Podcast appearances and mentions of seth what

Join us for this episode of “Drive Time OC”, Seth & Shelby discuss what's going on in Orange County CA. If it's important to them, it should be important to you!1.5 Million dollar settlement and are online courses going anywhere anytime soon? This and much more.Seth - What's that smell? Its 1.5 million DollarsWeb - https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/06/09/water-board-approves-1-5m-settlement-in-laguna-beach-sewage-spill/Web - https://www.ocregister.com/2021/06/09/1-5-million-settlement-over-laguna-beach-sewage-spill-approved/“OC Real-Estate with Daniel Preszler”HeadlineShelby - College online options are here to stayWeb -https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-04/covid-changes-csu-future-students-want-more-online-learningNATIONAL CORN ON THE COB DAYAs we approach the first day of summer, June 11th marks the calendar to celebrate National Corn on the Cob Day each year. Fresh corn on the cob is a summertime treat people from all corners of the United States look forward to as we start the picnic season.Web - https://nationaldaycalendar.com/days-2/national-corn-on-the-cob-day-june-11/Story Recap:Seth - Aiden Leos shooting: Charges filed in the road-rage shooting death of 6-year-old boyWeb - https://6abc.com/aiden-leos-suspects-arrested-freeway-shooting-update/10762462/Seth - Just another Covid update - got to love them Web - https://voiceofoc.org/2021/06/all-orange-county-residents-still-required-to-wear-masks-until-at-least-late-june/Shelby - Bite & a SipRodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton/WestminsterBrewery, food, dessert, arcade, a lot of outside areas Web https://www.rodeopublicmarket.com/“Feel Good Friday with Tina AndersonEventsSeth - A Rooftop Bar at Your Place? 5 Reasons This Should Be Your Next Place to Live in OCWeb - https://localemagazine.com/skyloft-apartments-irvine/Shelby - Drone Ban?Web -https://www.ocregister.com/2021/06/08/huntington-beach-pd-to-partner-with-state-in-enforcing-drone-ban-in-bolsa-chica-ecological-reserve/ Santa Ana is Accepting Art Proposals Web https://newsantaana.com/submit-your-art-proposals-for-the-south-main-public-art/LinksTina Anderson, Feel Good Fridayfb - https://www.facebook.com/tinaandersonOC/ig - https://www.instagram.com/tinaandersonoc/Web - https://tinaandersonoc.com/Drive Time OCWeb - https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/drive-time-oc/Twitter - https://twitter.com/DriveTimeOCInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/drivetimeoc/TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@drivetimeocFacebook - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DriveTimeOCSponsors“OC Real-Estate with Daniel”Daniel Preszler - (714) 788-7525 Email - 714ocre@gmail.comFoskaris Wellness - https://foskariswellness.com/Sitch Radio - https://sitchradio.com/If you would like to become a sponsor or advertiser Call Sitch Radio (714) 643-2500 X 1

In recent years, UrbanStems has grown from operating its online flower ordering and delivery business in a few markets to processing and delivering orders from coast to coast. It’s a DTC success story, but it was by no means an easy road to get to where the company is now. Scaling is one of the most challenging parts of running a business. Where do you allocate your resources? How do you enter new markets? And what do you do when disaster strikes in a way that could topple your business?Seth Goldman had to answer those questions and more when he took over as the CEO of UrbanStems in 2017. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he spilled the tea on everything he learned along the way. Seth explains how to navigate through the process of scaling, finding bottlenecks in your operations, and breaks down the ways to look at ROI when trying to break into a new market. Plus, he gives some insight into best practices when adding headcount. Main Takeaways:Finding the Bottleneck: There is a tendency for everyone to think everything is the problem, so it’s important to use data to prove that you have an actual bottleneck rather than anecdotal experiences. With the data as a guide, you can zero in on the actual bottlenecks and fix them at the source.Tipping The Scale: There are various hurdles to scaling. Doing it successfully is about finding the right level of balance when it comes to allocating resources. Are the current processes failing? Is there new technology that can create efficiencies? Or maybe you should be allocating headcount in a different way. Answering those questions is the best way to determine how to stimulate sustainable growth.Welcome To [Enter City Here]: When expanding your business into new markets, understanding the ROI of moving into those cities is the first step. It’s not enough to figure out if there are potential customers. Other factors such as supply chain, cultural considerations, and non-financial benefits also need to be taken into account.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-Founder at mission.org. Today, on the show, we have Seth Goldman, the CEO of UrbanStems. Seth, welcome.Seth:Thank you, Stephanie. Great to be here.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm excited to have you. For anyone who does not know UrbanStems, can you tell me a bit about it?Seth:Sure. UrbanStems is a six-year-old old company that is the premier provider of direct to consumer florals.Stephanie:That's awesome, and how long have you been with the company?Seth:I've been at the company for about three and a half years.Stephanie:Cool. What brought you to UrbanStems and what was your background before?Seth:Yeah, so it was a person actually that brought me, the founder, Ajay Kori is a dear friend of mine, and we both worked at a company called Quidsi together, which was acquired by Amazon back in 2011, and we remained very close friends from that point on. I went off to a company called HelloFresh. He went off to found UrbanStems, and we reunited in 2017.Stephanie:That's great. What did you do at HelloFresh?Seth:Yeah, I was the CEO of the US business, helping to grow HelloFresh from its near infancy in the US to a much larger business, and it was a wild ride and I had a lot of fun doing it.Stephanie:That's great. It seems like a good company to get a lot of lessons from, to bring to UrbanStems, like similar problems maybe, or things to tackle.Seth:Absolutely, both in terms of the apps, specific product, a perishable product, and a complicated supply chain, as well as I'd say the softer skills in terms of scaling a business, scaling a team and the challenges that come along with that.Stephanie:Very cool. When you came into UrbanStems, what was going on back in 2017, and how has it changed since?Seth:Yeah. When I came on board, it was great. Ajay brought me in and asked me to help beef up the operations of the company. I'd say, as a consumer, the biggest difference between now and then is that you could only get UrbanStems in a few select cities across the US at that point, and we made a big decision to go nationwide in early 2018, and that's really helped us scale the business since then. Although, we really still love our city delivery method that we still have in New York and DC. It creates that really intimate relationship with the customer and their recipient. We hope to be able to do more of that going forward.Stephanie:Tell me a bit about how do you pick cities? Of course, if it's started in a certain city, you're probably going to launch there, but how would you go about picking which cities to start in and having that city method that you're talking about, is developing a good relationship in that city?Seth:It's a pretty simple exercise of figuring out which cities are likely to have enough revenue and an ROI on that city to get in there. We believe there probably around 30 cities that we could identify today that likely makes sense. In terms of which cities we'd prioritize next, we would really rely on data. That data would help us understand what would be the revenue opportunity, how quickly we might get there. From there, we would also layer on supply chain and we would try to figure out if that city was easier or more complex from a supply chain standpoint. Finally, we'd overlay brand. We'd try to understand if there were any idiosyncrasies of that city that made it more or less attractive. Then finally, we might say, does that city have any sort of non-financial strategic importance to our business?Stephanie:Oh, great. Okay. This is a very interesting topic that I actually have not talked to many people on the show, so I want to double click into all of those, if you're happy to go there with me.Seth:Sure, let's go.Stephanie:All right. When you're picking your cities, you're talking about developing which ones have an ROI, and then of course, looking into a bunch of data for rolling out to the next cities. How do you go about developing which cities will have a good ROI?Seth:Yeah. The great news is that we have data to show what revenue we have in those cities currently. We would have to do a deep dive analysis of what zip codes we thought we could actually deliver to, depending on the city, if it's a city that we could get in with bike messengers, as we currently do in New York and DC, or if it's a city that would force us to rely exclusively on cars, which is not a major concern although we really love our brand promise of delivering via bike where we can.Stephanie:That's fun.Seth:Yeah, we would then use analytics to understand where we stand in each city revenue versus where we think we might be able to get to, where we start to have to look at some proxy data. For example, Google can help us understand what we believe our penetration in that city is versus a benchmark say of New York or DC, where we currently have our strongest brand recognition. That could give us some guidance as to whether, if we're doing X dollars of revenue, do we think if we jump in, we can increase that by 25%, 50% or more than 100%? Then we have to partner with the marketing team to understand what sort of a marketing effort would be required to get us there within a year or 18 months to break even, which is sort of, not a hard rule, but it's sort of a general proxy of what we're going to be looking for.Stephanie:Okay. When it comes to that marketing effort, what kind of channels do you look for, especially when you're launching in a new city where maybe you're not well-known and it's like, this seems like a city maybe similar to DC, but we've never been there before? What kind of things do you explore to get those new customers and brand awareness?Seth:We have to probably devote certain on the ground marketing campaigns. It could be as simple as going to street fairs, it could be that we would take some sort of local radio or other sort of top of funnel awareness advertising out. Each city though, is really going to be unique. I think that's something that we've learned, even just having New York and DC, we see small differences in the average order value. We see small differences even between, say Manhattan and Brooklyn, in terms of the percentage of flowers versus plants that the consumers purchase. So, we'll have to do some research that helps us understand the consumer and then that would help us figure out which marketing channels would make sense. But we almost certainly would be more comfortable getting aggressive in awareness marketing when we jump into a new city, because the return on that investment should be pretty strong, given that when we get into a city, the conversion rate, we would expect to be higher on our ecommerce platform.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. I can also imagine if you have bike deliveries, like if they had the backpack with your logo and beautiful flowers sticking out of it. That in and of itself could be a great marketing tactic to spread word of mouth.Seth:Absolutely. That is an entire romantic vision is true, except hopefully for the flowers sticking out the back, because they should be in contained packaging.Stephanie:Oh yeah. I guess I would just buy all over the place if they're just sticking out. Huh.Seth:But we do have branded everything for our couriers, t-shirts and vests, the coveted sweatshirts and hoodies. In fact, one of the downfalls of our sort of head of delivery was that he designed a hoodie that was too well loved that, not to accuse our corporate team, but they started taking them in numbers that they shouldn't have so we had to place an extra order. It really is the most comfortable hoodie.Seth:But it accomplishes two goals. The first, as we discussed is, it's really nice branding and advertising for the company. The second is it helps make these employees in these remote locations feel more part of our broader and greater team and brand.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. Are there any other on the ground methods like that, that you're experimenting with or that you are hopeful of to promote word of mouth in maybe a new and different way?Seth:It's interesting in, especially the last nine months, we probably pulled back on a lot of that for obvious reasons. I think that it's an area where we would experiment, but I think you also have to be careful because it's hard to measure the effectiveness of that spend it takes, not just monetary resources, but really time. One of the things that I noted when I came on board in 2017 is that my city managers were being asked to do a lot of these in-person events. We hadn't really thought through how much of their time was being taken and how to think about them as an operations manager versus a marketing manager when we had a lot of work to do to scale the operations of the business. I think people just have to be thoughtful and careful about the KPIs that they're going to measure people against.Seth:But the people who are responsible for budget, but also the people whose time is going to be taken during these events. The good news is that the people love doing the events. These small scale events were very popular for the staff that, even after I told them that they should pull back, I found out months later, they were still doing them because they enjoyed them, but then they would complain that they didn't have time for other things. It did have to lead to some alignment meetings.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a really good point. So, thinking about the next piece that you mentioned was layering on supply chain when rolling out into new cities. It seems really difficult of course, with fresh items. So, how do you all go about thinking about that in a new city and building out a good supply chain that makes sure the flowers don't just die in a warehouse or something?Seth:A very sort of blocking and tackling for our goods is that you have to have a refrigerator. It has to be something that you have confidence is going to maintain temperature at around 35 degrees. And you, say very simple things like just like you're developing any real estate, make sure you give enough time to build it out, so you're not under pressure, because it's hard to come back from that if you're forcing yourself to open up on January 1, but you just can't have the refrigerator installed before then, you're going to fail. Making sure you understand your lead times. But for our business, I'd say the most important thing is understanding the notes in our networks. We have a larger facility in the Greater DC Area that helps service our New York and DC same day delivery locations.Seth:We have to think through as we branch out to more cities, if so for example, Philadelphia, we could certainly service from the same Maryland facility with limited additional CapEx, with limited additional complexity added to our supply chain. As we think to the West Coast, or as we think to, say the big populations in Texas or in the upper Midwest, if we have a facility nearby, there may be synergies where we can pull product from there and deliver it to a local facility. I would say that the farther we get from our home base, in terms of miles, in terms of being three hours and three time zones behind, you have to just ... it's hard to model it out on paper, but you have to start to acknowledge that the difficulties, things that could get lost in translation. You go from having everyone on the same eight hour, 9:00 to 5:00, to only overlapping for five hours, that can just sort of add strain to the systems.Seth:If you're going to go to the West coast, have you hired someone, did you decide that you're going to spend three months having them on the East Coast, training up, learning your culture before you send them to the West Coast, or you're going to take a gamble and just hire them on the West Coast and through more Zoom calls and maybe someone flying to California, try to build them into the culture and the brand of the company? I think those are really important decisions that don't sound like supply chain decisions, but ultimately, really help you down the line when someone is going to have to make a lot of executive calls that will impact your supply chain and will impact your ability to be successful or not on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.Stephanie:Yeah. I think that's so important around building culture and a team. I mean, especially right now, where everything is digital and companies are still having to hire and find the right people, and it's kind of hard over Zoom. I've interviewed some people over zoom and it's like, you don't really know if you know them or how many notes they have in front of them, or what's really going on. How do you guys go about building a relationship and hiring? I think earlier you mentioned having this connection economy, where everyone's on digital tools, but people still want to connect in the real world, but maybe you can't right now. How do you think about that with teams and cultures and hiring new people?Seth:Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have hired probably about half a dozen people since the lockdowns were initiated and since our corporate staff for the vast majority of folks have not gone into the office. I'd say that we had one key advantage, which was that, before March, we did have a team that was split between New York and DC, so it was not uncommon for us to be on video conferencing. That transition was, to some degree, at least natural. In terms of the hiring process, I'd say the hardest part, and one that we definitely still have not right, and I'll be honest, for some small company, we didn't have it right necessarily before the pandemic was the onboarding. That the team though has started to make headway, we've gotten our swag. We've actually pulled it from the various physical locations and people are getting a care package now when they are in their first week at the company.Seth:I make sure to reach out to new hires during their first week to just welcome them with a warm email and then tell them when they're feeling no longer overwhelmed that we'll have a 30 or 45 minute call with no specific agenda other than really getting to know each other. I can try to sprinkle a few of my thoughts around company mission and values into those calls. Seth:I think for hiring managers and/or senior executives out there, I would also say, it's not just you making sure you know them. If you have someone that you really like, how are they getting to know you and feeling it on both sides? That you have an easier time convincing them to come on board.Stephanie:Yeah. Are there any best tips that you recommend to make sure that the candidates get to know you because, especially over Zoom, it seems like people are always talking over each other, even with ... I was talking earlier about internet, the video's not on, I had to turn it off. Is there anything that you guys practice to make sure that, not only are you getting to know the candidates, but also that they feel comfort with you and can ask questions and feel confident about that?Seth:Yeah, so we do as much as possible try to do video rather than just phone call interviews. I guess you could make arguments that that's better or worse, but it certainly allows people to respond to facial expressions, queues when it looks like someone is about to speak so you can try not to talk over them. I do reserve the last 15 minutes of every interview to allow the interviewee to ask me questions. That's both for them, and also, I secretly am looking to see how prepared someone is by the quality and thoughtfulness of the questions that they ask. If anyone is local, I will try to meet with them in person. We have to be thoughtful about that. Let's say we have two candidates and one is in New York and one is in DC, and we haven't crossed this bridge yet, but how do we make sure there's no implicit bias that we're pushing for the person that we met in person? But we try to have a variety of interviewers for each role. I think we've done a pretty good job with that.Stephanie:Okay, cool. Thinking through bringing on new employees, the first thing that's coming to my mind is scaling companies, something you've had quite a bit of success with around HelloFresh and now UrbanStems. I wanted to hear a little bit about how you think about scaling companies, whether it's at UrbanStems or HelloFresh or anything in the past that you've worked on.Seth:Yeah. I think what I try to do is, when I do have a moment to step back, is look at each function within the business, or I look what our plan is, where are we expected to get to over the next year? Whether that's our revenue mark, whether that's improvement along other KPIs or important metrics, and I try to pair that against each function. Is each function at a point where they can make that leap without any additional people? Are they at a point where they can make that leap but they'll need to improve just process? Do they need technology investments in their function in order to be more successful? We are nowhere near perfect on this, but each year we've gotten better. Our planning process is in the sort of June/July timeframe, of talking through what that plan is, and each team trying to think through what they will need to be successful there.Seth:I would say that stepping back where you run into problems, and it's sort of dual-edged sword, is if you put cash out and investments ahead of growth, you can get yourself in trouble. But you can also get yourself in trouble if you put growth ahead of investment. It is a dangerous game. I think, when it comes to hiring people we try to be thoughtful. It's also, what level are you hiring at? That's something you'll often hear me say to the team if they ask for another resource. To me, it's most important that we get that right level right. Very different to hire an associate versus even someone with two or three years of experience where you're saying, we just could not be successful, we hired someone just out of college. My next question will almost assuredly be, why?Seth:And managing the specific work that someone needs to do against the experience that you're saying is required. You don't want to hire someone too senior to do junior level work. They won't find it satisfying. There is such a thing as overqualified. Then on the flip side, you have to be careful what you can expect of someone more junior and what level of accountability and ownership you can place on them. I think, to me, that's the most important thing, is making sure you're hiring it to the right level, that everyone is aligned, that this role is needed. The reality is, in almost any startup, you're going to have a whole slew of resources that are not yet hired that people think are necessary, and trying to at least agree on alignment on when those might get prioritized.Seth:If something comes up that accelerates something, that happens too. That can throw a wrench in plans and you have to walk people through that that's happening and have conversations, well, hey, how did this new role cut in line ahead of the others? That can be hard, but you have to do it.Stephanie:I've definitely seen that in the past. At previous companies I've been at, I worked in finance, and every team always wanted headcount. Everyone always had a reason and were pretty good at justifying why they need those people. How do you go about spotting those opportunities of like, this is an area that obviously needs investment and I see growth coming after that? How do you actually think through finding the opportunities when they seem like they're pretty hard to spot? What's holding what up to create growth or to create exponential growth in the future?Seth:Yeah. I would say that you're sort of hiring for two reasons. One is growth, like you said, we're truly, there's a revenue or a profit or a customer experience opportunity that's not yet ... We can't go after because we don't have someone on the team. The other is that we're, I don't want to say things are crumbling, but sort of this more fixing the foundational type hires that you have a critical process that's not being executed the way you want. That's where you have to start to lean in and understand, is that a process technology or a resource issue? Once you get comfort that that's a resource issue, from my standpoint, typically that's a pretty easy hire, because, unless you have invested in something that's causing friction, that itself is not worth investing in, that hire will pay for themselves financially, because they're going to unblock something that, that is important to be unblocked.Seth:That's how I get comfortable with those kinds of hires. On the revenue side, if it's creating something new, you can run ROI models. Sometimes you can do those in your head. Sometimes you put them down on paper. Then for other functions, sometimes it is a little bit of taking a risk. For example, it was about a year or 18 months ago that we decided we needed a stronger social presence. We weren't sure exactly what that meant financially, but we brought someone on board on our brand director, Megan's team. After a few months, we started to really see results. We were really impressed. We managed to, in the last 18 months, five X on our Instagram following, not that that's the be all and end all of KPIs. Then for the sort of CFO in me, we started to see revenue, directly attributable revenue follow that.Seth:I think the other thing that, this is where managers have to do, is they have to sometimes take a risk. They say, there's a resource I'm really asking for, this is what I think it will return, and when they have something pan out, they are able to probably come to that next meeting with an ask with a little more confidence themselves, and with the, me again wearing my CFO hat, and me having more confidence to say yes to that opportunity.Stephanie:That's cool. I like you wearing your CFO hat. I appreciate that with a background in finance. You just mentioned, which I'm now I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, tell me how you grew your social, because that is an avenue that obviously a lot of brands are relying on and it's becoming even more important with the ability to click and buy on social, or at least it's headed in that direction. What did you guys do to grow your social presence?Seth:Yeah, so the very first thing we did is, like I mentioned, hire a dedicated resource, someone who spends probably 75% plus of her time thinking through our social channels and how we can become more influential there. Second is, once we started to see some results there, we added a SaaS software platform that helped us assess which visuals were going to be more engaging for our customer base. We did, though still have conversations, interestingly enough, the photos that I'd say I prefer from a brand perspective, those with people in them significantly underperform those of just flowers.Stephanie:Oh, interesting. This is a piece of tech that you guys were utilizing to figure out which ones like, which images would you best?Seth:Yeah. I actually don't know how precise it is, but it certainly helped us. We didn't need that to tell us that people underperformed flowers, but even just different variants of a similar image, they were able to pretty convincingly predict which one was going to outperform. Obviously we are betting on engagement, at least these measurable engagement statistics mattering. I think one of the hardest things in social is understanding what matters and what doesn't. Like I said, having our Instagram following at 150,000 versus at 30,000, where it was, we think that is directionally very good, is that, can I quantify what that means for our company? No. Will we continue to push to increase our reach. Absolutely. Are we seeing that increased reach is translating into direct revenue? Yes. Is that our only goal? No.Seth:Do we know the relationship between directly attributable revenue and non-attributable revenue? No, we have no idea if that even is the same month over month. But these investments that we made in a resource, training her, we actually had some, at one point also gave a green light to bring on an intern so that our full-time hire could manage up and start to add strategy to how she was thinking through, not just executing every day, and that's been great. We talked about that. How much is this going to cost? What is this person going to do? It was a pretty quick decision. But because it wasn't a ton of money, but even there, what I think is still critical is that someone comes to the table with that analysis done that's thoughtful, and that they seek to justify any investment, whether it's $100,000 or $1 million or $1,000.Seth:It just gets people in the discipline habit of understanding that money is going to be invested or not across teams, and it's not ... there's not an infinite amount of it. Stephanie:That's very cool. Now that your social person is able to start managing up, what kind of tactics or strategies are they hoping to implement over the next couple of years? What are they saying they believe in, or they want to try or test out?Seth:Yeah. I think a big buzz word in social is influencer. One of the things I've said is, if Oprah came out and endorsed UrbanStems, I don't know if that would even help us because our website would probably crash. We'd be out of stock on inventory in the next 20 minutes, and we'd enrage all of our good customers who came back and sold out. So, we have to think through how we would even execute that, but the team is bullish that, that matters. So, we're trying to think through that. I certainly also believe in content. The team believes in that. So, expect the we'll invest more in content. It's no secret that video content outperforms static photo content. So, looking at that, but it's also no surprise to anyone that videos are a lot more expensive to make than taking photos.Seth:You have to figure out what your budget is. You have to still be able to test very scrappily. I still will always believe in that, some of the best content is always going to be UGC. Some of the best content is going to be filmed in an iPhone, or for suckers like me, Samsung Galaxies. It's about mixing that with the more professionally created content, figuring out where and when to spend bigger, both from a photography standpoint and from a video. For example, the team did a wonderful job. This Thanksgiving, we have a dedicated lining page, which features video for the first time on the site.Stephanie:Oh nice.Seth:I'm really excited about that, testing it and testing more of that. With everything digital, the best thing is that you can always AB test that. Even if you spent a ton of money on something, I still encourage you to AB test it, to ensure that it's working. If you want to AB tested at 80% with the video and 20% control without so that you get more out there, that's fine. It'll just take a little longer to get the results of that test.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you letting us look into the future with you and your team. I'm sure that you're probably like, ah, I don't want people bringing this up anymore. That's so three years ago. However, it came to my mind when you were talking about Oprah and if she were to endorse you guys and you could sell out, and their website will crash. It brings me back to, of course what happened in 2017 that I think a lot of people could learn from, who are listening, around, I think there was like a Valentine's day snafu where you had too many orders and the website maybe crashed or something. Tell me a little bit about that and what you guys have ... what actually happened, what are the details on it? I know you weren't there, but what are the details? What have you learned from it? And what do things look like today?Seth:Yeah. No, I wasn't, but I don't think that's the sort of important part of the story. I think, in three short words, we messed up. We did not fully understand how we were going to execute the holiday. It was unfortunate that it was on Valentine's day, which is one of these two days a year that everyone looks to flower companies to sort of solve their buying need, which is to get flowers delivered. We were better at marketing than we were at executing that year. We learned a lot. I think that that's the most important thing, which is we learned that we needed a more sophisticated plan. That plan needed to be backed by data. To be honest, this is why I came in. This is why Ajay asked me to come into the business, which was to help figure it out for the next year.Seth:The first thing I did was I talked to people. I got the stories. I started sharing those stories around to make sure that they matched with what people thought went wrong. I started to look at data, and data helped me craft a plan. One thing that I actually think I did really well is that we had the data and we had the plan, and we just kept going over the plan. I think that is one of those things that, for people who would like to move quickly, can infuriate you. It's infuriated me at times. The number of times that I think we had to go over the plan or that we went over it was well into the double digits, just reviewing and reviewing, but we were successful and it wasn't just that we fixed everything from the previous year.Seth:In fact, we had to make changes that had nothing to do with people making mistakes. We had just pushed too many orders into certain physical facilities than we could handle. Our tech had not been robustly tested to meet the peak needs by a combination of looking at data and incorporating feedback from people who had gone through it. We were able to create a plan that was, again, based in numbers and efficiency metrics, and a realistic execution, still stretched by all means. We did not pull back. But to the credit of Ajay, he brought me in, and he gave me the green light to bring in some additional resources, which I did. We did some new things. We delivered for the first time in the company's history via a third party parcel carrier that allowed us to take orders that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to take.Seth:We had an on-time rate of about 98% to 99%. So, it was a nice reversal from the previous year. The way we phrase it with the team is, it's three and a half years ago, so it's, we don't dwell on it. But we do remember it, and we remember it as a way of motivating ourselves to make sure that our plans have been vetted, thought through, are based in data and have been shared with the team well enough in advance so they feel confident in their ability to execute them.Stephanie:Yep. What are some of the biggest data points that you looked at? When you were coming in or when you reviewed what actually happened, what were some of the biggest things that stood out where you were like, oh, was it the website crashing because it was the tech stack? Was it the supply chain? What specific things were the biggest contributors that maybe any new company can learn from of like, oh, if I'm setting up a similar type business, I need to look for this, this and this. If Oprah decides to come out and give me a shout out.Seth:Yeah. And Oprah, if you're listening, we will still take the shout out.Stephanie:Yeah, send it our way.Seth:But I think the challenge was, when I got ... everyone thought it was everything. It was really important to help people compartmentalize. It actually brought me back to a course in business school. I feel like, in many respects, I was one of the only people, one of the only ones of my friends who actually learned something in business. I remember taking an operations course and it talked about a factory that made, I forget if it was chocolates or chairs, it almost doesn't matter, and they said it was an assembly line and it took a minute to make the first chocolate. The chocolate had to go through, it doesn't even matter, let's call it six steps that each took 10 seconds, and it said, how many chocolates can you make in an hour? I got it wrong.Seth:I said, well, you can make 60. It takes a minute to make each chocolate. It turns out that there were six, like I said, six steps, each were 10 seconds. So, you can actually make six a minute, or 360 an hour. My mind was blown. It was really cool to figure out how an assembly works, what throughput is. I went to a Chipotle just to observe it in action, to find out what the bottleneck was and to figure out actually how a company like Chipotle does an amazing job at lunchtime. It's actually the cashier who typically is the bottleneck. So, you can see they add an extra cashier. Sometimes it's the first person who has to do both your burrito and the meat. So, you'll see they have an extra person who just does the meat. If you ever want to understand operations one-on-one in action, go to a Chipotle at peak time.Stephanie:Oh, that's good. I'll be looking at police so differently now.Seth:What really I just had to understand, and what was clear to me is they hadn't really done that kind of analysis to look at throughput, how many orders can be packed out. We also have to ... people kept telling you what the bottleneck is. The bottleneck is basically where your business chokes, what's the slowest part of your operation. People kept telling me things that ... and then I would say, well, how long does it take to do this? And I would write down the answer, and the numbers they gave me did not match with it being a bottleneck, which either meant that it wasn't the bottleneck, or that it took a lot longer than what they thought.Seth:The key thing was keep digging, keep trying to understand, is it ... because at the end of the day, the math will be the truth that you can use. But if your assumption is based on faulty math, then it's just garbage math. So, you have to look at the operation in action and you have to understand, so for example, with us printing out these custom note cards, whereas it's the note that you wanted for your mother for Mother's Day, right? That's what makes every UrbanStems order unique, besides the fact that you get to pick the bouquet you want and the ad-ons that are specific to your order, which took a lot of technological build hardware and software, to be honest, but it's that note card.Seth:I was told, "This is our bottleneck," and I said, "Well, how long does it take to print a note card?" And they said, "Five seconds." I said, well, it takes a lot longer to pack out an order than five seconds. That can't be. But then I started to lean in, and it turns out that they would print 20 of these note cards at a time, and then they would organize these into a folder, and then they would put the folder away, and then they would bring the folder back out when they were ready to pack out. What was five seconds, when I did all the math, ended up being a minute, and you couldn't even do them one by one, like in the chocolate example, because you had to get 20 chocolates assembled at once. You had to wait for 20 of those chocolates to go down to the end of the assembly line before. So, if you ever got behind, the time to catch up was significant.Stephanie:Oh, wow. That's really Interesting, about like something where you're like, oh no, that's not the problem. Then being like, oh, actually your process is the biggest part of the problem.Seth:Exactly. This is a very cool evolution. People who have not been at the company for at least two years, don't understand. With a bottleneck, you have two solutions. You either make it more effective or you add resources to the bottleneck. The first year that's what we did. We had five of our most analytical people, five very smart people who just on Valentine's day helped us print them. As absurd as that sounds, that's what we did. We just overwhelmed the process with resources. This past year, the tech team and the supply chain team got together and they completely reinvented. Now, every single order is sent to a specific person's queue that ties to their physical desk, and there's a printer at every station and that printer prints out one note card at a time that's tied to that a specific order. Now, it takes five seconds to print an old card, and it is no longer a bottleneck.Stephanie:Yeah. That's great. It seems like there'd be a lot less room for things to get lost. I mean, if everything's in a folder and you're trying to sort through it, [crosstalk] maybe picking up the wrong notes and you'd be like, hey grandma, and be like, oh, this is the wrong note that got sent out. It seems a lot more. Yeah. You're not going to have any errors doing it this way now.Seth:Yeah. The error rate, both reported and for sure, actual declined. We also saw that our throughput overall went up by 50%, 60%, 70%, and we could train people on this new system much faster. Those five people that I mentioned that had to be in that room on Valentine's day now don't have to be in that room.Stephanie:Yep. That was very good reminders about bottlenecks. I think it's very encouraging for every new brand to kind of look into that and really dive deep. So, yeah, I love that example. All right. The couple of minutes left, let's jump over to the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Seth?Seth:I am ready.Stephanie:All right. We'll start with the hardest one first. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Seth:The one thing that'll have the biggest impact on ecommerce is FedEx and UPS.Stephanie:Okay. Tell me a bit more.Seth:Yeah. Their ability to grow and sustain their supply chains and deliver on time is going to be critical to, in the next 13 months, they're going to have two holiday seasons, and either a lot of happy customers or a lot of unhappy customers. It'll be really interesting, your 800 pound gorilla. Amazon is highly confident because they've largely disintermediated their over-reliance on UPS. In fact, FedEx and Amazon, they're divorced for the most part. I think that their ability to continue to shift to ecommerce to add Saturday and Sunday delivery nationwide to do FedEx, and UPS delivery to do ground deliveries next day, seven days a week, based on a previous day pickup, all of these things are going to either allow ecommerce to continue to blossom or hold it back. Also, what's very unclear is how much they're going to raise rates in January. Typical years call it 3% to 6%. There is a lot of concern that they could be above, and potentially well above that 6%, and what does that do to demand?Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, that's a really good answer. What one topic or thing do you wish you knew more about?Seth:One topic or a thing.Stephanie:[crosstalk] technology or ...Seth:I've been in and around physical product ecommerce businesses. I think getting more in the data and technology side is always the right ... that is always the future. I love being in consumer businesses. I love the ability to ask almost anyone about the product or service that I'm working with and trying to lead forward and getting their opinion and having that opinion matter. That's the joy and the challenge of ecommerce, but certainly getting deeper into data, getting deeper in technology is something I'm going to encourage anyone, especially anyone young, certainly what I'm going to get my kids into.Stephanie:Yep. I love that. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about, and who would your first guest be?Seth:I think it would be about brands that do it right. I think that I so admire people who build iconic brands, and it goes back to this consumer side of things, but to me, it's looking at these revered brands and whether they are the Phil Knights, Nikes of the world, Reed Hastings and Netflix, or some lesser known smaller brands. I'm always so impressed with people who take the leap to do it. Those, especially who do it without raising significant amounts of capital and create something that just clicks and resonates with consumers, because I think we can all learn that. I find that I've been around companies that have done a nice mix of brand and execution, that have focused so much on execution. I think it's something that I'm good at, and I've been around other people that have been good at it. Maybe it's because of that, that I so admire the folks, those creative, just truly creative visionaries on the branding side.Stephanie:I love that. And who would you pick to bring on as your first guest?Seth:Who would I pick to bring on as my first guest? I guess, not that Reed Hastings would agree, but Netflix ...Stephanie:He might.Seth:Netflix so transformed and based on an industry that could have gotten there, had they seen it coming. In fact, I think at some point he had discussed with them with blockbuster buying out the business, and they dismissed him. I'm sure he has fabulous stories. I'm not so interested in actually the last three years where they've been a powerhouse. I'm really interested in those first years when he struggled, when he kept the faith when things were not going well, how he saw the future when others didn't, how he pivoted from CDs delivered, when he knew it was the time to digital and build something big and special, how he hired people in those early years and got them convinced it was going to be big and special. Those are the questions that are ... and/or now getting the best and the brightest is easy, given the company that they've built. But it's those early years that I'd be really excited to learn about.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I love that. I think we have the same kind of passion, and you would probably like one of our other podcasts called the story, because it's about people like that. We did retastings Phil Knight, We do Elon Musk, and it talks about the early days, how they got started and then you guess their identity at the end, because you wouldn't actually all the things they went through to build the companies that they did. You have to check that out.Seth:Very good. I will.Stephanie:All right, Seth. Well, this has been a great interview. Where can people find out more about you and UrbanStems?Seth:Yeah, UrbanStems is the company name and it's also our website, so urbanstems.com will get you there. If you want, you can also reach out to me, seth.goldman@urbanstems. I'd be happy to chat with you. I'd be happy to provide you with a promo code on your first order. We love people enjoying flowers, and more importantly, we love people sending gratitude to people that they care about.Stephanie:Awesome. Love that. Thanks so much, Seth.Seth:Thank you so much, Stephanie. Bye.

Here is a topic suggested by Seth W.! Charles delivers the question from Seth - What was great about your first car? We truly would have never thought of this topic ever but it was a great one. It seems like all of our first cars were kinda beat up and had issues, but there are a lot of great memories surrounding them. Thanks to Seth for sending in the question. If you would like to do that email us almostdailypod@gmail.com . We Show Some Love: We show the love for Yourself. Featured Guest: Follow, Like, and Subscribe: @AlmostDailyPod FB/AlmostDailyPod Anchor.fm/AlmostDailyPod Contact us: AlmostDailyPod@gmail.com Hosts: Charles McFall, Philip Keating, Tony P. Henderson, and Mike Ellison Music is: Cherry Metal by Arthur Vyncke used under the Creative Commons License --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/inadditionpod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inadditionpod/support

Transcript: Mary: Okay, this is going to be interesting being a couple answering this question. Plus, we already kind of answered in the first question, but what's more difficult listening or speaking? Seth: What? Mary: That's a good joke. Seth: I would say for me, speaking. Even in my own native language speaking is harder for me than listening. I'm a really good listener. I can sit there and listen to someone forever and just keep asking them simple questions and let them do most speaking. So maybe it has to do with a little bit of your personality, but I would say that listening is probably easier for me than speaking. Seth: What about you Mary? Mary: Oh, what do you think? Speaking hands down way easier. I mean, I love listening to. I love getting...you're a good listener. Thank you. I really like knowing more about people and listening to their perspectives and their stories and things like that. But speaking is not hard for me because I'm so interested and I love language. I no matter what language it is. I really love language. And so it's fun for me to speak. And it's fun for me to share. Seth: It's fun to listen to you. Mary: So definitely, speaking is more fun. Listening is more difficult because my brain is in speaking mode. And so sometimes listening I really have to like, be much more conscientious of that skill and learn to practice that Seth: And I am the opposite. Have to consciously speak except minutes with you. Mary: Oh, it's so easy for us. So where we got married. So anyway, you guys, I wish that we could hear what You're what you would say about that. What is more difficult for you? Maybe go and write that down or share with someone which skill is more difficult for you.

Today on Drive Time OC Seth & Brian talk with Steve Rodriguez, the Chief Curator and mind behind OC Wanderlust, an Instagram feed boosting over 18 thousand followers.Seth – Shuttered San Clemente Hospital Could Reopen To Treat Coronavirus ZombiesWeb – https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/03/24/shuttered-san-clemente-hospital-could-reopen-to-treat-coronavirus-patients/Brian – Orange County is releasing city data on covid19 starting todayWeb – https://occovid19.ochealthinfo.com/Seth – 2 Critically Injured by Vehicle While Crossing a street in Santa AnaWeb- https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/24/2-critically-injured-by-vehicle-while-crossing-santa-ana-street/Brian – Brian – Local OC breweries providing pick-up service for cans, kegs, and growlers.– Gunwhale Ales, Costa Mesa & Orange– Green Cheek, Costa Mesa & Orange – *Bootlegger’s Brewery, Costa Mesa & Fullerton– The Bruery, Placentia– Four Sons Brewing, Huntington Beach– Chapman Crafted, OrangeWeb – https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/25/local-breweries-come-to-the-rescue-so-you-dont-miss-happy-hour/InterviewSteve Rodriguez, the Chief Curator and mind behind OC Wanderlust, an Instagram feed boosting over 18 thousand followers.Web – https://www.instagram.com/ocwanderlust/ EventsBrian – Binge watch anything!Seth – What you can do: Paint nights, Yoga, health wellness, drugs, hunt humansLinksJamar, the “Digital Currency Guy”Web – https://thedigitalcurrencyguy.com/free-trading-challenge-1Web – https://thedigitalcurrencyguy.com/startdcgIG – https://www.instagram.com/jamarjames/FB – https://www.facebook.com/jamarjames11/Twitter – https://twitter.com/Jamar_100Email – jamarjames@gmail.comJay Sherer, “What’s Coming to Theaters this Week”Storytelling ExecutiveThe Reclamation Societyjay@reclamationsociety.orgThe Story Geeks PodcastTina Anderson, Feel Good Fridayfb – https://www.facebook.com/tinaandersonOC/ig – https://www.instagram.com/tinaandersonoc/Web – https://tinaandersonoc.com/“OC Real-Estate with Daniel Preszler”(714) 788-7525714ocre@gmail.comTitan HST with A Prepared OC – https://www.titanhst.com/Drive Time OCWeb – https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/drive-time-oc/Twitter – https://twitter.com/DriveTimeOCInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/drivetimeoc/TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@drivetimeocDownload the “Drive Time OC” AppAndroid – http://bit.ly/38ifo2JApple – https://apple.co/2RzEzIhSponsorsFoskaris Wellness – https://foskariswellness.com/Teatro Martini – https://www.teatromartini.com/Sitch Radio – https://sitchradio.com/If you would like to become a sponsor or advertiserCall Sitch Radio (714) 643-2500 X 1

Episode 36 - Interview with Marketing Expert & NY Times Bestselling Author Seth Godin Bucket list ticked! How would I describe the experience with him? He was totally gracious, his brain moves so fast, his recall of stories and case studies is incredible, and he is as super generous as I had hoped. In this podcast interview with Seth, he shares What he defines as “This is Marketing” in his new book and not “that.” The power of early adopters in your marketing and communication strategy The biggest mistake he ever committed When he realised he had a ‘Personal Brand’ What his focus is for the future of brand “Seth” What he did to attract talent to his company Squidoo when they all wanted to work at Disney How to rise above media hype that polarises people and instead leads change

On this week's episode, there will be royalty visiting us as King Leon The 6th calls in for an exclusive interview. Find out why a king decided to get into the wrestling business, how he acquired his current squire, and why can't he get our names right? Also, who's going to face Jinder at SummerSlam? Can Dean ever trust Seth? What other matches are being rumored for SummerSlam? All this and more, so tune in!

On this week's episode, we welcome the self-proclaimed "meta-human super villain" Insane Dick Lane! Here how he was created, what his goals are, and who needs to watch out for his wrath. Also, a huge secret was revealed on RAW. What was it and how does it affect the GM? Will Dean ever forgive Seth? What happened in the Punjabi Prison? All this and more, so tune in! In addition, we lost a friend this week. This show is in dedication to him, since without him, the show never would have existed. 

In this episode we sit down with Centricity Music General Manager, Steve Ford. 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a:hover{color:#8f8f8f !important;} www.fullcirclemusic.orgFCM007_-_Relationships_with_Steve_FordDuration: 00:50:21You're listening to The Full Circle Music Show. The why of the music biz.Chris: Welcome back to the Full Circle Music Show, it’s Chris Murphy and I'm sitting right beside Seth Mosley. How are you buddy?Seth: I'm good man. It's a busy week, lots of good stuff going on over here at the studio. And I’m excited to take just a few minutes out of our schedule to talk to one of our favorite people in the industry, Mister Steve Ford.Steve has been a guy that I've known for a long time, was one of the people that I met moving to Nashville in the music business. And we've talked to a lot of people on the creative side so far but we haven't yet talked to anybody on the label side. So, you think of the guy that sits in a dark room with a suit in a corner office, that's this guy! Except for not, he actually sits in a what is a pretty awesome office, he's the general manager of a label company called Centricity Music; has been pretty massively successful in the past couple of years and really since they opened. But, he's a really great leader and speaks to what they look for in a good producer, in a good artist, in a good team member at their label.So, if you're wanting to get involved in the music industry, this is a great episode to listened to. I learned a ton and I think you will too.Chris: You know, being a podcast junky, it's nice to meet a fellow podcast enthusiast as well. We had some great conversations in the episode but also talked a lot about our favorite podcasts on and off the mic. He's just a great guy, great to get to know him and I really appreciate Seth you setting this up. Another great interview and I can't wait to listen to it.Seth: And you can check out his company at centricitymusic.com. They have a lot of great artists that I think you'll dig.Audio clip commencesHey podcast listeners, something is coming February 1st 2016. Have you ever thought about a career in song writing or music production? We have created a couple courses with you guys in mind. We've been getting a lot of feedback on people wanting to know more about how to become a song worker; how to become a professional music producer or engineer. These courses were designed to answer some of those questions. Go to fullcirclemusic.org and sign up there for more information.Audio clip endsChris: You were saying earlier before we started rolling that you were a podcast guy.Steve: Oh yeah, big podcast guy.Chris: And, you've heard this podcast before?Steve: Yeah. I've listened to the first three.Chris: Okay. So, can I ask you to go out on a limb and give us a grade so far?Steve: You know what? I'd give them a solid B+. I want them longer. That's my thing; I want to go into the background. I want to hear when you did Brown Banishers which is funny because I've worked a lot with Brown but you didn't get past Amy Grant.Seth: Sure.Steve: I mean, this is the guy who worked with from everybody from Third Day to Mercy Me to Why Heart, he's done everybody like come one there are stories there. I tell people I'm on the corporate side because of Brown Banisher because of how he worked. I was an engineer in LA for ten years and he would come out and mix records with us, it was at a little place called Mama Joes and I would see him on the phone going, “Happy birthday sweetie.” Later knowing that it was Ellie; missed her first walk and all of these other things. And when my daughter was born, I was like, I can't do this. I needed a life and so I started praying and Peter York calls. So it’s because of him so it's fun to hear some his stories. I did a lot of records win Jack Joseph Puig and–Seth: And you were engineering at the time?Steve: Yeah. I was an engineer at LA.Seth: And at the time that was really engineering?Steve: Oh my gosh.Seth: You were cutting tape and…Steve: Yeah! I've cut a lot of two inch tape, quarter inch tape, half inch–Seth: Stuff that I hope to never do.Steve: You don't have to, Jericho does it for you.[Laughter] Seth: I don't know if Jericho has ever cut tape? In school he did.Steve: Now, I feel really old.Chris: Is that kind of like when you're in a biology class and not in any other time of your life will you need to dissect a frog but you just have to do it for the experience of it. Is that what it's become cutting tape?Steve: I don't know if you have to do it even that. It's sort of like this legend of starting a fire with flint, you know? It's sort of like, “Yeah. I used to cut tape.”[Laughter] Seth: I mean there's probably a resurgence. I would imagine knowing the process of what coffee has become and how artists.Steve: Yeah.Seth: I think there's a big thing in maybe it's the millennial generation or whatever it is but I think people are drawn back to slower, older more hands on processes it seems like than just pushing the button or going through the drive through–Steve: And somethings, don't you think, in some things its like just give me the button. Give me the filter on Instagram.Seth: That is true! That's true but then you've got the whole wave of people roasting their own coffee beans now and then they're grinding the with a hand grinder, and then they're putting in a… And, I'm saying this because we have like three artists that we work with; that come in and they bring their whole coffee apparatus.Steve: And they measure how much coffee goes in, weigh it?Chris: Yeah.Steve: My son has one of those has a scale that weighs, how much coffee goes in. Oh yeah just …Chris: Yeah, I thought you were going to say some of the artists that you work with, they actually bring their own barista in the studio because–Steve: I'm sure that will happen.Seth: That’s kind of a prerequisite to be in a band. There has to be at least one barista.Steve: True.Seth: In the band.Steve: There has to be one business guy in every band and one guy who can make great coffee.Seth: And then the guy who can actually play the instruments.Steve: Yeah. Then the artist.[Laughter]Chris: And then the fourth guy on base who just knows how to shape everybody's beards. He's more of a grooming guy.Seth: And sometime there's a drummer.[Laughter] Steve: You don't need a drummer; there are machines for that now.[Laughter] Seth: Yeah. I mean, just take us through a little bit of your journey, you started in L.A.?Steve: I was born and raised in L.A.; read an article when I was 14 years old about this guy named Sir George Martin. And I was like, “What? You can do that for a living?”Seth: Who is George Martin?Steve: He produced this little band called the Beatles, probably never heard of…most 20 year olds haven't heard of them so…Chris: And then isn't true that he went on from there to write The Game of Thrones?Steve: Did he? I'm not a Game of Throne person–Chris: Okay that's R.R. Martin, sorry.Steve: Wrong one. But I mean, you read about these guys and you sort of open a door into a new world that you didn't know existed. And so, I was 18 years old, junior out of high school walked into the recording studios and started from there.Seth: So, you didn't wait to have some sort of a college thing to get internships?Steve: My mom was like Reeds parents which was like, “That’s a nice hobby but let's make sure you have a backup plan, a plan B.” And so, I still went to school, I still went to college did all of that. Don't ask me my grade point average because I was going home at 4 o'clock in the morning, waking up at 8 to crawl into my first class, it was terrible. But yeah, my first job in the recording studio, I was making $500 a month from 6 o'clock to 3 o'clock in the morning.Seth: Living in L.A?Steve: Living in L.A.Seth: And that probably paid for a tenth of the rent?Steve: Maybe.Chris: Or, just the gas to get around?Steve: But I loved every second of it. And then from there you sort of work your way up. So, I did that… Like I said earlier my daughter was born and I was like an engineer’s life is a hard life in LA especially. Those were the days when you'd pay $1,500 a day block booking a studio; you booked a studio and you're paying $1,500 if your there six hours or eight there 24 hours. And a lot of them stayed 24 hours, and you just have next, next, next, next.Chris: And you've got to be the first guy there.Steve: First guy there, last guy out, yeah. You're sitting there winding tables at 6 o'clock in the morning going, “I just want to go home.”Chris: When the bug caught you, from that point until the time that you walked into that first studio and got a job, what skills were you harnessing?Steve: None.Chris: Just reading liner notes?Steve: Yeah. Lying in the floor, reading and going, there's one in North Hall and I'd write it down on a piece of paper because I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and start looking for them. Hey man that where Bill [inaudible 8:50] studio is or whatever the studio was and start. There wasn't really a whole lot you can do to prepare for it. It's no like in high school you go, “I wonder what class…”  I was in all the choirs and all the music stuff and that didn't prepare you for it. Probably the greatest skills for a studio engineer especially a starting one is being attentive, being hungry, being prepared and that depends on who you're working with.When you working together with somebody so well, I'm sure you and your team, they know what you want in advance and plugin something in before you even have to ask, that’s just working together. I've told a lot of wannabe engineers who want to go to some of these very expensive schools, don’t do it. Take that money, live on it for two years and go give yourself away for free for two years. You learn more two years in a studio than you will however long you go to one of the expensive ones.Chris: Yeah.Steve: It's just doing it. Just aligning the tape machine which is once again, it's like starting fire with flint again, knowing the lines taped but you learn by doing that.Chris: Absolutely.Steve: You learn by making a lot of mistakes. I recorded a lot of bad drum sounds.[Laughter] It just happened and then you go, “Oh if I do this, its better.” And 10,000 hours man, it takes 10,000 hours.Chris: Again, I think that it's not that schooling is necessarily a bad thing but the way that you learn in life versus the way that you learn in a classroom is different because for the most part, a classroom will deduct points for the stakes and if you’re in the–Steve: That's true. Good point.Chris: Yeah. I heard that -actually going back to our love of podcasts here- I heard Tim Farris on his podcast talking about the fact that he was going to go to, was considering something like Princeton or Harvard or something to go get his MBA. And he thought instead of doing that -or maybe this was advice given to him and he took it- instead of taking that couple hundred thousand dollars worth of whatever I needed to go get my MBA. I'm going to invest that in myself, very similar to what you're saying. And I'm going to use that to live on so that way I can go and I can intern for that company that I would never be able to if the money mattered that much. Because once you get out of school its like, “Oo I've got to go do something with this.” But if you've got the money set aside to go get the MBA anyway, it goes a long way to really feeling free to not have to pay that rent or pay that car payment that you could really dive in.Steve: And most people never use their college education for what they use. I had a meteorologist specialist. She had a degree in meteorology for TV and she was my marketing assistant. And you go, “I want to see what you spent four years doing versus what's your grade point average or what's you major.” I don't care about that stuff.Seth: So to fast forward to today, you are general manager of a very successful record label. When you got to hire somebody to your team, do you even say, “Hey, send in your resume. Where did you go to college?” Or does that not even cross your mind?Steve: I do want to see that. Four years in college gives me the impression that they follow through, they finish. You’ve said it before, finishing is such a hard art in today's world. To have somebody who finished is very valuable. Do I care about your grade point average? No. Do I even care about your major? No. Because if you have the right work ethic and the right heart, I can train you to do other things but I want to see how hard you're willing to work.Seth: So, a college degree still carries some weight but maybe it doesn't carry the weight that people think it does in terms of having the training because you kind of have to relearn it all when you get out into the real world.Steve: Exactly. Most college students that I see haven't learned anything that’s a really good use at a record label. My last five hires at Centricity have all come from internships. Now, I've had a lot of bad interns. I've wanted to fire a couple of interns, that's pretty bad when you want to fire somebody who works for free.Seth: What defines a good intern and what defines a bad intern?Steve: A bad intern sits on Facebook until you give them something to do and then they do exactly just to the letter of the law of what you asked them to do, hand it in to you and then get back on Facebook. A great intern does what you do and says, “Hey and I thought about this. And what about this more?” You give them to go to D and they go to G; then you give them to G and they go to S. I have a girl in my office, I asked her to do one thing and she says “Oh by the way while I was thinking about it I did these other three things that will help you out.” That type of proactivity and thinking ahead is so incredibly valuable. Like having somebody patching in your compressor before you ask for it. They know where you're going so fast that they're working ahead of you. And for all of those out there, that's old school once again patch bays.[Laughter]Seth: We have a small patch bay, we have two patch bays actually so we're probably on the old school end of things.Chris: It looks very cool though. It's looks kind of old science fiction movie.Steve: Spaghetti.[Laughter] Seth: It's like a telephone operator kind of thing. I heard a thing on…man, we keep talking about podcast, we're all just podcasts nerds, dude. I think that’s what we do for a living is listen to podcasts. And I heard one last night, they did a study of millennials; if you had a dream job, pick out of these choices what would be your dream job. Number one was the president; number two was a senator; number three was a successful athlete; number four foreign diplomat; five was a CEO of Apple; and then the last choice was the personal assistant to a famous actor or athlete. And 45% I think picked that one, hands down.Steve: They have no idea what that job looks like.Seth: They don't but it also speaks to they don't want to take the responsibility. Like, when you're that person, when you're the boss, they want to have a boss and maybe you can speak to a little bit to that but I feel like when you were talking about the internships, the ones who go above and beyond are the ones who are willing to take some responsibility and say, “Here's an idea” and just put it out there. How many interns would you have to get, to get that one good one?Steve: Probably 10 to 15.Seth: 10 to 15 to 1?Steve: Yeah, to 1. I think that’s what it is.Chris: Wow.Steve: Yeah, that's what it is. And I heard you, I think we had the conversation, there's such a different work ethic in today's young adults. And part of it is my fault, I'm a parent of a young adult they've been given everything in their whole life, they haven't had to work for anything. You want that iPhone! Here's that iPhone. You want that? Here's that. The art and the craft of working, the labor of getting something is a lost art, I think.Seth: So, would you go back and do those things differently?Steve: For my kids? My kids had to work.[Laughter]Seth: So, you weren't saying from my experience, you weren't–Steve: I’m saying that personally and much more of…[Laughter]What we made our kids do is like when they wanted that $100 American girl doll is you buy half, we’ll buy half. And all of a sudden they're digging out rocks in the backyard at $1 a bucket out of the garden. Because you want to give your kids what the value of work is and that's that doll at the end.In our world, I sat with an intern once and he was irritating everybody in the office. He's that guy who only asks questions because he wanted to tell you how much he knew. An intern needs to be quite and listen because there's a lot of information that flows around… And then they find the person that they can go to and go, what did that mean when he said this? So, what did that mean or… Come to me! I've told everyone in my internship, feel free to come to me and say, what does it mean when you said that? Versus this guy would come to you and tell you everything he knew. So, I was sitting him down one day and going,  “Man, you're irritating everybody. The whole office wants to prove you wrong.”Seth: You literally said that?Steve: I said that to him and later on, “I know I do that. I'm just trying to figure out where I fit and trying to find a job make $100, $120,000 a year and start in the music industry.” And I said, “You're in the wrong industry, man.”Seth: Go into finance!Steve: Go into finance, or go be an architect somewhere I guess or something. It was just about wanting to make as much money as his dad did, now! This generation wants to start where their parents have gotten to right now. I've seen it with artists, I've seen it with interns–Chris: They don't want a drop in their lifestyle that they've become accustomed to.Seth: A luxury once had, becomes a necessity.Steve and Chris: Ooohh.Steve: Very nice.Seth: And I'm very guilty of that. You fly first class once and you feel like a swine by sitting in coach.[Laughter] Steve: I've flown private jets twice in my whole life, in my whole career both times sort of accidentally. And man, once you do a private jet and you don't have to go through security and you’re just like, “Oh, I want that.” I say this all the time about artists. The worst thing you can do for an artist is start them touring in a bus because that's the expectation and then you know what happens? Is they got on the bus and they’re, “This isn't a very nice bus.” There are people in vans like when you were out in a van, to be on a bus, to be able to sleep horizontally would be the greatest thing ever and just because you started at this place and then you get into private jets. Everybody needs to start their first tour in a Silverado truck and then the next one to a bigger–Seth: Graduate to a suburban!Steve: A suburban would be great, then a 15 passenger old church van that you bought for $5,000 that the left side of the speakers don't work. And then, you work your way into a [inaudible 19:58] van and then into a bus. Then you're grateful for everything that's better along the way.Seth: It's more about the process than anything.Steve: Yeah.Seth: And getting there.Steve: A wise manager once said, his job is to make his artists life better every year, just a little bit better. I'm like, that's a good goal. That's a good goal to have.Seth: It is. So, your transition, we shipped about 20 years–Steve: We skipped through it very fast.[Laughter] Your transition from doing that 6pm to 3 in the morning thing in LA, you had your baby…Steve: Yep. My wife and I were praying at that point going, “God, please give us some sane clients or open another door.” And I just worked probably two months before with Peter York–Seth: And for those out there listening, was this at a record label you got your first…Steve: I was working with Peter in the studio and he called me up and said, “Hey, are you interested in A&R?” And I started in A&R in Sparrow…what's that 87, 88? Right around there and we were still in Chatsworth, California, spent time out there with him. So, I’ve been at Sparrow, moved from Sparrow to Star Songs and then back to Sparrow when they came up. Started in A&R worked my way into the marketing side, artist development side… So, yes back to Sparrow went to  Mer and worked my way up to Vice President at marketing at Mer, was general manager at [inaudible 21:34], general manager at SRI and now general manager at Centricity.Chris: Wow.Steve: It's been a long journey. If you’d ask me to 25 or 30 years ago, were you going to be general manager at Record Label? I would have laughed in your face.[Laughter]Chris: Because you didn't think it was attainable or because you didn't want have this job?Steve: That was not the path I was on. I thought, I was going to be producing records and engineering records.  Jack Pueg is still mixing great great records out there and I thought I was going to follow that path. God had something very different in mind which makes me laugh going I was talking to [inaudible 22:09] this morning and I can't believe I’ve been doing this, this long. When you're now an industry veteran it means that you've been around a long time.Seth: But I don't think looking back and I don’t want to put words in your mouth but you don't strike me as one of those people that's looking back and feeling like you’re working in the corporate side of the industry because you never made it on the creative side.Steve: No, no.Seth: You don't strike me as that at all.Steve: I made that decision for my family. What's funny is I've learned more about engineering and more about mixing and more about mastering being on the corporate side of what we're trying accomplish and why trying to do what we're doing. I learned so much about that. And for the first year or so, I was mad at God going, “Why did I just spend 9, 10 years in studios, in dark rooms working long hours if this is where you wanted me?” But realize, every day of my life in the last 27 years in the corporate side I've used information I learned in the studio. Sometimes we can't ask God why until you're 20 years down and you go, “oh I get it.”It's the path he puts us on, he brings people in and out of your life. I remember a girl over at Sparrow she was an accountant, that was her thing she loved accounting and God put me with her to learn that whole budgeting, it was only like for four months and then we were separated again but once again she changed my perspective and my life for the next 20 years. So, you don't know if these people that are coming in and out of your life are for a short period of how they're going to impact you.But yeah, I've sort of worked my way, I was one of the strange guys everybody wants to be in A&R. I started in A&R and left to got to marketing and then got back into it as I moved back up into the but everybody wants to be an A&R guy, hang out in the studios and have dinner with the artists which is not what an A&R guy does.Chris: Well it's the perception out there–Steve: Yeah, exactly, that's what they think.Chris: Just like you saying the artist is going to be in private jets.Seth: And for honestly if somebody's out there, can you break down what exactly what it is A&R. What is that? What is that job?Steve: A&R, we [inaudible 24:27] airports and restaurants which is [inaudible 24:28].[Laughter]It’s artist and repertoire. It’s basically looking for artist, finding people that have a seedling of something. Sometimes you don’t know what it is. We’ve all got our standards of what we feel like will lead to success. But finding that, nurturing it, grooming it, it’s sort of the mustard seed put into the ground, pat around and hopefully something really great grows out of it. Sometimes the plants don’t live, sometimes they give up. But it basically the music made by the A&R guy, we have one of the best in the industry in Centricity. When he’s done, when the music is done, he hands the baton over to me, and I go everywhere from there. But it’s his job to make sure we have hits, we have songs that work for live or work on the radio, an artist that’s got uniqueness to him that fits differently than everything else in the market place and sometimes it’s just plain old dumb luck. We’ve got all those where we’re like, “We though this person had everything they needed, was need for success and it didn’t work, and this one over here it’s that seedling and it’s just growing like crazy.Seth: Yeah, sometimes you don’t know or probably more often than not, I would think.Steve: How many songs have you worked on and said, “Man, that’s the hit.” I have a memory of I will eat my shoe if this is not [inaudible 26:04][Laughter] I believe you owe me a shoe eaten.Seth: I’m wearing Nikes right now. I have a feeling that this material is not organic.Chris: I was going to say, whatever you choose make sure its biodegradable.Steve: I was going to send you a shoe after one particular sock.[Laughter]We’ve all got them dude.Seth: Oh yeah, totally. I think more often than not and it’s honestly becoming a theme on this show is, we’re all just kind of winging it we’re all just guessing. So, my question to that is, I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of responsibility placed on the shoulders of an A&R person. They’re the one that’s finding and nurturing talent and ultimately seeing what songs make it on records.I think a lot of people listening in our podcast audience, we have a lot of producers and writers and people outside of the music industry but then there are also probably some people who are just wanting to get in on the music business side and people who maybe want to be in music marketing or be in music management or maybe do what you’re doing someday, run a record label. You said what you look for interns, what qualifies a person to be an A&R person?Steve: Wow. Interesting. There are a few A&R guys you should interview. A great A&R person is able to inspire an artist beyond what they’ve every thought they could do. A great A&R person knows how to get a good song to a great song. We’re no longer in a society that good is not good enough, it has to be great. A great A&R guy can go, “You know what? There are seedlings, there are moments in here that are really great.” But you’re missing the mark I these two or three places. And then, coming in and sitting side by side with a producer like you and making sure that… I think that I’m a big movie buff and A&R guy is sort of like an executive producer on a movie where you put the team together and then sort of let the team go make the music. So, it’s the right producer for the right, for the right song and for the right artists and then let them shine where they go. It’s very much putting the pieces together. They’re not usually playing the music, they’re not [inaudible 28:34] musicians, they have to have a really good song sense and I think one of the skills an A&R guy has to know is, it’s not about them. They’ve got to know their audience, know what they’re making for because all of us have a tendency to gravitate towards music that’s on the fringe because we listen to so much stuff that all of the stuff in the middle starts mucking up. There’s a big muck in the middle. So, “you know what I like? I like this thing way over here or way over there.” Where a normal consumer listens to 10 records a year, the middle is the sweet spot for them. So, an A&R guy that understands who he’s trying to record for is very important.Seth: That’s very good. And, you said that they have to have a great song sense, that is even a sticky situation because why is one person’s song sense better than the other? Is that determined by track record? And, if you’ve never done A&R before, how do you prove that, hey I know a hit when I hear one?Steve: You know what? Our history of…John Mays is a 25 years somebody took a chance on him 27 years ago and said “You’re a great musician on the road, let me bring you in here.” Part is the relationship, you know, can they sit and hang with an artist? You know, you’ve been in these mediums. Where it’s like can you move an artist from A to Z while making the artist think it’s their move? As a producer it’s the same skill set of can you get an artist to bend without knowing that they’re bending? Or being able to move–Seth: All the artists out there, they just had a–Steve: I know they had a convulsion.[Laughter]And all the producer are like, yeah![Laughter]But that’s part of it, of like how do you get a song… because you don’t want to tell an artist, “You know what? This song sucks.” You just want to say, “Let’s work on the chorus. The chorus isn’t paying off hard enough, let’s make it lift better. Let’s make it shine.” Whatever it may be, moving them away from, “I love this, this is my baby. It’s beautiful.” To let’s keep working on this song.Seth: So, it sounds like it maybe starts with who they are as a person. Are they a good hang? Are they a servant? And then, the music kind of just follows and that taste follows.Steve: Our young A&R guy over there, he went through our radio department so he was listening to radio hits, radio hits, radio hits. And part of it is… There’s marketing guy named Roy Williams, I went to a seminar with him and he said he has a friend that works at General Market Record Label to pick all the singles and I’m like, “How did you learn this?” And the guy basically said, “Since I was five years old, every week I’d get my allowance and I would go buy the number one song in America.” And so for his whole life, he poured into himself hits. This is what a hit sounds like, this is what a hit sounds like, this is what a hit sounds like.Seth: That’s pretty good wisdom, right there.Steve: And so, at a certain point you go, you got to know our music, you got to listen to our music, you got to know what a hit sounds like. I’ve heard a lot of kids come though “I hate listening to Christian radio.” Then why do you listen to Christian music? How many people in country music go, “[inaudible 32:11] but I hate country music.” Get out! You’re not going to succeed.[Laughter]But they almost wear it as a banner that I hate Christian music in our market place. We have an open concept office and I’ll try to listen to two hours of Christian radio every day in my office. And if I’m listening to it, everybody in my office is listening to it too; more for this is what a hit sounds like, this is what radio sounds lie. If you’re trying to meet a need at radio and you don’t know what they’re playing, how can you meet the need? So…I digress, sorry.Seth: No, that’s gold. That’s all gold.Steve: I think you nailed it in your earlier podcast when you said, this is a servant industry. It really is. And in my life, it took me a lot of time to figure out what my calling was. I knew I wasn’t an artist but God, what does that mean? And I was walking through Exodus with my kids when they were very young and hit Exodus 17 where God say to Moses, they’re out of Egypt heading towards the Promised Land and they hit the Analcites, God calls Moses up to the hill top; arms up in the air he wins, arms down they lose. But what never caught to me until I was reading it, Moses took two people along with him Aaron and Hur and I love to say I am the Hur in the Moses’ life. It’s my job, what Hur was up there to do is to hold Moses’ arms up, that’s all he did. When Moses was weak, when Moses needed help, Hur held his hands up. That’s my calling be a servant, be there to hold your hands up. Some people know Aaron “Aaron, you know, Moses’ little brother.” No one knows who Hur is. If you’re okay standing, holding someone’s arms up and no one recognizes, you are created to be in the music industry. Because you’re not in to be the rock stars; we’re in the back of the room with our arms folded, looking at the person on stage going, “Yeah. I was there to hold their arms up.”Chris: That’s wise. One of my favorite movies is That Thing You Do, I don’t know if any of you have seen that.Steve: Yeah. I’m the guy that goes, “You look great in black.”[Laughter]Chris: Has anyone told you that?Steve: Yeah.Chris: But, one of my favorite characters in the movie, and they’re filled with them. Anybody out there that hasn’t seen it, it’s a great movie.Steve: Please, go see it.Chris: But there’s Horus who’s basically the A&R guy that sees them in–Steve: In the camper-[Laughter]Chris: Yeah, he lives in a camper and he’s essentially the A&R guy. But he sees them in a performance at an Italian restaurant or something and comes and buys their album and get’s them to sign a little deal. And then at the end, when they get signed to a major label and they’re going out to play these state fairs, Horus leaves and the main character drummer of the band says, “We don’t want you to leave.” And he goes, “My [inaudible 35:27] is done. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.” And then move on to the next thing and so he wasn’t meant to ride that out the whole movie; he’s there for a specific piece to move it from A to C. He’s the B part of it, the Hur of that story so to speak.Steve: Nowadays, you’d call them just production deals. You start working with an unknown artist who has a little bit of talent, you start developing them and then you start shopping them to record labels. And then you go, my job here is done. They then take the baton and now try to make to a national artist. If you make 2 out of 20, 3 out of 20, you’re in great shape. You’re a hall of fame baseball player if you hit 3 out of 10. And you’re a hall of fame A&R guy if 3 out of your 10 are hit artists.It’s a cycle, you have the young artist going up; you have the artist at their peak; and then you have some that are on their way down. And you’ve got to keep that circle going because any artist that’s been at the top is going to be past its peak and slowly work its way down, and you got to have the new artist coming up behind to grow into. So it’s a continual cycle of in the music industry. The circle of life in music would be that.Chris: I had a mentor –Scott [inaudible 36:48] if you’re listening I’m about to talk about you- but he always talked about how life in the ministry or in a career is kind of like looking at life or the people that you interact is like a watching a parade go by. There are things that are right in front of you, there are things that you just saw, and there are things that are coming down. And to really appreciate what is happening in the parade you have to absorb it all. And so there’s a little bit of grabbing from each of those in order to get the full experience of it all.Steve: And the bigger what’s right in front of you, the bigger those artists are in front of you, sometimes you don’t have time to look behind and develop what’s behind and what happens is with a lot of these record labels and I’ve been at these where, man they’ve got the big, and they slowly slipping. The [inaudible 37:32] slowly start getting past their prime and they haven’t developed anything behind them and then you’re in trouble because you’ve got this machine you’ve got to feed and you haven’t created for the future, it’s only for the present.And so, every A&R guy wants to sing but some of the big labels, the big artists, the A’s are so big that’s all they’re paying attention to. We’ve all seen it, we’ve all seen artists where we say, “Man, they’re amazing” but they got lost in the shuffle and that’s the sadness. We forget that we’re playing with people’s lives, especially on the record label side their dreams.I signed this band at a label and they were 18 years old when I signed them and 21 years old when I had to drop them. So, their dreams had come true and shattered by the time they were 21. And it’s just hard when you start thinking about that stuff.Chris: That’s true. And if you think about it there are some people that are fortunate enough to have a full career in the music industry and there are some people that have a three year window kind of like a profession sports guy or those things. There’s a window and the once you pass it, yeah but the guy is only 24 and the band is only 21. What’s coming up for them?Steve: You know what, I think it’s a catalyst of those people leaving or burning out, is balance. You guys have said it; I can walk through a record label at 8 o’clock at night and I can tell you which employees will be gone in a year because they have nothing to put back into themselves. The music industry is a take industry, it just continues squeezing and it just wants more and more and more. If you have one they want five; if you have five we want ten; if we have ten we want twenty, and it’s never enough. My poor radio team goes, “Hey we got number one.” And I’m like, “Great. How do we keep it on number one for another week?” It’s never enough and so you continue squeezing out what this industry does, if you don’t have a ministry, if you don’t have a relationship, if you don’t have friends that give back to you that don’t care what you do  for a living and basically go, “Yeah, yeah. You do music, how are you?” You know, if there aren’t nursing students at the college that you got to that are your friends, you’re going to burn out.  Because there’s nothing giving back, there’s no one pouring into you. Sooner or later the candle ends, there’s no more fuel and it juts burns out.So, I try to keep my staff saying, I want you to go to concerts and date people and go home at 6 o’clock and have a life. Because if you don’t have a life you have nothing to come back when you come back tomo