February 21, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode, Michael talks with Joshua Lee Chinn, Procurement Manager at Spotify, about the arc of his career, and the journey from education to the corporate world. We discuss his early career out of business school in consulting, and his eventual landing in procurement.
You can learn more about Josh at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlchinn/ or https://www.joshlchinn.com/
Visit CareerContrastPod.com for more information. Want to tell your story? Contact us at Careercontrast@gmail.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Lane Smith (00:12):
This is Career Contrast, and I'm your
host, michael Lane-Smith.
As a career recruiter, I'mfascinated by the variety of job
paths or careers that peoplecommit to, and Career Contrast
is all about work, how peoplework, the state of work, and in
each episode, we'll explorequestions that provide insight
into the problems people solvein their jobs every day.
Ultimately, I hope to capturethe experience of an
(00:33):
informational interview from theperspective of a talent expert.
Joining me today is Josh Chin.
Welcome, josh.
Hey Mike, how are you doing?
Doing well, man, it's good tosee you.
I'd love to start with, did youhave a dream job as a child?
What did you want to be whenyou grew up?
Josh Chinn (00:50):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know if I ever had likea dream job that's, you know,
was really realistic, like Ithink.
You know, if you ask a fiveyear old, I wanted to be a
baseball player and I don'tthink that was going to happen.
Um, and so, yeah, I I thinkthere are a lot of interesting
careers, but I don't know if Ihad, you know, one that I was
(01:10):
like I really want to be thiswhen I grow up professional
baseball player edgar martinez,number two.
Yeah, you know it'd be, uh, it'dbe cool too.
But you know I, I think onceyou hit eight years old or 10
years old or whatever, that youknow, and kids start growing
like, okay, this is probably notrealistic.
Yeah, but you still playsoftball, you're still a runner,
(01:31):
I still play softball.
I still play hardball too,baseball.
Oh there you go?
Michael Lane Smith (01:35):
And when you went to college, what did you
study?
What was your career track andor, I guess, educational track?
Josh Chinn (01:50):
And did you kind of have an idea about what that
would look like as you got intoit?
So I got into the businessschool at the University of
Washington directly as aincoming freshman.
And I was in that because inhigh school I took a business
class called DECA and I'm sureyou know a lot of different high
schools have business classeslike that in a kind of exposed
to me the basics of business.
Right, You've got profit andyou've got or I guess you've got
(02:11):
revenue and you've got expenses.
Here's how a company spendsmoney, as well as financial
basics of like.
Here's how you save money,here's how interest works,
here's how compounding works,here's how debt works and a lot
of things like that.
And I was like, okay, that seemspretty interesting.
(02:32):
I feel like you know, just ingeneral, that's a pretty broad
career field and one that seemslike it would be probably useful
and beneficial down the road.
And so I checked a little boxon my application saying I would
like to be considered for thebusiness school and for, um, uh,
for my uh, college application.
And then I got directlyadmitted.
So I ended up going touniversity of Washington, um, uh
, and studied business there.
Michael Lane Smith (02:53):
Yeah, and as I understand it, you can apply
for the business school as youapply to the university
immediately, but then there'salso folks who get admitted
later on.
Is that correct?
Josh Chinn (03:05):
Yeah, yeah.
So there I would say that's amajority of the people.
Um, you know, you, you takeyour first couple years of
prerequisites and then you gofrom there.
So I think a lot of those.
You'll take a prerequisite likeaccounting class, you'll take
like a business management class, you'll take a law class, um,
and that's kind of like thepre-business track, and then you
apply after your, uh, freshmanor sophomore year to get in.
Um, yeah, it's, I mean, it'svery similar, you know, as if
(03:26):
you're doing chemistry and youknow you'd probably have to take
some math classes, some bioclasses, and apply from there.
Michael Lane Smith (03:33):
Right on.
Yeah, and I always tell folks,especially young folks looking
for jobs, you know when you'restarting to think about what you
want to do.
The more you start to talkabout it, the more you get
involved.
The earlier you get involved,the better setup you're going to
be.
And you described being a partof DECA and it sounded like it
was a class.
I've also seen DECA clubs.
What other types of experiencesdo you think helped you get
into the freshman directadmission for business school?
(03:55):
Is there anything else you'dwant to highlight?
Josh Chinn (03:57):
Yeah, well, I think it was pretty clear.
I mean, if you look to my highschool profile it was pretty
clear that I had maybe theexperience right.
So I'd taken some AP calculusclasses.
I had taken a statistics class.
I had taken, you know, and Idid well in those classes and so
mathematically I felt like Iwas there.
You know, my test scores weregood enough that I felt
(04:19):
comfortable applying.
So my SAT I had a decent enoughscore and then I had things
like high school summer jobs andso having a job and really just
kind of showing interest intaking the initiative and
showing the effort of you knowthat you're interested or that
you're proactive, you takeinitiative and I think a lot of
(04:40):
those things are.
If you can highlight thosethings there and articulate them
well, they're very wellreceived by college admissions.
Michael Lane Smith (04:47):
Right on, right on, and I remember, I
think, probably junior year.
You and I were both at theUniversity of Washington trying
to find jobs, thinking aboutwhat we're going to do with our
lives post-college, and, if Iremember correctly, you had a
job either at the end of junioryear or early senior year.
Is that right?
And what was that process like?
Going from a freshman gettinginto business school to now not
(05:09):
even graduating but looking forjobs two or three years in?
Josh Chinn (05:13):
So I remember.
So let's see this was so.
I had my junior year, so mythird year of college, I guess.
At the end of the year year Ihad an internship.
And so I remember I was with myfriend Grant and we were both
looking for internships andthings to do and we thought it'd
be fun to move to San Francisco.
So we kind of limited or welooked for jobs that would be
(05:35):
interning from our junior summerinto our senior year, um, that
would be interning in SanFrancisco.
So I interned at the gapcorporation corporation, um, and
so got to see visibility intoum gap as a entire conglomerate.
So banana republic, intermix,old navy, gap um and I, that was
(05:58):
uh, supply chain and kind ofoperations and you worked across
all three business entities.
No, I wouldn't say I worked.
I mean I more just got exposed.
You know, in interns,internships, I feel like you're
never doing crazy.
You know useful work, becausethe all the crazy useful work is
done by the really smart, youknow graduates and people who
(06:21):
are actually in the full-timejobs.
But, yeah, so I entered intothe gap, um, and I was doing I
worked at two folsom street insan francisco, uh, and it was
doing supply chain andoperations, which was my, my
focus, or, yeah, I guess myspecialty um at the university
of washington.
And so I came out of that likebasically what supply chain is
(06:43):
like.
Michael Lane Smith (06:43):
It seems intuitive, but yeah, you're
somebody who's worked in it, I'massuming now Washington.
How would you describebasically what supply chain is?
It seems intuitive, but yeah,you're someone who's worked in
it, I'm assuming now for years.
How would you describe it forsomeone?
Josh Chinn (06:52):
Supply chain.
I guess the most direct thingthat I think a lot of people
understand is farm to table.
You're like, how do I get foodfrom a farm onto my table?
And there's a lot of middlemeninvolved, there's a lot of.
You need the labor to eitherpull the fruits and veggies or
(07:12):
to harvest whatever goods, or towork with the meat, and you've
got to transport it and thatcosts money.
And then you got to get intostores and then advertise it and
that costs money.
And so you know, it's alwayskind of little incremental
spends and thinking about thatof how something gets from the,
an idea in somebody's head, andso, or you know, like literal or
figurative seed in the ground,um, and then you know how, how
(07:33):
is it created, how is it made,how is it transported, how is it
marketed, how is it shipped,and then how does it end up?
You know, how do I?
You know, at the gap it's likehow, how do I end up wearing it?
Yeah, um, so, yeah, all ofthose things.
And then, yeah, how did thatlead to your ultimate job?
(07:54):
Yeah, so, uh, I wouldn't say itwas a direct translation, if
you will.
Um, I so, coming into my senioryear, I remember I had, um, a
guy who was in my fraternity andhe kind of had a similar path
to me, except he was a yearolder.
And so, uh, he was great CauseI, I was able to kind of look up
to him and be like, oh, likewhat, this guy, this guy looks
like, he knows what he's doing,um, and yeah, and, and he had a,
(08:16):
uh, a great job out of out ofcollege.
I think one thing that isn'tapparent to very many people
unless you're really involved,is that a lot of companies start
recruiting the minute you stepon campus, your senior year, and
you know, obviously you'regraduating in June, but a lot of
the interviewing andapplications and kind of that
(08:39):
courting process is in, you know, the fall time for a lot of
large companies.
That's kind of how the pipelineworks.
And so the guy in my fraternitywho was a year older obviously
he was working already for thisconsulting company and he was
like, hey, you may be interestedin this, your stats are good,
my GPA was good enough, I had aninternship that was great and
(09:03):
my GPA was good enough and I hadtaken a lot of classes that I
had done well enough in so thatI can point to them on my resume
and be like, yes, I'm qualifiedto do X, y, z and went through
their interview process andtheir interview process is
(09:23):
pretty, in my opinion, asstandard as it gets for the
consulting realm of things, andso it'll be like an
informational session.
You'll have an interview.
I mean, hopefully you'll end aninterview, hopefully you will
get past that interview andyou'll either get to like a
manager interview or like agroup interview, uh, and then
(09:46):
after that you will get, um, uh,like an interview, to like a
panel interview or a caseinterview.
And so case interviews forthose of you who don't know are
very much like they.
They will interview you kind ofgiven a hypothetical situation
or kind of a random question,and it's really they want to see
how you think and how you canbreak down a problem, and it's
(10:07):
not just throwing out an answerand seeing like, oh, I hope
that's right.
But it's all.
It's kind of like literallyshowing your work on paper, yeah
, and so that case interviewwent well and then, you know,
got a job with accenture rightout of college, which is great,
because I would, you know they.
They said, hey, go, uh, we'lltalk to you Like here's, here's
your offer, assign some papersand we'll talk to you in six
(10:28):
months once you graduate andwe'll, you know, we'll place you
in an office.
So it was nice, it was yeah, itwas great having that security.
Um, I don't think I would havegotten there if, um, you know,
this upperclassman hadintroduced me to the concept,
and so I'm really thankful forBrian.
Um, and, yeah, it's, it was.
It was kind of just right time,right place.
(10:49):
Um uh and and I was yeah, and soI moved on to San Francisco for
, uh, right after, I guess justa few months after, graduation.
Um, and it was from there.
Michael Lane Smith (11:01):
Awesome.
Oh, I'd love to talk about yourconsulting experience first and
foremost, before we get intowhere you're at now and where
you've gone since then.
I remember different I thinkthey were called case
competitions or differentcompetitions through the
business school that folks coulddo and in those you were often
tasked with some sort ofhypothetical or business issue
and you and a team of five to Iwould say maybe three to five
(11:24):
people would try to solve thatissue and you just described in
the interview process you knowcase questions where you're
given like a hypothetical, verysimilar.
Could you describe for me yourexperience with case
competitions and you know howthat may have led to success in
the interview process and evenin your time in Accenture?
Josh Chinn (11:42):
Well, I think I mean , I mean, ironically, my case I
would say case competitions are,um, a a little bit different
from an actual case interview,uh, but for the most part
they're kind of just boilingdown business situations and
scenarios and they're like, okay, how would you address this?
Here are the things that youwant to think about.
And so the business caseinterviews, yeah, I mean,
(12:06):
obviously those are over an houror so as a literal interview,
whereas the case competitionsare over, you know, a couple
weeks or two, because they'reprojects and your presentations
and you put things together.
But yeah, essentially they'llgive you a problem or a quote
unquote case and they want tosee how you solve it by, you
know, proposing solutions, bywalking through things, by
(12:27):
thinking of numbers, by doingyour own research into things,
and it's a lot of criticalthinking of putting things, yeah
, making assumptions, doingresearch, that kind of thing of
of just here's, here's how Iarrive at a, at a viable
business.
Answer to this question and, asa result, also like answer to
this question and, as a result,also like here are the impacts,
yeah, and, I think, a coupleexamples.
Michael Lane Smith (12:48):
I remember reading.
I mean gosh, this was 10 yearsago now.
Like, how many briefcases arethere in the United States?
Is that an example of one?
Josh Chinn (13:03):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I'd say those are kind ofcalled market sizing questions
and it's basically kind of backof the envelope math, and what I
mean is like, literally, youcan use a back of the envelope
to just do general businesscalculations of like, okay, I
know there's, you know 50.
Tosses you an absurd questionhow many gumballs can fit in an
(13:25):
airplane?
Or something like that?
You know they don't.
They don't want the correctanswer, they want to be, um,
they want to see how you breakthings down.
So you're like okay, well, agumball may have this diameter
or this radius or this.
You know this volume, um, and Iknow a plane can fit this many
people, and so I think you knowx people or x gumballs can be
inside one person.
And you know there are a lot ofdifferent ways to think about it
and break it down.
(13:45):
There is no correct answer.
And if somebody does have acorrect answer, that's a little
more disturbing because thatprobably means they got the
answers to the test.
But yeah, all of those thingsare just the companies want to
see how you think.
They want to see Can you breakdown a problem, can you do basic
math, can you make assumptionsand think about things?
Michael Lane Smith (14:13):
And there are a lot of easy way to
practice those.
I know there are a lot of likecase interview guides and things
like that that can help peoplewith those kind of break down,
those hypothetical scenarios orthose case interviews.
Yeah yeah, so take a look onthe internet.
There's definitely someresources out there and
definitely some interviewquestion examples that folks
could easily find.
And after or maybe even duringyour time at Accenture, what
were you thinking about tryingnext?
And your management consulting,as I understand it, is pretty
broad and opens your eyes tomaybe other opportunities.
(14:33):
Where did you go next and whatled you there?
Josh Chinn (14:36):
Yeah so during my time at Accenture.
So I was there for two years onthe dot, like on three, yeah.
So I was there like 720 days,730 days exactly, um, and after
that, I guess during my time ata center, I had four different
projects and each project wasabout six months um, and the
projects varied.
So I was at, uh, I was doing atlike a medical health care
(15:00):
conglomerate doing some um Iguess, like business, um project
management there.
Um, I had some like advertisingwork a little bit at google, um
I that worked at a fintech andso so these companies um they
they literally kind of helpliterally consult other
(15:21):
businesses um to do to do workwith strategy, or they'd kind of
do staff augmentation, to kindof help fill a role.
And so I had four projectsduring my time at Accenture and
I realized that, while I enjoyedthe people and the work and the
culture was great, I wanted tobe a part of a company where the
(15:49):
end product was something thatI was involved in, whereas you
know, when you work in atAccenture for consulting or
other literal professionalservices, your product is really
you like, you're selling kindof your mind, your time, your
thinking time, you're thinking,uh, and I wanted to work for a
company that allowed me to belike, yes, I worked, but the
product that we produce wassomething that was, um, that I
(16:10):
found interesting and it wasn't,you know, like a literal
service to another person.
So I ended up moving, yeah, soI ended up moving to airbnb.
Um, I was working there, uh, forI guess, yeah, I worked there
for a couple of years.
I was working as a procurementcontractor and it was, it was
great, it was.
(16:31):
You know, it was in the Bayarea, it was pre-COVID and so,
you know, the whole techie thingwas was a lot of fun.
It was very much, you know,techie, right, and so free lunch
and really cool offices andgreat people and really smart
people.
But, yeah, that's where Ireally kind of well, I guess you
could argue I dove intoprocurement via supply chain and
(16:53):
operations and gap.
But I think this was really myfirst foray into procurement and
like actual paying the billsand so, um, I guess for those of
you who who don't know,procurement is, um, it is
basically, uh, paying the billsfor a company, right, so the
(17:13):
company makes money and acompany spends money and
oftentimes, you know, everybodythinks about how you make money,
that's sales, that's through alot of different things, but not
many people think about how youspend money and where that
money goes.
And so, and companies, they dospend a lot of money, right,
there are services.
There are good, like literalhard goods.
There are contractors that youneed to pay.
(17:35):
There's, like payroll that youneed to pay.
Payroll usually doesn't gothrough procurement.
Procurement usually deals withthings called operating expenses
and those are things like youknow, like business services,
right, like, uh, we pay googlefor their ad services or, um, we
have a new office being built.
We need to pay for these, uh,different kind of expenses.
(17:58):
Um, but uh, yeah, and so, um, Igot my feet wet there and
learned like, here's howsomething is bought, here's how
contracts work, here's how weengage a vendor, here's how we
find vendors, here's how we paythem, here's when we pay them,
and all those business questionsthat you know are pretty
(18:18):
obvious when you, when you like,sit down and work through it,
but not many people think aboutit on a day to day basis.
Michael Lane Smith (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, I think where was I going to go.
Well, I think your, your pathis probably typical to the other
folks that I've spoke with.
I've only spoken to a couple ofprocurement people in my time
as a recruiter.
Is your path pretty typical,you know?
Do people often go frommanagement consulting to you
(18:46):
know business services likeprocurement, or are there other
routes that people take Plentyof other routes.
Josh Chinn (18:51):
I don't think there is a right or wrong answer.
I think whatever you want to do, if you're willing to put in
the work and really honestlyhumble yourself, you can end up
wherever you want.
End up wherever you want, um, Iwould say I mean some of the
people who I worked with hadworked in accounting.
Some of the people I workedwith had worked at other
management consulting.
Some of the people I workedwith had just been like, uh,
human people since day one.
(19:13):
Um, and other people havegotten into it from other ways,
and so I don't think there'slike a direct path.
Um, yeah, but I think either Imean obviously, not maybe
obviously, but everybody had abusiness background of like,
okay, I understand accounting,right, I understand this is
profit is, is you know, revenueminus expenses, yeah, and things
(19:36):
like that, right?
Michael Lane Smith (19:36):
And so I don't think I worked necessarily
with any chemistry majors inprocurement, but I'm sure if
their math is sound, then theywould excel as well
(20:01):
international studies, pre-lawfocus, you know I could probably
pursue an MBA and get seriousconsideration for more business
operations type of role, asidefrom recruitment which I'm doing
now.
Would you say that that's, youknow, probably necessary?
People who don't have businessknowledge or degrees would need
some sort of additionalcertification or indication that
they, you know, have otherbusiness related skills, general
business skills that are widelyapplicable.
Josh Chinn (20:19):
Yeah, I think so.
I think it also depends how faryou want to climb the ladder
too, right?
Like, if you want to be adirector, you're probably going
to need to get somecertifications or stuff like
that.
If you're okay just being ananalyst and kind of, you know,
you clock in and you work foreight hours and you're working
on procurement and you don'tdesire to climb the ladder that
much, I think there are plentyof places for that as well, and
(20:45):
maybe somebody has a family athome and they just need to put
in their eight hours and then gohome.
Michael Lane Smith (20:47):
I think there are places that you can do
that Absolutely.
I would echo the same forMySpace, and when I was working
with the procurement team acouple months ago, I heard a lot
about procurement, but I alsoheard about procurement and
sourcing.
Are those different functions,or the same function, just
called different things?
How would you describe thatgreat?
Josh Chinn (21:02):
question um, I would say they are very related.
Um, let's say, procurement ismore of the act of uh, the kind
of the um paying, paying thebills and sourcing is like
finding the bills to pay, if youwill.
So let's say, you as a I'mtrying to think of a good
(21:25):
example.
Let's say, I need to market myproduct.
Right, I am going to hiresomebody to Not hire somebody,
but like some service to help mecome up with a design and
branding, right.
So the sourcing would befinding that agency, working
with them, getting a contract inand, obviously, like the actual
(21:48):
marketing work would probablybe done by the marketing team.
But the contract work workingout the terms of payment,
working out the amount we'regetting paid, working out all
the legal clauses, and thatstuff would be on the sourcing
team.
And then, once the contract issigned and then we have to pay
them, we have to figure outwhere that hits the accounting
books and all of those thingswhat costs are there, what
(22:10):
project codes, where all thismoney goes, and here's when
we're paying it out and here'show it relates to our bank.
That's the procurement side,and so they work hand in hand
and I would say a lot ofcompanies just call it procure
to pay or sorts to pay and mostof those things are pretty
synonymous across the impact andeffect of what they did.
Michael Lane Smith (22:31):
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned earlier some ofthe things that people procure
or buy as a company.
You know professional services,you know all the things that go
into allowing someone to showup, do work at an office space
and more right.
What's been like someinteresting things or maybe
things you didn't think aboutwhen you got into the space that
you've.
(22:51):
You had to work to, procure orbuy.
Josh Chinn (22:55):
Oh, man.
So I would say that is veryspecific, on whatever kind of
business you run or you operate.
I think, in essence, like, ifyou have a business, you are by
default, kind of you're sellingsomething and you are buying
things.
There are some interestingthings, you know, I think now,
working at Spotify, you can seeyou guys have visibility into
(23:19):
some contracts that you havewith um, with services, right.
So you just see, uh, like I seea lot of money flowing to
google because we pay them a tonfor, you know, advertising and
and marketing.
Um, I see a lot of money, likeI see the money that that we
write to our our food team thathelps us with our um, like our
snacks in the office and ourfood in the office, um and so,
(23:40):
and and obviously a lot of thatstuff is confidential and
there's a level ofconfidentiality and and um, just
kind of uh, uh vulnerability inin a lot of these contracts.
Um and uh, so you're you're notsharing them or spreading them
on twitter, linkedin and stuff,um, but uh, yeah, you do get
(24:00):
visibility into some things oryou're like, you know, you have
a heads up or like, oh, like,we're spending money on this.
I wonder if that means, youknow, next year we'll be doing
this, um, so yeah, there arecool things.
I think you know every businessis different, right?
A restaurant and the money thatthey spend on and the things
that they procure like literalfood and ingredients.
We don't really do that, Iguess, other than snacks, right,
(24:21):
it depends on the kind ofbusiness you run.
Whatever business you're in,you probably can see some wacky
stuff come through or some crazymarketing campaign.
I feel like if I worked at RedBull and was on their
procurement team or sourcingteam and just marketing team and
paying these contracts forsomebody to fly an airplane off
a cliff or something.
There are cool things and youget some visibility into that.
Michael Lane Smith (24:45):
That's awesome.
You mentioned the confidentialnature.
I'm more than happy to edit outsome of the stuff you just
described, but it did seem maybemore obvious.
Is that right?
Yeah, I mean.
Josh Chinn (25:01):
I'm fine with most of this being in the episode,
but like there are things likemaybe not contracts, but like if
, if, if Spotify is hosting anevent in can for for the awards
and they want an artist to play,that contract will eventually
probably come through my team,that contract will eventually
probably come through my teamand I will look at it and be
like I don't have any controlover the money or the contract
(25:23):
or anything, but I'll look at itand be like, okay, here's where
the bank accounts match up,here's where this money will be,
kind of where we have itbudgeted from, and here's how
you know whose wallet is payingfor it.
Right, is it the marketing team?
Is it the branding team?
Is Is it a design team?
Who's paying for what?
And at the beginning of thefiscal year, all of these teams
have budgets that are kind ofset and my job is to connect the
(25:44):
dots and be like okay, we have30% of the budget coming from
this team, so we're going tocharge it to that call center.
We've got 80% of his travelexpenses being covered by this
team.
We've got 90% of the food andbeverage, etc.
Etc.
So yeah, um, yeah, so you get.
You get kind of a visibilityinto that and it's cool and you
know you can.
You can be like, wow, you know,for the super bowl we paid that
(26:06):
much for the you know this adand you're like, okay, well,
that that's a lot of money.
Michael Lane Smith (26:12):
So yeah, I'm imagining you know there's been
news reports and likescreenshots of like federal
government spending items.
Yeah, from our organization.
Josh Chinn (26:20):
I would say that is.
I would say that is a huge partof um, like, like, if somebody
works for the government, um,and they're either as a
contractor or in the governmentpaying out the bills, like
that's literally um, you knowwhere a lot of these come from,
and so I think at some level,that the government, for better
(26:42):
or worse, is is run like abusiness and that you need to
keep track on where the moneygoes and when it's being spent,
and you know if the governmentowes you money or if the
government is spending too muchmoney or et cetera.
There you know, there are waysthat it breaks down very
similarly to a company.
Michael Lane Smith (26:58):
Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say, gonna
say, you know, I know thatthere's screenshots floating
around of, like the federalgovernment spending like eight
thousand or like eighty thousanddollars on like pro publica
memberships and yeah, probablypro publica sells a, um, like a,
essentially a service for newsreporters and and folks to look
at policy analysis.
And, uh, you know, from your,your perspective, you see, you
(27:21):
know, 80,000 spent towardssomething potentially dubious
and just to find out like, oh,like there's a business reason
for this, like does that happen?
A lot where you're like why?
Why is this expense coming tomy desk?
I need to figure out whatexactly this is.
Yeah, that's.
Josh Chinn (27:34):
That's a good question.
I think sometimes there arequite like no-transcript.
(28:07):
We'll just make sure thatthings want to go properly.
Um, but yeah, for the most partwe leave that up to the
business of like.
Michael Lane Smith (28:14):
You know it's it's their money to spend,
essentially yeah, and I thinkyou think we're starting to talk
about something that I love toask about, which is the type of
problems that you deal with on adaily basis in any specific job
.
I think most jobs are justdeciding which problems you want
to have to deal with, and so,for you, you're describing
allocating specific resourcesfor specific spend.
(28:37):
Specific resources for specificspend.
I want to have chatted withother procurement folks.
I've heard oh well, you knowwe're not necessarily revenue
driving, but you know I've saved3 million or 5 million a year
by renegotiating this contractor the other?
Yeah, how would you describe therole you can play in saving
money for a company and drivingvalue that way?
Josh Chinn (28:57):
Yeah, so I think it, you know it, it it?
Uh, and maybe this is a bit ofa stretch for people who haven't
taken a business class, um, butessentially right.
Like, if I'm selling items andI get paid, that is revenue,
right.
And then any money I spend isexpense and revenue.
So the money I make minus themoney I spend is my profit.
(29:18):
And a company's goal istypically to increase the profit
, basically to make more moneyso that you have more money to
work with.
And so if I buy a stick of gumor a pack of gum for $1 and I
sell it to you for $2, so the $2that would be the revenue and
my expense of buying the pack ofgum would be $1.
(29:39):
Dollars.
So the two dollars that wouldbe the revenue and my expense of
buying the pack of gum would beone dollar, right, and my
profit would be the revenue oftwo minus the expense of one,
and my profit would be an extradollar, right.
And then all of a sudden I canbuy two packs of gum and resell
those for four dollars.
Um, and so the way that I lookat procurement is like we don't
do much with the revenue, right,we're not out there selling
(30:00):
things, but what we're doing iswe're trying to decrease the
expenses, we're trying tomonitor the expenses and so if I
you know and this is where thesourcing comes in they'll
negotiate contracts to savemoney.
We will make sure that thingsare paid effectively, and so
we're kind of getting into adeeper accounting terminology
here.
We're kind of getting into adeeper accounting terminology
here, but things like net 30payments, net 15 payments, and
(30:21):
trying to figure out ways how wecan work to save money or to
have more money available atcertain times.
And the value of that is reallywe want our suppliers to work
with us, right, we want and thisis an example, not not a
specific use case but we want edsheeran to be like oh, I love
(30:43):
spotify because they pay me ontime, so I'm going to do a
special concert for them at adiscount, right, like it's those
kind of business relationships.
And all of a sudden we're likeokay, well, now, instead of
spending a hundred dollars on edsheeran, now we only have to
spend fifty dollars because helikes us or because you know
he's giving us a discount,because we're doing multiple
things, and so it's a lot ofbusiness and literal vendor
(31:05):
management.
It's a lot of negotiatingcontracts and all of the goal of
that is to save how much you'respending.
So, instead of spending $100,you're spending $75.
Spending $75.
And so even the way that inbusiness, um, that profit goes
up is either the revenue has toincrease and the expenses stay
(31:27):
the same, or the revenue staysthe same and the expenses
decrease.
Ideally, the revenue increasesand the expenses decrease, right
, because both of those willgive you a bigger gap between
the two, which would be anincrease in your profit.
Uh, so, but, but yeah, so ourjob is is to gap between the two
, which would be an increase inyour profit.
So, but, but yeah, so our jobis is to work with the expenses,
make sure that we are, um, youknow, being being fiscally
(31:47):
minded, being smart about whatwe're spending, when we're
spending.
And then our job is really, ona procurement team, is to work
with the vendors, make sure thatthings are paid on time, make
sure that they fit ouraccounting books and that all of
those things are clean, becausewe're a public company, we're
traded on the stock market andat the end of each quarter,
people can look into ourfinancials and they want to see
(32:08):
that we are making more moneythan we are spending, and then
the procurement team is a way toboth limit and get good
visibility into that absolutely,absolutely, um.
Michael Lane Smith (32:23):
I was chatting with some folks in the
recruiting process for our mostrecent procurement hire and you
know some of the folks weretelling me about, um, you know,
having to you kind of take astep back from some of the
contracts that their companieshave signed because, um, you
know the company's not making asmuch money.
You know you have torenegotiate contracts.
Hearing you talk about it, itsounds like that's on the
(32:43):
sourcing side.
Sourcing does more of that kindof negotiation and deal closing
, whereas you are the moreexecutionary arm.
Is that, right on theprocurement side, operational?
Josh Chinn (32:52):
for sure.
But then there definitely arethings like we are a lot of
contract management as well.
If we say all right, I will getthe notification saying, hey,
the contract's up at the end ofthis month.
Ideally, we have a lot morelead time than that, but maybe
we had a five-year contract andthe contract is up at the end of
2025.
And here we are entering 2025.
(33:18):
Okay, we need to think abouthow we want to negotiate this
next year so that we can savemoney, so that we can get a
better deal, so that we can getmore licenses, whatever the good
may be.
Michael Lane Smith (33:26):
And that's exciting.
That's where the magic happens.
That's where procurement reallyearns their value.
That's awesome, let's see.
So we talked a lot about someof the problems or work that
you're doing day to dayconceptually.
Are there any other problems,tasks that you would share with
folks wanting to get into thespace or interested in the space
at all that you deal withpretty regularly in your role?
Josh Chinn (33:48):
I think it's like it's business at the end of the
day, right, I would say morethan 50 percent of what I do is
interacting with people, so weare like part of the business
services.
So we, you know, I I work withpeople inside Spotify.
I'm not selling to a customeroff the street, but it's
interacting with those peopleand making sure that the process
(34:10):
is clear, making sure thatthey're able to know what
they're doing, so my job becomeseasier in the future.
All of those kinds of thingsare like, hey, you know, we.
Or if somebody comes late to melate, and they're like, hey, we
needed this paid yesterday, I'mlike, well, there's a lot of
paperwork that we didn't sign.
So, like, legally, we are kindof, yeah, we're not doing that,
(34:31):
or so it's it's.
It's it's educating people onthe process.
It's making people understandwhat the expectations are, and I
would say that's a good.
You know, maybe not 50% of myrole, but that's kind of the
essence of the role is like makesure that the business is
educated so that you knowtogether we're spending less
money.
Michael Lane Smith (34:56):
Yeah, there's a lot of, I think, just
competence, standard humancommunication competence.
That goes into a lot ofcorporate work, I'm hearing.
Josh Chinn (35:00):
But you know also the incredibly specialized work
that you described got you towhere you are working at
accenture, solving back of thenapkin problems this kind of
goes to my view on corporateamerica as a whole is like a lot
of people can do a lot ofdifferent people's jobs, like
there's there's somespecialization, but at the end
of the day, if you know you knowbasics in excel or sql or
(35:21):
python, which are some data,data languages or um, you know
very, very kind of standardthings.
Right, if you can make a goodpowerpoint and you've worked on
your soft skills of presentingum, you can go a lot of
different directions and so Iwouldn't say that I'm very
specialized in that.
I would say my specialties comefrom literal learning on the
job and having experience in it.
(35:44):
But I'm not like a superhero oranything.
If you had spent eight years inthis field you would know the
exact same things you have.
Michael Lane Smith (35:55):
I think you know I'm really curious about
how things are changing in yourspace and in recruiting.
I've talked a little bit inprevious episodes about how
we're using AI, about how youknow.
When I was doing PR for devicecompanies, you know how IoT was
a big market mover back in theearly 2010s.
How would you describe how yourrole or space is changing or
has changed since you've gotteninto it?
Josh Chinn (36:17):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent ways to answer that
question.
I think I can answer it from atechnological point of view of
here's AI and here's how some ofthese things are making our
jobs easier and faster.
I'm actually going to pivotthis a different direction
because I think this is a usecase that maybe is less
applicable to large businesses.
But Spotify has started to workmaybe not started to work, but
(36:39):
has continued to work with a lotof really small creators, right
, and so the.
If I'm at, um, uh, basicallyit's called, like, the, the long
tail of creators, and so, um,if I wanted to pick up a book
and read it out loud, um, andand record it as an audio book,
um, I probably can do that, butI, you know, and maybe I'll make
(37:02):
you know, $20 a year doing that, right, it's, it's really small
numbers, but the end of the day, number one that adds up number
two, it's a lot of differentcreators or readers, narrators,
um, and that's a problem thatwe're trying to figure out of.
Like, okay, we don't need everysingle person set up in our
business as a supplier, right?
(37:22):
Like, there's a differencebetween Facebook's bank account
and my bank account.
They will be billing us everysingle day, whereas I will be
billing them maybe once a yearto figure out the ways to work
(37:43):
with small creators, especiallyin a creator driven economy.
Um, uh, small payouts, umpayouts on demand, and things
like that are areas that I thinkare interesting.
Um, and that's uh, I mean, youknow, until really uber and kind
of that, um, single person, um,uh, creator economy, um things,
whether it's technology,whether it's regulations,
whether it's processes, haven'tbeen built out and really
(38:06):
standardized.
So there are a lot of differentways that you could take that.
There are a lot of differentways that we're trying to do
things um, and I think, you know, seeing those things is
interesting yeah, if you'repaying one agency, right then
it's really simple.
Michael Lane Smith (38:18):
But if you, you have to pay.
You know 50,000 differentindividual creators the economy
of scale just ruins your day.
I'm imagining that is brutal.
On the technology side, though,I am curious like how has
technology started to change howyou do work?
Are you guys using AI in yourspace?
How has that kind ofmaterialized, if at all?
Josh Chinn (38:41):
that kind of materialized, if at all?
Yeah, um, I think there arethere.
There are a lot ofpossibilities.
There are a lot of tools thatare trying to address those, but
I don't think very many of themare super mature yet.
Um, I think they are.
A lot of them are trying tosolve the same issues, um, but,
uh, yeah, I think you know, forfor those, um, kind of like in
the way that a chatbot is builtusing large language models, we
(39:04):
are still kind of working togather the data such that the
tools that we, the AI tools thatwe're creating, can be useful,
because right now, if we throwan invoice in and it's in a
different language and they havedifferent terminology from what
we use, yes, it's translatingit, but it's also trying to
figure out like, okay, if thismeans invoice number, this means
(39:25):
the dollar amount, but to thecomputer they're all just
numbers.
How does it determine which iswhere and and what is what?
And so I think training a lotof those things is happening.
Um, the technology and likebeing able to process things
instantaneous maybeinstantaneously, but you know a
lot, a lot faster um is ishappening, um, but I think we're
(39:48):
still a few years out from itbeing like a actual super
competitive landscape there.
Michael Lane Smith (39:53):
Yeah, One of the things that I first thought
when I got to professionalworld post-college was like I
thought software would be userfriendly.
I thought software would beuser-friendly.
Josh Chinn (40:03):
I thought enterprise tools would have solved most of
the problems and you just gethere and you're like wow,
nothing works.
Michael Lane Smith (40:11):
Not nothing works right, but you know
there's still a lot of room, foryou know folks to come in and
build something exciting.
Would you say that that's beenyour experience as well and that
you know as much as there hasbeen done in this world to make
business more effective?
There's still a lot to do.
Josh Chinn (40:25):
It's, it's, it's.
I think people, in the grandscheme of things, also don't.
I think they underestimate howmuch time has passed right.
Like 30 years ago, most ofthese programs didn't even exist
.
20 years ago, most of theseprograms didn't even exist, and
I mean even, you know, in 2008,.
You know the recession,everything.
And now we have Sarbanes-Oxford,like there are just so many
different, you know,governmental policies that are
(40:47):
in place that we have to accordto, we have to deal with a lot
of different processes.
There are so many differentliteral technologies of, like,
all right, ai, large languagemodels, like here's, you know, a
new coding language.
Here's all of these things thatdidn't exist even 25, 30 years
ago.
And so, um, you know, I thinkat some level, humanity is
(41:09):
growing and and trying to keepup, but I think the
technological advancements areincreasing at a faster rate than
humanity is.
So, um, we're kind of like,okay, you know, we can keep
building, building, building,but at some point we need I
think humanity might need toself audit and sell itself and
be like, okay, we need to slowthings down a little bit, just
so we can get a mastery of whatwe're doing here yeah, and build
(41:30):
like a co-working internet andprocess of tools that actually
help us do our jobs withouthaving to rebuild everything
every two years and and I mean,and I think, at a grander scale
of things, right, like theamerican economy being
capitalist economy is.
You know.
You know you have competition,you have a lot of different
companies trying to do maybe thesimilar or the same things, but
(41:51):
they're building it indifferent ways, which is awesome
and it's great and competitionis excellent.
But at the end of the day, thatmay mean that you speak maybe
not like you know, like verballanguage, Right, but you know,
you know one coding language andI know another and as a result,
we can't work together becauseA doesn't equal A and you know
apples to apples and we'recomparing apples to oranges
(42:14):
there.
You know, obviously there areways to get around that too, but
that takes time.
Michael Lane Smith (42:19):
Yeah, absolutely Well, right on, man.
I really appreciate everythingyou've shared.
I think this is really helpfulfor someone who's wanting to
learn more about procurement andsourcing.
Uh, if there was any otheradvice you wanted to share with
people you know about the space,getting to the space, is there
anything else you'd want to say?
Josh Chinn (42:35):
um, I think there are a lot of decisions like I
think there is a level of quoteunquote the game that people
have to play if they want tohave financial success.
I wouldn't say sit down andshut up, but you have to put in
(42:56):
your time such that you have thecapital at the end of it so you
can do what you want.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent ways to get capital
and resources and money, and Idon't think any of them is
better or worse than the other.
So if procurement seemsinteresting to you, great.
If it doesn't sound interestingat all, that's also okay.
(43:18):
I don't think there's anythingthere.
I will say one of the reasonsthat I kind of looked into
procurement and kind of theaccounting area is it's
relatively like recession proofthere will always be people who
need to handle the money and thenumbers and, you know, even
(43:40):
after COVID and things like thatI can look at.
I lost my job during COVID butI think it was pretty fairly
easy to find a job in thefinancial slash accounting
organizations after that, and soI know other industries can
(44:01):
have issues with that or it'skind of like a one and done,
like there's there's a clockthat you need to to to get
things by.
But, um, I think accounting isa relatively less less risky um
environment and so, as such,that that may be um, intriguing
to some people, but also may beboring and not where some other
(44:21):
people want to be.
So there is no right answer.
There are a lot of differentthings to consider when choosing
a career and, yeah, yeah, youknow.
Michael Lane Smith (44:31):
there's other things we could certainly
talk about your sport cardtrading business, your lobster
fishing summer.
There's lots of things I couldprobably dive into.
My typical last question is youknow how has your career
changed you?
I'd rather ask, I think youknow of the various jobs, side
gigs that you do participate in.
(44:51):
You know how have those?
How has your entire career sofar changed you?
Josh Chinn (44:58):
You might want to edit this out, I don't know.
I feel like I've gotten to apoint in my career where I think
I am nearing my end game andnot in a I'm fiscally ready to
retire.
But when I entered, I mean and Iliterally was just talking to
my therapist yesterday aboutthis, but it was like when I
(45:19):
joined corporate workforce itwas so that I can get financial
stability and I can work, youknow, and to some level it's the
prestige and status which Ithink objectively kind of feels
pretty good as a human for otherpeople, wow, he works at this
job or he does this X, y, z.
But I never joined to reallyclimb the ladder.
(45:40):
I feel like I, you know, know Icould maybe force myself to um,
but I've gotten to a point inmy career where I feel like,
okay, maybe I'm ready for maybenot a pivot um, but just
something outside of corporateamerica, because I think
corporate america is a greatplace to play the game um and
there are a lot of differentopportunities there.
(46:00):
But I kind of want to look moreinto entrepreneurship, into
business ownership and yeah, andI think that's.
I would not have been able todo that had I not spent eight
years in the workforce, but nowI'm at a point in my life where
I think my career and my viewtowards career is shifting a
(46:22):
little bit.
Michael Lane Smith (46:23):
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Well, thanks so much for yourtime, man.
I really appreciate it.
I know you only had an hour soI'll let you go, but yeah, was
there anything else you wantedto share with our listeners?
Or we can stop recording, evenif you'd like.
No, I?
Josh Chinn (46:35):
think.
I mean my guess is, if you'relistening to this, then you're
probably curious or you have aninquisitive mindset and you're
intrigued about a lot ofdifferent things.
I think that's a really healthymentality to keep up.
I think, no matter where youare, it's important not to get
complacent but to keep askingquestions and have fun along the
(46:59):
way, and I think if you're nothaving fun with it, then it's
really time to um.
I think you know stress comes.
Money, money is tough, right,people need to live, um, but I
do think that people need tohave an enjoyment of their lives
and, um, people should.
Well, maybe, maybe not peopleshould, in my opinion.
I like to uh, such that I canlive, as opposed to.
(47:20):
I know other people who like tolive so they can work.
But yeah, I find a lot ofenjoyment outside of work and I
plan to keep that work Right on,man.
Michael Lane Smith (47:50):
Thanks again , thank you.
This is Career Contrast, and I'm your
host, michael Lane-Smith.
As a career recruiter, I'mfascinated by the variety of job
paths or careers that peoplecommit to, and Career Contrast
is all about work, how peoplework, the state of work, and in
each episode, we'll explorequestions that provide insight
into the problems people solvein their jobs every day.
Ultimately, I hope to capturethe experience of an
(00:33):
informational interview from theperspective of a talent expert.
Joining me today is Josh Chin.
Welcome, josh.
Hey Mike, how are you doing?
Doing well, man, it's good tosee you.
I'd love to start with, did youhave a dream job as a child?
What did you want to be whenyou grew up?
Josh Chinn (00:50):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know if I ever had likea dream job that's, you know,
was really realistic, like Ithink.
You know, if you ask a fiveyear old, I wanted to be a
baseball player and I don'tthink that was going to happen.
Um, and so, yeah, I I thinkthere are a lot of interesting
careers, but I don't know if Ihad, you know, one that I was
(01:10):
like I really want to be thiswhen I grow up professional
baseball player edgar martinez,number two.
Yeah, you know it'd be, uh, it'dbe cool too.
But you know I, I think onceyou hit eight years old or 10
years old or whatever, that youknow, and kids start growing
like, okay, this is probably notrealistic.
Yeah, but you still playsoftball, you're still a runner,
(01:31):
I still play softball.
I still play hardball too,baseball.
Oh there you go?
Michael Lane Smith (01:35):
And when you went to college, what did you
study?
What was your career track andor, I guess, educational track?
Josh Chinn (01:50):
And did you kind of have an idea about what that
would look like as you got intoit?
So I got into the businessschool at the University of
Washington directly as aincoming freshman.
And I was in that because inhigh school I took a business
class called DECA and I'm sureyou know a lot of different high
schools have business classeslike that in a kind of exposed
to me the basics of business.
Right, You've got profit andyou've got or I guess you've got
(02:11):
revenue and you've got expenses.
Here's how a company spendsmoney, as well as financial
basics of like.
Here's how you save money,here's how interest works,
here's how compounding works,here's how debt works and a lot
of things like that.
And I was like, okay, that seemspretty interesting.
(02:32):
I feel like you know, just ingeneral, that's a pretty broad
career field and one that seemslike it would be probably useful
and beneficial down the road.
And so I checked a little boxon my application saying I would
like to be considered for thebusiness school and for, um, uh,
for my uh, college application.
And then I got directlyadmitted.
So I ended up going touniversity of Washington, um, uh
, and studied business there.
Michael Lane Smith (02:53):
Yeah, and as I understand it, you can apply
for the business school as youapply to the university
immediately, but then there'salso folks who get admitted
later on.
Is that correct?
Josh Chinn (03:05):
Yeah, yeah.
So there I would say that's amajority of the people.
Um, you know, you, you takeyour first couple years of
prerequisites and then you gofrom there.
So I think a lot of those.
You'll take a prerequisite likeaccounting class, you'll take
like a business management class, you'll take a law class, um,
and that's kind of like thepre-business track, and then you
apply after your, uh, freshmanor sophomore year to get in.
Um, yeah, it's, I mean, it'svery similar, you know, as if
(03:26):
you're doing chemistry and youknow you'd probably have to take
some math classes, some bioclasses, and apply from there.
Michael Lane Smith (03:33):
Right on.
Yeah, and I always tell folks,especially young folks looking
for jobs, you know when you'restarting to think about what you
want to do.
The more you start to talkabout it, the more you get
involved.
The earlier you get involved,the better setup you're going to
be.
And you described being a partof DECA and it sounded like it
was a class.
I've also seen DECA clubs.
What other types of experiencesdo you think helped you get
into the freshman directadmission for business school?
(03:55):
Is there anything else you'dwant to highlight?
Josh Chinn (03:57):
Yeah, well, I think it was pretty clear.
I mean, if you look to my highschool profile it was pretty
clear that I had maybe theexperience right.
So I'd taken some AP calculusclasses.
I had taken a statistics class.
I had taken, you know, and Idid well in those classes and so
mathematically I felt like Iwas there.
You know, my test scores weregood enough that I felt
(04:19):
comfortable applying.
So my SAT I had a decent enoughscore and then I had things
like high school summer jobs andso having a job and really just
kind of showing interest intaking the initiative and
showing the effort of you knowthat you're interested or that
you're proactive, you takeinitiative and I think a lot of
(04:40):
those things are.
If you can highlight thosethings there and articulate them
well, they're very wellreceived by college admissions.
Michael Lane Smith (04:47):
Right on, right on, and I remember, I
think, probably junior year.
You and I were both at theUniversity of Washington trying
to find jobs, thinking aboutwhat we're going to do with our
lives post-college, and, if Iremember correctly, you had a
job either at the end of junioryear or early senior year.
Is that right?
And what was that process like?
Going from a freshman gettinginto business school to now not
(05:09):
even graduating but looking forjobs two or three years in?
Josh Chinn (05:13):
So I remember.
So let's see this was so.
I had my junior year, so mythird year of college, I guess.
At the end of the year year Ihad an internship.
And so I remember I was with myfriend Grant and we were both
looking for internships andthings to do and we thought it'd
be fun to move to San Francisco.
So we kind of limited or welooked for jobs that would be
(05:35):
interning from our junior summerinto our senior year, um, that
would be interning in SanFrancisco.
So I interned at the gapcorporation corporation, um, and
so got to see visibility intoum gap as a entire conglomerate.
So banana republic, intermix,old navy, gap um and I, that was
(05:58):
uh, supply chain and kind ofoperations and you worked across
all three business entities.
No, I wouldn't say I worked.
I mean I more just got exposed.
You know, in interns,internships, I feel like you're
never doing crazy.
You know useful work, becausethe all the crazy useful work is
done by the really smart, youknow graduates and people who
(06:21):
are actually in the full-timejobs.
But, yeah, so I entered intothe gap, um, and I was doing I
worked at two folsom street insan francisco, uh, and it was
doing supply chain andoperations, which was my, my
focus, or, yeah, I guess myspecialty um at the university
of washington.
And so I came out of that likebasically what supply chain is
(06:43):
like.
Michael Lane Smith (06:43):
It seems intuitive, but yeah, you're
somebody who's worked in it, I'massuming now Washington.
How would you describebasically what supply chain is?
It seems intuitive, but yeah,you're someone who's worked in
it, I'm assuming now for years.
How would you describe it forsomeone?
Josh Chinn (06:52):
Supply chain.
I guess the most direct thingthat I think a lot of people
understand is farm to table.
You're like, how do I get foodfrom a farm onto my table?
And there's a lot of middlemeninvolved, there's a lot of.
You need the labor to eitherpull the fruits and veggies or
(07:12):
to harvest whatever goods, or towork with the meat, and you've
got to transport it and thatcosts money.
And then you got to get intostores and then advertise it and
that costs money.
And so you know, it's alwayskind of little incremental
spends and thinking about thatof how something gets from the,
an idea in somebody's head, andso, or you know, like literal or
figurative seed in the ground,um, and then you know how, how
(07:33):
is it created, how is it made,how is it transported, how is it
marketed, how is it shipped,and then how does it end up?
You know, how do I?
You know, at the gap it's likehow, how do I end up wearing it?
Yeah, um, so, yeah, all ofthose things.
And then, yeah, how did thatlead to your ultimate job?
(07:54):
Yeah, so, uh, I wouldn't say itwas a direct translation, if
you will.
Um, I so, coming into my senioryear, I remember I had, um, a
guy who was in my fraternity andhe kind of had a similar path
to me, except he was a yearolder.
And so, uh, he was great CauseI, I was able to kind of look up
to him and be like, oh, likewhat, this guy, this guy looks
like, he knows what he's doing,um, and yeah, and, and he had a,
(08:16):
uh, a great job out of out ofcollege.
I think one thing that isn'tapparent to very many people
unless you're really involved,is that a lot of companies start
recruiting the minute you stepon campus, your senior year, and
you know, obviously you'regraduating in June, but a lot of
the interviewing andapplications and kind of that
(08:39):
courting process is in, you know, the fall time for a lot of
large companies.
That's kind of how the pipelineworks.
And so the guy in my fraternitywho was a year older obviously
he was working already for thisconsulting company and he was
like, hey, you may be interestedin this, your stats are good,
my GPA was good enough, I had aninternship that was great and
(09:03):
my GPA was good enough and I hadtaken a lot of classes that I
had done well enough in so thatI can point to them on my resume
and be like, yes, I'm qualifiedto do X, y, z and went through
their interview process andtheir interview process is
(09:23):
pretty, in my opinion, asstandard as it gets for the
consulting realm of things, andso it'll be like an
informational session.
You'll have an interview.
I mean, hopefully you'll end aninterview, hopefully you will
get past that interview andyou'll either get to like a
manager interview or like agroup interview, uh, and then
(09:46):
after that you will get, um, uh,like an interview, to like a
panel interview or a caseinterview.
And so case interviews forthose of you who don't know are
very much like they.
They will interview you kind ofgiven a hypothetical situation
or kind of a random question,and it's really they want to see
how you think and how you canbreak down a problem, and it's
(10:07):
not just throwing out an answerand seeing like, oh, I hope
that's right.
But it's all.
It's kind of like literallyshowing your work on paper, yeah
, and so that case interviewwent well and then, you know,
got a job with accenture rightout of college, which is great,
because I would, you know they.
They said, hey, go, uh, we'lltalk to you Like here's, here's
your offer, assign some papersand we'll talk to you in six
(10:28):
months once you graduate andwe'll, you know, we'll place you
in an office.
So it was nice, it was yeah, itwas great having that security.
Um, I don't think I would havegotten there if, um, you know,
this upperclassman hadintroduced me to the concept,
and so I'm really thankful forBrian.
Um, and, yeah, it's, it was.
It was kind of just right time,right place.
(10:49):
Um uh and and I was yeah, and soI moved on to San Francisco for
, uh, right after, I guess justa few months after, graduation.
Um, and it was from there.
Michael Lane Smith (11:01):
Awesome.
Oh, I'd love to talk about yourconsulting experience first and
foremost, before we get intowhere you're at now and where
you've gone since then.
I remember different I thinkthey were called case
competitions or differentcompetitions through the
business school that folks coulddo and in those you were often
tasked with some sort ofhypothetical or business issue
and you and a team of five to Iwould say maybe three to five
(11:24):
people would try to solve thatissue and you just described in
the interview process you knowcase questions where you're
given like a hypothetical, verysimilar.
Could you describe for me yourexperience with case
competitions and you know howthat may have led to success in
the interview process and evenin your time in Accenture?
Josh Chinn (11:42):
Well, I think I mean , I mean, ironically, my case I
would say case competitions are,um, a a little bit different
from an actual case interview,uh, but for the most part
they're kind of just boilingdown business situations and
scenarios and they're like, okay, how would you address this?
Here are the things that youwant to think about.
And so the business caseinterviews, yeah, I mean,
(12:06):
obviously those are over an houror so as a literal interview,
whereas the case competitionsare over, you know, a couple
weeks or two, because they'reprojects and your presentations
and you put things together.
But yeah, essentially they'llgive you a problem or a quote
unquote case and they want tosee how you solve it by, you
know, proposing solutions, bywalking through things, by
(12:27):
thinking of numbers, by doingyour own research into things,
and it's a lot of criticalthinking of putting things, yeah
, making assumptions, doingresearch, that kind of thing of
of just here's, here's how Iarrive at a, at a viable
business.
Answer to this question and, asa result, also like answer to
this question and, as a result,also like here are the impacts,
yeah, and, I think, a coupleexamples.
Michael Lane Smith (12:48):
I remember reading.
I mean gosh, this was 10 yearsago now.
Like, how many briefcases arethere in the United States?
Is that an example of one?
Josh Chinn (13:03):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I'd say those are kind ofcalled market sizing questions
and it's basically kind of backof the envelope math, and what I
mean is like, literally, youcan use a back of the envelope
to just do general businesscalculations of like, okay, I
know there's, you know 50.
Tosses you an absurd questionhow many gumballs can fit in an
(13:25):
airplane?
Or something like that?
You know they don't.
They don't want the correctanswer, they want to be, um,
they want to see how you breakthings down.
So you're like okay, well, agumball may have this diameter
or this radius or this.
You know this volume, um, and Iknow a plane can fit this many
people, and so I think you knowx people or x gumballs can be
inside one person.
And you know there are a lot ofdifferent ways to think about it
and break it down.
(13:45):
There is no correct answer.
And if somebody does have acorrect answer, that's a little
more disturbing because thatprobably means they got the
answers to the test.
But yeah, all of those thingsare just the companies want to
see how you think.
They want to see Can you breakdown a problem, can you do basic
math, can you make assumptionsand think about things?
Michael Lane Smith (14:13):
And there are a lot of easy way to
practice those.
I know there are a lot of likecase interview guides and things
like that that can help peoplewith those kind of break down,
those hypothetical scenarios orthose case interviews.
Yeah yeah, so take a look onthe internet.
There's definitely someresources out there and
definitely some interviewquestion examples that folks
could easily find.
And after or maybe even duringyour time at Accenture, what
were you thinking about tryingnext?
And your management consulting,as I understand it, is pretty
broad and opens your eyes tomaybe other opportunities.
(14:33):
Where did you go next and whatled you there?
Josh Chinn (14:36):
Yeah so during my time at Accenture.
So I was there for two years onthe dot, like on three, yeah.
So I was there like 720 days,730 days exactly, um, and after
that, I guess during my time ata center, I had four different
projects and each project wasabout six months um, and the
projects varied.
So I was at, uh, I was doing atlike a medical health care
(15:00):
conglomerate doing some um Iguess, like business, um project
management there.
Um, I had some like advertisingwork a little bit at google, um
I that worked at a fintech andso so these companies um they
they literally kind of helpliterally consult other
(15:21):
businesses um to do to do workwith strategy, or they'd kind of
do staff augmentation, to kindof help fill a role.
And so I had four projectsduring my time at Accenture and
I realized that, while I enjoyedthe people and the work and the
culture was great, I wanted tobe a part of a company where the
(15:49):
end product was something thatI was involved in, whereas you
know, when you work in atAccenture for consulting or
other literal professionalservices, your product is really
you like, you're selling kindof your mind, your time, your
thinking time, you're thinking,uh, and I wanted to work for a
company that allowed me to belike, yes, I worked, but the
product that we produce wassomething that was, um, that I
(16:10):
found interesting and it wasn't,you know, like a literal
service to another person.
So I ended up moving, yeah, soI ended up moving to airbnb.
Um, I was working there, uh, forI guess, yeah, I worked there
for a couple of years.
I was working as a procurementcontractor and it was, it was
great, it was.
(16:31):
You know, it was in the Bayarea, it was pre-COVID and so,
you know, the whole techie thingwas was a lot of fun.
It was very much, you know,techie, right, and so free lunch
and really cool offices andgreat people and really smart
people.
But, yeah, that's where Ireally kind of well, I guess you
could argue I dove intoprocurement via supply chain and
(16:53):
operations and gap.
But I think this was really myfirst foray into procurement and
like actual paying the billsand so, um, I guess for those of
you who who don't know,procurement is, um, it is
basically, uh, paying the billsfor a company, right, so the
(17:13):
company makes money and acompany spends money and
oftentimes, you know, everybodythinks about how you make money,
that's sales, that's through alot of different things, but not
many people think about how youspend money and where that
money goes.
And so, and companies, they dospend a lot of money, right,
there are services.
There are good, like literalhard goods.
There are contractors that youneed to pay.
(17:35):
There's, like payroll that youneed to pay.
Payroll usually doesn't gothrough procurement.
Procurement usually deals withthings called operating expenses
and those are things like youknow, like business services,
right, like, uh, we pay googlefor their ad services or, um, we
have a new office being built.
We need to pay for these, uh,different kind of expenses.
(17:58):
Um, but uh, yeah, and so, um, Igot my feet wet there and
learned like, here's howsomething is bought, here's how
contracts work, here's how weengage a vendor, here's how we
find vendors, here's how we paythem, here's when we pay them,
and all those business questionsthat you know are pretty
(18:18):
obvious when you, when you like,sit down and work through it,
but not many people think aboutit on a day to day basis.
Michael Lane Smith (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, I think where was I going to go.
Well, I think your, your pathis probably typical to the other
folks that I've spoke with.
I've only spoken to a couple ofprocurement people in my time
as a recruiter.
Is your path pretty typical,you know?
Do people often go frommanagement consulting to you
(18:46):
know business services likeprocurement, or are there other
routes that people take Plentyof other routes.
Josh Chinn (18:51):
I don't think there is a right or wrong answer.
I think whatever you want to do, if you're willing to put in
the work and really honestlyhumble yourself, you can end up
wherever you want.
End up wherever you want, um, Iwould say I mean some of the
people who I worked with hadworked in accounting.
Some of the people I workedwith had worked at other
management consulting.
Some of the people I workedwith had just been like, uh,
human people since day one.
(19:13):
Um, and other people havegotten into it from other ways,
and so I don't think there'slike a direct path.
Um, yeah, but I think either Imean obviously, not maybe
obviously, but everybody had abusiness background of like,
okay, I understand accounting,right, I understand this is
profit is, is you know, revenueminus expenses, yeah, and things
(19:36):
like that, right?
Michael Lane Smith (19:36):
And so I don't think I worked necessarily
with any chemistry majors inprocurement, but I'm sure if
their math is sound, then theywould excel as well
(20:01):
international studies, pre-lawfocus, you know I could probably
pursue an MBA and get seriousconsideration for more business
operations type of role, asidefrom recruitment which I'm doing
now.
Would you say that that's, youknow, probably necessary?
People who don't have businessknowledge or degrees would need
some sort of additionalcertification or indication that
they, you know, have otherbusiness related skills, general
business skills that are widelyapplicable.
Josh Chinn (20:19):
Yeah, I think so.
I think it also depends how faryou want to climb the ladder
too, right?
Like, if you want to be adirector, you're probably going
to need to get somecertifications or stuff like
that.
If you're okay just being ananalyst and kind of, you know,
you clock in and you work foreight hours and you're working
on procurement and you don'tdesire to climb the ladder that
much, I think there are plentyof places for that as well, and
(20:45):
maybe somebody has a family athome and they just need to put
in their eight hours and then gohome.
Michael Lane Smith (20:47):
I think there are places that you can do
that Absolutely.
I would echo the same forMySpace, and when I was working
with the procurement team acouple months ago, I heard a lot
about procurement, but I alsoheard about procurement and
sourcing.
Are those different functions,or the same function, just
called different things?
How would you describe thatgreat?
Josh Chinn (21:02):
question um, I would say they are very related.
Um, let's say, procurement ismore of the act of uh, the kind
of the um paying, paying thebills and sourcing is like
finding the bills to pay, if youwill.
So let's say, you as a I'mtrying to think of a good
(21:25):
example.
Let's say, I need to market myproduct.
Right, I am going to hiresomebody to Not hire somebody,
but like some service to help mecome up with a design and
branding, right.
So the sourcing would befinding that agency, working
with them, getting a contract inand, obviously, like the actual
(21:48):
marketing work would probablybe done by the marketing team.
But the contract work workingout the terms of payment,
working out the amount we'regetting paid, working out all
the legal clauses, and thatstuff would be on the sourcing
team.
And then, once the contract issigned and then we have to pay
them, we have to figure outwhere that hits the accounting
books and all of those thingswhat costs are there, what
(22:10):
project codes, where all thismoney goes, and here's when
we're paying it out and here'show it relates to our bank.
That's the procurement side,and so they work hand in hand
and I would say a lot ofcompanies just call it procure
to pay or sorts to pay and mostof those things are pretty
synonymous across the impact andeffect of what they did.
Michael Lane Smith (22:31):
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned earlier some ofthe things that people procure
or buy as a company.
You know professional services,you know all the things that go
into allowing someone to showup, do work at an office space
and more right.
What's been like someinteresting things or maybe
things you didn't think aboutwhen you got into the space that
you've.
(22:51):
You had to work to, procure orbuy.
Josh Chinn (22:55):
Oh, man.
So I would say that is veryspecific, on whatever kind of
business you run or you operate.
I think, in essence, like, ifyou have a business, you are by
default, kind of you're sellingsomething and you are buying
things.
There are some interestingthings, you know, I think now,
working at Spotify, you can seeyou guys have visibility into
(23:19):
some contracts that you havewith um, with services, right.
So you just see, uh, like I seea lot of money flowing to
google because we pay them a tonfor, you know, advertising and
and marketing.
Um, I see a lot of money, likeI see the money that that we
write to our our food team thathelps us with our um, like our
snacks in the office and ourfood in the office, um and so,
(23:40):
and and obviously a lot of thatstuff is confidential and
there's a level ofconfidentiality and and um, just
kind of uh, uh vulnerability inin a lot of these contracts.
Um and uh, so you're you're notsharing them or spreading them
on twitter, linkedin and stuff,um, but uh, yeah, you do get
(24:00):
visibility into some things oryou're like, you know, you have
a heads up or like, oh, like,we're spending money on this.
I wonder if that means, youknow, next year we'll be doing
this, um, so yeah, there arecool things.
I think you know every businessis different, right?
A restaurant and the money thatthey spend on and the things
that they procure like literalfood and ingredients.
We don't really do that, Iguess, other than snacks, right,
(24:21):
it depends on the kind ofbusiness you run.
Whatever business you're in,you probably can see some wacky
stuff come through or some crazymarketing campaign.
I feel like if I worked at RedBull and was on their
procurement team or sourcingteam and just marketing team and
paying these contracts forsomebody to fly an airplane off
a cliff or something.
There are cool things and youget some visibility into that.
Michael Lane Smith (24:45):
That's awesome.
You mentioned the confidentialnature.
I'm more than happy to edit outsome of the stuff you just
described, but it did seem maybemore obvious.
Is that right?
Yeah, I mean.
Josh Chinn (25:01):
I'm fine with most of this being in the episode,
but like there are things likemaybe not contracts, but like if
, if, if Spotify is hosting anevent in can for for the awards
and they want an artist to play,that contract will eventually
probably come through my team,that contract will eventually
probably come through my teamand I will look at it and be
like I don't have any controlover the money or the contract
(25:23):
or anything, but I'll look at itand be like, okay, here's where
the bank accounts match up,here's where this money will be,
kind of where we have itbudgeted from, and here's how
you know whose wallet is payingfor it.
Right, is it the marketing team?
Is it the branding team?
Is Is it a design team?
Who's paying for what?
And at the beginning of thefiscal year, all of these teams
have budgets that are kind ofset and my job is to connect the
(25:44):
dots and be like okay, we have30% of the budget coming from
this team, so we're going tocharge it to that call center.
We've got 80% of his travelexpenses being covered by this
team.
We've got 90% of the food andbeverage, etc.
Etc.
So yeah, um, yeah, so you get.
You get kind of a visibilityinto that and it's cool and you
know you can.
You can be like, wow, you know,for the super bowl we paid that
(26:06):
much for the you know this adand you're like, okay, well,
that that's a lot of money.
Michael Lane Smith (26:12):
So yeah, I'm imagining you know there's been
news reports and likescreenshots of like federal
government spending items.
Yeah, from our organization.
Josh Chinn (26:20):
I would say that is.
I would say that is a huge partof um, like, like, if somebody
works for the government, um,and they're either as a
contractor or in the governmentpaying out the bills, like
that's literally um, you knowwhere a lot of these come from,
and so I think at some level,that the government, for better
(26:42):
or worse, is is run like abusiness and that you need to
keep track on where the moneygoes and when it's being spent,
and you know if the governmentowes you money or if the
government is spending too muchmoney or et cetera.
There you know, there are waysthat it breaks down very
similarly to a company.
Michael Lane Smith (26:58):
Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say, gonna
say, you know, I know thatthere's screenshots floating
around of, like the federalgovernment spending like eight
thousand or like eighty thousanddollars on like pro publica
memberships and yeah, probablypro publica sells a, um, like a,
essentially a service for newsreporters and and folks to look
at policy analysis.
And, uh, you know, from your,your perspective, you see, you
(27:21):
know, 80,000 spent towardssomething potentially dubious
and just to find out like, oh,like there's a business reason
for this, like does that happen?
A lot where you're like why?
Why is this expense coming tomy desk?
I need to figure out whatexactly this is.
Yeah, that's.
Josh Chinn (27:34):
That's a good question.
I think sometimes there arequite like no-transcript.
(28:07):
We'll just make sure thatthings want to go properly.
Um, but yeah, for the most partwe leave that up to the
business of like.
Michael Lane Smith (28:14):
You know it's it's their money to spend,
essentially yeah, and I thinkyou think we're starting to talk
about something that I love toask about, which is the type of
problems that you deal with on adaily basis in any specific job
.
I think most jobs are justdeciding which problems you want
to have to deal with, and so,for you, you're describing
allocating specific resourcesfor specific spend.
(28:37):
Specific resources for specificspend.
I want to have chatted withother procurement folks.
I've heard oh well, you knowwe're not necessarily revenue
driving, but you know I've saved3 million or 5 million a year
by renegotiating this contractor the other?
Yeah, how would you describe therole you can play in saving
money for a company and drivingvalue that way?
Josh Chinn (28:57):
Yeah, so I think it, you know it, it it?
Uh, and maybe this is a bit ofa stretch for people who haven't
taken a business class, um, butessentially right.
Like, if I'm selling items andI get paid, that is revenue,
right.
And then any money I spend isexpense and revenue.
So the money I make minus themoney I spend is my profit.
(29:18):
And a company's goal istypically to increase the profit
, basically to make more moneyso that you have more money to
work with.
And so if I buy a stick of gumor a pack of gum for $1 and I
sell it to you for $2, so the $2that would be the revenue and
my expense of buying the pack ofgum would be $1.
(29:39):
Dollars.
So the two dollars that wouldbe the revenue and my expense of
buying the pack of gum would beone dollar, right, and my
profit would be the revenue oftwo minus the expense of one,
and my profit would be an extradollar, right.
And then all of a sudden I canbuy two packs of gum and resell
those for four dollars.
Um, and so the way that I lookat procurement is like we don't
do much with the revenue, right,we're not out there selling
(30:00):
things, but what we're doing iswe're trying to decrease the
expenses, we're trying tomonitor the expenses and so if I
you know and this is where thesourcing comes in they'll
negotiate contracts to savemoney.
We will make sure that thingsare paid effectively, and so
we're kind of getting into adeeper accounting terminology
here.
We're kind of getting into adeeper accounting terminology
here, but things like net 30payments, net 15 payments, and
(30:21):
trying to figure out ways how wecan work to save money or to
have more money available atcertain times.
And the value of that is reallywe want our suppliers to work
with us, right, we want and thisis an example, not not a
specific use case but we want edsheeran to be like oh, I love
(30:43):
spotify because they pay me ontime, so I'm going to do a
special concert for them at adiscount, right, like it's those
kind of business relationships.
And all of a sudden we're likeokay, well, now, instead of
spending a hundred dollars on edsheeran, now we only have to
spend fifty dollars because helikes us or because you know
he's giving us a discount,because we're doing multiple
things, and so it's a lot ofbusiness and literal vendor
(31:05):
management.
It's a lot of negotiatingcontracts and all of the goal of
that is to save how much you'respending.
So, instead of spending $100,you're spending $75.
Spending $75.
And so even the way that inbusiness, um, that profit goes
up is either the revenue has toincrease and the expenses stay
(31:27):
the same, or the revenue staysthe same and the expenses
decrease.
Ideally, the revenue increasesand the expenses decrease, right
, because both of those willgive you a bigger gap between
the two, which would be anincrease in your profit.
Uh, so, but, but yeah, so ourjob is is to gap between the two
, which would be an increase inyour profit.
So, but, but yeah, so our jobis is to work with the expenses,
make sure that we are, um, youknow, being being fiscally
(31:47):
minded, being smart about whatwe're spending, when we're
spending.
And then our job is really, ona procurement team, is to work
with the vendors, make sure thatthings are paid on time, make
sure that they fit ouraccounting books and that all of
those things are clean, becausewe're a public company, we're
traded on the stock market andat the end of each quarter,
people can look into ourfinancials and they want to see
(32:08):
that we are making more moneythan we are spending, and then
the procurement team is a way toboth limit and get good
visibility into that absolutely,absolutely, um.
Michael Lane Smith (32:23):
I was chatting with some folks in the
recruiting process for our mostrecent procurement hire and you
know some of the folks weretelling me about, um, you know,
having to you kind of take astep back from some of the
contracts that their companieshave signed because, um, you
know the company's not making asmuch money.
You know you have torenegotiate contracts.
Hearing you talk about it, itsounds like that's on the
(32:43):
sourcing side.
Sourcing does more of that kindof negotiation and deal closing
, whereas you are the moreexecutionary arm.
Is that, right on theprocurement side, operational?
Josh Chinn (32:52):
for sure.
But then there definitely arethings like we are a lot of
contract management as well.
If we say all right, I will getthe notification saying, hey,
the contract's up at the end ofthis month.
Ideally, we have a lot morelead time than that, but maybe
we had a five-year contract andthe contract is up at the end of
2025.
And here we are entering 2025.
(33:18):
Okay, we need to think abouthow we want to negotiate this
next year so that we can savemoney, so that we can get a
better deal, so that we can getmore licenses, whatever the good
may be.
Michael Lane Smith (33:26):
And that's exciting.
That's where the magic happens.
That's where procurement reallyearns their value.
That's awesome, let's see.
So we talked a lot about someof the problems or work that
you're doing day to dayconceptually.
Are there any other problems,tasks that you would share with
folks wanting to get into thespace or interested in the space
at all that you deal withpretty regularly in your role?
Josh Chinn (33:48):
I think it's like it's business at the end of the
day, right, I would say morethan 50 percent of what I do is
interacting with people, so weare like part of the business
services.
So we, you know, I I work withpeople inside Spotify.
I'm not selling to a customeroff the street, but it's
interacting with those peopleand making sure that the process
(34:10):
is clear, making sure thatthey're able to know what
they're doing, so my job becomeseasier in the future.
All of those kinds of thingsare like, hey, you know, we.
Or if somebody comes late to melate, and they're like, hey, we
needed this paid yesterday, I'mlike, well, there's a lot of
paperwork that we didn't sign.
So, like, legally, we are kindof, yeah, we're not doing that,
(34:31):
or so it's it's.
It's it's educating people onthe process.
It's making people understandwhat the expectations are, and I
would say that's a good.
You know, maybe not 50% of myrole, but that's kind of the
essence of the role is like makesure that the business is
educated so that you knowtogether we're spending less
money.
Michael Lane Smith (34:56):
Yeah, there's a lot of, I think, just
competence, standard humancommunication competence.
That goes into a lot ofcorporate work, I'm hearing.
Josh Chinn (35:00):
But you know also the incredibly specialized work
that you described got you towhere you are working at
accenture, solving back of thenapkin problems this kind of
goes to my view on corporateamerica as a whole is like a lot
of people can do a lot ofdifferent people's jobs, like
there's there's somespecialization, but at the end
of the day, if you know you knowbasics in excel or sql or
(35:21):
python, which are some data,data languages or um, you know
very, very kind of standardthings.
Right, if you can make a goodpowerpoint and you've worked on
your soft skills of presentingum, you can go a lot of
different directions and so Iwouldn't say that I'm very
specialized in that.
I would say my specialties comefrom literal learning on the
job and having experience in it.
(35:44):
But I'm not like a superhero oranything.
If you had spent eight years inthis field you would know the
exact same things you have.
Michael Lane Smith (35:55):
I think you know I'm really curious about
how things are changing in yourspace and in recruiting.
I've talked a little bit inprevious episodes about how
we're using AI, about how youknow.
When I was doing PR for devicecompanies, you know how IoT was
a big market mover back in theearly 2010s.
How would you describe how yourrole or space is changing or
has changed since you've gotteninto it?
Josh Chinn (36:17):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent ways to answer that
question.
I think I can answer it from atechnological point of view of
here's AI and here's how some ofthese things are making our
jobs easier and faster.
I'm actually going to pivotthis a different direction
because I think this is a usecase that maybe is less
applicable to large businesses.
But Spotify has started to workmaybe not started to work, but
(36:39):
has continued to work with a lotof really small creators, right
, and so the.
If I'm at, um, uh, basicallyit's called, like, the, the long
tail of creators, and so, um,if I wanted to pick up a book
and read it out loud, um, andand record it as an audio book,
um, I probably can do that, butI, you know, and maybe I'll make
(37:02):
you know, $20 a year doing that, right, it's, it's really small
numbers, but the end of the day, number one that adds up number
two, it's a lot of differentcreators or readers, narrators,
um, and that's a problem thatwe're trying to figure out of.
Like, okay, we don't need everysingle person set up in our
business as a supplier, right?
(37:22):
Like, there's a differencebetween Facebook's bank account
and my bank account.
They will be billing us everysingle day, whereas I will be
billing them maybe once a yearto figure out the ways to work
(37:43):
with small creators, especiallyin a creator driven economy.
Um, uh, small payouts, umpayouts on demand, and things
like that are areas that I thinkare interesting.
Um, and that's uh, I mean, youknow, until really uber and kind
of that, um, single person, um,uh, creator economy, um things,
whether it's technology,whether it's regulations,
whether it's processes, haven'tbeen built out and really
(38:06):
standardized.
So there are a lot of differentways that you could take that.
There are a lot of differentways that we're trying to do
things um, and I think, you know, seeing those things is
interesting yeah, if you'repaying one agency, right then
it's really simple.
Michael Lane Smith (38:18):
But if you, you have to pay.
You know 50,000 differentindividual creators the economy
of scale just ruins your day.
I'm imagining that is brutal.
On the technology side, though,I am curious like how has
technology started to change howyou do work?
Are you guys using AI in yourspace?
How has that kind ofmaterialized, if at all?
Josh Chinn (38:41):
that kind of materialized, if at all?
Yeah, um, I think there arethere.
There are a lot ofpossibilities.
There are a lot of tools thatare trying to address those, but
I don't think very many of themare super mature yet.
Um, I think they are.
A lot of them are trying tosolve the same issues, um, but,
uh, yeah, I think you know, forfor those, um, kind of like in
the way that a chatbot is builtusing large language models, we
(39:04):
are still kind of working togather the data such that the
tools that we, the AI tools thatwe're creating, can be useful,
because right now, if we throwan invoice in and it's in a
different language and they havedifferent terminology from what
we use, yes, it's translatingit, but it's also trying to
figure out like, okay, if thismeans invoice number, this means
(39:25):
the dollar amount, but to thecomputer they're all just
numbers.
How does it determine which iswhere and and what is what?
And so I think training a lotof those things is happening.
Um, the technology and likebeing able to process things
instantaneous maybeinstantaneously, but you know a
lot, a lot faster um is ishappening, um, but I think we're
(39:48):
still a few years out from itbeing like a actual super
competitive landscape there.
Michael Lane Smith (39:53):
Yeah, One of the things that I first thought
when I got to professionalworld post-college was like I
thought software would be userfriendly.
I thought software would beuser-friendly.
Josh Chinn (40:03):
I thought enterprise tools would have solved most of
the problems and you just gethere and you're like wow,
nothing works.
Michael Lane Smith (40:11):
Not nothing works right, but you know
there's still a lot of room, foryou know folks to come in and
build something exciting.
Would you say that that's beenyour experience as well and that
you know as much as there hasbeen done in this world to make
business more effective?
There's still a lot to do.
Josh Chinn (40:25):
It's, it's, it's.
I think people, in the grandscheme of things, also don't.
I think they underestimate howmuch time has passed right.
Like 30 years ago, most ofthese programs didn't even exist
.
20 years ago, most of theseprograms didn't even exist, and
I mean even, you know, in 2008,.
You know the recession,everything.
And now we have Sarbanes-Oxford,like there are just so many
different, you know,governmental policies that are
(40:47):
in place that we have to accordto, we have to deal with a lot
of different processes.
There are so many differentliteral technologies of, like,
all right, ai, large languagemodels, like here's, you know, a
new coding language.
Here's all of these things thatdidn't exist even 25, 30 years
ago.
And so, um, you know, I thinkat some level, humanity is
(41:09):
growing and and trying to keepup, but I think the
technological advancements areincreasing at a faster rate than
humanity is.
So, um, we're kind of like,okay, you know, we can keep
building, building, building,but at some point we need I
think humanity might need toself audit and sell itself and
be like, okay, we need to slowthings down a little bit, just
so we can get a mastery of whatwe're doing here yeah, and build
(41:30):
like a co-working internet andprocess of tools that actually
help us do our jobs withouthaving to rebuild everything
every two years and and I mean,and I think, at a grander scale
of things, right, like theamerican economy being
capitalist economy is.
You know.
You know you have competition,you have a lot of different
companies trying to do maybe thesimilar or the same things, but
(41:51):
they're building it indifferent ways, which is awesome
and it's great and competitionis excellent.
But at the end of the day, thatmay mean that you speak maybe
not like you know, like verballanguage, Right, but you know,
you know one coding language andI know another and as a result,
we can't work together becauseA doesn't equal A and you know
apples to apples and we'recomparing apples to oranges
(42:14):
there.
You know, obviously there areways to get around that too, but
that takes time.
Michael Lane Smith (42:19):
Yeah, absolutely Well, right on, man.
I really appreciate everythingyou've shared.
I think this is really helpfulfor someone who's wanting to
learn more about procurement andsourcing.
Uh, if there was any otheradvice you wanted to share with
people you know about the space,getting to the space, is there
anything else you'd want to say?
Josh Chinn (42:35):
um, I think there are a lot of decisions like I
think there is a level of quoteunquote the game that people
have to play if they want tohave financial success.
I wouldn't say sit down andshut up, but you have to put in
(42:56):
your time such that you have thecapital at the end of it so you
can do what you want.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent ways to get capital
and resources and money, and Idon't think any of them is
better or worse than the other.
So if procurement seemsinteresting to you, great.
If it doesn't sound interestingat all, that's also okay.
(43:18):
I don't think there's anythingthere.
I will say one of the reasonsthat I kind of looked into
procurement and kind of theaccounting area is it's
relatively like recession proofthere will always be people who
need to handle the money and thenumbers and, you know, even
(43:40):
after COVID and things like thatI can look at.
I lost my job during COVID butI think it was pretty fairly
easy to find a job in thefinancial slash accounting
organizations after that, and soI know other industries can
(44:01):
have issues with that or it'skind of like a one and done,
like there's there's a clockthat you need to to to get
things by.
But, um, I think accounting isa relatively less less risky um
environment and so, as such,that that may be um, intriguing
to some people, but also may beboring and not where some other
(44:21):
people want to be.
So there is no right answer.
There are a lot of differentthings to consider when choosing
a career and, yeah, yeah, youknow.
Michael Lane Smith (44:31):
there's other things we could certainly
talk about your sport cardtrading business, your lobster
fishing summer.
There's lots of things I couldprobably dive into.
My typical last question is youknow how has your career
changed you?
I'd rather ask, I think youknow of the various jobs, side
gigs that you do participate in.
(44:51):
You know how have those?
How has your entire career sofar changed you?
Josh Chinn (44:58):
You might want to edit this out, I don't know.
I feel like I've gotten to apoint in my career where I think
I am nearing my end game andnot in a I'm fiscally ready to
retire.
But when I entered, I mean and Iliterally was just talking to
my therapist yesterday aboutthis, but it was like when I
(45:19):
joined corporate workforce itwas so that I can get financial
stability and I can work, youknow, and to some level it's the
prestige and status which Ithink objectively kind of feels
pretty good as a human for otherpeople, wow, he works at this
job or he does this X, y, z.
But I never joined to reallyclimb the ladder.
(45:40):
I feel like I, you know, know Icould maybe force myself to um,
but I've gotten to a point inmy career where I feel like,
okay, maybe I'm ready for maybenot a pivot um, but just
something outside of corporateamerica, because I think
corporate america is a greatplace to play the game um and
there are a lot of differentopportunities there.
(46:00):
But I kind of want to look moreinto entrepreneurship, into
business ownership and yeah, andI think that's.
I would not have been able todo that had I not spent eight
years in the workforce, but nowI'm at a point in my life where
I think my career and my viewtowards career is shifting a
(46:22):
little bit.
Michael Lane Smith (46:23):
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Well, thanks so much for yourtime, man.
I really appreciate it.
I know you only had an hour soI'll let you go, but yeah, was
there anything else you wantedto share with our listeners?
Or we can stop recording, evenif you'd like.
No, I?
Josh Chinn (46:35):
think.
I mean my guess is, if you'relistening to this, then you're
probably curious or you have aninquisitive mindset and you're
intrigued about a lot ofdifferent things.
I think that's a really healthymentality to keep up.
I think, no matter where youare, it's important not to get
complacent but to keep askingquestions and have fun along the
(46:59):
way, and I think if you're nothaving fun with it, then it's
really time to um.
I think you know stress comes.
Money, money is tough, right,people need to live, um, but I
do think that people need tohave an enjoyment of their lives
and, um, people should.
Well, maybe, maybe not peopleshould, in my opinion.
I like to uh, such that I canlive, as opposed to.
(47:20):
I know other people who like tolive so they can work.
But yeah, I find a lot ofenjoyment outside of work and I
plan to keep that work Right on,man.
Michael Lane Smith (47:50):
Thanks again , thank you.
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