Career Contrast
Career-focused informational interviews from the perspective of a talent expert.
Career Contrast
Josh Chinn - Procurement Manager
In this episode, Michael talks with Joshua Lee Chinn, Procurement Manager at Spotify, about the arc of his career, and the journey from education to the corporate world. We discuss his early career out of business school in consulting, and his eventual landing in procurement.
You can learn more about Josh at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlchinn/ or https://www.joshlchinn.com/
Visit CareerContrastPod.com for more information. Want to tell your story? Contact us at Careercontrast@gmail.com.
This is Career Contrast, and I'm your host, michael Lane-Smith. As a career recruiter, I'm fascinated by the variety of job paths or careers that people commit to, and Career Contrast is all about work, how people work, the state of work, and in each episode, we'll explore questions that provide insight into the problems people solve in their jobs every day. Ultimately, I hope to capture the experience of an informational interview from the perspective of a talent expert. Joining me today is Josh Chin. Welcome, josh. Hey Mike, how are you doing? Doing well, man, it's good to see you. I'd love to start with, did you have a dream job as a child? What did you want to be when you grew up?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if I ever had like a dream job that's, you know, was really realistic, like I think. You know, if you ask a five year old, I wanted to be a baseball player and I don't think that was going to happen. Um, and so, yeah, I I think there are a lot of interesting careers, but I don't know if I had, you know, one that I was like I really want to be this when I grow up professional baseball player edgar martinez, number two.
Josh Chinn:Yeah, you know it'd be, uh, it'd be cool too. But you know I, I think once you hit eight years old or 10 years old or whatever, that you know, and kids start growing like, okay, this is probably not realistic. Yeah, but you still play softball, you're still a runner, I still play softball. I still play hardball too, baseball. Oh there you go?
Michael Lane Smith:And when you went to college, what did you study? What was your career track and or, I guess, educational track?
Josh Chinn:And did you kind of have an idea about what that would look like as you got into it? So I got into the business school at the University of Washington directly as a incoming freshman. And I was in that because in high school I took a business class called DECA and I'm sure you know a lot of different high schools have business classes like that in a kind of exposed to me the basics of business. Right, You've got profit and you've got or I guess you've got revenue and you've got expenses. Here's how a company spends money, as well as financial basics of like. Here's how you save money, here's how interest works, here's how compounding works, here's how debt works and a lot of things like that.
Josh Chinn:And I was like, okay, that seems pretty interesting. I feel like you know, just in general, that's a pretty broad career field and one that seems like it would be probably useful and beneficial down the road. And so I checked a little box on my application saying I would like to be considered for the business school and for, um, uh, for my uh, college application. And then I got directly admitted. So I ended up going to university of Washington, um, uh, and studied business there.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, and as I understand it, you can apply for the business school as you apply to the university immediately, but then there's also folks who get admitted later on. Is that correct?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, yeah. So there I would say that's a majority of the people. Um, you know, you, you take your first couple years of prerequisites and then you go from there. So I think a lot of those. You'll take a prerequisite like accounting class, you'll take like a business management class, you'll take a law class, um, and that's kind of like the pre-business track, and then you apply after your, uh, freshman or sophomore year to get in. Um, yeah, it's, I mean, it's very similar, you know, as if you're doing chemistry and you know you'd probably have to take some math classes, some bio classes, and apply from there.
Michael Lane Smith:Right on. Yeah, and I always tell folks, especially young folks looking for jobs, you know when you're starting to think about what you want to do. The more you start to talk about it, the more you get involved. The earlier you get involved, the better setup you're going to be. And you described being a part of DECA and it sounded like it was a class. I've also seen DECA clubs. What other types of experiences do you think helped you get into the freshman direct admission for business school? Is there anything else you'd want to highlight?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, well, I think it was pretty clear. I mean, if you look to my high school profile it was pretty clear that I had maybe the experience right. So I'd taken some AP calculus classes. I had taken a statistics class. I had taken, you know, and I did well in those classes and so mathematically I felt like I was there. You know, my test scores were good enough that I felt comfortable applying. So my SAT I had a decent enough score and then I had things like high school summer jobs and so having a job and really just kind of showing interest in taking the initiative and showing the effort of you know that you're interested or that you're proactive, you take initiative and I think a lot of those things are. If you can highlight those things there and articulate them well, they're very well received by college admissions.
Michael Lane Smith:Right on, right on, and I remember, I think, probably junior year. You and I were both at the University of Washington trying to find jobs, thinking about what we're going to do with our lives post-college, and, if I remember correctly, you had a job either at the end of junior year or early senior year. Is that right? And what was that process like? Going from a freshman getting into business school to now not even graduating but looking for jobs two or three years in?
Josh Chinn:So I remember. So let's see this was so. I had my junior year, so my third year of college, I guess. At the end of the year year I had an internship. And so I remember I was with my friend Grant and we were both looking for internships and things to do and we thought it'd be fun to move to San Francisco. So we kind of limited or we looked for jobs that would be interning from our junior summer into our senior year, um, that would be interning in San Francisco. So I interned at the gap corporation corporation, um, and so got to see visibility into um gap as a entire conglomerate. So banana republic, intermix, old navy, gap um and I, that was uh, supply chain and kind of operations and you worked across all three business entities.
Josh Chinn:No, I wouldn't say I worked. I mean I more just got exposed. You know, in interns, internships, I feel like you're never doing crazy. You know useful work, because the all the crazy useful work is done by the really smart, you know graduates and people who are actually in the full-time jobs. But, yeah, so I entered into the gap, um, and I was doing I worked at two folsom street in san francisco, uh, and it was doing supply chain and operations, which was my, my focus, or, yeah, I guess my specialty um at the university of washington. And so I came out of that like basically what supply chain is like.
Michael Lane Smith:It seems intuitive, but yeah, you're somebody who's worked in it, I'm assuming now Washington. How would you describe basically what supply chain is? It seems intuitive, but yeah, you're someone who's worked in it, I'm assuming now for years. How would you describe it for someone?
Josh Chinn:Supply chain. I guess the most direct thing that I think a lot of people understand is farm to table. You're like, how do I get food from a farm onto my table? And there's a lot of middlemen involved, there's a lot of. You need the labor to either pull the fruits and veggies or to harvest whatever goods, or to work with the meat, and you've got to transport it and that costs money. And then you got to get into stores and then advertise it and that costs money.
Josh Chinn:And so you know, it's always kind of little incremental spends and thinking about that of how something gets from the, an idea in somebody's head, and so, or you know, like literal or figurative seed in the ground, um, and then you know how, how is it created, how is it made, how is it transported, how is it marketed, how is it shipped, and then how does it end up? You know, how do I? You know, at the gap it's like how, how do I end up wearing it? Yeah, um, so, yeah, all of those things. And then, yeah, how did that lead to your ultimate job? Yeah, so, uh, I wouldn't say it was a direct translation, if you will.
Josh Chinn:Um, I so, coming into my senior year, I remember I had, um, a guy who was in my fraternity and he kind of had a similar path to me, except he was a year older. And so, uh, he was great Cause I, I was able to kind of look up to him and be like, oh, like what, this guy, this guy looks like, he knows what he's doing, um, and yeah, and, and he had a, uh, a great job out of out of college. I think one thing that isn't apparent to very many people unless you're really involved, is that a lot of companies start recruiting the minute you step on campus, your senior year, and you know, obviously you're graduating in June, but a lot of the interviewing and applications and kind of that courting process is in, you know, the fall time for a lot of large companies. That's kind of how the pipeline works. And so the guy in my fraternity who was a year older obviously he was working already for this consulting company and he was like, hey, you may be interested in this, your stats are good, my GPA was good enough, I had an internship that was great and my GPA was good enough and I had taken a lot of classes that I had done well enough in so that I can point to them on my resume and be like, yes, I'm qualified to do X, y, z and went through their interview process and their interview process is pretty, in my opinion, as standard as it gets for the consulting realm of things, and so it'll be like an informational session.
Josh Chinn:You'll have an interview. I mean, hopefully you'll end an interview, hopefully you will get past that interview and you'll either get to like a manager interview or like a group interview, uh, and then after that you will get, um, uh, like an interview, to like a panel interview or a case interview. And so case interviews for those of you who don't know are very much like they. They will interview you kind of given a hypothetical situation or kind of a random question, and it's really they want to see how you think and how you can break down a problem, and it's not just throwing out an answer and seeing like, oh, I hope that's right. But it's all.
Josh Chinn:It's kind of like literally showing your work on paper, yeah, and so that case interview went well and then, you know, got a job with accenture right out of college, which is great, because I would, you know they. They said, hey, go, uh, we'll talk to you Like here's, here's your offer, assign some papers and we'll talk to you in six months once you graduate and we'll, you know, we'll place you in an office. So it was nice, it was yeah, it was great having that security. Um, I don't think I would have gotten there if, um, you know, this upperclassman had introduced me to the concept, and so I'm really thankful for Brian. Um, and, yeah, it's, it was. It was kind of just right time, right place.
Josh Chinn:Um uh and and I was yeah, and so I moved on to San Francisco for, uh, right after, I guess just a few months after, graduation. Um, and it was from there.
Michael Lane Smith:Awesome. Oh, I'd love to talk about your consulting experience first and foremost, before we get into where you're at now and where you've gone since then. I remember different I think they were called case competitions or different competitions through the business school that folks could do and in those you were often tasked with some sort of hypothetical or business issue and you and a team of five to I would say maybe three to five people would try to solve that issue and you just described in the interview process you know case questions where you're given like a hypothetical, very similar. Could you describe for me your experience with case competitions and you know how that may have led to success in the interview process and even in your time in Accenture?
Josh Chinn:Well, I think I mean, I mean, ironically, my case I would say case competitions are, um, a a little bit different from an actual case interview, uh, but for the most part they're kind of just boiling down business situations and scenarios and they're like, okay, how would you address this?
Josh Chinn:Here are the things that you want to think about. And so the business case interviews, yeah, I mean, obviously those are over an hour or so as a literal interview, whereas the case competitions are over, you know, a couple weeks or two, because they're projects and your presentations and you put things together. But yeah, essentially they'll give you a problem or a quote unquote case and they want to see how you solve it by, you know, proposing solutions, by walking through things, by thinking of numbers, by doing your own research into things, and it's a lot of critical thinking of putting things, yeah, making assumptions, doing research, that kind of thing of of just here's, here's how I arrive at a, at a viable business. Answer to this question and, as a result, also like answer to this question and, as a result, also like here are the impacts, yeah, and, I think, a couple examples.
Michael Lane Smith:I remember reading. I mean gosh, this was 10 years ago now. Like, how many briefcases are there in the United States? Is that an example of one?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, absolutely so. I'd say those are kind of called market sizing questions and it's basically kind of back of the envelope math, and what I mean is like, literally, you can use a back of the envelope to just do general business calculations of like, okay, I know there's, you know 50. Tosses you an absurd question how many gumballs can fit in an airplane? Or something like that? You know they don't. They don't want the correct answer, they want to be, um, they want to see how you break things down. So you're like okay, well, a gumball may have this diameter or this radius or this. You know this volume, um, and I know a plane can fit this many people, and so I think you know x people or x gumballs can be inside one person.
Josh Chinn:And you know there are a lot of different ways to think about it and break it down. There is no correct answer. And if somebody does have a correct answer, that's a little more disturbing because that probably means they got the answers to the test. But yeah, all of those things are just the companies want to see how you think. They want to see Can you break down a problem, can you do basic math, can you make assumptions and think about things?
Michael Lane Smith:And there are a lot of easy way to practice those. I know there are a lot of like case interview guides and things like that that can help people with those kind of break down, those hypothetical scenarios or those case interviews. Yeah yeah, so take a look on the internet. There's definitely some resources out there and definitely some interview question examples that folks could easily find. And after or maybe even during your time at Accenture, what were you thinking about trying next? And your management consulting, as I understand it, is pretty broad and opens your eyes to maybe other opportunities. Where did you go next and what led you there?
Josh Chinn:Yeah so during my time at Accenture. So I was there for two years on the dot, like on three, yeah. So I was there like 720 days, 730 days exactly, um, and after that, I guess during my time at a center, I had four different projects and each project was about six months um, and the projects varied. So I was at, uh, I was doing at like a medical health care conglomerate doing some um I guess, like business, um project management there. Um, I had some like advertising work a little bit at google, um I that worked at a fintech and so so these companies um they they literally kind of help literally consult other businesses um to do to do work with strategy, or they'd kind of do staff augmentation, to kind of help fill a role. And so I had four projects during my time at Accenture and I realized that, while I enjoyed the people and the work and the culture was great, I wanted to be a part of a company where the end product was something that I was involved in, whereas you know, when you work in at Accenture for consulting or other literal professional services, your product is really you like, you're selling kind of your mind, your time, your thinking time, you're thinking, uh, and I wanted to work for a company that allowed me to be like, yes, I worked, but the product that we produce was something that was, um, that I found interesting and it wasn't, you know, like a literal service to another person. So I ended up moving, yeah, so I ended up moving to airbnb.
Josh Chinn:Um, I was working there, uh, for I guess, yeah, I worked there for a couple of years. I was working as a procurement contractor and it was, it was great, it was. You know, it was in the Bay area, it was pre-COVID and so, you know, the whole techie thing was was a lot of fun. It was very much, you know, techie, right, and so free lunch and really cool offices and great people and really smart people. But, yeah, that's where I really kind of well, I guess you could argue I dove into procurement via supply chain and operations and gap.
Josh Chinn:But I think this was really my first foray into procurement and like actual paying the bills and so, um, I guess for those of you who who don't know, procurement is, um, it is basically, uh, paying the bills for a company, right, so the company makes money and a company spends money and oftentimes, you know, everybody thinks about how you make money, that's sales, that's through a lot of different things, but not many people think about how you spend money and where that money goes. And so, and companies, they do spend a lot of money, right, there are services. There are good, like literal hard goods. There are contractors that you need to pay. There's, like payroll that you need to pay. Payroll usually doesn't go through procurement.
Josh Chinn:Procurement usually deals with things called operating expenses and those are things like you know, like business services, right, like, uh, we pay google for their ad services or, um, we have a new office being built. We need to pay for these, uh, different kind of expenses. Um, but uh, yeah, and so, um, I got my feet wet there and learned like, here's how something is bought, here's how contracts work, here's how we engage a vendor, here's how we find vendors, here's how we pay them, here's when we pay them, and all those business questions that you know are pretty obvious when you, when you like, sit down and work through it, but not many people think about it on a day to day basis.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, yeah, I think where was I going to go. Well, I think your, your path is probably typical to the other folks that I've spoke with. I've only spoken to a couple of procurement people in my time as a recruiter. Is your path pretty typical, you know? Do people often go from management consulting to you know business services like procurement, or are there other routes that people take Plenty of other routes.
Josh Chinn:I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. I think whatever you want to do, if you're willing to put in the work and really honestly humble yourself, you can end up wherever you want. End up wherever you want, um, I would say I mean some of the people who I worked with had worked in accounting. Some of the people I worked with had worked at other management consulting. Some of the people I worked with had just been like, uh, human people since day one. Um, and other people have gotten into it from other ways, and so I don't think there's like a direct path. Um, yeah, but I think either I mean obviously, not maybe obviously, but everybody had a business background of like, okay, I understand accounting, right, I understand this is profit is, is you know, revenue minus expenses, yeah, and things like that, right?
Michael Lane Smith:And so I don't think I worked necessarily with any chemistry majors in procurement, but I'm sure if their math is sound, then they would excel as well international studies, pre-law focus, you know I could probably pursue an MBA and get serious consideration for more business operations type of role, aside from recruitment which I'm doing now. Would you say that that's, you know, probably necessary? People who don't have business knowledge or degrees would need some sort of additional certification or indication that they, you know, have other business related skills, general business skills that are widely applicable.
Josh Chinn:Yeah, I think so. I think it also depends how far you want to climb the ladder too, right? Like, if you want to be a director, you're probably going to need to get some certifications or stuff like that. If you're okay just being an analyst and kind of, you know, you clock in and you work for eight hours and you're working on procurement and you don't desire to climb the ladder that much, I think there are plenty of places for that as well, and maybe somebody has a family at home and they just need to put in their eight hours and then go home.
Michael Lane Smith:I think there are places that you can do that Absolutely. I would echo the same for MySpace, and when I was working with the procurement team a couple months ago, I heard a lot about procurement, but I also heard about procurement and sourcing. Are those different functions, or the same function, just called different things? How would you describe that great?
Josh Chinn:question um, I would say they are very related.
Josh Chinn:Um, let's say, procurement is more of the act of uh, the kind of the um paying, paying the bills and sourcing is like finding the bills to pay, if you will.
Josh Chinn:So let's say, you as a I'm trying to think of a good example.
Josh Chinn:Let's say, I need to market my product. Right, I am going to hire somebody to Not hire somebody, but like some service to help me come up with a design and branding, right. So the sourcing would be finding that agency, working with them, getting a contract in and, obviously, like the actual marketing work would probably be done by the marketing team. But the contract work working out the terms of payment, working out the amount we're getting paid, working out all the legal clauses, and that stuff would be on the sourcing team. And then, once the contract is signed and then we have to pay them, we have to figure out where that hits the accounting books and all of those things what costs are there, what project codes, where all this money goes, and here's when we're paying it out and here's how it relates to our bank. That's the procurement side, and so they work hand in hand and I would say a lot of companies just call it procure to pay or sorts to pay and most of those things are pretty synonymous across the impact and effect of what they did.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, yeah. You mentioned earlier some of the things that people procure or buy as a company. You know professional services, you know all the things that go into allowing someone to show up, do work at an office space and more right. What's been like some interesting things or maybe things you didn't think about when you got into the space that you've. You had to work to, procure or buy.
Josh Chinn:Oh, man. So I would say that is very specific, on whatever kind of business you run or you operate. I think, in essence, like, if you have a business, you are by default, kind of you're selling something and you are buying things. There are some interesting things, you know, I think now, working at Spotify, you can see you guys have visibility into some contracts that you have with um, with services, right. So you just see, uh, like I see a lot of money flowing to google because we pay them a ton for, you know, advertising and and marketing. Um, I see a lot of money, like I see the money that that we write to our our food team that helps us with our um, like our snacks in the office and our food in the office, um and so, and and obviously a lot of that stuff is confidential and there's a level of confidentiality and and um, just kind of uh, uh vulnerability in in a lot of these contracts. Um and uh, so you're you're not sharing them or spreading them on twitter, linkedin and stuff, um, but uh, yeah, you do get visibility into some things or you're like, you know, you have a heads up or like, oh, like, we're spending money on this. I wonder if that means, you know, next year we'll be doing this, um, so yeah, there are cool things.
Josh Chinn:I think you know every business is different, right? A restaurant and the money that they spend on and the things that they procure like literal food and ingredients. We don't really do that, I guess, other than snacks, right, it depends on the kind of business you run. Whatever business you're in, you probably can see some wacky stuff come through or some crazy marketing campaign. I feel like if I worked at Red Bull and was on their procurement team or sourcing team and just marketing team and paying these contracts for somebody to fly an airplane off a cliff or something. There are cool things and you get some visibility into that.
Michael Lane Smith:That's awesome. You mentioned the confidential nature. I'm more than happy to edit out some of the stuff you just described, but it did seem maybe more obvious. Is that right? Yeah, I mean.
Josh Chinn:I'm fine with most of this being in the episode, but like there are things like maybe not contracts, but like if, if, if Spotify is hosting an event in can for for the awards and they want an artist to play, that contract will eventually probably come through my team, that contract will eventually probably come through my team and I will look at it and be like I don't have any control over the money or the contract or anything, but I'll look at it and be like, okay, here's where the bank accounts match up, here's where this money will be, kind of where we have it budgeted from, and here's how you know whose wallet is paying for it. Right, is it the marketing team? Is it the branding team? Is Is it a design team? Who's paying for what?
Josh Chinn:And at the beginning of the fiscal year, all of these teams have budgets that are kind of set and my job is to connect the dots and be like okay, we have 30% of the budget coming from this team, so we're going to charge it to that call center. We've got 80% of his travel expenses being covered by this team. We've got 90% of the food and beverage, etc. Etc. So yeah, um, yeah, so you get. You get kind of a visibility into that and it's cool and you know you can. You can be like, wow, you know, for the super bowl we paid that much for the you know this ad and you're like, okay, well, that that's a lot of money.
Michael Lane Smith:So yeah, I'm imagining you know there's been news reports and like screenshots of like federal government spending items. Yeah, from our organization.
Josh Chinn:I would say that is. I would say that is a huge part of um, like, like, if somebody works for the government, um, and they're either as a contractor or in the government paying out the bills, like that's literally um, you know where a lot of these come from, and so I think at some level, that the government, for better or worse, is is run like a business and that you need to keep track on where the money goes and when it's being spent, and you know if the government owes you money or if the government is spending too much money or et cetera. There you know, there are ways that it breaks down very similarly to a company.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say, gonna say, you know, I know that there's screenshots floating around of, like the federal government spending like eight thousand or like eighty thousand dollars on like pro publica memberships and yeah, probably pro publica sells a, um, like a, essentially a service for news reporters and and folks to look at policy analysis. And, uh, you know, from your, your perspective, you see, you know, 80,000 spent towards something potentially dubious and just to find out like, oh, like there's a business reason for this, like does that happen? A lot where you're like why? Why is this expense coming to my desk? I need to figure out what exactly this is. Yeah, that's.
Josh Chinn:That's a good question. I think sometimes there are quite like no-transcript. We'll just make sure that things want to go properly. Um, but yeah, for the most part we leave that up to the business of like.
Michael Lane Smith:You know it's it's their money to spend, essentially yeah, and I think you think we're starting to talk about something that I love to ask about, which is the type of problems that you deal with on a daily basis in any specific job. I think most jobs are just deciding which problems you want to have to deal with, and so, for you, you're describing allocating specific resources for specific spend. Specific resources for specific spend. I want to have chatted with other procurement folks. I've heard oh well, you know we're not necessarily revenue driving, but you know I've saved 3 million or 5 million a year by renegotiating this contract or the other?
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, how would you describe the role you can play in saving money for a company and driving value that way?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, so I think it, you know it, it it? Uh, and maybe this is a bit of a stretch for people who haven't taken a business class, um, but essentially right. Like, if I'm selling items and I get paid, that is revenue, right. And then any money I spend is expense and revenue. So the money I make minus the money I spend is my profit. And a company's goal is typically to increase the profit, basically to make more money so that you have more money to work with. And so if I buy a stick of gum or a pack of gum for $1 and I sell it to you for $2, so the $2 that would be the revenue and my expense of buying the pack of gum would be $1. Dollars. So the two dollars that would be the revenue and my expense of buying the pack of gum would be one dollar, right, and my profit would be the revenue of two minus the expense of one, and my profit would be an extra dollar, right. And then all of a sudden I can buy two packs of gum and resell those for four dollars.
Josh Chinn:Um, and so the way that I look at procurement is like we don't do much with the revenue, right, we're not out there selling things, but what we're doing is we're trying to decrease the expenses, we're trying to monitor the expenses and so if I you know and this is where the sourcing comes in they'll negotiate contracts to save money. We will make sure that things are paid effectively, and so we're kind of getting into a deeper accounting terminology here. We're kind of getting into a deeper accounting terminology here, but things like net 30 payments, net 15 payments, and trying to figure out ways how we can work to save money or to have more money available at certain times. And the value of that is really we want our suppliers to work with us, right, we want and this is an example, not not a specific use case but we want ed sheeran to be like oh, I love spotify because they pay me on time, so I'm going to do a special concert for them at a discount, right, like it's those kind of business relationships. And all of a sudden we're like okay, well, now, instead of spending a hundred dollars on ed sheeran, now we only have to spend fifty dollars because he likes us or because you know he's giving us a discount, because we're doing multiple things, and so it's a lot of business and literal vendor management.
Josh Chinn:It's a lot of negotiating contracts and all of the goal of that is to save how much you're spending. So, instead of spending $100, you're spending $75. Spending $75. And so even the way that in business, um, that profit goes up is either the revenue has to increase and the expenses stay the same, or the revenue stays the same and the expenses decrease. Ideally, the revenue increases and the expenses decrease, right, because both of those will give you a bigger gap between the two, which would be an increase in your profit.
Josh Chinn:Uh, so, but, but yeah, so our job is is to gap between the two, which would be an increase in your profit. So, but, but yeah, so our job is is to work with the expenses, make sure that we are, um, you know, being being fiscally minded, being smart about what we're spending, when we're spending. And then our job is really, on a procurement team, is to work with the vendors, make sure that things are paid on time, make sure that they fit our accounting books and that all of those things are clean, because we're a public company, we're traded on the stock market and at the end of each quarter, people can look into our financials and they want to see that we are making more money than we are spending, and then the procurement team is a way to both limit and get good visibility into that absolutely, absolutely, um.
Michael Lane Smith:I was chatting with some folks in the recruiting process for our most recent procurement hire and you know some of the folks were telling me about, um, you know, having to you kind of take a step back from some of the contracts that their companies have signed because, um, you know the company's not making as much money. You know you have to renegotiate contracts. Hearing you talk about it, it sounds like that's on the sourcing side. Sourcing does more of that kind of negotiation and deal closing, whereas you are the more executionary arm. Is that, right on the procurement side, operational?
Josh Chinn:for sure. But then there definitely are things like we are a lot of contract management as well. If we say all right, I will get the notification saying, hey, the contract's up at the end of this month. Ideally, we have a lot more lead time than that, but maybe we had a five-year contract and the contract is up at the end of 2025. And here we are entering 2025. Okay, we need to think about how we want to negotiate this next year so that we can save money, so that we can get a better deal, so that we can get more licenses, whatever the good may be.
Michael Lane Smith:And that's exciting. That's where the magic happens. That's where procurement really earns their value. That's awesome, let's see. So we talked a lot about some of the problems or work that you're doing day to day conceptually. Are there any other problems, tasks that you would share with folks wanting to get into the space or interested in the space at all that you deal with pretty regularly in your role?
Josh Chinn:I think it's like it's business at the end of the day, right, I would say more than 50 percent of what I do is interacting with people, so we are like part of the business services. So we, you know, I I work with people inside Spotify. I'm not selling to a customer off the street, but it's interacting with those people and making sure that the process is clear, making sure that they're able to know what they're doing, so my job becomes easier in the future. All of those kinds of things are like, hey, you know, we.
Josh Chinn:Or if somebody comes late to me late, and they're like, hey, we needed this paid yesterday, I'm like, well, there's a lot of paperwork that we didn't sign. So, like, legally, we are kind of, yeah, we're not doing that, or so it's it's. It's it's educating people on the process. It's making people understand what the expectations are, and I would say that's a good. You know, maybe not 50% of my role, but that's kind of the essence of the role is like make sure that the business is educated so that you know together we're spending less money.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, there's a lot of, I think, just competence, standard human communication competence. That goes into a lot of corporate work, I'm hearing.
Josh Chinn:But you know also the incredibly specialized work that you described got you to where you are working at accenture, solving back of the napkin problems this kind of goes to my view on corporate america as a whole is like a lot of people can do a lot of different people's jobs, like there's there's some specialization, but at the end of the day, if you know you know basics in excel or sql or python, which are some data, data languages or um, you know very, very kind of standard things. Right, if you can make a good powerpoint and you've worked on your soft skills of presenting um, you can go a lot of different directions and so I wouldn't say that I'm very specialized in that. I would say my specialties come from literal learning on the job and having experience in it. But I'm not like a superhero or anything. If you had spent eight years in this field you would know the exact same things you have.
Michael Lane Smith:I think you know I'm really curious about how things are changing in your space and in recruiting. I've talked a little bit in previous episodes about how we're using AI, about how you know. When I was doing PR for device companies, you know how IoT was a big market mover back in the early 2010s. How would you describe how your role or space is changing or has changed since you've gotten into it?
Josh Chinn:Yeah, that's a good question. I think there are a lot of different ways to answer that question. I think I can answer it from a technological point of view of here's AI and here's how some of these things are making our jobs easier and faster. I'm actually going to pivot this a different direction because I think this is a use case that maybe is less applicable to large businesses. But Spotify has started to work maybe not started to work, but has continued to work with a lot of really small creators, right, and so the.
Josh Chinn:If I'm at, um, uh, basically it's called, like, the, the long tail of creators, and so, um, if I wanted to pick up a book and read it out loud, um, and and record it as an audio book, um, I probably can do that, but I, you know, and maybe I'll make you know, $20 a year doing that, right, it's, it's really small numbers, but the end of the day, number one that adds up number two, it's a lot of different creators or readers, narrators, um, and that's a problem that we're trying to figure out of. Like, okay, we don't need every single person set up in our business as a supplier, right? Like, there's a difference between Facebook's bank account and my bank account. They will be billing us every single day, whereas I will be billing them maybe once a year to figure out the ways to work with small creators, especially in a creator driven economy.
Josh Chinn:Um, uh, small payouts, um payouts on demand, and things like that are areas that I think are interesting. Um, and that's uh, I mean, you know, until really uber and kind of that, um, single person, um, uh, creator economy, um things, whether it's technology, whether it's regulations, whether it's processes, haven't been built out and really standardized. So there are a lot of different ways that you could take that. There are a lot of different ways that we're trying to do things um, and I think, you know, seeing those things is interesting yeah, if you're paying one agency, right then it's really simple.
Michael Lane Smith:But if you, you have to pay. You know 50,000 different individual creators the economy of scale just ruins your day. I'm imagining that is brutal. On the technology side, though, I am curious like how has technology started to change how you do work? Are you guys using AI in your space? How has that kind of materialized, if at all?
Josh Chinn:that kind of materialized, if at all? Yeah, um, I think there are there. There are a lot of possibilities. There are a lot of tools that are trying to address those, but I don't think very many of them are super mature yet. Um, I think they are.
Josh Chinn:A lot of them are trying to solve the same issues, um, but, uh, yeah, I think you know, for for those, um, kind of like in the way that a chatbot is built using large language models, we are still kind of working to gather the data such that the tools that we, the AI tools that we're creating, can be useful, because right now, if we throw an invoice in and it's in a different language and they have different terminology from what we use, yes, it's translating it, but it's also trying to figure out like, okay, if this means invoice number, this means the dollar amount, but to the computer they're all just numbers. How does it determine which is where and and what is what? And so I think training a lot of those things is happening. Um, the technology and like being able to process things instantaneous maybe instantaneously, but you know a lot, a lot faster um is is happening, um, but I think we're still a few years out from it being like a actual super competitive landscape there.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, One of the things that I first thought when I got to professional world post-college was like I thought software would be user friendly. I thought software would be user-friendly.
Josh Chinn:I thought enterprise tools would have solved most of the problems and you just get here and you're like wow, nothing works.
Michael Lane Smith:Not nothing works right, but you know there's still a lot of room, for you know folks to come in and build something exciting. Would you say that that's been your experience as well and that you know as much as there has been done in this world to make business more effective? There's still a lot to do.
Josh Chinn:It's, it's, it's. I think people, in the grand scheme of things, also don't. I think they underestimate how much time has passed right. Like 30 years ago, most of these programs didn't even exist. 20 years ago, most of these programs didn't even exist, and I mean even, you know, in 2008,. You know the recession, everything.
Josh Chinn:And now we have Sarbanes-Oxford, like there are just so many different, you know, governmental policies that are in place that we have to accord to, we have to deal with a lot of different processes.
Josh Chinn:There are so many different literal technologies of, like, all right, ai, large language models, like here's, you know, a new coding language. Here's all of these things that didn't exist even 25, 30 years ago. And so, um, you know, I think at some level, humanity is growing and and trying to keep up, but I think the technological advancements are increasing at a faster rate than humanity is. So, um, we're kind of like, okay, you know, we can keep building, building, building, but at some point we need I think humanity might need to self audit and sell itself and be like, okay, we need to slow things down a little bit, just so we can get a mastery of what we're doing here yeah, and build like a co-working internet and process of tools that actually help us do our jobs without having to rebuild everything every two years and and I mean, and I think, at a grander scale of things, right, like the american economy being capitalist economy is.
Josh Chinn:You know. You know you have competition, you have a lot of different companies trying to do maybe the similar or the same things, but they're building it in different ways, which is awesome and it's great and competition is excellent. But at the end of the day, that may mean that you speak maybe not like you know, like verbal language, Right, but you know, you know one coding language and I know another and as a result, we can't work together because A doesn't equal A and you know apples to apples and we're comparing apples to oranges there. You know, obviously there are ways to get around that too, but that takes time.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, absolutely Well, right on, man. I really appreciate everything you've shared. I think this is really helpful for someone who's wanting to learn more about procurement and sourcing. Uh, if there was any other advice you wanted to share with people you know about the space, getting to the space, is there anything else you'd want to say?
Josh Chinn:um, I think there are a lot of decisions like I think there is a level of quote unquote the game that people have to play if they want to have financial success. I wouldn't say sit down and shut up, but you have to put in your time such that you have the capital at the end of it so you can do what you want. I think there are a lot of different ways to get capital and resources and money, and I don't think any of them is better or worse than the other. So if procurement seems interesting to you, great. If it doesn't sound interesting at all, that's also okay. I don't think there's anything there.
Josh Chinn:I will say one of the reasons that I kind of looked into procurement and kind of the accounting area is it's relatively like recession proof there will always be people who need to handle the money and the numbers and, you know, even after COVID and things like that I can look at. I lost my job during COVID but I think it was pretty fairly easy to find a job in the financial slash accounting organizations after that, and so I know other industries can have issues with that or it's kind of like a one and done, like there's there's a clock that you need to to to get things by. But, um, I think accounting is a relatively less less risky um environment and so, as such, that that may be um, intriguing to some people, but also may be boring and not where some other people want to be. So there is no right answer. There are a lot of different things to consider when choosing a career and, yeah, yeah, you know.
Michael Lane Smith:there's other things we could certainly talk about your sport card trading business, your lobster fishing summer. There's lots of things I could probably dive into. My typical last question is you know how has your career changed you? I'd rather ask, I think you know of the various jobs, side gigs that you do participate in. You know how have those? How has your entire career so far changed you?
Josh Chinn:You might want to edit this out, I don't know.
Josh Chinn:I feel like I've gotten to a point in my career where I think I am nearing my end game and not in a I'm fiscally ready to retire.
Josh Chinn:But when I entered, I mean and I literally was just talking to my therapist yesterday about this, but it was like when I joined corporate workforce it was so that I can get financial stability and I can work, you know, and to some level it's the prestige and status which I think objectively kind of feels pretty good as a human for other people, wow, he works at this job or he does this X, y, z.
Josh Chinn:But I never joined to really climb the ladder. I feel like I, you know, know I could maybe force myself to um, but I've gotten to a point in my career where I feel like, okay, maybe I'm ready for maybe not a pivot um, but just something outside of corporate america, because I think corporate america is a great place to play the game um and there are a lot of different opportunities there. But I kind of want to look more into entrepreneurship, into business ownership and yeah, and I think that's. I would not have been able to do that had I not spent eight years in the workforce, but now I'm at a point in my life where I think my career and my view towards career is shifting a little bit.
Michael Lane Smith:That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it. I know you only had an hour so I'll let you go, but yeah, was there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners? Or we can stop recording, even if you'd like. No, I?
Josh Chinn:think. I mean my guess is, if you're listening to this, then you're probably curious or you have an inquisitive mindset and you're intrigued about a lot of different things. I think that's a really healthy mentality to keep up. I think, no matter where you are, it's important not to get complacent but to keep asking questions and have fun along the way, and I think if you're not having fun with it, then it's really time to um. I think you know stress comes. Money, money is tough, right, people need to live, um, but I do think that people need to have an enjoyment of their lives and, um, people should. Well, maybe, maybe not people should, in my opinion. I like to uh, such that I can live, as opposed to. I know other people who like to live so they can work. But yeah, I find a lot of enjoyment outside of work and I plan to keep that work Right on, man.
Michael Lane Smith:Thanks again, thank you.
