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Ep 586: Laura Cantor: Digital Transformation, AI Collaboration, and Why We're All Failing Calculus Together
00:51:36
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the DTC Podcast. I'm Eric Dick. Today's conversation is with Laura Cantor, VP of Marketing and E Commerce at New York Company. Laura's leading one of the most interesting digital transformations in retail right now. Turning a legacy mall brand into a fast moving AI powered operation. And she's doing it by building in public and learning alongside the entire retail community. On LinkedIn, we dig into why she moved from Shopify Hydrogen back to liquid right before Black Friday, how AI tools are everywhere but clarity is scarce. And why the skill that matters most now is adaptability, ability to unlearn as fast as you learn. This one's about transformation, collaboration and why we're all in one giant study group trying to figure this all out together. Let's get into it and on with the show.
- [00:44]
B
Simplification. Everything is so complex. If you can simplify something and like even just name the problem for what it is, you're going to resonate. We're all failing the calculus class together. We are. This is AI. We are in one giant study group. The task at hand is so technically challenging. It's strategy, it's brand, it's touch points, it's really analytical, it's data. You're going to need an army of people to support your learnings, to give you that confidence to go forward and test anything.
- [01:27]
A
This episode is brought to you by Contentful marketers. You know that feeling when your creative clicks, when that social post sends engagement through the roof, when your outside of the box campaign hits ROI positive, when a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers. It's utter marketing bliss. Contentful helps you create tailored omnichannel experiences without working overtime. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels@contentful.com welcome to the podcast. Laura Cantor I Cantor across your post on LinkedIn about some really interesting stuff you were doing with your website and just kind of really became enamored with your story. You're the VP of Marketing and E Commerce at New York and Company. You're leading one of the boldest digital transformations in retail right now, turning a well known mall brand into a fast moving AI powered commerce layer. You came up through Ralph Lauren and J. Crew and you were also named to the Direct 60 list for reshaping how legacy brands go to market. Maybe start with a little bit of your background. Those are two of my favorite brands. Two of the best apparel brands in America, in North America. Ralph Lauren and J. Crew. Talk about how what you're doing at New York and Company has been influenced by your, your retail background?
- [02:43]
B
Yeah, well, I've been in retail and specifically apparel my whole career and those are some strong brands to start with for sure. However, when I worked there has relatively little to do with what I do now. But the DNA and the ethos of what it is to be a brand, what it is to understand just the apparel vertical itself was a great foundation.
- [03:09]
A
Talk to me about what you were brought in to do at New York and Co. And what inspired this pivot from legacy retail into full E commerce.
- [03:17]
B
Sure, yeah. New York Co. Was bought and moved all D2C. I came in slightly after that change to work on growth particularly and then ended up doing the full funnel, all the retention, all the CRM and then pivoting to site experience. So it's really, the whole experience is tied more closely together than ever before. We're really a agile flat team. We're not as siloed, so we're heavily integrated where we weren't before. So that's been a really interesting pivot living through that. I think we're a little early to that move before other brands and we have a lot of stories to tell about that experience.
- [04:02]
A
What's been the most challenging thing so far about this transition?
- [04:05]
B
Challenging? I mean, everything is really a challenge. But I do believe that all the problems are really the opportunities. The problem of not having enough resources or budget always lead to being able to adopt things first or trying things out of the box where, you know, if you have everything perfectly going in the first place, you're less likely to take risks to try things differently. And today's market and environment really call for rapid change and complex problems to be solved in new ways. So it actually served as an opportunity rather than a problem every, every challenge that we faced.
- [04:45]
A
I think one of the things I've noticed about your approach is just, and it's something we talk about at D2C all the time, like is, you know, when you're building an E Commerce or a digital business, your ability to just sort of ship iterations. I think it's easy to get caught in your head on coming with something perfect and then letting inaction kind of take over. And I feel like you're pretty good at making decisive, iterative changes on the fly.
- [05:07]
B
Yeah, I think it's more about focusing on what needs to be solved now. You know, maybe in the past or recent past. It's like what tool or what strategy will, you know, inform our next year's sales or five year sales. And you know, that's the lever that we need to pull. But it's really looking at what are the problems we have today and how do we solve those most efficiently, most successfully right now?
- [05:34]
A
Give me an example of a problem that you've solved at New York and company in your tenure there.
- [05:38]
B
Yeah, it was actually something that I think brought us together on this podcast is I spoke about it on LinkedIn, I had a post that went absolutely nuclear and we got in each other's radar and here I am today. And one of those problems was the qaing of our site and how complex that's become in an environment where so much of what we produce on the back end is through AI. So text, images, sometimes it's another people's translations. So much is automated where it used to be manual. So we have a lot of data that's created by A coming in, but we don't have the ability to use AI to check and QA that data. That's still a manual process. And when you aren't Walmart and you don't have all the money and resources in the world, what do you do to solve the scaling that's happening because of AI on the back end and make sure that it's not creating any bottlenecks or problems for customers when you can't have visibility to lots of Pages, lots of SKUs and lots of different things that are being created by AI on the site.
- [06:51]
A
AI is both the creation of and solution to so many of our problems. Because you went and used AI to Q&A 500 micro issues. Talk about that a little bit.
- [07:00]
B
So we piloted this platform and it is really an agentic AI that shops your site and it quantifies the value of what those problems are and structures those in an order and priority that tells you this is what you need to focus on for the maximum impact. So it's not. There's a lot of problems on everyone's site that's not unusual. But you know, we had moved from hydrogen to liquid. We came out with a brand new site. So there was, you know, extra things to check, more considerations than normal. And of course we found, I think over 500 problems on the live site that we had zero visibility to.
- [07:42]
A
Talk to me a little bit. I think for people that I get accused by my family members who listen to this podcast of not explaining things well enough because it's a business to business podcasts. But talk to me a little bit about the decision to move from Shopify Hydrogen, which is a react based headless version of Shopify, from The Liquid. The traditional theme on why did you guys make that change?
- [08:02]
B
Yeah, I've been asked this a lot. It's probably the. One of the reasons this post went viral is because we. I started off saying that that term and it is quite controversial. You know, I was surprised. Some people don't know what Headless really even is at this point because it seems to have been popular maybe like five years ago and has, you know, certainly lots of sites run on Headless. And it's nothing against it either. It has a lot of reasons and positives for particular circumstances. Right. What I don't think people realize is New York and company was the first headless store on Shopify, or one of when we had experienced sort of a depreciation of like Headless 1.0 and worked with some of the top agencies that really need or needed to support a headless site, which, you know, we were doing this all internally. They went into our code repository and like Shop, if I wrote this code. So it was just old and it takes a lot of maintenance. So you need a lot of extra considerations in terms of integrations. Like, number one, like, anyone who's on a headless site takes a lot longer. And that's fine if you have the resources. But as we pared down and became more efficient, we didn't have access to as many resources. And it takes a lot of learning to keep up with the technology for Headless because it's changing. So we wanted to be quicker in what we did and we wanted to integrate better into the Shopify ecosystem. One of the advantages of being on Shopify is you have the integrations at your fingertips and not being able to use that became more of a problem than the benefits of what hydrogen provided.
- [09:44]
A
How did the transition go? You did this right before Black Friday, which was another key part of your viral post.
- [09:49]
B
Yeah, people say any like, it takes six months to transition. I think our site had been particularly broken to the point of where it sometimes wouldn't function, that it was. It needed to get done very quickly. And Liquid isn't that hard to work with. It's actually pretty easy. So this, you know, an enterprise environment, this really scares a lot of people. Oh, my gosh. We're going to be replatforming, essentially. But you have to keep in the mind the context that it's replatformed to something that's much less complex and is almost out of the box. Right. There's Horizon. That's almost like a headless environment to the extent of speed and customization. So that didn't exist prior. Shopify's made a lot of changes before. Our site launched in about 2021 and it was easy. It wasn't hard at all. It's actually really easy. We did a lot of customizations. There's so many sites out there for great inspiration. It took very little resources or less than we expected to make that happen quickly.
- [10:52]
A
And how have the results been? Have you seen any sort of drop or increase in performance after the switch back to liquid?
- [10:58]
B
Yeah, the site's been a lot faster. It does have that snappy quality that we were on Headless in the first place. Right. So it is, you know, at risk for needing some support that you may not need with Hydrogen. But to now, I mean, it's not very heavy. A new site is always going to be fresh. You know, we took some video assets off, we did pare down. And so much of that speed issue that we're having too is also, you know, GTM codes and depreciated apps and other things hanging out that we cleaned up. So I feel that, you know, it's a better customer experience. We have much more integrations and tools that serve our customers. And if we want to start a new tool or stop a new tool or we have an idea, there's so much great conversion tools out there that we're using. We can quickly adopt and test where this would be impossible on Hydrogen.
- [11:54]
A
I want to dive into a few of the most impactful tools, but the one you alluded to originally in this conversation was the AI QA tool where you found 500 micro issues on the website. What tool was that?
- [12:04]
B
It was Zent. So Zent AI and hopefully we can put a link in the bio. If anyone check it out, you get a free audit of your site, which I think is really cool. So you can, you don't even have to sign up. You can do this on your site without signing up, talking to anyone or paying any money. So that's, that's a low lift offer that I think they just have. So that's exciting. And then when we did use the tool certainly got more granular in respect to the different types of agents we could try because it's checkout, it's discoverability and SEO. It's beyond just UX and copy mistakes or whatnot, but those copy mistakes and photo mismatching and metafields being wrong. We know that those affected people from making purchase decisions when they see a skirt that says pockets and then there's no pockets in the photo, you know, some of the AI does create this issue. Right. Where you know, it doesn't show exactly what the description shows. Those were very confusing to a customer. So you know, there are a lot of them.
- [13:11]
A
They're just trust breakers. Right. And you never know. Total conversion busting as soon as. And if you see more than one of them, it's going to accrue, you know, and even one of them can be enough to send you away. So can if your page loads a little bit slow which. So you had all those things.
- [13:25]
B
Exactly. It's all these little things. And these are, these are particularly customer facing and we're not on the PDP like shopping at, you know, looking through this and considering something for purchase typically. Right. We're on there visually does everything there. Right. Is the format I'm testing for format or color of button or placement of text not necessarily the context of what a shopper is saying. Hmm, I'd like this. Should I buy it?
- [13:50]
A
You had a point here, but it's like seeing your site through your customer's eyes for the first time because you see things all the time and it's so easy to like look over things or to assume something is right. But customers come at it so natively that you know, I think having a tool that allows you to see things with fresh eyes obviously makes a lot of sense.
- [14:06]
B
Yes. You get a lot of fatigue and it's hard to let someone own this too. Whose responsibility really is this because it's almost impossible to achieve it's scale. We dropping a thousand SKUs. You know, just getting product to site quickly has been another key advantage that we have. But that also allows the, you know, testing or just making sure everything was done correctly like almost impossible. So this is really, really helpful in reducing that, you know, that need entirely and just going back after the fact and fixing those. Those issues.
- [14:39]
A
Super cool. Talk to me a little bit about growth. Originally New York Co. Was a retail giant. So it has the footprint that people are used to the brand that has been established. You come in to help move things all fully over to E commerce. What's been the big driver? Has it been retention from people that are aware of the New York and Co brand? Is it Facebook ads? What are you driving growth with?
- [15:01]
B
Yeah, originally we have very healthy paid media program and did really well. We have a lot of advantages of being a legacy brand. Known name and a large customer file and list and CRM lists. So those things all play into the fact that we can focus on what's happening on site, experience on Retention very, very well without some of the considerations that other brands might need to drive more top of mind relevance. Right. We don't have that as much, but I think growth for us shows up now or even like brand in the types of tools and experiences that she has on site that elevate that shopping experience. Obviously product is always going to be at the center of everything, but what can we do outside of the product and value that we offer to, you know, establish trust to increase conversion. And a lot of that has to do with the technology and so much of it is now centered around AI.
- [15:59]
A
Give me an example. Are you using like recart or you know, things like that where you're increasing your AOV through some of these tools?
- [16:05]
B
I think there's been a lot of consolidation around the whole stack of things that are needed to your site. You see this in platforms that are taking over a lot of things that had been cherry picked before. But I see it mainly as anything that has to do with the data that's being ingested from actions being taken on the site, whether some type of messaging needs to pop up to save a card or an abandonment, whether or not there's some social proof on your PDP or PLPs and you know, offering different things for first time customers, first return customers. And a lot of it has to do around shipping and getting that person at the cart to you know, say hey, I'm getting this great offer or I can get it quickly or maybe there's a discount involved. Then what does that experience look like after the fact? Right, the post purchase experience as well, to just create that customer second purchase which is just elusive and has been really tough and challenging for. That's not us as a brand. I think that's every brand.
- [17:13]
A
Well, one of the things you've done to combat that is your VIP segment where it sounds like you've got really great repeat rates and you're doing some different things there. You're not. It's not just like it's not an out of the box solution. You're doing innovative things with your loyalty program. You talk about that a little bit.
- [17:28]
B
Yeah, we just introduced a loyalty program. We never had one before. We had a hard issue being so large with understanding like the real economics around the loyalty program. And finally we were able to get to the point the tools also improved and we were able to launch on Liquid, which was also helpful. And yeah, it's been great. It definitely promotes a sort of segment that's more loyal or reason to come back and shop and Then also the acquisition efforts through referrals is super important to us given we have reduced media spend for a company of our size. And, and you know, there's not much new to say about loyalty. It should, you know, for us now it's more of like a. Yeah, we have a loyalty program and we, you know, have it in our klaviyo and we surface points and reasons to shop all the time with it. But I wouldn't say that's our key leather of growth that is just I think necessary like spoke in the wheel to support Right. Reprieve purchases.
- [18:30]
A
So what would be the main lever? Because I know, because I think I have some notes here, you're sort of like you've actually lowered the meta spend for instance. You're spending a little bit less on the top of funnel, focusing more on retention. So what's been the biggest needle mover there?
- [18:42]
B
Yeah, we do a lot of acquisition through organic efforts, through CRM, through pop ups, through social media, and again referrals and keeping that list really healthy and fresh. We have a really phenomenal CRM program with the loyalty built into it and that does drive primarily a lot of the revenue. Now yes, we have larger direct traffic than, you know, a typical brand, so we benefit from that. But because we have less media spend currently, that won't be forever. You know, it forces us to just tend to that side of the business with a lot more focus than just dumping new customers into the funnel.
- [19:24]
A
I want to just go back to the post that, that connected us here. Thousands of likes on this post about the move from hydrogen back to liquid. Why do you think this post caught the fire that it did?
- [19:37]
B
Let me just tell more about the post first because I didn't have that many followers on LinkedIn. You know, had a healthy, healthy amount, let's say, you know, a couple thousand. And I have been in the D2C world almost 20 years and have had all iterations being on the brand side, being a brand owner, an agency owner. So I have, you know, I certainly have a lot of vendors, but I attend a lot of events, I have a lot of great first connections. But this post really resonated to the larger retail ecosystem in a way that was completely not predictable at all. So that was very much of just a shock in a way because it really reached every single D2C brand that's really relevant and extended beyond to huge enterprises like to the likes of like the Ultas and Starbucks and Nikes of the world. So to have something resonate between that Difference of scale is pretty like something's going on. Right. It had over 900 saves. Like, I don't know about you, I don't typically save a lot of content on LinkedIn. It was shared by the head of fashion at TikTok. And that was just the people on the post. There were hundreds of comments that I received in my inbox from people maybe are lurkers, which I sometimes do, too. I don't want to comment or, you know, engage, begging me to tell them about what I was doing and what this tool was about. Like, almost to the point of like, if you don't send this to me right now, I'm going to come find you.
- [21:13]
A
That's wild. So your career as a tech influencer was really launched with this post.
- [21:18]
B
Yeah. And I wouldn't call it a career per se, but it showed me a couple things that are really relevant for some themes that are colliding in the retail world in general. I think a lot of them make sense in the context of what we saw coming out of nrf. We do see brands becoming more like media companies. Right. You have key hires that, you know, are more about entertainment and owned media than, you know, we're talking about the things that we did to, you know, advertise. Right. It's a different mindset. And I wonder if, you know, inside of a company, as an employee, we are also being tasked to somewhat be a media channel per se. And there's several types of reasons for that, but it does. There is an alignment there about how we're attracting new customers and how we are amplifying either a, our brand's message, our own message as employees or professionals and the partnerships that we have that have become so important. Another key element at NRF is partnership. Partnership is everywhere because complexity around AI is so hard to not only understand and learn just to explain. So much of it is verbiage and, you know, vendors speak robot. Right. So we're. We really need partners to grow now. There we, you know, there was an event that was all about partnerships and honoring these partnerships. It's not about like, maybe there was some friction between partners and the buy side of the brand side previously or some competitiveness now. It's more like we learn and grow together and depend on each other. So I would say talking about your partners on a post might have been like, you wouldn't want to say that, right? A year ago, you don't want to give away your business advantage. But now we are all partners in this together. We have really no Other choice. We learn from people and we get. As an employee or an advocate of my brand, I get benefits by signaling that I'm ahead of the game. This is who I'm working with. These are what I'm doing. Come, follow me. Come, come. Understand. And we learn together. And, you know, just as, you know, I put my knowledge out there, I've learned so much from other people also as my peers in the industry, super relevant.
- [23:42]
A
And it's literally what. What we've done here at D2C and our agency, Pilot House, right? We created a media company to talk about the space, to talk about E commerce, to talk about performance marketing. And then we intersect with Pilot House in all these ways, and by the time someone reads our newsletter five times, they're like, oh, I should take a meeting with Pilot House. I think it's really exemplary for other brands to look at. I look at all the other brands that are mastering channels, whether it's TikTok shops, you know, figuring out the content that resonates with your audience. And it doesn't have to always be about your product. It can be tertiary or sort of run alongside your product like a lifestyle. So with these sort of topics, this idea of creating media for a brand and creating stick to itiveness, how are you translating that into what you're doing at New York and company?
- [24:23]
B
I think I get a lot of benefits from being heard and speaking about the particular challenges that we're facing. It's not enough to just work alone and not talk about what those challenges are and how you're fixing that. I think it's really important that we share more about some of the things that we're going through so that we can get access. Whether it's betaing something that's new, a new tool comes along, I'm now connected to you and other people. Likewise, my network grows, actually become a more valuable employee and professional. And I bring a lot of value to my company by amplifying what we're doing. So I think price is always a consideration. Working with vendors, I think it's really. A lot of people are looking to save. So working together with a vendor to spread their message is always another tool in the toolbox to facilitate that as well.
- [25:22]
A
So did you speak at nrf?
- [25:23]
B
I didn't speak at nrf. It's a very large conference, and it is really a retail conference. I particularly speak at places that are more focused just on D2C, which is my specialty. But I did go to some events and I heard a lot about what's happening? And you know the other key topic? Well, the key topic is AI, right? And agentic protocols and all the announcements that were made. And so that you know that. Again, further, I think why this post resonated even further was because, you know, when a vendor talks robot about their product, it is really hard to understand what it does today. Does it solve a problem? And I think we're at the point where everyone knows AI. Like last year maybe we were just talking about it. It's like, this is coming or this is what's possible. And now people are like, okay, well what does it actually do? What are the practical implications of this AI and how does it solve my problem today? We need more proof in order to apply it. We're done talking in the future. And I think vendors still talk that speak. They still talk like this product can do X, Y and Z and all these amazing things. And it really goes over the buy side head, right? Because they're like, well, I'm literally here, hands on keys in the weeds, solving my problems every day. And so when I spoke about, you know, a tool that I was using, it wasn't about what it could do or what's possible. It's like, this is, this is the application I used it for and this is how it solved my problem. And I think that's why it was like, it was heard in a new way.
- [27:06]
A
And I think the video, I'm just on the post right now and I'll make sure I link to it in the show notes, the video or the GIF that you attached that literally shows and agents testing all aspects of your site and color matching various things. And it really just gets the, the idea home right away. I had a guy, I worked in a previous business and I had a guy that was trying to teach me how to make LinkedIn posts that go viral because it's like the platform itself is hungry for content and. But it's so easy to put out blah content. I think with yours it's, it's, it's like because it solves a problem because it's written well, it's because of who you are and I think the brand that you're with as well, like the fact that you're leading this digital transformation and it starts with a confession. We did something a little nuts right before Black Friday Cyber Monday. I'm just trying to. Yeah, the anatomy of a post. I think everyone, everyone should go look at it because it's, yeah, it's gone crazy.
- [27:55]
B
And again, none of that was really planned or really thought out. That's what makes it so shocking. And that's why it shows me a lot of indications of the kinds of things we're talking about and themes that we're seeing for this year. Because that 12 second video, right, it's 12 seconds, has like almost like 30 days worth of watch times, like, like hours upon hours of watch time. So it shows you, like there's definitely this interest in understanding, like, oh, this is AI and it can, and I can use it today, right? I can go and figure out something that not only like maybe makes me look good as a, you know, a contributor, but also it like literally takes the pressure off. Because I'll repeat this because it's been said a million times, we're all being tasked to do more with less, right? So if that is the task at hand, you're going to be looking for, not necessarily shortcuts, but any way possible that you don't have to upend your entire framework or get into a year's exploratory about some kind of tool that may or may not achieve something or other. You want something that you can plug and play incorrectly today and show up tomorrow at the meeting and be like, look, I found all these issues and then it's, I'm continuously running this. So like we're, we're good. There's like one less thing to worry about. So that's definitely had to spark the hunger for that.
- [29:19]
A
How do you handle it organizationally do, because, because it's such a decentralized movement. It's like any one of your employees could find a tool that could be a game changer. Do you guys think about it more as sort of a centralized organization where you test things very systematically through the core channels? Or do you. Is a lot of your team empowered to kind of go out and find things?
- [29:41]
B
We're really empowered. It's like the gateway drug with the AI. We started with like AI content. It worked really well. So it's like, that's going to work well. What else could work well? Now we have a really great structure and framework and process that keeps us from overreaching ourselves or, you know, possibly going into like a harmful territory and taking away from the impact that we could be having. But it's one of the things I like about, you know, more agile organizations is, you know, there's less steps to, to hop through and more the time frame is shortened. I think everyone will can pilot and do things. We just have a shortened time frame around it that makes it Less of like a, a burden for somebody in the organization to champion something like, and take, you know, full responsibility for something because there's just less pressure around it.
- [30:33]
A
I wonder also just back to your post, if it was the fact that you didn't actually share the company in the normal text. You used a hack where you ask people to ask for it and then you give them below and that just makes them comment. I wonder if that really helped fuel the algorithm as well.
- [30:47]
B
Yeah, you know that was, that was, that was tragically hard to keep up with. But that completely unplanned. Completely unplanned. It just was like that makes most sense. And then you know, LinkedIn has like, they don't let you automate responses. There's a lot of things around LinkedIn that keep it from, you know, being able to do that. And that could have been part of the strategy there. But again like the idea was like it was really an off the cuff post honestly. And you know, put me in like a center of a conversation, you know, get to meet people way outside of my media social scope. Certainly not famous by any means, but it allows me to get access that I think is really a differentiator in what it means to be a professional. It's just not enough to do your job. You need to have like a, I wouldn't call it personal brand that seems too light for what this is. It's some type of channel that you have that is almost like a safety net in a way too for what's either a coming. What could happen.
- [32:01]
A
Yeah, like a lifeline.
- [32:02]
B
Yes, absolutely. Because again, nothing is guaranteed and the changes we see now could be accelerated quite soon. We don't know what's happening with the agentic commerce. It's in play, but it's really hard to understand the forecasts around that and where brands may go. So I think of it more as like not trying to go viral or doing things to make things viral, but showing the real. Being a little bit vulnerable I think is better. Now we're more accepted because you have to be like, we're all failing the calculus class together. We are, this is AI. We are in one giant study group and it's not like we should or can necessarily hang out on our own island and think that we're going to conquer these massive undertakings and shifts in, in the way that we do business.
- [32:58]
A
So it's funny, my brother actually he just, this is news to the podcast, but he was just let go after nine and a half years at Shopify. But for the past year or the year before, he was like. He was sort of telling me that the AI revolution was so aggressive at Shopify that there was like this grace period where everyone. People were getting their jobs done faster, they were being more productive, and that was great because they were looking great. But then the year flipped over and it was like, that's expected. Now the performance gains that we're able to make on AI are getting, like, baked into the models. And so it's like, it sort of really does behoove you to create a channel where you're both sending and receiving intelligence about AI, I guess. Right.
- [33:37]
B
Well, that brings, like, the third phase is that, you know, if everything is created on the back end by AI, then everything is checked and dealt with, like what a human would manually do with AI, then where stands the person that used to do anything in the company? Which, you know, as these things get more complex, I feel like this conversation has kind of flattened a little bit because, man, we need people to make these decisions. This is really, really hard to unpack. But I've heard also in, you know, at nrf, another key theme was the idea of aq, the ability, you know, other than iq, eq, what is aq? Hold on, you have to cut this part. Adaptability quotient. I forgot.
- [34:25]
A
Adaptability quotient. Okay. I like it.
- [34:28]
B
Okay. So that's another thing, what I've learned about it. It's like the ability to unlearn as quick as you learn. And that another thing with this post maybe was just like, we don't know shit. We are struggling. Here's a tool. We got it up and running immediately. It solved a big problem really quickly for very little cost and very little work. That's an adaptability move. Right. So that's like the ability to just try something different, to know what to try in the first place, and then, you know, to get the next iteration, what that might look like, so that we can repeat, like, those wins over and over again. So that, I think, is a core skill for what will be needed moving.
- [35:12]
A
Forward is to almost forget the way that things have been done. Always when there are these new ways to do things.
- [35:19]
B
Yes. And to be open, like, you have to have a little bit of openness to some type of risks. Yes. But being early is really important, too. When I go to dinners or conferences and I hear brands that are definitely a little bit bigger or have larger, more complex organizational structures, what they talk about now is what I've been talking about 18 months ago, maybe 10 months ago, maybe six months ago. And it worries me because I'm like, we've already been through that arc, right? We've already made those mistakes and already learned those learnings and have applied them. And you're just now questioning whether you should be doing this or not doing this. And that question might circle around for another few months. And that is also where that AQ might need to come into play is we're gonna need people who could come into organizations and take on that feedback loop and shorten it up a bit.
- [36:19]
A
Are you planning your next post or are there, are there other tools?
- [36:23]
B
This is gonna be one of my next posts. So that's the other. I wanted to bring this up. I went to a dinner with the vendor that, you know, I spoke about Zent, Arthur Pentecoste, he's the founder. And it was also not planned. We ended up sitting next to each other after this viral post. Can you believe that?
- [36:39]
A
That's wild.
- [36:40]
B
Someone who had commented on the post was there too. And he's the head of digital at a very, very well known brand. And I'm friendly with him. And so, you know, he was like, yes, I know you because of Laura's post. And he said, no, we talked, you know, about six months ago. He's like, I had a call with you and I had no idea what your company did. And he's like, when I saw Laura's post and immediately understood what you did and then called you up and we had a second demo and then they ended up buying the Zen product and have consider it one of the key initiatives that have driven growth over the last few months. That's why the post went viral, is because I do think one other theme, and this is not coming out of nrf, this is coming out of me. And I do a lot of calls with vendors and work very closely with vendors. That's a part of a job. Scope now is really understanding the vendor ecosystem is simplification. Everything is so complex. If you can simplify something and even just name the problem for what it is, you're just going to resonate and it's going to be very, very hard. As new AI products come out, there might be a giant disconnect between what tools can actually do and people knowing that that can solve their problems. So that was a pure example that I got firsthand and that happened last night.
- [38:06]
A
So are you taking any commission? You need to get, you need to get on this, you need to get on the Zenit payroll, you know, another.
- [38:13]
B
Lever in growing your career. Just as we grow, an E commerce site is giving back and supporting people and bringing people with you as you grow, you know, so I do like to support people that are doing great things. It brings me more tools and more great things and more connections. And I, yeah, I do think there are additional revenue streams for employees, you know, as I know very few people are getting great raises or bonuses. You know, just to have a job is like a bonus, right? So I had my own brand, I had my own agency. So I have a more enterprising approach to having a career than a normal person maybe, who's maybe took, taken all those steps and risen the ranks. That's another reason I post on LinkedIn and do podcasts. I didn't have formal executive training how to present and talk and show what I do. I just do it. And I didn't really have anyone to answer to. And this position, this was stage of my career, which I love. I really do love being in an organization because I feel so impactful and that that really drives the enthusiasm and the will to continue to break through and get results. I think there is a way for, you know, people and B2B and vendors and SaaS and all of us to benefit off each other, whether it's monetarily, whether it's networking, whether it's, you know, when, you know, you need a job, a vendor will be the first person to step in and say, who do you need? I know everybody, you know.
- [39:47]
A
And as you say with, with, with Zent, you know, it's solving a problem that was maybe created by AI. You're. Because you have all these images, you have all these things that are out there. And then it also becomes the solution to the problem, which is really cool that maybe even a lot of people don't even know they have. That's the other part of it. Someone reading that post might be like, oh my God, do I have 500 plus mistakes?
- [40:05]
B
Yes, it's embarrassing. It's all the embarrassing stuff. You don't want to admit that you misspelled the word, you know, turtleneck or something. And you know, your customers are seeing that every day and thinking who's working there? You know, or I mean, and to that extent, like when we get into cleaning up our feeds, getting discovered in chat and Gemini, and when that becomes paid, all those things are also going to need to be cleaned up anyways. Like the better alignment you have with your images and text and checkout and promo codes working and all those things you're going to have, you know, that Much more leverage as the channel mix changes entirely.
- [40:47]
A
I love that also that the solution to like, because if people worry with AI that we're. That we'll become less human or that it'll take the roles of humans, hopefully it frees us up to do more human things. And what you're describing is humans connecting and staying connected. And that's one of the things. That's one of the reasons we launched our agency community business was, you know, we wanted to focus on things that like bring people together. And I think that's really what. What posts on. On LinkedIn, especially when they go as viral as yours really do. Because it's like now you get all these people like, hey, I tried that tool. You tried. That was great. Here's a tool that I tried. They'll send that to you. You know, you'll just have this ongoing dialogue of potentially thousands of people who are. Who are in this mastermind with you now based on that post.
- [41:25]
B
That's it. It's a. It's a people business now, right?
- [41:29]
A
Yeah.
- [41:30]
B
Have you noticed that, you know, there's so much more in person things that happen post Covid. You know, I and a. You know, a lot of people work from home A. And even if you don't, you're going to need a group or an army, let's say of people to support your learnings, to give you that confidence to go forward and test anything like you. There's too much at stake. Like, too much could go wrong. You need a. I need someone to open up their entire tech stack and tell me everything they're paying. Right. And this is the kind of relationships that need that are built brick by brick. So the viral post was the first connections were all people that I literally have had dinner with have been to my. These are. I really worked on this and it wasn't intentional either. It was a necessity to get up to speed and to do things that get results, not just to play in the retail space and look nice and say, I checked off these boxes. But to really turn something around takes a lot of institutional knowledge. That was a group project, 100%. And I think when the comets started rolling in from those first connections, it provided that, I guess fire to let that LinkedIn algorithm throw it out to so many more people. We're talking hundreds of thousands of impressions off like, you know, a QA agent isn't. Isn't that deep. Like, you go on LinkedIn and you see like I had this amazing epiphany in meditation or someone did something Incredible. Like that's, you know, or something. Super, super cringe, right? This was very boring. This was like, we have a QA tool and. And yet it struck a chord with like the pain that's going on right now with people trying to solve an impossible problem is how to grow when you have less. And it's almost like relearning everything that you used to know.
- [43:31]
A
It's funny, we've done events, we've done a bunch of events. And my friend Brock, who runs Frostbody, was talking to me the other day and he was like, you know, I'm still in touch with four of the people who I went to that event with on like a weekly or monthly basis. They formed like just an Impromptu, like mastermind WhatsApp group or whatever. And it's just. And it was actually the only event. I think he's been to a few now, but that was his first event he'd ever been to and he got so much value out of it just through the human connections that you make. Like, I always wonder if other industries are the same as this. Like, do insurance salesmen, I wonder that, do they share hacks like this? Are they much of the. The rising tide raises all boats as we are because I feel lucky to be in an industry that is open to this.
- [44:07]
B
I'd like to say it's our industry because I really love that part. Like, that is like, it's not like it's like a family, but it's kind of like your. Your friends and your peers and your family. It's all mixed up in one. And I think that too, like, what is it like when you go to the banking conference or the gambling conference or the, you know, healthcare conferences? I think we're. The task at hand is so technically challenging. It, it's strategy, it's brand, it's touch points, it's really analytical. It's data. It's lots and lots and lots of data. Right. It's also somewhat like of a zeitgeist thing where luck comes into play. Like something ticks off and suddenly you're the star viral product. This isn't very predictable in a lot of ways. Retail, it's a little bit of an art, a little bit of a science. And it's a small world too. Like, it's not maybe not as large as other industries as well. And it's fun, you have to admit.
- [45:07]
A
It is fun.
- [45:08]
B
More fun about E commerce, in particular, the G to Z environment. The fact that even 10 years ago a challenger could come in or an Incumbent could take over a large brand. And we saw that at the first lead. You know, that was the whole idea. And the premise of Shopify is that anyone can be a major brand or arm the rebels. Yes. And that if you have the spirit of an entrepreneur inside of you, here's your tool. And go. And I did it too. And to see the results of that with your own eyes is so inspiring. And today it's even less of a barrier of entry because anyone can get distribution. Photos, copy, text ads, even organic channels that didn't exist before. And now chat. It's only amplified itself, yet it's become so much more complex. It used to be so much easier. You just set up a Facebook ad, set up your Shopify store, open your shingle and go. You just had to show up. Now I'm in it. I'm in the enterprise. I'm in the side where, whoa, these are hard, complex problems to solve. Who would ever want to start their own or go off on their own? Maybe I'll feel different in a year or two, but their opportunity is just so big still, even though we've seen layoffs and tariffs and economy like sensitivity and whatnot, I think there'll be the next round of gigantic wins within one to two years based on what we're doing. You know what's possible.
- [46:48]
A
I feel so grateful to be in this growth part of the economy in these challenging times. And I find everything you're saying very inspirational. That's why we're launching D2C Dines, which is our DTC dinner series. We did our first one in Vancouver last week. We're gonna, we. We're not announcing where we're coming yet, but it will be in New York. We'll be all over the place to join us for a DTC dine. So you can put that on your calendar as soon as I definitely recommend it.
- [47:12]
B
I haven't been yet, but it sounds fantastic. And I'm sure you're. You're great at, like, knowing what topics and things to ask. And that's so important because those conversations are gold mine. And I, I do want to leave too with the thought that, you know, there. It's pretty depressing out there. Despite all these changes, like I said, you know, I do fundamentally believe that humans, they do need to consume in some way. Like two consume things is to be alive is to grow. You know, that's what I've always been attracted to in apparel per se, is that you really can change who you are with your outfit. Sometimes I don't feel part of myself, but I do. You know, you can be someone who you're not today with, you know, a change of that, you know, your look, your feel. And I've always been attracted to that sentiment, and I'm just, Just so curious to see how that, how that works out in the next few years. So I'm really excited to be on this ride for, with you, and I really appreciate this time together.
- [48:17]
A
Yeah, me too. I always think of the children's book going on a bear hunt at the. When I think about humanity because it always. There's all these obstacles that they've got to contend with, and every time they come to a big obstacle, they say, can't go under it, got to go through it. And I feel like that's where humanity is right now. And I feel like humans go through things by consuming. So I feel like we've created this, this engine that involves consumption, that it isn't always pretty. But as an Iroquois shaman told me one time, we're right where we need to be. So it's hard to. It's hard to believe sometimes when you look at the news, but that's what I take heart in.
- [48:52]
B
Yes. And if we can turn these challenges and problems into our next opportunity, that's probably the first place to look is what's, what's broken, what's not working, and is that the actual thing that we can solve like that or not how to solve it, but that. That's the solution right there. Right.
- [49:07]
A
And then make a LinkedIn post about it.
- [49:09]
B
And then make a LinkedIn post about it. Let the world know. And then, you know, hopefully sometime when you need a little help, you come by a post or a friend and get it right back to you.
- [49:19]
A
So amazing. Well, I will keep my eyes peeled on your LinkedIn feed for your next viral post, as should everyone. I'm glad that LinkedIn brought us together for this great chat today. Thanks again. If people. I guess I'll just put your LinkedIn link on this podcast, please.
- [49:34]
B
I would love that and I'd love, you know, I, I have and always was, you know, attracted to and get maybe technologies or ways of doing things that are a little earlier than, you know, you typically see. So I hope to be more of that voice and share, you know, my journey in a very challenging environment and be supportive to those around me who are literally helping. We're all helping each other as we get.
- [50:03]
A
Last question you mentioned nrf. Are there any other big events on your calendar that you're excited about?
- [50:08]
B
Yeah. So I will be speaking about UX and merchandising, another key component to conversion, which is getting more and more important as, you know, costs of acquisition rise at Etail west, which is one of my favorite, favorite places to go in this industry. And it's also beautiful because it's in Palm Springs and it's really great place to meet people. And then I think after comes Shop Talk, which is a can't miss opportunity.
- [50:39]
A
I'll be going there. I'll be. I'll be at Chop Talk this year again.
- [50:42]
B
That's. That is a lot of fun.
- [50:44]
A
Vegas is just always fun.
- [50:46]
B
Vegas is really fun and it's one big party and it's really great and you learn a lot and. And again, get to connect with the peers and vendors that, that don't always get to see. And then, you know, commerce next comes up in New York. Always a great time and the lead. So that's what I'll be in the coming months and, you know, hopefully I catch you somewhere at a dinner or an event soon.
- [51:10]
A
Awesome. Thanks, Laura. This is great.
- [51:12]
B
Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it.
- [51:19]
A
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumerall. One word co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.