Ingrid: [00:00:19] Hello and welcome to Infinite Shelf, the human-centric retail podcast. I'm your host, Ingrid Milman Cordy, and sadly, I'm not here with Orchid. Bummer. You're going to have to settle with Phillip and Brian.

Brian: [00:00:36] {laughter} Yet again.

Ingrid: [00:00:39] No, but really, honestly, you probably... Future Commerce is our parent podcast. You most likely have found me through them. Or if not, you should tune in to the Future Commerce podcast because it's pretty dope if you like this whole eCommerce retail commerce situation. How many times can I say commerce in one sentence? {laughter} Anyway, hey guys, how's it going?

Brian: [00:01:02] Pretty good. How are you?

Phillip: [00:01:04] We should be asking you.

Brian: [00:01:06] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:01:07] This has been like a wild ride of a season. Congrats on Season 3 and congrats, I think, even just the co-host change, the life change... Lots of change.

Ingrid: [00:01:20] Lots of change. I thrive in change. I think that's why I work in commerce in general. But then specifically eCommerce and digital. You have to be a glutton for change punishment really. That's just genuinely I firmly believe that. But yeah, lots of changes. So I was so grateful and blessed to have Orchid as a co-host this season. It was so much fun having these conversations with her. I hope you guys found them fun and interesting, and it was fun when we didn't agree. And then by the end of the dialog, we'd end up being like, "Yep, that's exactly how I feel. Okay, moving on."

Phillip: [00:02:05] I also, one thing that stood out to me in this season, and I'll just be really honest and say I probably only got through half of the season because we're like up to five podcasts now at Future Commerce, and it's really tough staying... Like I'm a prolific content consumer. I don't know about you, Ingrid, but then being on top of your own content too, and then making your own stuff and checking your own stuff, it's a tough balance to strike. But what I have noticed is a little bit of a freer, more punchier, hot take Ingrid. Especially when you're next to Orchid. I see that happening. A lot of pop culture, which is interesting because our thesis at Future Commerce has shifted in the last year too. And our new outlook on, well, what is the future of commerce? I think six years ago we would have said, well, rapid technology change is going to shift the way that we engage in commerce. And that's true. I think today we would say the way that culture finds itself online and offline is the future of commerce because culture is commerce.

Ingrid: [00:03:15] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:03:15] And I saw that come through in this season of Infinite Shelf.

Ingrid: [00:03:20] I am so delighted to hear you say that because I think that, and this may be a lot of the theme of this season went along with sort of the progression of mine and Orchid's because we're similar age, similar backgrounds, educational and work backgrounds. We saw a mirror or a parallel in what was happening in commerce alongside our own evolution as people, as employees, and as leaders. I think that similar to how I was in the beginning of my career, I was like overly serious about myself and about what I have to say and I always, especially truly just being a female, being a blond female, being someone who probably I don't think I do anymore, but I did... I always looked a little bit younger than I actually am, and so I always had to make up for it by being serious, you know?

Phillip: [00:04:25] You look like you're 20. Give me a break.

Ingrid: [00:04:29] I appreciate that. I think the other big change this season was having baby number two.

Phillip: [00:04:35] Congratulations. Aw, man.

Brian: [00:04:37] Congratulations. That's so wonderful.

Ingrid: [00:04:39] Super quick, though. I think that is me being able to openly embrace the pop culture ness, the softer side, the jokier side is very much like an evolution of the comfort that I have now within myself, both in a professional context as well as in a public speaking context, as being the host of the podcast. So that's cool. That's cool to hear you noticed that.

Brian: [00:05:05] It's funny what we put up as defense mechanisms. Some people use humor as a defense mechanism and some people use seriousness and sometimes it flip flops back and forth depending on where you're at. And it's really cool to see you just be able to enjoy yourself. And I feel like you've always been able to do that and you're such an incredible thinker and you always come with such great thoughts. But to be able to do that in the context of jokes and lightheartedness is such a cool thing.

Ingrid: [00:05:34] Yeah, yeah. Orchid definitely brought that out and I really appreciated that.

Phillip: [00:05:38] We just had Orchid on a learning product that we were building for Future Commerce. And so we're doing education and you'll hear about that at some other point through other properties of Future Commerce. But when Orchid came, it was the first time I actually saw Orchid in her element. I know Orchid as like through DTC Twitter, which is not the greatest light to put anyone in.

Brian: [00:06:04] She talked about that on the podcast too. She's like, "That's where I get all my news."

Phillip: [00:06:09] Right. And I definitely, having seen I think even Orchid on the Infinite Shelf podcast, and not to talk about her in absentia but you know, even seeing her on the Infinite Shelf podcast is she's bringing I think her whole self. Interesting to see her in sort of the light of "Oh no no, I'm going to teach you something now." And if I'm really honest, maybe you can talk to this Ingrid, but how much learning and insight gathering and analysis happens in the medium of podcasts in 2023? I think what you want is a good hang where you come away feeling like it was time worth spent in a context of I can relate this back to my work. I can relate this back to the things I enjoy and be part of the moment. And there are cultural moments and a lot of them revolve around media. And I really appreciate that's what you guys seem to be doing this season is taking those moments or those cultural moments and relating them back to work. That's what people do just normally, I think.

Ingrid: [00:07:18] Definitely, yeah. I mean, I think that is another evolution of the podcast too. So it's always been centered around the human-centric podcast, right? So we're thinking about retail through the lens of humans. And then we did that in a much more, I would say intellectualized way in Season 2 with Kiri Masters, where we went through these natural human elements that make us human apart from animals and things like that. And so listen back to Season 2 for some of the more heady intellectual stuff and then I think [00:07:55] Season 3 with Orchid, it kind of came together in this way where we start talking about how everything is intertwined and everything is intermingled like subcultures and cultures and how commerce creates that, sustains that, kills that, like that whole life cycle. And they're so intertwined. And I think that is truly the core of retail planning, marketing, building a brand, and all of the things that we hope and wish to do through the analysis and the media and all the things that we're trying to learn. [00:08:33] But we're subconsciously thinking about those things and actually applying them much more practically through these conversations. So it is, it's kind of like this balance between having the conversation around culture and pop culture and brands and things that we love and maybe a little fashion and skincare and fun things like that thrown in. But at the same time, I think people who are attuned to retail pick up on really what we're saying that 1 or 2 layers down, which is this is how you build a brand that people love. And that to me, when you peel back the layers of things that I want to listen to as as someone, as a retail leader, that is it, right? Because I don't need to God forbid, I'll never sit down and listen to someone teaching me how to do that or whatever. I want to hear the conversation through people who are comrades in the trenches with me of going through that and then applying it through this more realistic lens.

Brian: [00:09:31] It's interesting, I think you covered that across a very broad set of topics, too. You did an ask me anything this time and got into how to build an incredible brand, but also different aspects of that, like influencers... Are they still part of building a brand? You know, what would it look like if you were to rebuild Toys R Us today? And you were like, "Oh, it's just Camp, actually."

Orchid Replay: [00:09:55] What I feel like is that we should buy Toys R Us is what you're saying, because a lot of people are reimagining this. And I have a lot of fondness for Geoffrey the Giraffe, but a brand that I think has taken a cue and created this experiential but shoppable physical experience is this brand Camp. Are you familiar with them?

Brian: [00:10:16] It was interesting to sort of see you hit that both from like a moments angle, like when you covered the launch of Threads, but also from like a counterfactual perspective. It was just such a broad set. And then bringing in producer Erika to thee Gen Z...

Phillip: [00:10:34] I was going to mention that.

Brian: [00:10:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like you guys covered so much ground. It was awesome.

Ingrid: [00:10:41] We had a lot of fun and we started out with a lot of structure and then we kind of let our hearts sort of follow what we wanted to talk about. And so we'd show up and we'd be like, "We were going to talk about this, but actually this is what I'm really thinking. We really have to talk about it." And that's just kind of how it works. Well, so what were some of your favorite moments or most surprising moments or anything you disagreed with? Give me the juice. What do you think?

Phillip: [00:11:06] Well, if I could be so bold, I sort of wrote a piece based on one of the episodes that I was sort of struggling with what to write one day for the Future Commerce newsletter because there was a lot to talk about. The main takeaway for me in amongst the actual like good hang conversation was you both have been part of organizations that have been bought and sold. Acquisitions, integrations. And [00:11:32] hearing your perspective on what not to do in an integration or what to buckle up for in an integration, I was able to bring my own perspective to it too. It's like, what are the four things that can ruin an integration with your brand? And that felt so... It felt very informative without being structured in a, "Okay, I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to give you a structure broken down and analyze this for you," which is something I'd never listened to, but instead it was people relating their actual life experience. [00:12:09] And man, I had a little bit of like PTSD listening to it because I've been through it and part of the being through it realized in that I was like, "Oh wow. Actually, do you know how many of the DTC roll up acquisitions, acquihires we've already had in 2023 and how many more we have left to go? Because there's a lot of consolidation that this industry in the eCommerce space in particular is going to go through as runways shorten, as capital can't be refreshed, sources to capital being cut off, private equity chasing other fads, venture capital definitely moving away... These things are a reality. It felt very of the moment. And anyway, that was one that stuck out to me mostly because I wrote about it and I like to be self-referential. {laughter}

Brian: [00:13:02] {laughter} Another great moment was the episode, "Don't Ignore Your Fans." I feel like one of the things we've been highly focused on and now I'm going to get self-referential as well, is this idea of The Multiplayer Brand. That's part of our Visions report for this year, which everyone that's listening to this podcast should totally go check out Visions.FutureCommerce.com. It's amazing. And also go get our new zine at the same place. It is very fun. It's called The Multiplayer Brand, and [00:13:36] you nailed it that fans have more power and more influence than ever before and those that ignore them are missing out on the largest opportunity that there is right now. [00:13:49] I wrote an article way back in 2020 about how power is wielded and discourse is sort of the thing that I landed on, engaging in that discourse and harnessing discourse. And I feel like that is what engaging your fans actually is. It's sharing ideas and having them be a part of what you're doing. And you did this sort of in the context of the conversation about Instapot and what happened there.

Ingrid Replay: [00:14:21] Instapot had this ability to be this cult product and lead this whole band of fans that they earned and they just didn't. And that to me is like, whoever, sorry, but whoever's like running marketing or community management there, you shit the bed.

Brian: [00:14:40] And some people said that Instapot didn't have a brand. Well, it actually, it really did. It just got ripped off over and over and over and over. And everyone just sort of said, "Oh, I have an Instapot." Well, they didn't know that they didn't have an Instapot. But I think you called out like they just did a really bad job of fostering their fans and taking their feedback and bringing new things to them that could be complementary or new revision and things like that and just kind of stuck with the same old stuff the whole time.

Phillip: [00:15:13] Yeah, the Swifties of the home appliances are the...

Ingrid: [00:15:18] It was literally... Yeah, the Swifties are the home appliance. {laughter} The Insties. What I was going to say was the distinction between product and brand for that is like the textbook use case. I could bet my life there will be an HBS case study that's taught in business school of the true definition of when the company thinks that they're making a product, but really they're a brand. And I would say that in this day and age, when the barrier to entry for a product or a solution to a problem, which I hope all products are at some point, isn't as important anymore. Because it used to be really hard to bring a product to market to create it... Now it's so much easier. And so all we have left, even after a brilliant idea, is your brand. And I feel like it's so silly to have to keep saying this, but obviously I have to keep saying this because I think that people, leaders, and large organizations may intellectually understand this, but they're not functioning in the way that they can understand how to truly become a brand and engage with their fans, engage with the people who are using the products, just that whole thing. It's just it's not what you're selling. It's the other thing of what you're selling.

Brian: [00:16:50] I think this is really interesting, paralleled against another big bankruptcy this past year, which is Hunter. Hunter boots and I've talked a bit about this before, but I think what's interesting is Hunter, similar to Instapot actually, chased demand, but demand isn't necessarily fandom. It could be bandwagoners, it could be just people that want to be on trend or whatever. It doesn't mean they're actually genuinely like your product. And they ended up overproducing. They went crazy. They went overproducing, they ended up on Woot. When you ended up on Woot. Your brand is dead.

Phillip: [00:17:27] Hey, I bought an iRobot vacuum in 2008 on Woot.com. I'll have know.

Brian: [00:17:30] And they got acquired by Amazon.

Phillip: [00:17:33] That's a success story.

Brian: [00:17:34] Success story. Yeah. But my point in saying this is that I think fans aren't necessarily customers, it's not a 1 to 1. And so by focusing on white-hot center, I think the whole Hunter thing could have been completely avoided if they had chased that level of demand from actual fans as opposed to just chasing demand.

Phillip: [00:18:00] Brian, I hate to ask. I'm not familiar with Hunter. Can you give me like a two second...

Brian: [00:18:04] Oh, man.

Ingrid: [00:18:05] Wellies.

Brian: [00:18:06] Yeah. Iconic welly boots. Princess Diana wore them. They had a huge resurgence in popularity and maybe, what, five years ago? Six years ago?

Ingrid: [00:18:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe a little more.

Brian: [00:18:19] Yeah. Maybe a little more. Yeah, yeah.

Phillip: [00:18:20] Got it.

Brian: [00:18:21] And then they eventually just got into every retailer everywhere. And this is the other problem. Instapot and Hunter both suffered from another problem, which was they built too good of a product and no one needed more than one of them.

Ingrid: [00:18:36] That I agree with. I think the whole thing, you know Yeti for example, like not the microphones.

Brian: [00:18:42] The crappy microphones that we spent the pre-show disparaging.

Ingrid: [00:18:46] We will never get sponsored by the Yeti Microphone.

Phillip: [00:18:49] No. It's over.

Brian: [00:18:50] Rode on the other hand. Let's go.

Ingrid: [00:18:52] Yeah. But anyway, Yeti cups, those things last but they have a real brand. So they're a very good example of a brand that creates products that you're going to have for a really long time but just creates lots of different types of products and is continuously growing, staying true to their fans, staying true to their world that they have created visually through all of their marketing and all of that. And so I kind of especially like the sustainability person in me hates the idea of having to continuously create new things and buy new things. So I do think that there's a way for brands to create quality things that last for a long time that will continue to have growth.

Brian: [00:19:38] I mean, you're looking at the Stanley Cup right behind me.

Ingrid: [00:19:41] Exactly.

Phillip: [00:19:43] As he calls it, a Stanley Cup. That's the world's largest Stanley thermos I've ever seen.

Brian: [00:19:47] It's a double, actually... My wife's uncle gave this to me. He probably bought it in the 70s. I have no idea when he bought this thing.

Ingrid: [00:19:54] That's so cool.

Brian: [00:19:55] It's like old school. Like been around forever, never going to die. This thing is never going to... I'm going to pass this on to my grandkids.

Phillip: [00:20:49] Ingrid, can I ask you what is your is there like a meta take on this, on the ability to turn a fan into a customer? There's a Venn diagram for sure, but if you're just a fan and you're not a customer at a certain point in time, is there really a playbook to ever convert a fan to a customer?

Ingrid: [00:21:10] I think so. I mean, I think it depends on the product. The thing that is the easiest example that comes to mind is a luxury product. So you grow up maybe in a family that like, can't afford luxury things, but you see that like Jordan sneaker or that Hermes bag and you're a fan and you're like, "Wow, that is so beautiful. I love the story of this brand. I love the craftsmanship. I love Michael Jordan." All the things that like, make you truly a fan but not a buyer. Eventually, when you turn 30 and you start making money and you start whatever, like the rest of us, you're going to absolutely become a customer. And you're not even going to just buy like 1 or 2 pairs of Jordans. You're going to have a whole closet full of Jordans because we try to make our inner child feel better about all the things.

Brian: [00:22:09] So what you're saying is find your customers jobs and then they can pay you money for your products. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:22:15] Wow. It's funny, Ingrid, I don't know if you remember, like six, seven, six years ago, maybe the first time you were that I spoke with you on the podcast. I think you had been on the Future Commerce podcast before with Brian. But we literally talked about that it was the conspicuous consumption of something like a Jordan sneaker because I was trying to please my inner child and that is...

Ingrid: [00:22:37] I do remember that.

Phillip: [00:22:38] Nice callback. One of the things that I did like about the season too is this idea of relationship comes up over and over. It's sort of like a recurring thing but the work love language conversation and the fusion of pop psychology and the naming of trends in pop psychology and how it's been applied to how we understand and relate to each other in work styles and how those things become conflated over time. But the way that you approached that was really clever because I think that a lot of folks take these models and they don't look at them as a means to understand or create a place or a conversation that allows people to safely communicate with each other how they prefer to work, how they prefer to interact with each other, but instead buckets people into a presumed pattern of behavior. And the way that you broke that down, I thought was really interesting and in particular kind of relating it back to all the things that everybody talks about all the time. Oh, DTC or ESG or the things that I care about, the things I should care about, the things that are trendy to care about, and how does that come to bear in sort of my work love language? I thought that was really clever.

Brian: [00:24:02] Or business astrology as Orchid put it.

Phillip: [00:24:06] Right. {laughter} We've paid for business astrology at Future Commerce. We did Strengthsfinder.

Brian: [00:24:09] We invent business astrology.

Phillip: [00:24:13] That's true.

Ingrid: [00:24:14] I love that you pointed that out because this is the Infinite shelf, and [00:24:20] the whole idea is that the show talks about not just what we've been primarily focused on, which is consumers and brands and how do you grow and evolve and turn fans into customers. And all of that stuff is super relevant and I love talking about it, but that's 50% of what we talk about. The other 50% is how do we on the inside of organizations, how do we become good leaders. There's [00:24:46] a whole episode about that. How do we use our evaluate and understand our own love languages and then evaluate other people's work love languages and see how we can get things done? And so Phillip, when we first were thinking about the idea of Infinite Shelf and how we wanted to talk about the content that we were developing, you had made this really beautiful analogy about how it's this Infinite Shelf or this table where we're having like a long dinner party and on one side the consumer and on the other side is the brands and the people that bring things to market. And it was such a perfect visual for how we want to always focus the content of all of our seasons, regardless of what the overarching themes are. And so much of Season 3, I think did go into how do you actually get through barriers internally. How do you talk to other people from other generations who maybe have different work languages or different expectations of what the workplace is and how to behave and get things done? And yeah, so I love that you brought that part of it up because it's such a meaningful and important chunk of sure, you can philosophically understand how to build brands that people love and how to engage in culture, relevant conversations that then bring products and people to you. But organizationally, if you can't ship things and if you can't send out good communications and all of that, that's the other 50%. And so I love being able to have had some really meaningful conversations with Orchid about that.

Phillip: [00:26:27] Notwithstanding, I learned a lot about the two of you in that conversation, which is really interesting. Really cool to have the two of you be so transparent relating to each other. I also learned that penguins like to give each other rocks as gifts.

Orchid Replay: [00:26:39] So gift-giving is not about actually buying something. It's this thing that you give to the other person because you were thinking about them, and so it's actually more similar to penguins. Penguins do this activity called pebbling where they give each other rocks because they're like, I don't know, to build goodwill or something, so don't give me a rock. But Memes are kind of a form of pebbling.

Ingrid Replay: [00:27:07] Totally.

Orchid Replay: [00:27:09] Just some clarity.

Phillip: [00:27:10] That was fun. It's called Pebbling. I didn't know about it, but you can look it up. It's a thing. And Orchid has so many weird facts that she likes to drop all the time.

Brian: [00:27:20] She does. Orchid's a fount of information.

Phillip: [00:27:25] Random knowledge.

Brian: [00:27:26] I want Orchid at my trivia nights.

Phillip: [00:27:29] She's like a goblin. She's like a goblin. She's like, "Look at this idea trinket that I have. I found it collected somewhere."

Ingrid: [00:27:36] Oh, my God. It's so much fun creating content with her and just getting to have these conversations. And we would just we would carry them on like over text with Erika, our producer afterward, beforehand. We like sending each other memes. We'll have a follow up or something later with Orchid. But even products, we're like making Orchid be a guinea pig for certain products. I think eventually at some point we have to figure out how to broadcast a day in the life of Orchid's media consumption because I would pay really good money to have just a live stream of all the things that Orchid is looking at. We know it's just the headlines.

Brian: [00:28:23] We just want a cam on Orchid's eyes. So we could just watch everything she's watching.

Ingrid: [00:28:30] We just need to get the hacker... We know we can do this. We can do this. Orchid. We're going to hack into your systems and just see whatever...

Phillip: [00:28:38] It's not just Orchid. I mean, I want to call out producer Erika here, too, in that I learned about colostrum way more than I ever wanted to this season.

Brian: [00:28:52] Actually talked with the colostrum brand one time. I was doing some consulting with them.

Ingrid: [00:28:56] The actual colostrum, like the Aroma. What is it called, Erika? Aroma?

Erika: [00:29:02] ARMRA.

Ingrid: [00:29:03] Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. That's one of the very, very long text conversations we've had. But it's a fascinating thing and just the wellness in general. I keep threatening to do this, but we need to have like a full season of wellness brands and products. And so we review stuff because like man...

Phillip: [00:29:21] That's my jam.

Ingrid: [00:29:24] It's all of our jams, Phillip.

Phillip: [00:29:25] It's all of our jam. But I spent six years building a direct to consumer wellness brand. That was where I started in DTC.

Ingrid: [00:29:32] I didn't know that.

Phillip: [00:29:33] That's a whole other thing.

Brian: [00:29:34] I'm just going to do a whole episode on Suja by itself.

Phillip: [00:29:39] Brian. Brian, wee know what your regimen is. No one needs to ask. The Suja is offset by the $1.50 Costco hot dog.

Brian: [00:29:46] No, I'm gluten-free.

Phillip: [00:29:48] Those two things cancel each other out.

Brian: [00:29:48] I don't eat the hot dogs at Costco or the pizza. Even though I really wish that I could. I don't do gluten.

Phillip: [00:29:56] Brian, what's your colostrum intake like these days? That's the question.

Brian: [00:29:59] It's a zero at the moment.

Phillip: [00:30:03] Zero. {laughter}

Ingrid: [00:30:07] Wait, so I have to ask you guys. Total pivot from colostrum. Sorry, sorry, everyone.

Phillip: [00:30:12] Yeah.

Ingrid: [00:30:13] But the episode that I think lived on before and after all of the episodes, I think you know where I'm going with this, which was the growth versus profit conversation. It just does weave its way in or like weasel its way in to everything because it's just so embedded. What are your takes on the growth versus... Are you team profit or are you team growth? Can you do both at the same time? I'm so curious what you thought.

Phillip: [00:30:42] Brian. Brian. As the Chief Revenue Officer of Future Commerce, I'd like to hear what you say first. {laughter}

Brian: [00:30:49] I love growth when operations makes it profitable. No, I think. I think I don't really like the show Friends. I'm more of a Seinfeld guy. But I thought the Friends reference about the growth and profitability are like two legs of a tight pair of pants. That was a great reference. I think you have to have both. I am unfortunately in the camp of yeah, you got to make money, but you got to ride the train when it's there. I think that was a really good point, actually, Ingrid, that you made, which was when the growth train is happening, don't slow it down. You got to ride that train until it's time to ride the profitability train.

Ingrid: [00:31:38] Ride the train.

Phillip: [00:31:39] Yes, please. Please ride it. It's funny because I'm realizing something about myself. And this is the sort of the Internet-induced ADD of it all is I don't remember that episode, but I do remember a conversation about the Zuck/Elon Cage Match, which means I definitely listened to this episode. But that was not the takeaway that I had, and I don't think I had a well-formed opinion about it. Here's my perma take on growth and profitability. I think to have a brand, to have a brand. [00:32:19] A brand is not design and it's not a logo and it's not fonts and colors. A brand is something that has endured and stood the test of time, and that means many market cycles and that means longevity. And it's something that has, despite all the odds, somehow found a way to persist. I don't think you can do that without profitability. [00:32:40] So my sense is that the longer that you exist, for instance, a number of you may not think of a brand as the local pizza store, but what is the pizza store? That's the local haven. It's the one that says Established 1918. It's 100 years in business. It's the grocery store. Those can be brands, too. And I think having a reputation is aligned and a reputation sort of is part of brand. I think that is where I come down on, is that it actually takes quite a long time to build that. It takes a lot of persistence. So I don't know. I think maybe I'm in the profitability camp.

Ingrid: [00:33:20] It's really funny actually, because as you were working through it, truly everything that you were saying I was like, "Oh, he's going to say growth." And then he said profitability after that. {laughter} So like the same way that you just rationalized how profitability as you're like end all at the end of the train answer, I literally thought that you were going to say growth for those same exact reasons.

Phillip: [00:33:45] I think growth and profitability aren't necessarily cage match enemies. I think they have to be... They coexist and they're two sides of the same coin, which is like maybe there are seasons for both and there's a place for both.

Ingrid: [00:33:58] Yeah. That's what I say. The yin and yang.

Brian: [00:34:00] That's what you of saying about the pants. That was Orchid. Orchid was responding to you about that, I believe.

Phillip: [00:34:07] Was that a Friends reference? I don't get that reference.

Brian: [00:34:09] It was a Friends reference. I didn't get it either. I don't watch Friends.

Ingrid: [00:34:13] Yeah, I don't think you missed very much. Sorry.

Phillip: [00:34:17] Hot take.

Ingrid: [00:34:20] Yeah, I think it's the yin and yang of it. I think the one takeaway that I have that would be my advice to myself, to other leaders in retail is to understand where you are in that pendulum and act accordingly and have your KPIs adjust accordingly. I'm firmly in the mindset that they are yin and yang, but they are black and white and they complement each other, but they're different and they have different times and they have different seasons and they have different ways of determining success. And I think you start getting into trouble when the marketing team thinks you're in growth and finance and sales thinks that you're in profitability. And that's where the rub starts to happen. And I think this is up to all of the leadership teams, like especially from the CEO down, to be really clear about which season a brand or a product or conglomerate is in.

Phillip: [00:35:21] The bigger the corporation, I think the less accountability and the worse communication tends to happen because being really definitive and being wrong can end your job or your career. Being very clear and having high conviction and being wrong isn't celebrated as like, "Well, we swung hard." It means that you failed and failure can't really be tolerated. Especially catastrophic ones. And that's where I see a lot of unfortunately like a lot of people who just it's there's an insurance policy taken out against having poor organizational communication. It's like let's be really guarded in the way that we're leading this, like "We're in growth mode."

Brian: [00:36:08] Yes.

Phillip: [00:36:09] Okay. So that means that we're going to sacrifice some profit as we spend our way into acquisition. "No, no, no. We're not going to do that either. Like we're going to do both." No, you can't do both. And that's where I have a real problem. I think that the corporation, as an entity, is not set up to the larger that it gets... It's not set up to demand accountability and clear direction that it does become a zero-sum game. I don't know.

Ingrid: [00:36:36] You said something really important that I think I want to reiterate here. Being clear on what your goals are also leaves you completely vulnerable to not achieving those goals and it being really clear and that accountability and responsibility for setting a goal and not meeting it is what keeps most senior leaders up at night. And I think that's the reason why they know. They know that we need clear direction and clear leadership and clear thoughts. And I think the real leaders that set that and as maybe problematic in a lot of ways like Jeff Bezos, for example, can be. I do think that he had the audacity to be one of those leaders that set really clear goals and hit them most of the time. And then if he didn't, he'd fail and people would talk about it for a day or two and then move on because he'd be on to the next five things that he's doing well. And I think Steve Jobs is another good example of a leader who wasn't afraid to swing from the fences, be wrong, and the one thing that you do that is amazing, this thing. This thing. Is going to actually be your legacy.

Brian: [00:37:58] I do think that perhaps one of the reasons why profitability and growth seem at odds with each other often is because they are set as the goals. And this actually, I would argue is perhaps part of the problem. A lasting brand is about meeting customers' expectations and problems and things that are actually unrelated to profitability or growth. I would argue that often if you put a specific growth target... "What's your strategy?" "Well, we need to grow by 20% next year." That's not a strategy. That's just like some random target that has nothing to do with anything related to your product or your customers or anything that's better. So actually profitability and growth are often symptoms of the way that you build and go to market. And yes, you do have to be profitable. You have to find ways to add new customers. I'm not saying that's not true and I'm not saying that we shouldn't have KPIs around them. But if they are your top line goals, that's when you start to see businesses getting into trouble. You chase profitability. Guess what happens? You tick off a bunch of your customers or you cut out markets or you cause other problems. If you set growth as your goal, guess what happens? You die as a business or you end up having to sacrifice things that you wouldn't normally sacrifice, like your employees.

Phillip: [00:39:27] When you get to a certain scale, Brian, there's inertia, though, that even despite your many successive failures, you can continue to still have revenue.

Ingrid: [00:39:36] Yeah.

Brian: [00:39:36] Sure.

Phillip: [00:39:36] That's where, I think the rubber meets the road. By the way, that whole episode was about DTC profitability and DTC growth, and that's a whole other ball of wax, which I think some of us have more familiarity with than others. But I want to ask you, Ingrid, how many times do you think you in this season mentioned the CMO, the CFO, and the CEO by title?

Ingrid: [00:40:05] Oh, my gosh. Maybe once each would be my guess.

Phillip: [00:40:11] The CMO had zero mentions. The CFO had zero mentions. The CEO was mentioned like 11 times across of all of Season 3. And I think that's really telling that at the end of the day, there is a very clear leader who has to own the success or failure as the leader of the executive team but to rely solely on the CEO as the person who sets the tone and tenor, sets the goals and mobilizes the team to do the vision, I think is a little bit of a... At the end, they're accountable, but they're not fully responsible for executing.

Ingrid: [00:40:51] No, no. I think that's a really fair point. I think the reason why and I didn't even know I thought it would have been even.

Phillip: [00:41:00] You would think. Right.

Ingrid: [00:41:02] But it's a really interesting call out. So now I'm sort of in real time reflecting on why I think that. I would say that I would hope that the CEO doesn't ever come to a directive or a strategy or a goal without having consulted and gotten the information from the CMO, from the CFO, from the CTO, from the rest of the C-suite, and frankly, other parts of the organization as well, not just the leadership team. But so the reason why I in hindsight think that I focused so heavily on saying CEO CEO is because I don't ever assume that the CEO is making these unilateral decisions. Everything is done through advisory and recommendations from the subject matter experts of all the different functions. But ultimately, yeah, at the same time, accountability is paramount. And at the end of the day the person that's holding the bag is the CEO. And we have to hold people accountable.

Phillip: [00:42:12] I think the CFO and the CMO are also much more highly volatile positions that have a lot higher turnover than the CEO, which is another insurance policy problem. The cover of bad leadership in a particular part of the org doesn't flow upwards. It only flows downward.

Ingrid: [00:42:28] Totally. Yeah. I think that's a problem with like having shareholders and the whole system of all the like board of directors and how the CEO... Yeah I mean come on. There's like a whole episode about how stupid that whole setup is.

Phillip: [00:42:41] On the balance of all of the roles at the various organizations that you've worked at, do you think you've had... Have you had more stellar leadership or great leadership, or is it a mixed bag? What have you seen more of and how does that color the perspective of the journey you've been on for Season 3? {laughter}

Ingrid: [00:43:05] I can tell you that it's been definitely a mixed bag, but the bag is very I've either had really excellent leadership that I still think about on a regular basis, like what would this person do? What have they said before? What have I heard them say? How have they approached decisions? How have they approached communicating to the organization? All of those things. I've seen really stellar exemplary CEOs and C-suite employees. And on the other hand, I'm like, "Who the fuck hired these clowns? How is that even possible?" And it's truly like the delta between the really extremely amazing and still to this day inspiring to me and the how of it all is...

Phillip: [00:43:54] Yeah.

Ingrid: [00:43:55] There's very little in between. the in-between is always in the one level below, like the VPs and Directors. There's like a mixed bag of those characters. But the C-level is always like, you're either a rock star and you're going to do amazing things for amazing brands. Or how in the world did you even?

Phillip: [00:44:16] How did you even get here?

Ingrid: [00:44:18] How did you white male yourself into this?

Phillip: [00:44:22] {laughter} They're usually white males, that's why.

Ingrid: [00:44:27] But there have also been some really great white males that fall into the inspirational leadership thing, too.

Phillip: [00:44:32] I'm sure. Yeah.

Brian: [00:44:33] Is there a correlation at all between organizations that you were at that were successful as businesses and the leadership that was there?

Ingrid: [00:44:43] Oh, big time. Yeah. You saw the difference for sure.

Brian: [00:44:47] Interesting.

Ingrid: [00:44:48] Yeah. You do. And you see there could be shorter periods of, "Oh they're getting away with... I don't know how this dumb or inept but they're doing well." But that's like a blip. It's not usually like the consistent and that kind of goes back to Phillip's point about the longevity and really at the end of the day, it's the sum of a much longer period of time. And I think at the end of the day, you do see that.

Phillip: [00:45:14] Yeah, we've told you some of our favorite season highlights. What are some of yours?

Ingrid: [00:45:22] I mean, I really loved the leadership conversation, just thinking about who we are as leaders, the types of leaders that we gravitate toward, the ones that we remember, how we as our generation... We're both elder millennial leaders and hope that we are forming a different work environment, a different employee-employer relationship, but also still having clear boundaries of like getting things done and holding people accountable. So I really loved the leadership conversation. And then, yeah, of course, I think all of the cultural brand development, all of those, it's not like one, it's not limited to one episode. It kind of threads its way through everything was a podcast that I myself want to listen to and that's always been my goal with Infinite Shelf is to create a podcast that I myself want to tune into with the almost 15 years of commerce experience. I don't need a how to or a ten things to do before 9 a.m. I appreciate it, I'm glad that that content exists but I'm not the audience for that. [00:46:36] I'm the audience for this kind of conversational in the trenches, new insights, reframing things, highlighting things in a way that maybe I hadn't thought of myself. That is what I think I'm the most proud of with Season 3, all of our seasons, but particularly with this season, having weaved that in has been really great. [00:46:57]

Phillip: [00:46:57] So cool. Do you think you've achieved the Ryan Seacrest aspirations at this point, or is there more left in you? Hardest working man in show biz, I think.

Ingrid: [00:47:06] Really, I mean Ryan Seacrest is incredible. No, I don't think I will ever... Ever "Seacrest out." Dumb. But I appreciate him and I appreciate you guys. This is a really, really fun recap. I'm so glad that we got to reminisce and look forward to future conversations.

Phillip: [00:47:29] And Ingrid says we'll make this like 25, 30 minutes, right?

Ingrid: [00:47:33] I know. That's because I love talking to you guys.

Phillip: [00:47:37] Oh, we do, too.

Brian: [00:47:38] Visa versa.

Ingrid: [00:47:39] Well, if you haven't heard Season 3, tune in. It was really fun. And hopefully, we'll check you on the flip side.

Phillip: [00:47:47] Yeah.

Brian: [00:47:49] Yeah.