The Other AI: Why Aesthetic Intelligence Matters (with Pauline Brown)

Why aesthetic intelligence is important for nearly every company regardless of industry, and why it matters to individuals both personally and professionally. A new digital divide and its implications on our senses and on business strategy. 

Pauline impresses with her wealth of knowledge and experience, a reflective view of luxury, fashion and business in general, as well as life wisdom and her unique self, which she’s never afraid of being in the stodgy corporate world.

Episode Transcript

(00:21):
​“21st Century Renaissance”. Episode 1: The Other AI: Why Aesthetic Intelligence Matters, with Pauline Brown
For the first interview of my newpodcast, I speak to Pauline Brown.
Pauline is the former Chairman of LVMHMoët Hennessy Louis Vuitton North America,
and has held senior executive positionsat other leading companies, including

(00:42):
Estée Lauder, Bain, and The Carlyle Group.
In 2016, she launched her own practiceas an advisor, lecturer and author.
Her breakthrough book, AestheticIntelligence, is based on a course
she introduced at Harvard BusinessSchool and now teaches at Columbia
Business School, filling a void forthe topic in business school education.

(01:05):
Pauline is currently a Board Memberof America´s leading luxury retailer
Neiman Marcus and a Henry CrownFellow at the Aspen Institute.
She hosts the popular lifestyle show,Tastemakers, which airs on the American
broadcasting channel Sirius XM.
In this interview, we talk about whataesthetic intelligence is, why it's

(01:28):
important for nearly every companyregardless of industry, and why it
matters to us as individuals, both forour personal and professional lives.
We talk about a new digitaldivide and its implications on our
senses and on business strategy.
We also talk a little about hercourse, and her new e-learning

(01:49):
platform, Aesthetic IntelligenceLabs, which I plan to join soon.
Pauline brings to the conversationnot only her wealth of knowledge and
experience, but also a critical andreflective view of luxury, fashion
and business in general, as well aslife wisdom, and her unique self,

(02:10):
which she's never afraid of beingin the often stodgy corporate world.
I'm thrilled to have her as my firstguest, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
All right.
Well, welcome, Pauline, to my new podcast.

(02:32):
So I've finished your book in about threeor four days, which is a record for me.
Either that or the bookis way too easy a read?
No, no, it's not.
It's very insightful.
I'm not usually a slow reader--I'musually a slow reader, but the speed

(02:53):
means–shows–how engaging the content was.
You know, good writers are ableto establish or trigger connection
from their readers, even thoughthey don't personally know each
other, and I certainly felt that.
I felt this connection from afar.

(03:13):
I picture that our life pathskind of—if I gesture with my
hands—kind of went like this...
[hand gesturing] Hmm, crisscrossed.
Yeah, we started on the opposite endsof the globe—you're a New Yorker, a

(03:36):
New York jew with Central Europeanheritage; I'm from China with
Manchurian blood on my mom's side.
We skirted each other in New Yorkaround the time of our MBAs—I came
to the US and spent two years in NewYork and Washington DC, just at the

(03:56):
same time as you went to Wharton.
And then I think you went back toNew York, and I came to California,
where I got my MBA from Stanford.
And then I stayed on this coast.
So we were on the opposite coasts,with very different industries
and very different experiences.

(04:17):
But then somehow, as you said, wedeveloped many common interests,
ideologies, and curiosities, andnow we're sharing this common
time and space to explore them.
Thank you.
That's a very heartwarming andmost original introduction.

(04:38):
Most people get into the bio veryquickly, and I always prefer something
that talks about the journey.
But the other point I'll make is whatI have been pushing for—which way
predates the book—this idea of bringingmore beauty into business, with in
mind that business is a big partof the world—it's not divorced from
the world—to me, this is universal.

(04:59):
This is not about people whowant to be in the luxury world;
who want to work with designers.
I think every industry has opportunityto lift the human condition, and very
few actually consider that value add.
They might think of itas a bit of tokenism.
So, my mission here is to take somethingyou've expressed: coming from a different

(05:24):
part of the world originally, livingnow in a different part of the country,
and with very different industryexperience that still resonates with you.
You didn't need to be working forthe likes of LVMH or Estée Lauder
in order for this to make sense.
So that was my goal, andyou have given me a bit more
confidence that it's resonating.

(05:45):
Oh, yeah, it's definitely resonating!
So when you're talking about yourfamily background—again, I'm Chinese
with Manchurian background—you talkedabout your grandmothers and your
grandparents, their influence on you.
Even though we're from very differentcultural backgrounds, there has been
an appreciation of beauty and stylein my family too—my grandma was a

(06:09):
seamstress, and she worked for a tailorshop–a Japanese tailor shop, when the
region was in Japanese occupation.
She had this innate sense of beauty;always made beautiful clothes for us.
She had three daughters who didn'tinherit her skills, but they also had

(06:30):
this great sense of style and beauty.
The three sisters wereknown in my hometown.
So my mom, and my sister– myown sister–as well, probably
they're more stylish than I am.
So that really personally resonated,like you said, that universality of
this human appreciation for beauty.

(06:51):
Yes, thank you.
The other thing, though, that your storyis bringing to light is that the sense
of style is shaped by a lot of differentfactors, but one of them are these

maternal lineage (07:03):
this sort of influences that come from your mother, from your
grandmother, from stories of your familyin your history, in your migration, and
the cultures—not just where you're livingtoday, but maybe the culture that's in
the backdrop of your family history.
I spent a lot of time above andbeyond the book thinking about

(07:23):
"how does taste get shaped?".
Why is my taste quitedifferent than my sisters'?
In our case, we lived in the samehouse; we have the same parents.
But we have other differences.
And that has come into bear interms of how we express ourselves.
Definitely.
So speaking of the book, I lovedthe anecdote that you started with.

(07:47):
So instead of me repeating, it's probablythe best for you to tell that scene, up
to when you were proposing your courseto Harvard, and the reaction from Francis
hearing exactly what you had in mind.
You know what?
I wasn't exaggerating;the story went as follows.

(08:07):
First of all, I had no aspirationor vision of ever being a professor;
that was not on the table.
My entire career was invarious large global brands.
I knew that I wanted to take atime-out from being an operator.
I started figuring out at that stageexactly how I would structure my time

(08:30):
and still stay relevant and useful,and gainfully employed in some form.
Toward the end of my tenure at LVMH,I was asked to give a lecture at HBS.
And I went up–it waspart of a retail series.

I always enjoyed talking to students: That makes me feel young; I think (08:48):
undefined
it's their sort of fresh energy.
And I more and more, as I get moresenior in my career, felt that I had
something to offer that I wish I hadhad some access to when I was a student.
My professors didn't come from the worldin which I had come from at that point.

(09:09):
So we were sitting down after the series.
And I sort of–off the cuff–I said,"I've always kind of wanted to
teach, but I want to teach somethingthat I think is completely void at
business school, really absent".
And she said, "Well, what is it?"
And I was like, "Well, I don't wantto teach something about luxury
management; I don't want to teach aboutbrand building; I don't want to teach

(09:32):
marketing, even though those would bethe logical subjects from where I came."
I said "something much biggerand more profound than that."
She said, "What is it?"
And I said, "Well, it's kind oflike the business of aesthetics."
And she said, "Whoa, I love it!
How do you spell it?"
[Laugh] That was the first timeI ever had to spell it and I've

(09:53):
never spelled it wrong ever since.

I'm a bit of a wordsmith (09:55):
I do care about words; I was an
English major as an undergraduate.
I picked that word—even though it wasa bit spontaneous—I really settled on
that word very thoughtfully, becauseaesthetics, as you know from the
book, is not about simply beauty,and it's not about visual elegance.

(10:17):
It is something much more humanistic.
It's really– it comes from theGreek word aisth?tikós, which is
about perception of the senses.
So an aesthetic experience isone that lifts you sensorially.
And oftentimes, it may be liftingyou without having any visual impact:
it could be a beautiful concert thatyou're listening to; a wonderful
meal that has the aromas and thecuration, the preparation, and the

(10:44):
temperature and all the things thatcome together to make a meal delectable.
That is an aesthetic experience.
So what I like about this word aesthetics,which I've never given up on, is it
allows people who have different waysof arriving, or expressing their tastes,

(11:04):
to call on different sensibilities.
Yeah!
So
her reaction really sums up the state ofaesthetics in business or lack thereof.
[Laugh] True, true.
I also appreciated the assignmentthat you gave Harvard students.
You asked them to write reviews forrestaurants, and they all came back with

(11:29):
business consultant–type of reports...
Very dispassionate.
My directive to them—because I didn't wantto read a 500-page report at 100 students
at a time; I didn't want it to be thegreat American novel—I said to them: In
the constraints that you have, which wasa certain number of word count I think,

(11:53):
your job is to make me feel what youfelt at your most enlivened during that
meal, during that restaurant experience.
And I wanted them to be connected notjust with the emotional experience—because
we don't go to restaurants fornutrition [we can do nutrition much
more efficiently]—we go there for otherreasons: for social and for sensorial.

(12:18):
And what I find is that businesspeople in general, and Harvard MBAs
in particularly, are woefully bad atdrawing on the language of emotional

experience (12:29):
It's very clinical, very objective, very analytic.
You know, they've been trained nowfor years leading up to their MBA,
even, to sort of diagnose things in adepersonalized and almost scientific way.
That works, if you're data analyst,or many kinds of engineers.

(12:51):
It doesn't work if you'retrying to appeal to people on a
personal or an emotional level.
So it's almost a different way ofcommunicating that, on top of everything
else I'm saying is not being taughtat business school, that particular
skill set is not being taught.
Yeah, I have a lot to relate on that.
Not only HBS graduates, you know, Stanfordand the business community at large, are

(13:18):
taught to just value above the neck...
Yes.
... what is considered to be intellectin the brain and in the mind,
ignoring our body and the senses.
I have been actually leading workshops andplayshops—we had two seasons of playshops

(13:38):
during the pandemic—focusing on senses.
There's one session just exclusivelyfocusing on senses; the others
were exploring different sensesthrough arts-based learning.
But I frame this as for wellbeing,and for emotional intelligence.
I use these experiential activities insome of the corporate workshops as well.

(14:03):
One of the participants said, "Oh,I never realized how raspberries
tasted–raspberries tasted like that!"
But even for emotional intelligence, thisis kind of experimental, or I guess edgy.
My corporate client contacts wouldsquirm when I describe there would
be sensory exercises, because theywould feel that this is beneath them.

(14:27):
The reason that I'm putting myglasses on is: I, today, posted
on my Instagram Story, a quoteby a woman named Diane Ackeran.
She wrote a book called ANatural History of the Senses.

And the quote is (14:41):
"One of the real tests of writers is how
well they write about smells.
If they can't describe the scent ofsanctity in a church, can you trust them
to describe the suburbs of the heart?"
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you define aesthetics as the arousalof senses, and you spoke about something

(15:06):
that is bigger and more profound.
So what would you say is the deeperessence of why senses are important?
Well, first of all, let me say, aestheticexperiences are about arousal of the
senses; aesthetic intelligence is reallyabout shaping other people's senses.

(15:28):
So it's about taste, right,that how you express it.
And why do I think that's important?
I mean, No.
1, because in business–it's important inlife, we know, because: Who wants to live
in Maoist China when you can live withgreat art and culture and community and
faith and all the things that throughouthistory have enhanced the human condition?

(15:54):
So we know it's important in humanity,which is why we have museums and
why we have monuments and so forth.
Why is it important in business?
Well, Reason #1 is that the vastmajority—and I want to say probably 90%
of what we spend our money on—is notpurely based on this rational assessment

(16:17):
of needs, of functionality, of sortof utility, or cost/benefit analysis.
If we just were to be rational in howwe spend, whether it's for a T-shirt
or for a house or for a vacation, wecould do things much cheaper; we could
spend much, much less money than we do.
What we're spending on arehow things make us feel.

(16:40):
On average, about 85% of the ultimatebuying decision of one brand over another,
of one particular product over another,maybe even one category over another, is
how it makes that person feel and whetherthat feeling connects with an aspiration.
That being the case, why aren'tbusinesses more empathic toward how

(17:01):
their consumers or customers feel?
Why are they always designing thingswith a very rational assessment?
Why are marketers spending almost100% of their energy on the things
that might account for 15 or sopercent of the decision factor, which
is the features and the function.
So that's one reason.
It goes beyond that, though.

(17:21):
It isn't just about gainingor winning the customer.
It's about earning a relationship.
We don't have relationships with products.
Products are anonymous, inanimate.
We have relationships with anidea, an ideal, an identity; we

(17:43):
have relationships with people.
And great brands step in and play abit of a role in that relationship.
You feel connected, again, fora variety of different reasons
which we can get into; they'remostly psychological in nature.
And in order to do that, you have to beexpressing something again, that speaks

(18:04):
to people at their core, at their heart.

I would say another reason is (18:08):
So many businesses are running on such
tight margins, and the minute there'sa recession, or the minute there's a
disruptive technology that intermediate,if they don't go out of business, they
certainly lose their value very quickly.
There isn't inherent valuein what they're doing.

(18:32):
When you do what I'm proposingwell, it gives you so much pricing
power, as we saw with all the LVMHbrands, or the Estée Lauder brands
on the cosmetic end, that you canactually reinvest in your business.
And you don't just reinvest incoming out with the next, you
know, utility-based product; youreinvest in the communication,

(18:53):
you reinvest in the service, youreinvest in that human experience.
And when you're operating ona really tight margin, and
you don't have the ability to
elevate your prices, you're nevergoing to be able to offer more than
that commodity I just described.

(19:15):
So, I think that if done well–and that'salways– the first step is believing in
it; the second step is institutionalizingit starting with the top; the third is
keeping it going, keeping the machine.
It's a little bit like–when I thinkof strong aesthetic propositions, it's

(19:37):
a little bit like a strong athlete.
The best athletes in the world, theOlympic athletes often have form
of some advantage, but the realreason that they're at that level
is because they worked really hard.
They trained.
They had the good fortune of training inthe right place with the right people.
A good athlete no matter how many medalshe or she wins, if they stopped training

(20:00):
tomorrow, and then one year later triedto go into the competition they wouldn't
even rank the top 100, no matter how goodthey were four years ago or one year ago.

So my point is (20:09):
Aesthetics is like a muscle and you can build it wherever your
starting point, and also it can atrophy.
You can rebuild it, but generally thestrongest athletes are those that are
consistent and disciplined and havecommitted to long periods of time.

So I always tell people (20:28):
If you believe in what I'm saying, and you're prepared
to invest in it, be prepared that thisis a lifelong learning exercise too.
In the book, you say, "In the absence ofaesthetics most businesses are susceptible
to potentially fatal challenges.
In other words, when a company'saesthetics fail, so does the company."

(20:52):
That is a pretty large claim, and Iwould–I can imagine many eyebrows will
be raised by that, in the business world.

Caveat (21:03):
if I were the CEO of Exxon, I don't know that that line would
mean all that much to me, you know?
Do I think that there's a bit ofa relationship between a Mobil gas
station or a Shell gas station?
A little bit, but it's somarginal relative to proximity,
the price per gallon, so on.

(21:25):
So I think there are industries thatcan get away for at least until fossil
fuel gets away, which is happening.
I think that there are industries forwhom this doesn't speak to; I think
they are so few and far between.
I think, the vast majority–and do Ithink that comment raised eyebrows?

(21:45):
What my experience is, when peoplehear it, they get it in concept.
But the reason I called the book AestheticIntelligence, and the reason I started
my online platform called AestheticIntelligence Labs—and I did not call it
what I called my business class, whichis Business of Aesthetics—the reason is
because it's one thing to understand itand say, okay, "maybe I need to invest

(22:09):
more in my ad agency", or "maybe I needto put a few more seats in my creative
department"; it's another thing to say,to have the commitment to say, "I need
to work on this," whether I'm a CFO,a COO, supply chain: everybody plays
a role in this; it's a value systemthat has to go all the way to the top.

(22:29):
And I think that causes morediscomfort than the generic concept
that this matters for business.
...because it really goes into your yourvalues, like you said, the raison d'être.
Yeah, the meaning and purposeof your business, and a lot
of businesses have lost that.
So that, you're saying, iswhere the discomfort lies.

(22:52):
So can you give some examples—so as tobring it more concrete to people—where
this concept either made or broke acompany, especially outside of let's say,
luxury, or food, or you know, hospitality,where it's easier to understand or

(23:13):
maybe outside of creative industries?
Well, I can give you countless examples,and I'm always coming up with new ones.
So let me give you like threeextremely different sectors, and
different size, different history.
But before I tell you the firstone, let me pick up a point I talked

about in the book which is (23:32):
To be aesthetic doesn't have to be beautiful.
It can actually be in some waysunpleasant, that can be exciting too.
In French, there's the term which youmay remember: I talked about jolie laide.
Jolie is the French word for pretty,laide the French word for ugly,
and Jolie Laide is used often todescribe a beautiful woman's face.

(23:52):
What makes her beautiful, is thatthere's something a little bit
of—maybe it's the proportions, maybeit's a gap in the tooth—that makes
her interesting and it makes her thatmuch more beautiful and memorable.
So I say this because the first example Iwant to give you is: When I was coming of
age, as a young child, I loved ice cream.

(24:14):
I have a sweet tooth.
I love ice cream.
And the most premium ice cream goingback to the 70s, early 80s that you
could come up with was a Häagen-Dazs.
It was sold in this sort ofbeautifully packaged almost
like a jewelry kit pint size.
Everything else was inthe big box, a quart box.

(24:35):
And it was very fine.
If you've got for example, mintchocolate chip, it was very
finely ground and everything wasvery fine and subtle about it.
The vanilla, everything was subtle.
And then on the heels of that youhave a brand called Ben and Jerry's.
Ben and Jerry's, well, it wasserved in the same shape pint.
That cylinder pint was theantithesis of Häagen-Dazs in its

(24:59):
sort of sensorial experience.
Ben Cohen had a form of hypoesthesiawhere he actually had very
dull sense of smell and taste.
He was born with it.
And because of that, he did two thingsthat reinvented what we think of as
acceptable for premium ice cream.

(25:19):
The first is that he made themultra sweet: He over-flavored
them; he put together ingredientsthat normally wouldn't have been,
with this Chunky Monkey and...
So there's a lot of...
Cherry Garcia we recently had.
That was a best seller.
And then the other thing he didis because he couldn't fully
taste the flavor, he wanted moretexture, what they call mouthfeel.

(25:40):
So instead of this finely mincedchocolate or nuts, everything
was very voluminous and chunky.
And there was a lot of texturalcombinations in contrast.

My point being (25:50):
The person who loved Ben and Jerry's might have been looking for a
very different experience than the personwho loved a gelato or a Häagen-Dazs.
And it was such a subtle change, becauseas I said, it was still sitting on
the same shelves in the same stores.
Obviously, the visual representationwas quite different in almost

(26:11):
amateur-like, which was part of its charm.
And the naming was colorful and whimsical.
But I think the most important thing ishe took something that we had a formula
for, and he kind of re-crafted what
feel like, and in so doing–and therewas humor in the line and other

(26:32):
personalities-we developed a relationshipwith it that went above and beyond when we
were just sitting there eating ice cream.
And that is in a crowded market.
It is not easy to be anupstart in ice cream.
Go down any supermarket in thecountry in that frozen section,
and you'll see there is no emptyspace; there are so many brands.
And that was a time where thebig brands were prevailing.

(26:54):
And this was an upstart from Vermont.

Another example (26:58):
Disney.
This is a much bigger company.
It's been around a lotlonger than Ben and Jerry's.
Disney– I'm just going to talk fora minute about the parks, the theme
parks, which are very expensive.
I don't know if you read it, whichrecently came out of the paper, that
at the current price, because ofinflation and soaring travel costs,
average family of four will spend fiveto 10 thousands for a few days there.

(27:20):
Oh my god!
Very expensive, in the US.
And that's a middle class family.
This is not geared towardthe uber-luxury, right?
And that could be more than10% of their annual income.
So why did they go?
And why do they keep going back?
When you leave a Disneypark, you leave with nothing.
It's not like you leave a Vuittonstore and you've got your bag, right?

(27:44):
Or Chanel cosmetic counterand you've got your lipstick.
You leave with nothing, exceptyou leave with a memory.
And what Disney does so well is it createsa series of experiences and little moments
[as well as a few big moments, but mostlyaccumulation of little moments] that are
so colorful, and so delightful, and soevolving, because there are families that

(28:08):
go back every year or every other yearfor years until their kids are in college.
And you say I get you, you go once,but why would you keep going back?
Because they keep evolving it.
They keep delighting peoplein new and refreshing ways.
And there are so many moments of delight.
And what you leave when you leavea Disney park is with memories.
And memories and anticipation [meaningthe appetite to go back] is about 50% of

(28:34):
the perceived value of a Disney vacation.
So when somebody says "I spent $5,000for five days of the park with my
family, and that was a lot," you knowwhat they actually spent 2500 at the
parks, spent the other 2500 in somecombination of the six weeks before they
got on the plane, and six months afterthey were still talking about that trip.

(28:55):
So that's another experience, itis– to the point where I couldn't
even compare a Disney vacation witha day going to Adventure Land Park.
It is not even a theme park.
It's an immersive experience.
So it's kind of created almost its ownsector within the entertainment world.
Another example.

(29:16):
Again, I want to stay out of luxury.
Um, oh there are so many examples.
People ask me, well, "Canyou actually do this online?
Can you actually createdigital aesthetics?"
And I talk a lot about that, especiallyin my class [I now teach at Columbia],
and everyone is of course consumed withthe D2C and with digital representation.

(29:36):
And I say "with limitations".
It's never going to be as good ifit's a standalone online proposition.
But I can give you an example of acompany that's done it as well as I
could imagine anyone doing it withinthe constraints, and that is Airbnb.
Airbnb, like Disney, it sells nothing.
I mean it's a matchmaker.

(29:57):
It has no inventory, right?
It's just brokering.
Airbnb did not invent thisconcept of home or room rentals.
In fact, 12 years or so before Airbnbwas even launched, you had Craigslist.
Craigslist was doing exactly that.

(30:17):
Nobody unless they wereincredibly price sensitive or
desperate, would go on Craigslist.
And then certainly if you did geta room on Craigslist, you didn't
expect it to be a joyful experience.
There were a number of other companiesthat launched around the same time or even

earlier than Airbnb (30:32):
HomeAway, VRBO...
Why did Airbnb become, youknow, the giant in the space?
Why is Airbnb's market cap to thetune of about 20x where Craigslist is,
when it was launched so much later?

(30:53):
And why is– it's probably 4x what Expe–what Barry Diller's group, which they
own now– ah,VRBO as part of that group.
The reason that– the founders, thetwo founders of Airbnb came out
of Rhode Island School of Design;they were not technologists.
Yeah, I was going to say that, yeah.
And they understood from the get-go,that to solve this problem, they had

(31:19):
to use the elements of design—in theircase, mostly visual design, but even
around the placement of photography,the word choices, the style, and form
and voice of communication with boththe renters and the customers—they had
to use all of those tools to fostertrust, and to create excitement.

(31:43):
And they did it brilliantly.
So that would be another example where,again, their competency- they don't sell
anything that I couldn't buy any othernumber of ways; I could also still stay
at a hotel- but they were able to createmagic in their communication and their
messaging and in their visual expression.
So you give two, I guess, physical worldexamples historically [not really far

(32:09):
out historically, but at least in modernhistory], and then one contemporary, a
new– I guess, less than 20 year old–story,Airbnb, which is a digital company.
That brings up two questions thatI'd like to discuss with you.

So one is (32:25):
Among the things that really resonated that you mentioned as upcoming
trends is this digital expansion.
Where I am in Silicon Valley, it's–what we teach at Stanford, it's a
lot about digital transformation.

(32:47):
Airbnb is certainly a stalwartexample, more so from "How
do you transform digitally",rather than the aesthetic angle.
But, you know, CX—consumerexperience—is certainly one of that.
But what I wanted to discuss withyou is that you point out this
two emerging worlds, which reallyresonated, out of this whole

(33:09):
digital expansion, transformation,whatever you want to call it.
One is the automation, the artificialintelligence, robotics, et cetera,
and that seems to be unrelenting.
The other is this craving for moremeaning, relationships, human connections,

(33:29):
that are really the core part of ourhumanity, which senses are rooted in.
So I thought– you know, Ihaven't thought of this that
way, but it really spoke to me.
So what as consumers can we expectlooking forward, that may be—products

(33:50):
or services that may be going a littleaway from the everything–going–digital?
You know, how that may beevolving or even changing?
I just want to actually slightlytweak the way you characterized it.
I don't see these as two parallelworlds, although in some ways they are.

(34:13):
I see the more emphasis there is onthe URL, on the all things digital,
the more unmet need and yearningthere is for what has made us human
for 1000s of years, which is IRL.
So they are not independent variablesin the sense that we have spent so much

(34:39):
energy in the last—particularly thelast, oh, over the last 20 years, but
I'd say particularly in the last 10,you know, with THIS [holding up the
iPhone to the screen] being an extensionof our brain—that there's a part of
our human condition that is is reallythirsting for reactivation, and it is
opening the way for experiences thatare multisensorial, that are immersive.

(35:05):
Not in the metaverse sense of the wordbecause that's still not—you know that
[metaverse] form of immersive to meis at best like seeing a great movie.
If you said to me—I mean, the first timeI went to some of my favorite films like
Gone With the Wind, of course, I wasutterly rapt for two or three hours.

(35:27):
If I had the choice to take mybest...my favorite film of all time
and watch it, and if it were extendedto 24 hours, I'd say "no way".
I cannot sit in a theater, in a darktheater, watching a screen listening
to sort of that form of fabricatedor digitized sound, for 24 hours.

(35:49):
I can do it very happilyfor two to three hours.
So what's happening is for the—whatmaybe used to be a few minutes a day
and then turned into a few hours aday, and now might be 12 hours a day
specially with COVID; we're working andwe're doing this interview remotely—for
every hour we're spending doing this,it is like stepping into that movie and

(36:11):
stopping the part of our life that givesus a sense of balance, the physical
gratification, the human connectionthat is much more profound if we were
having this conversation face-to-face,which would be quite different.
We're making do with it, becausewe're practical, and we're efficient.
But it is —we can't fool ourselves— alittle bit like if you were going to go

(36:36):
on a diet and you said "okay, well, thisis my nutritional needs, and I broke
it down as a scientific experiment.
And I said, I need certain amount ofvitamin A, certain amount of vitamin
C, I need a certain amount of volumeso that I don't feel hungry and..."
and you just do—you could survive.
Many people who are in the hospitalfor months on end survive on such

(37:01):
artificial diets or supplementeddiets, but you would not enjoy it.
You would not enjoy life andyou would not enjoy your meals.
And the only thing that makes life worthliving and makes us look forward to
the next day and makes us creative, andromantic, and imaginative: all of that is
emanated in the things that give us joy.

(37:24):
So I go back to—so your question is howis this going to play out… Well, actually,
I'll add something to what I said.
So you give a different meaning to"digital divide": rather than the "haves"
and "have-nots", you're saying that divideis now the "wants" and "do not wants".
So it's defined not byaccess, but by desirability.

(37:49):
Yes.
So how would that play out affecting notonly what's coming— as a consumer, what
you can expect in terms of new shifts inproducts and services, and on the flip
side, what would you tell companies?
Do they need to target one or the other?
Or is there a different/optimalway of serving both?

(38:10):
Well, so I'll give youa real world example.
I serve on the Boardof Neiman Marcus Group.
Neiman Marcus is the largest retailerin North America of luxury goods.
Neiman Marcus has an online businessand e-commerce business that does
over a billion dollars in sales.
And unlike Farfetch andNet-a-Porter and a lot of the

(38:30):
others, it actually makes money.
Doesn't make as much money online asit makes in stores, but it also isn't
operating like a pure play, where itscustomer acquisition is nearly as high.
When I think of that business model,you know, it's gotten to a size where
I always say, "you're not going towin by playing the Amazon game".

(38:53):
The market may reward us as wehave outsized growth in our Online,
but our Online will never bewhat we're essentially selling.
We're selling two things thatAmazon will never be able to do.
And so the Point #1 is youdo what others can't do.
If you're offering just a smarteralgorithm, there'll be an even smarter

(39:15):
algorithm that will get—and product isnot going to be your limitation here.
So what—why we're winning?
No.
1, we're winning because we'recreating an integrated experience
where we can no longer look at "areyou online, or are you offline"?
If you're customer-centric,we're everything, we're both.

(39:35):
And my relationship as a shopper withNeiman Marcus has to have a certain
seamlessness between the two, whichvery few companies have done well.
I think we're probably in likethe first or second inning of how
this could play out over time.
But where we really win is in creatingan in-store experience that people want

(39:58):
to go to, and they want to go therenot because the chances of finding
something my size are better than ifI try it online and I'm disappointed
when it comes and it's not my fit.
It's because I can discover things inthe store that I would never discover
if I was doing a Google search.
It's because I can have the support ofa person in the store, who can give me

(40:20):
advice, so that when I—maybe even foundthat skirt I was looking for, I could
have some ideas or some inspirationof how I can finish it and pair it.
I can be in a store that—more andmore in our Neiman Marcus stores,
we're putting bars and lounges andcoffee areas, because the experience
shouldn't just be about buying clothes;it should be a form of retailtainment!

(40:45):
I've come— maybe there's a pop-up thatis short-lived, and it's a theme and
it's seasonal; maybe there's a friendI can meet for lunch or something
I can do just to take a break.
So the experience of it has to bemore than the transactional, which
I think was one of the many areasthat most retailers...bricks and

(41:06):
mortar retailers have gotten wrong.
They were so consumed—for about 50years—with productivity per square foot.
And we as a country are so over-stored;I'd say as a world we are over-stored,
we're over-malled, and we're sellingthings that people don't need.
But what they do need is to go back...

they need to be delighted (41:25):
women and men, increasingly men—want
to feel and look stylish.
This quest for discovery, the enjoymentthat comes from discovering, even

if you won't buy it (41:36):
I like going in stores sometimes because it's
a bit anthropological; I can touchthings and see things and I...
I have a daughter who's goingto college; it's interesting for
me to see what her generation isflocking to and staying away from.
So that human piece of itwill never be done online.
Never!

(41:58):
Does that mean that Neiman Marcus shouldsteer clear of all things digital?
Of course not.
First of all, it alreadyhas a big business online.
Second of all, it couldbe very complimentary.
Thirdly, there are times where I justwant a replenishment of my Crème de la
Mer; I don't want to go all the way toa Neiman Marcus store for that one item.
And I should have an easy option.

(42:19):
But we're not going to winon that convenience factor.

So that's my view (42:22):
the best of the—in all of these categories that
are inessential, Amazoncan continue to win.
In addition to just being, youknow, fast and plentiful and
transparent, and cost effective, isthey can supply all my necessities.

(42:42):
I have no reason to buy cleaning fluidanywhere else; it gives me no joy,
even in the best store environment.
So I, I might say my hats off to Amazon.
But when I see—and I've seen this abouta dozen times in the last 10 years—that
"Amazon is focusing on beauty and Amazonis focusing on fashion and Amazon wants

(43:02):
to go into luxury", I say "you know what?
Good money after bad;they're not going to do it".
It's a different mindset that isrequired having spent my whole career
on that other side of the fence.
Neiman Marcus is a large, famousbrand, established company.

(43:25):
You did also gave, in the book, examplesof small emerging companies that are
specifically meeting the unmet need ofthis human craving for whatever that
sense might be, whether it's touch, or...
Most companies in this countryand in the world are small.
They have less than 10 employees.

(43:47):
They are...might be described a littlebit pejoratively as mom-and-pop.
I think you can do very well—verywell as a high-performing small
business that isn't chasing sales,that's deep in the community.
People don't live in countries;they live in neighborhoods, right?

(44:11):
And people don't have relationships with1000s of people—the average person has
probably 150 meaningful relationships.
So what I would say to a smallbusiness is: go deep, but do it well.
Offer something in the form ofservice or product or ideally some

(44:31):
combination of both that feels specialand unique and authentically you.
This idea of aesthetic intelligence isnot about—the worst thing you can do is
copy anyone else, no matter how good.
When I see that Microsoft is openingstores and they took the best of of
Apple Store designs and made it theirversion of Microsoft Store, I say that

(44:56):
was the worst thing they could have done.
Why?
No.
1 because the designs they'recopying were already old Apple.
That was Apple circa 2012;that's not even Apple today.
Second of all, it's sodisingenuous; it's not interesting.
You know, if I want thatsensibility, I go to the original.
So I really encourage them—the smallerbusinesses—to double down, however

(45:17):
imperfect it is, on what is authenticallyyour expression, and bring it into the
store, because that's what people willemotionally connect with, just like that's
what people connect with, in human form.
What's an example of a company thathas been doing well on that front?
Oh,

(45:37):
I'll give big companies becausethe names are also recognizable,
but like a Trader Joe's.
Trade Joe's didn't study Wegmans orWhole Foods and say, "this is the
departments that they're winning, andthis is the marketing campaign that
put them on the map and made themcommanding of a much bigger marketplace
or newer territory than we have".

(45:57):
They just said, "this is what we are."
Trader Joe's is a big business butdidn't start as a big business.
It started...there was a Joe!
He died in the last year, and I read hisobituary, and I was quite touched by it.
And I thought, you know, youstill feel—and I never met him; I
never went to the original TraderJoe's store—but the point...
He's a Stanford grad, by the way.

(46:19):
A Stanford MBA.
Or he is?
I gotta believe, I gotta believe thathis aesthetic is very in tune; that
the original store didn't feel all thatdifferent than all the other stores
that we now see under that banner.
It's quite quirky.
Great customer experience.
It's very different.

(46:40):
We shop there every week, almost.
What's important there is thatit's a great employee experience,
too; employees are happy.
I don't know another supermarket whereemployees genuinely enjoy their job.
And I don't know that they enjoy theirjob because they tell me; I know it
because I see their smile on their face.
And I've been to manydifferent Trader Joe's.

(47:02):
One thing companies dowrong, is they think...
they treat their business as a bitof a theater, where there's a stage,
and the stage is what the customersees, and then everything behind the
stage is another story altogether.

It's sort of this (47:15):
when the curtain goes down, who cares what you express or how
you express it and how this all looks?
I think a good company is one wherethe way you treat your people—whether
they are employees, whether they areyour cleaning staff, your CEO, your

(47:36):
customer, your vendors, your marketingagency—there has to be a consistency.
That value, the value system whichis what you're expressing through
aesthetics, is a value system that hasto be true to how you run everything.
It can't just be used for design.
Right.

Yeah, it's like a person (47:55):
you have to be congruent as a whole being
other than just this part vs.
that part.
So what do you think would make businessesmore aware of and value aesthetics?
By the way, the Trader Joe'sstory makes me think that...they

(48:15):
may not have thought of theirstrategy as an aesthetic strategy.
Many companies probably do notthink of it through the aesthetic
lens, but they have exemplified...
The best strategies are notdeveloped as aesthetic strategies;
they're developed as honest ones.

(48:39):
It's just an expression of whatyou believe and how you believe it.
It's a voice.
And
that to me—I think you're absolutelyright, you know, I have a whole section of
the book where I talked about brand codes.
Brand codes are these markers of thebrand, like, McDonald's' double M,
you know, it could be a tune; it couldbe anything that we kind of connect

with (49:00):
Chanel, double C and so forth.
None of them were developed becausethey were supposed to be codes;
they were part of the...kind of thearchive of the company's history.
And they—you know, some cleverpeople, whether they were
the founders or designers ormarketing—found ways to repurpose
them and make them iconic over time.

(49:22):
Financial Times when itwas first produced...first
published...was in London, and itwas competing with a local paper.

And it had two issues (49:33):
No 1, it was financially strapped; and No.
2, that it wanted to differentiateitself from the other business
newspaper that came out of London.
So they decided to keep thatsort of salmon pink tone.
It was actually...the first reason wasbecause it was quite expensive to bleach

(49:57):
the paper, and so it was a way for themto save money to not have to bleach it.
And then secondly, they said,"Plus, it will make us feel
different than our arch competitor."
Flash forward over 100...more than 100years now, it is more expensive today
for the Financial Times to produce thatcolor on this paper; it would be cheaper

(50:17):
for them to go with just neutral white.
But it has become such a powerful code...
You know exactly, immediately that's FT.
I can be 100 feet away from someone,if they're reading it, I don't need to
see anything—I don't need to see thefont—I know it's a Financial Times.

And, I'd go even further (50:35):
I have certain assumptions about that
person 100 feet away who's readinga Financial Times: he or she is
sophisticated, is worldly, obviouslycares about the world of business.
I mean, there're certainassociations that are powerful.

But my point being (50:52):
it didn't start as a code.
Codes become that over time.
And once they are codes,they're very valuable.
That's goodwill.

So going back to that question (51:03):
what do you think will make companies
be more conscious of it, andcultivate it more, and value it?
First of all, if I had been around andproselytizing all of this 40 years ago,
nothing I would have said would havechanged the course of business history.

(51:26):
We're in a different moment in time.
And I think most companies, while theymay or may not, or let's just say their
CEOs may or may not believe that I havethe answer—and I may or may not, but I
think for many I do—one thing they doknow for sure, is that the way they've
operated for decades doesn't work anymore.

(51:48):
Just having a reputation is not a passto market leadership, sort of scale
and equity no longer go together.
We see that in many industries.
Just having more resources—wellsometimes that becomes diseconomies
of scale, because there's too muchcomplexity, which is why Tesla is
worth so much more than Ford, right?

(52:09):
Why is Tesla, which sells a fraction ofthe cars of Ford or GM, worth so much?
Well, because it didn't haveany of the legacy issues.
It's actually a good exampleof diseconomies of scale,
so it could be focused.

Innovation (52:22):
There is not an industry that I can think of other than some,
maybe very few commodities that isn'taffected by the technological advances.
But you can't really win on technologyup to—it's a bit like biotech or

pharmaceutical (52:36):
You can get a patent and it can give you a big lead.
But eventually, eventually—it might be10 years, or—but eventually that narrows.
In fact, as you get closerevery year, it'll narrow.
So how do you win?
Well, you don't win on any of thetoolkits that we've been taught in,

(52:56):
you know, in your case in Stanford, in
mine Wharton.
Now, you can't avoid them, becauseto be a big business, you still have
to have a strong supply chain, youstill have to use big data, you still

have to have financial controls (53:10):
All of that is to me the price of entry.
But you win on, I think on connectingwith people in a way that is much harder
to replicate; you win on delightingpeople in a way that takes empathy,

(53:31):
and takes creativity and imagination.
You win on differentiation...
... and originality...
All of that.
There may be other paths tooriginality—certainly there's a
burgeoning field around innovation.

(53:52):
But this one is so gettable, right?
To me, it's really hard—likeI know people working on
artificial intelligence or on...
There'll be some winners, kind of likethe California Gold Rush, but you'll
have a lot of people who go there becausethat's the next frontier, and they'll
come away empty-handed, a lot of people,because it's really hard to get that

(54:17):
stuff right, and it takes a long time.
And even when you get it right—Imean, think of internet 1.0, right?—it
takes time for the world to adapt.
I'm not saying that thatdoesn't need to keep going on.
What I'm talking about is almostcatching up with where the world is.
The world is looking for these experiencesalready, and so few companies do it well.

(54:40):
And that is why when companies do itwell, they are over-rewarded, in my mind.
Why is Apple one of the mostvaluable companies in the world?
Its computers don't havemore microprocessing power
than its direct competitors.
There are competitors, when itcomes to technology, have a number
of other benefits and advantages.

(55:00):
But what they do well puts them in aleague of their own in their category.
So, I go back to—why do wethink people will change now?
Because they don't have a choice not to.
No.
2:
How does it get socialized and executed?

Well, my biggest frustration: I was working, and still am to (55:19):
undefined
some extent, with one of thebiggest old automotive companies.
I started...I was brought in by asenior-most person in the company.
For a variety of reasons they wantedto rethink of the car, not least of

(55:40):
which because of this competitiveissue that they don't know how to
get their arms around with the EVs.
But, after a few iterations, myinitiative sort of started to fall
further into some functional trap,where "well, let's work within product
vehicle"; but then "there's a marketresearch consumer insights team" and...
What I realized is if the CEO and theCMO and anyone else who has a seat

(56:07):
at that top table isn't owning thesekind of initiatives, it's lip service.
It's lip service.
If I were having an investor meeting,if I were the CEO of a Fortune 500
company, and I had a supply chainissue, I wouldn't call in my Chief

(56:30):
Operating Officer and say, "Can youtalk to the analysts about that?"
I would feel as the CEO, if thatwere a critical issue—parts or
manufacturing—that I have to speak toit, because it's just that's fundamental
to my business, even though I have awhole team of people who have civil
engineering backgrounds and so forth.

(56:52):
So why is it if I were at an analystmeeting, and there was a question about
the emotional resonance of your customerexperience, would I not feel I need
the same grasp, the same ownership,the same insight on that topic?

(57:14):
If you believe what I'm sayingthat this is the differentiator,
it cannot be outsourced.
I would like to see—you know, they talka lot about diversity on the boardroom,
diversity in executive management.
Great.

But the challenge I give is (57:28):
It's always diversity in terms of color of
skin, of gender, of sexual preference.
But why don't we have any...whydon't we have any artists or cultural
leaders sitting on corporate boards?
Thank you!
I have been wanting toask that question forever!
I mean, I understand if I had aboard of 12, even at Neiman Marcus,

(57:53):
I can't afford to have eight peoplecoming from museums, clearly.
But Neiman Marcus isa cultural experience.
It is connecting its customer tothe zeitgeist—in this case around
fashion and style—that is moreconnected, you could argue, to

(58:14):
culture than it is to Silicon Valley.
But why do we prioritize havinga technologist on the board?

So my point being (58:19):
That to me would be diversity, and that
would be a winning formula.
Right!
And it's not even necessarilya technologist or the artists,
but a different way ofthinking, to bring to the table.
That's right.
That's right.
And a sensitivity, a sensitivityto the way people operate, and

(58:43):
some of these other components.
Whether we like it or not, businesshas moved in; business is so much more
than commerce in this day and age.
So we've talked much about businesses.

Bringing it back to the personal level: So you make this great observation—which (58:56):
undefined
I share as well—of this unnaturalseparation between the personal and
the professional, in the world ofbusiness and probably in many other
trades and professional worlds as well.
I haven't felt as much becauseas an entrepreneur, you know, the
professional and personal lives tendto blend...bleed into each other.

(59:20):
But I have—you certainly haveinspired me to be more intentional
in terms of how I dress.
I do dress up for occasions, and Iput on some makeup for you today,
but in my day-to-day life, I havenot been paying much attention
to how I dress and how I appear.

(59:41):
It doesn't help to live inCalifornia where people tend to
be more casual, and certainly thepandemic has made it even worse.
But what would you say to peoplewho either don't think about it
or are skeptical, and even averseto the concept of aesthetics?

(01:00:02):
You know, they would think "I am forwork ethics, not for aesthetics."
What would you say to them [about]why aesthetics matter for our lives
both personally and professionally?
Well, the first thing is, as you mightremember, there's a small section of
the book on Aesthetics and Ethics.
I do not believe aestheticsworks in the absence of ethics.

(01:00:24):
There are companies like...Juul isthe example I use, the e-cigarette
company, that used aesthetics veryeffectively, but, in my opinion,
unethical way, and it caught up with them.
At their peak, they were valued at 40billion, and Altria took a big position.
Today, they're valued atprobably 1/20th of that.
So my point being, eventually,if your aesthetic representation

(01:00:52):
isn't married with an authentic andappealing point of view, it won't work.
Point #1.

Point #2 (01:01:01):
When I think of personal aesthetics, I don't think of style
in the sense of, you know, "I gottaread Vogue magazine...or...the
Robb Report and figure out how toproject myself as a serious person".
I think it's as much as anythingabout getting into the fullest
expression of who you are underneath.

(01:01:22):
So let's take Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett, whether he wouldever talk about it or not—and of
course, I think he would not—hasa very strong aesthetic, and his
aesthetic works for him supremely well.
His aesthetic is not just the disheveledhair and the glasses that haven't probably
changed in 40 years, been oversized,falling down the nose and the shabby

(01:01:46):
suit, the fact that he drives...I don'tknow what he drives...Subaru?...I don't
know what he drives, a practical car.
He lives his beliefs, and it giveshim a credibility and an appeal, and a
sort of folksy accessibility that is sounusual in high finance, even before he

(01:02:10):
had the stellar performance we know hehas today...'cause in this case, success
breeds success; the more money you haveto invest with, the more you can actually
turn those results and so forth, so it'sreally been a virtuous cycle for him.
But he's been so consistent and soclear, and so coherent, and original, and

(01:02:32):
original.I used to always say that...Iworked at the Carlyle Group—I was a
partner for a period of years—and Iwrote a little bit about this as well.
One of the three founders of Carlyleis a guy named David Rubenstein.
If you see him, his image...thisis one of the wealthiest men in the

(01:02:53):
country...but his archetype is theexact opposite of a Henry Kravis.
Both of them have the same business model.
They raise money from many of the samepension funds and other high networths.
They pursue the same deals.

(01:03:15):
And they both are very successful.
So not one is moreeffective than the other.
They're both effective, becausetheir demeanor and their expression
is true to what they believe.
When you go into to Henry Kravis'office, it is dripping with art.

It's very imposing (01:03:32):
he's got dark wood walls; it feels like,
you would imagine, like a robberbaron of the early 20th Century.
And he himself wears very tailoredsuits, finest material, Loro Piana,
and...; everything about him isstudied and refined and expensive.

David (01:03:57):
he's the son of a postal worker, and he's proud of it.
He fell into this business—he worked inthe Carter administration in the 70s.
He's very creative, but he's hokey,and he's sort of socially awkward.
It's part of his appeal!
He's got a good sense of humor.
He too, like Warren, has theglasses down the nose, not at all

(01:04:20):
aware of how shabby the suits are.
There are investors who would rather gowith David because they say "my money
is going into the deals and not into hisfancy offices", which are very unfancy.
And there are others who say "I'drather invest with Kravis because
that is what success looks and feelslike to me, and that's my aspiration".

My point is (01:04:42):
There is no such thing as good taste, while there
is such a thing as YOUR taste.
Where I think people struggle is whenthey either follow formula, which—for
example, when I came into the corporateworld, there was a formula and it
was not considered professional for awoman to, for example, wear as low cut

(01:05:06):
a neckline as I have right now or asdangly an earring as I have right now.
I don't work in a corporateenvironment anymore, but I
wear the dangly earrings today.
I don't live by other people's rules.
And if I'm in a company that isuncomfortable by my expression,
I'm in the wrong company.
That's partly why I got fed upwith corporate world very quickly.

(01:05:30):
But you had the fortitude, andI guess the self-honesty, to
say, "This is why I can't stay."
Most people end up complyingand it's a form of oppression.
It's a form of oppression.
And they do it out of fear; theydo it because they can't really
envision how to be otherwise.

(01:05:53):
From a very young age in ourschools, we're taught that to
succeed is to follow the rules.
And schools are very rule-bound.
Learning is very rule-bound.

There is a purpose (01:06:06):
I mean, if I was going to be, you know, a train
conductor, I better follow therules; a pilot has to follow the
rules; doesn't have to be creative.
But, how many jobs are outthere where you'd be better
off if you could be yourself?
And how much more fun would you have too?
Yeah, I certainly wouldlike to have more fun.

(01:06:27):
I've been paying more attention tocultivating inner beauty, but there's
this other side that I...I appreciate,but have not paid enough attention to.
So I will follow through.
Never too late.
And start in small ways.
One of the reasons I started theplatform I mentioned earlier, Aesthetic
Intelligence Labs, is I wanted to give acommunity of people who are interested,

(01:06:50):
who are not getting their MBA at Columbiaor at Harvard, but who do work in the
real world, and who do need to expressthemselves and do have ideas that they
want a canvas to showcase, to give themtools for doing really simple things,
really simple things, because as I said,you're not going to be taught this kind

(01:07:13):
of methodology in a traditional school.
In fact, I don't think anyone elsein the world is teaching this.
So I've made it my mission to not justproselytize but actually to provide
a platform where people can learn.
A point you make in the book isthat aesthetics can be cultivated.
An encouraging point.

(01:07:35):
100% of the population hasmore capacity than they use.
Well, it's been delightful to talkto you, Pauline, and best of luck
with your—so the class coming upon the first of June: is this your
debut, or have you run it before?

(01:07:57):
No, I've been doing it...thiswill be my fourth cohort.
We launched it in...actually June of 2021.
Every quarter we have a new cohort.
It's self-paced, so people don't haveto work alongside others, but it's a
three-month period so that we can sortof give people the various exercises and

(01:08:21):
learnings in sort of chunk...bite size.
We recognize that most peopleare working; they're busy.
They have to do this on their own time.
We also have participantsfrom around the world.
I have 10 people coming into the nextcohort that are refugees from the Ukraine.
Oh wow!
I put together scholarship forthem because they had expressed

(01:08:42):
interest but couldn't afford to join.
What shocked me, by the way,was one woman who reached out.
She said "I'm living inIndonesia; my family is still
in Ukraine; it's terrible time.
I would love to take thatcourse; I can't afford it."
I said to her, "We'll put aside 10 seats.
Help us spread the word."
In matter of days, wehad 100 applications.

(01:09:04):
We had to pick 10.
We did a few things for the90 who didn't make it in.
So my point being we have participantsfrom around the world: from Asia, from
South America, from Central Europe.
One
of my surprises—it was apleasant surprise—is how
powerful the community piece is.

(01:09:24):
There's a community platform.
People learn not in avacuum or in isolation.
They learn through theinteraction and seeing each
other and supporting each other.
That's become a bigpiece of this platform.
How uplifting!
I can have another conversationjust on that with you.
Well, I hope

(01:09:44):
you'll join us.
Yeah, I will let you go to getstarted on your Memorial Day.
Once again, thank you so much!
Thank you.
It's really lovely,lovely speaking with you.
Thanks for spending this time with me.
Yeah, I would love to stay in touchand to see how your work develops.
And good luck with the podcast.
Thank you so much.

(01:10:05):
OKay.