Carly Chenault is the Founder of MARKET EDIT, a strategic advisory and media firm that shares retail strategy and cultural insights through its publication, Retail Roundtable. With over 15 years of experience in retail and luxury brand strategy, she covers fashion and retail trends to empower emerging founders. Carly is also an Advisor at Need It For Tonight, a same-day fashion delivery platform.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:55] Carly Chenault talks about her early interest in fashion — and why she moved from Miami to New York
• [6:49] Carly recounts a silent elevator standoff with Anna Wintour during her Condé Nast days
• [10:15] What causes retail brands to plateau?
• [18:45] Why brand reputation and capital don’t guarantee sustained innovation or growth
• [23:21] How to fail effectively by leveraging controlled tests and learning from missteps
• [28:38] Bridging physical and digital experiences in retail
• [36:16] Strategies for designing pop-ups that foster community and emotional connection
• [44:17] How consumer behavior has shifted from online to in-store
• [48:02] Fashion tech breakthroughs Carly is excited about, from digital try-ons to wishlist plugins
• [1:00:09] What Zara’s retail redesign reveals about shopping psychology and convenience
• [1:08:25] Carly talks about being diagnosed with ADHD and her goal to be a role model for founders  

In this episode…

Many retail brands believe they’re delivering a compelling customer experience until sales dip and consumers lose interest. Why do so many businesses miss the signs that their customer relationships are slipping? Even with a solid product and strong brand recognition, growth can plateau when companies ignore evolving customer behavior, overlook internal leadership shortcomings, and fail to adapt their strategies. How can brands remain relevant in today’s retail environment?

According to fashion and retail strategist Carly Chenault, overcoming growth plateaus requires founder self-awareness, customer insight, and adaptability. She recommends employing structured experimentation, building community by integrating physical and digital retail experiences, and leveraging technology like digital try-ons and wardrobe AI to streamline the customer experience. Carly also advises innovating with intention, collecting customer feedback, and prioritizing ease, trust, and transparency in customer interactions.

Tune in to this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as William Harris invites Carly Chenault, Founder of MARKET EDIT, to discuss scaling a retail brand by transitioning back into brick-and-mortar. Carly talks about building a community through immersive pop-ups, the psychology of retail layouts, and how to fail strategically.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Carly Chenault on LinkedIn
• MARKET EDIT
• Retail Roundtable
• The BoF Podcast
• Emily Oberg on LinkedIn
  ‍

Quotable Moments:

• “You need to solve the problems for the world in which you live.”
• “Just because you aren't doing something in your business anymore doesn't mean that you're not good at it.”
• “Your consumer can feel that you don't care about me. You're not taking any time.”
• “If you're not talking to your customer base often, you're not hearing what they actually need.”
• “If we don't do it for ourselves, nobody's going to right now, and I think it's just a fact.”

Action Steps:

1. Listen to your customers consistently: Regularly gathering and analyzing customer feedback reveals shifting needs and prevents brand disconnects. This ongoing insight ensures your messaging and product align with real-world expectations.
2. Know when to delegate: Recognizing your strengths and hiring for your weaknesses helps maintain efficiency and drive effective growth. Founders who micromanage stall progress and lose team trust.
3. Create immersive brand experiences: Pop-ups and community events deepen customer relationships by turning transactions into emotional, memorable moments. These engagements can build lasting brand loyalty and improve lifetime value.
4. Test and fail intentionally: Structured experimentation with clear hypotheses allows teams to learn and adapt without repeating the same mistakes. Unstructured failure wastes resources and hinders growth.
5. Design for real consumer behavior: Build products and experiences that reflect how people actually live, not aspirational ideals. Meeting users where they are builds trust, usability, and long-term brand relevance.

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:02  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey

William Harris  0:15  

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Today's guest is one of the sharpest minds in modern retail, someone who doesn't just follow fashion trends, but actually translates them into strategy. Carly Chenault is the founder of marketing at MARKET EDIT, a media and advisory firm, guiding fashion startups and emerging brands through the sifting shins of culture, Commerce and Consumer behavior. She's also the creator of Retail Roundtable, a must read newsletter for anyone who wants to understand what's really happening behind the velvet curtain of the fashion business. If you've ever wondered what's happening in retail before it hits the headlines, odds are, Carly's already written about it with clarity, context and a whole lot of wit. What makes her perspective so unique is that she's seen fashion from every angle, from the storied halls of Barneys to the chaotic trenches of early stage startups, all the way to the advisory rooms where today's founders are trying to decode what's next. She's one part strategist, one part cultural translator and one part hype free truth teller, and today we're going deep into brand building, the state of retail and why most companies miss the real signs that tell them what customers want. Whether you're scaling a DTC brand or just trying to make sense of this new era of commerce, this episode is going to give you the clarity you didn't know you needed. Carly, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Carly Chenault  1:37  

Hi. Thank you so much. It was such an intro, yeah,

William Harris  1:42  

well, I'm excited to have you here. You've posted stuff on LinkedIn. And I was like, Oh, I like what she's saying. We actually, I don't think we had anybody necessarily, even in common connection that I know of. I just reached out. And I was like, I want you on the podcast. You're saying some unique stuff, and I think this would be really good for our audience. So thank you for joining me.

Carly Chenault  2:00  

Of course, that that post ended up being a little spicy. That's good because, uh, it got a little crazy unintentionally. But um, like you said, kind of part of the brand just kind of being a true teller, saying exactly what's on my mind, and open to having conversations around what that looks like. And sometimes it goes well, and sometimes people get a little get a little spicy, but I'm glad that it made it sweet to you.

William Harris  2:24  

No, that's good. Um, I want to get into the good stuff. Before we do I'm going to announce our sponsor real quick. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO. You can learn more on our website at Elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.com, that said, as we get started, I want to talk about your journey and what drew you to fashion originally. Yeah,

Carly Chenault  2:55  

I, for some reason, was always super interested in fashion from a very young age. And my mom would tell me that she would drop me off at school when I was, like, in pre K. She worked at a pre K. I'd go when I was, like, 234, years old, and she would put me in collared shirts, and I would tuck them in. And to this day, I don't like collared shirts. They're not for me. That has stuck with me since I was like, three years old. Or if you're a 90s baby, you'll remember these big frilly socks, not the cute ones we have now. And I used to tuck them in, pull them down, because I was an ankle sock girl. And again, I'm not a crew sock girl. To this day, I'm still an ankle sock girl. So some things have really stuck with me, but I just always was really into, I think, more so like esthetics. I loved looking at well designed houses. I loved looking through magazines and seeing editorials. I would spend so much time after school, when I was, like, in high school, looking at sites like Urban Outfitters and just seeing how they styled pieces and put them together. And it really, I think, to me, just kind of made me feel like there was another world out there, and how were people living in, and what did these clothes say about them, and when people design sets, what world was I transported to? And that always really drew me in. And so I knew from a really young age I want to be involved in fashion somehow. I wasn't sure exactly what that looked like, and I really didn't know a lot about the industry. And I ended up moving to New York. And I think at the time, the big role, and I still think is one of the coolest roles, was being a buyer, and that didn't end up working out for me. And I think it took me a while to really figure out my place in fashion. And I think there's so many more opportunities now as time has gone on. But yeah, happy to get more granular. Anything. Well, you

William Harris  4:29  

glossed over this part, which I liked. Your your reason for moving to New York, you were in Miami, and I understand there was like this, this pivotal moment that you're like, Yeah, I can't be here. I need to move to New York. Yeah,

Carly Chenault  4:42  

you know what's really funny. As I have gotten older, I've met so many people who are from really small towns, my husband included. And I think I thought growing up and I was outside of Miami, I knew that I was in a bigger market because I had a lot of family in a really small town in Maine that my parents still go to often. You. And I would notice when we'd go there for the summer, like, oh, they put something on the radio. And I was like, I heard that song Three months ago. So I was very much aware there was a lot going on where I was from, but I was still deep in the suburbs, and something about city life was so enticing to me. And yeah, the moment you're talking about is I was at, I believe it was my prom my senior year. And a lot of times, again, growing up in South Florida, a lot of times our homecoming and our prom would be down by the beach in hotels. And I went to a pretty large school, so I know a lot of people like their proms and homecomings, like at their school. I had 1000s of kids just in my grade. And so we would go down to a hotel by the beach, and then I remember we get, like, a hotel or something afterwards. That's where everyone that's where everyone would hang out and party. And we went back to this one that was pretty deep in the suburbs where I lived. And I remember I was in a Betsey Johnson dress. I had begged my parents, like, please for my senior year, let me get a Betsey Johnson dress. She was my everything. And I got this dress, and it was, like my first, like designer piece, if you will, so excited about it. And I just remember getting to that hotel, and I don't want to sound like a brat here, by any means, but just looking around and feeling like it was very suburban, and being like, I just want to be in New York. There's got to be more than this Suburban. I say that as I'm from a very nice place. I mean, no offense. I just knew that I I want to live in this and I want to live in New York, and I'd only been at that point one time. Ended up going. My junior year. I got to go for my grad present. My parents took me for like a week. And the next time I went to

William Harris  6:33  

New York, I moved Wow. You visited at least one time. Now, early on in your career, if I remember correctly, you were at Conde Nast and you got to ride in an elevator with Anna Wintour. Oh, who was it? Then? What was

Carly Chenault  6:49  

Anna Wintour? But I did not get in the elevator because, if you're bougie lore fashion girl, there was all these rumors back in the day that, like, you know, Anna wore these sunglasses, and you didn't talk to her, and you look at her and like, this whole thing around who she was. And so if you were a Conde Nast girl in the 2000 10s, a lot a lot of them are out there. They were semi traumatized. All you did all day was usually run around. If you were fashion closet girl, ran around to all the different PR agencies or two different design just like headquarters. And you would be grabbing bags and all the polls that they would do to get things ready for the editorials that they were shooting. And so it was the middle of summer, you know, there's, you're so hot, you're like both sides, just like 20 pounds of these bags. And the old Conde Nast building was near Times Square. And so the way the building worked was there was a main entrance on the front side, and then if you walked through the front it was just a hallway until you got to the same exit on the other side, and there was elevators on both sides. I remember it was so hot. I had been out for like hours, and I had probably like 30 pounds, I am not exaggerating, of garment bags with me, and my arms were falling off. And I just want to get upstairs and drop them and sit for a second. And I get to the elevator, there's no one there. I push it. I'm so excited. I'm like, I'm gonna get in here quickly. And then Anna one tour walked through the other side, like the back.

William Harris  8:12  

Oh, sure. He has, like, double open, yeah. And I was

Carly Chenault  8:16  

just looking at her, and it was just the two of us, and I'd already hit the elevator, and the elevator opened, and no one was on it, and she just walked in, and we just looked at each other, just like, dead stare. And I was like, Yeah, I can't get in here. Like, I can't get in this elevator. There was this rule, like, you weren't allowed to, and I don't know if that's true to this day or not, but also, like, how scary I was. Like, you know, 19 or 20, I wouldn't have gotten, like, an elevator within a winter on my own then gotten off my example, like, see, ya, have a great day. Yeah, yeah. That was

William Harris  8:44  

like, a Cruella de vill. I wonder if, I wonder if she knew, like, how much people felt that way about her. But like, I wonder if she was actually, like, a sweetheart though, too, and she just laughed whenever somebody wouldn't get on the elevator. Oh, there's another one who believes that. I think that

Carly Chenault  8:56  

often, like, I kind of was looking at her and I'm like, does she think this is funny? Like, does she think? Like, oh, like, this is like, this is gonna be good for her. This is good Laura for her. Like, she'll remember this story. But yeah, that was one of my early days, too. That was the fun thing about being in New York, that was that you saw people all the time, even, like the people that they were shooting at Conde Nast, or when I was working at intermix, or I was working at Barney's, and it was just really cool, I think, at that point to see how people interacted with fashion and all the kind of the behind the scenes players. That's what's always intrigued me. Like I remember I was at brunch one time and I saw Grace Coddington, who was one of the big shooters for or the shooter for Vogue, and is so legendary as a photographer, and just seeing those people who have such an impact on the industry maybe aren't like as forward facing, especially back then, like before social media was really so big, and you kind of had to know people, or just know of people. I do your research, not that I knew them. Was really interesting to be able to see those people and and understand, like, really the industry at that time, and everyone who kind of built it into what it was. Yeah.

William Harris  10:00  

Hmm, I want to shift into growth and scaling and breaking through plateaus a little bit. You've worked with brands of every size, from from VC backed, massive, scrappy, what causes them to plateau? In your mind,

Carly Chenault  10:15  

it's a good question, and I think there's quite a few answers, and it depends on exactly where the brand is at. I think one of the most common things I've seen a lot, maybe more in my startup days, is leadership. I think that oftentimes there are leaders who don't know when it's time for them to pivot out of their role and not be sitting on top of every department so heavily and making good hires that can help them really be strategic and move forward. I think that can be a really scary thing, which I understand, especially if you're in the startup world. You're a founder, you've built this into what it is. You've taken on money. You feel like you have a lot of pressure, not just for yourself to succeed, but to, you know, not let people down who invest in your business, or you have employees, and I think that oftentimes it can be hard for them to understand when to pull away and what to pull away on. And I think if you don't understand yourself as a founder, and you understand where your strengths are, and you get lost in your business, and you just become the entirety of the business, I think it's going to be really hard for you to transition out and say, These are my strengths. This is where I should stay, and here's where I need to hire out, and where I need to start delegating. I also think a lot of people think they're delegating and they're not. They are micromanaging. I think that can be really difficult. So I think being able to one be self aware, be honest about what's going on in your business, and be able to really take in criticism from your team constructively, um, I think are really big sticking points. I think another one also depends on where you're at in your brand, but um, not understanding your customer to an extent that you can't market to them properly at all. And I think a lot of us have seen this as consumers, where you follow a brand and then you're like, what choice did they just make? Or how did they move so far away from me, like I'm still buying from them? I don't understand how we got here, and I think that probably comes down to leadership again too, and not understanding or letting your teams do what they need to do, and being a roadblock. But I think those two and happy again to get more granular anywhere for me or what I've seen in my experience with brands, I think people forget who their consumer is often, and it makes it really hard to scale that to that same person and to talk to them on multiple fronts.

William Harris  12:31  

Well, I think a lot of times, founders start off as being their ideal customer, right? They solve the problem that they felt, but by the time you've reached 10,000,020 5 million, you're likely not the same person as the person who originally had the problem that you're solving. And so your your mindset is maybe not as relevant as it used to be into your understanding of who those customers are. And so you have to start doing better customer research versus relying on your own. Let's just say intuition. Intuition is good. You need to still rely on that. I don't want to take the way from founders. Founders have good intuition, but you have to start using some data in some inputs from outside sources too.

Carly Chenault  13:10  

Yeah. Two things I want to say to that, something you'll hear me say all the time, whether it's on LinkedIn or if you know me in real life, and I talk about on the newsletter a lot, is to solve the problems for the world in which you live, because I find compared to what you said, you know, they might have been their ideal consumer starting off, I think a lot of founders are so deep in their own world that they'll start imagining the world already exist, as if their problem is solved, or as if everybody already cares about solving that problem with them. Sure. So they will start looking at finding solutions for things in that dream world that doesn't exist yet, and forget that they're still bridging the gap to that world all the time. And I hope that makes sense the way I'm explaining it, but I see it a lot with people who work in sustainability, is that their whole world can become about sustainability. And so then they start solving problems as if everyone cares about sustainability still, and it's like, we're not there, right? Like you still have to solve the problem for the world in which you live. And then the second thing is that I listened to a great podcast the other day. Was a business fashion podcast, but it was with Emily Oberg of Sporty Enrich and I think she was a really great example. I think people should listen to it if they're struggling with knowing when to step out of their business and or not out of their business, but, you know, really function as a CEO versus like being the head of marketing as a founder. And she talks pretty early on, and she was really lucky to have a partner and a co founder who had his own brand already, and so we had a team at their disposal to help with sales, operations, logistics, but she knew from an early on point that she was really great at brand building and marketing and the visuals, and she let that team run with it. She didn't try and get in there and overrun a team that already existed. She really focused on what she was good at. So not everyone has that privilege right to start a brand and have 50 people on the side working for you, but she is a great. Example of knowing from the beginning I'm not good at operations, so I'm not going to sit here and micromanage my operations team when they're functioning the way they should. And so I think if you can't trust the team that you're with, you have to decide, Is it because of them, the reason that you feel like you need to micromanage, or is it because you're not trusting yourself to hire right people or to make the right decisions and being honest with yourself about what that looks like? What that looks like, and again, finding out what it is that you're good at. At that point,

William Harris  15:27  

I remember when we implemented EOS traction, which is entrepreneur operating system. It's a really good foundation framework for a lot of startups to work around. When we implemented that at Elumynt at the agency, one of the things that you start doing is you talk about, does somebody is, are they, what is it? GWC, do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity? Right? You might want to do it. You might get the concept of what it is. But like, do you have the capacity to actually do it? And that might be a no. And it's really interesting, because, you know, you put your name in the seat first, you put down, like, not all, like the titles and the positions, but it's like, what is the function that needs to happen? You write those all down, and you start putting names in those, and you look at it, and you say, okay, and you vote as a leadership team, right? It's like, does William Harris have the ability to actually do that, right? Do you think he does? And it's funny, because there were things that I'm like, Yeah, I'm actually really good at this. But when they talk about the capacity, it's like, but you don't have the capacity, right? And so like, the team would be like, nope, raising my hand, saying, No, he does not have the capacity to do this because of whatever reason. It's like, well, we actually need you to be the CEO. Now. We have other things that we need you to do. There are other people who can do those things. And I remember that being like a really interesting thing as a CEO, new CEO, trying to work through this, giving up some of those things that you're actually might be good at, that you like doing, you want to do, you just don't have the capacity to do them anymore.

Carly Chenault  16:52  

That's a really great point, you know, I'm dealing with that kind of on my own, as I'm building out, you know, my newsletter, and trying to iterate on what the next version of that looks like. A lot of that is what does the actual community building look like, and what are the platforms I need to be on? And one of them has been like, I need to really start social for this newsletter. And it's like, of course, I know how to do that. I've spent my life in marketing. I understand social, I understand these things, but I don't have the time right now to do it properly. I don't have the time to create content and create visual that's actually something I'm not good at, so I've known that and very aware of it, but to do that on top of everything else I'm doing, if I tried it right now, something would fail, right? So I need to either a wait until I have everything else really up and running, to a place where the systems are good and I'm able to execute on it quickly at the same level that I started at, so my quality stays up while I get faster at doing it and become more efficient, and then I can add on the next piece, or I've already looked at taking on an intern or a small hire come the fall, and planning for what that looks like and what that's going to cost my business. And it doesn't have to happen right now, right? But knowing that it does need to happen eventually for me to grow again. And so if I need to outsource that, because I do have, like you said, the knowledge so I can help kind of guide somebody, but I don't have the capacity right now, so I need to be able to give that to somebody else, and it's not a reflection of me not being good at something. Just because you aren't doing something in your business anymore doesn't mean that you're not good at it. It just means you can't be doing it anymore. There's other more important things for you to do. You could be good at x, y and z, but x may take up 80% of your time and also give you the most results in your business, and you need to lean into doing that, doing more of that

William Harris  18:28  

often. Something you wrote that I really appreciated was that you said, brand reputation and money don't guarantee scale. Why is innovation? Do you think so hard after traction, you get that traction and then stop?

Carly Chenault  18:45  

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that. I think it may be easy to feel like you've had some wins. Maybe if you've innovated early, got some traction, then you feel like, well, I did it right? So I just need to keep doing I need to keep repeating that. And I think that it's easy to also lose sight, like I was saying, of your customer in your community, if you're building I think it's really and I'm talking about from a startup phase, but I can talk about it from a larger scale as well. If you're gonna start up. I'm kind of doing this right now too, is like, I'm trying to maintain my engine while knowing that I want to really iterate on, like, what the next version of the brand that I'm building is, right? And so trying to keep your business alive while building the next phase is very difficult because you're in two different head spaces. You have a lot of work to do. And I think that something's gonna fall right, like something's gonna happen when I'm talking about, you know, brand reputation and money Don't, don't guarantee success. I think innovating when you're at a large company, like when I was at Barney's, becomes really difficult too, because you're such a heritage brand, and people know you for one thing, but you can't get stale. You have to find ways to, you know, are you bringing in new brands? Are you doing the. Next collab, and every decision you make when you're at a really high level is scrutinized because there's so much to compare it back to. If you're a newer brand and you're making new decisions, it can constantly just feel like, oh, new part of the brand. Oh, I'm unlocking something new. Oh, here's their next version. But if you're a brand that's been around for 50 100, you know, whatever years, everything you do is going to be compared to what you did previously. And even if you did really great, if it didn't align with something that you did that was absolutely killer 10 years ago, people are still talking about, it's just, it's difficult. And you know, I worked at Barney's during the time, where they were really open about struggling with money before they shut down, and they were really open and honest about it, which I appreciate as a brand. But there was just so many missteps that happened on multiple fronts. There was a lot of brand reputation pieces that missed that I won't get into. There was money being spent on things that maybe they didn't need to ultimately their their demise. A lot of it was out of their control at the end, but there was things that led up to it that led up to it that didn't put them in a good place to be able to, you know, negotiate, or just have any sort of standing to make better decisions. And so I think innovating at a large at a high level, becomes really difficult to kind of constantly compare to, and to also, like, stay on brand and to try new things where you're trying to connect with a new customer, right? Like your customer base is going to be changing. People are going to be meeting when they're younger, getting older. You're trying to do new things to stay up to date with them. You're trying to stay up to date with marketing trends. You're trying at all and having to really not try much at all. That's really difficult. And then, like I said, for startups, I think things can drop, or I know we want to talk about in startups, and this might be a hot take, that you have to fail and have to take risks, you have to do things, but the end of the day, I do think as a startup, you only have x amount of chances to fail at something, and you're not failing properly. If you're failing so often that you never learn from it, and you're just continuing to make mistakes over and over again again. There's going to be things that are out of your control. There's there's going to be things that are really difficult to deal with, the economy, or other things might happen. But I think so many times to learn from your mistakes before you have to get better. Money runs out, people leave.

William Harris  22:17  

So how do we fail better? Like, I like that that you're like, hey, if you're not failing the right way, like, how do we feel the right way?

Carly Chenault  22:24  

Yeah, I know that's kind of a mean thing to say, right? No, it's a really

William Harris  22:29  

good enough. There's a lot you're failing at failing. But I see this in the ad space, right? So at least jump from that for a second. We see this all the times where brands will come to us and they're like, our meta ads aren't working, our Google ads aren't working, TikTok ads, whatever. And, you know, we look through their account and we see it's like, well, what kind of testing have you guys done? Well, I don't know. We've tested a whole bunch of things, though. It's like, okay, but there's no structure to anything that you've tested. I can't actually even see what has or hasn't been tested from a naming convention standpoint, from the way things were or weren't systematically done. And then the reality is, like you as the brand owner, you have no idea, let's say that you did run a well structured test, but there's no real good recap on what did or didn't work and what the learning was from it. Then you haven't tested anything because you have no knowledge from that. It's almost as if the test didn't exist.

Carly Chenault  23:21  

Yeah, that's, that's pretty much. What I'm saying is, if things are allowed to fail, right? They fail for all sorts of reasons. And I think, again, working in marketing, I see this a lot, is you can do everything technically, right, or that everyone the industry is saying to do and what's working, and things just don't work out. Sometimes, like, something pops up in the world, and people didn't listen to what you guys were doing that week because some something crazy happened, or you went to go spend money on something, and something else happened that took away from your ads, and your ads didn't get in front of anybody. A million things could happen, right? You could partner with a celeb or an influencer, and the week that it comes out, they get canceled. There's a million things that could happen last minute. That's fine. And it's also fine to do something that really wasn't a good idea, that you maybe thought was, and you're really excited about and it didn't work because maybe it wasn't a great idea. That's okay. That can happen, but every time that happens, being really honest with yourself and your team, and sitting down, not blaming people, not pointing fingers, but saying, Okay, what did we think and what actually happened? I like to run everything as a literal science experiment, right? Like, if we haven't taught something before, if we're starting net new on something, what's our hypothesis? What are the variables? What's our control? What do we hope to get out of this? Because then, when you have that really set out for yourself, whether something does well or not, you should always be looking at the results of something right, and being honest with yourself about this worked, because that way you can continue to iterate on that and expand or saying this failed and it didn't meet our hypothesis, or this variable didn't work. But these two were okay, but that one really, you know, it dragged us down. So I think you have to be really honest with yourself. In your team about why this didn't work and not make those same mistakes again. So it's really what you were saying. It's like you have to be able to test properly. You can't test if there's no controls versus a variable, and you can't just say you can't cherry pick your metrics. I think that's very common, especially like when I was maybe in agency world, something wouldn't go well, but you can look at metrics and say, well, it says it was okay. It said there was some growth. It's like, yeah, I could tell any story I really wanted to, if I'm being honest, from metrics, unless absolutely everything had tanked. And even then, I could probably make up an excuse for why, right? Yeah. So I think you just, you really, like you said you have to have a controlled experiment and then be able to go back and say, This is why this didn't work. We should either scrap this, or here's where I think it went wrong. We can try again and and looking at all of those pieces, there's so much that goes into why something could fail. From a marketing perspective. You could have had great messaging, but your your imagery could have been terrible, or the product might not be great. And so it's really digging in and saying, Where are all the places we don't think this went well. And I think another thing is asking your kids, they didn't like something. If someone flopped like and you don't have to do it so publicly on Instagram, be like, Why did you guys hate this? Why did you guys buy this? But you can send out emails and be like, are you guys liking this product? Are you not? Or what do you want to see more of from us and see if there's a disconnect. Maybe you haven't been talking to your consumers, and you've just, like I said, been living in your own world, in your own bubble of what you think is cool and what you think is going to work, and you completely detracted from your your customer base. You know, the other day, you know, I'm kind of rambling here, but I was I put out a survey on my newsletter because, like I said, I'm trying to, like, iterate on this next phase, and substack has a group chat feature, and I personally don't love the chat feature. I don't like the way it's set up in sub stack specifically for me, and I didn't think it was the type of community that I want to build. And so I was like, well, maybe that's just a me problem, and I need to figure out how to use it well, or figure out what my community wants. So I put in there four responses, and one of them was like, I want to be like, up to date on news, or I want to be able to network, or I want to understand brand and marketing things that are going on. And then the last option I gave them was, I don't like the chat feature. It annoys me. It overwhelms me. Please don't make me use it. And a lot of people posted that I thought, great, and I won't use it, and I will find a different way to connect with you guys in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming, and that adds value that's beneficial for both of us. And I think it could have been really easy for me to say, like, oh my gosh, everyone that I follow has these amazing chats that are really engaged, and I need to be using that too and just gone with it and alienated people. And so if you're not talking to your customer base often, you're not hearing what they actually need, and you're just saying, Well, this is just saying, Well, this is what I like to do, or this is what I think works, right, or this is what other people on LinkedIn said would go, well, there's going to be a disconnect.

William Harris  27:50  

Yeah, talking to people is such a valuable skill in life, in every way possible. And I feel like sometimes there's an aversion to actually just getting behind our away from our computers to talk to people. I posted on x the other day that I'm I'm planning on, I'm not really, but I don't know joking at least that I'm planning on having my my gen Alpha daughters work as a telemarketer for a little while. They can actually learn how to pick up a phone call somebody talk on the phone, leave a voicemail. Like these skills that I feel like we learned the hard way that their generation may be it just hasn't had the opportunity to develop. But I want to, I want to jump over to this idea of bridging physical and digital for because it's something that I think you've talked about a lot, that I really appreciate. But what does it really mean to bridge physical and digital experiences in retail?

Carly Chenault  28:38  

Yeah, I think that depends on if you started first as physical or digital, and which way you're branching out. I am of the belief that physical is not dead and it's never dead. It's dead because you didn't do it well. It's not dead because it's a dead Avenue. So I think, you know, you're seeing a lot of brands, whether they just do like pop ups, and that could be for a weekend, that could be seasonal. I think it's always great if you're a digitally native brand, to be able to have some sort of physical space eventually, or for a short period of time, where brands can really connect and understand your brand world, or brands consumers can connect with you and your brand world in a physical way. I think it's especially important for retail because depending on your product and people want to touch and and see and and smell a product, it either kind of makes it or breaks it for them. But it may be a place, you know, if I'm somebody who's buying an active wear brand constantly online, and I'm starting to realize it's not fitting, or something's not working, or if had to make two or three purchases for me, that's annoying, and it may just deter me from making any purchases in the future, where, if I could go in person and try on all those pieces, you know, at once and see which ones work best for me, it allows me to just make those purchases and those decisions easier and quicker. And anytime that you make decisions easier for your customer, the more likely they are to convert. So whether that's only putting out the actual options that they need, like, so don't launch a brand with, you know, 40 SKUs. Launch a brand with five. Understand what works, iterate, grow. Um, give them the decisions that they need. Don't, don't overwhelm them, um, and making purchases easy for them. So I think you're seeing a lot of brands like vivrel has a pop up right now in the Hamptons. I think that's great. That's like a rental brand for luxury handbags. And a lot of people aren't just gonna feel comfortable, always going to like Saks and walking through Chanel and touching and feeling and seeing, but it's still a fun experience that they want. So I think that that's important for them. I think if you're a physical brand, I think understanding how to translate to digital in a way where you're not reducing options. Because I think if somebody shops with you a lot in person, it's because they have a great experience with you, where they know what the brand looks like, or they know the products that they can come to expect from their experience, or a sales experience that they can come to expect. And I think if you go digital and you just throw things up on a website because you want somebody in a completely different state to be able to buy some products for you, and you're not thinking about your original customer, and you're alienating them, that's where you're going to have, like, a mishap in what brand experience feels like, which I think is so crucial for any retail brand, because there's so many out there. So understanding what your value prop is as an experience, I think, is really huge. I also think if you're talking about either way, I think the sales experience is something that people are really trying to understand. You'll see a lot of brands I wrote about this the other week who are kind of adopting that Apple model of shopping where there's just tables out, and the product is there, and there's not a cash wrap, right? Because it allows your customer to come in and and browse around and discover and see pieces. And when they come to you, they have a pointed question on, how does this fit? Or do you have more of these come in another color? Like, tell me about this product, and so you're giving really pointed advice. I remember my first sales jobs in New York. I won't say the brand could have been really amazing, but their sales process was so dated, and they would say corporate would come up with these ideal ICPs. And here's what we're selling this week, and here's what's on sale, and here's what we want you to push. This is, you know, part of our entire campaign. And somebody would come in asking, literally, I had this experience. They were asking for a gown. It was their daughter's, like, sweet 16 or something. They needed a full gown. I was working on getting her some options. It was a brand that had really cool product in that space. And when she was in the fitting room, the managers were coming over, and they were like, You need to tell her about the product, like the one that corporate said that we need to push it was a pair of ripped pink jeans that have glitter in them. And why would I offer that to her? Because now she's not going to trust me. She's gonna think I'm just selling her things to, you know, get that ticket price up so that I get more commission. And I wouldn't do it. I refuse to do it. And she ended up buying the gown. It was great, and I got in trouble still anyways, and I remember thinking, like, that's not how this should work. And I think the old method of sales in person is it's just so dated, and it's not great for your consumer. If you're just trying to push product, your consumer can feel that they can feel that you don't care about me. You don't care about the products that you're not taking any time to get to know me. And so I think that that new kind of model that you'll see, like in glossier Missouri, obviously pioneered by Apple, allows people to walk around, experience, discover, talk to somebody who's standing in front of something they like, communicate with them, build that kind of community, have a brand feel, and then when they finally come to ask you things you already know a little bit more about them. So any other advice, or anything else you try to sell them on, feels really targeted. And I think that's what people love about digital, in a way, is that, like you're saying with ads, is that you can have a really pointed experience. Hey, I talked into my phone. I said, I want a purple sweater. Now purple sweaters are showing up everywhere. It's my conspiracy. It's searching for something, and now I'm gonna get ads for it on Instagram, right? And that feels really pointed. I'm like, great. That helped my shopping experience personally, and it made my life easy. I personally love a target ad, like, help me find what I'm looking for. And I think a lot of brands are trying to do that now with what the search function looks like on their website. Because if you go into a store and you're looking to buy something, you're not looking to buy red MIDI dress, you're looking to buy like I have an event, or I'm going on vacation to New Mexico with my friends. So these are products I need. And so search is really starting to evolve in that sense, on, you know, your own site, to be able to allow people to shop like that and connect them with the same products. And so I think bridging both of those just allows you to understand your consumer better what they're actually searching for. Give them a better experience. Give them a better feeling of trust and authenticity in your brand, whether it's from your sales associates in person, or the way their sales associate via search functions online, and your overall brand experience is going to be better for them. And that makes them come back over and over. I think we. Over complicate what it means to have a great customer experience, and it's ease of shopping, it's trust, it's speed, like it's really not that difficult. I think we've overdone it, and people are screaming for the experiences that they want, they're telling you. And I think there can be a disconnect sometimes between sometimes corporate. I'm not here to bash on corporate, but sure what's going on over here, and what's actually happening, like, boots on the ground, or, like I said, what's actually going on with the data on your website, if you have a hot jar or something? How are people actually using your site? Are they searching and bouncing because they can't find what they want really quickly? Are they, like, rage, clicking through things, really understanding your data and what's happening to bridge those experiences.

William Harris  35:43  

I love that you've gone down such a really good path for bridging digital and physical from retail. A lot of who we talk to would be more in the dnvb camp than the retail camp, at least on this podcast. And so one of the more approachable ways that you talked about was pop ups. And I like that because it's like, maybe you're not quite at the point where you're setting up your own stores, but you could do the pop ups. How do you what's the key to making these moments? Let's just say both, uh, memorable as well as measurable.

Carly Chenault  36:16  

Yeah, I think a good pop up, if it's one of your first ones, you're still early stage. For me, the esthetics of it really do make or break, and that can seem sometimes, I think, really like fluffy, frivolous to some brands. But I think if it's some of your first experiences creating your brand world, it's important to make people feel like they've just stepped into almost the website. That kind of feeling that I said in the beginning of where I want to just like, jump into magazine editorial. So I wanted to live this life. People are coming to visit you because they love the experience that they had online, they love the products they got, and now they want to see it in person. And they really want to feel like they're part of this community. But something I think is really, really such a sign of success, is that in person, community feel so you'll see a lot if you if you search around Park, is this brand that popped up a few years ago, and I talk about them often because I found them pretty early. Actually. I found them before they launched, and loved their original products. I've kind of grown out of it now as they've grown but I talk often about their founder and how I think she is such a formidable first time founder because she has her foot on this industry's neck in terms of being able to corral a group of girls who are just hanging on every product she makes, and when she does these pop ups, she's always talking about how these girls are waiting in line and They're becoming friends, and now they're talking to each other, and they're following each other on Instagram, and they're getting together and, oh, they lived in the city, well, now they're going to workout class together, and they found each other through that brand. That brand was that touch point for them, and that is such a strong sign of community. You can try and cultivate community on your own and bring people together, but when your customers start getting together on their own because of your brand. That, to me, is the ultimate sign of community. If you weren't really technically involved to an extent, that's incredible. And I think that's what pop ups are really great for. So I think one think about experiences that are beyond just the product there. I think Sporty Enrich obviously, if I keep talking about them, but I think she's doing so well as well. Obviously, her store in New York isn't a pop up, but something that she did really well was she's such a brand world builder, and there's a spa, I think, in the New York store, or I've had friends who have had matcha bars inside their stores, and so it's like, what else does your consumer like that makes them feel really excited, like I'm a park girl, like, I wear these mock necks, I drink Matcha, I go to Pilates. Like, that's a really basic, you know, explanation of a person like that's, it's very, you know, it's very surface level on who your, your your demographic is, but those small things and ways that you can kind of add them in, in a pop up experience that make people feel really connected to your brand beyond you just saying, come here. I have product. Come buy it. Well, they already buy from you, right? So like, make them feel special. Make them feel like, almost like it's a gift to them. Like I am so thankful that you guys support my brand. I want you to come here and and feel like I'm giving you something. Feel excited about this and and feel like it's a time for both of us to connect. Don't just think about as you know, here's our sales per square footage, and that's what we want our upt to be, and here's what like the AOV should have been like. I think you have to think in those kind of non tangible brand metrics that scare a lot of

William Harris  39:36  

people, and it is hard, but when you do it well, I think that you will see like things like your LTV go up over time with certain cohorts, right? And, you know, I talk about this on the ad side all the time as well, where the very first thing that a lot of people do after you buy something on their website is you show them an ad to buy more stuff, literally, like the same day. That they just did, and you're showing them, and not even good ads, like DPA ads, of like, here's product and price, buy more stuff. And when I try to talk to brands about this is, it's like, romance this, I love this idea of like, like, husband and wife, right? Where you're like, Okay, what would you do? Like, if your wife, you know, like, as soon as you did like one thing. And she was like, great, here's the other 10 things that I need you to do, too. It's like, versus saying, like, Hey, thank you. Let's go on a date, let's do something. Let's have some fun. Like, like, you have to have a relationship with your customers. And I think that to your point, you can do this both online, and I talk about, like, the online version of creating that relationship, but you could do this offline as well, where it's not just about the product, but about the whole experience.

Carly Chenault  40:42  

Yeah, so, and that is such a great point. If you're talking about this husband and wife, maybe I just took my wife shopping and she bought this dress. The next thing I'm not going to do is be like, Well, no, I need to go buy some more things. Or, oh no, you buy something else. Or, wait It's like, let her go wear the dress, take her on a nice date. Like, let her experience the product and know the entire experience around it. So it's like, I think whether it comes to pop ups and you maybe are thinking of events that you're doing in that same city, beyond the actual store, maybe you're getting people together at, like, some again, this is like, a terrible it's not terrible example, but maybe you're going on a walk with all of them, like, hey, the store opens out. It's gonna open later today, on Sunday, because for the first two hours, we're all gonna meet over here and go on a walk together, and you're bringing them together, and you're all gonna wear your part hoodies. And, you know they are right. Like, you know they're gonna wear the product. And I think this works for brands in a lot of ways, when you're thinking about partnerships, like, if you are an active wear brand, like, maybe you're partnering with people, I think, like, aloe does this really well. Where, when you buy a product from aloe, they have aloe moves, and obviously that's a little bit easier for them to control, because it's, you know, under their umbrella. But if I'm buying some active wear, like I said, Don't send me an email again asking me to buy another piece. Send me an email that says, here's 50% off to our partner at the scope society for you to use for a month. And the rest of our girls use it too. And now you feel really like one of us, right? Like you're in this community. You're going to wear this brand that I just sold to you, your cute, little active wear brand. You're going to go do sculpt society in the morning in your house. You're going to take a picture of it, and you're going to post on Instagram. You're going to add it to your TikTok video. I'm going to repost it. Other people are also going to now see that I'm XYZ girl, and this is what my lifestyle looks like. And they want to be that girl too, and now they're bringing people in. So like you said, it may not feel immediate, but I think when you're scaling as well, I think like you're one even on scaling up to 1 million, everything you do feels like you can see a result pretty quickly, right? But when you start getting into that space where you're scaling 10 to 5050, to 100 those like not so tangible brand metrics, are things that maybe you don't see the next day, but like you said, you'll see long term, and they will really help you grow, because they're solidifying that brand. They're really getting you those repeat customers. They're getting people excited about your brand. They're hanging on for every next thing you do, it just makes your brand more sustainable. And those are things you have to think about as you're really scaling to those next stages that are so important. And I think it's scary, because you can't always, like, you said, See that KPI, like, right away, and what's that number and what's that metric? And not everything has a number and a metric. I'm a big believer of like, sometimes you do have to kind of vibe track, and you have to feel things out, and you'll see those numbers, like you said, eventually. And again, that might be part of your hypothesis, where you say we're going to do this pop up, and we hope that within six months, our our LTV, is up to this number. Our AOV is up to here, the partnerships that we've secured with other brands as XYZ, our press mentions are XYZ, and so it might just take some time. It might be you're playing the long game at that point.

William Harris  43:51  

Yeah, and that's hard for people to think through. Sometimes I feel like I've noticed that brick and mortar to me, at least feels like it's trending again, my middle school daughters, you know, they wanted to go to the Mall of America for their birthday and bring their friends and so, yeah, right. So it seems like, it feels like we are wanting to get back into stores a little bit more. What does this signal to you about the consumer behavior?

Carly Chenault  44:17  

Yeah, I think quite a few things. The pendulum swings quite often. I think pre COVID People were really into brick and mortar again, and we were seeing brands get really just interested in on what they were doing. I would go, you know, to LA and walk down Melrose. And I loved going to glossy. I loved going into outdoor voices. And I I loved how fun they made the shopping experience, and that it felt fun to like walk in and out of stores and out of stores and discover things, and I think obviously during COVID, when we weren't able to go as many places, the pendulum swung hard back to E Comm, and people got really great about what scaling a brand in that space looked like. And we were seeing kind of that 2021 2022 big partnership, like every brand was partnering with other brands, and that's how we were growing. And you know what a DTC look like, and it was just taking off and being funded like crazy. But I think post COVID, we're seeing a lot of people, especially younger people, who maybe didn't have as much of a social life because they were just so young, start to grow into those years and realize they don't maybe always want to be online. They're really yearning for community. And I think the brands that we were seeing really kind of lead this retail Renaissance again, are the ones who understand that their retail space isn't just for selling product. It becomes a community hub. So like I said, do they bring in people to come do a yoga class in the morning? Do they use like bandit running? I think, I think running is actually a great place for me to make a little tangent here, as a runner, you know, for years, no one was touching any market share for Nike. And in the past, I think it's like three to four years, there's like five brands that have popped up that have actively taken away market shares. You have, like Hoka, you have on cloud, you have bandit. And what I think is, like, coolest about Bandit is that they create a storefront that is literally their meeting place for their run clubs. And it's like, people want that, you know, they want to go to a place where they feel like is a home base for them, and they have community, and they can meet other people who want to do the same things as them. And obviously, we all live our lives, most of us very much online. But you're seeing younger people, whether it's like the younger half of Gen Z and like you're saying Gen Alpha? Yes, they love like Roblox, and they're shopping a ton on there, and that's what their space looks like. But they like getting together with people, and they need that community. And their their lives were upended in such a strange way at a very pivotal time. And I think you're seeing like I said, brands really understand what their retail should look like more. So they do a few pop ups, and they really understand where should I be, what works for my brand, and they're not diluting their space and thinking, how am I going to scale to 100 stores? It's I have four or five stores across the country that are really just great touch points for people to one come and visit Right? Like it's exciting, they add it into their itinerary. Oh, I want to go stop by that store and see it. It looks amazing. Then they go there, and they get excited about it, becomes part of their plan. And then they're able to like I said, touch and feel that product and get their eyes on it and try it on and see if it works for them, and see what products they like. And it helps bridge, again, that digital experience they can purchase more often. But I think people just they want a fun retail experience, and they want to be with people, but they they want to have a reason to go, whether it's this looks like a fun experience, or I'm going to meet like minded people. And I think the brands who understand that and look for experience before they start to just scale, you know, for growth at all costs, they're going to be really successful in this next wave, and they'll understand their customer better and we'll be able again to bridge those gaps.

William Harris  47:42  

Yeah, I love that. I want to talk a little bit about fashion tech then as well. You know, we've talked about before. It seems like there's a lot more digital try ons and returns, logistics, in person, UX designs. What do you think is the next breakthrough, or the things that you're seeing in fashion tech right now. Oh,

Carly Chenault  48:02  

man, I love fashion tech. There's so much going on right now. It's, it's so innovative, and I feel like it's really made fashion fun. Again. It's hard for me to pick just one place, because I talk to people all the time. I'm like, oh, that's genius. How did I not think of that? Like, of course, I need that. I do think digital try on, as we continue to get deeper into it will be really incredible fit. Match AI is a company that I worked with a little bit. They are an app that scans you, does a 360 scan of your body, and then takes all of your measurements into account to see what size you would be at a brand. And when I first tested with them, I did my scan and they sent me over their first like iteration. It was like sports bras and some tops, and it was so accurate because different Lululemon fabrics and styles I wear a different size in, and they run a different size. Similar things run 2468, and some run a 3436 you know, like a bra. They were so accurate, so insanely accurate. And I think that's so helpful for people to understand, well, I think I might wear the sizer I kind of look like that person. So let me go into their fit match and, you know, look at their their measurements and see how close they are to mine, and will that fit me then and then. That helps with your returns, right? Like that helps your bottom line. It also just helps somebody feel more confident in their purchases. People don't want to have to buy four sizes when they buy something and then know that they're going to have to make a return. Making returns is annoying. It's not fun for the consumer. So I think when you hear brands be like, Oh, we gotta, you know, punish people sometimes, you know they can't make any more purchases from us or any more returns, it's like, well, why did they have to in the first place, what information was lacking from them? What was the disconnect in your products that you know, the sizing wasn't consistent? They don't want to make, which I don't want to drive down to UPS all the time to make returns. It's really obnoxious. I have other there's a lot of other places I'd rather drive to and go spend my time at. So I think to think that people want to do that is crazy.

William Harris  49:59  

I think you're right on most of the time. But I have to tell a story here, because it's really my mother in law. I will tease her, and I was I will tease her to her face about this. I I'm convinced that she enjoys doing returns, and will buy things just to return them. So we were in we were in New York City Black Friday. I don't remember what year this was, like, 2010 or something like that, because her son was living there at the time, and so my brother in law, so we went out and visited him, and she's out there, and I swear she bought stuff. And then we get back to his apartment, and she's like, No, I don't like it. We gotta return it. Everybody like, like, it's a it's, this is chaos, right? Like, this is absolutely a zoo. She's like, now we got to return this. So we did. I took her back down there to return this, but I do jokingly say that I'm pretty sure she enjoys doing returns. Like this is something she gets a kick out of.

Carly Chenault  50:50  

Do they like doing returns or do they like just purchasing? There's a lot of people who just like that dopamine hit from like, grab all these things, and they don't need it something I'm really big on. I shop very particularly because I've been around product for a long time. I know what fits me well. I know what I like. I know my style pretty well. So when I shop, it is like it's very thought out. It's very considered. I rarely make a spontaneous purchase unless I absolutely have a connection to something. And things that I love are brands like carded or locker, which are wishlist apps. They I use the plugins most often. I use the app when I'm shopping my phone, but I shop a lot on desktop, because I'm on my computer a lot all day. And what those types of brands allow you to do is, if you're shopping and you don't want to have 5000 tabs open and forget about what you need. What you need, or you see something that you like, like, I'm busy right now. I don't have time to look at this. You want to save it. You can save it to your carded or your locker. You can make kind of like, boards. And I know carded has, like, a price feature. It'll let you know if something drops in price, you know when to purchase it. It also allows you to see all the things you have saved and just sit and just sit and think about your purchases for a minute, because a lot of people are really in such an over consumption phase. And I get it, it's really difficult. Like, you see everyone online buying something all the time and spending a lot of money, especially when they look at like influencers, and you know, then you find out almost everything they're wearing was sent to them. They weren't even purchasing it. Or we're thinking everyone's spending a lot more money than they are, or we don't repeat outfits, and it's a whole thing, and a lot of people in fashion tech are trying to solve for that, but I think those two brands really like, solve an actual gap of people needing to, like, take a second, it slows you down, and make better purchase decisions, and then that behavior changes, and it's really organic. I think anytime you're trying to change consumer behavior, it's usually really difficult, very expensive if you're a brand. But I think having companies like that who make it fun and make it feel intuitive, they do help change consumer behavior over time, and it makes it a lot easier. It's so native to me. Now, I've been using these apps for probably two, maybe three years, and I do when I'm in person, I'll scan something on, like, the brand's app, and I'll be like, I don't know that it's right now. I'll get it into their app, I'll upload into my card it or my locker, and I'll sit on it for a second, and then, like, the other day, I was at H M, and I want to buy something. I was like, I don't need this today. And I had it saved and went down to $3 and I was like, well, for $3 I have to have to have it, right? That's great, and but I wouldn't have known that, because I wouldn't have gone, you know, back in store. So those things are really fun to me. I do think digital try on, like I said, there's a lot that are getting better. There's some like doji, which are really cool because they're pulling in, like, really, like, high end brands, and they're allowing for more, like, a personal styling experience, which I think, if people are trying to find their style, that can be really difficult, can be really overwhelming to do that in person. Because, like I said, not everyone wants to go to a high end retailer and try on a bunch of different products, or knows how to style pieces. Maybe they have access to it. Maybe they're somewhere that's more rural and they don't have access to these clothes, but they love fashion. They want to play in that space and be excited about it. I think that's really cool. I think Benny is amazing. Again, another one that I use their plug in most often. But basically, if you're on a site and you see something you like, it will scan every like secondhand market to find you that piece pre owned and at a better price and one better for the planet, but two saves you money, right? Who doesn't love that? And they have a ton of other features now. So people are building so much as long the B to B side brands that I work with that I'm so excited for them to really grow and for brands to integrate all of these. I think a lot of the ones who are even like more consumer facing right now, they have such potential for brands to, you know, start using them and adding to our experience and taking that data and seeing what people want. Yeah, it's so super fun right now.

William Harris  54:47  

You didn't mention the apple vision pro though. Like, have you tested out any of the apple vision pro stuff? Yeah, so Okay, when it comes to digital, try on. I'm very excited about this yet. They don't have it yet, but I, I did a review of aloes, their their shopping experience, and it is cool, because you can, you can have the model there, and you could spin it around in 3d and see it all right? And so, like, there's a couple of different things that are, I'd say, right now. They're just, I don't know they're, they're interesting, but they're not that exciting yet. But you talked about this idea of being able to have, like, your full body measurements. And actually what I'm excited about is being able to see that exact thing on me, right, like, and I think that we're really close to that being a reality. We can even use AI engines. So that way, if you say that, you know, whatever that exact fabric is, that that fabric will stretch correctly from a physics standpoint, in the way that it needs to because we can really just add that into the algorithm, if we would right, from an AI perspective. And so I think that we're not far from being able to see that. And then, to your point, somebody like me who's not that cool, doesn't understand fashion or what needs to happen. I could look at this and be like, I don't know what I should wear with this, right? But it's like, well, then I can even maybe even maybe put on my actual clothes that I have right now. It's like, this is what I've got, but it's like, I don't know what else to do with it. And then it could be like, hey, great. We're just gonna layer this on and this on and this on. And you're like, Oh, I like that. You're like, you can buy these extra pieces here. Here's the, you know, the links to these pieces. You're like, okay, great. Now I don't have to. Look at say, okay, great, you just showed me, like, 10 things that I have to buy, and I can't buy 10 things, but I could buy one or two new staples, right? And now I can have my own clothes on, put this on me, try on now that sport coat to see it with the shirts and the pants that I already have, you know? Okay, I like that, and see how it fits me. I think one

Carly Chenault  56:37  

I'm really excited about. I there was a lot of brands that popped up with kind of digitizing your wardrobe, and I never got super into it, because it felt like a really big lift. And I was like, Well, I just don't know all of what I'm gonna do with that, like, what are, what are the features with it? And there's a lot of great ones. I'm just saying, personally, for me, it wasn't like something that was like I need to do right now, but there was, there's a founder, she runs this company called tote, and she just kind of came out with their next iteration, like a big pivot on their brand. Originally, I believe when I would see it, it was you would post pictures of your outfit for the day, and it was like really realistic outfits and getting inspo from other people. So it felt like a social way to get inspiration and shop. And there was affiliate links. And thought that was great. But their new iteration allows you to upload your wardrobe. And then their AI agent will say, like, Oh, you're in, I'm in Vegas, right? It's super hot. And you can say, like, you know, this is, like, what I have planned for the day. And it will go through all the items that you've uploaded and say, here's an outfit for you today. And that to me, I'm like, That's so good. Like, especially if you're traveling, it'll help you, like, make a packing list. Um, but if I'm going to travel and say, like, the end of the week I was in Miami and I brought things, I could have been like, Okay, today it's it's sunny, and these are things I have to do, what I have to wear. Well, the next day, when it's raining, it's like, well, my outfit needs to change a little bit compared to what I thought I was going to bring. And it'll help me. It helps you just see your wardrobe in a different way. And I think get more use for people out of things I know. Index is one that does like, cost per wear, I believe, and just gets you to like, use what's in your wardrobe more often. I think you can do like, flat lays on theirs as well. So once you upload you know your wardrobe, you can kind of style it yourself, or, I think other people can style your stuff too. So if you're like, I'm stumped on what to wear, like, your friend can go in and be like, Here, here's all these pieces. All these pieces, and you might not have seen your wardrobe in that way. And I think those things are again changing consumer behavior in ways where we think of like over consumption right now, and what, what sustainability can mean in a lot of different ways. And a lot of that really is just slowing people down and producing less. You know, we talked about like buying products that are certain fabrics, or always buying secondhand. All that is great. The best thing to do is try and shop your closet for as long as you can. And so if we can maximize that, and then continue to have people buy second hand and and do all those things, we're heading in a better direction, and you're making it feel fun. And like I said, it's really hard to change consumer behavior. And if you can do it in ways that feel fun and intuitive, then we're on the right path. And those are the types of companies where I'm excited to see. You know, what do their B to B integrations look like eventually? So when I'm shopping on the site, can I kind of flat lay something and say, Does this fit into my wardrobe, like I want to buy this piece, but does it match with anything I have in my closet? Am I actually going to get anywhere out of this? Yeah, I think there's so much potential, and we're figuring it all out. There's a lot going on right now, and I'm excited to see, in like, 510, years, maybe some people start merging, or we start really seeing some big raises for these companies, and they're allowed to not allow, but able to get to that next level and get in front of a lot of people. Yeah, I'm super, super excited for

William Harris  59:38  

it feels like this is right on the cusp of some very, very good things. It's like, it's there, it's usable, and it's like, we're just, like you said, a couple years away from this being just seamlessly integrated. I wanted to talk a little bit about, let's just say, retail strategy and category psychology. You had sent me an article about. Zara and some of their layout changes that they had, walk me through, what are, what are some of the layout changes that they had and that you think, like, Why? Why is this beneficial?

Carly Chenault  1:00:09  

Yeah, I think there was a lot about layout changes and, you know, putting in new floors and all these pieces. But what I really thought that was the most beneficial about what they did was technology that they implemented that just made your shopping experience quicker. And I think that, like I said, brands, there's a fine line between knowing when somebody wants to have a great all in experience at your store with your brand, and there's also knowing that sometimes people just need things, and they need clothes and they need it to be easy, and that doesn't mean they're not having a great brand experience, but that brand experience is now pivoted to, I need something quickly. I need convenience, and I think that the technology they start to implement was really in line with understanding how people need to shop in that manner. Think it's something that target has done really well. You know, having drive up and being able to do returns with drive up, or being able to order my Starbucks when I go to pick up my order. And now I'm like, it's a two for one. I didn't have to go the car at all, and I'm in and out and something was ready in a few hours. Zara kind of implemented some RFID technology and things along those lines that allowed people to come in and pick things up quicker or make returns much easier. And I think it talks a lot about how women shop, and I talk about this a lot, especially on the newsletter, but women control 85% consumer spend, and that doesn't just mean that we like have more money or something. It means that a lot of times, even if we're not the head of household, that we are making a lot of financial decisions in terms of what shopping actually looks like. So if you know, maybe you're a stay at home mom, you're buying all the groceries. You're buying everything that you need to, like, maintain your home, but you're also really buying a lot of your husband's clothes or the things that he needs day to day, right? I don't think brands think about a lot of like, if you don't know how to talk to women and understand how to get them excited for your products, even if they're not your own consumer, it may not get purchased. They're going to go where they understand. And women's role in society is really shifting. And, you know, there's, there's so much about what we're doing, but a huge part is that, you know, we're not getting married a lot of times until a little bit later. We're not having kids until later. We're going to college or maybe getting additional degrees, where we're really moving up in our careers. We're starting businesses, and our lives have just become really busy and really full. And so looking at the way that we shop, while we still hold that consumer spend is really important, because we might not always have the time to go and just, you know, waft around Zara and, you know, go through sometimes. I need to go on that app. I need to search for what I need. I need to see it immediately. I need to add it to cart, pick it up within an hour and grab it and whatever didn't fit, I need to be able to send it back quickly, because we just don't have as much time. And especially if you add kids into that, or you do choose to get married, and now you're you have a really full life, oftentimes, women, you know, we're not staying home, we're having kids and getting married and still going to work. That's a really busy life. It's a lot that women are doing. It's a lot for anybody, but especially when you have, you know, just those additional pressures. And so understanding how women's lives are changing and creating retail experiences that can talk to a multitude of different women and how we've changed even over the last 1020 years. I think is super beneficial. I think Sara did a really great job at that. And I think that those are some of the things where you'll read it and you won't really see if you're not looking why it was important they did that. It just seems like, oh, it's convenient, or oh it was time for an update, or oh they needed to expand the brand a little bit. Oh, they want to change their positioning. But at the end of the day, anything you do has to be to make money, right? Like you need your customers to spend money, and so it's how all those choices that I just said, your positioning or having a better experience. It comes down to your customer spending money, and you need to find a way to connect with her, to get her to spend that money, and to be able to do in a way that doesn't interfere with her life. Because, like I've said a million times already on this podcast, you need to solve for real problems, and you need to understand your consumer, and you need to understand where they're at, and you need to create experiences that match them where they're at. And if you don't like there will be no moving forward. I

William Harris  1:04:13  

like that you called out that your consumer might not be the person who the product is actually for, right? That the person who's actually going to make the purchase might be the wife, it might be the grandparent, it might be the parent for their kid. Like it's, it could be there's a lot of other things that are in here. What? What are some other ways? Let's say that this was like a super a brand, just super targeted towards guys. Let's say that it's, you know, car wash stuff that is definitely just, it is intended to be super masculine, manly car wash stuff, or whatever, what? What are some ways in which they could say, Well, okay, how do we make sure that we're still reaching that guy's wife, uh, who's maybe the one who's actually making the purchase?

Carly Chenault  1:04:58  

Yeah, I. Think it's maybe not as much of having to implement it, 24/7, across your positioning and be okay, here's some marketing that's going out to men. Here's something out to women. Okay, and are paid. We're gonna try and, you know, focus it here. I think brands are doing it really well. I'm not sure if anyone's on TikTok, then you've probably seen these where there's car dealerships and they have these men. A lot of them are dads. They're probably in their mid 40s or late 40s, early 50s, and they're it's not even just car dealership. So this is one that really comes to mind, is they'll be using a lot of like slang and like things that we say, like on TikTok, and they'll be talking to women, and they'll be like, you look so slay in here, Girly Pop. And it's funny, because it's ridiculous, you know, and it, it's like a joke, and you can tell they're kind of uncomfortable, but they're doing it to be, like, they find reasons why. Like, the car, like, whatever, being like, all wheel drive would be, like, beneficial for you if you, like, hit a curb or something, you know. And it's funny, like, and I think doing things like that, where you can get them in a little bit and be like, oh, what they they are listening like, it is funny. Just gets them in the door, and at least get you ahead of people who aren't doing it at all. And I wish we saw it more from like, I think about like golf brands a lot. Not that women don't golf, right, but husbands like to spend a lot of time on the golf course. And if your wife wants to buy you something for your birthday or a holiday or for any reason, like, does she know anything about this? And are you making it easy for somebody who has no experience at all, possibly with, like, with said Hoppy, it's not just golf, like any hobby that your wife possibly has. So you're like, I know she loves this, but I let it be her thing. If you go to buy her something in that space and you're starting from absolutely zero, is the education there at all to help walk somebody through making a purchase and making a purchase that's good for her? Like, that's really difficult to do, so I think that's also just a part of it is making sure that you're not just talking to somebody who's already a user of your product, but making sure that your whole like messaging hierarchy throughout, like, the customer experience, and I hate to talk about a funnel, because I think it's very dated, but that it's meeting people at all places. I've talked to a lot of brands where I got on like, somebody's landing page other day and I was like, this is essentially the page that I should see if I was logged in. But you're talking to this person as if they already work with your company and they already use it, and you're not trying to sell me and give me any education on why I should join. It's very confusing. And so understanding your messaging hierarchy, and I think having fun with it, and just not making it so serious where it has to be, oh, this is just for women. And we're gonna have a whole offshoot. And then we're gonna, we're gonna target this much of our, you know, allocate this much of our budget to put into it. It's like, there's things that can be funny, understand cross culturally. I think. Anyways, what's going on for your consumer? Like, if you're somebody who has a running brand, well, what else do they use? And what else is going on in their world? And what else are they what else are they keeping up with? Right Understanding that, and I think that's important for anybody, so understand what's going on in the family of your consumers world, and be able to kind of talk to that a little bit and just throw some things in every now and then that. You know they don't have to be so serious. Have fun with your brand, so good

William Harris  1:08:01  

and be flexible with it. Yeah, we need more fun. We need more flexibility. I want to shift into talking about who is Carly Chenault, because I think that it's fun to get to know the human being behind each one of these episodes. I understand that you were diagnosed with ADHD later in life. Um, how did you how did you find out that you had ADHD? Yeah, I

Carly Chenault  1:08:25  

think it was something that I kind of maybe always thought in the back of my mind. Um, I actually had a cousin who was like, ADHD, and was very, like, hyperactive, and I remember being around her one time being like, Oh, my God, this is this a lot, you know? And I was younger, I was like, in my teens, and that was the first time I'd ever really experienced that. It wasn't till I was, I think, in college, that I started to be like, Oh, some things are starting to feel a little bit harder. I think high school felt kind of easy for me, and I didn't have to study a lot, and I was able to get through things quickly. And I think that might have just been because of where things were being taught, and not necessarily, because I was, like, some super smart person by any means. So it was, it was easier for me. And I remember getting into college and realizing, like, Oh, I'm a very visual learner. Knew that about myself at that point, so I need to take a lot of notes, because I couldn't just remember things when I would sit in like, you know, these lecture halls now, and that was super different. And when teachers would, like, post their own lecture, and it was so much easier for me, because I needed to see things like written out on a board, and I could remember that, and that's how I would study. I couldn't just look at a note and try and memorize my brain if I thought back to what I was studying. Could see the flashcard, you know, that it was on, um, I started realizing that it was a little bit more difficult for me to manage all the things I had going on. I remember middle school, you know, you had like, seven or eight classes, and I remember the whole time just being, like, excuse my language. Like, this is hell. Like, I can't do this. Like I was struggling really hard. And when I got to. When I was in block scheduling thrived. It's so much better because it was just there was more time focused on something, and it wasn't like I had so many different little things to do. Little things are actually very easy for me now, crossing off little things on my to do list, I started realizing, once I was at like, Barney's, that when I would have to, like, write a paper, like a report on something starting, like, staring at a blank Word doc. I could not do anything. I would just stare at it and freeze. And the only thing that would get me to end up doing it would be like, this is due tomorrow, sure? Like, it needs to be done.

William Harris  1:10:32  

It's a classic 100%

Carly Chenault  1:10:35  

Yeah. And I, I, what I would have to do is, like, write something that had nothing to do with what I was trying to work on, and then be like, Oh, that doesn't make any sense. What I actually wanted to say was and delete it all, and then my brain would be able to start working through it. And I do that a lot now. I do my newsletter. I think if you read it, you'll see it's like, a lot of stream of consciousness. And a lot of times I'll like, I'll even throw into AI, like, write an intro to my newsletter based on this, and it will be, oh, that's awful. And I'll delete the whole thing and be like, what I actually wanted to say was, and it helps my brain, like, get started. I can't start from a point of zero, and so that. And then, like, that kind of shame that comes with feeling like, am I being lazy? Why can't I manage all these things? Is actually just too much work? Or am I expecting too much of myself? Or is it not? And I think comparing yourself to people who are just, like, very productive, people, like, we're all productive, I think in different ways, and learning that was really different. And then I think people just started talking about it more, and I started thinking, like, oh, maybe this is something a little bit different. And a lot of it happened when I was, like, getting into my 30s. And I think for women, there's a lot of things that change for us. And to get, like, even more person. I got off my birth control. I had some other things happen. So I thought, like, maybe, like my hormones were just changing, and I was getting more tired and I was older, and like, things were just feeling a little more difficult, until I started taking off all my tests, which I don't really recommend, but I was like, or is this, like, an ADHD symptom, or is this me being lazy? It's me being tired. I think hearing other people talk about, like, uncommon symptoms that they had really helped me feel like, oh, there's, there's other things probably going on here. Yeah,

William Harris  1:12:11  

I think it's wise that you were able to, like, listen to what was going on in your mind and went and found help. I also have ADHD, and wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult as well. And to your point, for me, my story is similar, where it's like, there was nobody who doubted that I had it as a kid, right? Like it was, it was probably obvious then, even in college, I can remember, like, you know, sitting in the back of the room, and it's like nibbling pretzels to spell out words, right? Like the little like, three pretzels. It's like, okay, I can make an A with this. I can do this. It's like, like, that's a very ADHD thing. It's like, you're using the condensation of a pop can to write my name on, like, the table, right? It's like, very much. And the kicker was, we were learning about ADHD in class, and the teacher was like, sometimes these kids can be so hyperactive, they're on top of the desks, running around, you know? And I was like, does she know? Because that day, as a college student, before she came into the lecture hall, I was on top of the desks, running around, and it's like, okay, yeah, definitely had it, but still had never been officially diagnosed, right? Everyone's just like, Oh, you're just hyperactive. It wasn't. For me, the uncharacteristic symptom that I didn't know was running a business, the demands get higher. I've got kids, and I was maybe, let's say, high functioning, to your point, and then, but I started to snap. I would just, I had a short fuse. I would just get angry at things. And it's like almost impulse. It was just like I was just get kind of frustrated very quickly. And I remember talking to, you know, the doctor, and had me go see a psychologist to find out what's going on. And it's like, yeah, you have ADHD, and you're just actually at the point now where you can't work through those impulses. And so those impulses hit you, and so I think, you know, being able to learn what it is and then work towards, what are the things that make me this way, and how can I work to counteract that? I think has been really good, and I'd say that I'm overall in a stronger mental health game than I've ever been as a result of working through some of those things.

Carly Chenault  1:14:13  

Because I think for me, I never felt hyperactive. I actually felt the opposite, like I felt really run down. I felt really tired, and not just like, physically. I felt like, I feel like I was getting to a point where it was hard to, like, retain a lot of information, and I was feeling overwhelmed, of like, what do I need to remember? And what don't I and I feel like I'm not getting my thoughts together, like I feel really scrambled and never felt hyperactive. And that's why I think, I thought so many other things that, like, were confusing, because I also didn't know a lot of people who were, like, technically hyperactive, and maybe they were already Medicaid at that point, I don't know, but I think that to your point, it's less scary, or it's more scary for me to feel like I don't know what's going on. Like, if you have an answer, then you can. And you can figure things out. You can start finding solutions. You can figure out what's what's best for you. And the more you know, it's just, like, it's, it's not like, this big, scary, like, black hole of like, guessing all the time on things and, yeah, I just feel like, the more I knew, the less scary it became. Or I was like, Oh, thank God. Like, I can just, like, figure something out. Like, I just know what to do better. I don't feel as like, worn down, or like bogged down by things or like that guilt that you're like, I'm not, I'm not doing anything. I'm not getting anything done. Like, I'm so lazy, I'm so unprotect I'm never gonna be like, successful, never able to do anything. Like, you figure out then the things that you need to do and what makes sense for your brain. Like, when I structure like my days and my weeks, like, what does it actually look like? And I can do that now, where before, I was just so, like, wound up and stressed about not knowing

William Harris  1:15:48  

the way that I worded it for some people to understand and even for myself, was imagine so I also have glasses. I wear contacts, but my eyesight is terrible. But imagine if it's like, I was playing baseball as a kid and I didn't have glasses or contacts, and it's like, Man, I could just never hit the ball, right? And you're like, Well, it's because you literally can't see the ball. There's an actual problem here that you you need to address. And once you figure out what that is, you're like, Oh, now we can work on what's the right way for you to treat this. For some people, it might be medication. For others, it might medication. For others, it might be learning new tactics or tricks. Or for some you might say, I can actually do this if I write a whole bunch of nonsensical stuff and then delete that and start from there. It's like you can start to learn, what are these things that allow you to be able to hit the ball? But first you have to know, why am I not hitting the ball? Absolutely, you you told me that you, you don't necessarily have a mentor, but that you are trying to become more of a role model. Like, in what ways are you becoming a role model? And like, Who are you trying to serve?

Carly Chenault  1:16:52  

Yeah, I think that was really important for me, because I realized pretty early on that I hadn't found somebody. I think mentorship is really hard. I think very few people actually have a true mentorship versus just somebody who maybe is in their corner. But you know, I always felt like I was having to learn all those mistakes on my own. And I realized that when I was at a startup a few years ago that I was working with, like, some younger girls, and I was like, they would say things that they did or that were going on. I was like, Don't do that. Like, no, don't do that. And I feel like I do that a lot naturally. Now, just I feel like I'm a very sound like a self aware person, but I feel like I'm very intuitive, or I'm very honest with myself. I do, like, a lot of reflection. And so there's a lot of times where I've looked back on things that I've done and been like, No, that was my fault, or I shouldn't have done that, and giving yourself grace on it, but also being like, okay, I can really dissect a situation that happened now. And so I feel like I was able to kind of start giving advice to people. When I started writing on LinkedIn, and I started, like, talking about my career and my role and the things that I've done, I had a lot of people reach out and be like, how have you done this? Or can you tell me about your career, and can you tell me about, like, the things you're working on, or if you need help with things like people, so many women just want to learn, so many people want to learn, but people just want to learn, and people also just want to connect. And I think something I've learned is like, one a lot of times, if you reach out to people and you have, like, an actual reason to reach out, um, they'll respond and they will be helpful. Um, not everyone has a ton of time, so that might look different for everybody, but I still think you should try. A lot of people would reach out to me and ask me, like, these questions and ask they can get on a call, and I wouldn't always have time to go on a call, but the thing that I've started doing is I would tell them, like, write down all of your questions and send them to me. I will do a loom, and I'll record all the answers, and that way you have it for the longer term. It also has a transcript, and also a lot of answers overlap. So if we were on a call, like, they wouldn't get as much out of that same hour or half hour, because they'd be asking me questions where, like, I can just get out everything that I need to. I tried that a lot because I didn't have it. I didn't have anyone. Also, like, social media just didn't exist in that in that way. So trying to find people who you know were doing the things you wanted to do that you could really connect with. Um, was much harder. And networking in person. It's just it's more difficult. People are really busy. So I think now that it exists in that capacity. Um, I think one, if you're listening and you want to reach out to people, like, try, like, send a message to them, DM them on LinkedIn, email them, but have a purpose and just be like, can you talk to me like a brain? Yeah, go to them with like, two or three pointed questions, or, like, tell them why you're reaching out. And people, I think, are really willing to give advice, but I think I just realized that back then, I didn't have that, and now that people reach out to me, I'm like, I feel like it's so important because it'll help you from making a lot of mistakes early on in your life, or have people just sound bored with there's so many things that I wish I had, not that I like regret, but that I would have done differently in my career, and I was always just making decisions like fully on my own, so I didn't have any perspective either. You know, I'm fully functioning from like, my experience in life. Life, and I could have talked to maybe two or three other people at certain times to, like, get their opinions and be able to take all that into account. When I was making decisions, would have probably made better or different decisions, and it all worked out fine. But it's just like, I don't know, big believer in, like, having a lot of perspective and being able to talk to people and people with different backgrounds and understand all that, I think comes into play, into everything, but specifically in mentorship and

William Harris  1:20:23  

yeah, move Learn for Life. Who've done it before you right like it's let learn from the painful mistakes that they've had to make it so much better. That way, you have told me that you specifically have a heart for women in this space. Why?

Carly Chenault  1:20:39  

Why? It's a good question. Why not?

William Harris  1:20:42  

Why not? Yes, why? But why you? Why specifically, right? Yeah,

Carly Chenault  1:20:46  

I think I'm, I don't know. I think maybe, as a woman, it's easier to maybe understand some of those feelings of when you see a woman really win or do something really exciting that I think we're still working through all the times when we couldn't do things, or when we weren't allowed to do things, and the changes that have happened. And when you see women succeed, how exciting it is, and it feels personal like for me, when I see other women win, I feel like I win, like I like. I mentioned I run a lot, and I was reading a little bit earlier about the Boston Marathon, and I can't remember the woman's name. I wish I did, who kept trying to get on the track. And the person who started the Boston Marathon was like, literally, like, pushing her off. And was like, You cannot be in this like, women do not run. And I saw a video the other day of this little girl. She was three, and she was running a local race, and there were so many women on the sidelines, like, cheering for her. And I was, like, in tears. I'm just like, not that long ago, we weren't even allowed to be in these races. Now there's like, these three year old girls, and when you see these women, like, they can remember that, or they can remember, like, just not having these experiences, like, how, how empowering that is for that young woman to feel like there's other women around her. When you're a young girl, I wonder young at all. Like, I'm sure you know if your daughters give you any sort of compliment, like, they really mean it, like, because little kids, like, they say exactly what they mean, right? So like, when they when they know that something's cool or something exciting to them, like, they'll let you know what. It's so pivotal when you're young to have anybody like, tell you they did something well, or how exciting it was. And if they're older and you're like, Oh, they're so cool. Like, I want to be like them. Like, it changes the course of your life, really. It gives you this confidence. And I think that women, especially in business, really get me excited, because there's so many studies that have been done. I don't say this like, bash men, but that when women are CEOs, or they're in these higher roles, when they hire more women, it's statistically proven that when men are in charge, they aren't always putting women in these higher roles, whether it's a subconscious thing or not, but women will move more women up. That only brings us all up. It makes us all more money. It allows us more freedom to do things. Women owned businesses only get 2% of venture capital, and so much of that comes from women as it is. So if we don't have the money to then be able to help angel investor. We're not in these rooms because we didn't think that we could go to college and become an investor. Then we don't get products made that we need. We stay behind in life. Women, who are CEOs also, they contribute more to their communities. They donate more. There's so much that goes on, and I don't again, mean to say that in a way of like men aren't doing enough. It's just like there's so much that I think women take on in life, whether it's having, you know, a family, or the way that we process decisions and the way that we function emotionally, that when we're put in these positions of power or these places of influence, even if you're the girl who's on the sidelines cheering that little girl On Running, it just has such a profound impact. And there's so much that we can do. And we're really, like, just getting started, and I get really excited about it, because I see these women starting these careers. I'm like, I will do anything I can to support them and help them, even if I don't think I'm like, the best person to help you on this business, anything you need, I will help you on because if we don't do it for ourselves, nobody's going to right now, and I think it's just a fact of the world, and what's what's going on. And we are, you know, we're getting more educated, we're making more money, we're doing all the things, and we've had to fight our ass off to be able to do that, like I know a lot of people who are, you know, my mom's age, who didn't go to college, still, who didn't do any of that, and to see women now who are running these huge companies, or they went and got like, their JD and their MBA at the same time, or they're sitting in these rooms making huge financial decisions, like it's it's amazing how much we've done. And I think that as a woman, you can understand that fight and that tenacity that's behind all the change that's been made recently. And so when I see something good happen for a woman, I'm just like I'm so excited about it, and I just want to be more of that, and I want to be able to have more of that, because more we can be seen in those spaces, the more younger women will think it's possible for them, and it will just keep getting better.

William Harris  1:24:52  

Yeah, it helps for us to see people like us doing something right. And I love that you called out like that perspective of. Like time where it's like, even just a couple generations ago, how far we've come. And so it's like keeping that perspective. I think it's cool. I like that you called out too, that it's like, we'll see things differently. There will be things that you're able to see that I can't see, needs that you can see, that I just don't even perceive, right? And so by having you or other women in positions of leadership, there will be ways in which they are able to impact the business, our world, our families, in ways that I just wouldn't even have the capacity. We go back to GWC that gets it, wants a capacity. They don't even have the capacity necessarily, to even see some of those things. And so I think that's a really cool way of looking at

Carly Chenault  1:25:47  

that. Yeah, I think, like, look, I don't know if you tell me if men, like, feels way too black, even when I watch the Olympics and I watch, like, you know, the US women's gymnastics team, I think, like, all women get so psyched about them because they're so good, or, like, we're so dominant, they're so incredible. Like, and you think about it, and I forgot, I'm like, two, they're 18. Some of them are, this is their summer after high school. You know, they haven't gone to college, and they go out there, and they just have, like, this poise and the strength and this grace, and they've been so determined their whole life. And when I see them, like, I'm again, I'm like, in tears, because I'm just like, it's so incredible to see women do those things, and to, like, there's just, like, an emotional piece about that, I think is really hard to explain if you're not a woman. But like, when I see a woman get promoted into like, a big role, or, like, I don't know, it's just it, like, opens a part of you being like, hell yeah. Like we did, like, it was a win for all of us. It wasn't just a win for that girl. Like, it's a win for the girls who are in seventh grade right now and are starting to think about their future, like, even if they haven't seen that person directly, like, it's just a win for all of us anytime something good happens. And I get so excited about it. And I think when women get together, like, there's just this power around it, like, there's just this strength of like, we're just capable of so much, and we're still mentioned, like, scratching the surface on it, and seeing, you know, where we can expand all the things we can do. And, yeah, I just think it's so important as women to support each other as, like, kind of as as elementary as that sounds, because, like I said, it's not happening other places, like, if we don't start funding each other's businesses as angel investors, if we don't get in those rooms, if we're not lawyers, of we're not in these places if we're not supporting other women also who, like, don't look like me, you know, like I do have like, you know, level of privilege as a white woman. So what am I doing to make womanhood better for everyone? Anyone who's in business, you know that 2% of venture capital is like woman as a whole, but that that goes down significantly for women of color, you know, and the right so they're graduating college, like it's better, but it's not great, or the ways that they're being promoted, or the companies that they're CEOs of. So it's not just about myself, either, but making sure that all women are being supported in that way.

William Harris  1:27:54  

Yeah, it reminds me of, believe it or not, the Hebrew Bible there, the word that's used when Eve was created, as he says, Ezra connecto, and I might be butchering it right, like, I'm not a Hebrew scholar or anything, but the word that's used, oftentimes, translated, they say, is like helper. And so sometimes people have thought that this sounds very like subservient is it's like, you're here to help me, and it's like, no, no. What's interesting is that same word is used for God, meaning that it's like, that it's like, it's they say that it's like, this help that you cry out for. You're just like, I am not able. I need my Ezra. I need this help that is, and it's like, he calls out, just like, God is his Ezra. Connecto, right? It's like, like. So I think it's really cool to think it's like, we're starting to see, maybe as a society, that there is things that are powerful about both of these different feminine and masculine energies that I think allow us to see and perceive different needs within our world, and that allows us to heal different pieces within our world. And so I think it's a really cool little thing we are at time. It has been absolutely amazing talking to you today. I've enjoyed learning from you. I've enjoyed learning about you. If people want to work with you or follow you, what is the best way for them to do that? Yeah,

Carly Chenault  1:29:13  

if you want to follow me, I have been dead on LinkedIn for a little bit, but you guys should all go yell at me to post on there again. But I'm on LinkedIn. There's still a lot of content that I have posted on there. Posted on there that you can go back through and read, um, go subscribe to Retail Roundtable. There's a lot coming in the fall that I'm really excited for, and again, seeing what the next iteration of it looks like beyond just a newsletter and the type of content we could put out there. So I would love if you went and followed you don't have to have a substack account. You can just put in your email, even though it's hosted by sub stack, and they'll go right to your email. And then if you want to work with me, the type of consulting work that I'm typically doing right now is one off strategy session. So if you have a specific issue that you want to talk about or work through related to retail strategy, marketing or brand strategy, we can do that. And I also do like, three to five day VIP days, where I can come in as like your fractional. Cmo or COO, typically, for startups, to help get you aligned as a founder, and make sure that your team is prepared and you are able to support them in a sustainable way, and also make sure that there's that speed and consistency for your brand. Because, as I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this know, when you're early stage in your business, a lot of your first hires are interns or their contract work, and there's a lot of churn, so making sure that there's sustainability in your business, I can come in and get that sorted out. You can go to marketedit.co And, yeah, that's mainly it. But yeah, follow my LinkedIn. DM me. I love talking to people on there. I'm super open to it, and all of my email and information is in there as well. So

William Harris  1:30:36  

perfect. Well, again, thank you so much for sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Outro 1:30:47  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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