Impact over Passion: The Sustainable Way to Change the World

Operating a business strictly for profit is an outdated, exhausting leak on long-term sustainability. True organizational energy comes from aligning corporate objectives with a distinct, larger mission that transforms standard daily operations into purposeful problem solving. For many leaders, the disconnect between personal values and their professional output creates a heavy friction point that ultimately stalls organizational growth. We sit down with Bryan Welch, an experienced media executive, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Consumer Impact Events, to map out the tactical reality of leading an impact-driven enterprise.

We get into the specific mechanics of balancing a purpose-driven mission with the raw, daily puzzles of traditional retail operations. Bryan details his 50 year business journey from running community newspapers to managing massive media spaces like Mother Earth News, revealing why deep interest sustains a career far longer than raw passion alone. Our conversation pivots into technical territory as we break down the rise of Agentic Commerce, analyzing how artificial intelligence utilizes data points from rigorous B Corporation certifications to fundamentally shift consumer shopping behaviors. We also analyze the unglamorous friction points existing between suppliers and big retail merchants, exploring data-backed methods to remove costly food waste, streamline distribution loops, and foster collaborative value creation.

Operators frequently get torpedoed during market scaling because they rely on theory instead of directly confronting the logistical realities of category pricing. True sustainable growth requires a grounded mindset shift, a willingness to embrace the messy variables of human error, and the courage to strip away manufactured brand identities. Viewers will walk away with a functional framework for auditing their supply chain inefficiencies, an understanding of the incoming artificial intelligence landscape, and a blueprint for executing authentic leadership.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Purpose Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hello and welcome to the Retail Journey Podcast. I'm Charles Greenhouse, one of your hosts. And I am James Harris.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And today we're speaking with Brian Welch about purpose-driven businesses. Brian, welcome to the Retail Journey. Thank you. It's great to be here. I've been looking forward to this since I think I asked you to be on here. And sometimes they're the same thing, sometimes they're not. One, you know, what's your like where's your fire for purpose driven coming from? And what got you into it?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Well, what got me into it was more or less accidental. I was a journalist when I got out of college and I went to work in the local newspaper business, which, you know, felt very purpose-driven, you know, every kind of good, social good, and truth to power, environment. I covered in the environment, you know, and I covered government. And um eventually I ended up running community newspapers.

Brian’s Accidental Path To Impact

SPEAKER_00 1:20

And by that time, it was a sort of habit as well as just a source of energy. I found, you know, I found running businesses that every day are trying to make the world a better place really interesting, really engaging. And um I, after 15 years, moved into the bigger media business, magazines and events and other things. But I was able to build a company around conscientious lifestyles. We had a magazine, a big magazine called Mother Earth News. We had magazines about natural health, um, the environment, uh, self-reliance. And again, I think my motivation was fundamentally that I found it more interesting to work on projects that had some larger meaning in the world, that had the that were oriented toward making the world a better place. It was just more interesting for me to run that kind of business. And it evolved that way. So that, you know, today I'm around 50 years uh in business, and I've never been uh associated with a business that wasn't the purpose-driven in that way. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I love being able to follow interest into maturing into passion, and then uh that just becomes the a much greater motivator, probably creating your best work, whereas sometimes people who don't have an interest and don't have a passion, their work suffers the whole time.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

You know, that's true. And if we're working on things that have a deeper meaning for us, we have more energy, our focus is better. Yeah, you know, it's I think it I think, you know, I might I'm pretty sure that I I've been more successful doing this kind of thing because of my fundamental interest in it. The other side of that equation is also uh fascinating to me, which is, you know, businesses like mine have always attracted people who were out to change the world with this sense of mission, but who were motivated first by passion and less so by interest. Unfortunately, that leads to a kind of idealism burnout. Passion can run out. Yeah, because the world's a big complicated place. Yeah. And to see it change in any significant way in one lifetime is kind of unlikely, really. Yeah. But if you find, I think if you're motivated by the exercise of trying to make things better, yeah. And if you're motivated by a fundamental interest in making things better, that it's it has better, it's more endurable, more sustainable.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

And I I think sometimes when we think about making the world a better place, we think about changing the world in mass today. Right. Versus I want to be a positive influence. I want to be a positive light in my little corner of the world.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Right. I think sometimes we try, we try to, it has to be all or nothing.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

But but I can I can influence everybody in this room today. There's a lot of people I can't influence, you know.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

I've been really attracted to the the mind space of becoming the type of person that, you know, has the impact that I'm wanting, that that lives in a way that um will result in the thing I'm trying to push.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, isn't that that's such a profound observation, I think. You know, I personally believe that our intention in every moment is changing the world in minute ways. And if I look over the if I look over the course of my life at people who have influenced me, sometimes, you know, it was a fleeting conversation at a counter in a coffee shop or uh sitting in an airport waiting for a plane. Fleeting conversations, but a conversation with someone who kindled something in me that ended up being very motivational. And so I don't think we know where our greatest impact might be over the course of a lifetime. But that moment by moment intention is, I think, where I think it's uh profound.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

That's where I feel like people I think of who are purposeful, like they're present to that moment and they are where they are, and they're they have intent as they're you know having a conversation, trying to do things. And I've certainly had moments where I was very intentional and had moments where I was very not intentional and unintentionally

Passion Burnout And Sustainable Motivation

SPEAKER_02 6:05

created things that are like, boy, I wish I had not said that. Oh boy, I wish I had not impacted that person in that way. Oh, right. And then only afterwards do I have a kind, loving friend come up to me like, Do you realize that they're upset with you? Like, no, no idea. You know, and so I know we all have uh it's a kind of a constant act of rebalancing when it comes to walking with purpose and intention. I'd love to hear you know your thoughts or reflection on that as you've you've I mean, walked that way professionally, but are also human and have have your your ups and downs.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Oh, to say the least, you know, I believe it's a matter of practice. I think it's something one can practice. Yeah. I'm personally a meditator, yeah. And one of the most basic and fundamental and enduring things I think that comes from a meditation practice is just in sitting and watching your own thoughts and feelings non-judgmentally, yeah, you develop a kind of understanding of your reactivity. And that so that reactivity decreases. You're more able to consider your your reactions because you you get to know yourself in a way that allows you to do what your reactions have been. Yes, you are, yeah. And you're able to create some space uh between um the phenomenon and your reaction to the phenomenon. And in that space, we I think can make better decisions. Uh, but as you say, not every time. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Yeah. It's more like baseball, you know?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Because uh, you know, 350 batting average is is pretty great. Um, but anywhere we're right failed 65% of the time and still be like, hey, I was pretty good pro class. That's right that's kind of scored.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Uh the you know, when I when I teach meditation, I tell people the absolute first step, most fundamental thing, is friendliness toward yourself so that you're able to observe yourself in a non-judgmental way and not go down a spiral of negative feelings toward yourself.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

That the non-judgmental part of that, because I meditate as well, not nearly as consistently as I once did, and I'm going to fix that. But that noticing without judging, it sounds so simple. But once you start doing it, then you can start doing it out here. And I realized, at least in my life, you know, 10, 15 years ago when I started messing around, playing around with that, was I'm burning a lot of energy judging people for sure. Didn't you know, like probably not consciously, it's just habitual. Uh, but it took that slowing down to notice, like, oh, I'm doing this to them, I'm doing this to me. And if I just stop doing it, it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

It's yeah, much more free. And the amount of time and energy it takes, the amount of attention it takes to run an appraisal of every single thought we have is you know, it's a heavy burden. It really is.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

And distracts us from other things. Makes us not present. Yeah. Um, so I I met you in the context of one of your more recent endeavors, the Consumer Insights Summit. Um, I'm sorry. Consumer Impact Summit. Yeah, um tell us about it. How um, yeah, what was the you know, what was the seed that grew into what it is? And then just for people that aren't familiar with the Consumer Impact Summit, what uh what you all do.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Sure. Well, as a product of the kind of businesses I've run, I've been uh probably 25 years involved in various uh purpose-driven or impact-driven uh business organizations, right? Um 20 years ago, there was the Social Venture Network. More recently, there was the B Corporation movement, conscious capitalism. And they've all been inspiring to me and engaging. And I I've you know developed many very important relationships through them. But one of the weaknesses of those events, from my perspective, was always the amount of time we spent talking about why we run impact-driven businesses and talking about, oh, in a perfect world, there could be this or that or the other thing. Where

Small Moments That Change People

SPEAKER_00 10:20

the most important learning experiences I had were my conversations with other operators about how we were solving the daily puzzles, how we were making the necessary compromises, you know, just the, you know, the sort of thing that you all teach all the time here, and the sort of thing that you this bring to your clients at high impact. I think, you know, there was a real need in the community of impact-driven businesses for those kinds of discussions. So my friend Jeff Clapper, who runs Eighth and Walton here in Bentonville, he and I had been talking for some time about how we'd like for there to be a conference that was very focused in that way, where the presenters were almost all people with operating roles in businesses getting the job done. And um, so I had some extra time a couple of years ago, and Jeff and I had just been casually chatting about thing, these things. And Jeff said, let's uh let's do it. And so we started uh what we call consumer impact events, I guess about a year and a half ago, had the first event in September last year. And um, you know, I've been through several startup experiences. Yeah. And so I always keep a parachute packed. Yeah. Um, but uh we after last year's event, um we had 230 some attendees and 55 really cool speakers, and it just generated really lovely energy. And so both of us wanted to do it again. And so the next one's coming up this coming September.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, we were fortunate enough to to have a small part there um last year. Um, and it was a great event. Um met people there that I've stayed in touch with, um, heard things that are we're still using, uh implementing. So really great, especially for a first year. There's a million things that can go wrong in a in an event, and it was very well done. Uh, I imagine you'll see a lot of growth this year, and we're excited to be a part of it again. I'm glad.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

I think we we are seeing a lot of growth, and I think almost everyone there uh felt that energy. And you know, uh uh from my perspective, a lot of that energy came from this geographic setting from Northwest Arkansas. It's a unique market like that. It's unique. The just the energy for business and for entrepreneurism in this region, I think it's more uh concentrated than anywhere else I've ever been. And virtually every business person I meet in Northwest Arkansas wants fundamentally to be part of a business that's values driven, that shares their values. Something bigger than you. Something bigger than you, that exact thing. Yeah. And so there's all this local energy combined with um a lot of purpose-driven business veterans who come

Meditation As Decision-Making Practice

SPEAKER_00 13:40

from, you know, uh Northern California or Oregon or the East Coast, who are really unfamiliar with the business environment of Northwest Arkansas. And, you know, it was a surprise to me. I didn't see that going into the event. But the both both groups, both groups in our constituency were discovering a new source of energy and inspiration, and I think enjoying each other very much. And so it was uh it was fun.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, I feel like um it may be naive. I'm interested in your perspective, this you know, a non-judgmental view of your thoughts, this the concept in meditation. I feel like in this space, we're talking about our why for the thing that's bigger than us, there's energy behind that. And and the consumer impact summit was really about the how. Like, well, then how, or how might we this and how might we that? And that just feels like a very non-judgmental assessment of our our actions, our practices, our what's working here, what's not working there. And it's not about you know, measuring sticks and who's best here. It's just like how can we all improve? Because if if purpose-driven brands are doing more and doing better, then there's their purposes are being better yet fulfilled, yeah, and there's a cumulative impact on our planet, our environment, our our in um, you know, neighborhoods, our community, those that we get to work with, and consumer themselves. Um, is it a bit naive, or uh it feels like there's a uniqueness here where in North West Arkansas, I feel more so than not, people are just trying to be better, trying to find ways to be better and delighted to help each other along that journey.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

You know, the energy generated by business is so different than the cliche about it. There's there's sort of among people who aren't business people who who have not run businesses, there's this notion that that the primary motivation is greed, or totally that um, you know, that there's something sordid or dirty about the whole thing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

There's my high school brain, I chose music education as my major because business majors were clearly just greedy and they didn't know what they wanted to do. Yeah, but they knew they wanted money. Yeah, obviously they've changed to business, but but yeah, I had that exact, you know, just sort of misconception.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Right. What I found, and I was like you, I mean, I was a poet, I was a creative writing major. Yeah, you know, um all the high earning uh uh yeah, exactly. We had we really had we got a very clear view of our career.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Um and then, you know, I'm at a local newspaper, I get promoted into a business position, and I was sort of immediately, I was surprised and sort of immediately gratified by the clean energy that's generated in a task where you get measured every day, yeah. Where you can aggregate resources that you can then use to, you know, based on your own values, you know, how do you want to uh allocate those resources? Yeah. And what good would you like to do in the world with the money that you're making? Um, I found that really gratifying. I sort of found, I think, a vocation in that. Yeah. Um, and I I wanted to do it better. And in the conversations about how we do these things, you know, uh I've run, I've been on the boards of nonprofits. I've run one nonprofit for a short period of time. You're always talking about the why. It you have you raise money based on the why, you have a board full of people who are talking about the why. And the arguments and the the competing for perspective is endless. And personally, I find that quite frustrating. It I didn't take to it. It's not I love the practicality of business, I love the the puzzle solving of business, and I love taking the resources and the energy that businesses can aggregate and pursuing higher goals with them. Yeah. And I find that combination.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

I'm sure there's people out there right now that are rolling their eyes saying, oh, purpose-driven, yeah, yeah. Wait till the money, you know, doesn't come in, then we'll know your purpose or whatever. Yeah. Um, but I think about it a little more strategically. You know, it's not uncommon refrain, uh, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Yeah. Right. So good cultures um have all kinds of research that show us that people want to work at a company that's doing something beyond earning money and paying them. Absolutely. That that's that's causing something. So it's an easy thing to, even if you just want it for the practicality nature of, hey, we stand for this.

Why The Consumer Impact Summit Exists

SPEAKER_00 18:55

We and then, oh yeah, I can lockstep, you know. Well, not to mention that you then end up attracting employees who are values driven in their lives, they're less likely to steal, they work harder, they show up earlier, they stay later when they need to. You know, you're you're building higher quality resources because you've established a higher quality company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

I love that. And we've got to you know take ownership. And when you really think about ownership, you you want to have a better impact on on those around you, on your own life, your family, your neighbors, of course, your clients and your coworkers. And it's just um, it becomes a not a not a spiral down, but like a building block that just accumulates over a career.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah, I think that's that's true. And I think we're we may be uh entering an era now when uh a company's value system may become a more important component in its data set. Yeah. Because we don't know how it's going to evolve, but it seems pretty likely that intelligent agents are going to start representing and working for consumers. Yeah. And when that happens, the whole real is uh now revealed. The process of shopping, you know, everybody wants to do business with the people who share their values. And those values have been sort of easy to blur and to misrepresent in the past, but artificial intelligence is very good at looking at all the details and comparing one company to another, you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

It feels like there's no downside to that. Um, like I love that. I picture the you know, you eat at a restaurant, you have no problem eating there, and then you work at that same restaurant, you stop eating there, like that reveals something is wrong. Something was terribly wrong that you would never have known because the the front that was put up was, you know, frankly, edible. And then when you get back there, you see what actually happens, like, yeah, I'm not eating here. Um, and I feel like it's it's so good for that to be known, like for it to be unknown, for it to be a thing misrepresented, yeah, is awful. And it always will come out in the wash eventually. And to your point, consumers are the ability to trick is is gone, going away quickly. I hope it goes away entirely, where it's just like, yeah, I hope you have good, and the deeper you dig, the more good you find across everything that you you do as an organization so that uh you will continue to succeed. You'll have sustainable growth.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Right. And are you are I assume you're both familiar with B corporations and what they represent.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

So we're not sure everyone in the audience will be.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Yeah. Well, we can I mean, simply put, there since uh two thousand. 2008. There in 2008, uh B Lab was formed, and it was an organ it was a a nonprofit that established the certificate certification process for both you know social and environmental human resources practices so that if you're if your company can pass this pretty rigorous assessment of how well you take care of your people, how well you serve your community, how well you care for the environment, whatever business you're in, um, then you can be certified as a B corporation. I I bring this up. Well, and so I certified my first company as a B Corporation the year that B corporations were invented in 2008. And it was the eighth yeah, there's the number again. It was the eighth B Corporation. There are 8,000 across the world today. Um, so I was on board for this idea really early on. It just seemed like what I hoped was consumers would start recognizing the logo, the B Corporation logo, and the consumer behavior would shift. And, you know, I that hasn't happened to the degree that those of us there at the time hoped it would.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

But if you think about it from an AI perspective, when you there are uh in the current assessment, I think there's something like the 1,700 individual areas that are assessed, scoring areas, something like that in the assessment.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

So it's a lot of rubber stamp that you pay for.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

And you know, a consumer can't begin to dig in to that amount of data comparing one company to another. But an agent can't. Interesting. And so all those data are available to companies that have certified themselves to put in the front of their data set to be immediately noticed by the by the bots as they roam around.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

We're starting to work on that ourselves because we manage digital listings for our clients, and agentic commerce is the thing now. Uh as far back as like October, I believe, of last year, 30% of traffic coming to certain retailer websites was coming from Chat GPT alone. Really? Wow. That's a huge number.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

It's a really huge number. So how humans shop, it sounds like it's changing in a big way and very rapidly. Very rapidly. And I think you know, as you're saying, um it's gonna make it much harder to present a manufactured identity for your company.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

There's gonna have to be some legitimacy there because now we have this presence with us, this other intelligence that can look at the details, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

And the irony of like AI-generated images and videos deepening the conviction on I want to see something real and authentic. Because once you see and feel like, oh, this was fake, I've been duped, it's like I hate that.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Well, I think we're gonna see that in customer service too, as everything goes to agents and bots. Um, people are gonna want human interaction. Is it there's gonna be a higher value placed on it, isn't there? Yeah. So I don't think like I don't think AI is ever going away,

Northwest Arkansas Energy And Business Myths

SPEAKER_01 25:20

but I do think we will start to live more intentionally, like fragmented lives where this is my tech time, this is my garden time, this is when I'm out in something real. Uh, you know, now I mean obviously there's the fear of people talking to bots instead of humans and things like that. I just think there's gonna be a large kind of swing back to okay, this tool is great, it helps me be more efficient, come up with ideas, but I want to be around people too. I wanna I want to have a shopping experience that is is flesh and blood.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

For sure. Yeah. The I I was listening to something they were talking about how medical care might change, you know, and there's the idea, I mean, that a huge percentage of all the surgeries could be done through robots by the best human surgeon alive. You know, no matter where you are, right? Yeah, if if you have the if you have access to the intelligence and the robots, those surgeries can all be done by the world expert. But of course, when we go to the doctor and we want to explain how we're feeling, yeah, I think we want to look at a pair of human eyes across the room whose understanding that. How vulnerable can you be with a machine? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

I I don't I guess we don't know yet, but yeah, yeah, we'll see. And and then answer like maybe you may not know the answer to this, but what about liability? And how do you I guess you could sue the company that used the bot, but usually like doctors have liability insurance for a reason. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And yeah, I think there's so many questions. It's a it's an exciting and mysterious time. Yeah. Yeah. Even even the I listen to lots of stuff about AI, and even the world experts. They they actually don't know how it's making itself. Yeah. Wow. Which is a wild uh uh possibility.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

I'm always drawn to those that are uh able to admit that they don't know. Yeah. As opposed to the definitive this is how this is going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Yeah. We have uh we have a uh speaker who just uh confirmed yesterday as a speaker, uh Kimberly Schenk is her name, and she has a company called I believe it's Novi. Yeah, a new company, fairly new company. Uh but Kimberly graduated from MIT as an engineer, went into the Air Force, ended up a captain in the Air Force working on top secret AI projects. She did that for 10 years, and then she founded this company. And I'm so excited to think about what she will have to share because you know, there now that her company, Novi, advises both retailers and brands about how to prepare for these and for these agents for agentic availability shopping search. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah. I met Kimberly at uh Expo West this year. I thought she was very impressive. She sure is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

And Alistair Dorward, a mutual friend of ours, is uh an advisor for her company.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

And so uh they may do a presentation together, which is quite.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

That's funny because I saw Alistair went over and said hi. He said, Let me introduce you to somebody. I thought it might have happened that way.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

That's what I was thinking. That that's probably how that works. Yeah, yeah. The retail can be and really just but that's an interesting pairing too, because Alistair, uh, who spoke last year, uh you probably met him at yeah, we set uh he's one of the ones I was referring to that was stayed in touch with that I met at the Impact Summit. So Alistair has been the founding CEO of half a dozen uh consumer product brands, purpose-driven consumer product band brands. That's his career, that's his specialty, including method. Right. Like not drop-in-the-bucket brands, no, founding CEO of method. And he gave a tour de Force Talk last year, basically by talking about challenges that he faced in his companies and how he and his teams solved the puzzles along the way, the bad luck, the good luck, and it was it was uh I I thought it was a fantastic talk, um, because it's real world experience. I what was uh trying to think one of the fun one of my favorite my favorite part of the story because I was there for that.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Um he said when we when they were direct to consumer, right? Um so their package was just a brown box that kind of opened up and it is for drops for laundry drops and dishwasher drops. He said, So we started approaching retail, and like, wait a minute, how do we do how do we do packaging? Uh and and for the life cycle of the business, you know, normally that's on the front side if you're if you're starting a traditional retail. That stood out to me as something that was kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

And his experience in that realm is also very interesting because at Method, yeah, the whole way method got into Target, which was their bit that was that brand's huge breakthrough. Yeah, was Target was redesigning stores. And Target's uh design people were looking for brands that were packaged in a way that worked in their new design framework. And Method, just one of Method's founders was this design wonk and was very into the shape of the bottles and the colors and everything else, and it meshed perfectly with Target's redesign, and that was their breakthrough.

unknown 31:05

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yeah, you know, all the ways it can happen or not happen, it's really fun.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

I mean, we're the retail journey podcast, it's nonlinear. Um, there's not just one journey, there's not just one path. Generally speaking, our audience is largely on the supplier side, you know, in this day-to-day interaction of trying to solve and create value across retail or on the retailer side doing the same thing. Your lens has been on like purpose-driven brands. I'd love to hear your perspective. Like if you were in either one of those seats, what are the things that you would want to know from your experience that would make us that would make each of them better on the merchant side and on the sort of sales and supplier side?

SPEAKER_00 31:54

That's funny because I think what I what I would observe are almost contradictory statements for the two sides, because you know, I I'm envisioning a more productive relationship between the two. Yeah. On the supplier side, I think one of the great myths is if your purpose or if your design or if your specific flavor is wonderful enough, um, you're gonna get premium pricing. You know. So you create a business that's creating a product that has to be premium priced, but you're going into a category that has very little premium in it, and they end up getting torpedoed at the at the point where they're ready, you know, when they try to scale. Right. Um, and in the purpose-driven business community, that's a that's uh epidemic. Oh, totally. You know, everybody thinks, well, this is so pure and so wonderful. Right. They're gonna love spending more on it. They're gonna love spending more on it. And, you know, um the the retailer, neither the retailers nor the shoppers seem to be ready to do that. Right. But on then if I look at it from the retailer perspective, um, I would say more attention to the details of how the products are created, yeah, could create more productive partnerships between the people who created the supply chain, the manufacturing process, the ingredient set, and the people who have it on their shelves and are selling it to the consumers. Yeah. And of course, big retail needs to run according to formulae, formulae, obviously, because of scale.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

But I think they've also painted over some levels of detail that could be quite productive, uh, both for the suppliers and the retailers themselves, if

Culture As Strategy For Better Teams

SPEAKER_00 33:55

they were willing to engage a little more in the complexity of how products are created.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Yeah. I think I've seen, I mean, some of the best conversations in that, which I it is hard. Right. It is hard. But you have to, if you're walking through someone's manufacturing facility and watching the friction points, you can together solve them if you're a retail and supplier. And I've had some of those where we're walking around and we are talking to the operations manager, you're watching the sales guy just sweat bullets because the ops manager isn't sugarcoating a darn thing because your Walmart. He's just like, ah, total hate when you guys, you know, and he's just why can't you? And how come you have it? And they're just they're unloading. I mean, I've brings me an enormous amount of joy. The merchant at the time, you know, watching the like, huh? But at the end of the day, if if what they're saying is like, oh, well, if if we make this decision differently, then all of that scrap right there goes away. And you know what that scrap actually represents? That my customer definitely cares about is cost. Yeah. There's a lot of customers that want to care about not wasting for the sake of the environment. Right. But might not be willing to pay extra for that. And they sure as heck are willing to pay less for anything. Yeah. And if you happen to also improve the impact on the environment, it's like, guys, this is impact. This is where you can do something that truly triple bottom line is shared value creation and the thing that's most valuable. And it but it's hard work. You have to you have to be able to understand the context of like, okay, well, when orders come in this way, they create this amount of tension and then this amount of waste and this impact. And it's obvious when you're sitting there. When you're in their contact, like, wow, that's a waste of time. Why don't we just change your minimum order quantity to this? Or why don't we not put the package on the shelf that way? We can put it on this way. And suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars are solved because Walmart's huge.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yeah. Um isn't it interesting how many layers of interpretation and training and handling are required between a supplier and the retailer. Oh, yeah. I mean, this town is obvious it's absolutely packed with people who are somewhere in that relationship chain because it's so hard for a big retailer and a supplier to just have a constructive exchange directly. It becomes very difficult. Oh, for sure. That's surprising and interesting to me. We had a case I was close to last year where a seafood company was, you know, had a director of sales who was clearly getting paid on expanding sales volume, right? Right. And that person was working, I assume, through a broker with the big retailer. And the CFO just notices that their bottom line is getting consumed by waste. You know, they're they're expiry, the the the seafood was going bad. Yeah. And but because of the people involved and because of how they were incentivized, it took an outside consultant to come in and say, hey, you need to pull distribution back. There's a way that this can be adjusted. Let's look at the actual, let's look at the data. I mean, I assume you all probably tackle this kind of thing all the time. Let's look at the data and we can we can target the distribution. You're gonna end up selling two-thirds as much fish, and you're gonna be end up making three times as much money.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Exactly. And also, once that fish is thrown away, you know what it's never doing? You know, nourishing a human or like it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

You know, it's no longer a food waste is a bit of an environmental issue as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

I remember the you know, early stage, uh, you know, I was at John Brown University um going through you know school projects and the cobblestone project started to to come and evolve, and it's like, how do we stop and solve food waste? And it was just mind-boggling to see how much of food that's like still super good, but it the time like it, you know, we're 48 hours away from this not being at all edible, yeah. And you can't keep the menu whole and expect to use it, right? We know that this food's gonna go bad. Yeah. Um, and we made so much soup that was like awesome. Yeah. But you would have it wasn't on the menu, it wasn't the plan, but it's how you you solve. And I think there's a creativity like what's it look like to walk

AI Shopping Agents And Values Transparency

SPEAKER_02 38:45

into a situation with some humility, with the people that have the ability to influence decisions. Um, and my hope is that merchants and suppliers alike can start thinking about I wonder where it's not about banging your fist on the table for reduced cost. Although there are maybe there's times where that's totally necessary, and I've for sure done it. Um desk banger and where can I actually remove cost and then share in the value that's created?

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Yeah. Um is there room? I'm just curious about this. I'm not passing judgment in any way. But is there room to build more mentorship into the merchant's role? You know, is there are there ways that we could engage that would help the merchants speak, well, uh exchange information with the suppliers in in more educational and in you know honestly, I love like where my mind goes immediately consumer impact summit, um, like a sort of round table of removing waste from systems with merchants and suppliers.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

And I think what's key pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

That sounds really cool.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

What's key is it's not like if it's your merchant, yeah. It's hard to have maybe a specific conversation because then you know there's a cost change that you must submit. If it's someone else, then we can actually find ways to reduce costs. And I think there would be delight in the ability to share. And I think what you'll find there's a maybe one of you wants to moderate that panel. Be delighted to. I think if you ask, there's a misconception on where merchants' desire to innovate and collaborate comes from. Some of it is is earned because your plate as a merchant overflows with abundance every day. Yeah. Emails are one of those things. There is never going to be enough time. And I'm sorry for everyone that emailed me when I was a merchant that I still never responded to. Um it's there's just like a there's a reality here. Some are actually very good at it. I don't know how.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

But not to mention the girls back in college whose texts you never returned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

That's also a uh I don't think I had that problem. No, but that was an issue. Um I love that. But ruthless prioritization is one of I think the fundamental ingredients in being a best in-class merchant. You have to be able to ruthlessly prioritize. And sometimes that uninvites a collaborative conversation that does need to be had.

SPEAKER_03 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

And I think it's a little bit incumbent on the merchants to make sure you're clear on like, I want to collaborate, I want these things. I'm strategically invested in removing waste on behalf of our customers. It's the entire flywheel. Like that was the beginning of the flywheel. You remove costs from the system, you lower retail, you sell more, which allows you to remove costs and it's really productive.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

That's why Walmart exists, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 41:40

I mean, it is a simple idea of collaboration of how might we actually make a lot by selling a lot, not by selling it for a lot.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

And come alongside the consumer instead of seeing how much can I get out of them?

SPEAKER_03 41:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

And that whole concept is is beautiful. I think there's a little bit incumbent on the supplier to push into the conversation, to have the courage to say, hey, I want to figure these things out, but I know we can't do it alone. We're going to need to work together. Are you open to this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Well, and I know one of the things that you all do in your business, which is absolutely critical, is educating the suppliers on how the retailer thinks. In among small to medium-sized suppliers. They just it's very hard if you haven't been very close to a big retailer. Oh, yeah. It's very hard to why on earth would they do that? Right. All the time.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

The most common, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

All the time. And the workload that a merchant carries is unimaginable, probably, to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

Yeah. There's a similar, you know, on the merchant side. Why on earth would they do that? Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Oh, of course.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

And operator to to merchant. Yeah. Why do they do that? In those training programs, they uh they made us early days. Like I spent eight weeks in the store stocking shelves. And before I did that, I'm sorry, and I think I've admitted it on the show before, of like, I just was like, man, why are associates in the store so lazy to not execute my beautifully planned modular exactly as it was intended? And then I was in the store setting my beautifully planned modular. And it's like, oh yeah, this doesn't fit. There's a 0% chance I'm doing this. I'm gonna shove it right here and move on to the next.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, not to mention the workload that that person is carrying. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Yeah, you know, the the one that stuck out to me is the the chicken nuggets that were not meant to be in the stock dump bin. You know, nowhere on a playbook was it like, hey, someone's gonna go to the deli, eat a couple nuggets, and then just dump the rest in this stock bin. And you know who has to deal with it? Whoever walked by it, saw it, was like, hmm. I'm sorry, I didn't know. I don't think you I don't think those chicken nuggets are supposed to be there. We need To clean this up, figure out what socks are contaminated, and it's not part of the plan, you know, but it's true tale, it's real life, it's it's humans.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Yeah, humans. We are starting to approach on time. So before we do our lightning round, uh tell anybody who should be at the consumer impact summit and how do they get information?

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Well, uh, you know, I think anyone who's interested in aligning their business life with their values would get a lot out of being at the Consumer Impact Summit. Um and the uh September 15th to 17th at the Ledger in Bentonville. Um and it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And you know, after 50 years, I find these stories and the people involved very inspiring. Every time I met two or three people yesterday whose stories really lit me up. Yeah. Shall I tell one real quick on the stuff? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Um, so one of our speakers is uh a woman. Her story is she was getting divorced, she was becoming a single mom. She didn't know how she's gonna make a living, she was in a panic. Her brother said, you know, you always told mother that her salad dressing should be in stores. You should sell you should make salad dressing and sell it to your neighbors. So she started doing that, and she went to Whole Foods and got empty Clementine boxes and put them in the put the dressing in the Clementine boxes because they were very pretty, and she then she would deliver it to her neighbors and she started doing this. And then one day the produce manager at her Whole Foods said, Uh, Clementine season is over, I can't get any more boxes for you. But what were you doing with them?

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Yeah, why do you want all these climate books? Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

And she said, Well, I make salad dressing and sell it to my neighbors. And he said, Well, bring some. And he showed it to the store manager, and they liked it. They took it to the region, and a few months later she was in the Whole Foods region. Uh-huh. Then she went nationwide, and and either now or in the very near future, they'll be in several hundred Walmart stores.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Oh, I love that story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Dressed up dressing, I believe that's right. That sounds right. That sounds right. That's a great story. Um, and so stories like that. I they light me up, and yeah, that's what it's all about. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

So our lightning round, we like three three quick questions. Uh, first one, what are you reading, watching, listening to?

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Yeah. Um, so we'll start with listening to. I've been doing a deep dive on artificial intelligence. Um I think it's you know, just fascinating. Uh and I think it it's an evolutionary step for

Retailer Supplier Trust And Removing Waste

SPEAKER_00 46:55

our species. And I think it's gonna change almost everything. Everything. And none of us knows in what ways, but it's yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah. Uh reading, I uh just finished a book called Fluke, which um I'm not gonna remember the name of the author right now. I'm not I'm not particularly good at that, but uh there there aren't a lot of books called Fluke. Right, yeah. Uh and uh it's a new book. Um and it talks about how misled we are by our notion that everything that arises in the world or that happens in the world is a direct result of a simple set of circumstances. So why do some people become billionaires? Well, the idea is they were smarter, they worked harder. Um if you actually look at the data, you know, you look at how many Amazons were started at other times and their relative engineering quality, and and you know, if you look at all the other variables, it was timing. You know, Amazon is Amazon because it happened to be started at exactly the right moment for Amazon to be started. And you know, he he does a wonderful job of looking into the statistics and proving in mathematical ways that luck is absolutely huge in this universe. Yeah. And that when we when we make decisions or read the data or draw conclusions from these linear uh total narratives that we like to create, yeah, generally speaking, we're mistaken. False comfort. And it causes us to go forward in making bad decisions.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

Correlations, not cause issues.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

As uh, you know, we're we're data nerds here. We really like using data on the end. And that reality is one that's always like cause for pause. You know, like that spreadsheet's not a vision into the future. No, it's a reality of what has happened. Yes. There's still live dynamics that are always going to change. Yeah. So that's where you know judgment, relationship, strategy, looking around corners.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

Well, yeah, and don't we like to leech all the complexity out of the history, out of the historical data? Right. Oh, totally. Um, and believe that it represents some sort of solid state. You know, uh, but of course it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Speaking of reading, I've been reading Brian Welch on Substack. Uh, everybody should check that out. Nice a lot of inspirational writing I've enjoyed a lot.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Well, speaking of inspiration, the next one is your biggest retail blender that you learned from.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Oh, let's see. Super interesting. So um I I I think at retail, so for a long time I ran a magazine called Mother Earth News. And at the time it was a really pretty significant magazine. You know, it was a couple of hundred thousand copies at at retail, just newsstand, not mentioned subscription and everything else. And um the gospel in the magazine business at that time was that you had to have people on your cover. And so we tried all kinds of people. We tried, you know, uh gardeners and farmers and celebrities, and we weren't getting great results. We were out of people. We ran a loaf of fresh bread on a on a cover and it killed.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

And so then we started finally actually starting to look at data and measuring and trying different things and running A-B splits across the newsstand. And what we discovered was that for our magazine, it was quite complex. But Mother Earth News had uh about 30% of its readers can describe themselves as very liberal politically, and about 30% of its readers described themselves as very conservative politically. And so every time we run a per ran a person on the cover, we lost 30% automatically lost 30%. But bread. So it came down to bread, yeah, fresh vegetables, and red barns. Really? All those three things. Here's very unoffens, inoffensive uh everybody likes fresh bread, fresh vegetables, and red barns. Yeah. Um but here's the you know, speak going back to the complexity uh part of the conversation, not berries.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Yeah, I can't have those.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

For some reason, fruits and vegetables of every other kind sold great. But every try every time we tried to run a cover with berries on it, it didn't do well. And I had a re So fluffy well, I had a retailer, uh a guy in the in the grocery business tell me, he said um it's it might be because their their uh li their shelf life is so short. Right. And so people have some sort of deep psychological aversion to something that's either not going to be ripe or it's gonna be overripe.

Lightning Round Luck And Retail Lessons

SPEAKER_01 52:05

They're not gonna eat it that day, it's gonna go bad.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Exactly right. Yeah, yeah, I don't remember it is today, so I'm not picking up an egg. But but I but I went, you know, the years went by with me doing the wrong thing on the covers of these magazines. This is so fist. And so yeah, that was my biggest blender. I like it. And it was several blenders, many blenders, yeah, one after another. Years, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

So and last question what are you over the next 12 months, what are you really looking forward to? What are you excited about anticipating?

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Well, on the on the Consumer Impact Summit, um it's so fun as the agenda comes together because I get to meet all these people who are speaking and have conversations and talk about their message and work on that, collaborate on that. And that's just huge fun. So I'm very excited about that. And I had a book come out last week. Um, and um, it's about grief and how it connects people.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

And as a result, what's the book title? And where can we buy it?

SPEAKER_00 53:12

It's called The Gift of a Broken Heart. Yeah, and you can buy it, I think, everywhere. It's Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

Walmart.com?

SPEAKER_00 53:20

I think so, yeah. Let's go. Um, and as a result, I go, I've been around talking to people about that topic, and I'm meeting dozens and dozens of people who have been carrying some kind of really profound grief that they haven't shared. Yeah. And that's a super yeah, um, that's the loneliest place in the world. Wow. And so moving to hear their stories. And yeah. So um my year's short shaping up great. So it's great.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

Yes. Thanks for uh for writing it and for uh you know having the courage to step into something that ironically alienates, but many many have it in common.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Yes, well, everybody has it in common. Right. Every human being grieves. Everybody does, everybody loses. Um my son died in 2013. He was a drug addict, and we had a really you know devastating uh both the disease and his death were devastating.

SPEAKER_03 54:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

But uh it also opened up in a way it it relieved me of the responsibility for going around seeming invulnerable. Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

You know, because um this isn't a burden I can just shoulder and walk around with it.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

The mess came off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

I found that comparing loss, there's no there's no fruit in that. There's no but but we all have it in common. Um not not the same by any means, but in 2014, my firstborn son died. Oh but it was soon after birth.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah, but still you can't compare one thing to the other. I try when people tell me about their dog who died, I try, I you know, I do my best. No, I do early on after you lose a kid, that is really hard to deal with. But over the years, you know, I've really worked on

Grief Leadership And Closing Details

SPEAKER_00 55:15

opening my heart to the fact that those feelings are real. And you know, a a pet dog can can fill a huge part, a huge role in a person's life.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

It's all about attachment, how attached to the thing is pulling to their depth of of pain and and offering it also back. Yes. Um, but yes, right after it's it was uh but right after when you believe my wife on that. It's like, oh my gosh, people yeah, come on.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

So we're we're we're the same. My dog just died.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 55:46

Well, and it isn't that crass, but people, you know, it it and that was hard first. The other thing that's hard is people who um can't resist talking about their brilliant children constantly. When it's fresh, when you've lost a kid and it's fresh, that also is is difficult. And in, you know, but my wife and also my wife and I also admit we have also have a daughter, and she's been super successful. And and we admit to each other that if both of our kids had turned out that way, we would think we had done it.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

That's true. That's that's insightful. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Brian, for joining us. I've been looking forward to this and uh I had a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

I did too. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

And always thank you for joining us. Uh, you can always get any of our podcasts, video or audio, on our website, high impactanalytics.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.