there is, potential for growth with still the 50-plus customer we have plenty of, consumers who can discover our experience who aren't you a shopping there and we think can fall in love with it but we did recognize hey there's a there's a rising generation that's that's embedded and videos embedded in the way that they operate, why aren't we doing anything there so I did raise my hand and talked a lot about you know that consumer and about the power of video and our expertise and, you know that with. David Robinson who was a new CEO Who had who had joined us in you know late 21 had a knife or for growth and an eye for the digital landscape and. You know started he started to think about where our future would would would lead and he knocked on my door. [16:45] Early and 22 and and we started to talk about what the future could be and how we might do that and decided he decided to establish the e-commerce Ventures is a new unit inside the organization and I join that team to help, you know lead a component of our Innovative future and so it does take having. A CEO that's got a mind for Innovation and you know the ability to say we're going to make the investment necessary to do that so. You know this isn't one of those I feel you know grateful for the fact that I get to work in this call it an intrapreneur setting. We're not chasing you no seed series a series B series C where we're going as a company we believe that we need to invest in the future and this is one of the ways that we can do that. Scot: [17:29] Yeah that's neat that you still sounds like you get the flavor of kind of a start-up within a big company but you can use infinite resources you guys have. Brian: [17:37] Yeah and that we think gives us an advantage and that that's true I we operate we don't have an operation in New York I soon is based in New York right are. QVC is based in West Chester Pennsylvania HSN is based in st. Petersburg Florida. Right so you know we set this up in a new location so that we could operate as an independent and entrepreneurial company but knowing that you know. Just an hour train ride away I've got hands and resources and folks that can kind of help us get through some of the tougher things of getting something off the ground. Scot: [18:09] Yeah exactly now do you have a pretty wide aperture what you could do so you could you say hey we want to just try something real fast on Tick-Tock or is your mandate it kind of needs to run through one of the mother ships or tap into. Brian: [18:24] No not at all. Scot: [18:25] The mothership or something. Brian: [18:26] No we have a very a very wide mandate most of the team comes from Industries outside of kind of are. Our CORE family fact most of the town I've hired has not been former or current QVC or HSN employees they have been, you know team and talent here based in New York City most of them which is where we found the talent pool that, looking forward to kind of build this future and we have a pretty wide aperture to test and try and that's we say we've been up for for several months now we're still we largely consider this the beta version because we are, finding the things that we think will be the best fit for the market and create the best experience for both consumers for Brands and ultimately for creators because we do the reason we refer to this as a platform is, we don't see this as just a one-dimensional or two-dimensional relationship you know brand to Consumer retailer to consumer, but we're also trying to build a place where creators can build a livelihood as well where Brands can create their own content to connect with consumers and where we've built kind of a new way for consumers, the kind of interact and discover new brands. Jason: [19:32] That is awesome and so it sounds like the soon mobile app is kind of the first public release from live shot Ventures am I thinking about that right. Brian: [19:42] Yeah it's the soonest kind of our first public facing you know component of the platform we have components that are that will face Brands and that will face creators to help round out this ecosystem that we think. We'll create a new way for you know these different constituencies to meet one another in a pretty exciting and interesting. Interesting way and they'll be more to share I'm not going to share a ton about those back-end Solutions at this point but there will be more to share in the future as we as we continue to round out the experience, we think it takes to really make this kind of new be Commerce mobile experience. Jason: [20:22] Awesome so maybe you can help it like paint us a picture like what is the unique value prop of soon like is it live is if e-commerce like is there a particular category focuses on or what's the. Brian: [20:35] Yeah to know it's appreciate you asking so look at the core of what we're trying to do is take the the style of video that is loved by a young consumer set column you know. Gen Z too early young Millennials we can't digitally native consumers what we mean by that that's a buzzword everybody said but we simply mean people that seem to have been born with an iPhone implanted in their hand, or some sort of device and if you go back up to 2007 when the iPhone and these devices launched we're looking at people to kind of get there. Hit their teens or younger in that view I look at you know the way that they navigate and that's kind of our core audience because they've grown up with this fat. Device being their primary form of discovering the world so that's our Target so our goal was to build. [21:23] An experience that would make sense to that to that audience so would be short would be fast could would be personalized. I would include the kinds of voices that they're used to hearing from that they trust and that they find credible. Would give Brands a place that are searching to find a pathway that are working so hard to build there. Their products but are can get caught in the jungle that are the very very large marketplaces would give these younger Brands these Innovative brands of place to meet the consumer and to be discovered and to be seen and to have their whole story told. You know it's one thing to just become a product listing on a. On a massive platform like Amazon or Walmart it's another to be able to have someone who understands the consumer tell your brand story so the value prop is to really build what we think is this entertaining. [22:13] Joyful serendipitous shopping moments where you can just discover Brands when you're when you're on the go we think. In some ways part of what. So wonderful about the e-commerce experience is also what's so difficult about the shopping experience and what I mean by that is e-commerce made it easier than ever to buy something. It also made it very difficult to just go shopping and if you think about the experience we used to love as teenagers by the way that gen Z teenager still allowed which is the notion of wandering a physical location a mall or a Target or pick your brand or. You know any of those physical experiences where you can just wander and things just inspire you and you you may have gone into by something you may have had an idea in mind you may have not had an idea in mind. But it was fun and it was a Pastime and it was, enjoyable just to go shopping digital Works differently digital is great if you know I need I need luggage for my trip to Europe I'm getting a backpack I'm going to take a three months and traveling through Europe. [23:18] You can go to the internet and I'll help you find the best backpack in the most array of choices at the price but if you just. Want to sit back and shop and so our goal was to build a platform where the Serendipity of shopping could come up again you could just thumb if you're standing in line at the. At the Starbucks or if you're standing in line at the store you're standing on the platform in the subway station, or you're sitting in class and you're done listening to the professor and you just want to see what might be in your feed that's relevant to you this could be as fun as opening Tick-Tock or opening Instagram. This would be opening shopping for the joy of. Jason: [23:52] I love that there's a this entrepreneur Julie rain Wainwright who founded real real and I don't know if she actually said this but she's always attributed with his quote the internet solve buying but broke shopping it's I. Brian: [24:06] It's a great quote I've heard I've heard that quote I'm not sure if it's hers or not either but I fully subscribe to and that's and that's the reality and so this is a way to bring it back in a way that we think is relevant to you know this. Young emerging audience who's up who's about to have a lot of spending power. Jason: [24:26] Yeah now I'm curious you've talked about this as a platform and it sounds like it's what I would think of as a sort of two-sided market place that you both have to you know recruit and keep happy a bunch of world-class creators that are creating content and you've got to recruit and keep happy in audience that consumes that content and buys stuff that shows up in the content and my am I thinking about it right in terms of it being a two-sided marketing challenge. Brian: [24:54] Yeah I think I think we've called three-sided because we think he have to keep the consumer happy you have to keep the brands and their Founders happy and then you have to, you know create something unique and special for creators who may or may not work directly for the brand that they're going to create content for, and so our thought process is thinking about all three of those audiences as we build and it's why you know we don't see this as a, you know as a Sprint but is building something that we think will be lasting because we're trying to build something that's going to be relevant and meaningful to all three of those participants in the platform. Will you operate as a marketplace right so we're not buying retail we're not buying inventory in the traditional sense right we're building the destination we're working to drive consumers to the destination we're working to source and find great creative talent that we think can build the right kind of content and then we're looking, and reaching out into the. You know into the Reit into the brand landscape to find Brands and products that we think would do well with this with this audience and so we got all three of those things kind of. You know working at once if that's not easy but sometimes the most rewarding things are difficult. Scot: [26:04] Yeah absolutely the marketplaces are hard because you're kind of building to businesses at once you get kind of the consumer and thus the demand and the supply side it can be. But once the network effects it going it's a great business but sometimes it's hard to kind of kick start them do you feel like you guys are at kind of like that product Market fit or you're still kind of. Experimenting and figuring out or like. Brian: [26:25] Yeah we think you know what we're excited about today is the engagement from the number of brands that have come on our platform has gone much faster than we expected. The consumer You Know download and engagement we're in that that nice stair-step each month each week of downloads, increasing on the platform so we feel that we're moving very strongly towards that you know that market fit place but that's why we say we're in beta right well when we're, one more there will declare that were there and we'll change the even the way that we go to market even more aggressively but we're excited about the early signs both the excitement from creators excitement from from Brands who come on board, and again the excitement from the early consumers who have engaged with us the early adopters and starting to experience the platform and so all of those things right now are very positive and. Giving us a lot of optimism as we think about the future. Scot: [27:25] There's wear it sometimes, great to be in a big organization when you're ready you can say hey we need a little distribution and suddenly you know you can you can turn that funnel on you got to be going to make sure you're ready for it and it sounds like you probably haven't you know you should definitely get out of beta for you do that but then even you know even you know how do you do the shoots the right way and you know, inside the work there's tons of just knowledge around streaming and video quality and I'm sure there's some interesting craters that overlap that would be fun to tap into it even brands that you know I'm sure if you were looking for a brand it's much easier being part of the larger or more brands are going to take your call versus you know Joe's startup LLC. Brian: [28:11] Yeah yeah I would say one of our I think that's well that's well well said one of our advantages right is the reality that for you know, for decades we've been helping small Brands become household names become very large businesses because we understand the power of live we understand the power of video and using it to help. [28:30] You know a Founder commercialize their their story and help it reach and reach an audience and so. For sure that is valuable as we talked to Brands who go hey this isn't you know this isn't just somebody out of there, out of the corner of their garage going hey we've got an idea for the future of video shopping this is you know the the leader in video and live shopping who said hey we're going to build a new platform a new experience for a new audience and, we're going to bring our expertise to video shopping to that to that platform and we're going to help you learn how to do it as a brand we're going to help you learn how to do it as a Creator both of those things have been very important, add helping us you know get to yes as we don't get a lot of NOS as we have conversations with Brands right now we get a lot of people excited, even in this early Journey even recognizing that we're in the beta phase because they believe in the business where you know we're over 300 Brands already interested in on the platform, at this stage and you know we're early on we launched in March. And so it's not been hard to get people excited about the potential here and I think part of that is because they can look to the parent of who's building this, and who's making the investment. Scot: [29:46] Yeah very cool would you say so that made me I'm a huge shark tank junkie and I always love when Laurie's on there because she always has that trump card of like, I can probably get you on HSN and everyone's like who so she could tend to get a good deal so then it made me think are you dealing with Challenger Brands kind of like you know things we people maybe haven't heard of or is this kind of like you know Kate Spade or whoever I don't want to go into details but like more long-term brands that are just kind of looking for a fresh new channel is there. Resonating. Brian: [30:22] Yeah so we have a lot of what we call emerging Brands and we can define those in a couple of ways right so there you know I'm an emerging, might have been around for 10 years or 15 years but they're just very tightly, geographically located maybe they just had a couple of stores and a little direct consumer website but they weren't really propagating their brand through there, back in the emerging and we have several brands that look like that we also have Brands there. Relatively young this could be year 1 year 2 year 3 right and they started as a direct consumer brand and they're looking for other points of distribution and other places to be able to tell their story. [30:58] But we've not preclude ourselves from from other brands that are better known and more, National in nature because again at the end of the day you know where our Focus has been, I'm in the early days is and it's because this is this is an area that works really well and video right or proper products that are problem solution oriented products and, Kelly's are great Brands who innovate and develop some new products that solve a consumer problem those do really well in video right now and if you think about, all the you know Tik Tok made me buy it friends you know so many of those products are built around the idea of hey we've got a new solution, a problem that you have or we've got a new take on solving a problem that has been solved a bunch of other ways but never quite solved this way those are the kinds of products and brands that do really well and we find those both in this emerging space and we also find. You'll also find it in some more established brands. But the focus has really been can we bring consumers content that's interesting to watch because what the product does for a consumer is. Have itself useful and highly valuable and that's if you spend some time on the app you'll see a lot of products, better focused in that in that regard and so you know we've not been exclusionary and by any stretch of the imagination but we do have a lot of young and fun emerging brands with some amazing Founders and some amazing founder stories behind them on plan. Jason: [32:23] That is awesome and Brian a fun fact about Scott like most people watch CNBC for Shark Tank and then they accidentally stay on for for Jim Cramer Scott's the one guy that watches CNBC for Jim Cramer and then accidentally. Brian: [32:37] Technics days I'm free. Scot: [32:38] I watched a shark fresh shark tanks on ABC come on. Jason: [32:41] Yeah. Fair enough Earth but inside not I keep telling Scott Scott keep saying hey we need to get on On Cue be on Shark Tank to get into QVC and I keep telling him that curate retailgeek has great merchants and if you have awesome product you can get in regardless of what whether you know a shark or not. Brian: [33:00] And that you know what that's so true Jason that in the reality is is that again if you have a great product curate wants to hear from you and that's and that's the truth and you know we understand what works well for our audience and we understand what works really well. For the video platform and if you bring it you can find your way there I will tell you we get a lot of submissions and for obvious reasons. But yeah you absolutely could find your way there without getting on Shark Tank although a little bit of notoriety never hurts. Jason: [33:30] Know for sure so I'm curious about a tactical element of soon it seems like you made a conscious decision to natively be a nap and and on the one hand. Like man you look at all the data and mobile apps are where it's at like that the overwhelming majority of all minutes spent on mobile devices are an app's you know the top apps have the best engagement and all this stuff but the flip side is, it's a brutally competitive space and it's like really hard to get people to download the app and then it's really hard to get them to to reuse it like I'm curious did you guys. Like debate about a mobile web experience versus an app and and decide that that's where you needed to be or how is that played out for you. Brian: [34:15] Yeah so we absolutely did they say it was probably one of the one of the bigger conversations right as we thought about our future and our Direction working with my team and and. Our partners to think about hey what's the best way to go forward and build a new shopping you know destination and we certainly researched all the hurdles. As well but we saw all the things that you highlighted in the beginning right the notion that, more time is spent on apps particularly from from the target audience we were going after the engagement is much higher the commitment once you have it as much stronger all of those elements that. This is going to be a heavier lift but it's going to be the right lift for us and. And we have to be committed we know it's going to take time but this is going to be the right lift because inside that app also it just gives you the flexibility to do and create some experiential things that just aren't as as. [35:12] They're just not as intuitive or as functional as they are in a mobile web app. Right so you know I'll give you I'll give you one of the features that we love that's just really hard to do in mobile web but amazing an app so you know part of our vision was to be able to create this window, shopping experience again right to bring the joy back to shopping we're literally as you thumb through things consider each one of those swipes the window, write as if you were walking down your favorite shopping destination and you know there's an amazing product with an amazing Storyteller so instead of being on a mannequin in a fixed window it's by a voice that, you know has some credibility and authority and as they tell you about that but what if you want to see more from that brand well you just swipe left. And you're into that brand store. Or what if you want to love what if you love this soon said what if you love this Creator we call them soon satyrs that's telling you the product and you want to do you want to see more will you just you know tap the screen and up comes all the video content that that person is created, doing that in a mobile app mobile apps just don't have the same kind of tactical functionality that you can build inside of an app I'll be realized, part of this if we were going to build a new experience we needed. [36:22] The flexibility in the capabilities to be able to use everything the mobile device gives to you you know ultimately we don't have haptics in our experience yet we will you know they're all those things that are that are native to the app experience that you know. Is opened up an iPhone and ultimately Android which are not on yet but will be in the future. That we wanted to be able to have access to to give it the richest experience even knowing we'd have some hurdles and getting apps downloaded keeping them on the device and getting people back to him. Jason: [36:52] I got it that totally makes sense another one that comes up a lot in a specially you mentioned it seems like adoptions a little earlier in China so I watched the Chinese Behavior a lot to sort of see a bit it predicts how things will evolve here and it's interesting there are amazing social platforms that had huge engagement that are all pivoting to become shopping platforms right so that's by dance that's we and then there are amazing Commerce platforms like Ali Baba and Team all that are kind of pivoting to become engagement platforms and so that's why you know ding dong live and Ali Baba live and all of these these things like I'm kind of curious do you have a position like in the long run what wins right being a a platform that has a lot of video engagement and adding Commerce to it which in the u.s. I guess that could be. Tick tock on Instagram or is it a platform that really is good at Commerce and adds adds the video engagement and so you know maybe that's that's obviously but Amazon or Walmart and then I assume like The Perfect combo of both of those is of course you guys. Brian: [38:00] Yeah so I'm not trying to sidestep but here's what I'll say, video wins video ends and I'll come back to it and here's a here's why I say that so do I think you know Tick-Tock and Instagram and all those who are building you know shopping experiences into their platform, have an opportunity to win and do conversate for sure do in fact I'll give you an example I often share. With you know Brands and others as I'm eating and it's a very simple question for both you Jason and Scott have you ever bought anything while you were in an airport. From a retailer awesome have you ever gone to the airport have you ever gone to the airport to go shopping. [38:36] Right so the reality is that airports have a purpose right which is they help you get from one place to another and it's a very valuable part of your life experience. But what airports learned is have had a lot of people in my space I'll bet if I put some stores in here for you those people will buy something that is for sure going to be true with these social platforms they have a lot of people in their space. [38:59] If they create opportunities for people to buy people will buy but the purpose for opening Tik-Tok is not to go shopping, and people are finding Pathways there because that's like that's a place where I'm at and I'm learning their shopping there so now I can do this so I know if I'm Atlanta I like Ferragamo I know in the Atlanta airport there's a Ferragamo so I can find my way there. As a as a consumer and make it a point to go there when I'm in airports where I know the brands that I like are at, but that's very different than then going to your favorite neighborhood street or going to your favorite you know mall to go to go shopping and so we think those places exist on the other side you have right you have what's happened in the physical space that's taking place in the digital space right so malls have tried to figure out hey shopping isn't enough to get people here I need restaurants and entertain I need other things that are engaging, and team on everybody else is going to go down that pathway as well and go hey, if I want to keep people here I need I need things that are engaging because consumers are expecting more well-rounded experiences from all the places that they go and so our viewers to say listen if you know let's just build something, that recognizes that that's what the consumer needs and wants and create a place we're going shopping and being engaged and being entertained is, in and of itself the point the experience and we believe there will be space for that for an experience like that but I think I think Commerce is going to happen. [40:25] In all of these spaces if you bring video to them I think it's going to happen on on you know brand own websites as they bring video that's the that's the core of it, and again if you step back and go well gee how much space is there you know retail such a fixed base well that's what we all said. You know 20 years ago when e-commerce showed up like e-commerce can't grow the retail space there's a fixed space it's going to be you know give some take some. At the end of the day retail is just larger as as the platforms and places, have continued to evolve and to explode if you think about the difference between where we are and you know where Asia is and where we see the Western markets I think part of this is understanding that I think Asia is unique in that there. Retail ecosystem you know take China it's just very different. From Mars when you consider the scale their population and how much of that is urbanized versus still you know in more agrarian spaces and so it's not exactly the bear to make the comparison between. [41:25] Those two spaces and you know they have different tastes and different preferences and so I think for us in the u.s. I think part of the difficulty has been we've been trying to apply. A formula from Asia to Western markets versus saying hey what's the formula that's right for Western markets and video. And let's let's take stock of understanding what the Retail Landscape looks like here what the consumer behavior and preference for shopping looks like here and then how do you build something that's around that I think brands are starting to figure that out I think we're, you know we're just at the corner we're probably today where e-commerce was in 2001-2002, right so we're on the verge of exploding but if you remember back in those days there were a lot of brands that we're saying yeah we're not going to need any Commerce site. And and then five years later everybody in the country headed e-commerce site. Scot: [42:17] Yeah that first of all you should have qualified your question I'm pretty sure Jason is gone to airports just to go to the Starbucks. That much of a Starbucks not or are you just like is muscle memory for him he's like I want to Starbucks he just ends up at O'Hare and he's like oh oh I don't have a flight but man this this latte is delicious. The so I started a company Channel advisor andqvc was an early customer of ours and I got to go on that behind the scenes tour where you can watch the production room and it blew my mind as an e-commerce person because it was like this pure intersection of data meet Stevie because you know the talent on are would have a may be mic'd up, and the producers say when you talked about you know how the vest feels they watch this I think it was like orders per second some velocity. And they would tell him to talk more about that and if a product didn't make a certain velocity there like next so it's really so I'm kind of thinking you know can you guys because you're you've got both sides of the marketplace are you giving your creators some really interesting kind of youqvc any HSN informed data on on you know. How how to make a better video and sell more product and that kind of thing or you may be too early in your journey but it seems like you guys Doug be like right in your strike zone. Brian: [43:40] No that's the you know that's part of the secret sauce that's why we're so excited about this space it's taking that learning and absolutely the analytics right that we're putting in place and ultimately the. That algorithms that will drive right the personalization feed and the coaching that's given not just to creators but then ultimately to Brands is all built around enabling their ability to be as effective as possible at producing a video and what works depending on the category so. That's core to what we are doing at Stone is using data to drive decisions around content to drive decisions around. The speeds that ultimately will be will be you know shared with consumers right to create as much likelihood or much potential for success as possible and you know you you hit on the head Scott right part of this and part of what's made. You know curate successful for so long is that what seems very soft. Is very data-intensive and using data to make those decisions and we see that as being one of our core attributes in our core advantages is a boat as we build. Jason: [44:51] That certainly makes sense Brian I'm sad because I know we're running up on time and I have one more topic I want to make sure I get in which is this whole debate of video versus live video and I know you do you think about QVC and there's a lot of scarcity built-in which makes the the live model make a lot of sense and in China a lot of it has scarcity of deals and things in the u.s. I hear a lot of people calling things live that aren't even live and so I'm just curious like what you know do you think it needs to be live or is it a place for both like what how do you guys feel think about the live versus store and play video Commerce. Brian: [45:32] Yeah so we use both at soon so we think live live has a role in the sense of creating excitement creating a bit of scarcity also creating the the Serendipity the moment and the authenticity and organic and credibility of the content most of the content. In our mind is shot or created live meaning we're not trying to do a bunch of takes and a bunch of edits of the work in fact I tell people all the time I said it's part of the magic of one of the longest running show Saturday Night Live it's one of my favorite shows maybe maybe part of your audience loves that show as well as right it's taped in front of a live studio audience and part of what makes that show so engaging. Right is that reality and the fact that there's room for errors or groom for mistakes you know you may see one or two but it just feels so, in the moment we think that matters a lot in the experience but today. I don't know I don't know the facts but I suspect a lot of SNL is watched after the fact. [46:29] But the fact that it was shot in front of a live studio audience is what makes it so engaging so what we think about video we talk about it live here we often mean look what we want this to feel is live like meaning it should feel like you're having a fantastic conversation sometimes it will actually be live. But the vast majority of the content is going to be consumed post life because let's be honest gen Z doesn't really meet anybody for an appointment anymore from a from a watch perspective right they watch things on their own time when it makes sense for them, and it fits into their their life that doesn't take away from the fact that if the offer is big enough, for the products right right they'll show up in force for a live moment and so we believe that you need both in order to. [47:15] To create something that's compelling but for us you know largely what we think matters is creating content that is done by people who really know how to speak, can do it in one take right because you know they're good at what they what they do and can bring that level of Candor to the. To the content and that's that's what we think really will resonate candidly with people of all ages we don't think this is that's just specific to young people that's specific to everybody, we love candidness, we love I think you open the podcast here saying Hey listen if you make a mistake or two we're not going to stop and rerecord and all those things right and you're going to listen part of what makes this so natural is when it's. Captured in the moment we think that's true for video Commerce as well. Jason: [48:00] That I love that that that's a perfect way to sort of describe that the approach it makes perfect sense to me side note the reason we do that on the podcast is because Scott makes so many mistakes that we couldn't possibly go back and fix them all. Scot: [48:15] Hey I think Brian was saying we're influent we're popular influencers that's how I. Jason: [48:19] I feel like he's like as an l and the Jason and Scot show are the two. The two top top tier entertainment vehicles I think that's very fair but Brian I'm super sad to report that we've used up our allotted time this has been a great conversation and we sure appreciate you taking time to talk with us. Brian: [48:39] I appreciate you having me on the show thank you so much guys. Scot: [48:42] Brian if folks want to learn more about your online thoughts or you are you an influencer yourself do you publish somewhere or you just want to encourage them to check out that. Brian: [48:54] No you so you can absolutely follow me on LinkedIn for sure I do Post. On occasion I'm not an avid poster right now because my head has been down here but please do that and then again I would encourage you to download soon if you have an iPhone you can visit us at soon dot live too. Hear more about this if you're a brand and you want to be a part of it part of what we're doing here please go to soon dot live you can fill out a form and and someone from our our merchandising team will reach back out to you for fairly quickly and get you connected but. Yeah thank you again for the time. Jason: [49:30] Brian we will put all those links in the show notes for anyone that wants to follow up with soon and until next time happy Commercing!
Welcome Back Greyhounds! We missed you this summer, but we're back with another book to discuss! Join us we debate whether the book is called Football Against the Enemy or Soccer Against the Enemy. (Bex is uploading it though and she says, 3 Americans against 1 Scot means it's Soccer!). In our more depth sections of the episode, Marita talks about the author, Simon Kuper, superstitions in sports, and the player directed nature of Dutch football (soccer!). Then Andrea delves into politics and racism in sports. Michaela builds off of this idea focusing in particular on aspects of British politics and considers the episode where Sam's restaurant is vandalized. Finally, Bex wraps it up with a discussion about how just as there are many ways to enjoy a book or a sport, there are just as many ways to engage in fandom. We hope you enjoy! Follow the podcast on Twitter @beardsbookclub
In this episode of The Role Forward, Joe and Scot dive into the world of fractional CFO services and the transition to in-house teams. They discuss the inflection points where companies outgrow fractional CFO services and the economic factors that drive the decision to hire in-house. The complexity of business activities and the need for a 24/7 finance team are key considerations.The conversation shifts to data infrastructure and the challenges early-stage companies face in building and tracking plans. They emphasize the importance of clean data and the role of systems and automation. Joe and Scot also explore the difficulties in integrating various systems and the value of data analysis in deriving meaningful insights.Scot shares his journey from startups to consulting and back, highlighting the growth and collaboration experiences. He explains the engagement process with companies, emphasizing the strategic value of starting with accounting before moving to more complex financial planning and analysis (FP&A). The episode concludes with insights into strategic projects and the path to growth.Guest-at-a-Glance
Welcome to the Whole Equestrian Podcast- where we're bridging the gap between riding and wellness! Discussing topics related to mindset, fitness, nutrition and community. Our mission is to promote health and happiness through our love of horses. Tune in to this week's episode with trainer Scot MacGregor. If you listened to our last episode with Dr. Pamela Reband, you most definitely heard Scot's name. He was a critical part of helping Pam rebuild her confidence and get back into the saddle. Very excited to share the conversation with you where we discuss positive coaching and horsemanship. You can learn more about Scot through Pam's self-published book, Three Steps Up to Mediocrity, available on Amazon: https://a.co/d/egLj3uT
After the release of their groundbreaking book, A Church Called Tov, which recorded the stories of abuse and toxic church cultures at some of the most prominent churches in the United States, New Testament scholar and blogger for Christianity Today Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer heard from a flood of people who had experienced similar instances of abuse. After all they've seen and heard, they still believe it's possible for church cultures to be transformed from toxic to tov—from oppressive to good. In Pivot, Scot and Laura help churches to implement practices,establish priorities, and cultivate the Kingdom Gospel-centered qualities that form goodness cultures. Readers will find answers to the four most common questions people have about culture transformation: How can I transform the culture in my church or organization to make it tov? I believe my workplace has unhealthy values. How do I initiate change? How do I unleash a culture of goodness in my ministry? I'm not in a position of church leadership. What are some red flags that indicate a toxic culture, and what can I do if I see them? Pivot also includes the following practical features: The “Tov tool,” a survey to help you discern your organization's culture and to promote spiritual conversations A “getting to work” section at the end of each chapter with questions and next steps for application Transformation is never easy. But for the sake of the next generation, we must do it. Scot McKnight (PhD, University of Nottingham) is a world-renowned speaker, writer, professor, and equipper of the Church. He is a recognized authority on the historical Jesus, early Christianity, and the New Testament. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Portuguese. He is the author of The Jesus Creed, The Blue Parakeet, The King Jesus Gospel, Revelation for the Rest of Us, numerous commentaries, and is now writing a sixteen-volume series of reflections called The Everyday Bible Study.
We know we went long, but that happens when we disagree. Just break it up into bite sized bits and enjoy the whole meal. Kemp suspends the gas tax to fight Bidenflation or bidenomics or something. Scot just thinks it means we are overtaxed. Americans for Proseperity are having a cool event The Original Grand Jury report was released on Friday and it included more names that should be indicted: David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, Lindsey Graham, but buried in there was State Senator William Ligon too. "Nobody Punched Colton" - Senate Republicans meet MTG gets her impeachment wish... sorta Who is Tony Bobulinski - and why wasn't he given the chance to testify? Whistleblowers Is this just a ploy by McCarthy to keep MTG in line? Kemp's latest shot at Trump Senator Still's Status to be decided soon - next day or so. The $100 patreon tier will be going away soon, and replaced with an advertising deal more inline with the value placing an ad on the podcast represents. Those who currently enjoy that benefit will be grandfathered in so long as they remain current on their contributions. Any one who signs up before October 1st will get to stay at the $100 level. Learn more about becoming a Patreon here. - We are truly grateful to these folks! Please take a moment to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. A review would be appreicated as well.
How do we call out injustice and seek shalom without becoming self-righteous? In their new book, Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers That Can Transform Your Church Into a Tov Culture, father-daughter duo Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer follow up their previous book, A Church Called Tov一charting a course for those seeking to create a healthier church culture. In this episode, they share with Steve Carter: How healthier churches exist when leaders listen to the Spirit and surrender to his leading. How to build a church culture in which power is stewarded, not abused; where people are shepherded, not manipulated; where leadership is accountable, not untouchable. How to diagnose the health of your heart and team, even when everything looks “put-together” externally. How to respond thoughtfully to abuse and scandal in the digital age. This book is a must-read for any pastor, leader, discipler, human, who aches to see the church become tov. EPISODE LINKS Scot and Laura's co-written books: Pivot, A Church Called Tov Laura's website: https://www.laurabarringer.net/ Scot's Substack: https://scotmcknight.substack.com/ https://www.churchcalledtov.org/ @scotmcknight @laurambarringer @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Long time Boston Globe reporter and columnist Scot Lehigh has just authored his first novel and it's a winner."Just East of Nowhere," Scot Lehigh's debut novel, is a gritty coming-of-age story that explores the often hidden pockets of Maine and features a poignant and troubled cast of characters who are caught in the undercurrents of a struggling coastal town. A fine work of exciting fiction from one of the region's top journalists!
Scot McKnight is on the podcast! His new release Revelation for the Rest of Us hit home for me. Turns out, Scot and I grew up in church communities that were teaching similar things about this mysterious book. The “literal” interpretations of Revelation often led to great (and scary!) speculations about what the end of … Continue reading Episode 213 – Scot McKnight
Show NotesAndrew has been following a story about a ‘Curse Tablet' found at an archaeological site in Israel which proponents claim should up-end Biblical Archaeology in such a way as to confirm the conservative evangelical view of the Torah – the first five books of the OT. We look into it and hear from both sides.This led on to Ed introducing the chapter in the ‘50 Arguments for God' book on Biblical Archaeology. It concentrated on the NT and we picked up especially on one claim in the chapter, that the archaeology concerning 1stC tombs around Jerusalem helped confirm the gospel account. After some digging (yes, a pun) we think that we unearthed (sorry) a different story.Links:Link for apologists making hay on Curse Tablet: Sean McDowel with the main proponenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEVEKX_0x08And after the push back, another episode with a Christian scholar who dismissed the Curse Tablethttps://youtu.be/SBmuNw59AOgResponses from academic, Dr. Robert Cargillhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkBByBE2OUohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Scp85Nlnk
EP310 - Sam's Club VP E-Commerce, Sabrina Callahan Sabrina Callahan is the VP of E-Commerce at Sam's Club. She participated on a panel at E-Tail Boston entitled "Humanizing your brand through effective storytelling". After her panel, she sat down with Jason to discuss all things digital commerce at Sam's Club. This broad ranging discussion included: Mobile's impact on shopping Challenges and opportunities of membership clubs (and their unique access to data) Role of omni channel Connecting digital marketing channels to digital experience Building a brand for Sam's Club in the digital era Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 310 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on live from e-Tail Boston on Tuesday, August 22, 2023. 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: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this episode is being recorded live from e-tail Boston Trade Show on Tuesday August 22nd 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott wasn't able to join us so you're getting twice the Jason for the same great price which if you think about it is double the value. And while I know it's disappointing to miss Scott we're making up for it by having a way better guest I'd like to welcome to the show Sabrina Callahan who's the VP of e-commerce at Sam's Club. Sabrina just completed a panel here at retail and titled humanizing your brand through effective storytelling Sabrina welcome to the show. Sabrina: [1:04] Thanks for having me Jason. Jason: [1:06] We are so excited and I'm hoping this ends up being a permanent replacement for Scott. Sabrina: [1:09] I think I'm up for it I've heard him so I think I could do it. Jason: [1:12] I feel like in the first five minutes you're way more interesting and pleasant than he then he he's kind of a curmudgeon. Sabrina: [1:18] I'm not I'm just not even going to say anything but just know that I'm ready. Jason: [1:20] Smart so before we get into all the meaty topics I always like to let listeners kind of get to know the background of the guests a little bit so did you work for Sam's Club straight out of the Cradle how did you come to Sam's Club. Sabrina: [1:34] Surprisingly no not right out of the Cradle. I've been here for the last four and a half years and Jamie rule mark my five year so I'll get the coveted 5-year badge but kind of backing up all the way to, my background I was born and raised on a small farm in Kansas. Jason: [1:53] And in Kansas a small farm is like 100 acres right. Sabrina: [1:57] Yeah exactly so I grew up on the farm grew out in the field by somebody dad does all of the crops and my uncle has the dairy so I was out on the tractors driving the semis trying to not get myself. Killed you know all of the fun things that come along with Farm life and left went to University of Kansas. Chuck that's exactly right that's Rock Chalk. And then graduated in journalism and then made my way down to Dallas so as much as I love Kansas and small-town farm and and everything I wanted to kind of experience, bigger city and been in Dallas ever since and we love it there so worked at a start-up in the beginning my entire career has been in digital and marketing and brand and social media and everything that goes kind of along with that storytelling and driving digital performance so I was a star but at startup and then I went over to Hilton corporate and was there for about seven years loved it there I think I. Jason: [3:00] Are you okay this event is a tan on Hilton property. Sabrina: [3:03] I know listen you're not supposed to say it don't say it. Jason: [3:07] To our loyal Hilton listeners were sorry. Sabrina: [3:10] But what if he found out I was staying at the Hilton and walking all the way over. True loyalty rate my shoes weren't word up for it today but no I was at Hilton for about seven years I loved it there and really grew up there and they took a they took a lot of. [3:28] You know bets on me and allowed me to thrive I was there in the e-commerce space really when they launched the pilot of e-commerce, and and got to work with some of the biggest hotels, in the world with them and a lot of great opportunity got to start managing people you know they kept growing me and investing in Me And It ultimately LED I was in the e-commerce space for the majority of the time and then It ultimately LED to driving and leading the social media strategy and Innovation for Hilton so it was across all 15 Brands and at the time. There was a lot of opportunity to kind of pull it together and say what's the role of social media, for a for a big company right not just hey we're going to go post but how do we think about the tech stack how do we think about the member feedback to drive business impact how do we think about, content and how do you think about influencers in the role of influencers in the partnership and understanding the rules of the Ft c-- all of the fun things that come along with that and then how do you make sure that, the Brand's all understand the value of it and lean in the right way so I got to present Hilton's first Evers social center of excellence and then that led to, a lot of opportunity that opened me up in the social space and I was on maternity leave with my third baby, when Walmart came knocking. Jason: [4:50] Wow congratulations on that by the way. Sabrina: [4:52] Yeah three babies is a lot especially we're in August right now and school starting so it's slightly chaotic around my house but still good so. No so then Walmart and Sam's Club came knocking and I didn't think I would leave Helton but I really had some fantastic conversations during my interview day and a lot one of the last ones with was with mr. Tony Rogers and have you met him before he's. Yes so you know you know. Jason: [5:26] Put my life in his hands on an airplane before. Sabrina: [5:29] Oh yes good luck yeah. That's good you're here to talk about it so that's good no and so we. We hit it off and they offered me the job and and four and a half years later it was a big giant move in a bet for me but it was obviously well worth. Jason: [5:49] Very cool and you've actually had some really interesting responsibilities at Sam's waiting up to your your turn responsibilities briefly talk about some of the projects you've been in. Sabrina: [6:00] Absolutely so his pitch if he will at the time was come build a 60 billion dollar brand with me. Now how can you say no to that so that was a fantastic first start and so coming in really we built the brand together I learned I think about 10 years worth of information from him about Brandon, three short years but we developed the brand so the look and feel the tone of voice the target audience we revamped all of the marketing channels including you know site email everything digitally and then really launched social media right so Facebook Instagram Pinterest, YouTube you name it all the things that have to do with social media including the influencer strategy again and and moderation and care so. We did some really fun things I think it was a bit of a whirlwind so our first brand campaigns got to do you know the Super Bowl with Kevin Hart all of the the fun things that come along with leading you know a pretty awesome brand. Jason: [7:09] That is very cool and for listeners that might not be familiar Tony was the former CMO at Walmart and Sam's and the next time he calls you I have a feeling free jewelry is going to be part of the offer because he. Sabrina: [7:21] Yeah I should make a list of things that I want. Jason: [7:26] It should be a long list but be my suggestion that he's at signature Georgia. Shout out to tell me I know he listens every week very willingly and so in the current role you are responsible for All Digital at Sam's Club and is that a thing is digital a fad at Sam's Club or. Sabrina: [7:44] We just a Fab yeah who probably probably gone. Yeah no big deal yeah is super super fat yeah so I along with two of my peers we lead the e-commerce business and so I'm basically the upper funnel piece, so working really closely on the traffic strategy so what types of traffic re driving in and then how are we actually moving that traffic down the funnel so you can think about that of all of the Cross category, you know Stories the homepage anything that really allows us to show the breadth of what Sam's club offers so not just the categories and Merchandising but also the membership the Sam's cash that we offer the Travel and entertainment all of the things that come along with an actual full membership not just retail only. Jason: [8:32] Yeah and there's all kinds of interesting Dynamics to me it seems about marketing em in a membership environment versus a. Traditional, wide open and retail business so I assume you're trying to get people in the funnel for membership and at the same time you're trying to get members in the funnel for individual transactions. Sabrina: [8:54] Absolutely right the bigger the base the more sales you can expect so it's a balancing act right in terms of we need them to be purchasing things but ultimately we need more members and we need them to renew right so at the end of the year would it becomes renewal time we want them to see have seen the value throughout the year that they say oh this is a no-brainer when we're on the brand side or I was on the brand side a lot of it was we're trying to build brand Advocates because there's nothing more powerful than someone saying you've got to join Sam's Club I joined and I love it, so that was the the sole purpose of we're building Advocates we're building brand passion we're getting them excited and every piece that we're pushing you should be pushing our value prop of the overall membership. Jason: [9:35] Awesome so before we dive any deeper in that I need to know what your favorite Members Mark product is. Sabrina: [9:39] Oh okay it's really hard to just pick one so I think I'm actually gonna pick two. One of them because one of them is very seasonally relevant and one of them something we do all year long so the seasonally relevant one I'm going to say. There's so many things I would say probably the members Mark beach towels and or pool towels I've had some of the same ones. For since I started working there they are thick their giant and big and they have a fantastic value to Market and we just keep I keep adding every year this year they didn't kid towels to with awesome designs on them so I'm a big fan of mild that's you know anything about you're advocating for something I advocate for a lot of things there and not because I work there but because I genuinely like them and then the other one that I love that I try to get everyone to do is we have these Members Mark southern style chicken bites. And you just pop them in the airfryer and sad sad to say is good and bad it's sad to say I give my kids then like once a week but they're addicting some always like well they're just for the kids and then I end up eating them all for dinner to they're just really good. Jason: [10:43] I'm well familiar with all those phenomenons and I'm going through an airfryer phase right. Sabrina: [10:48] Few are so easy. Jason: [10:49] I'm I gotcha yeah it seems and I thought you were going to go with salty snacks I mean that's the easy answer and then you curveball Benny with the beach towels which as a parent I have learned you need way more beach towel. Sabrina: [11:03] It's important we've got a pool and we always have kids coming over and using all the beach towels so it feels like it becomes a full-time job and then you can't find them all and I don't want to go spend a ton of money to replace them, and so we either have them on hand or they're not that expensive to go by Exo. Jason: [11:19] Now I don't know if you checked with the home this week but your pool has probably evaporated it is hot in Dallas. Sabrina: [11:23] Oh my gosh it is hot I think it was like 109 on Sunday. Jason: [11:28] Yeah good call to come to Boston. Sabrina: [11:29] Yeah yeah I walked around this morning it was so nice you Dallas is brutal yeah I did you ever see the thing that went viral with the guy who he was pointing out the temperatures and then he showed McKenney and it was like a hundred thousand degrees he's like everyone in McKinney's dead. That's how it really feels. Jason: [11:46] It does and pro tip is someone that does a lot of business travel we probably don't want to mention to our family that it's more comfortable here than it is at home. Sabrina: [11:55] I already texted them like sorry. Jason: [11:58] Just saying be careful so I have a new and it's so Members Mark is a of course the famous owned brand for Sam's Club. And I won't put you on the spot with any proprietary information but it's a on its own a very large brand I think Walmart in the past has disclosed that it's over a 10 billion dollar a year brand so so remarkable the Walmart, there's a number of own Brands but of course the one most associated with Walmart in my mind is great value, and so I'm now in a murdered with a new Great Value product that's only available in Canada. Sabrina: [12:32] And it'll only available in Canada what is it. Jason: [12:34] And I just imported two cases of them to my home in Chicago Great Value ketchup flavored potato chips. Sabrina: [12:43] Oh my gosh things are off we got two cases. Jason: [12:48] Do not recommend you you try them but here's the thing there was you guys just had your earnings call congratulations it was a very very successful quarter. And Doug mcmillon to see ya. I don't know if he did it on purpose or on accident but in the investor car he talked about a trip to Canada where they made him try catch, potato chips and he kind of said it's the only Walmart owned brand products that he doesn't want so now my thing is I show up at every meeting. With a bag of these potato chips. Sabrina: [13:22] I don't see him in here. Jason: [13:24] I did not I didn't think about bringing him to Boston and you have to like it's a pain too. Sabrina: [13:28] Okay packing with potato chips in an airplane. Jason: [13:32] Chick early well. Sabrina: [13:33] Get interesting yeah well now I'm intrigued yeah so I'm gonna have to drive it. Jason: [13:37] Procure some. Sabrina: [13:37] Yeah I can't wait to try them yeah. Jason: [13:40] Come away if Doug comes for a visit just saying. Sabrina: [13:42] Yeah perfect you don't as much as I'd like to be picking my kids will probably even like two. Jason: [13:46] Oh my God my son my son would definitely the more like something's unappealing to my palate the more likely. Sabrina: [13:53] I'm a to be fair I've seen my kids dip potato chips in ketchup. Jason: [13:56] Yeah of course. Sabrina: [13:57] So it seems to actually make a little bit of sense yeah. Jason: [14:01] Um so zooming into Sam's a little bit like obviously in this last decade one of the huge changes is this whole mobile, um and I imagine it's fundamentally changed how people shop, the you know you hear a lot of stats about even how much people are using mobile in the store in the club so like I'm somewhat curious I don't think please don't be offended, don't think of Club as the earliest adopter of digital not saying specifically but all club like. Hilton was impacted by digital before Club was right and Circuit City was probably impacted by a digital a little before. Sabrina: [14:44] Sir. Jason: [14:45] Of our club was so that being said like, is like how has the Advent of mobile changed how you think about marketing and customer experience at Sam's today. Sabrina: [14:55] I mean it's extremely important so you're absolutely right at Sam's Club when we look at that the performance and understand where people are headed that's where we focus our time and energy Ray where do they want to be where they going how do we get ahead of it and provide a good experience which requires us to know where they're spending their time and we've seen a pretty significant shift. Into Mobile and app experience specifically and so what we've what we've done is try to get a better understanding of what's the data and the behavior that they're taking within the app so let's just focus on specifically app right because there's desktop there's mobile web and then there's a and if you think about it there's trial barriers to downloading an app on your phone right you don't just immediately say yes I'm going to put the app on my phone so there has to be a reason and a journey to move them from mobile web into actually you know committing and putting the app on their phone. [15:51] So I think there's different ways to say well what's a trigger to get them to download but we know one of those giant triggers is this can I go I so everyone loves scan ago if you've done it you know and and you have to download the app and actually. You know use it in the club to be able to make the purchase through scan and go what's interesting that you might not know is if you hope if you've got scan and go and overall digital and you're looking at it the numbers are pretty strong if you take out scan ago and you just look at online digital penetration only about a third of our members or shopping online so so to me I'm like well hang on a minute they have the app on their phone so we broke through a massive barrier already of loyalty they're purchasing with us but they don't see the value of shopping online. [16:41] Unless they are shopping on the app in the club so the opportunity becomes massive I got two thirds of our own member base for good acquisition and new members coming in if I just even start with our member base how can I give them a reason to see the value of pulling up the phone and building a relationship through digital when they're not in our clubs and I think that's what we've been trying to focus on and get to so really then it becomes the traffic drivers. [17:07] Right so how are they coming and how do we get them to ultimately make that decision to move from Google to the app or to mobile web to add to cart and ultimately ultimately make that conversion and we're really taking a lot of time and focus around the data so for instance they come in on the homepage did they come in on a category shelf page that has a bunch of items did they come in on a specific product page did they come in because they wanted to check their Sam's cash total what drove them in how much time are they spending did they bounce or did they stay did they look at things what was their scroll rate did they spend a lot of time we really focus on what it is they're doing what types of things are finding worth adding to their carts and then we start figuring out okay how can we drive bigger baskets your category penetration or introduce new member benefits like we were talking about earlier rate so if I've seen that you know Jason's come in and he comes every five weeks and he buys the same 15 things to stock up as house well how do I show him the amount of Sam's cash he's earned. [18:15] In between that five to six weeks to get in to come in and then give them things to potentially you know get them excited to purchase through digital using that hands cash or whatever it is that that you can create those triggers using the data so ultimately focus on on driving more app frequency and. [18:33] Also say as we continue to see the shift to mobile and to app I think members are at the center of everything we do so remember obsessed and as we see what's working and not working with what's working we can lean in, great okay they love it keep doing it if it's not working we know about it so every week we start off the week of one of the members saying what do they not like about us last week right so we look at not only the MPS but we look specifically at the word for word feedback so through member surveys the customer call center the social media I mean we're all pulling it up looking at the Facebook groups and looking at the comments and saying hey we could have done better here and so as you think about that and you put that lens of app and digital this is working this is not working how do we think about our roadmap and our prioritization to provide a better experience to remove, the things that are giving them reasons to not want to shop online with us and pick the big ones and and start to move the needle which ultimately is part of the reason we saw an 18% complex you too. Jason: [19:37] That's amazing and I do I want to double click on the data but before I do I just want to stay in the app thing for one more SEC because I couldn't agree more, people way underestimate the difficulty of getting customers just to download the stupid app. And in many cases I have a lot of clients that like don't have quite the, Market awareness of Sam's and they'll ask about building an app in before I let any of my clients build an app I take them to an Apple store and we sit down and Apple Store and. Talking thing you'll notice about half the people in an Apple Store are men and women that are my age or older and they're in line at the Genius Bar because they do not know their iTunes password. And guess what you can't do if you don't know your iTunes password and download an app. And so there is just this this huge barrier and the. For normal retailers the mortality of apps is huge two people download it only use it once like the abandonment rates are super depressing so for a lot of people like you go like. Explicitly focusing on app downloads is often a mistake. Um I don't actually see Sam's heavily promoting the act of downloading the app what I see you guys promoting are the. Benefits and the problems that are solved with the app is that I'm assuming that's an intentional decision. Sabrina: [21:00] 100% right because I think if you go into the club which I think is again, the true power and value of a true end-to-end Omni retailer right and and that's our challenge always is when you go into the club you feel the club, right the the first experience coming in like you're like this is awesome and where do I start right and it's a full brand experience and you feel the I feel you see you touch you experience the items. And digital you don't necessarily have the ability to do that so the challenge becomes how do you bring your brand to life, through digital and you have to know those touch points and I would say. You're exactly right is is it's really hard to do say go download our app it's another thing to say hey do you want to get out the door quicker. Jason: [21:47] Get this line. Sabrina: [21:48] And I would tell you I would say 10 out of 10 people are like yeah they're not going to say no I'd like to stay in touch in line the waste my time no they want out and it's actually really yeah. Jason: [21:57] Desert home with the with their their their significant other. Sabrina: [22:01] That's very true like listen okay we'll say nine out of ten, 10th person's a sad sad person but either way the the opportunity becomes okay we'll give them a reason valuable enough for their time and attention that it's worth downloading that app on their phone I think what's been interesting to is navigating the conversations rate because when you see the value of app and you see the growth and app me like yes app app and everything is focused on app you tend to forget the actual member journey to get to the app right so they may have started on desktop, when you know they were sitting at work and me and they were trying to figure out where to start for dinner that night that desktop Behavior may have said okay actually I was looking at something at work today and now I'm pull it up on my phone and they went through mobile web and then ultimately they shop with us a couple times and now all of a sudden oh I didn't realize they had an app that app would be easier right so there's a journey and you can't forget everyone else that that is experiencing it before they made the decision to put that app on their phone and so you it's hard to prioritize and forget about about everyone else you have to understand there's a journey in between. Jason: [23:08] No I couldn't agree more in before I go on I do want to just one shout out to scan and go because it's amongst my favorite digital experiences because unfortunate truth of many digital experiences is, they're awesome and members our customers love them but they often are problematic for us as retailers IE often, it's taking something that the customer used to do and shifting it to something we have to do right so you think about online grocery, the customer used to get the bananas now we're getting the bananas right if those are home delivery the customer used to drive those home now we're driving those home scan and go is one of those rare things where it both increases customer satisfaction or NPS score, and the member is doing something that we used to have to do for them so I feel like that just amazing, on the data side like obviously one reason a lot of people like to get people in the digital echo system and using the app is because you do get all that wonderful data that, describe activating that's one of the areas where I feel like clubs have an unfair advantage because of the membership structure right like most of my retail clients they talked about this capture rate and what they mean is what percentage of my customers do I have any idea what they bought. [24:25] Right right because a lot of people buy with cash or they shop anonymously or, they pre-shop digital and then they you know paid on a different credit card and there's this whole, you know family amalgamation all these complications which is why if you walk out of this room right now there's 47 CD P vendors all trying to help retailers, solve this data Quagmire and I'm not saying it's not still hard at membership-based retailers but you do kind of have an unfair built-in Advantage like you pretty much know. What and how much each members fans and on what. Sabrina: [25:00] And I know they're out there I might just stay in this room and close the door. No but there's a reason why they're booming right because it's a it's a lot of work to figure out I would say yes coming into the membership space I was, very excited and shocked by how much data we really truly had every time you know member makes a purchase we see it so it allows you to kind of. Really understand what it is that's driving their trips how often they're coming where they're shopping what are they buying you can also start to understand their typical journey and behavior, so I'll give you two examples of the way we're kind of leveraging data I know I already talked about app but let me kind of put it into real life for a second. [25:46] One of those is and I'm talking specifically to like end-to-end experience so one of those I'll start with on, specific promotion or sales or event right what gets exciting is you can put this money into Market you can understand where they're coming in so first of all to drive the traffic and you're looking at a year-over-year confer a marketing campaign okay great so the traffic was there and hit the pages you needed it to hit well now you can say okay what they do next right and you can start to say all right did they move from that page to the next page and so you can see the analytics team has done fantastic jobs not only of having the data but making the data. [26:30] Readable digestible and actionable is a completely separate, right so there's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes of late great I'm looking at a table of a massive amount of data but what am I supposed to do with this to make a business decision and what they can do is they can take that and they can build it out for me across the funnel so they'll say okay traffic was up well and then it moved to the next page to it so it actually moved from let's say the home page or landing page we built to the Shelf page with all of the categories and then it moved from that category page to the product page and you can see all the product pages that were tagged with in that event in that campaign, then you can and it has your year-over-year growth of each so you can see the continued strength in growth throughout the funnel and then it moved to check out and ultimately her to cart and ultimately to check out and so you can see okay but you can also see when it's off right what happened okay so something's off you can say oh well that's because X percent of our items ran out of inventory in the first two hours because maybe we didn't estimate, demand properly right and so now all of a sudden okay we'll stop marketing that so go back up to your upper funnel and stop talking about those because you're making some angry members because they're falling off here and not because there's not strength in the funnel, it's because it's not actually available when they tried to go add it to their car so we got them all the way to the PDP and then something breaks. Right so it makes it makes it really easy to be able to do that in a way that allows us to actually pinpoint the issue. Jason: [27:57] Side note that used to be way harder to do in the store circular let's hard to erase the printing when you run out of. Sabrina: [28:04] Yeah it's not it's not exactly it's not exactly possible okay so and then other than the the funnel I think the other thing is understanding kind of their behavior on the pages, so if you think about let's just take the types of traffic coming in where they going and is it working raise so if they're coming in through paid marketing or if they're coming in through CRM or they're coming in through SEO where are they going and is it actually doing its job, right and then once it lands how to use the data up to optimize the right message you're putting in front of them at the right time so, not only just on personalization right so let's take our home page you have, frequently ordered items you have no inspired by a recent views things like that but you also think about well where is it they're clicking on that page the most and how do you take that that, that knowledge and that data and say okay here are the things we need to be putting in front of them based on that traffic driver that came in so we can connect the message, and make sure that we're taking advantage of that quality traffic so that we can actually move them down that funnel. Jason: [29:08] Yeah that's amazing and hearing those two examples it makes me think and hope that we both have kids in school hopefully they become data analysts because. Seems like there's an ever-increasing problem with processing all this data I heard a rumor that Walmart has like seven petrol bytes of data and I don't actually know what a petrol B is, but my seven-year-old tells me it's a big number. Sabrina: [29:33] I don't know what that is either but I'm not doubting it. And you're absolutely right like I think it becomes a if you have so much data right at your hands how do you make sense of it how do you organize it and again make it actionable because otherwise it's just a bunch of days that you're just sitting on and you're not actually doing anything with it to improve the experience, Sokka. Jason: [29:53] Compounding that data problem even longer we have the whole omni-channel, right and you know we used to talk about what percentage of our sales were digital and you know try to get that digital percentage up but increasingly, every customer using digital tools somewhere on the path to purchase and very often they're using physical stuff so how do you guys think about that at Sam's eye. That seems like it makes that whole analytics problem even more. Sabrina: [30:18] Of those it does but it's good right like you don't want them necessarily only shopping in the cupboard only shopping online you want them to think about it and we try to put ourselves, through this Member First mindset. Approach right so what is it that's driving that that needs data that purchase intent so are they just looking for inspiration right they're building their patio where there's getting ready for tailgating so they need a full solution or you know is it they just needed their paper towels or their bananas or their bottled water and on top of that you think about what what's the most convenient way for them to shop at the moment maybe they're on their way home from work and Sam's Club is right there five minutes from their house will they can. [31:00] Hop in because they know that they had a list of they can't remember what was on their list and they're already here so they're just going to do it maybe while they're in there they don't want to deal with the line so we give them another convenient option of scan ago okay well maybe they head home and then all of a sudden that night after Sam's Club is closed they realize they forgot all of the Lunchables for school tomorrow, bummer yeah been there multiple times and also big bummer or you're out of milk and you know your kids are going to cry because they have cereal every morning and now you've got an issue or whatever it is and I think based on whatever situation there and we want to make it convenient for them to be able to choose Sam's Club so you've given them the two options in the club will now you've got multiple options from an online purchase perspective you've got curbside so I'm going to put in my curbside order and I'm going to be able to go get it in the morning when it's ready and it'll be ready just in time or you're going to go you know put in a same-day delivery the next morning and you know you're going to get it really quickly or you can order on you no shipping and get it there in 23 days and you can wait a little bit because you can get free shipping as a plus member so you kind of see the opportunities for us to build around you you remember us have told us was most important to you and what you need so you know what the quality you want a great value you want it conveniently we know that about you so how do we think about all of the different scenarios you might be in and make it as easy as possible for you to choose Sam's. Jason: [32:26] Yeah and I'm assuming those successes and near-misses come up a lot and all that qualitative data on your. Sabrina: [32:34] They tell us yes they tell us they're like you know know but also a lot of times yes it worked. Jason: [32:39] Yeah I worked with a retard once they said there's two outcomes successes and learnings. Sabrina: [32:43] That's exactly right that's exactly right. Jason: [32:46] If that were true I would be a lot smarter than I am so. Sabrina: [32:48] So yeah it's a it's interesting because you see you know from one member of might have been a great experience and the same exact experience didn't work for the next member and it's because it's like well how do we put how do we let them know of all the options that they actually have to shop with us and let them choose the right Journey for them so a lot of it also is an opportunity around awareness right so do they know we have a curbside we just launched delivery not that long ago right so do they even know we have same day delivery I think you then get to the point of in the funnel again is this a conversion issue or is it just an adoption issue or is this an actual awareness issue, right so being able to kind of pinpoint where those opportunities are and the funnel I think is just just as equally important. Jason: [33:31] You know at the beginning of the show you mentioned that earlier in your exams career one of the projects you worked on was the actual Sam's brand which a would be terrifying to me because it's I mean. Is always Gary but then when the blank brand quite literally is the name of an American icon is kind of more. Sabrina: [33:51] Little bit little intimidating. Jason: [33:53] You don't want to screw that one up but when I think of, the sort of original Sam's brand right it was a lot about the store experience right and we've just spent 45 minutes talking about, all the cool new paths to Sam's and a lot of them are digital like do you guys have to think about. What the Sam's Club brand even means to members today in a different way than maybe you you were able to five years ago or ten years ago. Sabrina: [34:23] A hundred percent and I think you know we have continued to evolve with the members to to be able to say hey these are the most important things for them so let's continue to evolve the brand I would say yeah like starting out in the beginning it was really clear and again we used the member feedback to say like if we look at our brand passion index well here are the things that they're talking about and it's not driving a ton of volume and they don't really like it or they're rather neutral okay well when they are talking what are they talking about right both negative and positive and when you've got the - address it and when you've got the positive lean in right and the way you can lean in is on digital, so they not only from all of the marketing channels whether we know we talked about earlier marketing the social media all of those things but it's also on digital in the experience so if you know they like something how do you make it easy for them and bring the brand to life and tell the story so it's not just about again items are merchandising but it's the full membership experience and the ability to say hey like welcome to the club, right I think when we we've identified some of those opportunities when we think about their full Journey so the first year is extremely important to us they become a member. [35:31] If they didn't join in the club how do you make them feel like they're part of the club if they didn't come to a membership desk and say Hey I want to be part of this you might have gotten them through something a non-digital, well we also know that that first 90 days is extremely important and how do you get in front of them and say okay this is awesome welcome to the club and you should be shopping with us digital did you know our Omni proposition did you know the value and convenience that we provide and the team looks at those ways I think one of the things we did was build. [36:03] A digital membership booklet that's like okay we don't really talk about anywhere all of the things that the membership has to offer any more digitally we usually relied on the Associates at the membership desk to do that for us as they're like hey now welcome to the club here's everything you have well when you join digitally you're kind of Flying Blind right so okay I'm here now what do I do right what do I even get and if they don't want to spend a ton of time looking around and or it's not easy for them to find it then how do you introduce the journey that says welcome, look at all this stuff that you now have access to as a member of our club and and really kind of bring that brand to life and feel it even if you can't have your foot in the club so there's opportunities like that where we look for for bringing it to life and I think there's probably many more to go but we use the data and the members to say hey this feels like a gap let's figure out how to address it. Jason: [36:55] I'm in is that the big filter because I. Follow-up question is going to be what are the things that we could expect to see evolve over the next five years and you know we're at a trade show where there's a bunch of vendors that each have a interesting widget that. They want to sell and you every one of them you could imagine use case where that would be really cool and I imagine for someone in your shoes one of the challenges is which of these three hundred things is actually. Going to add the most value to to our members lives right and. Sabrina: [37:27] You're a hundred percent right and which way is the right path and I would say when I talk about Sam's something that I love is that it feels like we run, like an 84 billion dollar startup, and it truly feels that way and one of the reasons it feels that way is because of how quickly we test and learn and you know we work really closely with product and Tech and Engineering with a problem what's the problem we're trying to solve for the number that's what everything starts with right so again back to the member Obsession hey they're saying this is an issue and I think if we could solve it for them it could be really impactful so we give that problem to the product Tech and Engineering teams and they come back with like I think this could be it let's go test, we don't know it might crash and burn but we think this could be a potential path and they do a lot of customer surveys research to say, feels like it's down the right path and could solve for this problem and then they go out and they if it does well great let's try to scale a little bit more maybe move it across some of the platforms and see if it works across desktop mobile web and app maybe IOS and Android different behaviors right and then once they say oh okay no this is actually going to work and they're telling us they really like it we run, and I think that's the way we've done we've always done it is what the members tell us their problems in their pain points it's our job to go solve them for them and then run as quickly as possible and let them tell us whether we figured it out or not. Jason: [38:49] That sounds like a totally sound approach and I know I can't put my thumb on the scale but I hope one of those problems ends up being that I never have to run out of Lunchables again. Sabrina: [38:59] Yeah me too that could be really nice. Jason: [39:02] Significant quality of life. Sabrina: [39:04] My kids would appreciate it. Jason: [39:05] Exactly and sadly Sabrina that is going to be a great place to end it because it's happened again we've used up all our allotted time there are 45 CDP vendors waiting outside this podcasting studio and I've promised them all the time. Sabrina: [39:15] So excited yeah I'll thank you I appreciate it yeah nice of you. Jason: [39:21] But it's been a real Joy chatting with you and we appreciate you sharing a peek inside the covers with all our listeners I hope you'll come back. Sabrina: [39:29] Thank you guys for having me this has been awesome and I've Loved listening to your podcast you guys are extremely entertaining and I'm excited and honored that you guys had me here today. Jason: [39:38] Scot and I both agree that one of us is funny we just don't agree on. Sabrina: [39:41] It's clearly you because I'm replacing him so it's obvious who it is but we won't tell him he'll have to just hear it let he'll have to listen to the his own podcast so he decided not to come to ya. Jason: [39:51] Yeah he definitely does not listen to the show he's like the one person in e-commerce that doesn't listen. Sabrina: [39:54] Perfect yeah oh great. Jason: [39:58] It's been great thanks again and until next time happy commercing!
Scot returns to the podcast and we have the honor to have co author Laura Barringer join us today. We have a pertinent and timely conversation about the importance of TOV culture in the church and how we can be agents of change when we find ourselves in a toxic culture. Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers than can Transform Your Church- https://amzn.to/3r2D8GD*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Let's kindle real breakthroughs in your life, with kindness, humour and blunt force encouragement. Today's pod is a @thor_holt high energy collaboration with the indomitable Lambo spinning Scot, Geo McNee, @ConversationsWithAnInvestor Podcast on IG and www.cwipodcast.com - As todays 1st Ayahuasca Plant Medicine journey unfolds on iTunes and Spotify, you can join the @ThorsHippiHut (IG) movement and see the home of Thor's actual Hippie Hut over at @NorthHouseCroft on Instagram (IG)
Scot Free Summer 2023 Mix by subductionaudio
Welcome to the Whole Equestrian Podcast- where we're bridging the gap between riding and wellness! Discussing topics related to mindset, fitness, nutrition and community. Our mission is to promote health and happiness through our love of horses. Tune in to this week's episode with Dr. Pamela Reband author and endurance rider. Pam tells the story of how she got over a fear of horses that developed after 60 years in the saddle, with the help of her friend and trainer Scot. You can learn more about Pam and her story in her self-published book, Three Steps Up to Mediocrity, available on amazon: https://a.co/d/egLj3uT
Welcome everyone to the ‘Live from the CodeBar' podcast recorded from the code themed bar of Fenwood Manor. I am your guide on this adventure, Rob. For this New Series of shows we are pleased to continue our partnership with the website Area's Grey. Areas Grey is a travel blog for treasure hunters that features tips and reviews, treasure posts, a forum, dedicated research and hosted treasure hunts, and along with this partnership is the adding of an all new Website at https://codebarlive.areasgrey.com.On this new show I continue with the puzzle trend and have another very special puzzle guest Scot Ehrhardt. Scot is a poet, author, teacher, escape room creator and writer of the puzzle book ‘The Armillary Papers'! On this show we talk about his book, how he created it, as well as puzzling and escape rooms. So sit back, grab a drink and listen as we talk about The Armillary Papers!To become a CodeBar Supporter visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1641820/supportLinksScot Ehrhardthttps://scotehrhardt.weebly.comhttps://www.facebook.com/scot.ehrhardthttps://mysteriouswritings.proboards.com/board/409/armillary-papershttps://instagram.com/scehrhardt?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==Area's Greywww.areasgrey.comTwitter @AreasGrey_Instagram @AreasGreyTreasurehttps://codebarlive.areasgrey.comApple Podcastshttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-from-the-codebar/id1550617995Twitter @CodeBarLiveInstagram @CodeBarLiveSupport the show
Scot and Brian discuss the final 4 episodes of JUSTIFIED: CITY PRIMEVAL. The conversation is bookended by some SNOWFALL chat as well! [Recorded 8/30/2023] * Segment Breakdown * 0:00:00 - 0:05:55 Intro/Scot Can't Stop Watching Snowfall * 0:05:56 - 0:56:54 Justified: City Primeval (Final 4 Episodes) * 0:56:55 - 1:02:28 Scot Can't Stop Talking About Snowfall Either * 1:02:29 - 1:07:05 Wrapping It All Up
The Gospel According To... is the first and only podcast looking at the intersection of faith and pop culture and Christian faith. On today's episode, the guys are joined by the creator of @officetheology on Instagram! 60 episodes in and we are finally covering one of the biggest pop culture staples out there! Check out our socials for clips of this that you can easily share! As the Lord commanded, be sure to share The Gospel (According To...) with your family, friends, and even the HR rep from your office Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok
Scot Sellers is Chairman of Maui Land & Pineapple Co, which develops, manages, and sells real estate on Maui. Scot brings to the table extensive expertise of a 40-year career developing homes and communities across the country. Scot served as Chairman and CEO of Archstone, one of the world's largest multi-family housing companies, overseeing housing development, acquisition, and operation in over 50 cities. Scot also served many years on the international board of Habitat for Humanity and has continued to support the organization to provide shelter to those in need worldwide, including on Maui. He currently serves as a director for several innovative real estate companies, including The Howard Hughes Corporation, Milhaus, and The Irvine Company, and on the National Board of ACE Scholarships. My inspiring guest this week is Scot Sellers, we really did a deep dive into leadership in our conversation, and I'm sure you'll find huge value in what he has to say. Scot shares how he determines the right direction to follow by unlocking the creativity in his mind using a prayer journal to help him work through difficult decisions. He discusses his early career and the moves that helped him develop and hone his leadership skills. Scot also shares more about why it's so important to prioritize your relationships and how to plan your time so that you can pursue your passions right now instead of waiting for a moment that may never come. “Stand up and do what is right, even in the face of criticism.” - Scot Sellers “If you take what people say about you too seriously, it can really derail you.” - Scot Sellers “Be willing to take a risk. And because by taking those risks, that's what makes you alive.” - Scot Sellers This Week on The Wow Factor: What Scot learned about hard work from growing up on a subsistence farm The high school bullying experience that inspired Scot to study and understand human behavior and relationships Why Scot changed his career path from medicine to business and subsequently found a job in real estate through sheer perseverance How Scot and his team grew Archstone from $100 million in assets to over 20 billion in assets in just 15 years Scot's ten life lessons and why one of them is to stand up and do what is right, even in the face of criticism How the ‘as soon as mentality' works and why if there's something that you really want to do, don't wait How to plan your time so you have more time to pursue your passions Figuring out how your actions line up with your priorities How Scot finds his direction by praying, reading scripture, and looking for the wisdom God gives us Scot Sellers's Word of Wisdom: Be willing to take that risk that you're concerned about because that's what helps you grow and learn. I would also advise people to focus on their relationships because they are ultimately the most gratifying part of life. From a leadership perspective, make sure your teammates know that you care about them and that they are part of achieving something together. That's when you accomplish things way beyond your own individual ability. Connect with Scot Sellers: Maui Land and Pineapple Regret Free Living by Scot Sellers Resources: Chris Wright, Chairman and CEO at Liberty Energy, The Wow Factor Episode 175 Connect with The WOW Factor: The WOW Factor Website Connect with Brad Formsma via email Brad Formsma on LinkedIn Brad Formsma on Instagram Brad Formsma on Facebook Brad Formsma on Twitter
EP309 - Instacart IPO Filing Warning: Given the complexity and breadth of topics, this is a longer than usual episode with a runtime of 90 minutes (if we had more time, we'd produce a shorter podcast). Update: In this episode Jason mentioned that he didn't think Instacart accepted SNAP payments. It turns out that Instacart did start accepting SNAP earlier this month. On Friday, August 25th 2023 Instacart filled its S-1 IPO form with the SEC, in advance of its intention to make an initial public offering. The complete filing is almost 400 pages. In this episode we summarize all the key points, including a number of surprises, in the filing. If you want to follow along with the actual S-1, you can download it here. Scot suggests you focus on pages 101-124. Topics Covered: Cover Page and Entry Level Items Overall Growth Trends 25:50 Unit economics 42:90 Cohort Analysis 48:10 Instacart Ads 56:30 The Big Risk/Concern 1:00:11 Other observations (Instacart+, Carrot Services, Generative AI) 1:22:50 Other episodes mentioned: Episode 255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire and Episode 224 Customer Cohort Analysis and CLV with Dr. Daniel McCarthy. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 309 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, August 29, 2023. 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. Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 309 being recorded on Tuesday August 29th I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. We are going to jump into the talk tonight because one of our most popular shows as you know Jason the format is a deep dive and we have got a great Deep dive for you guys this episode. Last Friday August 25th there was a very big event not only in our favorite world's grocery which is Jason's favorite world and my favorite world of e-commerce and then Jason's favorite world of. But also in my favorite world of startups so this is this is a pretty big event and we wanted to dedicate a complete episode to it. I mean it is the filing of the S14 instacart. [1:24] And just to set it up the you know in my world of start-up land it has been very hard to get an IPO done so there's been a couple post coated and like late 2020. And then summon 21 and then there's been a dry spell there's been something called a dese back so you have this spec which is this. [1:44] Special-purpose acquisition thing and you can kind of go public through this kind of complicated convoluted thing. Tends not to go very well so there's been some of that like in My World Mobility there is one called get around and there's been a couple others and those typically have not. Gone so well they're down like 95% bird the scooter company did this as well. So it's been a very dry IPO market for startups and thus of interior backed investors. So there has been a lot of anticipation around when is that a PO when they're going to open who's going to be brave enough to kind of stick their foot out there first. And you know a lot of people have been rooming that instacart would be out there there's a couple other companies in this kind of unicorn Stratosphere stripe is another one that we cover a lot on the show from the payments world. There's also the others you can think of Jason there's this one. There's a software one that is just doing really well in AI that's been mentioned a lot not not open AI it'll come to me in a minute. So you know so this is kind of the real. Bang the Big Bang of here's a company that is being brave enough they're gonna go first and we're going to see what happens so it's going to be really interesting and we thought because it hits this Venn diagram of all of our favorite things that we would spend a fair amount of time on. [3:10] So first of all this is a 400 page document so our value add to the listeners is we have distilled it down into what we think are the most interesting little tidbits and some of the things we've learned from instacart it is nice because there's been a lot of rumors about how instacart Economics work and Jason has been tracking their ad piece which is you know cpgs have really seen some really nice results from that so we know that's been active and the areas we picked apart we thought we would cover tonight is I wanted to kind of give you a quick and dirty Scott's guide to reading an s-1 and we'll start at the cover page that's there's actually a lot that happens on the cover page so I want to spend a little time there and kind of give you a little I haven't taken a company poet behind the scenes of what's going on on there and then we're going to talk about some of the overall growth things that just kind of help you understand. [4:07] How to think about instacart how they're growing and what they do and what role they play and then unit economics one of the things that is happening more and more in these s1's is they're doing a more comprehensive cohort analysis and this is basically showing hey if if I car to a customer in a certain period how are they doing now and what are those Trends so that this this had a lot going on there of course we want to talk about the ad business and then little bit of a catch-all for other observations, Jason anything I missed before we jump into the cover page. Jason: [4:42] No I think you mostly covered it just one slight correction it's four of our five favorite things for those listeners that tuned in to hear us talk about Ahsoka we're going to do that on an upcoming episode so that Star Wars would be our fifth. Scot: [4:56] Yes sadly there was no Star Wars in this one so it's that one little part of the over the Venn diagram was left is its own little circle out in space. Jason: [5:06] That's a we call that a teaser for a future episode. Scot: [5:09] Yeah yeah we're we're Pros were 300-plus episodes into this thing and this is the kind of you know Pro level that we deliver on the pod. So you guys missed it Jason forgot to plug in his microphone earlier so that's a yeah we're still still learning every day, so when you open an s-1 the first thing you see is the cover page and it you know a lot of people just Breeze by it because it's a cover page but it has a lot of really valuable information so first of all the first thing that I noticed is I was searching for this on Edgar and I kept typing in instacart and it wouldn't show up and I was like WTH I know this s1's out there why can I not find it and then I saw an article and it said oh the company's real name is maple bear so that's the first thing you see on the cover is the company we all refer to as instacart its actual Corporation name is maple bear and it does business as instacart so I thought I did not know that prior so that was the first thing I learned right there on the cover so that's interesting so if you do go to the will put a link to the s-1 in the show notes but if you do Brave the Edgar SEC database yourself throwing a little Maple bear there and not instacart. Jason: [6:22] Not to be confused with Amazon's house brand Mama Bear. Scot: [6:26] Yeah yeah and I'm sure there's a honey bear and brown bears there's a there's a lot of a lot of bear things going on. The other thing that I was like to see is what symbol are they using I think it's fun to kind of you know as an entrepreneur to kind of think about what symbol you're going to use that best personifies your brand Channel Bowser we had ecom's so that was an exciting one so we captured e-commerce Shopify go. Jason: [6:52] The best ticker symbol of all times by the way. Scot: [6:55] Thank you thanks thanks I appreciate it. Shopify head shop and that was a good one and instacart / Maple bear is going with cart so I think that's a that's a that's a pretty nice one you know it kind of there a multi grocer chart cart and we all think about instacart I'm sure they hate being called Instagram so this kind of like really punches on the cart so maybe they get away from everyone mistakenly calm Instagram. Jason: [7:19] I think it's solid. Scot: [7:20] Yeah A-Plus on the symbol and then in the you'll notice that a lot of the evaluations and how many shares they're selling are blank and that's you know in this draft of this one which is the first kind of public one that they're dropping out there they'll they'll iterate a couple more times they'll do their Roadshow and then write one that, it prices they'll update the S12 include all that information so they'll make kind of literally a game day decision the night before IPO of how much based on the order book how much they want to sell and at what price so that, that's going to be blank through probably several more iterations as we go on then this is did you want to do something in. Jason: [8:04] No I was just I was just thinking that they I assume they left it blank because the underwriters were out of practice. Scot: [8:10] Yeah no no they they are there waiting and that's a good point because when you go public the the companies that take you public in this context they're all investment banks on Wall Street. But they they filled this role of Underwriters and basically what they're doing is they're acting as market makers they're going to cover your stock when it's public and they're also going to be basically pounding the pavement to sell your stock to buy side by side analysts and firms on Wall Street. Which there's two buckets of there's mutual funds and hedge funds there's also retail that I guess there's three buckets, retail would be you log into Schwab or Robin Hood and the diet of the IPO you try to buy some chairs that's retail and they all allocate a little bit of that for the IPO so they like retail to come in and get a little taste. [9:04] A lot of folks that if you're an accredited investor at an institution and you have a wealth manager, sometimes you can get a little bit of access to an IPO before it prices you don't get a special price or anything but you can if you're really excited and you're a retail customer you and you're in this kind of wealthy bucket then you can you can get some allocated shares I think is what they call it these call this friends and family they don't call that, that anymore that's called a allocated shares but what's important about the underwriters is there's actually a signal there several signals here and I didn't know this time went through the process. First of all they have lined up a who's who of investors so even before you get to Underwriters they have this really interesting note right before right underneath before they get in the underwriters and they say oh by the way we have lined up these investors already that have committed to buying and they have committed Asterix and then they kind of like take away the committed but. [10:05] I think that's a legality I think I think it's a pretty hard commitment is my reading of them and they basically say these guys are already these guys have lined up to buy at least 400 million in this offering. Regardless of the price and there's some big names in there there what I would call. Public-private so they have invested in instacart already as a private entity and then they have another side of there. Firm that invest in public entities and they have said that side is going to support the private side and that's nor just Bank tcv. [10:38] Sequoia and a couple others this is very unusual but I think it's an interesting play because it basically says to the market. Hey you don't have to worry about this thing you know taking on the first day because we're going to were signaling to you we're going to place a chunk of this with these folks that are long-term holders and they're going to backstop this thing I think of it as a adding a floor to the IPO basically saying we know it's been a while we know there's risk out there we're going to have a floor on this so so there's built-in demand for this IPO so that's quite unusual and this is the first time I've ever seen anything like that sometimes you'll see tiro price is a big one a big mutual fund that likes to do this or they'll have a private-public and they'll say you know they'll kind of suggests that, they're interested in buying more and they'll come out and say they don't plan to sell or they've accepted a lock up for a year or something like that I've never seen such a strong message as this one so I thought that was interesting. Okay then we move to the bottom of the cover and that's where you have the list of the underwriters and what's really interesting is the way this works is the bigger your font the bigger a role you play in the IPO so on this one the biggest font is Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and you know they have I don't know what would you say Jason like a 40 Point font. Your. Jason: [12:03] Yeah I had to read it with my my PDF zoomed way up so I feel like I yeah but it was a big font. Scot: [12:11] Yeah yeah so those guys get like a you know they're kind of really big and then what's also interesting is where you show up on the page is important so your importance starts at the left and goes down to the right so the most important what we would call the vernacular is the lead left which is the biggest font on the left side of the cover is the lead Investment Bank and as Goldman Sachs and they're they're The Bluest of Blue Chips everyone wants Goldman Sachs if they come out. [12:37] And then usually you want either JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley now JPMorgan has increased greatly and stature over the last three years because they have weathered coded and they have basically absorbed most of Silicon Valley Bank's deposits and a lot of these other riskier Banks and their CEO is pretty famous Jamie dimon so they've this is kind of you know two blue tips on the top of the book here which is pretty interesting and then, then you kind of go down a bit and you end up with 18 more Underwriters and there's like three levels of them there's like the font gets smaller so you go from 40 point to 20 point then you go to like kind of like 15 point and you go to seven point and you know what's interesting is I have never seen this many Underwriters either so they basically have said we want everyone on Wall Street lined to go and help us sell this we will turn no Rock no Rock will be unturned looking for buyers of instacart stock with the institutional investors. There's some International Players so they've basically if you kind of said if you if you. [13:53] Few War Room doubt what are some things a company could do 2D risk an IPO they have done things I've never seen before times like three and then the last thing that's interesting is the economics each of these Banks gets kind of depends on where they are on the page so you know if it all this gets him to like, there's all this Machinery but these guys do it because they make money so Goldman will make their kind of highest percentage and then JPMorgan and so on and so on based on how much they contribute to the book and all this kind of calculus that goes on behind the scenes so I thought that was kind of a really interesting just on the cover some things that were very unusual from other IPOs I've seen Jason anything that you found on the cover that was riveting. Jason: [14:43] We'll know I did. I have a question for you though I got I guess I when I saw all of those Underwriters I kind of and perhaps erroneously assumed that part of what was going on here is, it's been a while since there were in any IPOs that went through an underwriter and that all of the underwriters are out there. Desperate for four deals and that therefore. Instacart had more more leverage to get more Underwriters like is it. Is it literally instacart just agreed to pay more for these two more Underwriters 2D risk the IPO is that. Scot: [15:23] Yeah I think. So human nature is that the lead laughed and Lead right want to absorb a lot of the deal and don't want to share too much so so typically there's some friction there right so they'll be like yeah you could add a couple and they use this tearing language I don't you know this is just kind of how I don't know who how they know what who's what dear, but tier one is Goldman Morgan and JP Morgan Morgan Stanley and then tier 2 is you get kind of Stiefel, a couple others in there then you go tier 3 and then you kind of have like an international kind of tearing as well so usually you get like two from Tier 1 Maybe two or three from tier 2 and then that's kind of it and then if you've if the company feels strongly like another consideration is when you go public one of the things that helps you long term is to have analysts that follow your stock and we've had many of these analysts on our show Mark mahaney Collin Sebastian these are and then Scott Devitt he was at stifel and he's moved on to another shop these are these are famous people in the internet marketing world so you want take Mark sets, I wasn't even as Fern was he ever green but that's not it. [16:40] Ever Quorum so so you as the company can say the Goldman hey I know you guys want to keep a lot of Economics but I want mahaney on this and we got to get ever Cora so some of those on the bottom are probably International distribution retail or something the company wanted kind of specific to add them on and you know that was all pre-negotiated with Goldman getting lead left they had they kind of had to acquiesce to having a bit of a large number of Underwriters on there so I don't yeah I don't think I'm sure they all wanted to be to your point like there certainly wasn't even saying no to being invited to this and they probably you know you just bake off in this was I came to imagine if they ended up with 18 like, mr. started with 80 I don't know it's crazy that was probably like a. Six week bake off just to hear from all the bankers so yes I think there's more around the analyst going on with with the large number on some of those. Jason: [17:39] Got it and then I want to hear your speculation about where the price might come in but I'm trying to remember the details there's been a lot of interesting things going on with the private placements before we got to this point right so I think the some of the valuations of the private placements were at some point disclosed and then I want to say instacart reset there. Their valuation at a lower number while they were still private like presumably to make the equity appealing for employees. Scot: [18:17] Yeah the sequence of events and this is all you know they don't disclose all this in this one because it's kind of like. Jason: [18:25] Sure I'm just trying to get the the Run. Scot: [18:27] The Whispers And if you read some of these you know I subscribe to a lot of things that talk about some of this kind of rumors and so take it with a grain of salt but there was some sequins like they were chugging along and then Covent hit and it was like Off to the Races vertical and I think the wheels kind of came off the bus and they started to lose money because the unit economics weren't weren't ready for for like a surge like that and then right around 21 they replace the CEO and they had to kind of emergency raise some Capital which is kind of like one of the worst times to do it because even though their revenue was surging the rest of the market was in the toilet basically so I think they had to do a Down Round And what I've heard is their bed raised money as high as 39 billion and then they took this haircut at with this new CEO in this kind of re leaning down the company at about 13 billion so. [19:19] So I think that's kind of like the watermark is kind of where they've last raised money and if you look at their revenue that's actually not that's a very reasonable Place given where you know they've grown since then but now what's the revenue like four billion ish yeah so they're like 3 billion and 22 in revs so that's like a four times Revenue which is pretty reasonable for a company growing the way they are with with good profitability so I would be I would not be surprised we don't we won't know this per share price until we see the denominator and they didn't have the denominator which is market cap divided by number of shares equals share price we don't know the number of shares so I would I would suspect. I'll guess, four billion I'm gonna guess 20 billion would be a low like I think it will price they're on the low end and it could go as high as 25 30 depends on you know. Retail and how much momentum it gets with with buyers. Jason: [20:26] And part of the art here is you don't you don't want to price it too low because that means you you have money on the table when you sold your Equity but you also don't want to price too high and have the, the stock like go down from the offering price and get below water right away right so. Scot: [20:49] Yeah it's very common we kind of had this situation at Channel visor we went public right after you know cortical right after in a longer time window of 08 09 and you know they strongly we had golden lead left and they strongly encouraged us to think long-term and not get obsessed about that pricing and leave a little bit of money on the table and yeah and then over time you could do a secondary at a higher price and you really want to you don't want to tank especially in a tepid market so I'm sure this was all part of the um you know Goldman would counter negotiate this to be lead left and say look we we need your commitment that your yep part of the pitch is they give you what they think it's worth and how it's going to price and they also discuss the strategy and that's part of the selection processes and you would think it would be. Okay whoever says they're gonna give me the highest price but you actually kind of they really stand out a lot because the Goldman people can talk about Dave, they've got like a lot of data to back up their strategy and you know there's like Watson there that that are. It would make your head spin and so they do a really good job of talking about why it makes sense to price the way they think and how how they see it over a longer Arc of time. Jason: [22:12] Gotcha so the guys with all the money have really good justification for why you shouldn't worry so much about the money. Scot: [22:18] And then the other thing to know though is what typically happens is you are not sharing you're not selling any one shares so the company so as part of this IPO the company will issue new shares so so you as the founder and the other investors you still have your shares you're not actually selling them at this moment so you know in a way now you get diluted right so the flip of that is your percent ownership goes down but you know it's kind of the would you take a little bit smaller. Of that and long term when you can sell your shares as the investor and the founder and the team and the people that bet on you now you know can you execute and deliver and then earn your way into a higher price and then that's when you can kind of like get some equipment sir. Jason: [23:08] Do you want a little bit of a grapefruit or all of a grape. Scot: [23:11] Yes exactly yep that is a good description. [23:17] Okay so here's here's the other part of the quick and dirty guide to reading the S1 you can take so that's cover is really good and then you take the literally the next let's see what is it. 100 pages and you can toss them so this is where the lawyers come in and they love to make sure you understand all the risk factors you know a meteor could hit the Earth people could stop needing groceries cybersecurity I could be no one wants to shop for them it could be they'll compete with a bunch of people Amazon is always a risk factor Google Microsoft. So all that really doesn't add value and then there's a little bit of financial stuff but it's it's pretty dry and it's kind of like from the Auditors almost so it's like super drive so it always do is you skip to the part of this one we're finally the lawyers have earned their large fees and they vomited forth 100 pages of risk you know stuff. And then you get to write your story and that's called the Management's discussion and Analysis in the industry it's called the md&a. [24:27] It's confusing I thought for a long time it was md&a because Aaron says mdna really fast and they're saying the word A and D and it sounds like an end to me and I kept saying what the heck does md&a stand for they're like what do you mean what's up what are you saying. It's like a who's I first got a thing but it's md&a so Management's discussion and Analysis and this is where you. Jason: [24:49] Because I read all 100 pages and and I'm super depressed and one of the risk factors is the way I could become sentient and take over the Earth. Scot: [25:00] Mmm yep that is a risk factor and then it will bring our groceries to us I guess as we are batteries for its consumption. Jason: [25:08] The computers won't eat. Scot: [25:10] So if you really want you know so what you can do is you can get the gist of 95% of this by printing out the s-1 pages 1012 124 that's it's only 23 pages and it's really dense but it is actually this is actually a very good read they did a very good job of making this so you know. It's very approachable and they go into a level of detail that's really handy into problem so we're going to give you some of the highlights from that but if you want to go deep on your own we will give you all you need to go to the next level just by looking at those 23 pages. Okay so what did you see and them DNA and that got your attention. Jason: [25:55] Well I mean a number of things so maybe just super high level what's exciting to me like obviously a lot of this information about the business was not, publicly available so in the process of going public in issuing S1 they suddenly reveal a lot of things and they reveal things about. Their own business but they also have to paint a pretty good picture of what they think is happening and could happen in the digital grocery business so it's kind of like getting a whole class of really smart people to sort of, write a thesis about the the digital grocery business that we get to read and interpret and you know we they reveal things that we didn't know like how valuable customers are over time and how much consumers spend on a given order at instacart and what percent share of wallet they think digital gets versus brick and mortar and all these sorts of things and we'll get into a bunch of them in the in the individual sessions but my my takeaway from the beginning of that management discussion was that it's a. [27:08] A pretty robust business that the aggregate amount of. GTV that they that they have is pretty significant its twenty eight point eight billion dollars in groceries that they sold in 2022. Scot: [27:27] Yeah and GTV is gross transaction volume so instacart it's basically a Marketplace like eBay or Amazon where parts of parts of Amazon all of you back where you have in the marketplace of product Marketplace use GMB a lot of payment systems like PayPal use tpv gross merchandising value total payment volume they have chosen to use this term for the gross figure of GTV and at first I thought it was going to be groceries to do but it's gross transaction value I thought for sure it was like grocery, I was trying to decode it without looking it up and I was like that can't be grocery because then I don't know what a TV is doing there and you know so then their revenue is a derivative of that meaning of some percentage then of that big number Falls to them as Revenue after they pay the grocer The Shopper and then instacart the business has the leftovers and which ends up, we'll go through the unique and I'll mix it ends up being being pretty small because the grocery business does not have huge merchants. Jason: [28:26] Yeah so kind of looking at those business fundamentals that you know in 2022 they sold 28.8, billion dollars worth of stuff which for them generated 2.5 billion dollars in revenue and they were profitable on that Revenue they they net 428. Million dollars which like back in the a couple years ago when there were more IPOs happening there were there were IPOs in the space they were happening with companies that still weren't profitable so so that was interesting that they they were meaningfully profitable and then the, you know you're super interested in what the growth trajectory is and. [29:13] 20:19 was a very small year so going from 2019 to 2020 you know and then the pandemic app in the middle 2020 and urban was ordering groceries from, from instacart so the growth in 2020 was astronomical like 300% or something like that. But then the growth in 2021 over 2020 was 24%. On revenue and the growth in 2022 over 2021 was 39% in Revenue so. The revenue growth is Meaningful and accelerating. Which would be exciting they were not profitable in 2020 or 2021 so 2022 is the First full year that they were profitable. The GTD is a little different though they had significant growth three hundred percent in 2020 20 percent in 20 21 and 16 percent in 2022 so, well they have a track record of growth it's the top on GTV growth is decelerating. And then of course we're halfway through 2023 so they have to disclose. [30:23] How the well they've done in the first six months of this year and they compared to that to last year and the revenue and GTV are both essentially flat in the first six months of this year. Versus last year so I don't know you'll have to tell me but I look at that and you go man there's some robust stuff here there's a great growth story. I should have mentioned that that's on an annual basis on a quarterly basis they have five consecutive quarters of profitability which also seems. Impressive him pretty favorable but it's probably a slight worry that the. A lot of that growth seems like it's it's leveling off in 2023 I don't know if. That the most recent performance gets gets over weighted or underweighted and sort of evaluating the the prospects for the company. Scot: [31:19] Yeah the buyers will you know what every everyone has a different way they value things and they they're going to build their own models and the company will give them some guidance that's some of the stuff we did it we're not going to go over and but you have to be careful because you don't want to make forward-looking statements so this is this weird dance you do of you. You try to get people excited by not saying anything about the future which is which is a little tricky so you know what I imagine instacart s' just reading the tea leaves again they talked a lot about how they don't really do much sales and marketing which I kind of read to say, look we really hunkered down on our unique economic sand we've got it dialed in right now and spoiler will get to adds a lot of a lot of that has come from this ad piece. And I think now. [32:07] Because investor and I was the bullish scenario is you know they're going to raise at least 400 million they'll probably raise a lot of money from this they could start doing some advertising and you pick up some new customers that again I'm going to kind of hope they look at the cohorts those cohorts look like with what this in the here and they have at least the same unique anomic so if not better and I'm going to look at this growth accelerating wow what Wall Street loves their favorite favorite favorite kind of the top quadrant is accelerating Revenue growth an accelerating profitability and you know I could see a scenario the light has to go their way but I could see a scenario where that works here you know if they could if they could start spending some really careful sales and marketing dollars building the brand where they've been kind of under the radar for the most part and then. That works those cohorts stick and then they can work on the economics because that's gonna bring more advertisers per order because the more average more orders and more. GTV is going to bring more cpgs in that want to advertise against that then you could argue accelerating Revenue growth accelerating profitable unit economics. So I think that's the bull case the bear case is they've hit saturation they've got all the stores. 4% is anemic and nowhere to go but down. So that's the end of it is it is going to be interesting to see there's a little bit of A Tale of Two Cities in those possible outcomes. Jason: [33:36] Yeah what else jumped out at you in the management discussion. Scot: [33:43] They made a big point of talking about they have 7.7 million monthly active users which is a good number but they point out that in the u.s. there's 330 million consumers or I guess population so they use that and this is kind of one of those hints I was talking about the basically said hey we're. We've done good to get here but these are like the early adopters we still have a long way to go there's a lot of people you know I don't think they'll get all of them and I'll talk about that in a second but there's a lot more people that you should be using our service that aren't is so they kind of paint that 7.7 million and say that's teeny tiny compared to where we should be. And then you know the other thing they talked about that I thought was interesting I wanted to get your opinion on is they talk about, per user per month they get three hundred and Seventeen dollars and I was wondering I know you probably know this off the top of your head. What is if you look at the average US consumer and you probably look at the. Population of the convenience store that's like a kind of probably like that 100K and up household you know what is their monthly and is this like half of it a quarter what is your spidey sense tells you on that. Jason: [35:00] Yeah so real rough numbers the average American family and you know people shop for groceries in households versus people so it's almost better to talk in household so there's like 131 million households in the US and sin they've got. Seven million of them as customers the average household shops for groceries 1.6 times a week and they spend a hundred dollars per visit so you kind of you know rough that up and you get. Get what is that I'll have the intern do in turn do the math one point six times. 100 times, 4.5 is 720 total grocery spin which I don't have the census numbers in front of me but but that passes the smell test that so. Households are spending six seven hundred bucks a month and instacart saying that they're getting less than half of that. Scot: [36:12] Yeah and I saw some people speculate on this that, what their inferring is Davin they have an average order of 110 so this is like 2.6 instacart some month instacart orders per user per month that's another kind of interesting metric and then people are speculating in the saying the pattern is probably people are doing a big shop once a month and they're kind of going and getting you know, a lot of like maybe canned goods and things like that and then they supplement it with two or three instacart has to bring maybe a refresh of the the replenishable is like the cheese the milk the veggies and the fruits kind of thing. Again this is everyone just kind of like taking data and kind of going out for data point so the cone of uncertainty is pretty big out there but it kind of passed my sniff test that's how we've used it before, at our house with exception of wizard a lot at work to fill our snack area at work and we're probably like we're probably like top one quartile of this whole thing that's the number of snacks we get from Instagram. There's a deep does that that analysis of the one big shop yourself and then supplement does that. Jason: [37:26] No exact yeah I mean I think the Grocer's talk and I hesitate to bring this up because I don't think I remember I'll for off the top my head but there's like four typical types of shopping missions right so there is that like Pantry stocking shop there's like a weekly shop there's a. Occasion Bay shop where your your it's date night or it's Christmas or whatever and you make a special shop and then there's those, top off shops and I think it's generally agreed like there's not a big cohort of consumers that have just said I'm never using a grocery store again then I'm exclusive we gonna, I have all of my my calories show up at my doorstep so digital grocery ends up being one of the tools in the family's tool kit for, procuring their their calories and so it makes. Total sense that they would have a share that one of the ways they could grow is to increase that share presumably by. Being the best choice for more of those different kinds of missions. Scot: [38:34] Yeah and then the md&a they talk a lot about how they have these new offerings where you can get a weekly Monday thing and they're definitely poking around at this experimenting on how to grow the sand again they're kind of signaling we think we've got some room to go on this we can get that. [38:51] Bridge order up and we can get the ma use way up the second thing I noticed was you know they use this they use this phrase, several times you can tell it's kind of like must be tied to company values and they talk about we believe people want selection quality value and convenience if that sounds familiar to you the this is infamously brought up in the Amazon Jeff Bezos first shareholder letter in 1997 where he talks about the mark you know what Amazon believes and they believe that a multi-decade trend is people will not get tired of selection quality value and when value he uses kind of free shipping like versus product value is pretty specific on it and then convenience and then what got me thinking about this is. [39:38] Value inconvenience her you know they're often in conflict and this is the whole point of we've had, Casey on the show from the Lloyd there bifurcation kind of model which shows this was this I think a lot about this because this is the whole one of the whole reasons I started spiffy and we decided early on if we're going to be convenient we can't be the cheapest and I don't think people look at instacart as the cheapest you know whenever we use it it's kind of like, holy cow this is this is a pretty expensive treat in you know I really kind of need to be able to justify this to myself that I can't just pop over the grocery store and do this myself it needs to be yeah some some reason I'm going to miss a kid event or something that I'm getting a really good bang for the buck here so I thought that was interesting that at some point I wonder do they value part kind of struggle with you know how. Jason: [40:31] I think they have to have a. A more liberal definition of value because I think you're exactly right right and obviously you know value means different things to different people like they disclosed later in the S1 that they not surprisingly that they skew disproportionately to households that make over 100,000 a year compared to a traditional retail and particularly a traditional grocer like give I've no idea what it looked like when they actually did it but when Kroger went public or certainly when Walmart went public they would have talked about the top of their tree that we think the consumer really values price and and Walmart probably said price not value and you know they built a business around very aggressively maintaining those low prices because they thought that was the beginning of their flywheel and and you know Amazon talked about value but they when they said value a lot of what they meant was and we're going to you know have the very competitive or the lowest price on a lot of these goods and, the the business model of instacart makes it unlikely that that can be their positioning so they have to kind of, find a a valid but alternative definition of value to hang their hat on. Scot: [41:50] Yeah and I thought was interesting they put convenience a lot you know last you may say oh you're reading too much into it but you know I've been in rooms you spend so much time on every word there's a purpose to this order of selection quality value and convenience and and they mentioned this exact phrase like several times so this is a this seems to be an yeah a pretty important phrase in their their world to I just thought that was I want to get your take on you know at some point they may cross this road where they have to pick a lane and it'll be if it ain't going to be the value late you know I don't see a path there but you know maybe they think they can and you know they also talked about selling to the grocer some software so maybe that's kind of like how they're squeaking that in I don't know. Jason: [42:36] Yeah yeah and there's I think we'll talk about this and in our final conclusion but the there's multiple ways you could see this going over time and depending on which path it took like value could mean something different. So what will come back to that. I heard you like dissected all of the the disclose data and put together unit economic model for for instacart. Scot: [43:07] Yeah so it starts at the top so the GTV per order so every order that comes in they get the GTV as $110 and then there here's how they slice the onion so the biggest chunk goes to the grocer for the groceries and they get 83 percent which is $91 so right off the top we're left with $19 but now the grocer they have to go make all their money so instacart is that's what you would basically get I think if you and I went to the grocery store you know maybe they're getting a little bit of a discount but they're they're taking that $91 and they're adding $19 on top of it and this is all X tip there's a there's there is a delivery fee and what not so then the Shopper gets 8.2% or nine dollars in order and that's in that delivery fee and then they get the tips. Jason: [43:58] Clarification on shopper because like in most contact Shopper would mean the consumer that's buying the goods The Shopper in this case is is a instacart gig worker that goes to the store and gets Aggregates the order for the customer. Scot: [44:14] Exactly the gig worker is the Shopper so they get nine dollars and they get 100% of the tip so whenever you you know whenever you what what they don't say some of these gay places in this bothers me because we fell out on this they say the gig worker gets 100% but then they take a transaction fee of 3%, now I can't find they say 100% I can't see any little asterisks that says there's going to skim 3% or something so. [44:44] So to the hopefully they're being super up front and they the gig worker does get 100% of the tips but the tips aren't in the economic the kind of sit over on the side to go to kind of bypass instacart all together and they go straight to the shopper. Who also gets nine dollars from instacart so if you gave a 20 dollar tip the the Shoppers going to get 20 plus 9 or 22, then at this point we are finally at instacart Revenue which is ten dollars and that's into pieces seven dollars is the transaction revenue and three is ads. So almost half their margin you know so 30% I guess yeah. I say half because the line is going so fast it will become half probably by 2024 you know half the. Profit the margin the revenue that they get and probably disproportionate part of margin is from the ad piece which we're going to talk about in detail so that is. That's pretty important to this whole enchilada and until they figure that out this didn't really work I do. [45:48] So they get so 110 dollar order $91 goes the grocer that leaves us with 19 Shopper gets nine we're left with 10 7 of that, is the transaction Revenue three is ADS then their costs come out they have three dollars of cost per order. And this is this is things like you know their entire some allocation of all their website hosting the engineering team developed the app. I don't know if they would put sales and marketing in there and they weren't very specific about what they do and don't put in cogs so that was a question mark. And they're left with seven dollars of gross profit for that order. My bet is marketing is not in there and they kind of take that up later but again the didn't really. Disclose that I saw what all was and not in Cox so basically that 110 boils down to seven dollars a profit from them and if we looked at it you know. I bet that three of that seven is basically from the ads and you know because there's almost no cost to serve an ad and so so I thought that was pretty interesting that like you know around half of the Prophet basically is from the ad system. Jason: [47:00] Yeah I think I think it's for sure interesting and like you know two possibilities there there there, average value of an order is 110 bucks traditional brick-and-mortar grocer is a hundred bucks and so one question like did instacart wasn't totally clear I mean they tried to take credit for having a higher order value but it wasn't clear like do we think. There's something unique about our experience that causes people to spend more or. Is our service just more expensive and so therefore you know if I got the same 60 items from from Walmart it would cost me $100 but if I got it from instacart Cassandra and ten dollars. But if it's the latter and I'm sure the real answer somewhere in between but but if it's the latter then you go you know all of the, The Profit that instacart is potentially taking is kind of from the. The convenient spread where they're you know getting consumers to pay more for the extra convenience of this grocery delivery. Scot: [48:08] So that was the unique nanak's what did you discover from the cohorts. Jason: [48:12] Yeah well I think we both we both noticed that they had a pretty detailed cohort analysis in the s-1 and by cohort analysis what we mean is they. They break down all the revenue they get from every. Group of customers on the first year they acquire those customers and then they track the spending for that group of customers in each, subsequent year and so you have a cohort that you acquired in 2017 you have a cohort you acquired in 2018, so on and so forth through this 20:22 cohort and there's. Other dimensions you could do Court analysis on but this this tenure cohort is most common and loyal listeners of the show will know we've certainly talked about it before no most notably with a guest Professor Dan McCarthy. From Emory University who spends a lot of time. [49:13] Talking about and thinking about cohort analysis so I my first thought when I saw this cohort analysis is I'll bet you Dan McCarthy's really happy right now and is probably. Deep deep into these numbers and he has a phrase that he calls a super annuities which is for the circumstances. The older cohorts get more valuable over time and keep contributing more Revenue to your business which is, you know that if you think about it that's that's the ideal state right you want those kind of six-year-old cohorts to be. [49:51] Growing and be your most valuable and if they're you know significantly tailing off over time then like you know you start to question the core value proposition of the business like maybe customers get fatigued with your business or decide it's not a good value in the long run or something else so um the the big takeaway for me of the cohort analysis is the cohorts grow over time the if you look at like the year one value of this cohort it averages $226 and then it goes up 33 percent in year two to three hundred dollars and then up 16%, to 350 dollars in year three and then another up another 16% to 4:00 in your for and then up 10% $445 in year 5 and up another 8% to 480 dollars in year 6 and so like fundamentally. That is a very good picture of. The value of the cohorts and I'm certain why they chose to include the cohort analysis in there as one because I don't believe there's any. Any filing requirement to do that and certainly lots of companies don't include any cohort cohort analysis but then my kind of secondary take is. [51:12] You know not every year is the same and so some of those cohorts like started before Cove it and then they're their behavior, was slightly impacted by their maturity but also impacted by covet and some of these cohorts started after Cove ID and so one of the things you would look for in that cohort analysis is did these guys just get a big spike from Cova da, when people are afraid to go to grocery stores and you know has that worn off right and that's kind of a comment common narrative out there like I argue. [51:45] It's mostly misunderstood when people give that narrative about digital but it's. It's even more likely that is misunderstood if you have that narrative and grocery because grocery appears like on the surface to be the one category where hey we're at three percent e-commerce penetration before covet and now we're 12% e-commerce penetration and so this, these cohort analysis if if there was a spike that dip back down you would expect to see some of the later cohorts underperforming versus the the precoded cohorts and we don't see that right that like all the cohorts grow and they grow over time the rate of growth slows down over time which is like I think pretty pretty typical and not surprising um so all that was super favorable the one thing and one will have to have Dan on the show but the one thing that I think wasn't in here that you'd really want to understand how valuable the customer bases and and again guys like Dan kind of pioneered this idea of how you value a company based on their customer base. [52:53] And kind of set the price based on on this type of data but I think they would also want to see some churn data and understand. How many people are each in each of these cohorts and whether there's the same people or lots of defectors and new people coming and all those sorts of things and none of that was was disclosed and assess. Scot: [53:22] Yeah you're right the I think they're making the argument that the swamps turn but because they don't disclose it you kind of. You have to trust him and he would he would want that data because you know the whole Begin Again the the bull case here is all right if you got super annuities than spending ad dollars to bring super annuities in this smart right because everyone you bring in the door is going to follow this cohort and start of it you know you and I looking at a table that the says you're one they start at 2:26 and then by year 60 at 500 bucks so they they double over their life cycle in their GTV so over six years so if you know if you can go buy them for a hundred bucks a pop then you would just go and, and spend all that money in it should be we have a super annuity on one side you can spend a lot of money acquiring customers on the other. Jason: [54:15] For sure true what. Scot: [54:17] You turn there's something that they could hide in there. Jason: [54:19] Yeah so you have to worry about that you also side note like a thing that drives CFOs crazy about marketers is you also have to have this argument about correlation and causation right that like if I went out and bought a bunch of customers would they maintain this the same level of performance or with those those. Purchase customers through higher advertising and through greater sales and marketing a activities be less oil less valuable customers by. The answer varies depending on the business. Scot: [54:53] Yeah that's where I this kind of come back to that bifurcation thinks I think would you say 120 million households. Jason: [54:59] Yeah 131. Scot: [55:00] Yeah so there's probably I think it's probably a pretty evenly split between convenience and value so call it 60 and they've got 7.7 so there's actually good I think they've got a 10% share of, what does the actual dress for Market because I don't think they're going to get any of the value or in a consumers because yeah the valuing consumer does not pay for convenience they'll just go to grocery store. Jason: [55:23] Yeah and again in the bottom quartile a lot of people are shopping for for groceries with government assistance and I don't actually think instacart should double-check this but I don't believe instacart has a way to accept Snap payments. Scot: [55:36] Yeah I don't think the government is going to subsidize the food delivered. Jason: [55:39] Well they just you know they do in other great white white guy like you can order groceries online from Walmart and pay with SNAP but I don't think you can with instacart. Scot: [55:49] Yes that's another factor and then at some point yeah I'm sure you'll bring this up but the. The if you're if you're a grocer you know a lot of ours opt out of the sand to themselves and they like we have a Harris Teeter that they don't accept instacart yeah they're not on there and they want to do their own they want to own the customer themselves. Jason: [56:12] Yeah I save that discussion for other but I think that's a super important one. Scot: [56:16] Forget I said that that's a teaser that's it's a teaser was what we call a tease. Jason: [56:19] Excellent teaser yeah because I feel like we've gone to the add segment of the breakdown of is there anything else you wanted to cover before that Scott. Scot: [56:28] No I'm on the edge of my seat to hear what you thought about that specific. Jason: [56:31] Yeah so it turns out instacart sanad Essence and probably shouldn't surprise anyone you know Scott you alluded to the change in CEO the the current CEO for this IPO is fidge Asuma Seema who formerly was VP of advertising at Facebook so they brought in a Facebook. Exact to run this business and shoot I should have looked up what episode he was on but Seth Dallaire was a past guest on this show when he was the chief Revenue officer. For instacart which was right around the time that that fidget joined. [57:19] Instacart so we actually had a discussion about their aspirations to become an advertising business and spoiler alert, it worked at instacart which we're going to break into and that guess set the layer subsequently was hired as the chief Revenue officer at Walmart where he's. Building Walmart connect which is also working so turns out ads are becoming an increasingly important part of the ecosystem for retailers but the basic ad math at instacart is that in 2022 the last full year of data instacart generated 470 million dollars in ads so 470 million on 28 billion in GTV, means that that's about 2.6 percent of the spin. That went to ads it's thirty percent of their revenue today and. [58:20] It's growing at 29 percent so it went up 29% from 2022 to from 21 to 20 22. Um it's grown another twenty four percent in the first months of six months of 2023 so, a lot of the unit economics of their transactions have kind of stabilized and are flat the one thing that's still growing at a very fast double-digit pace, is the ad business and at seven and twenty million dollars it's already reasonably robust and they don't. Ads are not a line item on the income statement that they included like you know and presumably like it's not. You could argue it's not Material against the three billion in in Revenue. But the so we don't we don't really know exactly how profitable, Those ads are but in general we would call these ads or retail media Network and the you know people argue about how profitable these retail media networks are people particularly argue about Amazon's but kind of the middle of the range when people estimate how what how profitable these things are is that they're about 75 percent gross right so in theory they should be near 99% gross margin because like you don't have to make anything to sell an ad. [59:46] You know you do need some technology you need an ad server you need Administration and salespeople you need brand safety people you know there is. Some infrastructure some of which has to scale with the ad business and so the the kind of. Most common estimate that that I see out there is like 75% of that revenue from ad business is profit. So that implies that the ad business contributed seven 555 million to the. To the income statement for 2022. Um and they were only profitable 428 million in 2022 so that the ad business contribute like by that sort of slice the ad business contributed. [1:00:33] You know covered all of their losses and and was essentially all of their their profit. In in 2022 and it's growing faster than anything else so it's very clear that the ad business is a key. Tenant of this instacart model and they in the management can section they it was kind of funny working for a big, advertising agency because they had to spend a fair amount of time like justifying that ads are valuable good thing and that people are spending money on ads so they kind of you know paint paint this picture that consumer packaged Goods companies which are you know most of the goods that instacart cells that. [1:01:20] Cpgs in the u.s. spend about 200 billion dollars a year on advertising and currently about a quarter of that is digital. And so the. The you know a typical cpg spends like about thirty percent of their gross sales on advertising and you know at the moment instacart is collecting about less than three percent of its sales in advertising so I think they're saying like hey. Advertising is super effective it's an important part of our economic model and there's a ton of. Of potential growth for us in this market and that cpgs need us and they amongst their claims about the size of their business, there are 50 500 brands that are advertising on instacart today and those are. At the moment all brands that sell. [1:02:18] Whose Goods get sold on instacart so we call that endemic advertisers right so it's it's Mondelez selling cookies and folks like that a lot of advertising companies. Sell ads to people that aren't necessarily selling through the. The the platform we call those non-endemic advertisers and we I don't think there are any non-endemic advertisers on instacart as of yet. But so at the Top Line like these are these are solid fundamentals for an ad business you like. [1:02:54] From my perspective retail media networks are super important evolution in the space they are very important I actually think for a lot of smaller retailers they get overhyped and that there's a problem with scale with a lot of these but instacart appears to be one of the companies. That has enough scale to build a real. A real business around this there is a unique problem that instacart has with ads that you know I think they've only been partially able to remediate so far who's paying for the ads. [1:03:25] Right so they talked about the brands paying for the ad right it's Procter & Gamble about the ad but there's a lot of stakeholders with budgets at Procter & Gamble, there's Mark Pritchard that buys Super Bowl ads and tries to build the brand and make people love tied but there are also account teams, that are trying to Goose the sales at their account so there's a Walmart account team and a Kroger account team and an Albertsons account team and all of those guys have an ad budget, that they want to use to sell more stuff at Walmart Kroger and Albertsons respectively. And so the big problem you have with instacart is you spend that ad dollar with instacart and you don't actually know. Which retailer it's going to impact. Right and so it's kind of like it has to come out of the top of funnel ad budget but it's bottom of the funnel Performance Marketing, type ads mostly search ads and so not saying that model can't work but it's. [1:04:33] The the guys with budgets that are used to buying ads are used to a slightly different structure so I will say that at the moment instacart causes a lot of consternation because it's a it's an unusual Beast that people don't exactly know how to budget for or how to spend their money on and you know I would assume if instacart wants to grow a lot they have to make that, easier for for the brands to do. Scot: [1:05:00] Yeah so what do you think. They're so this is a relatively good chunk of Revenue where do you think they're getting it from is it online going offline I mean offline going online are they taking it from Google are they taking it from couponing or. Two Brands even do like newspaper inserts are still a thing like I know that back in the day. Jason: [1:05:22] So I know I yeah I think. Brands are pretty pretty rapidly shifting their their dollars to digital vehicles and so two things like there's you know traditional kind of, newspaper magazine advertising that's atrophying and and the brands are replacing that with digital there's a slight misnomer the whole privacy thing and Facebook is a real thing but you know who wasn't buying a huge amounts of Facebook ads are like National cpgs with huge brand recall so so you know those tended to be smaller Brands and longer tail things so it's less like oh. [1:06:05] The these guys are shifting from Facebook it's more they're shifting from old-school marketing and over are television to to these digital vehicles but a big chunk of it is still coming out of these trade budgets right and so there may have been a pool of money that was allocated to spend at Kroger and it used to get spend on newspaper circulars that were like Kroger ads that fell out of the newspaper and that's an increasingly ineffective vehicle or maybe they even got spent on floor decals in the aisle at Kroger right you know like Shopper marketing tactics or trade tactics and so increasingly the retail media networks are getting a chunk of those trade dollars and I do think instacart is getting some of those even though it's trickier to do because you know it's not allocated exactly 21 specific retailer at the moment. Scot: [1:07:07] Yeah the so what did the ad formats I've seen is I always get this one that's like you through some Quaker Oats granola bars in there if you add these six things will give you a five bucks or something I've seen a coupon and I've seen a you know an upsell hey you've previously bought this or you may like this are there those are the three main add units or am I missing something. Jason: [1:07:33] Yeah so I am not going to speak specifically about the variation in ad units but as a general rule like probably I'm assuming the most predominant ads on the platform are search ads right so people search for products like always and you know above all the organic results are a bunch of sponsored ads right and so off very often those don't have a special offer in them they're just premium. [1:08:00] And so a big chunk is probably those those search ads you know then they're there are like Banner type ads that that land either on like the homepage of a particular retailer or on a category page or subcategory page and more often those are likely to have some call-to-action offer in them so they might have a promotion or a discount of some kind and then in the digital space um there's a lot of what we call like top off and impulse ads which are what you were just talking about right and you know one of the big problems we have with digital grocery is when you go shopping at the grocery store your wife sends you to the store with a list of 10 items and you buy all those 10 items but then you walk by the ice cream aisle on your way to the cash wrap and you add ice cream even though you didn't plan to buy ice cream and then when you're standing in the cash wrap, you're sneering at that Snickers bar or that Wrigley gum and you add that to the car and maybe a cold Coke to drink on the way home from the grocery store so a big chunk of a traditional grocer sales are all these unplanned impulse purchases and that. [1:09:16] By default happens a lot less in digital Grocery and so a lot of these ad formats are kind of are, our Industries early efforts to try to reinvent digital impulse and I would I would call it pretty imperfect at the moment. Scot: [1:09:35] Don't you get a nursing inside about gum or something like because self-checkout smelled the gum that serendipity. Jason: [1:09:42] Yeah the the that that cash wrap used to be the most valuable real estate in a grocery store like the most Revenue per square foot was that what we call the cash wrap which is the. The conveyor belt that you stand in line and actually the first thing that killed the cash wrap was not any of this digital shopping or any of these things it was. Facebook and the mobile phone and simply because you now had something else to do when you are standing