The RetailWire Podcast
Welcome to The RetailWire Podcast, the show that gives you the latest insights and analysis from the world of retail, straight from some of the industry's top thought leaders.
Each episode, we'll explore the latest news, trends, and challenges facing retailers, brands, and retail tech solutions.
Whether you're a retailer looking to stay ahead of the curve, or a supplier trying to navigate the ever-changing retail landscape, we’ve got you covered.
The RetailWire Podcast
Reimagining Retail in the Modern Tech Era with Mark Self
What if the traditional retail shopping experience you've known is rapidly changing, influenced by technology, and the impact it's having is not just on our shopping habits, but on human interaction overall? This is the intriguing narrative we explore in a thoughtful conversation with our special guest, Mark Self, President/CEO of Vector Textiles and a seasoned technology veteran. Mark brings a unique blend of experiences in tech, sales, marketing, and business development.
This episode navigates the changing landscape of retail, how customer-clerk interactions have been replaced by self-checkouts and delivery services, and how these changes are shaping younger generations. We delve into how social media is impacting their confidence in presenting and interacting with people. Mark also shares his insightful experience mentoring high school students in technology, reminding us that mentoring is an effective way to bridge the gap between formal education and practical application.
Further into our discussion, we contemplate the value of liberal arts education in a technology-driven world, arguing for the importance of soft skills in the language of technology. We contrast our personal customer service experiences, emphasizing why well-trained staff can lead to a more immersive customer experience. Finally, we reiterate the importance of rehumanizing retail, reminding us that technology should not replace person-to-person interaction. Join us on this thought-provoking journey that redefines the traditional retail experience.
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Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklself/
RetailWire is the retail industry's premier source for news, analysis, and discussion. With a focus on the latest trends, technology, and consumer behavior, RetailWire provides a platform for industry experts and thought leaders to share their insights and perspectives. Whether you're a retailer, supplier, or service provider, RetailWire is your go-to destination for staying informed and ahead of the curve.
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Welcome to the Retail Wire Podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode here at the Retail Wire Podcast. We have another fun show for you today, but I actually I'm joined in the studio today not by one Brain Trust member, but also by my good friend, chase Benny, the CEO here at Retail Wire, and he decided he wanted to jump in on an episode with me. So we're going to do that today. But before we do that, i just wanted to jump in and say we're very, very excited. I'm going to let this guy introduce himself. Yes, hint, hint himself. I'm going to let him do that right now. Oh, yeah, you got that, yeah. Okay, there we go.
Speaker 2:But today, joining us on the Retail Wire Podcast, we have Mark Self, and you know what? Without further ado, i'm just going to bring him in here, mark. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 3:Hey, Brian, I'm good. Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, absolutely Glad to have you with us. Tell the folks at home a little bit about who you are.
Speaker 3:I'll try to give you the short version of the long story. I've had a long technology career with IBM, motorola, ncr leadership positions there, lived in the start in the San Francisco Bay Area, studied English literature at UC Davis, which of course is a natural path to technology career. In between I've run sales and marketing for a $150 million publicly traded company. I've been in four different pre-revenue startups. I'm leading two right now pre-revenue startups. One is a tech spin-out from UNC Chapel Hill and another one is actually an apparel spin-out advanced material spin-out from NC State. So that's me in a short nutshell In between the seams there. education-wise, i got my master's from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business when I was in Chicago, which was part of my IBM career arc, but kind of very, very wide and deep experience-wise in go-to-market everything go-to-market sales, marketing, business development, marketing strategy, business strategy, product market fit, all of that customer-facing stuff that is key to any business's success. So that's me in a hopefully very short outline And that's really cool.
Speaker 2:So you've definitely been around a while and I know now you're a vector textiles president, CEO of that We've got. Before I go too much further down this road, I'm going to say, Chase, how you doing, man, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:I'm good. Thanks for having me on the show Dude absolutely.
Speaker 2:This is your first episode with us, So hopefully not your last right.
Speaker 4:No, yeah, i want to get more involved, this one in particular. Just there's something about Mark's story that resonated with me. I wanted to be part of it.
Speaker 2:That's super cool man. Well, thanks for jumping in here And yeah, you heard the introduction there by Mark. So yeah, now you're. am I reading this correctly? You're in Raleigh area. Raleigh, new Carolina area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i've been. I've lived here, actually a town called Cary which is right next to Raleigh. It's kind of a suburban outpost of Raleigh. We've been here since 94, brian.
Speaker 2:Okay, chase, you want to go down and visit in Cary, north Carolina.
Speaker 4:You know I've heard of the city, but the only place I've been in North Carolina is Lake Norman.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:Okay, Well, it's a lovely state and I grew up, as I mentioned earlier, in California and spent some time five years in Chicago and two years in London and two years in Atlanta but I keep coming back to North Carolina Full place to live. I should be in the Chamber of Commerce because- it's great here, mark Seltzer Mayor, that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3:Move here. That's fine, but maybe for the folks out there that aren't familiar with Raleigh and Cary, when I moved here there was a lot of incoming transfers from big corporate jobs, specifically IBM and Cisco and whatnot. The re-litter's name for Cary was collecting area for relocating Yankees. That's where I live in the containment area. We don't talk about the war of Northern aggression anymore down here.
Speaker 2:Well, I know, man, again I'm super excited and I actually, you know, I wanted to go ahead and let Chase jump in here because he has he's been pecking me on the side here going, hey, I need to be in on this, You know. so I'm actually just really building this up much larger than it is right now. It was super fun to kind of watch him go where's Brian headed with this. Without further ado on that, I'm going to go ahead and let Chase jump in, because, Chase, you had some more questions for him, right? And I know we've had some offline conversations with Mark via email, which has really spurred even more of your excitement around kind of getting to know him, And so I'll just go ahead and let you take the lead on this and jump in to kind of get into the Meet the Brain Trust episode.
Speaker 4:Well, a few months ago, on one of our Brain Trust calls, i mentioned that you know there is a new generation who wants to learn, and a lot of our Brain Trust have experience that would be so valuable for someone starting out their career, and so Mark mentioned that he's mentoring high school students and has done projects with them. So that's where I want to jump in right away, mark tell us more about your experience mentoring students. You said you have projects at a private high school and at Northeastern University.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so thanks, chase, the whole start of this. I've been doing it for close to eight years And back when I started I had kind of an idea that was not right. With the school that I ended up developing a relationship, i thought that there might be an opportunity. I was seeing high school kids who knew how to code effectively Right, and I had this probably not probably kind of semi-evil idea that I could go out and hire high school graduates for software development jobs, pay them at a much lower rate. However wouldn't be taking advantage of them. I'd be paying them a sum of money that was far exceeded anything that they would get right then and save them the four years of college and gain young, somewhat inexperienced but talented coding capabilities and put them into my tech team at the time. So that was kind of my thesis right, and I went out and pitched that. I started with the charter school that my three kids went to And the idea was met with a little bit of interest. However, it kind of stopped for me personally because I was in a hurry And I was informed that in order to do something anything like that mentoring, internships, work, study program, anything I'd have to go through all of these kind of government-type hoops like background checks and all of that kind of stuff, and it was going to take probably at least six or seven months to get through the administrative part where I could just start to develop a relationship with the school. So I didn't like the time lag And I went and pitched to a school here locally called the Kerry Academy, which is a private.
Speaker 3:And here's where they kind of veered in another path. That's a private college prep high school, so obviously you can't go in there pitching. Hey, guess what? You all don't have to go to college, you can just get a job right now. And my conversations with the Kerry Academy administrators turned into let's try an internship. And then they had what they call a work experience program, which is a two-week program for all rising seniors. So I kind of I changed my initial idea and kind of inserted myself into their program And this has been going on. I probably have had about 64 rising seniors that I've given work to.
Speaker 3:One other thing is that I went. Kerry Academy is right next to SAS Institute, the big private software company, the Kerry Academy thing. There are a lot of those kids from an internship perspective matriculate into SAS. It's a beautiful campus. It's like Disneyland, if you like corporate campuses, this five-star chef group lunches and whatnot. It's a lovely place to work.
Speaker 3:I took that and I used it. When you go and you present what your project is going to be, i went in and I basically said to my first group of kids I'm going to give you real work. By real work I mean that if you do a good job, i'm going to use your work and either investment presentations from a usable sales pitches or marketing. This isn't like a make work thing where I just have you tag along with a corporate executive and you eat lunch and you have fun and you get to work out at the SAS gym and whatnot. I'm not being critical of the bigger business, but I had to compete differently because I was leading a startup software company. There wasn't a restaurant within five miles of where our office was. I thought to myself maybe one way to compete for the kids who are interested in business would be to give them real work and really challenge them. I did that with no expectation The first year.
Speaker 3:I guess I was fortunate enough. I had five kids and two of them were just amazing. One, alach Yang, is in the San Francisco Bay area. He's like a lead developer at Salesforce No LinkedIn. He moved from North Carolina, california, and there were several of the kids that made a big impression on me and the key part that all of them told me was attractive to them was the giving them the real work part. Sometimes that worked perfectly and other times I had to course correct, but I got excited about that first group of students. Since then. I actually look forward to late May when the program starts and then invariably one or two of the kids want internships for the summer. This has been an eight-year journey, but really more of an eight-year relationship with different groups of high school kids. I'm going to come back to the high school kids and the second. Somehow, when all of this was happening I don't even know how they found me because it's not like I promote this on LinkedIn or anything I don't say loves to mentor young adults getting started in their careers. There's no language like that in my bio, but Northeastern University called me.
Speaker 3:Northeastern has a work study program where college kids get course credit if they do a project for a business any business. They wanted to know if I would mind putting together a couple of perspective projects for Northeastern kids I did. The way that works is you put your project up on some virtual board and then the kids say that really sounds boring or this sounds interesting. Then they basically sign up for the project. You get a professor who doesn't teach, but he or she is there to help the process, get me acquainted with the students and whatnot. I've been doing that with Northeastern. I've probably done about nine different projects of various shapes and sizes with Northeastern, roughly about the same amount of eight plus projects with high school and eight to nine projects with Northeastern juniors and seniors.
Speaker 3:I'll riff off of that for a minute. The interesting thing to me there's many interesting things, but one thing I notice about the Northeastern students is that all to a man and a woman, they are very, very comfortable with just typing on their computer, which isn't a criticism, but they lack the social skills. This Zoom, we've all been through that. We're here doing this now and we're doing this so much three, four years ago, right, so we're all getting more comfortable with it. But what I noticed to my surprise was the high school kids, because they were here, they were in the office, wherever I was or the team was. I felt like that was a much more enriching environment. I felt like I got more out of kids who were two, three, four years younger than the college kids.
Speaker 3:I'll keep using Northeastern, but the whole thing is a different feeling. So Northeastern is great if I've got a pure research project, something that a student can do nothing but get on the computer and do research. They're very uncomfortable. They seem to be I shouldn't be so final. They seem to be very uncomfortable with human interaction and taking guidance or doing something like hey, instead of looking for that research on whatever websites you find, i want you to actually call some people and tell them what you're doing. You might as well ask them to jump across the Golden Gate Bridge in one leap, because they just don't. They're not comfortable with that and I find that sad.
Speaker 3:I suspect it's more than just Northeastern. So I just feel like what I'm seeing is when I've got kids here in person, kids who are 17, 16, some of them are 18 years old. First of all, let me repeat myself, they're going to a college, preparatory high school. That is very expensive and you get your money's worth because these kids are driven, they're smart, they play off of each other. So I'm fortunate to have this wonderful institution right in my backyard here. I'm not sure that every single high school would give someone like me the same experience, so I'm getting the proverbial cream of the crop. Already I've noticed the difference between the two groups.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say to ask on that as you were talking there. One thought that crossed my mind was the initial was like was it a knee jerk reaction? But from what I'm understanding, you're not saying it's not necessarily a hostility thing of I don't want to interact. It's that there's maybe a lack of confidence or a lack of the social dynamic structuring right based on kind of the last, what would we say, three years of kind of real world changes. So it's not necessarily that they just don't want to.
Speaker 3:It's the fact that they don't want to because they're not necessarily equipped in the best way that they could be based on that and also compared to someone who was physically socialized within the same actual space right, that's a much more elegant way, brian, of putting it than the way I was describing, but, yes, not like they're allergic to it, it's that they just don't. They don't seem to have that kind of background, and I started out this conversation with talking about. My original attempt was higher kids right out of high school. But it's also a proof point for what you could get, what you should get, out of a college education which, in addition to the class work, is all the socializing, and you take that away you kind of learn how to be an adult if you have a perfect four years, but you take that away with with with virtual stuff, and it's been difficult, i think, and the high school kids, in contrast, didn't have to deal with that.
Speaker 4:There's a really interesting kind of pattern I'm seeing, And a lot of the topics that we've been covering on retail wire have to do with a convenience, self-checkout, things that gone digital virtual reality, like all these different ways that seem like, oh, this might be the future.
Speaker 4:Let's do augmented reality and people can kind of they can just like click with their finger and buy something. But we're missing this other human side where that may look good on paper and on a profit statement for these, the companies who are implementing these things, But then when you visit in person with the, say, a high schooler or a college student, and you see they have been going, when they go to a grocery store, if they go they might do delivery. They might get hello fresh to their door and never do, But if they go they can just do self-checkout. And so anyone can live in this society now with very little human interaction If they just choose the self-checkout delivery. There can any questions they have, they ask their phone, they ask chat, GPT, or they can find somebody on YouTube who will talk about this situation that they're going through.
Speaker 4:So we have access to all this stuff without needing to, and I just watched a short documentary about the retail store's design throughout history And they showed images and none of us were probably alive at this time But when the retail store was more like you walk in and everything was behind the counter, yeah, and you had to talk with the clerk and then pick out, almost like how they keep cigarettes behind the counter now. They kept all the product behind the counter And you would shop personally with that one person.
Speaker 4:And then they would add it all up and you get to the cash register and then you'd get your stuff And so you. So it has gone from this you have to talk to people to now you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to. But when we follow just the ease and comfort around every decision point and say, well, i'm uncomfortable talking to people, so I'm going to choose to self-check out, never never being in with virtual classes and there's so much leniency with just accommodating people. Some of it's justified and other times it's. We do need challenges.
Speaker 3:I don't want to go all lead on the two of you. I think that there's a time and a place for the technology and you have to integrate the technology in an effective way so that it provides value to the shopping experience, and blah, blah, blah blah. But I have found that I think that the key highlights or low lights, depending on the group, but key highlights for me are that the kids, when they're driven like this and they've already got kind of the gray matter that's still being structured through whatever classes they're taking, they like to be challenged and they love the fact that if they do a good job, i'm going to actually use the work. I'll give you a quick example. One of the companies that I'm associated with Vector Textiles. The logo that I'm using for Vector Textiles.
Speaker 3:That was a logo that was built by a high school rising senior and she had an interest in design and I said, well, give me some. I was, i was, i was eager to move from kind of an old site with old graphics and all that and to a new site and I said here's kind of the initial idea Go off and make me something. And she came back not only with the logo, which I don't know if everybody likes it. I like it. I think it's professional looking and she also did the brand guidelines relative to color. And this is from a 16 year old Right, and all I needed to do was give her that challenge and kind of try to tap into her Mentioned interest in graphic design. And it's a no risk situation for me, because if I hate it, then okay, but I gave her some work and I'm not I mean, i'm, i'm paying for it with my time, but I'm not writing a check for somebody that I hired or going out and hiring A marketing firm to do that. So I like that as an example of challenging kids, giving them work.
Speaker 3:And then I think the other point that I've seen over eight years is that They are a lot more kids. Kids today Are a lot more confident with things like just standing up and presenting. And when I try to think back, you do kind of like what the hell was I? like when I was seventeen? I would have never Got up in front of a room of adults and so well, let me tell you about the brand positioning of this. I wouldn't even know what the heck I was talking. I am much less having the courage to just stand up and talk like that, yeah, so so kind of Generational late do you think that's because of social media's influence?
Speaker 3:maybe Brian, i don't know. That that's a. That's a good question, a good observation. I really don't know, because Social media has been kind of the villain of the day right now and it's keeping us all from having actual interactions. But at the same time, i could, i could see some validity to that, because they're seeing other people so often Give talks like Ted talk. Yeah, i've got kids events and I want to have a Ted talk like whatever. I like you know. So I think that it's There's two sides of the coin there.
Speaker 2:Part of that is is yeah it's almost a sense of like false confidence, not in a way that is like arrogance or anything. I don't think that at all. I think that social media has trained us how to present to a camera so well. Yeah, it's taught us so much how to present to the Internet and these random people that I don't know and I don't have any conversation with. But when we get into a room, say like with an actual Ted talk, if you're giving a speech to someone, i think the disconnect can potentially be where they don't know how to act. When someone responds And I think that's.
Speaker 2:That's a pitfall that I could see from people who aren't necessarily physically socialized in the same space but are so well socialized on social media. They've been trained for this one way monologue Instead of a two way dialogue. And so when you're presenting, and suddenly you've been presenting to a camera for two years and the camera doesn't ask questions, the camera doesn't interrupt you, the camera doesn't have these, these different things going on. You can silence or ignore a comment section if you'd like, but then whenever you get into an actual room and someone says, well, hey, can you expound more on this? And they look at you like a deer in the headlights, you know.
Speaker 3:Or you look out to the group and five out of fifteen people are staring at their phones and you don't know what to do with that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and then that makes your confidence drop, makes your your ability to stay focused drop yeah, and so that's where I think that could be such a big potential risk there with.
Speaker 2:You know, the training from social media is great in the sense that it can teach you to look at the camera which is looking someone in the eyes. But it's not the same as looking someone in the eyes. You know, and so you're reading all these different face use, your different, different positions of your shoulders, your chest, your, your neck, your head, anything else like that. People are reading that in real time but you can present really well to a camera like I can look straight into it and I know I'm looking right at you if you're watching the video. But whenever you know there's an actual human being and they look off to the side and they have this little weird like I don't know what to do right now, then you get You're?
Speaker 4:you're working in a tech sector. It's notoriously known for like being more about tech skills or STEM skills and not as much about social. It's not like you're working with theater students, right, and so that may be something there, but what do you see the role of Really the soft skills In any sector, but especially for you You're looking at? This is a world where almost any job is going to need tech skills, even if you just work at target. You now have a device that you carry around and that device is you're either taking your scanning things, your reading spreadsheets, your you're looking through databases. No matter how fancy the UI is, the user interface, you're still having to understand things and kind of a technology way. How do you see the role of these soft skills and where do you see those being actually developed for people?
Speaker 3:So I want the record to show that I did not ask Chase to ask me this question, but because I'm I am a big, huge proponent of humanities, of traditional liberal arts education. In part I'm Tuding my own proverbial horn because I studied English literature and what the heck? how in the heck does that get you to technology career? right? but here's, here's my defense and here's my observation. You can go to school. You could go to school, like You know people in the 60s who were coders. They coded in something called Fortran, right? How many times do you use? the language has changed the technology at us.
Speaker 3:So I'm not. We need STEM classes and we need people majoring in engineering and computer science. So I'm not dishing that at all. However, if you get a really strong liberal arts education, really strong, based on the classes and your, your engagement with it, you're going to learn critical thinking. You're going to learn how to write, which I, i Okay, chat GPT is chat GPT, but you still need to write and articulate your positions on things. And you can't get that unless you've been writing papers or you analyze some poem, or you writing about history or whatever. That's just that is really hard to replicate. Now, here's the Here's the potential other side of this conversation is that, soft skills. We all talk about soft skills. Soft skills are really difficult to put on your resume, right? what the heck do you say? well, i, i'm. I really like people.
Speaker 2:People, person yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm a great leader, all that nonsense it's just sounds like probably do a right. So it's really hard to sell that on paper. People only get a sense of that when they meet you or talk to you in person. But it's absolutely critical for the success of you in any kind of career. You met some theater students earlier, but You can't get that if you just take an engineering classes and the people who the skills that are going to be, in my opinion, harder to replicate are the one are the soft skills. You can't. You can't read a book about emotional intelligence or whatever and just walk away. They get it. It takes thousands of hours and days of interaction and falling on your face and embarrassing yourself And you don't. You don't get that when you're learning computer science.
Speaker 3:So that's my I don't know two minute promotion for a traditional liberal arts education which, by the way, is very much under fire right now because you've got very, very, very high tuition rates and people are Understandably saying something the effect of hey, i'm not gonna pay $250,000 for little Jimmy to go to blah blah blah school and learn history. Where's that gonna get him? You know, so we're. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of things at play here. But for my money, somebody that knows critical thinking, knows how to position an idea and knows how to take Their opinions and and take themselves out of the discussion and keep it to a business discussion and do that in a way That promotes the idea and not themselves, that's golden. You can't, you can't, you. You just can't learn enough of that.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really great point there. And you know one of the things too, i think you know Liberal arts education, i think, has a great place if it's, if it's doing something that's truly contributing back to society. I know that nowadays we have such a diverse and I say that cautiously We have such a diverse offering of of majors. I don't, i don't think I could have ever in. You know, i graduated 2007 from college and I Don't think I could have gotten like a major in dragonfly dance studies or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I probably could now, you know Lynn Lynn's cap Analysis or something could be another great major in 2023, i think You know. So I think that, going back to your point, i think when liberal arts universities are doing their best to to see what society needs and then Addressing those issues through their programming, then by all means I think it's a great program. I think we may have gotten a little hijacked at some point along the way, but that's a whole different discussion.
Speaker 3:So it is. And you're right, brian, that's what I think I've seen over the last eight years of working with different groups of kids.
Speaker 3:I haven't seen, there isn't an arc for me that says, wow, the kids nowadays are just so much smarter than the kids eight years ago. However, i do feel like I'm seeing increasingly Kids that are a little bit more confident in their abilities, maybe sometimes to their, to a fault, but In general, the quality of the high school students. I just can't. I can't Play that song long enough. It just amazes me that I can get good work out of a 17 year old Which work that, by the way, i pay real money for With someone postgraduate out of college and I'm getting I'll add one other thing I'm I feel like I'm getting better at leading.
Speaker 4:That's a perspective that not a lot of people will, will mention that it it's could be as much about The student or or the employee as it is the leader, sure, and It sounds like you've spent time to understand and just understand them and their approach to be able to lead.
Speaker 4:This is, i think, relevant to Since we are on on a retail wire podcast that I keep thinking about retailers and there's a lot about Labor. It's hard to keep people. There's a lot of turn, a lot of turnover And often it's it seems like it's it is hard to to staff the retail stores, and so There could be a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3:There's a couple of a couple of things jump out to my mind. One is that very often you get kind of Average we'll just say average. Average leadership at store level and People are asked to do no job is demeaning, by the way. I mean, maybe that, maybe that, maybe that dates me personally. But you know, you get these jobs that Go do this and go do that and it's very rudimentary and it's very repeatable. What, what does that do? when you've got a repeatable, rudimentary task? Well, that leaves that task open. For what drumroll automation? right, you get a store, you get a store environment. Like Lows or Home Depot come immediately to my mind. Those people actually Have to know something, because when you're asking is most of the time you're asking for more than just tell me what aisle, the, the window cleaners on. They've got to give some guidance and interact with you in a way that that's not not Open in.
Speaker 3:In other retail environments like the old, the old department stores were department stores, kind of a dead segment right now, with With all the right reasons, but when they were in their prime you'd go into department store and people actually know something about the dress or the blouse or the suit or how to put an outfit together, or There was a, there was an interaction there that was exciting. And now you know, in our drive to take out costs, i think that Retail, many, many merchants, many retailers have lost track of the fact that it's not just a cost when you have somebody on the store Floor. It is could be somebody that can make the shopping experience that much more fulfilling for a Customer or a group of customers. And I don't see that. I shop as we all do. I shop a lot.
Speaker 3:I've been in retail technology for a big part of my career and I just don't see it. I see people that are poorly trained, who aren't taught to Look for people to help. They're just filling shelves Or they're just doing something that that is easily automated, and I think that's the death knoll for a lot of these positions. I mean the, the, the self-checkout, which is going to continue to to be seen in stores. The original business case for that was you're taking right, you're taking four lanes With four cashiers and now you're going to have four self-checkouts with one person looking over from. So you just took three people out of the equation. That was the business case, so it was about labor saving right.
Speaker 4:I recently went to a shoe store. I have two Contrasting experiences to share. One is I went to a shoe store and I was Asking to try on the shoes. They brought out my size. I tried them on And the person actually said you can get a better price on Amazon And I said no, i think I'll I actually. I looked it up on my phone and it was like $10 difference. I was like I think I'll buy it here. I've never seen that where they almost tried to not sell me It, that it to me. It shows There's something, something up with the leadership of that store.
Speaker 4:On the other hand, i went to a department store here in Arkansas called Dillard's and And it's a very old, like it is. It brought me back in time because it had the jewelry section. It had like, and there were actually a lot of people shopping there. I was really surprised how many people were at this department store. Well, i was looking for a shirt for the next conference and I was just really indecisive. There were so many brands and so many things.
Speaker 4:The guy who was in charge of the dress clothes area he came over and Looked at me. He looked at my neck and he was like, hmm, looks around a couple tables, grabs a shirt and said this one's your size. This, this brand, is really nice. There's this kind of unique. There's a unique button on the the for the cuff, and I bought it without trying it on. I put it, put it on when I got home and it was the perfect fit, perfect size, and it like fit my personality. That type of experience, like I wish I could have that everywhere. Yeah, and and and you don't so his.
Speaker 4:He was enthusiastic But he also wasn't in too involved. He just gave me the advice. He said this one, i think, this one a week, and then he walked off, but he was around in case I had questions, but he just right gave confidence and then gave me space. Um, it was. It was a great experience. There's a restaurant that gave me that same experience and I asked the the actual.
Speaker 4:The server said how do you seems like you know everything on this menu and she said yeah, the chef actually does. Once a month We do a full. I think it was like three or four hours of training And we're tested on. If we know the menu, we actually have to go and like watch them cook it. That that Leveled up the experience at the restaurant to a point where we could ask about any item And she was able to do the substitutions and she knew exactly which, how they cooked it. It's hard to do that without spending that time and putting that money into the training. I mean time is money, so if they're going out, we don't have time for it. Yeah, or maybe we don't want to spend the money on it.
Speaker 2:And the funny thing is that exact thing. It plays out so much whenever you're actually asking for that input, you're asking for someone's recommendation. You can always tell there's, there's this. Look, there's kind of this feeling that, uh, they give you back if they don't know, but they just they've tasted two or three items on the menu and they're like oh, my favorite is this, oh, that's the best. And then you hear them walk over that table and they say, oh, that's one of my, that's the best.
Speaker 2:And then they walk over to that table and they go Oh, that's my favorite, that's the best. No, you're just full of crap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what you need to do is You can actually do this immersive experience. Um, and the more your staff is trained, they can say look, you know well, do you like coffee? You like coffee flavor? Well, then you'll probably love the coffee rubbed tri-tip. You like this smoky, savory kind of thing? Then you'll want to try this. If you want this, you need this, and so then they can help build a custom experience for the person.
Speaker 2:Exactly what they did with that, with the, the shirt in your example, chase, is, they're looking at you, he, he, it seems like maybe was a little, you know, streamlined as far as that goes. But he was so on point with assessing Okay, here's the look that you came in with, like what you're wearing, what you're, the way your hair, the way your face, the way your everything is, and then made an assessment, and then, if he knew that, if he made a wrong assessment of you, you would probably let him know. But otherwise, you know, hey, here's what I would recommend. And he was able to jump in, offer a custom solution for you, and you said that's it, that's the one.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's where we there's so much opportunity, not only there, but I mean to to marks you know to tie it back to mark here with Learning, these, these mentoring opportunities and everything, having that personal interaction with people to usher them up into that next level of service of of taking care of people. You know, we say around here We're rehumanizing retail, here at retail wire, and it's that's. That's exactly the point, because at the end of the day it's still a person-to-person interaction, even if you do automate some tasks right, but in the end it's all still person-to-person.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. I mean, i think All these examples they're they're institutional questions, they're not just people questions, and if you have an institution like a restaurant or like an apartment store, that believes in the value of the interaction, then that's going to be a different shop experience than one that is just looking to take out costs?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. I had the exact same experience In my own upbringing. I used to work at Sonic and there was my manager there. We were the best. You know this is sound silly now as an adult, but we were the best Sonic within like a 250 mile radius and the reason was because of the way that our manager ran the shop.
Speaker 2:You have a sonic that has its standards across the board everywhere, but he took his standards and so you know, shout out to Jody, because he took every single one of us under his wing and he he could make sure that we were taught social skills. He made sure that we were taught. When you go out of this building, you're taking a small red tray with you. I don't care if you're delivering a ketchup packet Or if you're running to your car to grab your visor or anything else. You take a red tray with you and you do not re-enter this building unless you've picked up a piece of trash off our lot. If you have a hard time finding a piece of trash, keep walking. I promise you'll find one, because someone has littered. If you can't find some trash to pick up, You can straighten something up outside.
Speaker 2:There's always something to be done, and so when you train your brain to re-look for those opportunities, then that's where those customer service interactions become a part of, like you're saying, the institution.
Speaker 2:Right, it's part of the greater experience as that brand, and so people knew that they could come to the Fort Scott Sonic and have a totally different experience Than other sonics in the area because of the brand we personally had created there, and I think that's where you know I'm just going to call it out Macy's and everybody is kind of struggling right now. They've kind of let their brand get so deluded and I don't mean their actual MACY Apostrophe S, i mean the people who work there. The heart and soul of everyone and the customer interactions that they have Have gone completely away from caring for people. And so you know, i think that's where, mark, i'm just super excited to see That you have such a great passion for high school and college age kids, to to really bring them up in such a way. That is really a passion, is really ushering them into that next level of customer service. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3:Now I've really I've learned probably as much from the various kids as they've learned from me, and I don't try to be like you got to do it this way, but I've taken away a lot from it as well, brian, so I appreciate you noticing.
Speaker 2:Chase, do you have any kind of final thoughts on this one? I know we're kind of wrapping up right now, so Any any parting questions for you?
Speaker 4:We covered so much. This has been great, mark. I love hearing your experience. We didn't even get into all of your life, but you know. That, i think, speaks a lot about your character, that you are looking to empower others, and that's that's, that's your mission right now.
Speaker 3:I'm going to go off camera and cry on that point. No, i listen, guys. It's been a great, great. I've had a great time talking to both of you, and It's something that I do feel very strongly about. And it started out, by the way, as a strictly kind of Capitalistic endeavor. I could exploit what I could exploit, a hole in the system and Give them something. They could give me something, but it's evolved into something much bigger It really has. So, yeah, and I, like I said earlier in the show, i look forward, i'm already looking forward to next May. And what kind of kids am I going to get them?
Speaker 2:So if people want to connect with you more outside of here, i would imagine is LinkedIn Probably the best way to start with that, or is there another avenue they can use to reach you? What's? what's the best way to follow up with you, mark?
Speaker 3:The easiest way would be LinkedIn, and I'm really good at if someone tries to get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm good at that. I'm also good at ignoring the people who are obviously trying to sell me something that I don't want, whatnot. But I do look at LinkedIn and I use LinkedIn mail a lot. Also, I'm really not on Twitter or anything. I mean, I've got a Twitter handle. It's self-lead, but I don't know. LinkedIn is the best way for this audience. Just get to me on LinkedIn If you have any questions. if you want a phone conversation, set that up on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to get on a conversation and hopefully help out a little bit Be sure and include a note of how you heard about him. Yeah, yeah, re-sale wire.
Speaker 2:One thing that drives me bonkers is when people reach out and they're like looking forward to connecting. I don't know this person, i don't know anything about them. We might have one or two mutual connections, but be sure, if you do reach out to them, let them know you heard about them here on the RetailWire podcast and that you'd like to connect based on something you heard here. That will help warm that up a little bit for you.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that very much, brian. I like the ones that come on. You have a really impressive background. You're a very impressive person. I want to talk to you. You're like, come on really Whatever. I mean to bring this back to a kind of a very small positive authenticity. If it's authentic, then it's going to work In most cases, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, mark, i have a feeling there might be some people who listen to this and say they'd like to do something like this mentorship in their own industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I hope so. Thanks again.
Speaker 2:We'll have you on again here soon, Mark. We've got a lot of great opportunities coming up.
Speaker 3:I look forward to that You too have a great afternoon, and thanks again for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and thanks again to everyone who is listening here. We really appreciate you being on the podcast and checking this out here If you haven't already. Be sure, and hit that subscribe button because you want to make sure and not miss another single episode here on the RetailWire podcast. We've got more Meet the Brain Trust coming up. We have some really cool conversations coming up with other industry professionals, so there's going to be a lot of learning, a lot of information, and you're not going to want to miss it. So we will see you next time for another great episode here on the RetailWire podcast. Thank you.
