July 17, 2025 • 26 mins
OLLY's presence in-store is powerful. It's digital strategy? Even more so—and Jennifer Peters is making it all click.
As Director of DTC, Martech, + Digital Compliance at OLLY, Jennifer Peters is helping one of the most recognizable wellness brands deepen its relationship with consumers—both online and off. In this episode, she shares how OLLY is bridging the gap between shelf and screen, redefining loyalty in a retail-first world, and keeping customer empathy at the center of it all.
Jennifer also reflects on her 13 years at Barnes & Noble, how tech is transforming customer feedback into action, and the advice she gives every rising professional looking to build a meaningful, long-term career.
Episode Highlights
- Why DTC is especially challenging for retail-first CPG brands—and how OLLY is making it work.
- What receipt scanning reveals about today’s hybrid shopper.
- Why loyalty means more than points—and who it’s really for.
- What “being where your customer shops” really means in 2025.
- Her advice for building influence and nurturing the next generation of talent.
This episode is packed with practical advice, big-brand insights, and career lessons you’ll actually use.
Links and Resources
Connect with Jennifer Peters on LinkedIn
Want more from SheSpeaks?
* Sign up for our podcast newsletter HERE! *
- Connect with us on Instagram, FB & Twitter @shespeaksup
- Contact us at podcast@shespeaks.com
- WATCH our podcast on YouTube @SheSpeaksTV
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just like being in the room and talking to people,
knowing their names, knowingwhere they work.
That will an investment thatwill last you forever.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to the show.
Hope you're all having a greatweek so far.
So I am excited for you to hearthis episode we have today,
because the industry that ourguest works in, which is the
vitamins and the supplementindustry, is an industry that is
growing like crazy.
Just to give you some statsback in 2022, the global market
(00:38):
was estimated for thesupplements and vitamins to be
about $48 billion.
That is growing so quickly.
It is expected to reach closeto $85 billion by 2030.
And that is just enormousincrease in awareness about the
value of supplements andvitamins.
(00:59):
And so today we have on the showthe wonderful Jennifer Peters,
who works at Oli and if you'vebeen to a Target, a Walmart, a
Publix or any one of these a CVSyou have likely seen the
colorful Oli packaging ofvitamins and supplements on
(01:20):
shelves there.
And Jennifer talks to us todayabout the industry.
She talks about her experienceand what she has learned along
the way.
We also take a step back andtalk about the beginning of her
career, which she spent atBarnes Noble, and we talk about
how e-commerce and people buyingproducts online has really
(01:44):
evolved over the last severalyears.
I really enjoyed thisconversation with Jennifer.
I think you will too.
We also have some giveawaysthat we are doing of Ali product
.
We had the opportunity to getsome product from Jennifer and
the team at Ali, so look out forsome information about how you
(02:04):
can enter to win some Aliproduct.
With that, I'm going to let youhear my terrific conversation
with Jennifer Peters.
Here we go.
Jennifer welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I have been lookingforward to talking with you
because you get to work on abrand that I see everywhere now
(02:27):
and I need you to first talk toeverybody.
You are currently the directorof direct-to-consumer marketing
and tech and digital complianceat OLLI, and you're going to
tell us what OLLI is, which I'msure everyone who hears this is
going to know immediately.
When you say what OLLI is, whatis OLLI?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I'm sure everyone who hears this is going to know
immediately when you say whatOli is.
What is Oli?
Well, I don't know, because Iwas at a conference a couple
weeks ago and I sat next to twopeople from Oli, the dog food
brand, and we were like, finallywe have come together, like
everyone can stop confusing us.
So it was actually great.
So I'm from Oli.
We're a gummy supplementcompany.
We have other things besidesgummies, but we're known for our
gummies that are delightful andyummy.
(03:03):
If you don't know what Ollie is, if you've ever been in Target
and you walk in and you turnright, we're always on the first
end cap, so that is.
Ollie, you recognize the bottleimmediately when you see it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
All caps, all caps, square bottles, beautiful.
So tell us a little bit aboutwhat you get to do day to day at
Ollie.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, it's different every day, which is why I love
it.
I run the direct-to-consumerbusiness, including retention,
website development, all of thecampaign pieces of kind of like
running an online business, butI also source and administrate
and maintain all of our MarTechsystems, so anything that kind
of marketing touches or anythingthat's sort of like in the
(03:40):
automation space, anythingrelated to AI that we use for
the business.
And then I also do compliance,which is great, because usually
two different people do thosethings, and so there's always
one person that's like yes, yes,yes, and the other one's like
no.
So I get to be one person who'slike this is a great idea or
this is probably a terrible idea.
So that's the nature ofcompliance.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I want to dive in a little bit to
direct-to-consumer.
For those who are listening,who maybe are not as familiar
with the direct-to-consumermodel, sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The way we define it is truly having a website that
sells direct-to-consumer.
Like it's not Omnichannel, it'snot Amazon, it's not Targetcom,
it's purely yourbrandcom,selling direct to your customer.
And typically those are themost brand loyal customers that
you have Right.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
That's unusual, right , most of the brands that we see
day to day.
As a shopper, I go into a store.
I might see a bottle of shampoo, but I can't go to that bottle
of shampoos website and buy theproduct from there.
Maybe I could go on to Amazonand buy it, maybe I can go on to
targetcom or walmartcom and buyit, but I can't buy it if I go
(04:44):
to their website directly.
How did it happen to be thatAli created this?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
sort of dual model?
That's a really great questionbecause there is a very good
reason.
You don't see a lot of CPGbrands selling D2C.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
There's a good reason .
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's very hard and typically your price points are
much lower for what you'reselling in a retail environment.
We are not a digitally nativebrand.
There are a lot of them outthere and so their whole
business is digital.
Ours is still the vast majoritybrick and mortar in-store sales
, so growing a digital businessto complement that is really
challenging, because it's reallyhard to connect the customer
(05:19):
one-to-one.
So, like if somebody shops ononlycom and then they suddenly
stop, there's no way really forus to know if they chose a
different brand or if they justshop at Walmart now, because now
that same product is carried attheir local Walmart.
So, it's really a tough businessto unite the customer, but it's
also really hard to connect allof those experiences because
there's so much that's outsideof your control in a brick and
(05:40):
mortar environment Like we can'tcontrol if the people that work
at the Walmart you go to arenice and friendly and helpful.
Like there's just so manyelements of that that are so
easy in the digital space butmuch, much more challenging in
brick and mortar and it's reallyhard to kind of bring that
together and make it feel like aunified brand experience.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Absolutely so.
Did the brand start as adirect-to-consumer brand?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
brand or did it?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
start in a retail location.
We started as partners withTarget, so our founder also
founded Method.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So same model.
Yes, Method the cleaning.
So very similar model.
We had an innovationpartnership with Target.
That was everything for severalyears.
But as you grow you need tostart serving other retailers
and grocery and drug and kind ofbe in those spaces too.
The digital business wasn't apriority until COVID, I would
say, when everybody was D2C.
You didn't really have much ofa choice, Like everybody had to
(06:31):
get into the D2C space.
So I think it really.
Anybody who's in that spaceduring COVID realized like this
can be a critical part of ourbusiness, not just for the
selling piece but for theeducation, just for the presence
, the awareness, all of thesethings.
It serves a lot of purposesbesides just being a store and
(06:52):
while we are a store.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
We also want to be like the brand hub for whichever
channel you might be shoppingin.
Yeah, it's so interesting tohear that in today's day and age
, it's still so difficult tomatch a consumer, a shopper, who
buys from you online but thenalso might buy in store.
Even as advanced as we'vegotten with the tools and you
talked about MarTech, marketingtech earlier Do you have a sense
(07:13):
for how these things informeach other?
So let's say, I'm walkingthrough a Target or Walmart or
whatever and I see Ali there.
Do you know if there areinstances where I migrate to
become a Alicom customer andvice versa?
I can see it the other way.
I start on Alicom and then Imigrate to being an in-store
(07:33):
customer, but do you know if itgoes?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
the other way.
I think it really does.
I think that when you do have abrandcom website, that's a
store, what you bring, there arethe people who just really are
committed to the brand andreally love the brand.
I mean, I think Sephora is sucha great example of that.
Like, sephora has everythingbeauty, like, let's say, you
love Moroccan oil, there's apoint where you stop shopping at
Sephora and you're like youknow what?
I want the perks, I want theloyalty points, I want the free
(07:57):
gifts.
I want that from the brand.
I'm going to move over to thebrand and so I kind of think of
it that way, like when you arebuying something and you're used
to buying it.
Like, sephora's got a greatloyalty program too, so it's
really tough to compete againstthat, but yeah, they've.
There's so many beauty brandsnow that the benefits of being
like a loyalty member there arehuge, and that's what drives?
I think a lot of that, yeah, andso we are investing heavily in
(08:17):
our loyalty program as well, andthis year we're going to be
rolling out receipt scanning sothat people who shop in store
can also be part of our loyaltyprogram.
We don't want to leave out thishuge group of customers who
love the brand and they don'tget the benefits of the loyalty
program.
They don't get you know news.
There's just like a whole CRMopportunity that we're missing
to drive people into store.
Like we don't.
(08:38):
We don't want to move peoplefrom channel to channel.
We want to be there to supportwhatever channel they want to be
in, and so this will help usunderstand where they are much
better.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I love that.
What a great idea to be able todo that.
So we now understand a littlebit more about what you get to
do day to day at OLLI.
I want to take a little bit ofa step back, if we can, and talk
about where you started in yourcareer.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You started on the retail side at Barnes Noble.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I love going into a Barnes Noble.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I do too.
I do.
I just love touching the books.
I love the smell.
The smell I was going to saythe smell of the books, it's
just there's a differentexperience.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Of course, we all buy a lot of stuff online.
We do that's.
You know that's where Amazonstarted, in books, Absolutely.
But there is something aboutthat experience of walking into
a Barnes Noble that you justcan't get.
Yeah, and it is thatexperiential moment.
So I want to talk about how youwent from Barnes Noble on the
(09:34):
retail side to making the shiftto digital media and what you
learned at Barnes Noble that youthink taught you how to do what
you get to do today.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
It's such a great question because I feel like in
a lot of ways and I have otherpeople that I've worked with at
Barnes Noble over the years whokind of moved on to other things
like we feel like we wereraised by Barnes Noble.
I was there for 13 years.
I grew up in their managementprogram, which is like huge
investments in people.
I mean, when you're in thatspace, you're just people
managing in a lot of ways.
So I got the opportunity toreally learn that young, which I
(10:03):
think once I moved over to thedigital space, you kind of see
like individual contributorsthey're good at their job and
then they get promoted tomanager and they have no idea
what to do.
I was very lucky to grow up inthe environment at Barnes Noble
where management and good peoplemanagement was like the most
important thing.
But I was there for a long timeand I think everything that you
know about merchandising andcustomer service and checkout,
(10:24):
all of that stuff is exactly thesame.
It's just in a different space.
Like you still want thecustomer to get to what they
want as fast as possible, youwant to put it in their hand,
you want to get them to theregister and you want them to
check out Like it's exactly thesame.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, you have a promotion.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
It's the same thing as having an end cap Like it's
not different.
So I was really lucky to havemany years of a foundation of
understanding how to sell stuffto people and people who wanted
to be there.
I always felt like Barnes Noblecustomers chose to be there.
They love it there.
It's not the grocery storewhere you have to go.
It's truly a place that youchoose to be and I got really
lucky and pivoted out of thatbecause my ex-husband was in the
(11:00):
Army and he got stationed at.
Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Iapplied for a role at the United
Methodist Publishing House andI became their director of
e-commerce for their churchsupply business, and it was
basically because the personthere filling the role felt like
, well, you know how to run abookstore.
It's just a bookstore online.
It's the same thing and it ishonestly.
(11:22):
It sounds like silly, but it iskind of the same thing and it
is honestly.
It sounds like silly but it iskind of the same thing.
When I first came to Cokesburywhich was the name of it they
were only doing print catalogsand print mailers and there was
zero digital, and so it wassuper cool to be able to build
that entire program from theground up, like, and I also
didn't know anything, so I hadto learn everything, but I was
able to do it at a pace where Icould learn it and implement it
and you, where I could learn itand implement it and you know
(11:42):
kind of test and measure andtest and measure and by the time
I left we had a team of like, Ithink, 10 people all running on
the digital space.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
It was really cool.
Well, and I have to tell youit's interesting because I'm
thinking about how what you musthave been exposed to in working
at Barnes Noble andunderstanding the customer.
I started my career at AmericanExpress.
We had a call center.
We got this enormous amount offeedback, thousands and
thousands of people who answeredthe phones.
(12:10):
And I remember the best piece ofadvice I got early in my
marketing career at AmericanExpress was the best investment
I will make in understanding thecustomer is.
Sitting with the customerservice reps and doing what they
call parallels.
Where a parallel like youlistened in on the calls, you
understood what the customer wassaying.
I can't tell you how valuablethat was in my understanding of
(12:35):
marketing.
Yeah, talking about a promotion, right, we would launch
promotions and the customerservice reps wouldn't even know
about them.
And that was one of the firstthings that I was able to figure
out by sitting on a call withone of these reps, because
somebody called in and said oh,I got this thing, you sent me in
the mail.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I'm like what.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Tell me more switch in your brain that goes off when
you start to understand thatthere is a person that is real
user, whether the person is ondigital or they're in person.
They are going through somesort of experience to purchase
and to become and to be anongoing customer.
I feel like the retailexperience is unparalleled.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It really is.
I like to think of it as seeinga movie that's based on a book.
You can see the movie and youcan be like this is a great
movie.
I really enjoyed this movie,yeah.
But if you've read the book,there's always someone who's
like well, I read the book andthere's a lot more in the book,
like there's a lot more contextand there's a lot more story,
and I feel like that's what youget when Figure it out from
watching the movie.
(13:40):
You'll get there.
It's fine, but it sure iseasier when you have all of the
context and the experience.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I bet you that it's so second nature to you at this
point, after spending 13 yearsthat you don't even like realize
how much it informs everythingyou're doing on a customer
journey.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's a digital customer journey.
Yeah, that's so true, and a lotof the younger people that I
work with they don't have thatexperience, and so I don't know
that I ever really valued it asmuch as I probably do now.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So you have this expertise in online sales and
very strong knowledge about thedirect-to-consumer selling,
including things like Shopify,magento.
What are some of the insightsthat people should understand
about selling to consumersonline?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Gosh you just always have to put yourself in the
shoes of the customer.
Even I can forget it sometimes,and that's my North Star.
If you get to a place whereyou're thinking about operations
, you're thinking about supply,at the end of the day, you have
to act like you've never seenyour website before, ever open
it up and experience the sitelike a customer.
You don't want to let a lot ofit bias you in ways that are not
(14:45):
good but at the same time, thatcustomer empathy is always the
most important thing, and Ithink in the CPG space it's
really easy to start thinking oflike Walmart and Target and
Publix and HEB as your customers.
They're not.
They are customers.
But the end user is the one whofeels delight when they use your
product.
They're the ones who are goingto come back and buy it again.
(15:06):
They're the ones that are goingto talk to their friends about
the brand.
Those are the people thatmatter.
Obviously, walmart matters, butI think that's one of the most
challenging things is to geteveryone in the organization to
realize who the customer is.
It sounds simple, but it'sreally not.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
No, but as somebody who spent a lot of years at a
company, that when we saidcustomer and card member, we
were talking about the personwho used their American Express
card.
It was such a shift in thinkingfor me when I started working
with people who had to make surethat they drove volume at a
retail location that when theysaid customer, they were talking
(15:42):
about the retailer.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, they were talking about it's very
different.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Because to them, they're moving all this product
to their shelves, right?
So if you're Pampers, yourcustomer is ultimately the
retail location and you wantthem to be happy.
Yes, that's whose happinessmatters, that's who's great,
it's so true and it's just, it'ssuch a different way of
thinking, and so I guess myquestion for you is how do you,
(16:09):
as someone who understands thevalue of the consumer so let's
say the shopper, the personwho's buying the product but
also the value of the retailer,how do you think about balancing
those constituencies?
It's tough.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
It's tough and in organizations everybody has a
different role too.
There's a shopper marketerwhose role is purely to serve
the retail customer.
It's you know.
There's customer experienceteam.
They're there to helpindividual people with the
things that go wrong.
So I think those are like thetwo extremes to me, and we've
got to find a way to integrateall of that and kind of bring it
into the middle.
I mean it's obviously importantto make sure that your
(16:42):
retailers feel supported.
Right it into the middle.
I mean it's obviously importantto make sure that your
retailers feel supported.
There are a lot of levers youcan pull to make that happen.
It's really almost like a levelof influence, I think, in the
way you talk internally, the wayyou talk about customers, the
way you talk to your operationsdepartment, your supply chain
and the people who order boxesand the pick and packers in your
warehouse.
Everybody needs to understandcustomer the same way.
So it's not something you cando overnight, especially if
(17:04):
you're trying to overcomeprevious cultural beliefs about
who the customer is.
You just constantly have totalk about it that way, and in
the business the customerexperience should be one of the
most important people on theteam because they are the ones
who know exactly what's wrongand exactly what's right.
And it's really easy to dismissthat stuff as anecdotal, but
it's real like from actualpeople.
(17:25):
Yes so it's a trove ofinformation.
It really is it is, andsometimes it's things you don't
want to hear.
We actually use a tool and ittakes all the sentiment from the
whole internet and puts it in adashboard by product.
And it has been one of the bestthings because, all of a sudden
, all of the complaints thatwe've had over the years about
like well, this one package isreally hard to open, we'll say
(17:45):
nothing happened for years.
Suddenly it's a data point andit's not anecdotal information
Like when you put it in adashboard.
It's a data point.
Oh my God, it's genius.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It is.
You can't argue with it, youcan't ignore it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
You can't hide from it.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And it is OK that because I do think that that's
one of the difficult parts ofworking at a big company is that
everyone assumes thatsomething's anecdotal and until
you can funnel the anecdotesinto something quantitative and
predictive.
(18:16):
It is so difficult to getpeople to pay attention.
It really is so I love thatthere is this tool.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's a great tool.
It really is.
It's a that there is this tool.
It's a great tool.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
It's a game changer for us.
I think there's so many thingsyou don't want to have to deal
with, you don't want to have toface.
I guarantee you there's not asingle thing that comes up there
that our team didn't alreadyknow, right?
I mean, there are literallyzero surprises, right?
But this gives you a way toquantify Exactly.
Now we can talk about it as ifit's data.
Yes, and that is a game changer.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I love that All right .
When you think about the retailpartners that we talked about,
the paid media channels that areout there, what do you think is
the biggest challenge in kindof maintaining that cohesive
channel strategy when you haveso many different elements?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
elements.
My feeling is that the mostimportant thing is to build your
internal structure in a waythat supports kind of all ships
rising.
Because if you create anenvironment where you have
channels competing against eachother and feeling like you're
getting in my channel, like Iwant to steal your customer
because I need to make mynumbers, it creates this
environment where you forgetthat you're on the same team and
we are so lucky at OLLI to havean understanding that
(19:25):
everything has kind of like anaura effect.
When we win, we all win.
We don't win for eachindividual channel's number.
Yeah, and I have worked manyplaces and seen many companies
that have a different structurethan that, where it truly is
very competitive, where you haveyour sales team being so angry
that Walmartcom did a sale andTarget didn't get.
(19:46):
You know.
I mean, it's so easy to kind ofcreate this us versus them
mentality and that structurecomes from the top.
It has to be intentional and ithas to be strategic and you
have to think about the brand asa whole and not the brand as it
breaks down in a channel.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
It's the concept of the rising tide floating all
boats Absolutely, and to get ateam to understand that is not a
small feat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
No, it's not, and everyone has to buy into that.
Every person on your leadershipteam has to buy into that in
order for it to work.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
If someone who is listening does not have that
naturally in their organization,is there anything you can
recommend or advice you have forthem about how they could
create that?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
cohesiveness.
It comes to how you talk aboutit, and I really think a lot of
times, when you're in anorganization and let's say
you're not a VP, you're not amanager or whatever, there are
certain things that you caninfluence but you can't do A lot
of it is almost campaigning,like you go out there, you say
the same words, you talk to thepeople who you know are decision
(20:47):
makers, you tell them the samestories and sometimes you have
to say it multiple times to thesame person before it clicks
before they get it.
So it's almost just like anOscar campaign.
You go out and you just startkind of, you know, talking about
this as if it's something veryimportant.
Every opportunity you get tokind of speak widely to people
within your company, you've gotto talk about it and you've got
to build alliances internally.
And that sounds weird and notsneaky, but obviously you
(21:10):
shouldn't have to do that.
But that is the reality.
Right, you've got to figure outwho's a doer.
Who can you get on your sideand like what executive
sponsorship can you get aroundthis idea?
Build who can you get on yourside and like what executive
sponsorship can you get aroundthis idea?
Build yourself a network ofallies within your business.
There are always going to bepeople who are helpers and there
are always going to be peoplewho are not.
And you just have to find theones who are, Find the helpers.
You've got to find the helpersand they.
(21:32):
If you can get them on yourteam, you can make that happen.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Or at least you can improve it significantly.
Oh, that happen, or at leastyou can improve it significantly
.
Yeah, oh my God.
I love that when you thinkabout how many times we say we
have to expose a consumer to amessage until they kind of go oh
, I'm going to buy this.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It's not once, it's not twice.
There's always a frequency,there is a frequency to?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
how often do you have to expose them to it?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Okay, Well since we are on a podcast that is called
Women of Influence, tell me howdo you think about influence,
what does it mean to you?
Where it really feels to melike I'm in the place, where I
(22:18):
want to give back now, andthere's always kind of this
reckoning of you know, lookingto your past, looking at who
your mentors were, looking atwhat they taught you.
Sometimes they taught you whatnot to do.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
In a lot of cases, yes, which is a valuable lesson
too.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Some of the hardest things to learn are watching bad
managers do bad management.
But you sure can learn a lot ohyes, and I'm at that.
(23:01):
Oh yes, around women, helpingwomen is very different than it
was 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
There's just a solid network ofwomen's groups.
Like she speaks, I mean,there's so many places out there
where women can support eachother and I think it's really
important to influence that nextgeneration of person, of
manager, of employee, of personwho cares about the brand.
So that's really where I amright now.
And my middle son justgraduated from high school.
He's in his first year ofcollege right now and he had
(23:23):
this friend group of just likethe most brilliant kids I've
ever seen.
I mean, they're just amazing.
And you know, there's this onein particular who's just like
wants to know everything aboutwhat everybody at OLLI does,
because she wants to know it, Imean she's very smart, but you
know I mean just like to seethat, like voracious appetite
for information and learning,and like that's so exciting to
me.
Yeah, to see someone just likeyou know this, I know she's
(23:45):
going to go out there and killit in this business world Like
she's going to be great.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But it's being able to influence that next
generation, I think is of thatsame age, and seeing that the
kids that really do stand outare the ones who have a thirst
for information and are curious.
And it's interesting because ifI were to tell that generation
one thing, it would be look,when you're starting out, you're
(24:16):
low on skill, but what do youhave?
You have high will, Absolutely.
And take your will and reallydial it up, and that means being
curious.
Ask the questions, do as muchas you can to show that this is
because you can be that sponge.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You can, absolutely.
You might find something youreally love at a business you
already work in that you neverthought you'd be interested in,
and when I hire, that's what Ilook for.
I don't.
I can teach you how to be aShopify developer, but I can't
teach you how to be curious andpassionate and ambitious and
smart.
I mean, those are things thatyou come to the table with, or
you don't?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah Well, and maybe this question, my last question
for you, sort of dovetails somuch with that, but I always
love ending and asking my gueststo talk about, if they could go
back to when they were justgetting started, what one piece
of advice they would give theiryounger selves.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Make friends with everybody that you can in the
business that you're in, becauseit's all the same people, Right
?
I mean, I think the longer I'min the Bay Area, the longer I'm
in CPG, the longer I'm ine-commerce.
It is literally all the samepeople working at different
places.
They just move around.
Yeah, and those relationshipsare everything.
Yeah, it's if you go into aroom and you network and you
don't talk to anybody, you justleft who knows what on the table
(25:27):
.
Yeah, those relationships areeverything.
And I take some of my directreports to events so they can
meet people and you know, I meanjust like being in the room and
talking to people, knowingtheir names, knowing where they
work.
That will an investment thatwill last you forever.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Oh, I love that.
What a great, what a greatpiece of advice.
Well, thank you so much,Jennifer, for spending this time
with us today.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Thanks for having me.
This was so great.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, this is fun.
Thanks for doing it.
Just like being in the room and talking to people,
knowing their names, knowingwhere they work.
That will an investment thatwill last you forever.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to the show.
Hope you're all having a greatweek so far.
So I am excited for you to hearthis episode we have today,
because the industry that ourguest works in, which is the
vitamins and the supplementindustry, is an industry that is
growing like crazy.
Just to give you some statsback in 2022, the global market
(00:38):
was estimated for thesupplements and vitamins to be
about $48 billion.
That is growing so quickly.
It is expected to reach closeto $85 billion by 2030.
And that is just enormousincrease in awareness about the
value of supplements andvitamins.
(00:59):
And so today we have on the showthe wonderful Jennifer Peters,
who works at Oli and if you'vebeen to a Target, a Walmart, a
Publix or any one of these a CVSyou have likely seen the
colorful Oli packaging ofvitamins and supplements on
(01:20):
shelves there.
And Jennifer talks to us todayabout the industry.
She talks about her experienceand what she has learned along
the way.
We also take a step back andtalk about the beginning of her
career, which she spent atBarnes Noble, and we talk about
how e-commerce and people buyingproducts online has really
(01:44):
evolved over the last severalyears.
I really enjoyed thisconversation with Jennifer.
I think you will too.
We also have some giveawaysthat we are doing of Ali product
.
We had the opportunity to getsome product from Jennifer and
the team at Ali, so look out forsome information about how you
(02:04):
can enter to win some Aliproduct.
With that, I'm going to let youhear my terrific conversation
with Jennifer Peters.
Here we go.
Jennifer welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I have been lookingforward to talking with you
because you get to work on abrand that I see everywhere now
(02:27):
and I need you to first talk toeverybody.
You are currently the directorof direct-to-consumer marketing
and tech and digital complianceat OLLI, and you're going to
tell us what OLLI is, which I'msure everyone who hears this is
going to know immediately.
When you say what OLLI is, whatis OLLI?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I'm sure everyone who hears this is going to know
immediately when you say whatOli is.
What is Oli?
Well, I don't know, because Iwas at a conference a couple
weeks ago and I sat next to twopeople from Oli, the dog food
brand, and we were like, finallywe have come together, like
everyone can stop confusing us.
So it was actually great.
So I'm from Oli.
We're a gummy supplementcompany.
We have other things besidesgummies, but we're known for our
gummies that are delightful andyummy.
(03:03):
If you don't know what Ollie is, if you've ever been in Target
and you walk in and you turnright, we're always on the first
end cap, so that is.
Ollie, you recognize the bottleimmediately when you see it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
All caps, all caps, square bottles, beautiful.
So tell us a little bit aboutwhat you get to do day to day at
Ollie.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, it's different every day, which is why I love
it.
I run the direct-to-consumerbusiness, including retention,
website development, all of thecampaign pieces of kind of like
running an online business, butI also source and administrate
and maintain all of our MarTechsystems, so anything that kind
of marketing touches or anythingthat's sort of like in the
(03:40):
automation space, anythingrelated to AI that we use for
the business.
And then I also do compliance,which is great, because usually
two different people do thosethings, and so there's always
one person that's like yes, yes,yes, and the other one's like
no.
So I get to be one person who'slike this is a great idea or
this is probably a terrible idea.
So that's the nature ofcompliance.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I want to dive in a little bit to
direct-to-consumer.
For those who are listening,who maybe are not as familiar
with the direct-to-consumermodel, sure.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The way we define it is truly having a website that
sells direct-to-consumer.
Like it's not Omnichannel, it'snot Amazon, it's not Targetcom,
it's purely yourbrandcom,selling direct to your customer.
And typically those are themost brand loyal customers that
you have Right.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
That's unusual, right , most of the brands that we see
day to day.
As a shopper, I go into a store.
I might see a bottle of shampoo, but I can't go to that bottle
of shampoos website and buy theproduct from there.
Maybe I could go on to Amazonand buy it, maybe I can go on to
targetcom or walmartcom and buyit, but I can't buy it if I go
(04:44):
to their website directly.
How did it happen to be thatAli created this?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
sort of dual model?
That's a really great questionbecause there is a very good
reason.
You don't see a lot of CPGbrands selling D2C.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
There's a good reason .
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's very hard and typically your price points are
much lower for what you'reselling in a retail environment.
We are not a digitally nativebrand.
There are a lot of them outthere and so their whole
business is digital.
Ours is still the vast majoritybrick and mortar in-store sales
, so growing a digital businessto complement that is really
challenging, because it's reallyhard to connect the customer
(05:19):
one-to-one.
So, like if somebody shops ononlycom and then they suddenly
stop, there's no way really forus to know if they chose a
different brand or if they justshop at Walmart now, because now
that same product is carried attheir local Walmart.
So, it's really a tough businessto unite the customer, but it's
also really hard to connect allof those experiences because
there's so much that's outsideof your control in a brick and
(05:40):
mortar environment Like we can'tcontrol if the people that work
at the Walmart you go to arenice and friendly and helpful.
Like there's just so manyelements of that that are so
easy in the digital space butmuch, much more challenging in
brick and mortar and it's reallyhard to kind of bring that
together and make it feel like aunified brand experience.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Absolutely so.
Did the brand start as adirect-to-consumer brand?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
brand or did it?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
start in a retail location.
We started as partners withTarget, so our founder also
founded Method.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So same model.
Yes, Method the cleaning.
So very similar model.
We had an innovationpartnership with Target.
That was everything for severalyears.
But as you grow you need tostart serving other retailers
and grocery and drug and kind ofbe in those spaces too.
The digital business wasn't apriority until COVID, I would
say, when everybody was D2C.
You didn't really have much ofa choice, Like everybody had to
(06:31):
get into the D2C space.
So I think it really.
Anybody who's in that spaceduring COVID realized like this
can be a critical part of ourbusiness, not just for the
selling piece but for theeducation, just for the presence
, the awareness, all of thesethings.
It serves a lot of purposesbesides just being a store and
(06:52):
while we are a store.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
We also want to be like the brand hub for whichever
channel you might be shoppingin.
Yeah, it's so interesting tohear that in today's day and age
, it's still so difficult tomatch a consumer, a shopper, who
buys from you online but thenalso might buy in store.
Even as advanced as we'vegotten with the tools and you
talked about MarTech, marketingtech earlier Do you have a sense
(07:13):
for how these things informeach other?
So let's say, I'm walkingthrough a Target or Walmart or
whatever and I see Ali there.
Do you know if there areinstances where I migrate to
become a Alicom customer andvice versa?
I can see it the other way.
I start on Alicom and then Imigrate to being an in-store
(07:33):
customer, but do you know if itgoes?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
the other way.
I think it really does.
I think that when you do have abrandcom website, that's a
store, what you bring, there arethe people who just really are
committed to the brand andreally love the brand.
I mean, I think Sephora is sucha great example of that.
Like, sephora has everythingbeauty, like, let's say, you
love Moroccan oil, there's apoint where you stop shopping at
Sephora and you're like youknow what?
I want the perks, I want theloyalty points, I want the free
(07:57):
gifts.
I want that from the brand.
I'm going to move over to thebrand and so I kind of think of
it that way, like when you arebuying something and you're used
to buying it.
Like, sephora's got a greatloyalty program too, so it's
really tough to compete againstthat, but yeah, they've.
There's so many beauty brandsnow that the benefits of being
like a loyalty member there arehuge, and that's what drives?
I think a lot of that, yeah, andso we are investing heavily in
(08:17):
our loyalty program as well, andthis year we're going to be
rolling out receipt scanning sothat people who shop in store
can also be part of our loyaltyprogram.
We don't want to leave out thishuge group of customers who
love the brand and they don'tget the benefits of the loyalty
program.
They don't get you know news.
There's just like a whole CRMopportunity that we're missing
to drive people into store.
Like we don't.
(08:38):
We don't want to move peoplefrom channel to channel.
We want to be there to supportwhatever channel they want to be
in, and so this will help usunderstand where they are much
better.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I love that.
What a great idea to be able todo that.
So we now understand a littlebit more about what you get to
do day to day at OLLI.
I want to take a little bit ofa step back, if we can, and talk
about where you started in yourcareer.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
You started on the retail side at Barnes Noble.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I love going into a Barnes Noble.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
I do too.
I do.
I just love touching the books.
I love the smell.
The smell I was going to saythe smell of the books, it's
just there's a differentexperience.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Of course, we all buy a lot of stuff online.
We do that's.
You know that's where Amazonstarted, in books, Absolutely.
But there is something aboutthat experience of walking into
a Barnes Noble that you justcan't get.
Yeah, and it is thatexperiential moment.
So I want to talk about how youwent from Barnes Noble on the
(09:34):
retail side to making the shiftto digital media and what you
learned at Barnes Noble that youthink taught you how to do what
you get to do today.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
It's such a great question because I feel like in
a lot of ways and I have otherpeople that I've worked with at
Barnes Noble over the years whokind of moved on to other things
like we feel like we wereraised by Barnes Noble.
I was there for 13 years.
I grew up in their managementprogram, which is like huge
investments in people.
I mean, when you're in thatspace, you're just people
managing in a lot of ways.
So I got the opportunity toreally learn that young, which I
(10:03):
think once I moved over to thedigital space, you kind of see
like individual contributorsthey're good at their job and
then they get promoted tomanager and they have no idea
what to do.
I was very lucky to grow up inthe environment at Barnes Noble
where management and good peoplemanagement was like the most
important thing.
But I was there for a long timeand I think everything that you
know about merchandising andcustomer service and checkout,
(10:24):
all of that stuff is exactly thesame.
It's just in a different space.
Like you still want thecustomer to get to what they
want as fast as possible, youwant to put it in their hand,
you want to get them to theregister and you want them to
check out Like it's exactly thesame.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, you have a promotion.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
It's the same thing as having an end cap Like it's
not different.
So I was really lucky to havemany years of a foundation of
understanding how to sell stuffto people and people who wanted
to be there.
I always felt like Barnes Noblecustomers chose to be there.
They love it there.
It's not the grocery storewhere you have to go.
It's truly a place that youchoose to be and I got really
lucky and pivoted out of thatbecause my ex-husband was in the
(11:00):
Army and he got stationed at.
Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Iapplied for a role at the United
Methodist Publishing House andI became their director of
e-commerce for their churchsupply business, and it was
basically because the personthere filling the role felt like
, well, you know how to run abookstore.
It's just a bookstore online.
It's the same thing and it ishonestly.
(11:22):
It sounds like silly, but it iskind of the same thing and it
is honestly.
It sounds like silly but it iskind of the same thing.
When I first came to Cokesburywhich was the name of it they
were only doing print catalogsand print mailers and there was
zero digital, and so it wassuper cool to be able to build
that entire program from theground up, like, and I also
didn't know anything, so I hadto learn everything, but I was
able to do it at a pace where Icould learn it and implement it
and you, where I could learn itand implement it and you know
(11:42):
kind of test and measure andtest and measure and by the time
I left we had a team of like, Ithink, 10 people all running on
the digital space.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
It was really cool.
Well, and I have to tell youit's interesting because I'm
thinking about how what you musthave been exposed to in working
at Barnes Noble andunderstanding the customer.
I started my career at AmericanExpress.
We had a call center.
We got this enormous amount offeedback, thousands and
thousands of people who answeredthe phones.
(12:10):
And I remember the best piece ofadvice I got early in my
marketing career at AmericanExpress was the best investment
I will make in understanding thecustomer is.
Sitting with the customerservice reps and doing what they
call parallels.
Where a parallel like youlistened in on the calls, you
understood what the customer wassaying.
I can't tell you how valuablethat was in my understanding of
(12:35):
marketing.
Yeah, talking about a promotion, right, we would launch
promotions and the customerservice reps wouldn't even know
about them.
And that was one of the firstthings that I was able to figure
out by sitting on a call withone of these reps, because
somebody called in and said oh,I got this thing, you sent me in
the mail.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I'm like what.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Tell me more switch in your brain that goes off when
you start to understand thatthere is a person that is real
user, whether the person is ondigital or they're in person.
They are going through somesort of experience to purchase
and to become and to be anongoing customer.
I feel like the retailexperience is unparalleled.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
It really is.
I like to think of it as seeinga movie that's based on a book.
You can see the movie and youcan be like this is a great
movie.
I really enjoyed this movie,yeah.
But if you've read the book,there's always someone who's
like well, I read the book andthere's a lot more in the book,
like there's a lot more contextand there's a lot more story,
and I feel like that's what youget when Figure it out from
watching the movie.
(13:40):
You'll get there.
It's fine, but it sure iseasier when you have all of the
context and the experience.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I bet you that it's so second nature to you at this
point, after spending 13 yearsthat you don't even like realize
how much it informs everythingyou're doing on a customer
journey.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That's a digital customer journey.
Yeah, that's so true, and a lotof the younger people that I
work with they don't have thatexperience, and so I don't know
that I ever really valued it asmuch as I probably do now.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So you have this expertise in online sales and
very strong knowledge about thedirect-to-consumer selling,
including things like Shopify,magento.
What are some of the insightsthat people should understand
about selling to consumersonline?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Gosh you just always have to put yourself in the
shoes of the customer.
Even I can forget it sometimes,and that's my North Star.
If you get to a place whereyou're thinking about operations
, you're thinking about supply,at the end of the day, you have
to act like you've never seenyour website before, ever open
it up and experience the sitelike a customer.
You don't want to let a lot ofit bias you in ways that are not
(14:45):
good but at the same time, thatcustomer empathy is always the
most important thing, and Ithink in the CPG space it's
really easy to start thinking oflike Walmart and Target and
Publix and HEB as your customers.
They're not.
They are customers.
But the end user is the one whofeels delight when they use your
product.
They're the ones who are goingto come back and buy it again.
(15:06):
They're the ones that are goingto talk to their friends about
the brand.
Those are the people thatmatter.
Obviously, walmart matters, butI think that's one of the most
challenging things is to geteveryone in the organization to
realize who the customer is.
It sounds simple, but it'sreally not.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
No, but as somebody who spent a lot of years at a
company, that when we saidcustomer and card member, we
were talking about the personwho used their American Express
card.
It was such a shift in thinkingfor me when I started working
with people who had to make surethat they drove volume at a
retail location that when theysaid customer, they were talking
(15:42):
about the retailer.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, yeah, they were talking about it's very
different.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Because to them, they're moving all this product
to their shelves, right?
So if you're Pampers, yourcustomer is ultimately the
retail location and you wantthem to be happy.
Yes, that's whose happinessmatters, that's who's great,
it's so true and it's just, it'ssuch a different way of
thinking, and so I guess myquestion for you is how do you,
(16:09):
as someone who understands thevalue of the consumer so let's
say the shopper, the personwho's buying the product but
also the value of the retailer,how do you think about balancing
those constituencies?
It's tough.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
It's tough and in organizations everybody has a
different role too.
There's a shopper marketerwhose role is purely to serve
the retail customer.
It's you know.
There's customer experienceteam.
They're there to helpindividual people with the
things that go wrong.
So I think those are like thetwo extremes to me, and we've
got to find a way to integrateall of that and kind of bring it
into the middle.
I mean it's obviously importantto make sure that your
(16:42):
retailers feel supported.
Right it into the middle.
I mean it's obviously importantto make sure that your
retailers feel supported.
There are a lot of levers youcan pull to make that happen.
It's really almost like a levelof influence, I think, in the
way you talk internally, the wayyou talk about customers, the
way you talk to your operationsdepartment, your supply chain
and the people who order boxesand the pick and packers in your
warehouse.
Everybody needs to understandcustomer the same way.
So it's not something you cando overnight, especially if
(17:04):
you're trying to overcomeprevious cultural beliefs about
who the customer is.
You just constantly have totalk about it that way, and in
the business the customerexperience should be one of the
most important people on theteam because they are the ones
who know exactly what's wrongand exactly what's right.
And it's really easy to dismissthat stuff as anecdotal, but
it's real like from actualpeople.
(17:25):
Yes so it's a trove ofinformation.
It really is it is, andsometimes it's things you don't
want to hear.
We actually use a tool and ittakes all the sentiment from the
whole internet and puts it in adashboard by product.
And it has been one of the bestthings because, all of a sudden
, all of the complaints thatwe've had over the years about
like well, this one package isreally hard to open, we'll say
(17:45):
nothing happened for years.
Suddenly it's a data point andit's not anecdotal information
Like when you put it in adashboard.
It's a data point.
Oh my God, it's genius.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It is.
You can't argue with it, youcan't ignore it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
You can't hide from it.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And it is OK that because I do think that that's
one of the difficult parts ofworking at a big company is that
everyone assumes thatsomething's anecdotal and until
you can funnel the anecdotesinto something quantitative and
predictive.
(18:16):
It is so difficult to getpeople to pay attention.
It really is so I love thatthere is this tool.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's a great tool.
It really is.
It's a that there is this tool.
It's a great tool.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
It's a game changer for us.
I think there's so many thingsyou don't want to have to deal
with, you don't want to have toface.
I guarantee you there's not asingle thing that comes up there
that our team didn't alreadyknow, right?
I mean, there are literallyzero surprises, right?
But this gives you a way toquantify Exactly.
Now we can talk about it as ifit's data.
Yes, and that is a game changer.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I love that All right .
When you think about the retailpartners that we talked about,
the paid media channels that areout there, what do you think is
the biggest challenge in kindof maintaining that cohesive
channel strategy when you haveso many different elements?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
elements.
My feeling is that the mostimportant thing is to build your
internal structure in a waythat supports kind of all ships
rising.
Because if you create anenvironment where you have
channels competing against eachother and feeling like you're
getting in my channel, like Iwant to steal your customer
because I need to make mynumbers, it creates this
environment where you forgetthat you're on the same team and
we are so lucky at OLLI to havean understanding that
(19:25):
everything has kind of like anaura effect.
When we win, we all win.
We don't win for eachindividual channel's number.
Yeah, and I have worked manyplaces and seen many companies
that have a different structurethan that, where it truly is
very competitive, where you haveyour sales team being so angry
that Walmartcom did a sale andTarget didn't get.
(19:46):
You know.
I mean, it's so easy to kind ofcreate this us versus them
mentality and that structurecomes from the top.
It has to be intentional and ithas to be strategic and you
have to think about the brand asa whole and not the brand as it
breaks down in a channel.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
It's the concept of the rising tide floating all
boats Absolutely, and to get ateam to understand that is not a
small feat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
No, it's not, and everyone has to buy into that.
Every person on your leadershipteam has to buy into that in
order for it to work.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
If someone who is listening does not have that
naturally in their organization,is there anything you can
recommend or advice you have forthem about how they could
create that?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
cohesiveness.
It comes to how you talk aboutit, and I really think a lot of
times, when you're in anorganization and let's say
you're not a VP, you're not amanager or whatever, there are
certain things that you caninfluence but you can't do A lot
of it is almost campaigning,like you go out there, you say
the same words, you talk to thepeople who you know are decision
(20:47):
makers, you tell them the samestories and sometimes you have
to say it multiple times to thesame person before it clicks
before they get it.
So it's almost just like anOscar campaign.
You go out and you just startkind of, you know, talking about
this as if it's something veryimportant.
Every opportunity you get tokind of speak widely to people
within your company, you've gotto talk about it and you've got
to build alliances internally.
And that sounds weird and notsneaky, but obviously you
(21:10):
shouldn't have to do that.
But that is the reality.
Right, you've got to figure outwho's a doer.
Who can you get on your sideand like what executive
sponsorship can you get aroundthis idea?
Build who can you get on yourside and like what executive
sponsorship can you get aroundthis idea?
Build yourself a network ofallies within your business.
There are always going to bepeople who are helpers and there
are always going to be peoplewho are not.
And you just have to find theones who are, Find the helpers.
You've got to find the helpersand they.
(21:32):
If you can get them on yourteam, you can make that happen.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Or at least you can improve it significantly.
Oh, that happen, or at leastyou can improve it significantly
.
Yeah, oh my God.
I love that when you thinkabout how many times we say we
have to expose a consumer to amessage until they kind of go oh
, I'm going to buy this.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It's not once, it's not twice.
There's always a frequency,there is a frequency to?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
how often do you have to expose them to it?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Okay, Well since we are on a podcast that is called
Women of Influence, tell me howdo you think about influence,
what does it mean to you?
Where it really feels to melike I'm in the place, where I
(22:18):
want to give back now, andthere's always kind of this
reckoning of you know, lookingto your past, looking at who
your mentors were, looking atwhat they taught you.
Sometimes they taught you whatnot to do.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
In a lot of cases, yes, which is a valuable lesson
too.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Some of the hardest things to learn are watching bad
managers do bad management.
But you sure can learn a lot ohyes, and I'm at that.
(23:01):
Oh yes, around women, helpingwomen is very different than it
was 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
There's just a solid network ofwomen's groups.
Like she speaks, I mean,there's so many places out there
where women can support eachother and I think it's really
important to influence that nextgeneration of person, of
manager, of employee, of personwho cares about the brand.
So that's really where I amright now.
And my middle son justgraduated from high school.
He's in his first year ofcollege right now and he had
(23:23):
this friend group of just likethe most brilliant kids I've
ever seen.
I mean, they're just amazing.
And you know, there's this onein particular who's just like
wants to know everything aboutwhat everybody at OLLI does,
because she wants to know it, Imean she's very smart, but you
know I mean just like to seethat, like voracious appetite
for information and learning,and like that's so exciting to
me.
Yeah, to see someone just likeyou know this, I know she's
(23:45):
going to go out there and killit in this business world Like
she's going to be great.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But it's being able to influence that next
generation, I think is of thatsame age, and seeing that the
kids that really do stand outare the ones who have a thirst
for information and are curious.
And it's interesting because ifI were to tell that generation
one thing, it would be look,when you're starting out, you're
(24:16):
low on skill, but what do youhave?
You have high will, Absolutely.
And take your will and reallydial it up, and that means being
curious.
Ask the questions, do as muchas you can to show that this is
because you can be that sponge.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You can, absolutely.
You might find something youreally love at a business you
already work in that you neverthought you'd be interested in,
and when I hire, that's what Ilook for.
I don't.
I can teach you how to be aShopify developer, but I can't
teach you how to be curious andpassionate and ambitious and
smart.
I mean, those are things thatyou come to the table with, or
you don't?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah Well, and maybe this question, my last question
for you, sort of dovetails somuch with that, but I always
love ending and asking my gueststo talk about, if they could go
back to when they were justgetting started, what one piece
of advice they would give theiryounger selves.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Make friends with everybody that you can in the
business that you're in, becauseit's all the same people, Right
?
I mean, I think the longer I'min the Bay Area, the longer I'm
in CPG, the longer I'm ine-commerce.
It is literally all the samepeople working at different
places.
They just move around.
Yeah, and those relationshipsare everything.
Yeah, it's if you go into aroom and you network and you
don't talk to anybody, you justleft who knows what on the table
(25:27):
.
Yeah, those relationships areeverything.
And I take some of my directreports to events so they can
meet people and you know, I meanjust like being in the room and
talking to people, knowingtheir names, knowing where they
work.
That will an investment thatwill last you forever.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Oh, I love that.
What a great, what a greatpiece of advice.
Well, thank you so much,Jennifer, for spending this time
with us today.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Thanks for having me.
This was so great.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, this is fun.
Thanks for doing it.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.