From Box Office to Big Data: Bridging Marketing and Technology Through Data-Driven Leadership with Brian Schwartz of SIZE

Eric Dodds 00:06
Welcome to The Data Stack Show.

John Wessel 00:07
The Data Stack Show is a podcast where we talk about the technical, business and human challenges involved in data

Eric Dodds 00:13
work. Join our casual conversations with innovators and data professionals to learn about new data technologies and how data teams are run at top companies. Welcome back to the show. We are here with Ryan Schwartz from size, which is an advisory firm for late stage companies, and they also do investing. We have a lot of questions about that, because it’s a really unique model and lots of other things to talk about. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Schwartz 00:44
Thank you for having me.

Eric Dodds 00:46
Well, give us a fascinating background. We were talking about movies right before the show because you have experience in that industry, but just give us a quick overview of your background. Yeah. So

Brian Schwartz 00:56
I’m a long time marketing guy who’s been at a digital agency in London for four years. Spent about six and a half years at DreamWorks Animation, doing marketing for the films and global retail marketing, and then, most recently, led global marketing for the lodging group at Expedia, focusing on all of our hotel and vacation rental partners around the world, kind of what I call life 2.0 which is post corporate world. I now advise a host of high growth companies send a handful of boards and kind of along the way, one of the companies I’ve been with for a while, I saw lots of problems happening within the business outside of the marketing world, things like supply chain and finance and HR, and decided to build an advisory group of former executives to be able to help these late stage companies across a variety of disciplines. And then the idea is, we get in there, we add a ton of value. We get a look under the hood, and then we couple that with an investment arm to be able to look to make strategic investments in companies that we’re advising.

John Wessel 01:51
So Brian, one of the topics we talked about before the show was the interaction between data and marketing teams. Data teams and marketing teams. It can be tense at times, and I think, but what I think you get that right? I think that’s one of the magic of these, like, really successful companies. So I wanted to begin with that topic. What’s another topic that you’re interested in talking about?

Brian Schwartz 02:11
Yeah, I think that’s a great topic. I’ve seen so many different Good, good things and bad things happen within the marketing, tech and data intersection. No, yeah, is another topic right now that’s very interesting to me. I also think enterprises and how they leverage data is very interesting to me. Everyone’s a little bit different in terms of their strategy. Some of them have tons of data but don’t do anything with it. Others have lots of data and are amazing with it. I’ve experienced both in my career, so I’m happy to kind of discuss and explore that as

Eric Dodds 02:43
well. Awesome. Well, let’s dig in.

John Wessel 02:45
Yeah, let’s do it.

Eric Dodds 02:47
Brian, I have a million questions for you, but I have to start at DreamWorks. So you were at an agency in London, but then you spent over half a decade at DreamWorks doing marketing for films, etc. And I guess your time there overlaps. I know a ton about this, but it seems like it overlaps with what a lot of people sort of view as, like, the golden years of such a cool company, like the approach and everything. Can you just tell us a little bit about that experience at DreamWorks?

Brian Schwartz 03:19
Yeah, it was awesome. I joke with friends that you can pay me nothing, and I would go back there today, just because of the people, the culture, the campus, everything that was involved with DreamWorks. But you know, in a nutshell, we were DreamWorks Animation. I think some people convoluted and confused the two of them, because DreamWorks as a whole, the founding of it was one company with Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg. And in 2004 they split, and Jeffrey led DreamWorks Animation. He took it public, and we were focused just on the animated film. Steven Spielberg was on the universal lot. They were focused more on the live action stuff that some people know of today. But on the animation side, we did everything from Shrek to KU panda at Madagascar. The last one I was working on when I was there was Trolls, which I would argue is probably the most successful full funnel franchise that was ever created by DreamWorks, even better than Shrek. And it was just a wonderful experience. It was a great experience to work internationally, to be able to identify and understand how different cultures approach business and then being able to build a business, both from a box office perspective, a retail perspective, a theme park perspective, in markets all across the world, ultimately, not only to drive fandom and excitement for the films, but real revenue and box office or DreamWorks Animation,

Eric Dodds 04:39
That’s amazing. Can you one question I have is the timeline and how you think about that from a marketing perspective? Because, you know, it’s not like you just sort of spin up a campaign in a week. You know, for a movie, the development takes a long time. There are multiple iterations. You know, there’s character. There’s interaction between, I’m sure, like the creatives who are developing, you know, the story and the visuals, and then also the marketing. That’s all, isn’t it? How long does it take, I mean, you’re working on a film for probably a really long time to sort of fully get it to market internationally, right?

Brian Schwartz 05:18
Yeah. And, I mean, animation is a beast of its own. So a typical film could take one or two years. Animation is probably four or five years. I think some of the studios like Universal have done a better job spending less money and accelerating the timeline, but I think on average, it takes four years to do an animated movie. And you know, my job as a marketer, and my father in law like to joke that I sold Shrek around the world was to essentially pitch the story and tell the story. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the story change, and how many times I’ve shared footage of storyboards with big corporations or with exhibitors, etc, and then, you know, myself included, like, with trolls or kung fu bands or something like that. I’m like, Man, this. I don’t think this is gonna be a good film in like, year two, and then by year four, when I see the final footage of I’m like, oh my god, this is incredible. So being able to see how the story line develops, how the architecture develops, how the graphics and the lighting and all that comes into place, is a pretty incredible experience. And then I think, like, you know, what I kind of miss a little bit too, is, you know, everyone on my team when box office day came, and most people don’t know, but internationally, it’s staggered in terms of when the movies are released. It’s not necessarily day and date with the US. So, you know, the US might launch, you know, a month or two earlier than internationally. So in those international markets, we’re all excited for that day, following deadline.com and hollywood.com to be able to see the box office reporting, to see all that work coming to fruition, seeing everyone actually going to the theater to enjoy the film.

Eric Dodds 06:52
That’s great. Also, you’re now sort of, you know, you adjust the daily drive and DJ playlist and Spotify for all the parents out there who get the, you know, the songs that come up from

Brian Schwartz 07:10
the troll sound rack on

Eric Dodds 07:15
totally so thank you for that, by the way. So then you go to Expedia, and I would guess that, in terms of pacing and sort of managing, like a funnel where, you know, people are booking lodging, the turnaround time is super fast on a lot of dots, right? So the train, there’s just transactions, you know, happening at a really rapid rate. 24/7, what was it like to sort of go from, you know, the super long multi year timeline, you know, and then, like a multi phase, multi month international roll out to, you know, we probably have, you know, petabytes of data,

Brian Schwartz 07:56
you know, from all this transactional, stock, browsing, data, everything, and then you have to turn that into revenue now, yeah, so it was night and day. It was the biggest eye opener of my career. You know what people don’t realize? And this has changed. And you look at Netflix and Amazon and some of these disruptors, this is why the legacy studios are not doing nearly as well, they have no idea who their customer is, right? If you look at Disney, I don’t know, four or five years ago, they literally revamped their entire business with Disney, plus to be very customer centric and have customer data and identify it. If we go back to DreamWorks and we think about it, how do we know who our customer is? Well, let’s look at all the different mechanisms. The first is the box office and exhibitors. The exhibitors like AMC Regal, they want to give us any customer granular data. The next is retailers who sell our product, they wouldn’t give us any customer granular data. The next is theme parks, which we don’t know about. They’re not giving us any customer granular data. So we had no idea who our customers were. And by the way, you know, we’d spend upwards of $100 million in marketing for a film, and really have no idea what the robot is. So then I go to Expedia, and I’m like, oh my god, like they do AB testing 600 times a day on the website, right? And everything is tested and learned, and everything is so data driven. And it’s just like I said, night and day. And it really changed my career, both as a marketer and a business professional, in terms of, like, where data comes into play when it comes to making decisions. Like, I still, like I was once listening to a podcast, I don’t know, like, five, six years ago, and someone was like, Look, at the end of the day, data is very important when I make decisions with my gut. Cool, right? But like, to me, like my gut is important, but like, if I’m not really focused and honed in on the data, I can’t make informed decisions with my gut. So it’s one thing to go from having zero visibility to having way too much visibility. So you know, if I kind of combine the two, I just love something in the middle, right where you are using data to make really conscious decisions. But. End of the day, you know you still use your street smarts and what you’ve learned throughout your career to be able to make articulate decisions to ultimately drive whatever business outcome you want.

Eric Dodds 10:10
I love it. Okay, then tell us about the next step, which is Expedia, and then to size and how size even came about.

Brian Schwartz 10:20
Yeah. So I think most people don’t realize, with these marketplaces, let’s call Expedia a marketplace, it’s two-sided, right? So there’s a supply side and demand side, and it’s very secular, right? Like, I think marketing is the third piece of it, where you know, if you don’t have the supply you’re not going to get the demand. So I was focused on the supply side. My team was armed with getting more hotel partners around the world on board of all over 200 points of sale. You know, most people don’t realize there are Spax. I think booking is like an $85 billion market cap business. Six feet is like a 20, $25 billion market cap business. They just got farther ahead in terms of the supply side. They will bring on tons of independent hotels in Europe and Asia, and really build that supply to then fuel the demand. So, you know, we were really strong with the chain hotels, but it was all about really focusing on independent hotels and driving more of those folks on board of all Expedia points of sale. And then ultimately, when you are working with existing partners, there are things in search and sort etc, that you can monetize as well, to be able to drive additional revenue from those partners. So, you know, at XG, I think it’s public knowledge. I think it’s like 70% of their business, or 75% of their businesses, hotels, just with the commission rates that you get on hotels versus airlines, etc, it’s a very large majority of the business. So there’s a really important group that we were focused on in terms of being able to drive these efficiencies and acquisition and retention and all that stuff. And then along the way, just as I was leaving, we acquired a poem away, which is really more about ramping up the vacation rental side of it. So VRBO. VRBO, however you want to say, was kind of their pride and joy, and we were starting to ingest that inventory into the Expedia platform as well, to be able to really drive demand full circle, not just on hotels, but on vacation rentals as well. And then to answer your question, so that that’s kind of the Expedia days on, on the transition to size. You know, when I left Expedia, I kind of went on a personal journey to figure out what’s next. I hired an executive coach. I worked with him for a year, and ultimately, you know, he asked me, like, what do I want to do with my life? And I said, I want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company by the time I’m 40. And, you know, I moved up the ladder relative pick. I think it was like 31 or 32 I was a VP at Expedia, and it just seemed like the natural progression. And then he asked me, why? And I’m like, I don’t know, people tell you that, like, like, you just constantly go up the ladder until you get to the top. And, you know, I sat back, and I was like, wait a minute, this stupid. I don’t really want to do that. I don’t think I really want to do that. And then he also helped me work on, like, a life plan, which is interesting, right? You hire your executive coach. Why are you working on a life plan? Well, I think the reality is, you know, it’s 50 your life is 50% personal, 50% work, right? It’s about that balance. And even when your gender, like a male versus a female, female, is even harder, right? Because then you have the family component too, and being a mom, etc. So for me, I came back with, like, what is my life mission? And it ultimately was to help people and give back. And I just felt like I wasn’t doing that in the corporate role. That wasn’t that being a CEO definitely wasn’t going to be there. So I said, Hey, this is kind of what I want to do. How do I build a life around these two priorities? So at the time I was living in Seattle, I told my wife, look, I think we need to move back to LA. That’s where my network was. And I started to selfishly meet a lot of people to kind of figure out what’s next. And I really stretched myself, like, you know, marketing, technology, data. Sure, that’s like table stakes, but I started to, like, meet people that, like, I just had not come across before I kind of fell into this world of family offices. I met a lot of board members. I started to meet people in government, certainly professors and academics. Really just starting to understand, like, what is out there, and what are people doing, and what do I ultimately find exciting and a really good fit for me. So that journey lasts about two and a half years. And you know, luckily, I did well, and I saved a lot of money so I could afford to do that. But throughout that journey, my friend, who used to be the Chief Marketing Officer at McDonald’s, told me, Look, go meet 300 people and you’ll figure out what you want to do with your life, which I thought was great advice. And you know, I took it. I probably met like 2500 people over two years, and what it ultimately led to is kind of this world of realizing that I could actually add a lot of value, personally to founders of high growth companies. So I think what you don’t know when you’re sitting in an office with your head down, just doing work all day is all these things you’ve learned along the way in terms of process and structure and being able to really lead large teams is actually super relevant for founders who are growing like crazy because they all of that to be able to professionalize that business. So I kind of fell into this world of advising a lot of these high growth founders and then ultimately sitting on a handful of boards as well. So that’s what I was doing personally. And then one of the companies I’ve been with for about six years is gopuff. And while I was there doing things I’m really good at, like digital and marketing and growth and partnerships, I started to see other issues arise in things like supply chain and HR and finance, and throughout that journey, I wanted to help them. So I was like, Could I go find some adults or former executives to throw out the problem. And that was kind of the aha moment where I said, Why don’t we bring everyone together as kind of like a dream team of all these former executives, where collectively, we can add a lot more value to these late stage companies than we can individually.

John Wessel 15:35
So Brian, we actually met through that. We were friends on that journey. And I was hoping you were going to bring it up, because I specifically I specifically remembered, I guess it was probably our first conversation, you saying, but I am part of, like, where you have reached out was, like, I’m on a mission to reach, you know, whatever it was a time, 300 people or or I even, I even think you had some kind of, like, monthly goal. I don’t know if you remember at the time, but I was, and it was via LinkedIn. And I, you know, a lot of us get, like, I’m sure Eric would agree, like, just ton you can spam on LinkedIn and like, like, kind of random people reaching out. Like, it’s unlikely that it feels unlikely. And in this thing you gotta, like, connect with real people. But I remember that, like, I think it was part of your message. Like, man, like, okay. Like, I support this. Like, this is a really cool idea. So

Brian Schwartz 16:25
I still do this day. Whenever someone questions me, I’m like, Look, I did it as part of my own journey. I just loved it. When you meet someone with no intentions and I am just doing it, I think the downside is the platform of LinkedIn, right? You got even myself. I’ve been out of the corporate rules for, I don’t know, five or six years, and I still get like, 50 people trying to sell me stuff. Trying to sell me stuff on LinkedIn every day. So it’s really hard to find and get genuine networking. You know, luckily, people like you, John, respond to me, and they’re open to meeting, and I’m able to, you know, be helped do, kind of do my mission, right? Help give back to folks as I’m chatting with them. But it would be great if there was another platform that was much more organic when it came to genuine networking?

John Wessel 17:05
Yeah, and we could talk about this all day, because it truly is a monopoly, like it is one of the most like monopolistic things out there that I can think of. Yeah,

Brian Schwartz 17:15
I actually have a good founder friend who told me he’s like, Yeah, Brian, I deleted Facebook, I deleted Twitter, I deleted Instagram, I just go on LinkedIn. He’s like, I am LinkedIn. I am on it. 24/7 is my go to social media platform.

Eric Dodds 17:29
I mean, the good news Ryan is, if size doesn’t work out, which I think is very unlikely, you can definitely use your LinkedIn skills as an SD arsonist. Yeah,

Brian Schwartz 17:43
there it goes. Against everything I just told you about, you can

John Wessel 17:49
become about LinkedIn influence, both dream

Brian Schwartz 17:56
I’ve had a conversation with my partner, and it’s interesting to see where you guys sit on this side of the table. At some point, I kind of had to make the conscious decision. For the longest time, I only accepted people I knew on LinkedIn. I kept getting more and more people and more following that. At some point I was like, You know what? I think I’m just going to accept people regardless, because of the following. Now I almost have 20,000 people I’m connected with on LinkedIn because of that, whereas my business partner is the complete opposite. I think he’s got like, 2000 but it’s literally only anyone he’s ever, yeah, bring to it who he actually accepts or connects with on LinkedIn. And

John Wessel 18:32
that’s such a like and actually completely sympathize with, like, hey, I want us to be a real network like that viewpoint. But it is such a weird balance. Where, like, where the if somebody has a like, small enough connections, and this is actually true of like LinkedIn tools, like, you’ll get excluded from, like, all searches. I think it’s like 500 or three connections, like recruiter like, like you will be like, basically blacklisted from people getting the fine too, which is bizarre, but you know, yeah, anyways,

Eric Dodds 19:07
yeah, it’d be really fun. Yeah, okay, let’s, let’s get a little bit more tactical. So one of the fascinating things about your background Brian is that you understand and have wielded technology and built data stacks to do some really amazing things in a number of different contexts. And you also have experience as a marketing executive, and that’s pretty rare, at least. You know, in my experience, to find someone who has both of those skill sets, and has proven them at an extremely large scale. Because usually you know, when you know, if you think about someone on the data team, you know, I think about a lot of our listeners, right? Like, okay, we’re going to get marketing in here to, like, help with the data stack. That’s generally like, well, we’re old, you know, brown the book, yeah. Say that least, at a minimum, you’re gonna say, like, okay, that gives me pause. Like, let’s talk about this, because there’s a lot of baggage historically, right, you know, and some of it’s legitimate, some of it’s not legitimate. But I love to hear your perspective actually. Let’s start with, let’s start with this question. Why do you think that dynamic exists where there’s this sort of tension, you know, it’s almost a cliche, right? There’s tons of memes out there around, you know, marketing screwing up things for the data team, or vice versa. Why does that exist?

Brian Schwartz 20:33
Yeah, I mean, look, let’s start in the data side of the equation. If you’re a data analyst, you’re an engineer, you’re a technologist, that’s what you grew up in, right? Like, that’s your lane within the corporate world, if you’re a marketer, historically, you’ve either grown up in brand marketing or performance marketing. So some point, as you’re going up the chain, and you become like a chief marketing officer, Vice President marketing, someone’s going to take a chance on you, because no one grows up in brand marketing and performance marketing. So let’s go with the brand marketing first. I mean, we talked about DreamWorks. I mean, it’s all brand marketing, right? There’s zero attribution. It’s above the line, it’s out of home, right? It’s everything to build brand awareness, which, you know, you have NPS, but it’s really hard to actually measure. And then you get to the performance marketing side, and is more measurable, right? And you do need, you need platforms to be able to actually understand your ROAs and all this stuff. But you know collectively that CMO is still not necessarily data driven. The thing I find most interesting is McKinsey did a study in terms of where money is spent within a marketing organization, and most people would assume paid media is probably number one, that was actually 24% 26% of marketing budget went to technology. So the question is, why is a marketer brand market or performance market or not a technologist, right? Like, if the majority of the spend from the marketing budget is going to technology, Shouldn’t that be what the marketing head looks like? So I think we’re kind of in like this new world order where you’re seeing probably over the next 10 years. And this is no offense to these people, because a lot of them are my friends. You know, a lot of these brand marketers who are leading marketing organizations are now kind of slowly being replaced by performance markers, which I think in the next 10 to 15 years, they’ll slowly be replaced by technologists, right? Who, you know luck, who understands technology, understands data, but really understands the customer, and that’s where that intersection all happens. So I think historically, the biggest issue when it comes to marketers and data teams is that marketers just don’t have those chops with their expertise. And then what I see a lot of times, because we work with a lot of high growth technology companies at SaaS, so I’m constantly talking to enterprises, retailers, etc, about their tech stack. And what I see is every organization is structured differently when it comes to decision making on their tech stack. So I’ll give you an exact I won’t use names, because I don’t want to send anyone, but I’ll give you an example, a large QSR that sells coffee, you know, for example, you know, they have a business team and a technology team, and they were looking for a customer data platform, and I had a whole conversation with them. And you know, you would think, like, the marketing team is more open to more emerging tech, things that are better useful for them, that they really understand that’s not the typical sales force, Adobe, that’s so big. And the technology team would be like, Look, sales force is easy. We can do commerce cloud, new data cloud. We do everything. Like, let’s just do Salesforce. And ultimately they say they collaborate on decision making, which is probably true, but the reality is, the business is actually making the decision. So when I talk to the technology team, they’re like, Brian, we love emerging tech, but the problem is Adobe sales people and sales for sales people are so aggressive that they’re all over my business team, and my business team is pushing for this legacy tech. So that’s one example. And then you flip to another example where, you know, another big retailer, like, the decisions are actually made on the tech team. Right? Technology is more centralized. It’s not just marketing, but it’s HR, it’s supply chain, it’s tech for the whole business. They’re making the ultimate decision, and then they have to work with the marketing counterpoints to implement it. I think the smart ones will take feedback from the marketing team. So it’s not like they’re just being pushed to technology onto them, but at the end of the day, the marketing team is not actually making decisions. So I think you have this world where in some organizations, the tech team makes decisions. In some organizations, the business marketing team makes decisions. And I think the best organization is actually more of a collaborative approach, where the tech team is really understanding the implementation and the issues that might come as a result of putting that tech into the stack, but the marketing team is really defining the business problems of that business. Issues that the technology is going to solve.

Eric Dodds 25:01
Can you speak to our listeners who are in a leadership position on the tech side or the, you know, the data side, and they the CMO or the marketing leader at their company is more of the brand marketer type that you’ve talked about, you know, give them some advice. Help them navigate that. Because, like you said, and I 100% agree that over time, technologist marketers are going to actually take over those positions. But there are a lot of companies who are still in a place where maybe the data leader, the technology leader, sees a huge opportunity to leverage data to accomplish some things in the business, but it’s really hard because of the brand marketer mindset and the marketing leader. Yeah. I

Brian Schwartz 25:50
mean, it’s a bigger problem where ego EQ emotion, all that stuff starts to come into place, right? It’s like, I have some brand marketers who are very successful, working at big brands who, like, are in their 40s and 50s, who are, like, taking courses on AI and right, like, they’re trying to educate themselves. They realize they’re not the smartest person in the room. Those people are great, or they’re probably super collaborative. I think when things like ego come in, or, you know, like, like this, the saying, Hey, we’ve always done it this way, we’re not going to change. Like, when that type of mentality comes in, it’s really hard for that data or technologist to be able to work with the marketer. But I think what the market needs to realize is like, look, every marketing touches everything, right? Like, the average 10 years of a CMO is 18 months because it’s either working or it’s not, and your job within an organization is to get buy-in from all of your executive stakeholders and partners. And I say the two biggest ones, in my opinion, that the marketer should be hand in hand with, is the CFO and the CTO or the CIO. You know, those are going to be your biggest champions when it comes to being able to be successful in your role.

Eric Dodds 26:57
Yeah, I love it. I love it. John, I’ve been a Monopol. I realize I’m just asking you about the questions here, but I know you probably asked him questions, so just interrupt.

John Wessel 27:08
But yeah, I mean that there’s, I think there’s so much to talk about in this, like data marketing, relationship space, I had the unique experience of data background, collaborated with marketing for a couple of years, and then ended up running data and marketing together at the same time. So, I kind of have a couple different ways, like avenues out of like, one, like, you’re kind of the data producer and me, like flip and you’re kind of the data consumer. I think through that experience, like, one actually, like, kind of like Brian said was, like, Man, I do think the future of this is going to be a lot more technologist in marketing. But and two, like, I do wonder if there’s going to be more companies that choose to basically organize around, I’m like, digital like, hey, we’ll just have, like, a Chief Digital Officer or something, depending on the company size. It’s basically, I have technology and marketing, yeah? But aside from that, assuming it’s more of a traditional, which most companies still are, of marketing and technology separately, yeah, Brian, I guess I’m curious. Like, if you can think of any, like, specific examples that you’ve dealt with where, like, where there was conflict over, like, I’m thinking like maybe a technology decision, or a or just a general path forward, and, like, just any insight. So what was like a breakthrough moment for the teams, where, like, they could see each other’s perspectives, or where somebody could jump in and help clarify any they didn’t come to mind.

Brian Schwartz 28:49
Well, I think look, because we work with a lot of technology companies at size, what we see all the time is there’s a lot of other competitive players, Legacy players. There’s something that they’re doing more replacing and a lot of times where there’s conflict or where something comes to head is when you’re doing something to the stack. The big example is a re platform. Right? If you’re re-platforming, it’s all hands on deck. Everyone in the organization, from the CEO to all the executive team, is really focused on the RE platform. So, like, that’s where you come back. It’s like, it’s bigger than technology and it’s bigger than marketing. It’s more about like, the emotional intelligence and the buy in of the executive team to all be on the same page and stop in the same direction. I think when you have problems and conflict is when there’s no alignment, right? There’s no alignment from the top. They’re not stomping in the same direction. There’s ego involved, right? Things that make it so there’s no uniformity in decision making. To me, that’s where I’ve seen problems come up when it comes to, you know, like every platform or something like that, yeah.

John Wessel 29:59
Speaking of. Re-platforming. I’m curious, since you’ve dealt with a lot of different companies, how often do you think companies needlessly replatform and how often do you think it’s actually the right? What a great question.

Brian Schwartz 30:11
I think every two years, right? I think I’m gonna rephrase the question, how many companies are currently in a digital transformation, right, like, and then re platforming comes into that, right? It’s like, I don’t know, we think it’s another McKinsey style, like, I think 75% of companies are currently in a digital transformation, right? So, like, when are you not in a digital transformation? When are you not re-platforming? Just

John Wessel 30:34
like construction of like

Brian Schwartz 30:38
structure that you know who benefits the most from these big consulting firms, right? They benefit the most of it. They constantly have work, because everyone’s constantly going through a digital transformation. I forgot who I was talking to the other day, but they said, Hey, we’re done. Like, like, we finished our digital transformation. It was five years ago. We’re at the end of it. Like, we’re good, we’re transformed. I’m like, wow, that’s like, the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that when super chance innovation were done and it was successful, yeah, yeah,

John Wessel 31:07
yeah, good for them. I think just my quick take on that, I don’t feel like I have a good, a good number, per se, but I think there’s two interesting components to it. One is when I, like, I got to talk to this company the other day, and they got acquired, like, a year or two ago, and then they’d been like, 3030, something years prior to that, and they just got by for so long with, like, no budget, like some homegrown things, like a Couple developers, and really, like, just in an impressive way, made a ton of money, like, in their little in their niche, and I just have a ton of respect for that. When people are able to do that, however, like, fast forward, they’re still running that way. And they were in one of the, one of the areas impacted by one of the hurricanes this season, and they had a, I think it was over a week downtime, which was like a multi billion dollar like problem for them. So it’s just interesting in the year of marketing, and probably in a lot of ways, like, constantly thinking about ROIs, but when you think about, like, this transformation of the tech piece of it, like, you can get like so far, right? And it often takes some kind of event for these companies to decide to do something, but what and then, but we just thought it wasn’t worth it. Like, yeah, probably, like, over 20 years, if they got by for this and they had one event, like, even though it was, like, a million dollar event, it’s probably still working.

Brian Schwartz 32:36
I think the other thing too, of is with the bigger corporations, is, the question is, is the CEO still the CEO by the time the quote, unquote transformation timeline? Yeah, right. Because, like, you might have completely new management, and then it’s like, do you start all over? Do you stop? What do you do with so called transformation, yeah,

Eric Dodds 32:59
yeah. When you think about a data stack. So let’s just talk about size in the context of size, right? So you go in and you have Executive Advisory across a number of different functions in the organization, in a tech stack obviously impacts, or let’s say, a data stack specifically impacts a number of those functions. How does size approach that? Like, how do you, you know, go into a later stage company and let, I’ll just paint a scenario for you. So let’s say we have, you know, some data, but we’re not drowning in it. We have, you know, some stack, but we really aren’t using the data to sort of drive the customer experience, or, you know, or drive decision making at a scale that would have, you know, sort of step wise impact on the business. So from a technology standpoint, of course, there’s people there, but like, where do you start? From a stack standpoint, yeah, I mean, usually,

Brian Schwartz 33:58
how good is your data and how accessible as your data, right? Everyone’s like, I have data. But then it’s like, okay, cool. Like, what could you do with it, right? And then, like, the next evolution is, okay, do you have data? Then do you need, like, a customer data platform? Like, do you need a CDP to be able to actually leverage that data? Can you access it from a snowflake? How do you actually get to the data? So my first question to everyone is, like, what’s the story with your data? Like, like, is it structure? Is it unstructured? Do you have access to it? Like, how are you using your data? And then the next question is, okay, like, let’s say it’s all pretty good. And the question is, okay, how are we then going to put the marketing head on, use that data to really focus on customer lifetime value or interact with and our custom customer acquisition right, and be able to really hone in on personalization, marketing orchestration, being able to really get our customer LTV up exponentially, and then figure out a way. Use data to make better informed decisions. On the acquisition side, when it comes to where our organic and paid media spend is going, makes

Eric Dodds 35:07
several senses. And in the late stage companies, I mean, you see a number of these, what state are they generally in? When size engages them, you know, and because, and part of the reason I want to bring like I bring this up is I think you two best when you brought it up earlier, Ryan, when your head’s down day to day, right? You know, I’m crowding it out. I’m trying to do good at my job. I’m trying to advance my career. It can be hard to sort of zoom out and say, okay, like a larger perspective. And so a lot of times you can feel like, is every company like is their data is screwed up as ours is their stack and, you know, all that sort of stuff. You see, you have a very wide purview in these later stage high growth companies. What is it like? You know? Yeah, I delineate between

Brian Schwartz 35:52
consumer and Tech because we kind of play in both worlds. So on the consumer side, it’s not great. But here’s the thing, it’s also not great with the bigger enterprises too. So it’s not just a problem for the high growth companies. Now the solution set is different, right? Things like a Klaviyo or Shopify or, you know, the platforms for these smaller, more emerging companies are very different from what a tech stack could or should look like for a larger enterprise. So I think they’re both screwed up, but the solutions are a little bit different. For our technology companies, it’s probably the opposite. Their data is awesome, right? Like, like, they are literally selling a product based on customer data, like one of our companies, this company called signified free IPO company, what they do is they essentially take all of the different transactions that are happening for E commerce companies, and they essentially see 98% of shoppers across the US, and they’re able to identify fraudulent or abusive customers. The only way they can do that is by having a killer, you know, data stack and data support to be able to do that, but it’s fundamental for their business. So that’s where I kind of delineate. I think these consumer companies, d to c, what omni channel companies? That’s where you see problematic issues with the data. I think a lot of these technology companies are data sound. The question now is, how do you layer on things like Gen AI, right to be able to make the data a lot more useful? Like we have a company called Quantum metric. What they do is they follow the customer journey and identify digital friction along the way. So you know, right now there’s session replay. Someone has to go watch 2000 sessions, figure out problems that are having in 2000 sessions. How do you take Gen AI to essentially tell you what’s happening in all the sessions? You don’t have to go watch 2000 sessions. You’re taking all that data where you’re making it so much more useful for the end user to be able to then leverage that data in a way that’s most impactful.

Eric Dodds 37:47
Do you see a lot of tech companies, you know, who just say, like SaaS companies, right? So we’re providing software, you know, to some businesses just for all the pain points that they have. Do you see an increasing number of those productizing and monetizing data as a product or an asset, as opposed to just delivering a software product that people use to accomplish whatever testing you do or accomplish. And

Brian Schwartz 38:14
I think it’s a hybrid of both. Again, I think it depends on what the technology is and what the business is, if that’s a feasible solution, but I’ve definitely seen both. I definitely see companies like I have a company right now that I’ve known the CFO for a very long time. He comes from the family office world. You know, their whole business is focused on structured data, right? Is somebody put something in a Google spreadsheet or Word doc or something like that, and you actually have data there, but how do you get access to it? How do you be able to leverage it when it’s not in a centralized platform? So there are companies like that where, literally, data is their whole core infrastructure and business. And there are other companies where you know, it’s exactly what you’re saying. It’s truly a software SaaS product, but they’re leveraging data on top of that to be able to optimize their software sales offering. Yeah,

Eric Dodds 39:01
Yeah, it makes total sense. Okay, we would be remiss not to discuss AI. We have to talk about AI.

John Wessel 39:11
I mean, we track this. We’ve tried to see how far we can get into the show without talking. Man, that’s true in our I don’t think we’ve ever done a full show,

Eric Dodds 39:20
okay, John, you get the first question on AI,

John Wessel 39:23
I would be curious, because you’ve got such a broad view over a lot of different companies, like kind of this, what do you think the most overhyped part of A is, as far as application, because we’re talking about AI amongst a bug, like sales, ops, Like all these different things, maybe overhyped and underhyped will be fine, like, what, what is most over hyped for this application or for this group, and maybe under hyped for, what is the Under hype for?

Brian Schwartz 39:49
Well, I think overhyped is the entire category, right? AI is very broad in terms of the use cases and what you could actually leverage it. You know, I mentioned. And before the show, you know, I met a woman whose grandfather’s thesis in 1923 was on AI. So like, AI has been around for a really long time now. Evolution is very interesting. I think all of this craziness of AI started when people actually saw what open AI could do with chat GPT, like, like the examples and the use cases of literally, like language translation and tutoring and things that you’re like, Oh my God. Like, this is crazy. It could totally take over. Now, are we there yet? Probably not, right? Like, I don’t think people are using, let’s talk in the consumer versus business. I don’t think consumers are using AI on a day to day basis to be able to better their life. Now, I mean, we saw what Elon must launch with this robot like that is something that consumers could use, using AI and robot robotics to actually better their life. Like my wife would be the happiest person if a robot folded her laundry or our laundry every single day, right? Like that would be a win for everybody. So I think that’s kind of overhyped, which is, like, it’s just such a catch all for everything right now, and it doesn’t really have use cases for everything that people are actually using. I think the under utilized aspects, which we’ve kind of previously talked about, which is just different business units that can leverage, AI that you just don’t really think about like, like customer call center, for example, like, you know someone who’s leading customer call center who’s been seeing staffs of, you know anywhere between 200 you know, 5000 people who are answering phones all day, who are now being succumbed. But hey, I could actually have voice AI do this, and you don’t actually need a person to do it, and it sounds just like a person, and they’re like, coming back to like, the conversation like a marketer versus a technologist. You know, at least the market is a little savvy with tech, because they’re, you know, it’s so critical to their business unit, the question with a customer call center person is outside of whatever their CRM sales force is to be able to track customer call centers. Like, how savvy are they when it comes to, like, AI, like influencing and potentially, you know, changing the way that work is done in their business unit. You know, I think they’re getting a really big like learning right now, and the companies that I see are doing the best with it for our conversation before is when that customer call center lead P and L owner reaches out to their CTO or CIO, and they’re like, Please help me, partner, please help me figure out, like, how to best optimize my business area. So I kind of think that’s the understated part. When we look at businesses and we look at kind of low hanging fruit, where, in that case, you could save a bunch of money with voice AI, you can have just as good of a customer experience like there’s a real business case for it that’s totally under leveraged and under utilized, because it just comes from a Legacy Leader who doesn’t really understand that category. But the best ones are the ones who are educating themselves, partnering with people who are much smarter than them to be able to really take advantage of it and be at the forefront of AI for their business unit going forward.

John Wessel 43:06
And the other part of that too, I think specifically in that call center, and I think ops, I’d say ops in general, right? And then there’s other things, like, maybe a call center that is a great, under hyped area. It’s interesting too. Like, it’s not just like the people on the teams, it’s also the tool. Like, if you like, I worked one of my first data roles in a call center. And, you know, like some you can get, like, some of these, some of these tools, not there’s some neat ones too. But like, some of these tools are like, you know, 3030, years old, and you have this big implementation of some kind of call center software. It’s not like, it’s not Salesforce, like, Salesforce is clearly kept up with technology. So they’re your own sales force, just to give an example, like being kept up, and they can integrate with things or whatever. But if you’re stuck on this, like, you know, you got, like, multiple sites connected together, all this, like, complex networking, and you’re in, like, a physical call center is like, oh, let’s just slap air on top of this. Like, from a technology standpoint, yeah, like, it doesn’t work. Whereas in marketing and sales, you’re like, Oh, cool. Like, you know, Salesforce agent for, like, this new thing, and we can, like, kind of call them and they’ll implement it, or get, you know, focus on what an implementer and, like, we can do

Eric Dodds 44:18
it. So, yeah, time to read the platform.

John Wessel 44:22
So it is interesting, though, like, just how things have evolved because and we take for granted. I think sales and marketing tends to be like, close to, you know, like, more technologically advanced. But there are, yeah, many areas that, like, maybe could have been that way, but because there’s no like, sales force, so build on or whatever, like they aren’t, yeah, yeah. I

Brian Schwartz 44:40
would just add to like, when I was at Expedia, we had, like, a tier one, a tier two and a tier three call center, right? Like, agent. So no in tier one are taking those, like, basic questions. The tier two is more advanced. The tier three is like, Hey, Brian just got an email from some dude yelling at me because he found me on LinkedIn about Expedia. Scary is sending them to the tier three customer call center, person. The reality is, I think with things like voice AI, like, it could replace the tier one call center agent, but it’s actually making the tier two and tier three call center agents more impactful. I think that’s something we don’t realize. We think of it as, like, it’s replacing a job or a call center, like it’s replacing a person, but it’s not just doing that. It’s actually making your employees better and more impactful at their job. Because in theory, all of the small things, or even the small things, all the things that the person is calling in for and the issues are already self identified before it actually gets to that call center agent. So they’re just much better at their job when they’re having a conversation with the customer.

Eric Dodds 45:44
Brian, do you work with any AI tech companies? Or, like, you know, have you looked at any AI tech companies? Yeah, like, from a SaaS standpoint,

Brian Schwartz 45:53
Yeah, we have a handful. Okay, so

Eric Dodds 45:55
One of the questions I had is on the cogs side of the business, because, you know, it’s not cheap to rent GPU space. Earlier, we talked about, you know, supply and demand and so getting costs under control for an AI company, or even, you know, if you just think about a business that’s trying to implement AI, let’s say it’s, you know, a large corporation, right? We want to implement AI. You gotta look at the options. It’s like, okay, well, to do this at scale actually isn’t cheap. In a straightforward manner, can you just speak to your perspective on the cog side of it, both from just a pure technology standpoint, right? Like, I want to go, you know, rent some APIs, or I want to, you know, sort of build some DIY based on, you know, something where I want to buy SaaS, and especially the companies that you work with, I just love to get an update on we’ve talked about on the show a couple times, but I don’t think, I think it’s been a while since we’ve talked about, like, how are the cogs going to work? Because we know it’s high impact. But to your point, you’d have to show ROI from the technology investment somehow, and companies have struggled to do that?

Brian Schwartz 47:01
Yeah, I think our best companies are either replacing costs, like they’re making it more affordable, or they’re driving incrementality in revenue, right? Like, I think that’s their pitch when it comes to the end user, as to why they used to use AI. So you know, one of our companies, for example, they take a product catalog from a retailer, then they use Gen AI to create upwards of 50,000 landing pages to help them organically win in Long Tail search on Google Crazy, right? But, you know, like, for a big retailer that should not be named, that’s a big electronics retailer, you know, they drive like 7% of site traffic to them. So, you know, that’s not a cogs thing, but that’s an incrementality in revenue and site traffic to ultimately drive, you know, real sales. So that’s one side of the equation. And then I think on your side of the equation is like, are we saving on some physical cost, right, or some cost that we’re spending that we don’t need to be spending on? I think that’s where, like that call center example, comes back up where, you know, like the cost. I’ll just give you an example. Like, the cost per minute with a live agent might be $3 or $2 for the retail or brand, but the cost using voice AI is 80 cents. So that, like, it’s a no brainer in terms of the business case. But then the question becomes, is, is the customer experience going to change at all, right? Because it’s like, if you think for some reason the customer is not going to have as good of experience, is it worth the extra dollar and 20 or 220 that you’re going to spend on that live person versus using AI,

Eric Dodds 48:35
yeah, yeah, that makes several sense

John Wessel 48:37
well, and I think on this topic, it is expensive compared to, like, servers based like, you know, compared to like, what we’re used to, right? It’s not expensive compared to people. And I think that’s where a lot of the hype is from, whereas I’m talking about hourly time, yeah, GPU time versus hourly people time still comes out ahead. I think of every scenario. But to Brian’s point, like, it’s like, did they? Because we’ve all, I’m sure at this point, I know I have had some frustrating experiences with automation and then even the AI operation. You know, I can tell that they’re using some kind of AI, but it’s annoying. And I want to start with, like, I’ve already read your Help Center. Like, that’s why I’m here. Contact us like this. I really want to name who this is, but I won’t. This was a very major technology brand that I’m dealing with, and their portal was broken, because I’m a partner with them, the report was broken, and I had, like, it was hitting contact us and pushed you through an AI agent first, and the AU, like felt, and then it’d be like, it went some kind of loop, and then I had to, like, grab a drop down to, like, fill in, like, something in the drop down, no drop down. And it was actually impossible to get in touch with their whole team. So I had to reach out to the consumer team, to get, like, transfer into the partners team, to talk to somebody and get figured out. It took like, four or five days. Like, that’s still really important.

Brian Schwartz 49:59
Topic, because, like, you know, they, the companies, think that they’re doing a great job by having you self-service and using AI to solve the problem. We don’t actually have to talk to someone. I think the reality is, most of the time it just doesn’t work, and they’re actually doing a terrible job in creating a poor customer experience. Like, the times I’ve talked to people. I think there was a case study in Corona with their call center on how many people they were able to service using AI and chat bot and all that stuff. But I’ve had experiences even with companies. I’ve advised big companies where, you know, the customer has a terrible experience because, like, I’ll pick on gopuff. I know they’re gonna hate me for this. I use scope off. My order was not delivered. There was no customer call center. They were so happy that they didn’t have a customer call center. I’m chatting, I’m chatting, I’m chatting. There’s no response. There’s no response. I finally got a response. By the way, it’s like 11 o’clock at night I go to bed. I finally got a response at 3: 15 in the morning from a physical human as to like, what happened with my order? And I still couldn’t call them. So like, of course, they’re my guys. I’m gonna keep using gopuff. I love them, but if I was any other customer, I’d never order from you again. Like, I couldn’t just call someone and figure out where my order is. It’s an awful customer experience. Yeah,

John Wessel 51:12
exactly. And even, and I can put my data hat on, even the tracking, isn’t it? Right? Imagine you’re like, AI agent. I can’t get to this group, and then even, like, rising up to the wrong group. So I’m wasting, like, somebody in another business unit’s time to get me transferred into this other group. So it’s horribly efficient. And even for the company, if I could just, like, reach the right person directly, yeah, we’re all efficient.

Eric Dodds 51:33
I will give another example on the positive side, and I’ll name the company because, you know, you, both of you are sort of, you know, have to be veiled on secrecy. I know you mentioned good enough, but so I was helping my wife with this little venture that she’s creating. And, you know, she creates a Squarespace site, and you know, a number of other things, you know, sort of getting doing the school thing going, and she tries to create a Google workspace instance through Squarespace. And that experience is generally, like, so smooth, and they’ve done a great job with that, and it just fails. And it gets into a crash group that’s, like, pretty inexplicable, you know. So I sit down and look at it, and it’s like, I can’t figure this out. And then I try to go log in through Google, you know, with the domain Eric, like, the page calls, like, inspection, oh. I mean, I was like, I was trying to figure everything out, right? And then you eventually get through, you try to log in with Google and reset the password and everything, and they’re like, Oh, this is actually, this is created by a reseller. So you have to go to the reseller. It’s like, oh, yeah, we Disney edition is Squarespace, right? So eventually it’s like, Okay, I can’t figure this out on my own, because, you know, Squarespace holds the key to this. And so I go through their support, and I end up with a chat, and it was really helpful, like it asked me a few questions, it pointed me to, like, the right documentation that didn’t explain everything, but gave me a few things to try. I tried the documentation, you know, the things in the documentation, it didn’t work. And then at the end of that journey, they said, Okay, you need to email someone from support. And I emailed some from support, and they like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I actually don’t care if it was AI or a real person, it felt like a real person. Yeah. And they’re like, you need to do this investing. And then it got resolved. And I was like, that was great. Like, yeah, it was really nice. And I’m sure that AI is all throughout that, but, like, I didn’t even think about that. It was just like, oh, it just felt natural that, you know, I’m sort of there. They’re pointing me to the right place, yeah, okay, Brian, we’re at the buzzer here. But I have one more question for you, and I’m just going to tell you right now. It’s a little bit of an unfair question, because if you talk to 2500 people, you have your life plan. But if you had to start a company, what problem would you try to solve, like, what problem space would you go after if you were just going to start a company and be the CEO of a company? So I

Brian Schwartz 53:58
I would never start a company and be the CEO of a company, but API is like helping people, and this is probably not going to be the answer you thought you were going to get, and it’s probably a little bit premature. But do you guys have dogs by chance?

John Wessel 54:15
I don’t. I don’t. Actually, I

Eric Dodds 54:17
have multiple kids, which is why

Brian Schwartz 54:20
multiple young children. I think my wife had this idea. So the thought was, can I help her commercialize it? I think 50% of people who have dogs care about the dog’s paws after they go for a walk, and 50% of people don’t care. So, like, let’s talk about other people that don’t care. The dog goes for a walk, gets dirty, disgusting, goes on the couch, goes to bed, whatever. 50% of people, like my wife, are like, Oh my god, this is the grossest thing in the world. So what do we do? What should I do? You know, I will poodle. He’s like, 12 pounds. I pick him up when I get back from a walk. I take these, like, wet wipes. I like, wipe the paws, and then he tries to. Me, and I’ve let him down eight tracks, like little paw prints, same with her thought, which I think is a great idea. So we’ll see if we can work to commercialize it and actually build something that’s like a contraption that is kind of like half golf ball cleaner for the paw. Or they can walk in and they can damp it half like Dyson hair dryer to immediately, like, make the paws like they’re getting groomed as fluffy as possible. And then the cool thing is, you know, what I learned is the paws are actually meant for the elements. So soap on an ongoing basis, actually not good for the paws, but being able to build some type of soap, like material that you can create a subscription product as well that goes into this contraption. So every two or three months you gotta refill it. So she had this idea for, like, three years and by the way, the reason I’m showing this idea is that everyone has ideas. It’s all about, can you actually do something? I’m okay with sharing it, because it’s like, okay, go build it, if you could build it. So like, three years ago, she had me reach out to an executive who just saw Dyson and I paid for a consulting call, and she’s like, this is great. You should do it like she gave some advice and guidance. And then my wife just never did anything. So this idea is kind of stuck in the back of my head. And now that I’m in Austin, one of my good friends who used to live in Hong Kong, who lives here, has a product development studio, so they actually build consumer products, and then my other good friend has literally financed most of the consumer companies here in Austin. So the three of us are kind of getting together and saying, Hey, should we, like, build this thing and find product market fit and sell it on Amazon and DTC and all that good stuff. Now the reality is not one of us could actually be the CEO and run it, because we all do 100 different things. So we’d actually bring in a C or so. It’s not your, hey, here’s a tech company, whatever, something that’s fun that we’re working on. I will leave you with two other ones that are probably more in line with what you were asking that I’m unfortunately never going to solve. But I think there are two big pain points that someone listening to your podcast would like to solve. I’m happy to help finance it. One is health insurance. So I had the best health insurance you could pay for at Expedia and DreamWorks through my employer’s health care. I do just as well, if not better. Now, in my kind of life, 2.0 and my health insurance is terrible. And the question is, why can I pay for that health insurance as an individual, independent contractor that I had at DreamWorks and Expedia? And what was crazy to me is, when I was in California during COVID, my wife was consulting, but she was on payroll as a consultant. So when she left, she was quite, unquote unemployed, but because she was on payroll and she left, not because of COVID, just because of her term. You know, when I was talking to Covered California, which is the one that does health insurance, you know, they’re like, Oh, do you have any unemployment income? And I’m like, Yeah, sure. So, you know, they’re like, Okay, here’s your new deductible, here’s your new cost, here’s what you get. I had to pay $3 a month for my insurance. I got 97% coverage, no deductible, no fees on medication. It was like the best insurance you could possibly get because of the Cares Act with COVID. So the government was funding that. So my question is, why can I essentially unionize 1090, nines, independent contractors, not the Uber or Lyft drivers of people who want to be this way because of tax purposes and want to own their own business to be able to buy that type of insurance. So that’s idea number one. And then the second idea is, I just think college education is flawed. You spend, you know, anywhere between $50 to $300,000 on college education. And you know, what do you get from it? I don’t know about you guys, what you studied in school. I studied political science and economics. I don’t use either of those right now in my career. I never have. And I think people go to school for three reasons. One is to get a job. Two is to go to more schools to get a job. Three is to kind of come of age and figure out who they are and do stupid stuff. And then I guess there’s a fourth which is like, society tells you and your parents sell you to. So my thought is like, could you essentially figure out some way to solve those four problems without going to college? And the idea is like, could you essentially create the equivalent, like a gap year where, and I guess this is very telling to this conversation topic where you create best in class education and things like data science, programming, engineering, digital marketing, things any company essentially needs, and be able to do that when you’re 19 years old in a rotational program in places like, you know, Sao, Paulo, Tokyo, Barcelona, so you know. And then the idea is that the big corporations who have now said you don’t need a college degree, like Google and Facebook can recruit directly from this program, but so can, you know, the small to medium business here in Austin, Texas that needs an engineer, digital marketer. So the thought is, look, you get a job. You come of age because you get to do stupid stuff in fun places around the world, and hopefully you may. Get a lead enough that it ticks the box that you don’t necessarily need to go to college to ultimately figure out what you’re going to do with your life. So if anyone wants to do either of those, I’m happy to support that my

Eric Dodds 1:00:12
My eight year old son was asking me about college because some of his cousins, you know, are sort of, you know, starting to look at college and all that. And this resonates with me because he was asking me like, you know, where do you think I’ll go to college? And without thinking, my gut response was, I hope that by the time you’re ready for that, college is a drastically different thing than just, you know, for your cousins. So everyone resonate with that,

Brian Schwartz 1:00:38
yeah, the last thing I’ll say is, I have a friend who, you know, is saving for college for his daughter. And he said, When it came time to go to college, he said, look, like you can go to college. I have no problem. Or I’ll give you 25,000 of the 200,000 now, and you can go start a business, and I’ll be here to support you, and we can learn along the way. And if the business is successful, we’ll keep investing more of your college fun and education into the business.

Eric Dodds 1:01:04
I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, Brian, this has been an incredible show. Thank you so much for giving us some time and keeping us posted on the various ventures. Sounds

John Wessel 1:01:14
good. Thank

Brian Schwartz 1:01:15
you guys. I really appreciate it.

Eric Dodds 1:01:16
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