Podcasts about stichfix

LauRen and Maney update us on their time off Everyday things that count as exercise Maney's Stichfix fail War of the roses  Ren's strange uber pick up  3 in the […] The post The Day 2 Crazies Got Back From Vacation appeared first on Kiss 95.1.

LauRen and Maney update us on their time off Everyday things that count as exercise Maney's Stichfix fail War of the roses Ren's strange uber pick up 3 in the QC What's weird on your body? Tip a little or none at all? Ren's pranked her mom Am I the Ahole? Support the show: https://www.mrlshow.com/

On this week's episode, we welcome back comedian and writer Eliza Skinner to chat about the joy of ceramics, craft root beer, the color wheel, and so much more!Eliza's Etsy shop!This week's sponsor is  Stitchfix:That's Wildgrain.com/JJGO, or you can use promo code JJGO at checkoutMake style easy—get started today at Stitch Fix dot com slash JJGO.That's Stitch Fix dot com slash JJGO.Stichfix.com/JJGOBe sure to get our new 'Ack Tuah' shirt in the Max Fun store.Or, grab an 'Ack Tuah' mug!Follow the podcast on Instagram and send us your dank memes!Check out Jesse's thrifted clothing store, Put This On.Come see Judge John Hodgman: Road Court  live in a town near you! Jesse and John will be all over the country so don't miss your change to see them. Check the events page to find out where! Follow brand new producer, Steven Ray Morris, on Instagram.

On this week's episode, we welcome actor and improvisor, Omar Najam (Critical Role, Desi Quest, Riverdale Season Six: The Podcast), to chat about rival DnD groups, niche subreddits, Spielberg cinematography, and so much more!This week's sponsors are Wildgrain and Stichfix:Are you ready to bring all your favorite carbs right to your doorstep? For a limited time, Wildgrain is offering our listeners $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to Wildgrain.com/JJGO to start your subscription. That's Wildgrain.com/JJGO, or you can use promo code JJGO at checkoutMake style easy—get started today at Stitch Fix dot com slash JJGO.That's Stitch Fix dot com slash JJGO.Stichfix.com/JJGO Check out Omar's Halloween Fest, 13 Days 13 Shorts.Follow the podcast on Instagram and send us your dank memes!See a live Jordan, Jesse, Go! FOR FREE in Los Angeles at Revenge Of, on November 2nd as part of the Comic Creators Block Party. We go on at 3pm!Come see Judge John Hodgman: Road Court  live in a town near you! Jesse and John will be all over the country so don't miss your change to see them. Check the events page to find out where!Follow brand new producer, Steven Ray Morris, on Instagram.

It's episode 220 of The Cavalry! Andrew needs backup that they're never going to enforce a fireworks ban and people should get over it. Johnny needs backup that being tall is a disability. Remember to subscribe to the Patreon for post-show banter... Enjoy! 

David was the chief software architect and director of engineering at Stitch Fix. He's also the author of a number of books including Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails and most recently Ruby on Rails Background Jobs with Sidekiq. He talks about how he made decisions while working with a medium sized team (~200 developers) at Stitch Fix. The audio quality for the first 19 minutes is not great but the correct microphones turn on right after that. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. A few topics covered: Ruby's origins at Stitch Fix Thoughts on Go Choosing technology and cloud services Moving off heroku Building a platform team Where Ruby and Rails fit in today The role of books and how different people learn Large Language Model's effects on technical content Related Links David's Blog Mastodon Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: Today. I want to share another conversation from RubyConf San Diego. This time it's with David Copeland. He was a chief software architect and director of engineering at stitch fix. And at the start of the conversation, you're going to hear about why he decided to write the book, sustainable web development with Ruby on rails. Unfortunately, you're also going to notice the sound quality isn't too good. We had some technical difficulties. But once you hit the 20 minute mark of the recording, the mics are going to kick in. It's going to sound way better. So I hope you stick with it. Enjoy. Ruby at Stitch Fix [00:00:35] David: Stitch Fix was a Rails shop. I had done a lot of Rails and learned a lot of things that worked and didn't work, at least in that situation. And so I started writing them down and I was like, I should probably make this more than just a document that I keep, you know, privately on my computer. Uh, so that's, you know, kind of, kind of where the genesis of that came from and just tried to, write everything down that I thought what worked, what didn't work. Uh, if you're in a situation like me. Working on a product, with a medium sized, uh, team, then I think the lessons in there will be useful, at least some of them. Um, and I've been trying to keep it up over, over the years. I think the first version came out a couple years ago, so I've been trying to make sure it's always up to date with the latest stuff and, and Rails and based on my experience and all that. [00:01:20] Jeremy: So it's interesting that you mention, medium sized team because, during the, the keynote, just a few moments ago, Matz the creator of Ruby was talking about how like, Oh, Rails is really suitable for this, this one person team, right? Small, small team. And, uh, he was like, you're not Google. So like, don't worry about, right. Can you scale to that level? Yeah. Um, and, and I wonder like when you talk about medium size or medium scale, like what are, what are we talking? [00:01:49] David: I think probably under 200 developers, I would say. because when I left Stitch Fix, it was closing in on that number of developers. And so it becomes, you know, hard to... You can kind of know who everybody is, or at least the names sound familiar of everybody. But beyond that, it's just, it's just really hard. But a lot of it was like, I don't have experience at like a thousand developer company. I have no idea what that's like, but I definitely know that Rails can work for like... 200 ish people how you can make it work basically. yeah. [00:02:21] Jeremy: The decision to use Rails, I'm assuming that was made before you joined? [00:02:26] David: Yeah, the, um, the CTO of Stitch Fix, he had come in to clean up a mess made by contractors, as often happens. They had used Django, which is like the Python version of Rails. And he, the CTO, he was more familiar with Rails. So the first two developers he hired, also familiar with Rails. There wasn't a lot to maintain with the Django app, so they were like, let's just start fresh, fresh with Rails. yeah, but it's funny because a lot of the code in that Rails app was, like, transliterated from Python. So you could, it would, it looked like the strangest Ruby code in the world because it was basically, there was no test. So they were like, let's just write the Ruby version of this Python just so we know it works. but obviously that didn't, didn't last forever, so. [00:03:07] Jeremy: So, so what's an example of a, of a tell? Where you're looking at the code and you're like, oh, this is clearly, it came from Python. [00:03:15] David: You'd see like, very, very explicit, right? Like Python, there's a lot of like single line things. very like, this sounds like a dig, but it's very simple looking code. Like, like I don't know Python, but I was able to change this Django app. And I had to, I could look at it and you can figure out immediately how it works. Cause there's. Not much to it. There's nothing fancy. So, like, this, this Ruby code, there was nothing fancy. You'd be like, well, maybe they should have memoized that, or maybe they should have taken that into another class, or you could have done this with a hash or something like that. So there was, like, none of that. It was just, like, really basic, plain code like you would see in any beginning programming language kind of thing. Which is at least nice. You can understand it. but you probably wouldn't have written it that way at first in Ruby. Thoughts on Go [00:04:05] Jeremy: Yeah, that's, that's interesting because, uh, people sometimes talk about the Go programming language and how it looks, I don't know if simple is the right word, but it's something where you look at the code and even if you don't necessarily understand Go, it's relatively straightforward. Yeah. I wonder what your thoughts are on that being a strength versus that being, like, [00:04:25] David: Yeah, so at Stitch Fix at one point we had a pro, we were moving off of Heroku and we were going to, basically build a deployment platform using ECS on AWS. And so the deployment platform was a Rails app and we built a command line tool using Ruby. And it was fine, but it was a very complicated command line tool and it was very slow. And so one of the developers was like, I'm going to rewrite it in Go. I was like, ugh, you know, because I just was not a big fan. So he rewrote it in Go. It was a bazillion times faster. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to add, I'll add a feature to it. It was extremely easy. Like, it's just like what you said. I looked at it, like, I don't know anything about Go. I know what is happening here. I can copy and paste this and change things and make it work for what I want to do. And it did work. And it was, it was pretty easy. so there's that, I mean, aesthetically it's pretty ugly and it's, I, I. I can't really defend that as a real reason to not use it, but it is kind of gross. I did do Go, I did a small project in Go after Stitch Fix, and there's this vibe in Go about like, don't create abstractions. I don't know where I got that from, but every Go I look at, I'm like we should make an abstraction for this, but it's just not the vibe. They just don't like doing that. They like it all written out. And I see the value because you can look at the code and know what it does and you don't have to chase abstractions anywhere. But. I felt like I was copying and pasting a lot of, a lot of things. Um, so I don't know. I mean, the, the team at Stitch Fix that did this like command line app in go, they're the platform team. And so their job isn't to write like web apps all day, every day. There's kind of in and out of all kinds of things. They have to try to figure out something that they don't understand quickly to debug a problem. And so I can see the value of something like go if that's your job, right? You want to go in and see what the issue is. Figure it out and be done and you're not going to necessarily develop deep expertise and whatever that thing is that you're kind of jumping into. Day to day though, I don't know. I think it would make me kind of sad. (laughs) [00:06:18] Jeremy: So, so when you say it would make you kind of sad, I mean, what, what about it? Is it, I mean, you mentioned that there's a lot of copy and pasting, so maybe there's code duplication, but are there specific things where you're like, oh, I just don't? [00:06:31] David: Yeah, so I had done a lot of Java in my past life and it felt very much like that. Where like, like the Go library for making an HTTP call for like, I want to call some web service. It's got every feature you could ever want. Everything is tweakable. You can really, you can see why it's designed that way. To dial in some performance issue or solve some really esoteric thing. It's there. But the problem is if you just want to get an JSON, it's just like huge production. And I felt like that's all I really want to do and it's just not making it very easy. And it just felt very, very cumbersome. I think that having to declare types also is a little bit of a weird mindset because, I mean, I like to make types in Ruby, I like to make classes, but I also like to just use hashes and stuff to figure it out. And then maybe I'll make a class if I figure it out, but Go, you can't. You have to have a class, you have to have a type, you have to think all that ahead of time, and it just, I'm not used to working that way, so it felt, I mean, I guess I could get used to it, but I just didn't warm up to that sort of style of working, so it just felt like I was just kind of fighting with the vibe of the language, kind of. Yeah, [00:07:40] Jeremy: so it's more of the vibe or the feel where you're writing it and you're like this seems a little too... Explicit. I feel like I have to be too verbose. It just doesn't feel natural for me to write this. [00:07:53] David: Right, it's not optimized for what in my mind is the obvious case. And maybe that's not the obvious case for the people that write Go programs. But for me, like, I just want to like get this endpoint and get the JSON back as a map. Not any easier than any other case, right? Whereas like in Ruby, right? And you can, I think if you include net HTTP, you can just type get. And it will just return whatever that is. Like, that's amazing. It's optimized for what I think is a very common use case. So it makes me feel really productive. It makes me feel pretty good. And if that doesn't work out long term, I can always use something more complicated. But I'm not required to dig into the NetHttp library just to do what in my mind is something very simple. [00:08:37] Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's something I've noticed myself in working with Ruby. I mean, you have the standard library that's very... Comprehensive and the API surface is such that, like you said there, when you're trying to do common tasks, a lot of times they have a call you make and it kind of does the thing you expected or hoped for. [00:08:56] David: Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's that whole optimized for programmer happiness thing. Like it does. That is the vibe of Ruby and it seems like that is still the way things are. And, you know, I, I suppose if I had a different mindset, I mean, because I work with developers who did not like using Ruby or Rails. They loved using Go or Java. And I, I guess there's probably some psychological analysis we could do about their background and history and mindset that makes that make sense. But, to me, I don't know. It's, it's nice when it's pleasant. And Ruby seems pleasant. (laughs) Choosing Technology [00:09:27] Jeremy: as a... Software Architect, or as a CTO, when, when you're choosing technology, what are some of the things you look at in terms of, you know? [00:09:38] David: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, it's a weird criteria, but I think what is something that the team is capable of executing with? Because, like, most, right, most programming languages all kind of do the same thing. Like, you can kind of get most stuff done in most common popular programming languages. So, it's probably not... It's not true that if you pick the wrong language, you can't build the app. Like, that's probably not really the case. At least for like a web app or something. so it's more like, what is the team that's here to do it? What are they comfortable and capable of doing? I worked on a project with... It was a mix of like junior engineers who knew JavaScript, and then some senior engineers from Google. And for whatever reason someone had chosen a Rails app and none of them were comfortable or really yet competent with doing Ruby on Rails and they just all hated it and like it didn't work very well. Um, and so even though, yes, Rails is a good choice for doing stuff for that team at that moment. Not a good choice. Right. So I think you have to go in and like, what, what are we going to be able to execute on so that when the business wants us to do something, we just do it. And we don't complain and we don't say, Oh, well we can't because this technology that we chose, blah, blah, blah. Like you don't ever want to say that if possible. So I think that's. That's kind of the, the top thing. I think second would be how widely supported is it? Like you don't want to be the cutting edge user that's finding all the bugs in something really. Like you want to use something that's stable. Postgres, MySQL, like those work, those are fine. The bugs have been sorted out for most common use cases. Some super fancy edge database, I don't know if I'd want to be doing, doing that you know? Choosing cloud services [00:11:15] Jeremy: How do you feel about the cloud specific services and databases? Like are you comfortable saying like, oh, I'm going to use... Google Cloud, BigQuery. Yeah. [00:11:27] David: That sort of thing. I think it would kind of fall under the same criteria that I was just, just saying like, so with AWS it's interesting 'cause when we moved from Heroku to AWS by EC2 RDS, their database thing, uh, S3, those have been around for years, probably those are gonna work, but they always introduce new things. Like we, we use RabbitMQ and AWS came out with. Some, I forget what it was, it was a queuing service similar to Rabbit. We were like, Oh, maybe we should switch to that. But it was clear that they weren't really ready to support it. So. Yeah, so we didn't, we didn't switch to that. So I, you gotta try to read the tea leaves of the provider to see are they committed to, to supporting this thing or is this there to get some enterprise client to move into the cloud. And then the idea is to move off of that transitional thing into what they do support. And it's hard to get a clear answer from them too. So it takes a little bit of research to figure out, Are they going to support this or not? Because that's what you don't want. To move everything into some very proprietary cloud system and have them sunset it and say, Oh yeah, now you've got to switch again. Uh, that kind of sucks. So, it's a little trickier. [00:12:41] Jeremy: And what kind of questions or research do you do? Is it purely a function of this thing has existed for X number of years so I feel okay? [00:12:52] David: I mean, it's kind of similar to looking at like some gem you're going to add to your project, right? So you'll, you'll look at how often does it change? Is it being updated? Uh, what is the documentation? Does it look like someone really cared about the documentation? Does the documentation look updated? Are there issues with it that are being addressed or, or not? Um, so those are good signals. I think, talking to other practitioners too can be good. Like if you've got someone who's experienced. You can say, hey, do you know anybody back channeling through, like, everybody knows somebody that works at AWS, you can probably try to get something there. at Stitch Fix, we had an enterprise support contract, and so your account manager will sometimes give you good information if you ask. Again, it's a, they're not going to come out and say, don't use this product that we have, but they might communicate that in a subtle way. So you have to triangulate from all these sources to try to. to try to figure out what, what you want to do. [00:13:50] Jeremy: Yeah, it kind of makes me wish that there was a, a site like, maybe not quite like, can I use, right? Can I use, you can see like, oh, can I use this in my browser? Is there, uh, like an AWS or a Google Cloud? Can I trust this? Can I trust this? Yeah. Is this, is this solid or not? [00:14:04] David: Right, totally. It's like, there's that, that site where you, it has all the Apple products and it says whether or not you should buy it because one may or may not be coming out or they may be getting rid of it. Like, yeah, that would... For cloud services, that would be, that would be nice. [00:14:16] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. That's like the Mac Buyer's Guide. And then we, we need the, uh, the technology. Yeah. Maybe not buyers. Cloud Provider Buyer's Guide, yeah. I guess we are buyers. [00:14:25] David: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. [00:14:27] Jeremy: it's interesting that you, you mentioned how you want to see that, okay, this thing is mature. I think it's going to stick around because, I, interviewed, someone who worked on, I believe it was the CloudWatch team. Okay. Daniel Vassalo, yeah. so he left AWS, uh, after I think about 10 years, and then he wrote a book called, uh, The Good Parts of AWS. Oh! And, if you read his book, most of the services he says to use are the ones that are, like, old. Yeah. He's, he's basically saying, like, S3, you know you're good. Yeah. Right? but then all these, if you look at the AWS webpage, they have who knows, I don't know how many hundreds of services. Yeah. He's, he's kind of like I worked there and I would not use, you know, all these new services. 'cause I myself, I don't trust [00:15:14] David: it yet. Right. And so, and they're working there? Yeah, they're working there. Yeah. No. One of the VPs at Stitch Fix had worked on Google Cloud and so when we were doing this transition from Heroku, he was like, we are not using Google Cloud. I was like, really? He's like AWS is far ahead of the game. Do not use Google Cloud. I was like, all right, I don't need any more info. You work there. You said don't. I'm gonna believe you. So [00:15:36] Jeremy: what, what was his did he have like a core point? [00:15:39] David: Um, so he never really had anything bad to say about Google per se. Like I think he enjoyed his time there and I think he thought highly of who he worked with and what he worked on and that sort of thing. But his, where he was coming from was like AWS was so far ahead. of Google on anything that we would use, he was like, there's, there's really no advantage to, to doing it. AWS is a known quantity, right? it's probably still the case. It's like, you know, you've heard the nobody ever got fired for using IBM or using Microsoft or whatever the thing is. Like, I think that's, that was kind of the vibe. And he was like, moving all of our infrastructure right before we're going to go public. This is a serious business. We should just use something that we know will work. And he was like, I know this will work. I'm not confident about. Google, uh, for our use case. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't risk it. So I was like, okay, I trust you because I didn't know anything about any of that stuff at the time. I knew Heroku and that was it. So, yeah. [00:16:34] Jeremy: I don't know if it's good or bad, but like you said, AWS seems to be the default choice. Yeah. And I mean, there's people who use Azure. I assume it's mostly primarily Microsoft. Yeah. And then there's Google Cloud. It's not really clear why you would pick it, unless there was a specific service or something that only they had. [00:16:55] David: Yeah, yeah. Or you're invested in Google, you know, you want to keep everything there. I mean, I don't know. I haven't really been at that level to make that kind of decision, and I would probably choose AWS for the reasons discussed, but, yeah. Moving off Heroku [00:17:10] Jeremy: And then, so at Stitch Fix, you said you moved off of Heroku [00:17:16] David: yeah. Yeah, so we were heavy into Heroku. I think that we were told that at one point we had the biggest Heroku Postgres database on their platform. Not a good place to be, right? You never want to be the biggest customer person, usually. but the problem we were facing was essentially we were going to go public. And to do that, you're under all the scrutiny. about many things, including the IT systems and the security around there. So, like, by default, a Postgres, a Heroku Postgres database is, like, on the internet. It's only secured by the password. all their services are on the internet. So, not, not ideal. they were developing their private cloud service at that time. And so that would have given us, in theory, on paper, it would have solved all of our problems. And we liked Heroku and we liked the developer experience. It was great. but... Heroku private spaces, it was still early. There's a lot of limitations that when they explained why those limitations, they were reasonable. And if we had. started from scratch on Heroku Private Spaces. It probably would have worked great, but we hadn't. So we just couldn't make it work. So we were like, okay, we're going to have to move to AWS so that everything can be basically off the internet. Like our public website needs to be on the internet and that's kind of it. So we need to, so that's basically was the, was the impetus for that. but it's too bad because I love Heroku. It was great. I mean, they were, they were a great partner. They were great. I think if Stitch Fix had started life a year later, Private Spaces. Now it's, it's, it's way different than it was then. Cause it's been, it's a mature product now, so we could have easily done that, but you know, the timing didn't work out, unfortunately. [00:18:50] Jeremy: And that was a compliance thing to, [00:18:53] David: Yeah. And compliance is weird cause they don't tell you what to do, but they give you some parameters that you need to meet. And so one of them is like how you control access. So, so going public, the compliance is around the financial data and. Ensuring that the financial data is accurate. So a lot of the systems at Stichfix were storing the financial data. We, you know, the warehouse management system was custom made. Uh, all the credit card processing was all done, like it was all in some databases that we had running in Heroku. And so those needed to be subject to stricter security than we could achieve with just a single password that we just had to remember to rotate when someone like left the team. So that was, you know, the kind of, the kind of impetus for, for all of that. [00:19:35] Jeremy: when you were using Heroku, Salesforce would have already owned it then. Did you, did you get any sense that you weren't really sure about the future of the platform while you're on it or, [00:19:45] David: At that time, no, it seemed like they were still innovating. So like, Heroku has a Redis product now. They didn't at the time we wish that they did. They told us they're working on it, but it wasn't ready. We didn't like using the third parties. Kafka was not a thing. We very much were interested in that. We would have totally used it if it was there. So they were still. Like doing bigger innovations then, then it seems like they are now. I don't know. It's weird. Like they're still there. They still make money, I assume for Salesforce. So it doesn't feel like they're going away, but they're not innovating at the pace that they were kind of back in the day. [00:20:20] Jeremy: it used to feel like when somebody's asking, I want to host a Rails app. Then you would say like, well, use Heroku because it's basically the easiest to get started. It's a known quantity and it's, it's expensive, but, it seemed for, for most people, it was worth it. and then now if I talk to people, it's like. Not what people suggest anymore. [00:20:40] David: Yeah, because there's, there's actual competitors. It's crazy to me that there was no competitors for years, and now there's like, Render and Fly. io seem to be the two popular alternatives. Um, I doubt they're any cheaper, honestly, but... You get a sense, right, that they're still innovating, still building those platforms, and they can build with, you know, all of the knowledge of what has come before them, and do things differently that might, that might help. So, I still use Heroku for personal things just because I know it, and I, you know, sometimes you don't feel like learning a new thing when you just want to get something done, but, yeah, I, I don't know if we were starting again, I don't know, maybe I'd look into those things. They, they seem like they're getting pretty mature and. Heroku's resting on its laurels, still. [00:21:26] Jeremy: I guess I never quite the mindset, right? Where you You have a platform that's doing really well and people really like it and you acquire it and then it just It seems like you would want to keep it rolling, right? (laughs) [00:21:38] David: Yeah, it's, it is wild, I mean, I guess... Why did you, what was Salesforce thinking they were going to get? Uh, who knows maybe the person at Salesforce that really wanted to purchase it isn't there. And so no one at Salesforce cares about it. I mean, there's all these weird company politics that like, who knows what's going on and you could speculate. all day. What's interesting is like, there's definitely some people in the Ruby community who work there and still are working there. And that's like a little bit of a canary for me. I'm like, all right, well, if that person's still working there, that person seems like they're on the level and, and, and, and seems pretty good. They're still working there. It, it's gotta be still a cool place to be or still doing something, something good. But, yeah, I don't know. I would, I would love to know what was going on in all the Salesforce meetings about acquiring that, how to manage it. What are their plans for it? I would love to know that stuff. [00:22:29] Jeremy: maybe you had some experience with this at Stitch Fix But I've heard with Heroku some of their support staff at least in the past they would, to some extent, actually help you troubleshoot, like, what's going on with your app. Like, if your app is, like, using a whole bunch of memory, and you're out of memory, um, they would actually kind of look into that, for you, which is interesting, because it's like, that's almost like a services thing than it is just a platform. [00:22:50] David: Yeah. I mean, they, their support, you would get, you would get escalated to like an engineer sometimes, like who worked on that stuff and they would help figure out what the problem was. Like you got the sense that everybody there really wanted the platform to be good and that they were all sort of motivated to make sure that everybody. You know, did well and used the platform. And they also were good at, like a thing that trips everybody up about Heroku is that your app restarts every day. And if you don't know anything about anything, you might think that is stupid. Why, why would I want that? That's annoying. And I definitely went through that and I complained to them a lot. And I'm like, if you only could not restart. And they very patiently and politely explained to me why that it needed to do that, they weren't going to remove that, and how to think about my app given that reality, right? Which is great because like, what company does that, right? From the engineers that are working on it, like No, nobody does that. So, yeah, no, I haven't escalated anything to support at Heroku in quite some time, so I don't know if it's still like that. I hope it is, but I'm not really, not really sure. Building a platform team [00:23:55] Jeremy: Yeah, that, uh, that reminds me a little bit of, I think it's Rackspace? There's, there's, like, another hosting provider that was pretty popular before, and they... Used to be famous for that type of support, where like your, your app's having issues and somebody's actually, uh, SSHing into your box and trying to figure out like, okay, what's going on? which if, if that's happening, then I, I can totally see where the, the price is justified. But if the support is kind of like dropping off to where it's just, they don't do that kind of thing, then yeah, I can see why it's not so much of a, yeah, [00:24:27] David: We used to think of Heroku as like they were the platform team before we had our own platform team and they, they acted like it, which was great. [00:24:35] Jeremy: Yeah, I don't have, um, experience with, render, but I, I, I did, talk to someone from there, and it does seem like they're, they're trying to fill that role, um, so, yeah, hopefully, they and, and other companies, I guess like Vercel and things like that, um, they're, they're all trying to fill that space, [00:24:55] David: Yeah, cause, cause building our own internal platform, I mean it was the right thing to do, but it's, it's a, you can't just, you have to have a team on it, it's complicated, getting all the stuff in AWS to work the way you want it to work, to have it be kind of like Heroku, like it's not trivial. if I'm a one person company, I don't want to be messing around with that particularly. I want to just have it, you know, push it up and have it go and I'm willing to pay for that. So it seems logical that there would be competitors in that space. I'm glad there are. Hopefully that'll light a fire under, under everybody. [00:25:26] Jeremy: so in your case, it sounds like you moved to having your own platform team and stuff like that, uh, partly because of the compliance thing where you're like, we need our, we need to be isolated from the internet. We're going to go to AWS. If you didn't have that requirement, do you still think like that would have been the time to, to have your own platform team and manage that all yourself? [00:25:46] David: I don't know. We, we were thinking an issue that we were running into when we got bigger, um, was that, I mean, Heroku, it, It's obviously not as flexible as AWS, but it is still very flexible. And so we had a lot of internal documentation about this is how you use Heroku to do X, Y, and Z. This is how you set up a Stitch Fix app for Heroku. Like there was just the way that we wanted it to be used to sort of. Just make it all manageable. And so we were considering having a team spun up to sort of add some tooling around that to sort of make that a little bit easier for everybody. So I think there may have been something around there. I don't know if it would have been called a platform team. Maybe we call, we thought about calling it like developer happiness or because you got developer experience or something. We, we probably would have had something there, but. I do wonder how easy it would have been to fund that team with developers if we hadn't had these sort of business constraints around there. yeah, um, I don't know. You get to a certain size, you need some kind of manageability and consistency no matter what you're using underneath. So you've got to have, somebody has to own it to make sure that it's, that it's happening. [00:26:50] Jeremy: So even at your, your architect level, you still think it would have been a challenge to, to. Come to the executive team and go like, I need funding to build this team. [00:27:00] David: You know, certainly it's a challenge because everybody, you know, right? Nobody wants to put developers in anything, right? There are, there are a commodity and I mean, that is kind of the job of like, you know, the staff engineer or the architect at a company is you don't have, you don't have the power to put anybody on anything you, you have the power to Schedule a meeting with a VP or the CTO and they will listen to you. And that's basically, you've got to use that power to convince them of what you want done. And they're all reasonable people, but they're balancing 20 other priorities. So it would, I would have had to, it would have been a harder case to make that, Hey, I want to take three engineers. And have them write tooling to make Heroku easier to use. What? Heroku is not easy to use. Why aren't, you know, so you really, I would, it would be a little bit more of a stretch to walk them through it. I think a case could be made, but, definitely would take some more, more convincing than, than what was needed in our case. [00:27:53] Jeremy: Yeah. And I guess if you're able to contrast that with, you were saying, Oh, I need three people to help me make Heroku easier. Your actual platform team on AWS, I imagine was much larger, right? [00:28:03] David: Initially it was, there was, it was three people did the initial move over. And so by the time we went public, we'd been on this new system for, I don't know, six to nine months. I can't remember exactly. And so at that time the platform team was four or five people, and I, I mean, so percentage wise, right, the engineering team was maybe almost 200, 150, 200. So percentage wise, maybe a little small, I don't know. but it kind of gets back to the power of like the rails and the one person framework. Like everything we did was very much the same And so the Rails app that managed the deployment was very simple. The, the command line app, even the Go one with all of its verbosity was very, very simple. so it was pretty easy for that small team to manage. but, Yeah, so it was sort of like for redundancy, we probably needed more than three or four people because you know, somebody goes out sick or takes a vacation. That's a significant part of the team. But in terms of like just managing the complexity and building it and maintaining it, like it worked pretty well with, you know, four or five people. Where Rails fits in vs other technology [00:29:09] Jeremy: So during the Keynote today, they were talking about how companies like GitHub and Shopify and so on, they're, they're using Rails and they're, they're successful and they're fairly large. but I think the thing that was sort of unsaid was the fact that. These companies, while they use Rails, they use a lot of other, technology as well. And, and, and kind of increasing amounts as well. So, I wonder from your perspective, either from your experience at StitchFix or maybe going forward, what is the role that, that Ruby and Rails plays? Like, where does it make sense for that to be used versus like, Okay, we need to go and build something in Java or, you know, or Go, that sort of thing? [00:29:51] David: right. I mean, I think for like your standard database backed web app, it's obviously great. especially if your sort of mindset bought into server side rendering, it's going to be great at that. so like internal tools, like the customer service dashboard or... You know, something for like somebody who works at a company to use. Like, it's really great because you can go super fast. You're not going to be under a lot of performance constraints. So you kind of don't even have to think about it. Don't even have to solve it. You can, but you don't have to, where it wouldn't work, I guess, you know, if you have really strict performance. Requirements, you know, like a, a Go version of some API server is going to use like percentages of what, of what Rails would use. If that's meaningful, if what you're spending on memory or compute is, is meaningful, then, then yeah. That, that becomes worthy of consideration. I guess if you're, you know, if you're making a mobile app, you probably need to make a mobile app and use those platforms. I mean, I guess you can wrap a Rails app sort of, but you're still making, you still need to make a mobile app, that does something. yeah. And then, you know, interestingly, the data science part of Stitch Fix was not part of the engineering team. They were kind of a separate org. I think Ruby and Rails was probably the only thing they didn't use over there. Like all the ML stuff, everything is either Java or Scala or Python. They use all that stuff. And so, yeah, if you want to do AI and ML with Ruby, you, it's, it's hard cause there's just not a lot there. You really probably should use Python. It'll make your life easier. so yeah, those would be some of the considerations, I guess. [00:31:31] Jeremy: Yeah, so I guess in the case of, ML, Python, certainly, just because of the, the ecosystem, for maybe making a command line application, maybe Go, um, Go or Rust, perhaps, [00:31:44] David: Right. Cause you just get a single binary. Like the problem, I mean, I wrote this book on Ruby command line apps and the biggest problem is like, how do I get the Ruby VM to be anywhere so that it can then run my like awesome scripts? Like that's kind of a huge pain. (laughs) So [00:31:59] Jeremy: and then you said, like, if it's Very performance sensitive, which I am kind of curious in, in your experience with the companies you've worked at, when you're taking on a project like that, do you know up front where you're like, Oh, the CPU and memory usage is going to be a problem, or is it's like you build it and you're like, Oh, this isn't working. So now I know. [00:32:18] David: yeah, I mean, I, I don't have a ton of great experience there at Stitch Fix. The biggest expense the company had was the inventory. So like the, the cost of AWS was just de minimis compared to all that. So nobody ever came and said, Hey, you've got to like really save costs on, on that stuff. Cause it just didn't really matter. at the, the mental health startup I was at, it was too early. But again, the labor costs were just far, far exceeded the amount of money I was spending on, on, um, you know, compute and infrastructure and stuff like that. So, Not knowing anything, I would probably just sort of wait and see if it's a problem. But I suppose you always take into account, like, what am I actually building? And like, what does this business have to scale to, to make it worthwhile? And therefore you can kind of do a little bit of planning ahead there. But, I dunno, I think it would kind of have to depend. [00:33:07] Jeremy: There's a sort of, I guess you could call it a meme, where people say like, Oh, it's, it's not, it's not Rails that's slow, it's the, the database that's slow. And, uh, I wonder, is that, is that accurate in your experience, or, [00:33:20] David: I mean, most of the stuff that we had that was slow was the database, because like, it's really easy to write a crappy query in Rails if you're not, if you're not careful, and then it's really easy to design a database that doesn't have any indexes if you're not careful. Like, you, you kind of need to know that, But of course, those are easy to fix too, because you just add the index, especially if it's before the database gets too big where we're adding indexes is problematic. But, I think those are just easy performance mistakes to make. Uh, especially with Rails because you're not, I mean, a lot of the Rails developers at Citrix did not know SQL at all. I mean, they had to learn it eventually, but they didn't know it at all. So they're not even knowing that what they're writing could possibly be problematic. It's just, you're writing it the Rails way and it just kind of works. And at a small scale, it does. And it doesn't matter until, until one day it does. [00:34:06] Jeremy: And then in, in the context of, let's say, using ActiveRecord and instantiating the objects, or, uh, the time it takes to render templates, that kinds of things, to, at least in your experience, that wasn't such of an issue. [00:34:20] David: No, and it was always, I mean, whenever we looked at why something was slow, it was always the database and like, you know, you're iterating over some active records and then, and then, you know, you're going into there and you're just following this object graph. I've got a lot of the, a lot of the software at Stitch Fix was like internal stuff and it was visualizing complicated data out of the database. And so if you didn't think about it, you would just start dereferencing and following those relationships and you have this just massive view and like the HTML is fine. It's just that to render this div, you're. Digging into some active record super deep. and so, you know, that was usually the, the, the problems that we would see and they're usually easy enough to fix by making an index or. Sometimes you do some caching or something like that. and that solved most of the, most of the issues [00:35:09] Jeremy: The different ways people learn [00:35:09] Jeremy: so you're also the author of the book, Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails. And when you talk to people about like how they learn things, a lot of them are going on YouTube, they're going on, uh, you know, looking for blogs and things like that. And so as an author, what do you think the role is of, of books now? Yeah, [00:35:29] David: I have thought about this a lot, because I, when I first got started, I'm pretty old, so books were all you had, really. Um, so they seem very normal and natural to me, but... does someone want to sit down and read a 400 page technical book? I don't know. so Dave Thomas who runs Pragmatic Bookshelf, he was on a podcast and was asked the same question and basically his answer, which is my answer, is like a long form book is where you can really lay out your thinking, really clarify what you mean, really take the time to develop sometimes nuanced, examples or nuanced takes on something that are Pretty hard to do in a short form video or in a blog post. Because the expectation is, you know, someone sends you an hour long YouTube video, you're probably not going to watch that. Two minute YouTube video is sure, but you can't, you can't get into so much, kind of nuanced detail. And so I thought that was, was right. And that was kind of my motivation for writing. I've got some thoughts. They're too detailed. It's, it's too much set up for a blog post. There's too much of a nuanced element to like, really get across. So I need to like, write more. And that means that someone's going to have to read more to kind of get to it. But hopefully it'll be, it'll be valuable. one of the sessions that we're doing later today is Ruby content creators, where it's going to be me and Noel Rappin and Dave Thomas representing the old school dudes that write books and probably a bunch of other people that do, you know, podcasts videos. It'd be interesting to see, I really want to know how do people learn stuff? Because if no one reads books to learn things, then there's not a lot of point in doing it. But if there is value, then, you know. It should be good and should be accessible to people. So, that's why I do it. But I definitely recognize maybe I'm too old and, uh, I'm not hip with the kids or, or whatever, whatever the case is. I don't know. [00:37:20] Jeremy: it's tricky because, I think it depends on where you are in the process of learning that thing. Because, let's say, you know a fair amount about the technology already. And you look at a book, in a lot of cases it's, it's sort of like taking you from nothing to something. And so you're like, well, maybe half of this isn't relevant to me, but then if I don't read it, then I'm probably missing a lot still. And so you're in this weird in be in between zone. Another thing is that a lot of times when people are trying to learn something, they have a specific problem. And, um, I guess with, with books, it's, you kind of don't know for sure if the thing you're looking for is going to be in the book. [00:38:13] David: I mean, so my, so my book, I would not say as a beginner, it's not a book to learn how to do Rails. It's like you already kind of know Rails and you want to like learn some comprehensive practices. That's what my book is for. And so sometimes people will ask me, I don't know Rails, should I get your book? And I'm like, no, you should not. but then you have the opposite thing where like the agile web development with Rails is like the beginner version. And some people are like, Oh, it's being updated for Rails 7. Should I get it? I'm like, probably not because How to go from zero to rails hasn't changed a lot in years. There's not that much that's going to be new. but, how do you know that, right? Hopefully the Table of Contents tells you. I mean, the first book I wrote with Pragmatic, they basically were like, The Table of Contents is the only thing the reader, potential reader is going to have to have any idea what's in the book. So, You need to write the table of contents with that in mind, which may not be how you'd write the subsections of a book, but since you know that it's going to serve these dual purposes of organizing the book, but also being promotional material that people can read, you've got to keep that in mind, because otherwise, how does anybody, like you said, how does anybody know what's, what's going to be in there? And they're not cheap, I mean, these books are 50 bucks sometimes, and That's a lot of money for people in the U. S. People outside the U. S. That's a ton of money. So you want to make sure that they know what they're getting and don't feel ripped off. [00:39:33] Jeremy: Yeah, I think the other challenge is, at least what I've heard, is that... When people see a video course, for whatever reason, they, they set, like, a higher value to it. They go, like, oh, this video course is, 200 dollars and it's, like, seems like a lot of money, but for some people it's, like, okay, I can do that. But then if you say, like, oh, this, this book I've been researching for five years, uh, I want to sell it for a hundred bucks, people are going to be, like no. No way., [00:40:00] David: Yeah. Right. A hundred bucks for a book. There's no way. That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. I mean, producing video, I've thought about doing video content, but it seems so labor intensive. Um, and it's kind of like, It's sort of like a performance. Like I was mentioning before we started that I used to play in bands and like, there's a lot to go into making an even mediocre performance. And so I feel like, you know, video content is the same way. So I get that it like, it does cost more to produce, but, are you getting more information out of it? I, that, I don't know, like maybe not, but who knows? I mean, people learn things in different ways. So, [00:40:35] Jeremy: It's just like this perception thing, I think. And, uh, I'm not sure why that is. Um, [00:40:40] David: Yeah, maybe it's newer, right? Maybe books feel older so they're easier to make and video seems newer. I mean, I don't know. I would love to talk to engineers who are like... young out of college, a few years into their career to see what their perception of this stuff is. Cause I mean, there was no, I mean, like I said, I read books cause that's all there was. There was no, no videos. You, you go to a conference and you read a book and that was, that was all you had. so I get it. It seems a whole video. It's fancier. It's newer. yeah, I don't know. I would love to hear a wide variety of takes on it to see what's actually the, the future, you know? [00:41:15] Jeremy: sure, yeah. I mean, I think it probably can't just be one or the other, right? Like, I think there are... Benefits of each way. Like, if you have the book, you can read it at your own pace without having to, like, scroll through the video, and you can easily copy and paste the, the code segments, [00:41:35] David: Search it. Go back and forth. [00:41:36] Jeremy: yeah, search it. So, I think there's a place for it, but yeah, I think it would be very interesting, like you said, to, to see, like, how are people learning, [00:41:45] David: Right. Right. Yeah. Well, it's the same with blogs and podcasts. Like I, a lot of podcasters I think used to be bloggers and they realized that like they can get out what they need by doing a podcast. And it's way easier because it's more conversational. You don't have to do a bunch of research. You don't have to do a bunch of editing. As long as you're semi coherent, you can just have a conversation with somebody and sort of get at some sort of thing that you want to talk about or have an opinion about. And. So you, you, you see a lot more podcasts and a lot less blogs out there because of that. So it's, that's kind of like the creators I think are kind of driving that a little bit. yeah. So I don't know. [00:42:22] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I can, I can say for myself, the thing about podcasts is that it's something that I can listen to while I'm doing something else. And so you sort of passively can hopefully pick something up out of that conversation, but... Like, I think it's maybe not so good at the details, right? Like, if you're talking code, you can talk about it over voice, but can you really visualize it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if you sit down and you try to implement something somebody talked about, you're gonna be like, I don't know what's happening. [00:42:51] David: Yeah. [00:42:52] Jeremy: So, uh, so, so I think there's like these, these different roles I think almost for so like maybe you know the podcast is for you to Maybe get some ideas or get some familiarity with a thing and then when you're ready to go deeper You can go look at a blog post or read a book I think video kind of straddles those two where sometimes video is good if you want to just see, the general concept of a thing, and have somebody explain it to you, maybe do some visuals. that's really good. but then it can also be kind of detailed, where, especially like the people who stream their process, right, you can see them, Oh, let's, let's build this thing together. You can ask me questions, you can see how I think. I think that can be really powerful. at the same time, like you said, it can be hard to say, like, you know, I look at some of the streams and it's like, oh, this is a three hour stream and like, well, I mean, I'm interested. I'm interested, but yeah, it's hard enough for me to sit through a, uh, a three hour movie, [00:43:52] David: Well, then that, and that gets into like, I mean, we're, you know, we're at a conference and they, they're doing something a little, like, there are conference talks at this conference, but there's also like. sort of less defined activities that aren't a conference talk. And I think that could be a reaction to some of this too. It's like I could watch a conference talk on, on video. How different is that going to be than being there in person? maybe it's not that different. Maybe, maybe I don't need to like travel across the country to go. Do something that I could see on video. So there's gotta be something here that, that, that meets that need that I can't meet any other way. So it's all these different, like, I would like to think that's how it is, right? All this media all is a part to play and it's all going to kind of continue and thrive and it's not going to be like, Oh, remember books? Like maybe, but hopefully not. Hopefully it's like, like what you're saying. Like it's all kind of serving different purposes that all kind of work together. Yeah. [00:44:43] Jeremy: I hope that's the case, because, um, I don't want to have to scroll through too many videos. [00:44:48] David: Yeah. The video's not for me. Large Language Models [00:44:50] Jeremy: I, I like, I actually do find it helpful, like, like I said, for the high level thing, or just to see someone's thought process, but it's like, if you want to know a thing, and you have a short amount of time, maybe not the best, um, of course, now you have all the large language model stuff where you like, you feed the video in like, Hey, tell, tell, tell me, uh, what this video is about and give me the code snippets and all that stuff. I don't know how well it works, but it seems [00:45:14] David: It's gotta get better. Cause you go to a support site and they're like, here's how to fix your problem, and it's a video. And I'm like, can you just tell me? But I'd never thought about asking the AI to just look at the video and tell me. So yeah, it's not bad. [00:45:25] Jeremy: I think, that's probably where we're going. So it's, uh, it's a little weird to think about, but, [00:45:29] David: yeah, yeah. I was just updating, uh, you know, like I said, I try to keep the book updated when new versions of Rails come out, so I'm getting ready to update it for Rails 7. 1 and in Amazon's, Kindle Direct Publishing as their sort of backend for where you, you know, publish like a Kindle book and stuff, and so they added a new question, was AI used in the production of this thing or not? And if you answer yes, they want you to say how much, And I don't know what they're gonna do with that exactly, but I thought it was pretty interesting, cause I would be very disappointed to pay 50 for a book that the AI wrote, right? So it's good that they're asking that? Yeah. [00:46:02] Jeremy: I think the problem Amazon is facing is where people wholesale have the AI write the book, and the person either doesn't review it at all, or maybe looks at a little, a little bit. And, I mean, the, the large language model stuff is very impressive, but If you have it generate a technical book for you, it's not going to be good. [00:46:22] David: yeah. And I guess, cause cause like Amazon, I mean, think about like Amazon scale, like they're not looking at the book at all. Like I, I can go click a button and have my book available and no person's going to look at it. they might scan it or something maybe with looking for bad words. I don't know, but there's no curation process there. So I could, yeah. I could see where they could have that, that kind of problem. And like you as the, as the buyer, you don't necessarily, if you want to book on something really esoteric, there are a lot of topics I wish there was a book on that there isn't. And as someone generally want to put it on Amazon, I could see a lot of people buying it, not realizing what they're getting and feeling ripped off when it was not good. [00:47:00] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, if it's an issue with the, the technical stuff. It probably is. But I, I know they've definitely had problems where, fiction, they have people just generating hundreds, thousands of books, submitting them all, just flooding it. [00:47:13] David: Seeing what happens. [00:47:14] Jeremy: And, um, I think that's probably... That's probably the main reason why they ask you, cause they want you to say like, uh, yeah, you said it wasn't. And so now we can remove your book. [00:47:24] David: right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:26] Jeremy: I mean, it's, it's not quite the same, but it's similar to, I don't know what Stack Overflow's policy is now, but, when the large language model stuff started getting big, they had a lot of people answering the questions that were just. Pasting the question into the model [00:47:41] David: Which because they got it from [00:47:42] Jeremy: and then [00:47:43] David: The Got model got it from Stack Overflow. [00:47:45] Jeremy: and then pasting the answer into Stack Overflow and the person is not checking it. Right. So it's like, could be right, could not be right. Um, cause, cause to me, it's like, if, if you generate it, if you generate the answer and the answer is right, and you checked it, I'm okay with that. [00:48:00] David: Yeah. Yeah. [00:48:01] Jeremy: but if you're just like, I, I need some karma, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer these questions with, with this bot, I mean, then maybe [00:48:08] David: I could have done that. You're not adding anything. Yeah, yeah. [00:48:11] Jeremy: it's gonna be a weird, weird world, I think. [00:48:12] David: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. [00:48:15] Jeremy: that's a, a good place to end it on, but is there anything else you want to mention, [00:48:19] David: No, I think we covered it all just yeah, you could find me online. I'm Davetron5000 on Ruby. social Mastodon, I occasionally post on Twitter, but not that much anymore. So Mastodon's a place to go. [00:48:31] Jeremy: David, thank you so much [00:48:32] David: All right. Well, thanks for having me.

In this episode, Abby and Vanessa discuss ... Crappie Lake - who is a better duo - Sonja and Lu? Or Ramona and Sonja? RHOC - why every franchise needs to do this party Don't forget to try StichFix. You can get 25% off when you keep everything in your Stichfix kids box. www.stichfix.com/REALMOMS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Flavilla is joined by Bianca Rangecroft, Founder and CEO of Whering. They discuss Whering's exciting future, the app startup growth journey and Bianca's experience of being on Dragons Den.  Bianca is fluent in five European languages and holds a first-class Bachelor's degree in History and Politics from SOAS & LSE, with a special focus on Africa and the Middle East, as well as a Master's degree in Management (Merit) from Imperial College Business School. She spent the first 4.5 years of her career in Banking, first at Barclays Investment Management and then in Goldman Sachs' consumer division in London (working on fashiontech IPOs like Stichfix & Farfetch). She is a board member of Imperial College's Alumni Advisory board, the London Chapter President for Unite2030, an UNLEASH 2019 and 2020 Global Talent and a committee member of Ubuntu, a South African charity and Textiles2030 signatory. She was a finalist in the Pitch UK, Elle x Bossbabe, shortlisted for WOTC award, We Are Tech Women's award and winner of the Most Disruptive Tech award at UNLEASH 2019, EUTOP50 founders 2021 award and a frequent podcast and TV guest (BBC's Dragon's Den).[00:11] Episode summary[00:54] Introducing Bianca[04:13] Bianca's entrepreneurial journey with Whering[08:03] The lessons learned from developing Whering[14:02] Successful strategies for user growth[18:53] Learnings from scaling a tech business[24:19] The experience of appearing on Dragons Den[29:17] Keeping resilient throughout the startup journey[34:13] Bianca's vision for Whering's Future[36:10] How would Bianca like to be remembered? To connect with Bianca, CLICK HERETo visit Whering's website, CLICK HERETo join the Tech Brains Talk mailing list for more perks, CLICK HERETo find out more about the 3 Colours Rule Agency, CLICK HERE

As moms we do carry a big burden – we have a God-give responsibility to love and care for our children, but how often do you feel crushed under that burden? It's hard to do all the tasks to take care of everyone – especially if you're measuring yourself by how many meltdowns (your kids or yours) did or didn't happen this week. What if that responsibility came with the freedom to not hold it all together? What if there were someone more loving and more powerful than you to shape all the details of life for the good of everyone involved? This week, Brittany Turner encourages us that the same God we trust to take all the hard in our lives and turn it into good is God for our kids too! We can rest in his capabilities and invite others into our lives to help carry the load. You do not have to mom alone!  Brittany Turner is a wife, mom of four, speaker, and writer who loves to help people take what they say they believe and put it into practice in their everyday lives.   Connect with Brittany Turner:  Website:  https://brittanyjturner.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iambrittanyjturner  Instagram:  @iambrittanyjturner YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPGJooyyxRuC4iM5Th1tC8w?view_as=subscriber    Links Mentioned:   Mary Van Geffen–Parent Coach for Spicy Ones  Body Awareness in Parenting :: Mary Van Geffen [Ep 333]  NYTimes Article “Harsh Realm of Gentle Parenting”   Related Episodes: Postpartum Depression :: Brittany Turner [Ep 277] Sunday Planning :: Retha Nichole [Ep 349] Encouraging the Exhausted Mom :: Summer of Mentorship Week 5 When You Carry the Burden of Perfection :: Aubrie Norman [Ep 284] Featured Sponsors:  Stitch Fix Get started today by filling out your FREE style quiz and advantage of free shipping and returns. StichFix.com/DMA The Biggest Story Bible Storybook by Crossway and Kevin DeYoung. Pick up a copy wherever books are sold or visit crossway.org/plus to find out how to save 30%. Simply Be Box Use Code DMASpring10 to receive $10 off Your Subscription or Spring Box Purchase at SimplyBeBox.com  

Rebecca Minkoff is a global fashion brand that was founded by brother and sister duo Rebecca Minkoff & Uri Minkoff in 2005 in New York City. The brand has four domestic retail stores, nine international locations, and is distributed in over 900 stores worldwide. Meet My Guest: WEBSITE: RebeccaMinkoff.com INSTAGRAM: @rebeccaminkoff TWITTER: @RebeccaMinkoff FACEBOOK: @rebeccaminkoff YOUTUBE: @rebeccaminkoff PODCAST: Superwomen Show Notes: 02:00 - Introduction 04:20 - Finding your own path 07:13 - Positional treadmill 08:40 - First fashion show 13:00 - Dawn of social media + specialty stores 14:35 - Weaving diversity into DNA of the brand 18:12 - Collab with StichFix 21:00 - SuperWomen podcast 25:24 - Being a first time mom 27:20 - How you can be healthier 31:00 - The tribe 31:30 - Values learned from parents to pass down 35:00 - You have to be the change you want to see 36:03 - Mom Haul 37:33 - Mom sense moments and a piece of advice - "Don't sweat the small stuff" Mom Haul: AMAZON: Medela Freestyle Double Electric Breast Pump

This week Caroline is back solo to talk about all things blame and shame.. there should be neither! Separation and Divorce happen.. We sometimes have to make the difficult decision to move forwards and we cannot worry about those friends we’ve lost in the split or hold back due to someone’s opinion. Family and Ex’s family members opinions matter, but not enough to stay in a relationship and sacrifice your happiness.. you need to learn to be at peace with your decision. For every friend you’ve lost through the separation there will be many many more new ones to com. As for the blame, well people will always have an opinion… but you’ve got to do what feels right & go with your Gut.  Visit www.StichFix.com and use code DND and you'll get 25% off when you keep everything in your fix! Visit www.MyBillie.com/DND to get your starter kit and get the best razor you will ever own. Visit www.Rothys.com/DND and check out al the amazing shoes, bags, and masks! Produced by Dear Media

Happy International Women’s week, this week I am so honoured and delighted to have the amazing, iconic, powerhouse that is Susan Sarandon on this week’s episode. Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon knows a thing or two about hard work, standing up for your rights and well, she’s got some great stories and chapters of love and relationships… so it’s very fitting I thought to have her on this week for International Women’s week which is celebrated across the world on the  8th March 2021 and to dedicate this episode to someone I really admire.   We sat down for a chat, where we touched on everything from love life, to marriage, to raising our children as well as touching on all those amazing movies. This episode is one for everyone! Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it.  Caroline X Visit www.StichFix.com and use code DND and you'll get 25% off when you keep everything in your fix! Visit www.MyBillie.com/DND to get your starter kit and get the best razor you will ever own. Produced by Dear Media

Iliza gets involved with a family's surprising birth certificate and a teenager who needs to calm down. This week's sponsors:Stitch Fix: Get started today at StichFix.com/iliza and you'll get 25% off when you keep everything in your Fix!The Real Real: Get 20% off select items with the code: REAL, plus new shoppers get $25 off their first purchase. Visit therealreal.com and shop all your favorite luxury brands today!Function of Beauty: Go to FunctionofBeauty.com/iliza to take your quiz and save 20% on your first order.

(1:50) - Start of interview(2:23) - Sukhinder's "origin story"(2:58) - Her start in Silicon Valley in 1997. She characterizes her career as "always building".Junglee - Amazon ('98-99)Yodlee ('99-'03)Google ('03-'09)Accel-Polyvore ('10)Joyus ('11-'17)TheBoardlist ('15-present)Stubhub ('18-'20)(6:50) -  Her boardroom experience (J Crew Group, StichFix, TripAdvisor, Ericsson, Urban Outfitters, Upstart...). "Your job is one of influence, and one of bringing specialization - in my case I brought e-commerce and digital [to my first board]." "Boardrooms are increasingly open to the idea of non-CEO specialists - allowing the possibility to bring more modern and diverse skill-sets into the boardroom."(9:35) - The boardroom diversity problem, and why she founded TheBoardlist in 2015.Bring more equity to the table.Bring all the talent to boardrooms.(11:50) - Why diversity is a bigger problem in private (venture-backed) companies than in public companies.(13:40) - The evolution of TheBoardlist since 2015. Started as a crowdsourced list of people who could serve on boards, first tapping a group of 30 executives/founders/entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffman, Michael Dearing and Joanne Bradford - resulting in 600 names added in an excel spreadsheet and a very simple website. Today TheBoardlist has about 17,000-18,000 members, divided in the following categories:Nominated director candidates.NominatorsCompanies that are searching for board members.(16:29) - Since then, there have been ~2,000 board searches in TheBoardList.  There has been a 4x increase in board searches since the MeToo and BLM cultural crisis. 75% of board searches are for private companies, 25% for public companies. Within the private companies: equally divided between early, mid and late stage. It's a "discovery platform" (curated list with recommended board candidates) it's not a "placement platform."(19:09) - Her take on the evolution of venture-backed company boards (and independent directors). "Often the independent board seat goes unfilled after the Series A or B."(22:28) - Choosing between a private and public company board position. "People want the experience they don't have in their day job." (board allows not only to contribute, but also to learn). Her advice to founders: "Often, you might be able rent unto the board the experience you can't afford to hire yet as a day job." You can craft a board seat for 1 or 2 years.(26:06) - Attracting more experienced directors to startup boards (as chairs or lead independent directors). Distinction with coaches. CEO reviews. "Every team needs a coach."(31:24) - Her take on SB-826 and AB-979 (California board diversity laws). "SB-826 has moved the needle." "Tokenism is about how you treat somebody once they get there."(35:25) - "The one thing that we need and that is missing is a conversation about board terms." Board Refreshment is critical for board diversity.(36:27) - Her take on dual-class share structures and other control structures.(39:46) - Her take on the shareholder primacy vs stakeholder debate. "Customer activism and employee activism are real and enduring trends."(43:41) - Her take on shareholder activism. Conflict between short term results vs long term strategy. "Directors need more courage than ever before." "You need to be both hopeful and paranoid as a director (and willing to put in the work) to help create a company with that bifocal lens."As a board member, you have to be really attuned to this issue because  there are proven financial returns to activists.It forces companies to confront issues that they would otherwise not confront in a reasonable time frame.(47:17) - Her favorite books:Good to Great, by Jim Collins (2001)Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick, McKinsey & Company (2018)The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav (1989)(48:48) - Her mentors (her dad was her absolute mentor). Group of mentors in Silicon Valley including founders of Junglee, Omid Kordestani (Google), different board members.(50:49) - Her favorite quote: "You don't know if you don't try"(51:00) - Her "unusual habit": shopping, knitting.(51:38) - The living person she most admires: her Sikh spiritual leader.(53:14) - Her parting thoughts for directors.Ms. Singh Cassidy is currently the Founder and Chairman of theBoardlist, and most recently served as the President of StubHub Inc, the leading global consumer ticketing marketplace for live entertainment. In February 2020, StubHub was acquired by Viagogo for $4bn, in a transaction led by Sukhinder and her team. She is currently a director of Upstart and Urban Outfitters. Ms. Singh Cassidy previously served on the board of Tripadvisor and Ericsson until 2018. Ms. Singh Cassidy holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the Ivey Business School at Western University.__Follow Evan on Twitter @evanepsteinMusic/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License 

Coffee Sessions #18 with Luigi Patruno of ML in Production, a Centralized Repository of Best Practices Summary Luigi Patruno and ML in production MLOps workflow: Knowledge sharing and best practices Objective: learn! Links: ML in production: https://mlinproduction.com/ Why you start MLinProduction: https://mlinproduction.com/why-i-started-mlinproduction/ Luigi Patruno: a man whose goal is to help data scientists, ML engineers, and AI product managers, build and operate machine learning systems in production. Luigi shares with us why he started ML in Production - A lot irrelevant content; a lot of clickbait with low standards of quality. He had an Entrepreneurial itch and The solution was to start a weekly newsletter. From there he started creating Blog posts and now teamed up with Sam Charrington of TWIML to create courses on SagMaker ML. Applied ML Best practices Reading google and microsoft papers Analyzing the tools that are out there ie sagemaker and how to the see the world? Aimed at making you more effective and efficient at your job Community questions Taking some time to answer some community questions! Who do you learn from? Favorite resources? Self-taught, papers, talks Construct the systems Uber michelangelo -----------------

Derek and Mike discuss their different views on subscription boxes as they are both decked out in their ShortPar4 gear. Have you ever tried a subscription box? If so, which one and are you looking to switch? Derek made the switch to Stichfix and loves it! Also talked about Mike's Butcher Box. As always, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, it really helps us grow as a podcast which in turn helps the businesses we promote! Leave a like comment, and subscribe. New videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday!

EP231 - The Forever Transaction author Robbie Kellman Baxter Robbie Kellman Baxter (@robbiebax) is the best selling author of “The Forever Transaction” and “The Membership Economy.” She has become a well known subject mater expert on subscription and loyalty programs. In this broad ranging interview, we discuss well known subscription based brands including Dollar Shave Club, Blue Apron, Stichfix, BirchBox, and Netflix. We also cover issues including subscription fatigue, cancelation friction, and Rundles. You can find out more about Robbie’s consulting work and her podcast at her website. Disclosure: links to Amazon are affiliate links. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 231 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, July 30st, 2020. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 231 being recorded on Thursday July 30th 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners We are continuing our I’m doing air quotes you can’t see me Summer of awesome guests and we’re really excited to welcome to the show Robbie Kellman Baxter. Robbie has a ton of experience working in the trenches at subscription companies and is leverage those experiences to write two great books that we strongly recommend the first was published in 2015 called the membership economy and then she has a new book that’s hot off the presses came out in March so good timing with covid I guess and that’s called the forever transaction welcome to the Jason Scott show Robbie. Robbie: [1:16] Thanks so much for having me. Jason: [1:18] Robbie we are thrilled to have you on the show is you know it’s a little bit of a tradition on this show we like to get to know a little bit about the guest Scott obviously already mentioned your books but can you give us a little bit of background about how you sort of got in the world of marketing and subscriptions. Robbie: [1:36] Yeah well it I guess it’s you know I’ve been in marketing for most of my career but my Consulting in the subscription while and I was a product manager for about five years after business school and then I got laid off what I was on maternity leave with my second child and I decided during that time that I need to be independent and able to manage my own career and my own income as a consultant and very soon after that I realized that if you want to thrive as a consultant you really need to have an area of expertise so I was trying to figure out what is big enough that it could juicy enough that I could be interested in it for a long time and it would be valuable to people but also narrow enough that I could credibly. Say I was an expert and then my I think it was my fifth client you know the first for clients I was really just trying to pay the mortgage and provide some value but the fifth client was Netflix. And I just fell in love with the business model I’d already fallen in love as a consumer I loved three out at a time which it was back in the day but as a business person I love the recurring revenue and the focus on the long-term with the customer and that’s really where I got interested in you know what I’ve come to call the membership economy. Jason: [2:57] Yeah I understand that investors have one of the recurring business model of Netflix as well. Robbie: [3:03] Yeah everybody loves the recurring Revenue you know that the valuations are you know whatever 5 to 7 x what their transactional episodic counterparts get which is pretty much making every business interested in subscriptions it’s kind of crazy. Jason: [3:22] Yeah yeah I feel like it was already hot pre-pandemic and then if anything the pandemic is only accelerated that conversation I know Scott’s eager to jump in to Netflix but I do want to just say that that seemed like super morally dubious to lay you off while you’re on maternity leave and legally perilous I would imagine but I’m I’m glad it had a such a good outcome though. Robbie: [3:44] So interestingly are you know at the time very disappointingly it’s completely legal if there are other people who are being in a group lay off in a mass layoff if there are other people late being laid off who are not. Pregnant or just coming back from maternity leave and there are also people who are pregnant or on maternity leave who are not laid off then they’re completely good, it’s only if the only people being laid off are the ones with the big bellies. Jason: [4:14] Yeah fair enough it’s crazy because I’ve done some studies and it turns out a hundred percent of people have a mom so it seems weird that we wouldn’t treat. But Scott did you have a Netflix specific question. Scot: [4:29] Yeah give us a time frame on Netflix was this kind of when they were moving from DVD to streaming or were they well into streaming when you’re there. Robbie: [4:37] It was before both of those things it was when the three DVDs out at a time and, other parts I was in the working in the marketing organization under Leslie Kilgore and Jesse tights Becker. But this you know it often other parts of the organization they were thinking about what was going to come next and how could they continue to be relevant and provide you know when I think about what Netflix does it’s you know. Large selection of professionally created content delivered with cost certainty in the most efficient way possible so at that time it was three DVDs out of it the time being the most efficient way possible but they were already looking at what is the next most efficient way possible going to be so streaming and downloading and you know going through consoles versus going through your phone and all of that they were thinking about it but when I was. First working with them this is 2002-2003 they were three DVD out at a time organization. Jason: [5:37] Wow and for our gen Z listeners DVDs were these plastic circles that had a movie on them and you could actually put it in a machine and watch it they were amazing. Robbie: [5:47] And they came in the mail not not email but actual mail in a mailbox very exciting. Scot: [5:53] Yes Samuel do you have any fun Reed Hastings stories you can share with us. Robbie: [5:58] Well you know I didn’t work with with him I mostly worked with Leslie and Jesse but the thing that I remember the most about that company was how. Incredibly focused they on what they did and how not interested they were in all the shiny objects going on around them so you know people would constantly be you know I was in that working with Acquisitions you know so how do we acquire new customers and you know all kinds of crazy stuff would come in over the transom you know hey we want to give away Netflix for free to you know when you buy a puppy or we want to you know like a you know it’s whatever you know anyway everybody wanted to kind of get in on it. And they were so focused on is that the kind of customer that’s going to get value out of Netflix because if not we’re not interested and that’s really what has you know one of the things that’s really stuck with me over time is how how focused they were so narrowly on you know they weren’t they weren’t three gain video games out at a time it wasn’t you know. Getting the most new subscribers it was about finding those people that we’re going to get value and stay for a long time. Scot: [7:05] Break oh yeah so we thought we would try to break this up into kind of two parts the want to talk about a lot of the concepts in the books and then use the second half to really kind of dive into some examples so one of the things I just finished both books and I kind of read them together and even though you wrote them kind of in a 5-year separation there they really kind of hang together really well feels I’m a Star Wars fan so it feels like maybe you’re working on a Trilogy I don’t want to. Hold your feet to the fire on that but so let’s say there’s listeners out there that haven’t read the books how would you say you know that they should approach them and how do they kind of fit together. Robbie: [7:41] Yeah so I think of the membership economy as the Y and the forever transaction as the. So when I wrote the membership economy a lot of people still didn’t think that subscription was relevant to their business and so I wrote the membership economy to save this as a massive transformation that is really powerful and positive for a lot of organizations of all shapes and sizes and you. You know business leader Organization leader entrepreneur should consider it no matter where you are in your business cycle. And here’s why and then five years later I don’t have to explain to anybody the power of recurring Revenue. But what people are saying now is we tried it and it didn’t work or we’re trying it and we’re running into this problem or it used to work and now we’re running into this new challenge or we’re thinking about it but we’re not sure where to start and so the forever transaction breaks down. You know how to launch a new business with a subscription component or a membership mindset how to had a skill that business once you have product Market fit and then how to maintain a leadership position in a kind of steady state mature business that uses subscription or membership. Jason: [9:04] Yeah so I’m struggling because I’m trying to go back in time to 2015 and think about what the climate was like then but in covid it feels like I’ve spent five years in the last three months so I’m my brain is a little muddled but if I have this right like, in 2015 there were a lot of trendy new businesses that had a subscription model as a core component so I’m feeling like the meal kits were really taking off like that might have been. Robbie: [9:34] Meal kits were new Dollar Shave Club was the big one, when I was launching the book and I’m trying to remember if it made it into the book or not but that was a bit you know billion dollar acquisition by Unilever and, a real people were really starting to say wow look at that it can work in consumer products and in packaged goods and. That was you know so it was sorting you know people were starting to think about it but. Most large organizations weren’t use it you know wasn’t a core part of the strategy and there were a lot of businesses that you know weren’t really thinking about it at all yet. Scot: [10:15] And then when you look back on it, our organization still missing something or does pretty much everyone have religion because you know obviously Unilever had to buy Dollar Shave Club to get the sand P&G I think it’s taken several runs at this I don’t know if they’ve got a lot of traction with with things but. Robbie: [10:31] Yeah it’s I mean I think that the problems that are like so right now I think they’ve got religion to the extent that they’re like. Most people would say subscription you know recurring revenue is something we want and we value getting closer going direct to our to our customers is something that we value we want to do this but I think a lot of organizations still think that they can just slap subscription pricing on whatever products and services they already have and call it a subscription and I feel like subscription is a pricing. Tactic it’s not by itself a strategy and I think where organizations are still missing the boat is that they. Don’t understand how it’s going to change not just marketing where you’re like on the pricing and packaging side but the product itself. And the way you sell and support that product and then of course the way you recognize the revenue on the finance side. Scot: [11:31] Yeah yeah it’s a lot it’s easy to say but then like you know how are you going to do if you haven’t had any direct relationship how are you going to do just the pricing just the hitting the credit card every 30 days and all those things that kind of come along with it. Robbie: [11:44] Yeah there’s a lot of tactical stuff you need new systems new processes you also need a different mindset because in product-centric businesses you know everything leads up and culminates in the moment of transaction right you you know awareness trial transaction. And then you go out and get another one or try to lure that person back and in a subscription model that moment of transaction is the starting line not the finish line and so everybody’s role changes it’s easier in a lot of cases to sell a subscription to acquire a new subscriber because often the prices lower and the commitment is lower but it’s easier for them to leave so you have to invest more in engagement and retention if I go buy a car if I buy a Lamborghini and I roll it off the showroom floor after giving them a check for the full amount and I keep the car in first gear and I say this is a terrible car doesn’t go fast at all. That’s my problem not the Lamborghini dealers problem if I’m subscribing to that car and keeping it in first gear. Right and I say this is a terrible car I’m going to cancel my subscription so suddenly the responsibility for engagement and usage and realizing the value goes, to the organization and away from the customer. Scot: [13:04] Seems like most people the way they stopped from you in your subscription is just to hide from you so I don’t know if that’s right. Robbie: [13:12] Hiding the cancel button yes. Scot: [13:14] Yeah call us in the near like six hours later you still are there trying to upsell you. Robbie: [13:20] Call us call us on Tuesday mail us a letter. Jason: [13:25] X effects yeah. Robbie: [13:26] Yeah right send us a fax it’s very I mean I’m I’m very anti hiding the cancel button that’s actually a lot of subscription you know I of course, involved a lot of you know subscription events and description shows and you know groups of CEOs of subscription businesses talking about best practices and often I hear them bragging about how they’ve increased lifetime customer value which of course is the key metric for any subscription they say we’ve we increased it by X percent in effect by hiding the cancel button by changing the user interface for cancellation so that it’s got more putting more friction into cancellation. And to me first of all I feel like although that’s legal and allowed it’s unethical and who wants to be in the business of making money because your customer couldn’t figure out how to get away from you and it also in the long-term I think it really has a negative impact on the brand equity on the trust that that customer has in the way that they talk about that company to their to their Network. Jason: [14:33] Yeah you know it it so it is I mean it’s a challenge because. It’s such a horrible customer experience and there’s all these reasons not to do it and and long-term Equity customer trust is so valuable like there’s a there’s a bunch of rational reasons to argue not to do it. Unfortunately. When there is an evil argument to do it that the customers that want to cancel are the least likely to come back and and so you know do we really care about creating a horrible negative experience for that particular cohort because they’re the. The least important for us to cater to. I will say one thing though it actually is start the the laws are starting to become more dubious so there is now a California law that went into effect last year for digital subscriptions that say and it’s. There’s a lot of nuance but essentially it says if you offer a digital way to subscribe to a service you must offer an equivalent Digital Way. To unsubscribe so you know a common practice is one click subscribe and then you have to call in wait in an on a phone queue for half an hour to cancel and in California that’s now actually illegal. Robbie: [15:41] Yeah and you know I’ve had I’ve had several conversations with the woman who is responsible for suing unethical subscription companies for the FTC Leslie Fair what a good name for you know real house. Jason: [15:55] A great name for a lawyer. Robbie: [15:56] And you know what she she said it’s you know we’re not you know all the questions you know I’ve spoken with her at some at some conferences and you know she gets a lot of questions like, you know what is the minimum font size for the fine print and is it okay to go silver on Gray. With you know the the font being in silver on a background of gray or what shade of grade is allowed or how many gradients of difference is the minimum and, she always says she’s like we’re not going to tell you exactly how to do it. But the goal is to be fair to the customer the customer needs to know what they’re getting into they know what they’re going to need to know what they’re going to be charged and they need to know how they can break off this contract. If they decide they no longer want to be a part of it. And yet organizations continue to be bad actors I think one one really interesting thing that I’ve noticed you know in working with a lot of different companies is that companies that are focused on Legacy or that are focused on the long-term such as family-owned businesses or closely held businesses often take more of a long-term approach than businesses that have leadership being evaluated on you know quarterly deliverables with a much shorter time Horizon the behavior towards their customers is very different. Jason: [17:13] Yeah that makes total sense so, I definitely mirror your experience I could totally see back in 2015 that there was an interesting conversation to be had about should you even have a membership program and what would that look like but but per your experience with that mental a lot of people is let’s just find a way to recurring charge to the credit card and returning ship and not think about the customer experience of membership or the value prop in a different way or all of these different things that people are doing wrong and that’s why it makes perfect sense to me that five years later you’d have to write the how book to sort of correct all those errors is that. Robbie: [17:52] Yeah exactly I mean everybody’s doing it now and they’re they’re bumping into these these problems in one example if you look at Dollar Shave Club which was of course a big deal in 2015. And what Gillette did it kind of in response and you see how if you’re a consumer product I don’t mean to pick on them but you know you look at a consumer product package goods company where there used to shipping things on pallets. Write an optimizing for you know Distribution on trucks to warehouses and then suddenly they’re sending it to Consumers right you know even if they get the package to you the package you know it’s it’s packaged like a delivery to a warehouse It’s not beautiful and fun and in frankly easy to open and also in order to have simple pricing for a consumer which is what is really in my opinion is really critical to a successful subscription you have to have some risk on the side of the company because you know your shipping costs are going to vary depending on where you’re sending it to and what the person actually needs and how frequently they need replenishment is going to change and so they ended up having a very complex solution not being able to handle returns very well. [19:12] Not being able to handle changes in the order very well because they just weren’t set up for it and those are all the elements it’s not just about you know sending the razor’s directly to the person or having a clever ad about subscription it’s about the whole supply chain and the way that the product is supported as well. Jason: [19:32] Yeah and you know what else I’ve found the you alluded to this earlier but the. Your mindset you are a different company when you’re selling that membership than you are when you’re selling the the one-time-use widget like it’s on the analogy I make sometimes is. When you’re selling a big expensive thing you have to decide really whether you’re going to be in the leasing business or the selling business and do one or the other it’s kind of hard to do both and so I think of like there are a lot of coffee companies that launched subscription services in the primary value prop was always will ship you the coffee this the same day we roast it in fact Walmart just rolled that out of all people and I used to always chuckle because you’d go to the website and they both are trying to sell the coffee as a brand and tell you to go buy it from the store where it’s been sitting on the shelf for. Weeks and then like you know 20 pixels lower on the screen there talking about how coffee sucks unless you get it the day it’s roasted and you should subscribe and it just it feels like, need to make one of those value props or the other but like you can’t put those two things side by side because they’re at cross-purposes. Robbie: [20:41] Yeah exactly and it’s so hard for organizations because a lot of them are trying to well either they’re trying to capture both values or they’re trying to transition and it’s a very scary thing when you have a successful business to move to subscription because you risk cannibalization you risk that you know losing the revenue you have from your best customers. Like let’s say that you have like let’s say that you’re a video game company and you have games that you sell for $60 a piece most of your customers by one game you have their 60 bucks though if the only people who go to your hundred dollar a year subscription or the people that are buying two games a year already, you’re going to lose money on that transition but if you keep the you know if you. Keep the two in parallel then you have to make a case that the experience of buying the game outright is no better or worse and subscribing which of course it’s going to be different so one of them is probably going to be better. Like with the coffee example so it is really tricky to make that transition especially if you already like a lot of big companies now if you already are really good at the transactional side and generate real Revenue it’s very hard to kind of navigate that transformation. Jason: [22:00] For sure I do want to get slightly back on track with a book so I did get to also read for every transaction and you there’s three main sections of the book launch scale and weed and I confess I did not read the membership economy when it came out but I’m imagining a lot of the topics in watch feel like they might be updated versions of the the why a little bit versus scaling weed being the how is. Is that true I like did some of the the wise change and did you feel like you needed to update those. Robbie: [22:36] You know. Jason: [22:37] Am I you it’s totally fine to say I’m wrong too by the way. Robbie: [22:40] Yeah well I mean it’s in Chimes I’m sorry sort of thing is it’s an interesting thing I think you know not when I was writing the book I was very worried that I was going to be regurgitating what I’d said in the first book and you know I really wanted it to be different I think that there is there is there’s a couple of chapters devoted to the Y at the beginning because I want the book to stand on its own but pretty quickly you get into I did not get into the nitty-gritty of how do you launch. Your subscription business which is actually for a lot of organizations that’s the hardest part like okay we have this Vision that we’re going to be this ecosystem for for whatever it is you know this is going to be the place where all you know ad agencies gather and share best practices and people manage their careers here and they get training and education and access to products and services and blah blah blah but today what are we going to offer because how do we get there and so that launched section I really had to break it down into what do you do if you’re launching as an entrepreneur where this is your the beginning of your business and what do you do if you actually have a going concern as we just talked about how do you how do you start and not distract the rest of the organization but quickly but also change the culture as that subscription begins to grow. Scot: [24:01] How did one of the cultural things I imagine that’s just we see this in the world of omni-channel is just sales compensation right no sales execs usually paid on the full value of a deal in an upfront and now you’ve got the subscription any best practices of how to get the sales word kind of aligned. Robbie: [24:19] Yeah it’s really hard because some in some cases I mean that especially like on let’s say the B2B side. [24:27] You know it might take a different kind you know a lot of times salesperson is a little bit of a big game hunter right and they go out and they find the woolly mammoth and you know it’s hard to kill and they bring it back to the to the cave and they tell the rest of the village like you guys deal with the carcass I’m going to go out and get another woolly mammoth. And that’s not the subscription model the subscription model is much more of a farming method where the initial acquisition is not that hard. But engaging and expanding the relationship over time is different so I think the first thing that an organization needs to do is to recognize that, it’s a very different model you know and that success is you pointed out is not just based on that moment of transaction but it’s based on the longer term. Result with that account and then to think about you know what does that mean for our existing sales team do we have the right people. And how do we transition them if so to this different model and different metrics because I think salespeople are very driven they’re very practical rational people if you know if you email them in a certain direction and say this is what we want and this is what we’re gonna pay you for that’s what they do but I think in some cases you might even need a different kind of person and you know inside sales especially right now in covid you know a lot of businesses are realizing that they can actually do a lot of their sales without an outside sales team. [25:53] Without everybody actually being you know remote and selling with a lighter touch. Scot: [25:57] It’s a bad time to be a mammoth Hunter. Jason: [26:01] Scot and I are actually old enough that we remember when people used to just bring Willie mammoths back to the cave so those were those were. Scot: [26:08] Those were the days yep the lot of it reminds me of software-as-a-service we’ve had to do the same thing in the software World years, so it’s kind of interesting that the cpg world now all the other things are coming that way so then the second part of the book is scale maybe you know obviously want to whet people’s appetite what are some of the interesting techniques for scaling these models. Robbie: [26:30] Yeah so there’s a bunch of things so there’s the infrastructure component where you have to actually you know in a lot of cases think of different technology to solve these problems you know you’re much more interested in engagement which you know a lot of companies don’t track it all like most cpgs have no idea if I’m using the same toothbrush for a year or a month, how hard I brush how long I brush what kind of brush I need so they have to you often have the technology to do a better job of tracking things differently the Oral-B is a great example of that they have a a nap that links to their their electric toothbrush which I enjoy using, so so that’s kind of a one-party sort of thinking about what kind of technology and what kind of metrics do you need to track and I think the other big thing is changing the culture you’ve alluded to this but I think this is a really big. Challenge in the scaling piece where you say Okay so the way we sell is different the way we support is different it’s kind of a move in those in the SAS world if you know that move from technical support to customer success is a very big change in the way the organization thinks about how they serve their existing customers, and you know changing that culture to be focused on the customers long-term well-being and engagement is you know a pretty big process and something that I go into a lot of detail on in that second part of the book. Jason: [27:56] That’s very clear cool it makes a lot of sense and then the third section of the book lead you talk about a lot of things that feel like they’re very much in Vogue right now like how you keep that weed or ship position as a membership service and so you know how do you deal with things like churn and subscription fatigue can you talk a little bit about some of the key themes and Lead. Robbie: [28:17] Yeah so so the company’s when I when I was writing lead the company’s I was really thinking a lot about our, the news organizations the gems the professional associations these organizations that have been membership oriented for a long time that are actually quite familiar with subscription but they’re finding in many cases like what I hear them saying over and over again is young people aren’t joiners young people aren’t readers young people don’t value loyalty and what I was seeing was not that young people were any different than people have always been but young people are making that decision for where they want to have a forever transaction to solve that long-term problem with fresh eyes and when they looked at the opportunities that they had to solve that problem whether it’s where do I go for my professional development in my Professional Network or where do I get information of what’s going on in the outside world so I can better understand my own world and make better decisions which is kind of the forever promise of news or what is the best way for me to get and stay fit which is kind of the world of gems. [29:34] These young people are these new buyers were looking at you know the gems and the association’s and the newspapers and they’re like well that’s not really the best way given what else is available for me to solve those problems you know I can look at Twitter for my news or and get you know user-generated content that’s much more current And Timely or you know I can get it for free or I can go to CrossFit instead of a traditional gym and have much better community and engagement and so. [30:03] I think at that at that lead phase I think it’s really important for organizations to balance the way they focus on existing members. And the way that they focus on tomorrow’s members and looking at acquisition and usually these older organizations are really good at engagement and retention and they’re not good at acquisition whereas I think in those first two phases you know the risk is often that they’re really good at acquisition and then they have a leaky bucket so that the issues that I see there in that lead phase are around staying relevant so iterating on their offering to stay relevant and to keep that forever promise true the way that Netflix has with you know once it was three DVDs at a time today it’s streaming but the promise is still the same. And the other thing that happens is that we’ve talked about a little bit is that in this phase it’s very tempting to take advantage of the trusted relationships to hit a short turn number. Writes all here organizations saying well we can just throw in a small fee or we can just not improve the product this year because our members are so loyal and they’re not looking at Alternatives so they’re not going to go anywhere even if we don’t give them Great Value this year. And that’ll help us hit our number. And so those are some of the issues that you know by focusing on today’s members and by taking them for granted you often. No neglect tomorrow’s business. Scot: [31:30] Yeah it’s got tricky. Interesting so so that’s super helpful and then if listeners want more than they’ve got to go get the book which we strongly recommend let’s let’s talk about some company examples now that we’ve kind of got the framework in place it wouldn’t be a Jason and Scot show if we didn’t talk about Amazon so you know as you’ve been talking about this I my mind always goes to Prime and I think Jeff Bezos said something like you’d have to be. Almost like irresponsible not to subscribe to Prime they just want to pack so much value into the program how do you view Prime and is it is it kind of the Holy Grail of these things or can you point to something you think they’ve they could have done better or where do you fall on the prime world. Robbie: [32:15] I think they’ve been really they’re a great example of this forever promise and I use them often as an example because you know today the you know they packed so much value into it you know you go there for you know certainly for the free shipping but also for the video content the audio content, and the in all of the other services that they provide but if you remember you know the the forever promise I think of Amazon is to remove all friction from all purchases right that’s kind of you know and I wonder sometimes in Jeff Bezos has world if it’s like you know I just think of a product I need and it a magically appears and I say no no that’s not what I meant and it disappears in a puff of smoke. Jason: [32:58] They actually have a patent on that. Robbie: [33:00] And. Scot: [33:02] Genie. Robbie: [33:03] The the Amazon Genie like Syria but you know the thing that that I think is, is really interesting to remember is that when they started because this gets back to that you know that launched phase when they started all they did was deliver books they made it easier for you to get the book you wanted but you have to actually wait a long time for the book and the shipping was not free so you know they’ve layered in more and more value. Overtime to better deliver on that promise of removing all friction from all buying. And so I think it’s actually a really good example and the other thing that’s interesting about it people often struggle with pricing of subscription and something that’s interesting about Amazon is that most people when I tested them they don’t even know how much they pay exactly. Yeah I think it’s is it 99 or a hundred nine or 89 or a hundred and twenty-nine I don’t really remember and that’s because as you pointed out they’ve packed so much value in that it’s they’ve really made Amazon a habit. For people that it’s the first place they go when they need to buy something. Jason: [34:12] Yeah it’s interesting there so that you may not be familiar with them but there is a a prognosticator in our industry he’s actually an idol of Scots a professor at NYU Scott. Exactly I’m teasing Scott I know you’re listening we’re just we’re just. Robbie: [34:31] Hahaha. Jason: [34:32] Um the Scot is the bane of my existence for several reasons but one is because I have a lot of clients that are um zealous followers of Scott and so one of the themes that Scott like Ruiz picked up on and started hitting hard a couple years ago was this idea that he coined of a Rundle which is a recurring Revenue bundle and so I then have to go to all these retailers and sit in on the Rundle meeting where they’re talking about like what’s our Rundle what’s our sort of recurring Revenue business that we could add on onto our thing like I’m kind of curious. Like do you agree with him and it was that in exciting thing that brought attention to it or is it oversimplifying to sort of just just think of it in terms of the revenue and not really the product in the experience. Robbie: [35:27] Yeah I mean I think that the idea is a good one and it’s a very catchy term you know Rundle I like that but I think I mean a couple things. I think that org a lot of organizations don’t there they over focus on the benefits to themselves. In terms of you know if we do this we get bigger transaction size we get more power we disintermediate all these other third parties we get recurring Revenue. And I don’t hear enough about why a customer would prefer Arundel that’s sort of the first the first issue is you know I think a lot of organizations don’t think about that very hard at all. Why would I rather subscribe to access a bundle of benefits or a bundle of products the other thing that happens a lot. [36:18] Is that you know everybody loves this idea of a subscription box that’s around Discovery versus replenishment and most people I’m get subscription fatigue from Discovery boxes they’re overwhelmed like how many how many new snack bars can I try how many different lipsticks can I own it’s a very very small audience of people that. He’s gonna want new products and exciting new things in a category every single month they often just want to you know kind of refresh and then go back to their habits and so. It’s actually pretty hard to build Arundel that’s not necessarily around around replenishment of a habit that consumers are going to want for more than let’s say you know six or seven months. Jason: [37:10] It’s funny because even my dog MacGyver is exhausted from his BarkBox. Robbie: [37:15] Ah Jason: [37:16] I know you would think of anything that like a dog would be happy to get a treat every month. Robbie: [37:20] Yeah but like and then you have what ends up happening right is and I don’t know if this is your case is that you have this pile of like doggy treats and doggy toys in your like but then the next one came and we haven’t even used up the last one. Jason: [37:32] Yeah. It’s the same thing with those those meal kit ingredients it’s it’s funny because the all of those Services were hugely in Vogue and many of them are still around but the common denominator that they all have is they have a non-recurring. Option right like just order the fix when you want it instead of getting a stitch fix every month or you know birch bark on demand or you know meal kits when you want it like it feels like per your point none of them could survive exclusively by by having the the the periodic shipment I do want to make one thing clear I feel like there could be no argument Scott has Scott Wingo are Scott has much better hair than Scott Galloway I’m just saying. Scot: [38:15] It’s a low bar the I’m a I’m curious to get your opinions in this is kind of in the free Consulting bucket so do with it what you will but I’m neck deep in kind of a digital Services startup and we’ve tried some subscriptions it’s been a little bit of a challenge and I’m wondering have you seen any best practice at practices as it relates to services. Robbie: [38:38] Yeah I mean there’s there’s a few different things one of them is to balance well. So you can have a subscription as a component of your business model or it can be the whole thing. Right so that I think is the first thing that I’ve seen with a lot of businesses so. You know you can say like for example vain the consulting firm has their net promoter is at the net promoter system loyalty Forum which is a subscription. But then there’s also you know they’re big transactions they’re big they’re big events. And a lot of organizations kind of give you a choice a hybrid If It’s All Digital Services and there’s no human component and it’s your primary revenue generator I think things that I would be focused on one is the onboarding of new members so that they adopt the habits that are going to make them stay and that are going to expand the relationship. [39:41] So a lot of you know I feel like there’s a lot of businesses where there’s almost like a failure to launch after they buy the digital service. You know it’s bought they don’t they don’t like they either. Walk into the lobby of the party and they’re like this isn’t very fun and then they leave before they even get into the room where the actual party is happening and you’re like wait you didn’t even see all the value I didn’t even see it because they couldn’t find their way to the value or they go into the room and they don’t feel welcome or they don’t understand how to enjoy it. And so they leave before they’ve ever had the ability to make it into a habit and so I think organizations under. Invest in onboarding both in the marketing around it but also in the product itself I think that’s probably the number one miss like kind of mistake or missed opportunity that I see. Scot: [40:32] Yes so so a good example is I’ll pick one away from me is home cleaning so there’s it’s companies like handy and all these folks and they’ll almost like force you into a subscription and then you can’t really sample and I’ve always felt like that feels weird right because now you’re forcing me into this just to get one house cleaning now and experience your service I have to. I feel like I’m committed and cancel so that doesn’t feel right it almost seems like what you want to do is get people you know. Trying the service and then identify a cohort that you think would be likely to subscribe to and then offer a subscription is that cam what you think would be the best practice. Robbie: [41:12] Yeah well so for the example of Handy you know I think about. You know free trial versus freemium versus nothing for free so a free trial is great if they don’t understand what the value is or they don’t believe it’s as good as you say. And so if you are trying hand in your uncle I don’t know if it’s as good as me cleaning the house myself or as good as a cleaning person or system we have now you want to be able to try it. So that you know if they don’t have the kind of brand that’s trusted or you don’t either you don’t believe it’s as good as they say it is or you don’t really understand what they’re going to do or what it’s going to feel like you need to have an opportunity to get a trial free or or a paid trial but that you know kind of one-on-one opportunity or a money back guarantee or inability to try it once and then cancel. I think that. What is good though about organizations that have discipline as they say look we’re opt let’s just say for this you know I don’t know a lot about handy but that you know people who. Only use this periodically like coming into our house that isn’t cleaned by us every week could be a disaster and much more expensive to clean but we know if we come every week, that we can manage our costs and we also know that the kind of people who take care of their homes should be cleaning their house on a regular Cadence so we don’t really want to be in the business of one-time cleaning. [42:34] So they might say you get one shot one chance to buy it outright and then you go to our subscription and they’re going to be leaving money on the table for sure because there’s all kinds of scenarios where you need a cleaning occasionally but they might say that’s not what we do just like Netflix said, you know we don’t do video game even though they’re exactly the same size as the other discs and we don’t let you buy the discs that’s just not what we do it’s too many different business models. Jason: [43:03] Although in my mind that even the business model issues aside it just does feel like, getting a customer to sign up for a subscription is a higher bar than getting customers to buy something once and so it feels like your marketing has to be different and when you act like I mean the corny analogy I always use is dating like you know asking someone to buy your product as I gassing them to go on a date with you but asking him to subscribe to your product is like asking them to marry you. Robbie: [43:32] Yeah yeah absolutely but it but in other cases you know you want to make the problem go away. Right you know I want my house to always be clean. Jason: [43:43] Yeah no I get it yeah. Robbie: [43:45] So so yeah it is it’s a higher it’s a higher bar and one of the challenges you know when I when I work with an organization and they’re saying our subscription isn’t working, kind of we do a diagnostic to look at where is the problem is the problem that the the friction is too high to get someone to sign up like it’s too much risk to commit to this new way of doing things or is the problem that once they sign up they stay for a little while and they say I’m exhausted from this like with the BarkBox or is the problem that they come in and they’re like the seems great but I don’t know why I’m not getting any value. So all of those you know those are all kind of different different scenarios. Jason: [44:23] Yeah so I’d love to get your opinion on one that’s kind of front and center in our industry right now so obviously we’ve talked a lot about Prime and it seems like an amazing example in retail there’s an even older example I think. Price Club which became Costco started doing memberships in like 1976 and that’s been a phenomenally successful model so in last couple of months there have been a number of articles that say that Walmart is about to launch a. Program and I think Jason Del Rey wrote an article that it was going to be called Walmart plus and it’s I’ve been really interested to follow it as far as I know Walmart hasn’t confirmed any of this and we don’t really know what’s what Walmart is or isn’t going to do but there’s been a lot of media attention to. [45:10] What they might do and whether that’s a good idea or not and it seems like it falls into camps there’s a bunch of people that are like this is ridiculous this is going to be a bad imitation of Prime with fewer products and slower shipping and it’s just going to be a bad look that it’s this this inferior version of prime and then a lot of other, like seemingly equally smart people have John have felt like oh my gosh super-smart for Walmart to engage they’re their most valuable cohort and you know start generating this this recurring revenue and and you know getting becoming more sticky with customers in the same way that. That a Costco are a prime is like do you I know we can’t know because we don’t know what Walmart’s off or really is or how they’re going to execute it yet but do you mean, are both of those potential outcomes does it like are you are you happy to see them seemingly move in this direction. Robbie: [46:03] Yeah I mean what I’ve been waiting for to see front but sort of two things with Walmart one of them is they’ve tried lots of other things to compete against Amazon they’ve offered some different me to Features they’ve offered some some benefits for membership and engagement but they haven’t really embraced first they haven’t really braced it as as core and the other thing is they haven’t really tapped into what makes them different from Amazon their unique strengths which is you know of course they’re physical footprint of being I don’t know what they say like within 10 miles of ninety percent of Americans or. Jason: [46:40] Yeah you have it exactly right. Robbie: [46:42] Yeah so I think I think that you know you know again all of this is kind of rumor and, conjecture but it seems like some of the benefits that they’re offering you know combining the priority slots for curbside pickup to our delivery to your home. And gas right with fuel for your car discounts on fuel those are pretty impressive headliner benefits that by themselves you know a lot of times with these kinds of bundled benefits a lot of times what people do is they do the math in their head, write like a lot of people did with Amazon prime rate like how many how many how much free ship how much should I spend on shipping before Amazon Prime pays for itself, which you know back in the early days is kind of how I think a lot of people thought about it and then Amazon layered and so much value that you’re like well I would never leave now and it’s not just about the shipping I think Walmart. Could be doing that with even just you know the discount on fuel so. I think the you know and you’re starting to see that they’re able to do some things that would be much harder for Amazon to do just because of their their physical footprint. So I’m optimistic this feels like a better a better offering than what they’ve done in the past. Scot: [48:03] Prequel how to one of the things that’s kind of nursing is so you kind of have loyalty and then subscription kind of bundled together how how do you think about the those and how they fit into this this whole framework. Robbie: [48:16] So loyalty programs you know what I always thought of as kind of the gateway to membership and it was a way for very transactional businesses very episodic businesses to smooth out the relationship with their customers to make it easy easier to get them to return and most of them did it I think in a pretty clunky way which was basically giving them, you know paying them for the frequency and depth of their purchases so it almost is you know the traditional loyalty programs like you know mileage or or you know the programs that hospitality industry has or even the old Punch Cards is basically you spend this much with us and we give you something with a real Financial value in return and. That almost feels like a financial transaction rather than really being about loyalty I don’t necessarily feel loyal to United but I’d be stupid not to get the free trips since I travel so much. [49:14] It’s not it’s not really about loyalty or engagement or preference it’s about a real Financial Arrangement whereas I think like the Costco example the price Club example which some people are calling premium loyalty programs now where you pay to be treated better because the assumption is this is a preferred place where you’re going to do a lot of shopping and you want the best possible experience it seems like a lot of organizations are moving away from the points-based loyalty programs and toward these premium loyalty programs where you pay Upfront for a bundle of benefits rather than rather than accruing benefits based on your frequency and depth of purchase. Jason: [49:54] Yeah it seems like give you can make the value proposition and make that sort of Premium loyalty work that it’s a lot more valuable I’m curious. Like if you have a pinion on like for brands that may be our only in a position to make that sort of basic transactional loyalty program work I’m really torn right now because on the one hand. I keep hearing about loyalty fatigue and everyone’s got got you know a hundred loyalty memberships in their in their household and therefore you know none of them affect behavior and and you know there are kind of a dime a dozen but then I keep I’ve been watching the space in like I think this this month Wendy’s rolled out a new points for purchase program and PepsiCo launched a points for for purchase program so I despite the fact we’re all pooh-poohing these like basic frequency programs it seems like brands are still doing them with I’m curious like do you think those are working for those brands or do you think it’s just, just in an experiment or ill-advised. Robbie: [50:58] I don’t I mean I think in many cases it’s it’s a starting point for an organization to begin building a relationship with their customers it’s a way to start you know in a lot of cases it’s just a way to start tracking Behavior at the unit at the individual level and so I understand why they would do it I don’t. You know in terms of driving loyalty you know I’m not I’m not sure that it’s the best. Kind of most sophisticated newest way to drive actual loyalty. You know it in contrast to Wendy’s you know Burger King has a subscription where you get unlimited coffee for five dollars a month. Jason: [51:39] Yeah that’s a new thing huh pant Panera is doing that as well yeah. Robbie: [51:41] Yeah there’s this nine dollars a month because it’s better coffee I guess. Jason: [51:46] Side note they open at like 9:00 a.m. so I’m not subscribing Manny any coffee Solution that’s not delivering coffee like when I wake up. Robbie: [51:54] In the morning. Jason: [51:55] Which I wish I woke up at 9 a.m. but that’s a those days are long gone I’m afraid let me ask you the most personal question of also I have a 77 year old mother last month she bought herself an Apple TV in miraculously installed it and subscribe to Disney Plus exclusively so she could watch Hamilton and I’m super fascinated to find out if she’s going to keep that subscription for years or if she’s canceling it in a month. Robbie: [52:22] Well so I’ve to thought so first of all I also have a 77 year old mom and she has dramatically changed all kinds of behaviors during this covid time and is subscribing to all kinds of new things as a result of this so This is actually a lot of organizations are having a moment right now where consumers are being forced to rethink their habits and find you know new ways of entertainment new ways to interact with their friends new ways to stay fit so it’s very exciting in the world of subscriptions for me from from that perspective in terms of Disney plus and Hamilton what’s really interesting I mean there’s a bunch of interesting things so first of all you know Disney versus Netflix you know they have a much more you know complex ecosystem of offerings and so they don’t necessarily have to make money on the Disney Plus in the same way that Netflix depends on their subscription Revenue the the Hamilton thing you know he’s shutting down the free trial because you know what it tastes like it tastes like princesses and National Geographic you don’t need to you don’t need a free taste it taste like Hamilton. And you know I think they were hoping that you know they did see a huge spike in acquisition specifically to get Hamilton but I’ve also heard a lot of people saying well you know effectively it’s 699 to rent Hamilton for the month which is still a pretty good deal. [53:49] I don’t know if Disney is fine with that but what has been surprising to me is. You know if you watch him within the recommendation that they gave at the end of it then that you know if you like Hamilton maybe you’d enjoy The Sound of Music which was sort of like if you’ve enjoyed watching 3 hours of you know Broadway musical maybe even join other three hours of Broadway musical right on its heels was really surprising to me I expected. Jason: [54:15] Kind of an underwhelming a i personalization experience isn’t it. Robbie: [54:19] Totally I was so surprised and so is lin-manuel Miranda by the way cuz he wrote you know he was like does my dad have the control at Disney. You know it’s sort of crazy and then the other thing is I haven’t gotten a lot of emails or in product engagement from them encouraging me to onboard and explore their offerings in a more sophisticated way which is which makes me think that probably a lot of people that plan to just come in you know the idea of having some kind of a teaser to get people in the door is you know you come for him Elton but you stay for National Geographic or you stay for the princesses and I don’t know if they’ve gotten enough people to make that leap. Jason: [55:01] Yeah yeah I know it’s going to be it’s going to be interesting to watch I’m with you though the it feels like lack of personalization is a huge miss here for example. Is regular listeners will know Scott is the huge Star Wars fan of all time so he’s been a Disney plus member from day one and he has no idea that they have Hamilton right and yet. Scot: [55:22] Not true not true. Jason: [55:25] But I’m just saying like. Robbie: [55:26] Disney hasn’t told. Jason: [55:27] Your lifetime spend on Disney properties I’m gonna guess greatly outweighs your lifetime spend on Broadway properties. Scot: [55:35] Probably here but I like Hamilton absolutely I think it’s fun to go from Hamilton into mantle and I think I think your grandmother should go that path. Jason: [55:43] Yeah I didn’t realize you were going to get all defensive on that you’re very cultural I wasn’t trying to imply you weren’t sorry but yeah but you could imagine I mean there are a lot of Star Wars fans that probably aren’t big Broadway musical fans and yet. They’re getting the exact same marketing experience for Hamilton as anyone else. Scot: [56:02] Yeah it’s tough when you have limited content I know we’re up against time and so part of your your gig is you do a lot of Consulting with companies on these topics maybe leave us with some parting thoughts on common pitfalls you see folks fall into or even on the other side of the coin wins for folks that want to get involved in the subscription economy. Robbie: [56:24] Yeah so I think the one thing that we haven’t really talked about a lot is this idea of I think the best subscription business is start with what I would call a forever promise what is the long-term impact that you’re helping your customer achieve what is the long-term goal that you’re helping them achieve what is the problem you’re helping them to solve that is an ongoing problem and then to optimize the offering around that problem so in your world of car washes for example right. I don’t want a faster car wash I don’t I spoke at the International Car Wash Association last year and you know one of the things that sort of shocked me is how often they talked about you know this brush takes nine minutes versus that brush which takes 10 minutes so you know we’re going to shave 37 seconds off of the experience, when I think what a carwash customer really wants is a clean car, and you know I don’t want to spend 10 minutes there or nine minutes there or 14 minutes there I want to not spend any time there and just have my car be clean. And so. Scot: [57:26] Did you mention spiffy atisha by chance someone told me someone was talking about Smith yet. Robbie: [57:31] This is like 2 years ago now now but I will in the future. Scot: [57:33] Okay okay all right yeah no thanks yeah. Robbie: [57:36] Yeah but it’s a very different model because you’re looking at it you know more aligned with how the customer sees it which is like I would rather never go to the car wash and just have little elves and fairies come and wash my car while I sleep. Scot: [57:50] I’m going to call it right here this the best guests we’ve ever had Jason. Jason: [57:54] Yeah somehow I thought you’d be aligned with that comment. No but I mean even if it is your idea it still makes total sense to me that you you sell the outcome not the service right. Robbie: [58:05] And the on yeah sorry yeah the ongoing outcome Beyond you know because if in a subscription it’s about you know I don’t want have my car be clean and be dirty I want to clean and dirty I want to just I just want to have a clean car like what what do I have to do to just have my car always be clean what do I have to do to always like in the world of you know you talked about Stitch fix or Le todor Rent the Runway what do I have to do to just always look good, professional. That’s that’s the promise I want and the closer those companies can get to you know making me always look and feel my best the more I’m going to be willing to trust them with my credit card. Jason: [58:41] Yeah and one step up on maslov’s hierarchy of needs I just want my wife to be happy and she’s only going to be happy if he has a clean car she’s only going to have a clean car if Scott comes and cleans it every week. Scot: [58:55] Yes with with an espresso. Jason: [58:58] Exactly so basically gets Biffy is selling marital happiness if you really think about it. Scot: [59:03] Yeah we we it’s I often say it’s better than a dozen roses. Jason: [59:08] We’ll listen Robbie this has been fascinating we could talk about this all week and I suspect Scott’s going to want to do that with you after the show but it is happen again we’ve used up all our allotted time as always if there any topics we didn’t get to the listeners are dying to bring up feel free to hit us up on Facebook or Twitter if you enjoy the show we sure would appreciate it if you could jump on iTunes and give us that five star review we’re not even looking for a ongoing Financial subscription commitment just a five star review. Scot: [59:39] Robbie really enjoyed having you on if folks want to follow you online and do you prefer Twitter LinkedIn Snapchat and stuff where where’s your where’s your best spot. Robbie: [59:48] I’m on all those places but I’m probably most active on LinkedIn. Jason: [59:55] Well we will put your your particulars in the show notes and until next time Happy Commercing!

Stephanie Simbari turns the tables and interviews fellow TSR host, Elizabeth Kott, for some quar time reflections and recommendations.   Thanks to our partner for this episode - Stichfix! stichfix.com/retrograde - for 25% off when you keep everything in your fix.     Produced by Dear Media. 

Rebecca Minkoff is a global fashion brand that was founded by brother and sister duo Rebecca Minkoff & Uri Minkoff in 2005 in New York City. The brand has four domestic retail stores, nine international locations, and is distributed in over 900 stores worldwide. Meet My Guest: WEBSITE: RebeccaMinkoff.com INSTAGRAM: @rebeccaminkoff TWITTER: @RebeccaMinkoff FACEBOOK: @rebeccaminkoff YOUTUBE: @rebeccaminkoff PODCAST: Superwomen Show Notes: 02:00 - Introduction 04:20 - Finding your own path 07:13 - Positional treadmill 08:40 - First fashion show 13:00 - Dawn of social media + specialty stores 14:35 - Weaving diversity into DNA of the brand 18:12 - Collab with StichFix 21:00 - SuperWomen podcast 25:24 - Being a first time mom 27:20 - How you can be healthier 31:00 - The tribe  31:30 - Values learned from parents to pass down 35:00 - You have to be the change you want to see 36:03 - Mom Haul 37:33 - Mom sense moments and a piece of advice - "Don't sweat the small stuff" Mom Haul: AMAZON: Medela Freestyle Double Electric Breast Pump

With Matthew out of town, Jamie crowns her real life bestie (whose name is also Jaime) co-host for the day, and they talk about...sports. Yes, sports. ...But they also talk about TV, Movies, Ethical Shopping, Unethical Nails, and the day Jaime met Jamie's boyfriend for the very first time. This movie WILL make you laugh: Good Boy (https://youtu.be/zPXqwAGmX04)   The other Jaime likes this show: Younger (https://youtu.be/rw9zFMbkQks)   And these guys can hook you up with an entire box of super cute, ethically sourced clothes, shoes, and jewelry: Thanks, Stichfix!! (https://www.stitchfix.com/invite/jrgt3ssz7s?sod=w&g=w&som=c)

In the season finale, ‘Like A Boss’, Alesha and panel will be discussing bossing it and burning-out as they share their views on pay gaps, imposter syndrome and the career tips you’d pass along to your younger self. The panel includes; CEO of Stitch Fix and youngest female in history to trade on the stock market, Katrina Lake; chef, author and Ayurveda advocate, Jasmine Hemsley and acclaimed author and journalist, Katherine Ormerod.

This week, Alesha and her guests will be discussing that big four-letter word in ‘Love, Lust and Everything In-Between’. Covering off heartbreak, the dating scene and preserving the spark in a long-term relationship, she’ll be joined by former Love Island contestant, humanitarian and explosive ordnance disposal expert, Camilla Thurlow, alongside DJ, radio and television presenter, Ashley James.

In ‘The Greatest Love of All’ Alesha discusses all things self-love, self-loathing and how the most important relationship of all, is the one you have with yourself. We’re joined by London-based style blogger, mum and body-confidence advocate, Natalie Lee (Style Me Sunday) and international supermodel, presenter and race car driver, Jodie Kidd.

Shane celebrates 200 episodes and then talks with Associate Professor of Marketing and Economics at the University of Seattle, Mathew Isaac.  They discuss the assumptions we make about lists: random order versus ranked order, and how emotional attachment can affect how we sell things.   Charity Of The Week: The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research  https://www.michaeljfox.org Visit our sponsor at www.StichFix.com/HereWeAre  Outro music by Plunkett - https://plunkett.bandcamp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shane celebrates 200 episodes and then talks with Associate Professor of Marketing and Economics at the University of Seattle, Mathew Isaac.  They discuss the assumptions we make about lists: random order versus ranked order, and how emotional attachment can affect how we sell things.   Charity Of The Week: The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research  https://www.michaeljfox.org Visit our sponsor at www.StichFix.com/HereWeAre  Outro music by Plunkett - https://plunkett.bandcamp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introduction What gets you pumped? Does the sound of our theme song get you in the mood to talk about business? Apparently, Jeremy, Rob, and Kevin can’t be counted on to do the podcast without hearing the theme music. Much to James’ chagrin, Rob and Jeremy give everyone a taste of the acapella version of the intro made famous in the Jamesisode. Do the hosts have a plan for this episode? Is there a concrete topic? Will they stop congratulating themselves on recording for two whole weeks in a row? Let’s find out in the next section! The Show Nope. There’s not a topic. It’s more of the free-wheelin’, off-the-cuff antics that you should have come to expect from this podcast. Some talking points: Saturday Drive had an awesome Christmas Party. Rob is being tricked into joining the Saturday Drive team. Kevin is dominating the Saturday Drive fantasy football league. What do the hosts’ businesses do during the slow month of December? Tips & Tricks Kevin’s tip is to not be a fan of the University of Tennessee Football Volunteers. If you’re just now getting into this college football thing, you should just pick a winner. This obviously wouldn’t be Tennessee, a team who’s last bit of national relevance disappeared before any of the current players were even conceived. I hear Alabama is going to be great for a while. Rob wants you to buy your kids a very special hoverboard. Not just any hoverboard, but a real Mozzie board! Apparently this board will help your child not fall off and break their arms, legs, or other appendages. Kevin and James correctly object to this product being called a hoverboard, since they have seen the Back to the Future movie franchise starring Michael J. Fox, and the Mozzie hoverboard does have wheels. If your kids want to ride on a fake hoverboard, buy them a Mozzie brand hoverboard, I guess. If you’re interested in launching or hosting a podcast, James recommends that you check out PodPub. PodPub is a service built by the pocket protector crowd that will host your podcast, your feed, as well as a professionally designed website. If you want to get a podcast off the ground, let the bespectacled nerds PodPub do all the tech stuff for you. Do your children constantly get mocked for their clothing choices? Are they social outcasts because they just don’t know a cardigan from a Kardashian? If so, Jeremy recommends getting your kids’ fashion game on point by using a service like Stichfix. It probably won’t help your offspring become more likable, but other kids will be less likely to banish them to the AV table at lunch.

Thanks to QUIP for sponsoring today’s episode! Get your first Quip refill pack free at http://getquip.com/pine Thanks to STICHFIX for sponsoring today’s episode! Hurry to http://stitchfix.com/pine to get started NOW! Keep all 5 items in your box and you’ll get 25% off your entire purchase! LA Animal Rescue: http://www.laanimalservices.com/ SEND US COOL STUFF AT: Sugar Pine 7 PO Box 451099 Los Angeles, CA 90045 Shop SP7 merch: https://store.roosterteeth.com/collections/sugar-pine-7 Click to Subscribe and become just another cog in the machine: https://www.youtube.com/user/mlghwnt?sub_confirmation=1 Steven: https://Twitter.com/StevenSuptic Cib: https://Twitter.com/notCib James: https://Twitter.com/JamesDeAngeliz Autumn: https://Twitter.com/_rufhaus James Allen McCune: https://Twitter.com/JAllenMc https://www.instagram.com/JAllenMc Mimi Torres: https://Twitter.com/Mimi_Can_Voice https://www.instagram.com/mimi_can_voice/ Music: “Okdesuka” By: 5_4_8 @5-4-8 https://Twitter.com/Five_Four_Eight James Allen McCune and 5_4_8's Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/SuperSTOPGAP

Juliet Hougland and Michelle Casbon are on the podcast this week to talk about data science with Melanie and Mark. We had a great discussion about methodology, applications, tools, pipelines, challenges and resources. Juliet shared insights into the unique data science ownership workflow from idea to deployment at Stitch Fix, and Michelle dove into how Kubeflow is playing a role to help drive reliability in model development and deployment. Juliet Hougland Juliet Hougland leads the Workflow, Environment, and Execution team at Stichfix. She is a data scientist and engineer with expertise in computational mathematics and years of hands-on machine learning and big data experience. She has built and deployed production ML models, advised Fortune 500 companies on infrastructure and worked on a variety of open source projects (Apache Spark, Scalding, and Kiji) at the intersection of big data and machine learning. Michelle Casbon Michelle Casbon is a Senior Engineer on the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team, where she focuses on open source contributions and community engagement for machine learning and big data tools. Prior to joining Google, she was at several San Francisco-based startups as a Senior Engineer and Director of Data Science. Within these roles, she built and shipped machine learning products on distributed platforms using both AWS and GCP. Michelle’s development experience spans more than a decade and has primarily focused on multilingual natural language processing, system architecture and integration, and continuous delivery pipelines for machine learning applications. She especially loves working with open source projects and is an active contributor to Kubeflow. Michelle holds a masters degree from the University of Cambridge. Cool things of the week Sandeep Dinesh: Kubernetes Best Practices YouTube CNCF TOC voted to accept Helm as an incubation-level hosted project to CNCF site Andriod P in Beta blog Agones 0.2.0 site Securing cloud-connected devices with Cloud IoT and Microchip blog Interview flotilla-os repo Kubeflow repo Cloud Dataproc site & docs Spark site & community site scikit-learn site xgboost repo PyTorch site TensorFlow site and github Kubernetes site github Introducing ultramem Google Compute Engine machine types blog #114 Machine Learning Bias and Fairness with Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell podcast Machine Learning Flash Clards site Open Source Data Science Masters site DockerCon SF site Question of the week If I have written a gRPC Service, but I’m using a language/platform that isn’t supported - is there any way I can access it as REST? grpc-gateway Envoy proxy Transcoding Where can you find us next? Mark is speaking at the San Francisco Kubernetes Meetup: Scaling Game Servers and the Conduit Service Mesh on June 14th. Melanie is speaking at a joint WiMLDS and PyLadies event “Paths to Data Science” on June 26th and Stanford AI4ALL on June 28th.

Rob Black talks about PayPal, Venmo, Stichfix, quantum easing, opera, the career ledge, and Halloween.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rob Black & Your Money" - Radio Show October 20 - KDOW 1220 AM (7a-9a) Rob Black talks about PayPal, Venmo, Stichfix, quantum easing, opera, the career ledge, and Halloween.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rob Black & Your Money" - Radio Show October 20 - KDOW 1220 AM (7a-9a) Rob Black talks about PayPal, Venmo, Stichfix, quantum easing, opera, the career ledge, and Halloween.