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Jason & Scot Show Episode 215 What to read during a pandemic

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A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 215 is a list of suggested resources to read for those looking to do some professional development in the commerce space. The Episode also features an interview with author Rishad Tobaccowala.

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Episode 215 is a list of suggested resources to read for those looking to do some professional development in the commerce space. The Episode also features an interview with author Rishad Tobaccowala. (all book links are amazon affiliate links)

This episode features an interview with Rishad Tobaccowala (@Rishad) Rishad’s is the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” published by Harper Collins. Additional writings can be found on the Re-Inventing blog. The interview starts at 15:50 of the podcast. Rishad also has an amazing photography feed on Instagram @RishadT.

Another book mentioned on this list is Remarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Digital Disruption – Stephen Dennis. Stephen is hosting a virtual book launch party (including @retailgeek and some e-commerce celebrities) on Tues April 14 at 4:15pm ET, that will include myself and some commerce guest stars. Pre-register here.

Here are some always updated resources:

Here are all the specific resources mentioned on todays show:

Personal Development

Startup / Entrepreneurship

E-Commerce / Retail / Case Studies

Movies

  • Glengarry Glenross
  • Boiler Room
  • The social network
  • Girlboss –  Based on Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso’s autobiography #Girlboss
  • Office Space
  • Startup.com

TV shows

  • Undercover Boss
  • Shark Tank
  • The Profit
  • SiliconValley
  • Halt & Catch Fire
  • Mr Selfridge
  • Succession
  • Mr Robot
  • Black Mirror

Non Conventional

Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.

Episode 215 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, April 8th, 2020.

Transcript

Transcript

Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 215 being recorded on Wednesday April 8th 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo.

Scot:
[0:39] A Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners first of all we hope everyone is saying safe and enjoying some time with your family as we all go through this battle with the
the Coronavirus
one of the unexpected trends that we’ve noticed about this fun pandemic self quarantining time is that folks are trying to carve out a little bit of time for professional development.
So we thought you know let’s do a show where we talk about some of our favorite books for kind of listeners and starting with kind of the.
You know the colonel of e-commerce and Retail where we spent a lot of our time but then also expand out a little bit and talk about more professional development type titles.
Sound good to you Jason.

Jason:
[1:23] Yeah that’s awesome but before we jump into the actual books I just want to get a couple things on record like I’m trying to ascertain how Millennial you are Scott are you a paper book guy or are you ebook / Kendall guy.

Scot:
[1:37] I am strange I guess so I like to read
fiction before I go to sleep because if I read like one of these books were going to recommend before I go to sleep I won’t go to sleep I get so fired up I know that’s probably strange but that’s how my brain works
so then so I use Kindle for my fiction reading in the evenings and then most of my nonfiction
before working from home full-time I commuted to an office and this is back in those days if you remember so I have about a good hour in the car
maybe a little bit longer and I would audible the nonfiction stuff out for some reason,
you know that that combination of being on a commute and having it being read really lands well for me and makes a little more engaging.

Jason:
[2:30] Yeah interesting so your moat so you’re very little Papyrus and your Kindle / audiobooks.

Scot:
[2:37] Correct yeah
are the reason is I’m I read a lot and I don’t know I’ve never been to your house but she came to my house I have like literally 20 but cases full book so there’s a practicality of you know my wife and I are both Avid readers and essentially
every square inch where we can put books as full so we had to switch to digital.

Jason:
[2:56] Yeah no I went through a similar Journey I’m in a condo and I imagine we have less storage space than you I say imagine but I know for a fact we have less storage space than you and.
Wait it just like I beloved I loved owning these books and I felt good about owning them but like.

[3:18] I just didn’t have the space and then when I travel all the time it’s actually annoying to carry books because if you’re going to finish one that means you have to bring to physical books with you and swept them around.
On this on the trip so I kind of have pivoted to only owning books digitally and I’ve actually started this.
Economically unhelpful habit what I like to do now is I buy the Kindle version and I buy the audible and for most of the books most of the business books that they have this great whisper SYNC feature where you can.
Toggle back and forth between the audio book and the Kindle version and it it keeps you synchronized to the place and,
what I’ve found that useful for is if it’s a book on listening to and there’s some super important Point that’s made in the in the audio version,
I like to stop the audio version crack open my iPad go to the Kindle and it’s already right what I just listened to and I can highlight that,
and then you know Kendall has this great feature where Aggregates all your highlights and notes so so it’s almost like I can do I can highlight text in the audio version of the book which is.
Kind of cool in handy.

Scot:
[4:33] Be cool if you had dyslexia do this where you could say have it read it and then pause it and have a highlight like an audio could you do a voice on voice highlight.

Jason:
[4:43] Not to my knowledge that would be a cool feature Alexa has good features for listening to audible books but I haven’t if there’s a marker highlight thing I have not experienced it yet.

Scot:
[4:55] Jeff if you’re listening please take that as a feature request thank you.

Jason:
[5:00] If he’s listening you know he’s listening so then.

Scot:
[5:01] Yeah I didn’t want to brag but.

Jason:
[5:04] Yeah I do I also want to address the elephant in the room before we get into the book list of books we were having this conversation offline a little bit.
Are books even relevant anymore like is it the like I feel like for a lot of my career books were super important and it was like you know their books that were.
Like really influenced how I did my job and things I learned and we’re super valuable.
Today like it doesn’t seem like the best source for for timely relevant information.

Scot:
[5:37] Yeah yeah into that and then you know attention spans I definitely feel it personally and I see it in my kids the social media has given us kind of these
this snack size kind of appetite for content right and it’s increasingly hard to just sit down and open up a three or four hundred page
book especially like a business book and then you know things are changing so fast.
It is hard to find those books they really stand the test of time so so yeah I agree and then you know so because of that we’ve actually thrown in a couple more
you know we probably call this a media show not just books because we have a couple kind of streaming TV shows and movies that maybe kind of
were interesting to certain folks that don’t want to sit down with a book be it audio or or paper or ebook.

Jason:
[6:28] Yeah and that is funny because I am.
You know I was thinking about the books I wanted to talk about in the show and we’re going to we’re going to go through a bunch of books I actually built a web page with a wider list of book recommendations and so I was like oh this will be my comprehensive list of all the books I’d recommend someone read.
And there are a bunch of books that are some of my all-time favorite books that I actually couldn’t bring myself to put on the list because while they were super important when they were written in 1990 or 2,000 or 2010.
You know I don’t think they did stand the test of time and so it was interesting to me like a lot of the books that were quote-unquote about retail I feel like retail has changed so much.
Heck retails changed so much from three months ago that I didn’t find that those books held up really well but there were a lot of my hall of fame books about like.
Customer psychology and those sorts of things which are Super relevant even though they might be 20 or 30 years old so it’s kind of interesting.

Scot:
[7:30] Yeah absolutely let’s jump into it.

Jason:
[7:33] Yeah let’s let’s do it so side note if anyone’s listening in the show on exercise equipment we will put a complete list of all the books in the show notes and I’ll put a link to the website I reference so
no need to try to take notes during the podcast and with that out of the way let’s jump in what are you reading right now.

Scot:
[7:53] Yeah I thought we’d kind of
cut them into categories and and since we are talking about you know personal development thought we’d start with that category
book I read a couple years ago and I just kind of stumbled on this because I started following his daily Paris group periscopes he does a daily kind of a coffee
kind of periscope it’s got out Adams the author of Dilbert.
So he’s a cartoonist you may think what does this guy have to do with anything well he’s probably the most,
educated cartoonist well I don’t know if cartoonist are educated but he has an MBA he’s an economist he’s got you know a lot of different things there he’s a trained hypnotist oddly enough so he wrote a book called.
How to fail at almost everything and still win big I wanted to start with that one because it has two big ideas that I found really interesting.
So these things you kind of already natural
naturally do maybe but it was cool the way he framed him and talked about him so the two big ideas from that book are this concept of using systems versus goals.

[9:01] And and
this is super helpful because you know he uses a kind of weight loss example where it’s easy to set you know it’s very easy to say hey I want to lose X pounds and then you fall off that pretty quickly because it go like that
is increasingly hard to get to if you get off track it’s easy to throw away that goal an example of a system would be you know I’m going to measure my calories every day and make sure I come out Nets X calories and exercise to get there
that’s going to be my daily system and if you can kind of commit to a system it’s a lot easier because you can build it into a day it’s easier to track,
and then sure enough you look up and boom you’ve achieved your goal be it weight loss or whatnot this one’s really important because.
You know I talk a lot to Young Folks at software companies and things and the question I get is like how do I organize my day and that’s kind of part of the system to is making sure that your so let’s say you’re just starting out in a sales career or something,
spend time prospecting spend time managing your pipe and build a system and then improve that system over time and before long,
got this really great system for managing your life so that’s a really good one Hill goes into a lot more details,
the second framework I really like in that book is this idea of continuing to your life to build your skill stack.

[10:21] I have a computer software background and knew nothing about Finance marketing I’ve never taken a,
ticket some econ classes but I’ve never taken like the classes you would take for a business degree or an MBA so but I’ve learned all that over the years and you know it’s part of my skill stack now
so that it’s this really interesting idea of thinking and visualizing right you want to improve your life and your career.
What can you add to your skills fact that you don’t have.
The third point in that book that’s really interesting is he talks about one of the biggest skills that you can add to that skill stack as persuasion.

[11:00] So Persuasions
pretty important so you know I’m an entrepreneur so on any given day I’m having to convince you know an investor to invest in my company an existing investor to invest more customer to do something an employee to do something recruiting an employee
every pretty much all my day is persuasion convincing this random guy to do a podcast with me those are just examples of you know
things that we’ve that use persuasion for so you know
as an entrepreneur I use it all the time but even if I know a lot of our listeners you know maybe you’re working in a larger company as kind of a what I would call an intrapreneur you’re kind of on the digital side of a large company well you actually have a bigger
persuasion mountain to climb than I do right because a lot of times you got to convince some dude in a store to give you credit for a sale or fill in a word or whatever it is
so
so I wanted to also fold in here that Scott Adams has two books on persuasion once called win big lie others called Loser think that’s more recent just came out this year.
And then so I strongly recommend does to and then he actually I like his approach this a little bit better than some other folks because it’s very practical and he gives you kind of you know,
tips that you can actually start to apply like how to pay somebody in these kinds of things but then once you’ve read that then I’m more technical approach is by this guy that’s considered the Godfather persuasion Robert child Nene.

[12:26] His two books are influence the psychology of persuasion and then he has a newer book called pre suasion a revolutionary way to influence and persuade.
What’s kind of mind-blowing about,
this is what you get your head around persuasion pre suasion is you can actually Prime people to be persuaded faster and easier so that’s kind of interesting there’s actually a step before where you can actually.
You get pretty good at persuading people you can get better at doing it quickly by using pre suasion,
so those are two that’s kind of a whole class there in that genre of persuasion and the Scott Adams is a really good introduction into this if people haven’t really read on it.
Read about it before.

Jason:
[13:10] Nice I love all of those and it’s funny persuasion I talked about a lot in presentations.
And there’s a funny backstory to to the book he was like he was a candidate for his cognitive psychology PhD when he wrote the book and he basically,
in his Studies have discovered that we are all hardwired with these cognitive biases.
And it dawned on him that evil marketers could use those cognitive biases against consumers and sort of persuade them to,
take actions and buy things that weren’t necessarily in their best interest so.
Supposedly he wrote the original influence thinking that like you know what have you made consumers aware of these cognitive biases they’d be less likely to be affected by them and so he had this altruistic goal of like informing people so they wouldn’t be,
manipulated and the book became a global international bestseller because every marketer in the world.
But the book has a manual to use to trick consumers into buying things.

[14:17] So I just love that story I’m a big fan of that category 2 and I actually am reading a new book that just came out last month that’s in the sort of.
Cognitive psychology space it’s called The Catalyst how to change anyone’s mind and it’s by an author I like Jonah Berger Joan has a professor at Ward and I think and,
he wrote a previous book called contagious and contagious was all about like what are the attributes that causes something to go viral and it became kind of a,
Bible in the social media space and so this new book,
is about how to actually convince someone to change their mind and like early in the book he makes the point that like you know most people’s inclination is to,
argue with people or debate with people which is an entirely unsuccessful way of getting someone to change their mind and so he.
He works across all these different Industries and he finds case studies with like.

[15:19] The FBI’s best hostage negotiator right and he makes the point that hey you think about this hostage negotiator and he’s got to convince.
Someone to do something that they absolutely don’t want to do that’s going to have a horrible outcome for them right so give yourself up,
and go to prison and so he talks about like the tactics that that negotiator uses and the approach they take,
the try to successfully you know have these like super high stress situations come to us more safe,
conclusion by getting the the criminal to change their mind and so it’s fascinating and there’s a bunch of sort of practical advice if you really want to change someone’s mind versus just,
feel good about arguing with someone it’s super helpful book so I think it’s a good tool to put in the marketing Arsenal.
My other recommendation in this category is a new book that just came out this year called restoring the soul of business staying human in the age of data and that’s written by Richard tabaka Walla and I think it was released this January.

Scot:
[16:29] Hey Jason you know Richard Wright.

Jason:
[16:31] As a matter of fact I do he’s a longtime former coworker of mine and I actually invited him on the show,
so without further ado,
please welcome to the show the former Chief growth officer publicists gentleman who was named by Time Magazine as one of the top five marketing innovators in the world and a guy who could get me fired with a single phone call,
Rishad tobacco Wawa.

Rishad:
[16:57] Thank you very much and I’m glad to be here.

Jason:
[16:59] We are thrilled to have you Rashad you know we did overlap at publicist and a fun fact I don’t know you had a much longer and more storied career their than I have had but I have an annual review every year and I always sit down with my boss,
and he asks what my career aspirations are and I say well my ultimate goal is to be Rishad.

Rishad:
[17:19] Well who are you are you have you lack imagination.

Jason:
[17:23] Yes I could see how that would be your perspective but my boss is perspective is that I should set more realistic goals.

Rishad:
[17:29] That’s great.

Jason:
[17:31] But all joking aside you you’re someone that has done almost every role in boob assist your,
super beloved and as you are stepping down from a full-time role at poobah says you’ve had this like I want to call it like a year-long victory tour where I feel like you visited every office and all your old friends and you just have this.
Never ending stream of Twitter photos of you with.
10 20 30 year friends that you you worked with that are now all the luminaries and leaders of our industry and it’s like I think it speaks really well to you this enormous network of people you.
You’ve cultivated that all these act in public like they love you.

Rishad:
[18:16] Yes it’s either that or I have to like two pictures over the years one of the two.

Jason:
[18:20] Exactly well I’ll let our listeners be the judge but I do want to get your book and talk about that but a tradition we have on the show is before we get into that we like to get a kind of brief.
Um synopsis of your career and how how you sort of develop the point of view that you shared in the book so can you share with our listeners your background.

Rishad:
[18:43] Sure absolutely so I grew up in India came to the United States after getting a degree in advanced mathematics to get an MBA at the University of Chicago.
And I started my career with a company called Leo Burnett which is that advertising agency.
And I thought I’d stay there for two to three years and 37 years later I was still there.
The last time my business card said Leo Burnett was sometime in 1994 which is about 25 years ago.
I worked in account service on big class like PNG.
And then moved into our direct marketing department and saw something called digital in 1994-1995 launch one of our first digital agencies.
Then helped launch Stockholm which is what about media companies.
And then we merge with another company eventually we got bought by publicist in 2002 which is about 18 years ago.
And over the years at Goldman says I helped build the case for some of our digital companies that we bought each digit SI cherries a fish and for the last five six years,
I served what was the direct wobblers sort of the board as both the chief strategist and the chief growth officer.

[20:03] At about two and a half years ago as Maurice Levy step down and he was the CEO.
And I’d work with more recent another gentleman coach actors who are 25 years.
I sort of said at some stage I need to do something different and once they were convinced that what I wanted to do was be a writer and speaker.
And I could still be related with the company we began a transition which is sort of that to are you talked about.
And I am still senior advisor to the group I still have an office my key card still works but I no longer am a full-time employee which means I have no clients to look after.
No boss and nobody working for me otherwise still connected in some way to the company and my focus really is writing this book which I began about three four years ago with Concept and thinking about it.
And the basic Trend was I was getting a little bit worried.

[21:02] That as the world was becoming more data-driven more digital more math driven.
That companies were making mistakes of becoming too left brain.
And I call that the spreadsheet will be coming spreadsheet driven companies and I believe that successful companies need to combine the spreadsheet which is obviously very important that the data.
But combine also that with the story which is the people that culture.
The values and and thinking about it over 3/4 years I began to realize that companies that combine the two,
what companies that actually did well and companies that tilted either two words the spreadsheet too much like let’s say a Wells Fargo you began to open Fake accounts or like Boeing ship the plane which wasn’t ready.
On the other hand if you watch was too much to the right you end up ended up with a company like we work which is all story but total bullshit at least from an economic perspective.

Jason:
[22:03] It’s a story just not a true story.

Rishad:
[22:05] It’s not a true story exactly so the whole idea is if it’s all story without a spreadsheet you have we work it’s lots of spreadsheet without a story you’ve got to Wells Fargo.
But you combine the two industry after industry companies that combine the two.
Not only are more successful in the near-term but their stock price does well and in every sort of stuff and it says compared your Southwest United Airlines or,
you know Pixar / Disney to a lot of other companies or Costco to the old Walmart and you began to see that.
This this basic belief that was all about that data and math was actually very short-sighted.
And in fact heard companies more than help companies and given that I was a digital Pioneer have an advanced degree in mathematics and people think I know the stuff I’m not anti math anti data anti digital anti anything.
And so that’s how I read what I wrote for book and surprisingly it appears that I wrote the book for a post covid-19 world so people said you know this was going to happen and I said no.
The book is as in fact it resonates even more today than it did two months ago.

Jason:
[23:21] That is awesome and it’s great that it’s even more topical I still have to imagine from your Publishers perspective it’s not optimal the launch a book when you like can’t fully go on a book tour right.

Rishad:
[23:33] Yeah well I was somewhat fortunate in the fact that because the book came out on January 28th in the United States and Feb 20th outside the United States and I had started sort of promoting the book.
Immediately unlike January 1 as soon as the holidays were over so I got to be on the road actually from Jan 1 to approximately March 7.
So I was had good eight nine ten weeks of doing so now we’ve somewhat slowed down but I have one particular advantage.
To really one is as you know Jason.
When I speak I speak without notes or slides or multimedia which basically makes me a very zoomable Sky possible.

[24:25] Speaker and so I’m still speaking which helps on the book tour without actually physically going anywhere.
But the second thing that helped you know to a great extent was the fact that my book actually.
Resonates with the times that six of the twelve chapters seems to have been written specifically for today’s world like I have a chapter on how you manage workforces.
When they’re not all together in one place have a chapter on how you lead when you’ve got tough times and so those two things which is my ability to basically speak without notes and the fact that people are very hungry,
in this including our chapter on when you’ve got time how to use it.
And also how to upgrade your mental operating system all of which what people are doing so it turned out to be.
I wish we weren’t in these circumstances but it’s turned out to be all right but I’m looking forward to going back into the work you know the world out there,
and and because I was writing about humans and not about an event in time the book doesn’t age so the fact that there’s a pause in the book tour doesn’t hurt because when it starts it won’t be.
Problematic.

Jason:
[25:42] Be dated at all when you.

Rishad:
[25:43] It won’t be dated at all if I could be more relevant on the other hand.
You know it’s not pleasant to see what we as a society are going through some writing a lot these days and I’m trying to think of the positive side of the troubles we are in.
And so the framing some stuff from my book I call this era which I think is so not the Great Recession that we occurred in 2008 2009 but I called this era that we’re about to enter the Great reinvention.
Because I truly believe that people are going to come out of this different than when they went in one because.
Nothing like this has happened before in my 40 years if I could most people’s lives and which is everybody in the world is affected all at the same time.
Which is rare the second is we all are effective for 60 to 90 days,
and habits change in 60 days so either you start or stop doing things in 60 days then when you restarted it’s very different and very you know unusual.
And so I do believe coming out of this people are going to be looking for safety they going to be looking for society they going to be looking for security it’s going to be a different world and so I’m thinking a lot about that these days.

Jason:
[27:01] Yeah I feel like another thing I saw you talk about when you were talking,
sort of coming in the book on social media that really resonated with me is hey everyone saying we’re working from home we aren’t really this is not work from home this is work under duress.

Rishad:
[27:18] Yes so the key is this is completely work under duress because you know we have three big challenges and that is everybody who’s listening to this so the first.
As long as you’re a human being I think you have these three challenges but it’s sort of differentiates a little bit on you know what your state in life is ETC.
The first one basically is we are extremely anxious about own health,
help us people our parents our kids our team members so you know you normally don’t work from home with this anxiety that people are dying in the thousands and you could,
get that if you go to the grocery store so that’s number one,
the second is you basically have this particular area of fear and the biggest fear that we have R2 and most of them are around economic,
which is will my job still exists because every day you see companies layoffs,
between 10 to 50 percent of furlough between 10 and 50 percent of the employees,
so that’s the second one in the third is uncertainty which is when will this end how will this end and nobody works from home under those circumstances where you basically have kids sitting in the house with you.
We shouldn’t be there worried about your health what about going to the grocery store water that your job will disappear.
Right there is not under any circumstances working from home is basically working under duress.

Jason:
[28:47] Yeah no I totally resonated it is funny like I like you travel a lot and so when I’m home I often do work out of my home office and free pandemic.
I would be super concerned about my family interrupting a work conference or something like that and I if it ever happened I’d be really embarrassed and one of the things that’s been kind of funny about our present circumstances is I have kind of a cute I won’t tell him this but but acute four and a half year old son
and now I almost create an opportunity for him to come in and interrupt every meeting because it’s almost expected and appreciated and.
Makes me feel it helps me like form a more personal bond with the people I’m interacting with.

Rishad:
[29:32] So I actually posted something that was it’s a real story and it happens to be the CEO of one of our very large clients.
His mate his name is Laxmi under a salon and he’s the CEO of record been Seeker or now known as RB.
Which happens to make products like Lysol.
His products actually are doing very well there Lysol and they’re like Trojans and apparently you know condom sales are going up in Lysol sales are going up.
And he basically there’s an interview with HIPAA The Wall Street Journal and literally the way it ends is his mother he’s living in London with his 79 year old mother,
and his mother comes in and says you have not taken the garbage so he stops his board meeting and takes the garbage out.

Jason:
[30:19] Yeah I love that the.
I did want to pick one bone I do have a small bone to pick with you though you you referenced earlier than no slides thing.

[30:31] And this is funny one of the reasons that I think of you frequently in my career is because but you do do a ton of,
client and public presentations in your you know very in demand public speaker and as you noted.
You never use slides I’ve watched you from the the wings a lot and it seems like,
you’ve jotted down you know the key bullet points that you want to discuss on a napkin or something and and you walk up there and had this really engaging conversation with the audience and it feels like.
There’s there’s less Detroit as between you and your audience and I feel like it really facilitates you,
um sort of having a bond with them and it feels more interactive and authentic which is all great,
I also do a lot of public speaking and I use a ridiculous amount of slide so a it always makes me feel bad about myself because I feel like.
I’m using a prop that you don’t need but but even worse than that,
I’m usually doing those slides at like 3 a.m. the night before the presentation and I’m thinking to myself
you know Richard went and had a nice dinner had a cocktail use the cocktail napkin to jot down his notes for the presentation tomorrow and got a good night’s sleep and I’m sitting here at 3 a.m.
You know trying to find the right image to put into a stupid PowerPoint deck so I.

Rishad:
[31:58] Difference the big difference is when I see your presentations I enjoy that and I say thank God I don’t have to do such amazing presentation.
Because the big difference is while you do have amazing slides you you use them as a backdrop but you speak without you know reading numbers from them or reading words from them,
you basically use them as sort of a prop but not as some kind of crutch so a lot of people use things as a crutch you don’t use it as a crutch use as a prop but the two reasons of the two or three reasons that I
don’t do the slides one is because it requires work.
Oh I just you know I’m down lazy but as importantly when you do slide somebody then says they want to see them and that requires like having a meeting to prepare the meeting which is a bit difficult.
But the most important reason and this you can’t do obviously because you share a lot of very valuable information which requires you to have those slides because when I look at your slides this isn’t just like a using slides because you,
using them because they actually add to the show but one of the reasons why I don’t use slides and why you actually don’t use them as much as you think you do.

[33:09] When you don’t use slides people play the slides in their head so when I’m speaking.
Actually there is a slideshow going on it’s sort of like a form of radio it’s like the theater of the imagination and what I began to realize is people think I’m speaking to all of them because they’re visualizing.
Their own slide where and that became what I found is very powerful which is not only if it was just that I’m going to save time and be lazy that doesn’t make a good presentation I’d get fired for doing that,
it’s because actually if you think hard enough about the audience and you customize it which is what I do.
People in the audience that actually played in their own minds I think you wrote everything just for them.

Jason:
[33:57] Yeah that’s awesome.

Scot:
[34:00] Jason speaks people close their eyes and envision the slides and sometimes they make kind of light snoring noises.

Rishad:
[34:08] Yeah but you know what happens is he has so many slides you gotta Clyde’s are so strange,
got to have a look at that because you’re seeing this big car wreck train wreck happening and you’re trying to figure out like how is this going to play out that’s what you’re going because you should see a slides they’re almost like.
It’s this almost like Van Gogh on drugs.

Scot:
[34:29] This is fun we get to team up on give Jason her time I like this.

Jason:
[34:34] In my defense and I feel like you gave me a nice compliment their Rishad which I really appreciate but the in my defense it is true like my sides tend to
images that support whatever story or point I’m trying to make as opposed to,
actually having the information on the slide and so the one thing I do dread is for your point like when a client or show organizers like hey can you send me your slides in advance or can you do and I’m like,
well I can but they would make no sense because they’re not the content like they’re not the story,
you know it’s like it’s kind of like asking to see the illustrations from a book without saying the words.

Rishad:
[35:14] Exactly exactly at that so that that’s out of the way it is and so what are the the you know the fun ways I try to sort of also redo.
Just like I thought of rethinking the presentation.
You should as you’ve read my book what’s unusual is I read mented the book without people without changing the format of the book so the,
it’s obviously available as a book at an audible at a Kindle and everything else but,
I sort of thought about that most nonfiction business books tend to only have one good chapter and then somebody just repeats and repeats and repeats,
and so I decided to write 12 different books instead of it being a book of essays is actually a theme and the theme is the story of the spreadsheet.
That’s I basically said I’ve written the first Spotify playlist of a book where you can basically read every chapter in any order.
And as a result people that Amazon are now asking the question how come they don’t have a shuffle mode on Kindle.

Scot:
[36:14] The other question you kind of outlined companies that are to Excel and opposite in the Spectrum do you have a case study of a company that kind of does a good blend between the two.

Rishad:
[36:29] Yeah so I would basically say that in every category I select having in almost every category I could name like one particular leader.
So in in the world.
So the film for me the leader always was Pixar because Pixar basically told amazing emotional stories using state-of-the-art technology.
I basically think about it pizza delivery it’s Domino’s,
right the improves their Pizza they basically read the very thought of themselves as a Distribution Company or logistics company that delivers pizza.
But they really want to own the entire category of pizza so they’re willing to give you a coupon for Domino’s anytime you buy any pizza so now if you go to a grocery store and you buy a pizza you have think about dominoes,
which is absolutely brilliant in Airlines at Southwest compare Southwest to United and I believe that the most.
For many years it was one of the most underrated technology companies don’t of course that was not underrated was Adobe so if you look at the decisions that adobe made in Adobe right now is the second most valuable Enterprise technology company after Microsoft.

[37:40] And so categoria and many see these leaders and I know some of these folks who lead these companies
they have these amazing people who combine the spreadsheet on the story and they and and and and often it is leadership that makes the difference if you think about Microsoft.
For 10 years its stock price went nowhere and Steve Ballmer yelled and screamed Windows Windows Windows.
Write it it stack ranking math machines and everything.
In such an ideologue basically came on he gave everybody the spoke growth mindset he talked about basically a becoming a learning organization versus a know-it-all organization,
you focus basically on business primarily,
right and productivity he got out of a lot of the consumer business with the exception of Xbox and and in effect,
and he got rid of the windows Division and the stock price went up fourfold in 3 or 4 years.
And he’s a much more Humane boss with a company that is much more people oriented.
But on the other hand it’s results are better than anybody’s.
And so you know whenever anybody tells me they make decisions with numbers I tell them two things one is you are not human being because humans select with their hearts they use numbers to justify what they just did,
and if you work in marketing and tell me you make all the decisions with numbers are in the wrong World on the other hand if you do make all your decisions with numbers and let’s see working in the world of.

[39:10] Finans sooner or later you’re not going to have a job because AI does a much better job with numbers and computers do a much better job with numbers than human beings so anytime you make it
you saying it’s all about data or All About Numbers my stuff is don’t be silly and for most companies do with the exception of a few like an Amazon a Google or Facebook and a few others.
Data is very important but I sort of defined data is electricity.
Which is it’s so important that you can’t work in the future without electricity but on the same hand almost no company differentiates Itself by through its use of electricity I don’t see a company saying I use electricity better because I’m better.
Different better and so there’s this confusion and that was one of the reasons I wrote this book but it’s it’s kind of remarkable because it’s you know I found that.

[40:00] Because the focus is it still help people think see and feel differently about how to grow themselves their teams and their company,
that it is resonating with all kinds of people CEO CFO CMOS young people because part of it is it’s training on how to think,
and we have forgotten how to do that so big part of this book really is a,
you have amazing potential and I call everybody a leader but here are some things that people may have never taught you and you may want to think about and that’s probably why I think people should read the book,
which is it will make you more productive as a CFO of a company just bought 300 copies for every employee in his company and I said you’re a CFO what you buying this book called the purpose of business and all of that,
he said when I read it and two of The Twelve chapters maybe five percent more productive I decided therefore,
that each of my employees will become 10 thousand dollars more productive so what the hell your book will be cause 20 bucks by.

Jason:
[40:58] Yeah and that absolutely is one of the things I love about the book as I feel like in my day-to-day life,
my colleagues and my clients get like really focused on The Shining baubles right like everything’s about the new marketing tactic or the new ad unit or the new e-commerce platform or whatever the widget is and it.
In the long run it feels like all of those things.
Are only 10% of the business problem and the other ninety percent of the business problem is the people behind those tools and how they work together and how they collaborate and.
Um and I feel like your book is a lot of super practical advice about improving the 90%.

Rishad:
[41:40] Yes and explains what and how to frame the 10% and because I know that 10% so well I can talk about framing that 10% and then focusing on the 90 because I truly believe there are only two ways to change a company.
And that is to basically either change the people or upgrade the people mind sense right everything else is a press release.
And we don’t play enough attention to that so this basically says a year so you pay attention which is if you get upgrade the ninety percent of the people,
how they work the talent the skill sets the company will do better it’s not different than you know world class sports teams usually world class sports teams have a disproportionate share of talent,
and then they have a coach that make sure that they work together and not at counter purposes and they win.

Jason:
[42:29] Yeah the that is terrific on the flip side though I feel like one of the challenges with your book is because it has these twelve chapters and there,
they’re sort of very varied in topic it’s your book is really annoying to summarize.

Rishad:
[42:45] Yes that and that’s part of the the two parts of the book that is sort of annoying which is what it’s as hard to summarize the way I’ve basically summarized it is it help you think see and feel differently about it to grow yourself your company and your team which is number one,
and number two I would basically say is it basically says that for to succeed you have to come by.
Everything you know about the left brain part of you which is the spreadsheet out of you and combine it with the story part,
add depending on the situation that combination can be 75 30 25 or 25 75 or 50/50 it’s never hundred zero.

Jason:
[43:26] Yeah.
So Rishad apologize we are coming up on time but I do want to let our audience know about one other important Rishad fact.
And that is that,
in addition to being a great business leader and now author you are very accomplished photographer and it seems like you you use your opportunity to travel all over the world to capture these,
amazing landscape and Architectural photography wherever you go.

Rishad:
[44:01] Yes it’s one of the key things which is you know in fact I mention it there’s a chapter in my book on how to use Stein.
And you know one of the key things is I look at photography as a way to see the world differently but also to remember that it’s passing Us by.
Which is one of the reasons the opening line of my book is time is the only thing we have,
and these days we now truly recognize that time is the only thing we have whether we have too much of it or we are worried that we will die and have too little of it.

Jason:
[44:33] Yeah I feel like in a pandemic there’s two kinds of people there’s working parents that have none of it and then there’s there’s empty-nesters are people without children that like suddenly have discovered some more of it.

Rishad:
[44:45] Absolutely absurd.

Jason:
[44:47] Rishad speaking of time we have sort of ran out of it but I’m thrilled you are able to drive by and I can’t wait for this pandemic to be over so you can get back on the road and you can update your Instagram feed.

Rishad:
[45:00] Absolutely but thank you again thank you for your audience and thanks to both of you all bye.

Scot:
[45:04] Thanks for Sean unfortunately I have not read your book but it is on my list and coming soon.
So the next category that I wanted to jump into is what I would call start-up entrepreneurial books and again you know this is for my entrepreneur buddies out there most impressive read them but if your intro
preneur I think there’s a lot you can pick up from these so I want to start with some of the classics so one of my favorites and I go back to this one probably once every two years just to kind of.
Remind myself of some of the concepts is good to Great by Jim Collins,
he’s kind of a recluse and he was just recently did a little PR tour so there’s some podcast he did one with see you do it with
Tim Ferriss and they do Joe Rogan no I don’t think he did but he did a couple podcast that were were just outstanding he has a little addendum to the book called turning the flywheel where he talks about evidently apparently,
he helped to Amazon deliver develop the flywheel that we all talked about all the time and he has a lot of really other interesting examples of flywheels in that little short book.

[46:14] This one actually spoke in the same conference with him recently and unfortunately he has passed away in the last year and this is the innovators dilemma by Clay Christensen
this one for the longest time I couldn’t understand the early days of e-commerce why big companies were acting the way they were like it was so clear to me that this was going to be the thing and they’re like yeah we’re just going to Outsource this whole thing and it’s going to be a small part of our business and I’m just like.

[46:38] Wanting to shake them and say my God can’t you see this is going to be the future and I didn’t understand of have a way to put that into you know understanding why these big companies were so hard to move and then the innovators dilemma came out and I was like
this guy totally nailed it he totally just makes a lot of sense now to me
another classic one and again for for someone like me that starts these new products and has to figure out all right why isn’t this getting the adoption I want it to how do I how do I.

[47:07] Get up that curve is called crossing the chasm and that’s a really good one for any
any kind of a start-up any new product that you have out there it’s got a lot of kind of great ideas for every every adoption curve has this dip in it how do you get across that tip that’s the chasm.

[47:25] I think that’s Jeffrey Morris all right yep
and then so those are kind of what are called Old chestnuts so totally stand the test of time you can pick them up today and they’re so extremely relevant some of the more modern ones there’s one called 0 to 1 by Peter teal
this was interesting because people have a kind of a binary reaction to it I just got a funny it says it’s called zero to one you know most startup people don’t like it
but then I found a lot of kind of more General business people love it so that’s interesting I’d be interested to hear how readers react to it what am I
one of my challenges has been there’s not a lot of books for startups when you get past like a hundred people there’s tons of books for how do you find product Market fit and like the early days of the startup but there’s
you’re having historically been a lot of what do you do when you get to kind of like 10 million and a hundred people how do you get 200 million or a billion and this is where probably my most,
my most favorite modern book by Ben Horowitz is called the hard thing about hard things and it’s with the first books I found we’re actually kind of
explains all the stuff of how you’re going to feel problems are going to hit when you get to like them employee number 200 and all the things you need to do to push through that so that’s one of my favorites.

[48:43] Speaking of that earlier stage you know I think I’ve practiced that this,
got put into writing as Lean Startup so how do you how do you get something out and get feedback faster that’s pretty much a staple because agile software development is worked its way into
all aspects of companies now but at the time it was kind of a weird thing to Think Through.
Um it spiffy we have to implement a lot of processes and procedures more so than I’ve ever had to do in any other company so there’s a book They’re called the checklist Manifesto that I found
absolutely helpful
and then Ben Horowitz just recently came out with a new book that’s kind of moron company culture which is really good what you do is who you are and then one of the last ones in actually want to add another one.

[49:29] Is Think Like Amazon we had John Rossman actually on the podcast and I go back to that,
there’s a lot of cool Amazon isms in there that I’m using on a daily basis like this concept of a two-way door of if we make a decision let’s be able to get out of it,
and I found that a really useful framework there’s like 10 or 20 of these in that book for me that are really helpful to help explain to someone
why we’re doing what we’re doing and why would you why would you try this if we just have a plan for I’m doing it well here’s why we don’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of that door for example
the other one is Extreme ownership I’m doing this from memory and this is by Jocko will will Nick
ex-navy seal my partner is 50 is an army guy and you know when I first read this at kind of it’s all about you know being a Navy SEAL and going out and killing people your kind of like well what’s that have to do with business,
and but you know increasingly especially in these times when it does feel like we’re under Fire,
I found that a lot of the concepts and that one are really really good and he has a great podcast to Listen to If you want to get super fired up and like
where if you’re having a down day and you want to watch some of his YouTube stuff that’s really really good content to kind of get you out of a little bit of a funk or depression.
How about you Jason.

Jason:
[50:56] I think he’s got some Jocko has a couple extremely highly regarded appearances on the Tim Ferriss podcast as well.

Scot:
[51:05] Yeah yeah absolutely and he’s on Joe Rogan all the time as well.

Jason:
[51:09] And then for listeners that are following the John Rossman was on episode 181 talking about things like Amazon.
Yeah so that’s an awesome list I am reading another book that I would kind of put in this category.
The came out this January called future is faster than you think and it’s by this guy don’t.
Knew nothing about Peter diamandis and I don’t know if I’m pronouncing his name properly but this is a topic that you and I talked about a lot it’s this this concept of exponential growth.
And how everything particularly in technology is getting adopted at a much faster rate than ever before and so it’s kind of.
A framework for thinking about how.
How to operate in a world in which the future is coming at you faster than ever before and so you know it’s like as we’re doing this podcast Disney plus just got its 50 millionth subscriber right and.
Five years ago it took Netflix much longer to get 50 million subscribers and you know way before that it took HBO much longer to get 50 million subscribers so,
just kind of a interesting helpful book to sort of help you think about running a business in a in an accelerated world that’s growing at an exponential rate.

Scot:
[52:37] He said one of the founders of Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil they’re biffle’s.

Jason:
[52:43] Yeah hence the his hands his love of exponential growth.

Scot:
[52:47] Yes absolutely it’s kind of interesting because I you’ve seen me talk about
this tonight I lead with that example A lot of times of exponential growth and how we’re not used to it it’s really interesting in this world of viral contagions that there is a bunch of people that just can’t get their head around exponential growth.
They’re like you know well .01% what does it matter you’re like well you know if you keep moving the decimal every other day that’s a pretty quickly.

Jason:
[53:16] Yeah I think unfortunately a lot of people are learning about exponential growth in the context of the pandemic right now.

Scot:
[53:22] Yes yeah the the hard way cool anything else on the general books Journal business set.

Jason:
[53:30] No I have a longer list again I’ll put on the on the web page but that you know that I think that’s a great great list for now.

Scot:
[53:39] Cool so then the third category we wanted to talk about is what I would call kind of e-commerce retail digital retail
payments and that kind of thing
this category I found the ones that hold the better test of time for me and our little more engaging or when I would call business biographies
so one of my favorite in the world of retail is Sam Walton made in America this one’s hard to find because it’s out of print so you have to buy it kind of used but it’s really good it’s got a lot of great stories about how
CM would just fire around America and you know be over some City and be like we’re going to put the Walmart there anyways in this little.

[54:19] Kind of I don’t know what kind of plane it was but and then you know sure enough they would build a Walmart there so that’s a really good one talks about you know
the whole concept of Walmart and how I scaled it up that’s pretty amazing in that same genre Ken langone who started one of the founders of Home Depot he has a book called I love capitalism that’s kind of his life story and it talks about.
How you used to work for a hardware store and there could be a better way and did the big box thing and it’s really really a good history of retail and you know,
just like Sam he’s had a very rich kind of post Home Depot business life also
and then as we get into the world of e-commerce the perfect store which is,
about eBay from Adam Cohen that was a bit old but still holds up pretty good I think the eBay story is really interesting from a Marketplace perspective
the good Google case studies called in the Plex the Facebook one that I recommend is called the Facebook effect,
it’s not a salacious as a lot of the other Facebook ones it really talks more about you know the iterative way they built Facebook.

[55:27] The best kind of the go to Amazon book is called the everything store,
my good friend Brad Stone you can actually find my name in that book if you want to go little spelunking there,
and then a bird to little bird told me Brad’s working on maybe either updates that book or a new book so I’ll be kind of watching for that so much happens with Amazon your,
but of course regular listeners know we spend half our time talking about all the new stuff coming on Amazon that it’s hard for him to keep that up and then
Doug Stevens who is speaks it a lot of the events we go to has a really good book in the world called in the world of retail called re-engineering retail that,
I think is interesting and kind of talks more about experiential kind of retail and a lot of the topics you talk about Jason.

Jason:
[56:16] Yeah yeah for sure all good ones the it’s funny I read a ton of business biographies,
and I love reading them I do feel like some of them have these like.
Pearls that are Evergreen and some of them are like super interesting at the time but I’m not quite sure have as much legs.

[56:40] So you know it is a little interesting but you know other business biographies that I’ve read recently you know not too long ago we had weary and Gracia on from the billion-dollar brand Club,
um which is cool because it’s talking about a lot of direct-to-consumer biographies many of those stories are not completely done yet so it feels like,
work in progress,
um another book that sort of loosely a business biography also on Amazon is Amazon for CMOS which is by Kiri Masters,
I’m sorry like that but the book I’m reading right now in this category of.

[57:23] Kind of like specific retail advice is called remarkable retail how to win and keep customers in the age of digital disruption,
and that’s by another guy in our sort of speaker and social media ecosystem Steve Dennis and he’s a longtime executive JCPenney and then later Neiman Marcus,
and so I’ve read the book but it actually doesn’t launch until next week so it’s why it’s releasing on April 14th,
and because the pandemic he can’t go on a book tour so he’s having a virtual book launch,
on on April 14th at like 4:15 in the evening so if you happen to be listening in this episode before Tuesday I’ll put a link in the show if you want to join the virtual book launch,
and I will be participating and having a conversation and there’s going to be several other,
surprised e-commerce guest stars so it might be a fun way to hang out on Tuesday afternoon if you’re available.

Scot:
[58:27] Very cool I’ve never seen the virtual book launch so it’s going to be exciting to see how that goes down I’m look forward to seeing how he signs books across Zoom.

Jason:
[58:35] Exactly.

Scot:
[58:37] It’s going to be some way.

Jason:
[58:39] Yeah I’m leaving that testy.

Scot:
[58:43] And then for those folks that do not want or need if you’ve read all these books already or you’re not into books that’s not your thing this category is kind of multimedia so shows movies streaming anything in that kind of category
one of my
kind of all time classic business movies is Glengarry Glen Ross you can’t work with a sales team unless you’ve watched this in this is where all these kind of chestnuts of
ABC always be closing coffee sir closer closers there’s a lot of kind of sales people language that comes out of this movie and it really kind of.
Catcher some does a good job of
you know articulating to people that aren’t in sales what it’s the pressure of being a salesperson can feel like and of course it’s Amplified like
like nothing else in the stakes are much higher than in reality but it’s pretty interesting how they do that another fun one is Boiler Room same kind of a thing Wall Street you got to put that in there,
classic Michael Douglas Wall Street The Social Network.
That’s a really good one to kind of see a dramatization of how Facebook was created at the music and that is exceptional
this is one that I find a lot of people haven’t seen it’s called girl boss and it’s on Netflix it’s a Netflix original.
It tells the story of how a retailer Jason you got to help me out with her name Sophia Amorosa Zurich.

Jason:
[1:00:07] That sounds right to me yes.

Scot:
[1:00:08] Yeah okay so she started this this apparel e-commerce site called Nasty Gal and fun fact it actually started out as an eBay
so she started as an eBay seller this is really cool because it kind of shows this and I’m really super familiar with this life cycle because,
it might company started a channel advisor we have like thousands of customers like this where you know it started out as she she wanted to
make money to go buy something so she started
collecting vintage stuff finding it and selling it and then suddenly you know you look up and your apartments full of boxes in your you got a seven-figure eBay business and then she kind of graduated out of that into a retail facility and so
that did a really good job kind of showing that lifecycle that that’s really common for a lot of how a lot of e-commerce businesses are born
you have to watch office space that’s kind of a classic comedy around kind of what life in the office is like Jason is a consultant I feel like you.
You live that every day effectively and then another good one is start up.com.

[1:01:15] This is kind of a documentary about these guys that started a company and its classic because a lot of times you see this sad situation where these
these Founders will get together they’ve never really met each other and then they spend like the next two years just excruciating Lee arguing with each other and ending up with zero so so this this one kind of covers a situation like that and it’s a good
warning of if you’re going to start a company pick your Founders a little bit
carefully and then make sure you have those tough decisions early versus at the very tail end of the whole thing.
On TV shows I really enjoy Undercover Boss that’s kind of a cool way to see it’s so it’s a little staged and.

[1:01:58] More than three or four of them kind of get old but you know if there’s a certain business you want to kind of learn more about it’s a good way to do that shark tank is a lot of fun to watch with the family and kind of guests you know it’s a fun thing to see you know hey would you invest in that company and what do you think their evaluation should be
um another really good one is the profit this is on CNBC and this guy you know I was going to name wrongly.

Jason:
[1:02:20] Marcus Lemonis.

Scot:
[1:02:22] Leah notice he owns Kemper world you probably got better idea.
And all pretty much most the Sporting Goods things except for Dick’s right.

Jason:
[1:02:34] He’s acquired a number of them recently in bankruptcies so again.

Scot:
[1:02:39] Martin’s Gander Mountain yep.

Jason:
[1:02:43] There may be more available in the near future.

Scot:
[1:02:44] Yeah so a lot of his a lot on the profit you know there’s a good diversity of companies he goes in and turns around but there is a fair amount of retail there they’re not big box they’re usually kind of local retailers,
how about you Jason and he anything in the multimedia category.

Jason:
[1:03:02] Yeah so you know.
I like to watch a binge watch shows while I worked out and we’ve all had a little more time to exercise lately so I’ve caught up on a bunch of stuff that was in my backlog,
um so I just recently finished the last season of Silicon Valley and,
to me that’s super important because I don’t know if anyone knows this but it’s Loosely based on get spiffy.

Scot:
[1:03:28] Let’s hope not.

Jason:
[1:03:30] So except Smith is going to end better but but the characters,
the characters are very very similar so that super funny and a great parody of Silicon Valley there’s a much less popular show that I really enjoyed the AMC made called Halt and Catch Fire,
which is kind of a dramatized documentary of like the.
Early eighties birth of the PC Atari kind of.
Yura and it’s pretty fun and mostly historically accurate which is cool.
Another one that folks tend to have not heard of but for retailers I think is a great one is called mr. selfridges.
And so this is the BBC show that was done about three years ago and it stars Jeremy Pivens,
as this iconic retailer Gordon suffrage who.

[1:04:31] Was a senior executive for Marshall Fields here in the US moved to London and open their first,
um department store called selfridges and a lot of the,
the retail best practices that we still use today and a lot of the slogans you here in the retail industry all came came from him so things like the customer’s always right for example are,
is one of his quotes and he led a very interesting colorful life so there’s a good soap opera quantit quality to the storytelling so that’s a I think that was a couple Seasons that BBC did.
I also recently caught up on succession which is excellent and I imagined,
plays out in the Wingo family when they’re talking about the spiffy Empire so,
highly recommend everyone watch that feel like you got to watch mr. robot so that you know not to store any of your secrets on anything digital.
And then I love Black Mirror which is kind of a.
BBC remake of Twilight Zone and it’s all these stories from the near future and I use quips from the show all the time at work because they’re all these,
sort of scary probably realistic projection of like what our life is going to be like in five years that that’s.

[1:06:01] When they when they paint the picture it’s kind of concerning.

Scot:
[1:06:06] Very cool yeah I love Blattner do you like the last season had the automated pizza delivery van that was kind of cool.

Jason:
[1:06:14] Yeah there it’s funny all these shows are starting to work these like near real-time things and I also I’m watching Westworld right now and they just had like in the last episode this week like,
like in the background while two characters are talking you see like for SpaceX rocket so I gland.

Scot:
[1:06:33] Yeah yeah this call is on those funny
cool in the last category is what I would call non-conventional you know areas to go to learn interesting things one thing that I find is underutilized by a lot of folks is
there’s all these public companies in our category and if you’re interested in any company that’s public
part of being public as they have to disclose tons of stuff so one of my favorite documents to read is the S once when a company is about to go public if I was this document with SEC called Ness one and it’s this
it’s called a poop sandwich so it’s kind of got it’s really weird thing having done this you have to kind of say you know
our company is terrible you probably shouldn’t invest and then you say well here’s why we think it actually is okay and then you like you and you’re like
but there’s all these risk factors and we’re pretty sure it’s not going to work out so you have to kind of find that meet in the middle which is the really good stuff we’re management actually describes the business in their own words
I’m just called the management disclosure and
mm DNA and I don’t know I’ve got that but just look for management discussion and so that’s really really a cool way of reading things so you know kind of thinking about our audience
the Stitch fix one had this really interesting description about cohorts of customers and how they applied a i to those chewy had a really interesting one around how their subscription business work Casper to had this really.

[1:08:01] Really well-thought-out discussion of CAC versus LTV It’s oddly some of the best business writing you’ll find in for modern companies kind of buried inside of there so I know that’s a weird hobby but that’s I really like to read those
then if there is a business that you find fascinating like I’m obviously a bit obsessed with Amazon I listen to all their conference calls read there
quarterly reports and those kinds of things other ones in the industry I would recommend eBay Shopify has some really interesting kind of conversations on there’s one line that was kind of top of mind this week.

[1:08:38] On the furniture side is Wayfarer so they’ve kind of they saw sales spiked like 30 or 40 percent due to this quarantine so I’m going to be interested to hear what they have to say,
Etsy has seen an increase as people have been cocooning or nesting,
Ali Baba’s always interesting if you’re interested in the China side of things and then every public company has an investor relations site and on their they typically have their latest presentation they give to analysts and that’s another really interesting,
way of seeing how these companies talk about themselves you’ll get a lot of really good presentation ideas because these companies.
If you go look at Facebook’s or anything they’ve probably spent humility Philippe $300,000 on the graphics in this one deck so so you can kind of crib some good,
deck Graphics if you will from looking at some of these really high-end investor relations Decks that are out there so I like to poke around on that stuff as well.

Jason:
[1:09:33] Yeah that’s awesome you actually turned me on to a related resource when these companies are doing IPOs after they file the s-1 they go on this road show too.
Sort of turned up investors and a video of a lot of the road shows is at least temporarily available in a lot of cases right.

Scot:
[1:09:54] Yeah there’s a site that no one really knows about called retail road trip and they’re they’re up there for a very short period of time which is frustrating because it’d be fun to go back and look at like you know the Amazon Roadshow or something
but they are really really good so you know see one of my favorites Riesling was the Uber and Lyft one’s really good.
Yeah they’re they’re the Stitch fix one was excellent,
so that’s another really good kind of a area to go and you have to kind of unfortunately get to go kind of like log in if you especially if you know a companies going public you can kind of see when it’s coming
with this economy we’re in right now there’s not going to be eating probably for six months but,
keep it in the back of your mind if you hear Aaron B is going to go public Airbnb or whatever you can go and watch that as well.

Jason:
[1:10:46] Yeah and then sort of a special case of the investor conference calls a number of these companies put out annual shareholder letters and of course.
The the Amazon one is particularly famous and like that’s one of the things I always look forward to every year is the new,
Amazon shareholder letter and the all-time classic is the 1997 version of the shareholder letter and it’s so classic that he reprinted in every new show at the end of every new shareholder letter.
And then like on the.
I don’t know if I’d say opposite end of the spectrum that another shareholder letter that’s like slightly less retail e is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway,
shareholder letter always has a ton of interesting Insight in it and you know side note people forget but that warm Warren is a very big retailer that owns a bunch of retail in that portfolio so.
So it tends to be retail relevant.

[1:11:45] Awesome so that is a plethora of resources for anyone that’s looking to consume some new information and again like I’m going to try to put a superset of this on the website and I’ll put some links in there,
to sort of like the all-time classic list of books and putting on the books we have here and in the show notes will try to put a list of everything we talked about on the show,
but we’ve ended up using up a little bit more than our allotted time so we should probably wreck this up as always if you enjoyed the show we sure would appreciate a review on,
iTunes and if we miss some resources that we should include definitely hit us up on Twitter Facebook we’d love to add to the list and what are some new things that Scott on I should read.

Scot:
[1:12:31] Thanks everyone hope you enjoyed this list of books and other media on how to improve your your situation while yourself quarantining and until next time.

Jason:
[1:12:45] Happy commercing.

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