- Intro since you're really the man,
I'm just a guest star
on your fucking show.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whatever Gary.
Good morning every one.
Thank you.
And welcome to Coffee & Commerce.
The show that intends to and our vision
is to push the commerce
conversation forward.
So we're super excited
to have Salesforce's
Chief Digital Evangelist
Vala Afshar with us today.
Thanks for joining us Vala.
- Vala...
- Great to be here.
- Vala, Vala, you and
I have been, you know,
real life friends.
We've interacted a couple of times,
unbelievable Twitter
buddies for a decade here.
So why don't you take
the first two minutes,
to take the floor and tell
everybody what that means
that what you actually do at Salesforce
and an even why don't we
even do two or three minutes
on your origin story of how you got there?
Because I think, you
know, knowing my audience,
which is obviously a high percentage
of the people watching here,
I think that'll bring some
value to the audience.
And then we'll get into some nitty gritty
of the State of The Union
from Zubin and I, and your perspective.
- Absolutely.
I went to school and studied
electrical engineering.
So I started my career
as a software developer
and an introvert, always
finding imposter syndrome,
happy to sit and just write code.
And, but eventually my career
led to running engineering
at a technology firm.
And then the CEO of the company said,
I wanna bring some discipline.
You have an engineering
and a service and supports
out of the house.
And this was a $500 million
annual revenue company.
And so he asked me to roll on services.
This was in 2003.
I had no idea what a CRM was.
I had no idea what tools
needed to run service.
So I researched a few of us
and we found this West coast company,
a couple of hundred people at
the time called Salesforce.
And we brought up into our company.
Salesforce helped triple
the size of my company.
When I joined Salesforce,
the company was a billion in revenue.
And I was the chief marketing
officer at the time.
And I ended up writing a book about CRM.
I ended up writing articles.
I fell in love with social.
You're the reason why I
fell in love with social.
- I didn't know that
I didn't know that.
I didn't know, please.
- So I'm a customer of
Salesforce at Dreamforce in 2011,
August, 2011.
Now I joined Twitter in 2011.
So at that time I've got a
couple of hundred followers
and I think a couple of
them were my parents.
So really I have no network.
I actually started so small.
You send a DM to me on the
first day of Dreamforce
saying, I'm gonna be at the keynote area.
I'd like to meet you.
Of course, I couldn't know,
I've been at the Trust Economy.
I've read your book that
I'm following you on Twitter.
But you have hundreds of
thousands of followers?
You are a verified account.
I have no idea, by the way to this day,
I have no idea why you
had the generosity to...
- I actually remember now.
I have a funny meeting.
I am funny.
I remember that event very clearly
because I wasn't on the main stage.
I was on a separate room.
And while I was prepping,
I was looking at everybody who
was talking about the event
and literally just being a gracious person
and saying, hello.
I like people.
- It's the first life lesson,
networking is about giving.
There was, I had,
I had shocked, that you
had shocked my system
that a celebrity thought leader
is just randomly wants to meet me.
Again I didn't have a footprint.
And so it was just
unbelievably surprising to me.
So I come and meet you.
And you asked me about my origin, my name.
And I'm like, I'm a refugee immigrant.
And you say to me,
so I tell them I was born in Iran.
There was a war I had
to immediately leave.
It was a crisis.
And the most disruptive
thing in your life,
whether you do it by choice,
or your force is leaving
your birth country.
And you said, listen, first of all,
you grabbed my arm and then
you roll up the sleeve.
Then you said, look at my goosebumps.
And then I'm looking, I'm like, Oh my God.
You connected with me
with such a visceral way
by grabbing my arm and
showing the goosebumps.
And you said,
my family immigrated in 1978 from Belarus.
And my family was at a borderline,
at a border and with military protection
and we have to butter
with flour for bread.
And that's the permission that we,
so it was a bag of bread
that saved my family.
- Let me clarify.
It's slightly different, but
you've got the genesis of it.
Israel and America traded wheat to Russia
to let some Jews out.
That was it.
like, you know, it's just,
- Unbelievable.
- Nonetheless...
- It's unbelievable.
That's when I realized...
- That hit you.
- The power of...
- It hit me.
Well, you know how often
I share your content?
I mean, you're masterful
at genuinely connecting.
I remember if you sent to
like a 15 second video to me
years after
- I remember that.
- The video was like,
I really like what you share on social
and I'm sitting there going
like what simple, brilliant, you know?
And when I say like connected with me,
like, you know, I don't,
I have your material around my house
that reminds me about the
grind, the work, the gratitude,
the mindset of giving
without expecting to get,
give, give, give seven times
before you make an ask.
I mean, these are like.
- And the key for everybody watching.
I know we're going a little high level.
You're Zubin, but I know you love it.
It's I love you, Vala,
'Cause you're hearing me,
'cause not ask, not take, not get, ask.
And then the real key is
give, give, give, give,
give, give, give, give, give, give, give,
ask person doesn't reciprocate.
And don't worry about it
because that's where people,
people fake give and then expect.
And they're devastated when they don't,
when they didn't even really give.
My belief is that giving is giving.
Sure, there's times to ask.
But if the person doesn't reciprocate,
all that giving I did,
did not require that
person to give back to me.
I gave for the sake of
giving, you know, the end.
And most people are crippled by...
- Hugely important.
- Huge.
It's why people don't give.
They're crippled.
And most people confuse
giving with manipulating.
God, so many people try to give to me
when they're full of shit.
They're trying to give me
something that I don't want
in return for me to
give something they want
when I have all the leverage.
- Absolutely, absolutely, see that,
And I don't know if it's
because us three immigrants
recognized that the world
doesn't owe you anything.
It's like that sense of entitlement
is what cripples entrepreneurs,
founders, business leaders,
especially when you
climb the success ladder.
Although I don't believe in ladders.
I think when you help people,
you become the ladder.
But at the end of the day,
this notion of the world
doesn't owe you anything.
If you want something, you work for it.
But I got to tell you that I
didn't have that realization
until my forties.
When I met you in 2011,
I was 41 years old.
So I don't know if it was my parents,
my teachers, my managers,
I had this silo mentality
and that silo mentality
was consume resources,
protect those resources and
extract as much value as you can
from those resources.
So I thought the
lifeblood of your success,
your company individual
was just capturing.
Now, by the way, at that time,
I'm a chief marketing officer.
I have hundreds of
people that work for me.
I have a hundred million dollar budget.
So I was actually doing a
decent job of collecting.
But it was the first
tweet, it was meeting you,
it was the book, the articles
where I realized the lifeblood
is movement of resources.
The reason why we have passion for sharing
is because I spent 40 years
learning and consuming knowledge,
resource knowledge, and then
using that to better myself.
But I didn't take the extra
step of sharing what I knew.
And I wouldn't be a chief
digital evangelist at Salesforce.
The first evangelists
that the company hired,
if it wasn't for the love of
sharing and I'm telling you,
you played, and I don't
say it enough, I should.
You played a massive
role in opening my eyes
in terms of the goodness of giving.
And you just did it so naturally,
like it's I remember
like it was yesterday.
- Thank you for that,
Zubin.
- I mean...
- Top train here.
Well, see you next time.
On Coffee & Commerce.
- No, look Gary,
you asked me a few episodes go.
You said, what is the one
thing that surprised me about
working at Vayner and about you frankly?
And one of the things that
I said is the appreciation
people have of you,
not people that are just getting started,
people that are established
people that are incredibly
successful in what they do
like Vala.
And I think that's kind of the
thing that's really important
for people that look
at you as a role model.
And say, what does he do?
How can I do it?
Right, everybody does it differently,
but in terms of the genuinity
and giving, giving, giving,
and ultimately if you
receive great, if not,
that's not a zero-sum game.
- It's not why you did it.
- You can continue exactly...
- It's why you did it.
- Yeah.
- But...
- Its, you go ahead.
- No, go ahead, finish your thought.
- I was gonna say like,
you know, it's funny
this first time I've ever
realized to this something like
Ooh, this is the insight
to why I don't talk
about my nonprofit work.
You know, like when I do
biz, like I talk about,
like when I do business, I'm like,
Hey, buy this baseball card that did it.
You know, I do business.
But when I'm giving, you know, I really,
so many people give back in charity
to position themselves as a good person.
It's a proxy.
It's a strategic move.
They're not given for the sake of giving.
They're giving because it's
gonna make them look good.
Oh, you're a great person.
Oftentimes hiding something bad.
You know, so like, it just
literally just right now,
I'm like, right,
this is the same fucking
reason that I don't,
that I'll go there occasionally,
but it's just not my normal state.
Listen, we've gotten very high level
in the first 15 minutes.
I want to really go.
I want you to kind of
take control here, Zubin,
Salesforce such a real
player in this space.
Let's go in with some tactics.
What questions do you
have in mind for Vala?
- Yeah, so look,
we talk about e-commerce
obviously all the time.
We talk about Omnichannel, we
talk about all these things.
That's our area of expertise.
That's where we focus
and we want to just bring
different voices into
the conversation, right?
We're continually talking about Shopify
and we have a great
relationship with them.
Vala at Salesforce and
Salesforce Commerce Cloud,
they have a different type of client.
They have different types
of clients, frankly.
And so it's great to hear
from different perspectives.
What we see in the
marketplace is that there is
kind of horizontal growth,
vertical growth happening
in the marketplace.
And it's just great for our
audience to be able to hear
from experts like Vala in
the space about a few things,
one, content, right?
Gary talks about content all the time.
Vala is supposed know a lot of content,
but Vala writes a lot of content as well.
He's got his own show.
Talk to us about content and
how that has actually impacted
your business at Salesforce.
And then the other thing, obviously
we want to get into,
- Let's say right there,
let's say right there, let's
say right there for a second.
- Yeah, Content is, you know,
so I do research.
I'm a speaker.
I'm active on social and I write
and I write mostly for ZDNet
because it has a technology audience.
They're owned by CBS Interactive.
So When I stopped traveling
in the first week of March,
I decided that I'm gonna
write more, you know,
I'll log into Twitter before, you know,
in February, Twitter Analytics.
And it's just, 70 million
impressions every 28 days,
I've written 65 articles since March.
I'm writing three, four articles a week,
and now it's 150 million
impressions every 28 days.
So people are consuming the content.
No question.
Now as far as you know, commerce,
we started doing scenario
planning in late February,
Salesforce, working
with, you know, partners,
customers, employees,
partners like Accenture,
Deloitte, PWC.
We want to bring some experts
in terms of understanding
the impact of pandemic.
Because we've never in our lifetime,
have gone from centralized
to distributed digital model.
So this construct is
completely new to all of us.
And I will say, you know,
adopting a beginner's mindset is critical.
'Cause I don't believe there
are experts of tomorrow.
It's just, there's this
new norm, next norm
is gonna be vastly different.
And for many reasons.
So the scenario planning
led to us believing that
we could be in the state for three years,
18 months to three years
short, short, short window,
18 long window, three, three years,
meaning in an absence of
doing 67 million tests a day.
In the absence of herd immunity.
In the absence of
automated contact tracing,
not manual or zero.
And then vaccine,
you're gonna have two more factors
that define discretionary spend.
At any level, individual to big business.
Prior COVID discretionary
spend had relatively
wasn't the main criteria
in terms of how you spend
your hard-earned dollars.
In the climate we are today,
where you have a health crisis,
you have an economic crisis,
you have a race crisis.
And frankly you have a
lack of leadership crisis,
So there's a trust deficit.
Like Gary talked about, you know,
the fine line between
manipulating and inspiring
and that fine line is
defined by your intent.
Your border of motivation.
And today, right now in this country,
people don't trust institutions.
They don't trust leaders.
At the highest level, the
leadership is as invisible
as the virus itself right now.
And that's why we're one of
the worst performing countries
in the world in terms of combating.
So in these three years means companies
that can remove friction,
knowing convenience always wins.
And understanding that
the two other criteria
on top of relevance is safety.
Like I'm a father of three,
I'm not going to a movie theater.
I'm not going to a mall.
I'm not going to,
unless I understand that the
safety measures are in place.
Social distancing, wearing a mask,
cleaning the environment.
So all of this means that in my opinion,
we've witnessed probably
five years of social
and cultural transformation
just in the last five months,
five years of transformation.
Now, if you look at US retail,
in terms of just e-commerce,
we went from about eight to
15% of total retail commerce
being digital, and it took 10 years
to get that doubling effect.
I wouldn't be surprised
if we encounter 2020,
where digital commerce
is 30% of total retail.
So you've looked at 10 years
of acceleration of adopting
digital commerce, contactless payments,
order online, pickup curbside, you know,
all of these measures to ensure safety.
And the last thing by the way
is it's not just safety.
It's accessibility.
There's certain businesses
that can't open, frankly.
And you've seen a lot of States
not going back to phase one,
given the explosive, we had
71,000 positive cases yesterday.
That was a record.
According to Dr. Fauci,
we might enter August
with a hundred thousand new cases a day.
Now what that means is
that if you're a business
and you're not investing in commerce,
you're not removing friction.
You're not taking advantage of the mindset
where safety and accessibility
is now really driving discretionary spend.
You're gonna be out of business.
Now, fortunately for companies like yours
and my companies like mine,
folks that are pioneering, you e-commerce
both on the BDB and BDC side.
And really taking advantage of innovation,
like machine learning,
that powers that personalization at scale,
that's taking commerce to a level
where you don't feel
like they've sold to you.
The advice is like a
Netflix recommendation
or a Spotify song.
It's like, yeah, I do need this.
It's amazing how the science
of understanding an individual
embedded in commerce with
the power of community
where word of mouth and
social can really drive.
You're gonna see commerce
is gonna be a really
a do or die capability.
I don't care what size business.
I don't care what geography.
I don't care what industry.
Now the sad part is I was talking to a CEO
of a $500 million company
yesterday, yesterday.
And she said,
I had to shut off my e-commerce
because my supply chain backend
couldn't keep up with the demand,
still were missing on our promise
and it's affecting our brand.
And I'm like I can't,
she was so frustrated
that she's running a half
a billion dollar company,
but she doesn't have the complete view
of the commerce business.
Understanding that
if you don't integrate
with your back office,
if you don't understand
your persona of your buyers
and you're not adapting.
Like I'm a guy that buys, you know,
black, gray, you know, blue clothing.
So when I come to your commerce side,
if you don't have my buying
behavior in the past,
and you start showing
me yellow, red, pink,
just understanding male, extra
large and color preference,
and you sort the content based
on my prior purchase history,
you're gonna have two order of magnitude
in terms of improving
shopping cart abandons
and increasing your
retention and acquisition.
So again, I felt so bad to the CEO
because some people feel
like, ah, tweaking a website,
that's it, that's the Congressman
and you're ready to go.
And they don't realize that
there's a science to this.
And the science is
getting more sophisticated
and you're gonna lose market share.
If you don't understand
that speed relevance,
personalization at scale
powered by intelligence
is the only way you can compete in weight.
And that's why Amazon's market share
is more than the 10 retailers
that compete with combined
combined.
So, anyway, sorry, that was a long answer.
But (indistinct) that commerce is vital
- We are,
it's so vital that if you sell something
and you don't spend 80%
of your mental energy
to be the best in the
world, in your sector,
on the commerce e-commerce side of it,
you're completely misunderstanding
the moment that we live in.
You're misunderstanding, you know,
because it doesn't go
backwards to your point,
whatever one day, when the
data's a little clearer
COVID has done to expand and accelerate,
whether it's three years
or 30 years or five years,
it's clearly something.
You have to be completely
asleep to think it's not.
More importantly, it's a hockey stick.
It's not like we go back to
real life that we all knew
on April 16, 2021.
And then all of a sudden, of
course, there'll be a decline.
If you're allowed to go to the store,
you're gonna buy something
that you're not buying
on a computer right now.
But forever, right now, I see
everybody in the comments.
I wanna read these.
Please leave a comment right now on social
or on the scream you're in,
on something you bought
during COVID on e-commerce
that you already now know,
you will never go back
to buying in a store.
Please put hashtag never going
back so I can see them all.
Hashtag never going back and
then list or link or picture
the item, or write the item
that you have now switched
your behavior forever.
Not, when we... forever.
So for every entrepreneurs watching
this, isn't like, Oh, I wanna
add this on for this time.
I see somebody who like,
Oh yeah, Gary, I need this
now for this time.
No, no, this is not for this time.
It's forever.
It's forever.
- It is forever.
- My dad who's fought me so hard.
Like we got into a huge
argument three years ago
'cause he wanted people to
front the shelves of the store
during the day.
So it looked presentable,
which was hurting us.
'Cause you only had so much for payroll
because we were not getting packages out
as fast as I wanted.
And it was a fight.
It was, when I say fight,
it was a verbal jousting that,
that led to me gonna a
place, I'm like, look,
and this is why the business has declined
since I've been gone,
like really like hurt feelings, right?
He literally.
- I know how much you love your dad.
- The most.
- So, spirited debates, are hard.
- I was only coming because I love him.
And I'm like, okay,
you're gonna lose market share here.
You're fighting for a front
that doesn't exist anymore.
That's declining 25% a year,
regardless of what you do.
I could fucking show back up in the store
and be there 12 hours a day.
And people are gonna come
and take selfies with me
and buy a bottle of wine
and we're still gonna fucking decline.
And now he literally told
Brandon my best friend
who runs the store for the last,
with me the whole time and independently
for almost the last 10 years,
he literally says things like,
I don't even give a shit.
And it's like, he just,
he's learned.
Like it's, the ship has sailed.
I'm trying to convince him
to turn the second floor
of the store into a sports card store.
I'm not joking.
- So look, the...
- Listen, 96% of discretionary spend
go into like seven buckets.
How to move, where to live, what to eat,
what to wear, how to
entertain, how to learn,
how to heal.
96% of spend goes into
these seven categories.
All of these categories are
gonna be impacted by commerce
because it is about removing friction.
And again, companies, I
keep mentioning Amazon,
they spent $2 billion just to go from
48 hours to 24 hour prime.
So you're gonna speed
and personalization are gonna be key.
The other thing I want
to say is that, you know,
forward thinkers, I view
your Gary as a futurist
because comments you've made about content
and social and digital marketing
where it easily in some
instances, a decade ahead.
And so when I think about
listening to Elon Musk
talk about this code freeze
on autonomous vehicle,
today, my relationship in a car
when I get in the car is purely operator.
A hundred percent of the
time I'm driving the car.
My son is 10 years old.
When my son gets his license,
seven, eight years from now,
the relationship for him in
a car is not an operator.
It's an explorer, it's a traveler.
It's a student.
When he gets older business person,
natural language processing
and voice enabled digital assistants
that are driving commerce
for some of our most advanced
Salesforce customers, me
You're gonna talk to a
headless commerce platform,
your dashboard,
and as you're driving and you're
getting close to Starbucks
and that's where you get your coffee,
the system is gonna recommend,
do you want your latte?
You're two miles away.
You say, yes, you have heads up display.
You have voice.
So it's very safe.
And by the way, by the time my son,
we're at level four, level five autonomy.
So you can go to sleep and go to places.
What people don't realize is that
this is your remote control for life.
Your second biggest screen
is gonna be in your car.
Because the average adult is in a commute
one and a half hours a day.
Now that may change because of COVID.
And you'll be able to work from home
because of the cultural
shift that we've witnessed.
so the fact that you can.
- Or...
Or it will become so pleasant
for you to work in your car.
- Yes.
- Once it becomes that,
it doesn't look the way it looks now.
I can't wait.
You know how much I love
flying across country
in my very comfy lay
down first class seat,
working for four hours,
nobody bothered me.
I might just go to a
baseball card store in Ohio,
five hours away.
So I can work in my car for
five hours and enjoy myself.
I mean, people don't get...
- Absolutely.
- People don't get it...
- And in commerce...
- Real quick on this thought,
because I wanna drill this home.
Do you understand that
this is like fucking
out of a fucking Sci-Fi
film for our grandparents.
When they were 16,
do you understand that this
is fucking Star Wars shit.
And we sit here
- it is.
- And this is gonna be a pager.
This is gonna look like a
pager to all three of us
and everybody watching in 20 years.
Like a fucking pager.
- Absolutely.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Now remember NASA last year celebrated
the 50th year anniversary of
putting a man on the moon,
all of the computing power
they used to put a man on the moon.
This has 1 million times
more the processing
and memory power.
So in not quite in my lifetime,
but in my father's lifetime,
all of NASA has computers,
so you know what that means is, you know,
humanity now has a
supercomputer in their pocket.
But at the same time, I want recognition.
I was invited to a UN event
December of last year,
but Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee,
the inventor of the web and
the inventor of TCPIP protocol,
which is the internet.
And celebration for UN
was, in December last year,
it's the first time we crossed
the 50% of humanity
accessing the internet.
Right now,
one in two of the 7.7 billion
people on in the world.
They don't even have access to internet.
So, countries like India...
- By the way,
forget, I knew where you were about to go.
And I want to just jump in here,
people in America,
one of the reasons I got so passionate
about the All In Challenge when COVID hit
was people don't have excess food.
You go to inner cities
and very low income areas
in this country.
These kids, their escapism
was school and the YMCA.
They're sitting at home.
People are like, Oh, they
need to be homeschooled.
These kids don't have fucking internet.
- 30% Of K-12 in the U S
doesn't have broadband access.
So, you know, it's,
12% of adults in the U S
don't have internet access,
which was shocking to me.
Canada has more internet access
and mobile access than US.
So there's a lot,
we're privileged the fact that
we're doing this right now,
the fact that, you know,
we're technologists,
we have to be mindful that COVID,
and even prior to COVID
there are so many individuals
that just don't have access to technology.
Like we do.
And it's folks like yourself,
with your generosity,
and the fact that you're
always trying to educate
and inspire people to understand that,
be grateful for what you have right now.
And give as much as you can.
So anyway, sorry, sorry.
Sorry, Zubin.
I know you have an agenda.
- No, there's absolutely
no need for me to jump in.
This is fantastic.
Just one thing to mention.
So a lot of what you're
talking about right now,
like everything sum it up.
It's consumer behavior, right?
Technology's shifting consumer behavior.
Consumer expectation is shifting.
People that don't have
access to that technology
are getting left behind.
So they need access to
that technology, right?
Because as our consumer,
as our behavior changes,
then now you look at the
people that are in the audience
that are listening,
that have online stores,
they have their products in retail.
What do they need to do?
The fact of the matter
is you need to evolve.
Every single person that's
in the chat is a consumer.
The interesting thing is
you talk to a lot of people
that are either selling online
or they're selling in retail, whatever,
and the most common sense
things they don't do,
because they don't put themselves
in the chair of the consumer.
Even though they're a consumer,
they buy other people's products.
But when it comes to their products,
they don't think about that.
- And, and
you have to balance that with not creating
a focus group of one.
Right? So,
- Absolutely.
- I think so much of my
success as I've navigated
around the consumer is
I don't have any beliefs
when I have my business hat on.
Meaning like I don't want to make slime,
but nine year old girls do,
like, by the way,
I actually started
talking about sports cards
one year after I decided
there was something there.
Because I spent an entire
year educating myself
and triple checking with myself,
am I trying to force this to happen
'cause I loved it.
Or is this actually
just another observation
like social media, the
internet, you know, it was,
Zubin to your point, not only
looking at your own behavior,
but what so many people in
the chat make a mistake of,
overall when the watchers
listens to this later
is they impose their points
of view on the world,
on the market and they get destroyed.
My complete neutrality on it,
other than what I observe
has completely completely impacted me.
By the way, let's get very better.
I drank no alcohol in
high school and college
'cause I was completely not into it.
Yet my first business was a wine business.
And I'm one of the most
public figures in social
in this 15 year window.
And I share nothing about
my personal life, nothing.
Had I not been into this,
I would not have social media accounts.
On the record, had I not
been a communications guy,
a marketing guy, a media guy,
I would probably not have social media
because I would have nothing to post,
because I wouldn't post my family
the way that 95% of
people do and they like.
- But Gary, do you know why
you have so much in common
with autonomous vehicles like Tesla,
because you know what
signals to pay attention to.
You get a shitload of noise.
When we drive in a car,
when I'm sitting there driving
in the car, I see the tree,
I see this, I see the sky,
whatever the vehicle drives,
It knows what signals to pay attention to.
Not the noise.
Same with you.
Same with people in the chat.
Like people tell you shit all the time,
but the key is understanding
what signals matter
and which ones do you do something about?
- Yeah, and as complicated
as autonomous vehicles are,
there were only four building blocks.
There's the sensor building blocks.
So you are, your sense in response.
Then there's the analysis
decision and actuation.
And the actuation is
left, right, fast, slow.
It's actually very simple logic.
But you put that together.
When you look at the tech
stack of a company like Tesla,
and which, by the way,
all future businesses are
gonna be built like Tesla,
the modularity, the ability
to send some response.
It's your humility that you
have and the beginner's mindset
free of prejudice, really
hungry, really curious,
admit when you're wrong,
adjust and sense, again,
market trends, that's in your DNA.
And that's why I said,
you're one of the most
prominent futurists.
I've never heard you
call yourself a futurist,
but in my mind, you're a futurist.
And in this space,
I see a lot of folks
innovating in this space,
COVID commerce, the
human mind, for example,
processes an image 60
times faster than text.
So if you've got commerce folks
thinking about augmented
reality and interactive three D,
companies that are building commerce,
where you can take the,
like a key or putting
furniture in your store,
you take lockdown technology
and your iPad you scan your room.
And then you placed furniture in your room
with different color palettes
and the exact size and fit appears.
You're getting 66% more engagement.
You're getting 40% more conversion.
You're getting 35% less returns.
Sooner the statistics that
drive the success of eCommerce
is being accelerated by visual commerce,
by machine learning and deep
learning in very simple.
Today simple, began Sci-Fi five years ago,
but it really is here now.
So advice to entrepreneurs
who are listening and watching
two things, don't disqualify yourself
if you're going to solve
an unsolved problem.
Again, there are no experts.
Like I see so many people worried about
are they qualified to do this thing.
But it's an unsolved problem.
And in the commerce space,
there's a lot of opportunities
for people to innovate.
And the second thing is stay teachable.
This space is moving
really fast, really fast.
So the most important
skill that you can have
is you've got to read, you got write,
you've got to attend conferences.
You've gotta be active on social.
If you're an introvert,
it's difficult for you to create content,
engage at least watch and observe,
you can watch your Coffee With Commerce.
That's another example of
why you should stay teachable
because the world two,
three years from now
is gonna be far different, far different.
In this space.
And by the way, it's
not just consumer side
because I've got, I think
there's $4 billion of Commerce.
80% of that is B2B.
It's all, every business,
every brand wants to get
close to the consumer.
You're gonna find this great
awakening on the B2B side
that says, my God,
we need more investment
in content and content.
'Cause you find that moment of truth.
You better have something that
adds value to your end user.
Whether it's a business buyer or consumer.
Speed to value is how
you define relevance.
And without relevance,
you can't achieve growth.
Speed to value.
Can you cooperate value
at the speed of need?
And you don't get to
define the speed of needs
to your customer.
And I'm telling you digital natives,
you all three of us
are digital immigrants.
We weren't born mobile,
social, in the cloud.
My 10 year old is a
digital native, all he,
I mean, he knows more about
surfing and connecting
than I did when I was 30 or maybe 40.
So you have to recognize a
third of humanity right now
is 18 years or younger.
The world is gonna be Gen
Z and digital natives.
And man, if you can't connect with them
at the right time on the right
channel, to the right person,
with the right content,
to that digital native world,
you're a dead business,
your dead business.
52% of Fortune 500 has
disappeared since year 2000.
So don't think this is
like small businesses
that are immune.
The biggest businesses in the world.
Half of them have died in the
last, in the 21st century.
Every 10 business day, accompany
falls off the SMP 500 list.
No one is immune to disruption.
And if you ignore commerce,
you're a dead business.
In my humble opinion.
- So let's lean into
the teachable moments.
Totally agree, Seth, let's
drop in some questions.
We've got about 10 minutes left.
Let's just jump into
questions from the audience.
- I so meant to just listen
to Gary the whole time.
So I apologize.
This was an opportunity
for the teacher to learn,
the teacher to give to the students.
And I just talked too much.
So I apologize.
- You really didn't what was fun for me
and why I was saying
unusually quiet myself is
you're a very excited
communicator like I am myself.
And you're touching on things
from a macro technology standpoint
that I often take for granted,
because I'm trying to make it
so practical for everybody,
but what you did.
And I was listening and I
was reading the comments.
What you did is what I ended up.
You know, it's so funny.
I always want to go super practical.
And then I always get into
macro because I'm like, fuck,
we can't fix this sink
unless we fix the well.
And if I don't get them to
be not insecure anymore,
they're never gonna fucking
do this shit anyway.
And what I think you
did in a technology way,
which used to be more of what
I used to do as you know,
is you're setting up
the framework of like,
you do understand that
this is how I interpreted
what just happened.
Hey, everybody,
you do understand that
this is hasn't even started
and everything we're actually
playing with right now
is minor leagues.
So if you're worried about debating,
even going in on e-Commerce,
you're gonna wake up in 10
years and get fucking smacked
because, because it's...
- Thank you for the summary.
That's exactly what I meant to say.
- Zubin, take it away.
- Let's do a skiBum 1130 asks,
how do you adapt the maintain
old school customers?
- By over-communicating
to old school customers
about the changes you're
making and maybe even keeping
some of your old tactics just for them.
We do this all the time in my companies.
We change.
Somebody wants to be grandfathered
in it's less profitable
because we changed, but we
want to retain the customer.
So even though we've gone full,
we now communicate on Slack.
We may have three clients still on G chat.
Or even though we don't do free shipping
in New Jersey anymore with Wine Library.
Now you got to buy the
library pass, Amazon prime.
You know, now we still
keep three customers
that we did free shipping in 1999.
You're willing to adapt
to keep a little sliver.
Too many people take the
philosophy of the new change
and they burn the ocean with it.
When all you needed to do
was a piece seven people,
not scalable, but very consumer centric.
Should I really, I really liked that.
Can we clip that?
I've never really talked
about it that way.
And it's actually very, clear
to me how much I do that
and how important it is.
- Now, take that on a tactical level.
- And good companies understand
the total lifetime value
of a customer.
So there's always exception based.
And this isn't a light switch.
This is a dimmer.
You know, you don't turn off your,
you gotta,
I always go to Gary's,
the reason you love your parents
is because they loved you first.
Just get, keep continuing to give the love
to your good customers.
Be flexible right now,
empathy, flexibility,
generosity is what will define your brands
for the next 10 years.
People judging you right now.
- We can use the 3,700 other cliche,
great words that I love that you love.
It is blindly consumer centric.
It is blindly consume...
there is no world I live in
that any my thought process
doesn't think why this is good for them.
I don't even have the gear
to think about in the micro
or the operations, what's in it for me,
I'm aware that if I live
for what's in it, for them,
that everything else will turn out okay.
One of the number one things I recognize
in the first two meetings
I had with Zubin,
as he considered to sell his company to me
versus somewhere else,
was he had so much knowledge
and communication capability
and wants and needs in him.
And that I knew one of the biggest things
that I could bring to him was giving him
far more exposure than he had had.
I am allocating an ungodly amount of time
to this fucking show, you know,
Coffee $ Commerce for two reasons.
Number one, Zubin.
'Cause this is kind of what
I signed up for in my mind,
because I knew
it was important to him.
- cheers to you.
- And number two, for
the fucking 3000 people
that are watching right now
that instead of them
buying some bullshit ebook
for $4,000 about e-commerce
because everyone's coming in
that they're getting all of this for free.
Three, I know in some way, shape or form,
that that will be good for me,
whether that's good for
me in his grandfather,
Zubin telling him those legacy
story of Gary V you know,
or in that, you know, ginger
beloved in this audience buys,
you know, from Wine Techs every
day, which I think she does,
or, you know, Vicky Jay in here, you know,
tell somebody to come to
Four-Ds or RosPress buys,
Sports cards that makes 10 X is money
and then tells everybody
that was get like,
and that's brand.
To me, brand transactional or nothing.
'Cause it's just the right thing to do.
That's business, that's...
- I'm stuck.
I'm stunned that you know
names and individuals,
knowing that your customer base
is hundreds of thousands If
you have a personal connection.
- He's the Tesla, he's the Tesla.
- I'm reading, I'm reading the chat.
That's not the point.
The point was the analogy is I used
against those individuals were proper.
It's easy to read the chat.
It's different to know what
these people are doing with you.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- Signal calling.
- Amazing.
- All right, Seth,
what's the next question.
So Val Vr asks, Hey guys,
how would you go about
relaunching an eCommerce store
after being out of stock for some time
because of logistics delays,
what strategy would you
implement to get back on top?
- Zubin, I'm gonna let you take over
because I've got now a client slot here.
'Cause I was taking 15 minutes away.
So Vala I love you.
Audience, I love you.
Zubin, take us home.
We'll talk soon.
- Bye Gary, thanks.
- All right, so you're out of stock,
goes back to what Vala was mentioning
in terms of a client earlier,
recall that he had with
Fortune 500 Company,
look, sincerity, authenticity.
We're talking about that,
that's the theme of this
entire episode, right?
So why not continue that
with the actual audience that you have?
Let me tell you a story.
There was a prominent fashion brand that
somewhat of a startup that
I purchased something from
in LA sometime ago, last year.
Anyway, four weeks in, no order status.
Six weeks and I emailed
them, no email back.
Eight weeks in, Oh, I'm sorry,
Your product got delayed
in routing and China
or whatever it was.
Now, mind you, I bought this in October
so that I could wear it in November.
It was like a jacket
when we went to a Thanksgiving somewhere.
So now it's like December, it's January,
they still haven't responded to me.
Finally, they respond to me and they say,
okay, look, we're sorry,
we made a mistake.
The CEO emails me.
We're gonna get you credit, et cetera.
We're in fucking July right now.
And no email is still.
So the point is like
the authenticity of it,
of be honest to people.
You're out of stock.
Why did you sell it if,
did you sell it to begin
with and charge them?
That's a different story.
But if you're out of stock,
explain to them what the process was.
Why do people like going and
buying from Empathy Wines
or something like that
when they show you the whole farm to table
sourcing path.
Because you can see the
actual path that it took.
Why not be honest and explain
what actually happened
in that entire sourcing
logistics part of the equation.
And what you're gonna do to rectify it
and why they should come back.
So over communicate
and then give them a reason to come back.
Don't just expect them to
come back and buy from you.
Give them a credit.
The key is LTV.
The key is customer for life.
Sorry Vala, go ahead.
- No, no, no, I can't.
There's not much for me to add to that.
Trust has to be your
number one core value.
Now, you know,
recognize people understand
that the pandemic
has led to massive
supply chain disruption.
So you might be surprised if you
through whatever channels you
connect with your customers.
Maybe it's a newsletter, email, social,
you simply states and admits
that you had high demand,
low inventory.
And because of the pandemic,
I'm assuming it's because of the pandemic,
the company struggled, but
we're back and to show,
to apologize for the inconvenience.
There's a promotion.
There's something,
give them a reason to come back.
But radical transparency
at the end of the day,
practice radical
transparency and know that
people are gonna be empathetic.
People are empathetic with businesses.
They know everyone is struggling.
No one is expecting perfection,
but everyone's expecting high
integrity and trustworthiness.
- I know we keep saying this on this show.
I keep mentioning it.
But surprise and delight people.
- Yeah, exceeded their expectations.
- You used to go to retail stores,
you buy a cologne or perfume, whatever.
They throw a bunch of samples in there.
And you're like, Oh, this is awesome.
Even if you're not gonna use them,
you just love the fact you get that,
exceed expectations for people.
This isn't just for those
that have run out of inventory
and their customers are upset.
But even those that are
actually doing really well,
surprise and delight.
- I hate to use another cliche,
but this is something Gary
has been saying for a decade.
He asked the question,
the best marketing strategy
and his answer is two words.
Care more.
Care more.
Not only are you gonna communicate,
you have low inventory,
but you're gonna care
more and do that extra
one or two steps to ensure
that people come back
and continue to earn you with
their hard earned dollars.
- You mentioned something
earlier about personalization
and like for the audience,
I just want to kind of take
that home and drive it home.
If you're speaking to
somebody in real life
and you sell a shirts for example,
and you're in the retail store and they,
you talk to them, you find
out what their style is.
You get all this information
for them and you go,
this is the best shirt for you.
This is why you should buy this shirt.
That's what we're talking about
in terms of personalization online,
somebody asked earlier in terms of,
how do I deal with my old
school customers, et cetera,
personalization.
Don't just fucking send everybody
back to the same homepage
that has the same product
that you're pushing.
If you have an older demographic
that you started with,
and now you're skewing
lower in terms of age,
well, make sure that you
send that older demographic
back to experiences that are for them.
What have we got next Seth?
- Right, right,
- yeah, go ahead.
- No, I mean the next time
Zubin walks into the store
and you know, the previous
experience, he, you know,
he bought that beautiful
color pink shirt that he's on.
He has on now.
If the personal shopper says, you know,
and they look up on the tablet,
they don't have to have amazing memory.
That's what CRM is for.
But they understand
your likes and dislikes.
And you see, you have more
collage shirts on sale today.
I love an experience
when I go back to a brand
and they recognize who I am
and they understand my preferences.
That's how you keep me as a costumer.
If you treat me like a number,
and by the way, you know,
hotel, this is a perfect example
for those of us that travel,
or airlines.
You don't know how many
times I have to tell them
I prefer an aisle seat.
And I am a premier member.
I mean, I'm traveling a
hundred thousand miles a year
and they still don't know my preferences
in terms of where I wanna sit.
Anyway, remove friction.
And that's how you earn people's trust.
- And don't over personalize.
Every call I've had with
Vala or most of them,
he's got a collared shirt and a tie on.
So I wore this to
personalize myself for him.
He wore this to personalize
himself for our show.
So don't overpersonalize.
- That's right, that's right,
That's exactly right,
that's exactly right.
- Pourush Kalra asks, question for Vala.
What advice would you
give to a technology lover
grad student to get a mindset like yours?
- Oh, wow.
Remember all of this to
me happened in my forties.
So you're 20 years ahead of me.
The mistake I made as an introvert is that
I didn't realize that
networking was about giving.
So I think resumes are dying.
So if you're a grad school,
you're looking for that traditional resume
and your updated LinkedIn profile,
for most innovative companies,
they're looking at your digital footprint
and your digital exhaust.
So your brand, by the way,
as a former CMO, people would
say, what does brand mean?
Your brand is what people say about you
when you're not in the room.
Now, the room is the web
and the web are people,
and people are more social.
Therefore the room is more social.
So people are gonna learn about you
and talk about you all the time,
especially if you are a company.
Now, as an individual,
looking to build the career,
your brand is your digital footprint,
plus your digital exhaust.
So as a student, I would
say, Google, yourself
and ask, would I hire me?
What's the first thing that pops?
Are you hashtag failing brands.
What's that video about you?
The photo about you?
What's the tone and sentiment
about the words you use.
Are you using remarkable words?
So companies are using machine learning,
powered recruitment applications
to determine your EQ.
Not your competence
and the things you did,
but the cultural fit for you in a company.
So to have that mindset,
knowing your brand is
what people talk about you
when you're not in the room,
you must live a recommendable life.
So when people are talking about you,
they're recommending things about you.
He's a nice guy.
He's trustworthy.
He's fun to be around.
He's smart.
He's giving,
are you living a recommendable life?
And that social and digital footprint
is really the web is your resume.
So the mindset of giving
and caring and knowing
that you will be judged by your presence,
both physical and digital and more
and more in the future Digital
means that you have to be super mindful.
And in terms of how
you represent yourself.
Live a recommendable life,
leave a legacy that's the
best advice I can give.
And start giving.
Giving means writing,
giving these podcasts.
Giving means volunteering at community.
Don't wait for people to
tap you on the shoulder,
to get engaged.
Get in the game.
You can't score on the
bench or in the stands.
Suit up and get in the game.
And that's what I didn't
do early in my career.
But over time I, you
learn from my mistakes.
Doers will make mistakes.
Smart doers make original mistakes.
So learn from it.
Keep doing, keep falling,
keep getting back up,
but live a recommendable life.
- Brilliant.
All right, let's get a couple
more questions in here.
So Nishant Uppal asks, hi team Gary,
what do you suggest if
I'm looking to start
a fresh eCommerce business of this time
and set something up
while this pandemic is on,
basically make money and
set up base for future.
Let me jump in, Vala
and then I'll hand it off to you.
So I got a couple of
issues with this question.
The number one thing
is, look, I agree you.
Leverage this opportunity.
And when I say leverage this opportunity,
what I'm saying is that there
are a lot of opportunities
that you can focus on right now
to build a future for yourself.
Now, where do I have an issue with this?
The part about making money, right?
Because when I think about making money,
I'm thinking about like
EBITDA or net income.
I'm thinking like profit.
Whereas I think right now the
focus should be not profit.
We get hit up all the time.
We get hit up by different types of people
that are starting companies,
starting D to C brands, et cetera.
And you look at their
financials and you're like,
or their financial projections,
and they've got salaries and
they've got this and that.
And you're like, okay, the
amount of money you're raising,
doesn't even get you to three months.
It's not even gonna take you to market.
The key right now in my mind
is invest in your future.
If you're doing it with a bunch of people
take that time and invest.
So yes, do it right now.
And I'll explain to you
what I think you should do.
But the point that I'm making
here is don't think about it
as making money right now,
but laying the bricks for your future.
Now, in terms of the fact,
look e-commerce is hot.
Everybody's trying to
get into it, et cetera.
But it's also, as everybody's
been getting into it
over the last few years,
competition is up the market's saturated.
You're not just gonna go
in and make a quick buck.
Like you were able to five years ago,
three years ago, whatever.
And they key to
sustainability and longevity
is to lean into what
you're passionate about.
You're gonna have more shitty days
than you're gonna have good
days or the shitty days
are gonna feel more than the good days.
So you gotta be passionate
about what you're doing.
What are you actually
passionate about in your life?
And then figure out a way,
do I have the ability to
build a unique product
and take it to market?
Or do I take something that
exists and make it better
and take it to market?
But again, you've got to
love that fucking thing.
You've got to love that space.
You've got to think about,
I mean, the way I think
about it is like, for me,
if I were to take a product to market,
it'd probably have
something to do with soccer.
Because what I read when
I'm not reading about work,
whatever is I'm following
Arsenal Football Club.
But my point is like,
if I were to do that,
that's what I would do because it's fun.
And I enjoy it.
And I have a lot of
depth of knowledge in it.
So lean into that.
Sorry, Vala, go ahead.
- No, that's brilliant advice.
It's a complicated question to answer,
you know, it is.
Just know it can be a unique product.
It could be, as Zubi said,
something that, remember Google
was the 21st search engine
to come out in 1998, 21st.
And you know, they're trillion
dollar market cap company.
So, you know,
although I don't think better saying this
is necessarily a disruptive innovation.
You can have incredible success
and it doesn't have to be
the first product or
something that's super unique.
Following your passion,
I think is good advice,
but you have to have discipline
and you do have to
invest in yourself first
before you can help others.
It's all about creating value.
So, the question was something
quick during the pandemic
to make money, I don't know enough about
the person who's asking
the question to give him
specific advice, but add value.
And the only way to do that is
to again, invest in yourself.
And then understand situational
awareness is also important.
Understanding the holes
that exist around you
and how you can fill that
with the skills and competency
and get rules if you have.
That's all you need to do.
But I gotta tell you,
you've got to work hard.
You're not, no one's
gonna give you anything.
And competition is fierce
and a talent loses when
they stop working hard.
So you gotta put in,
it's a 10 year commitment
to building something
of success, 10 years.
So there is no,
overnight success usually for most takes
many, many years of failure,
uncertainty, rejection, hard work.
And if you don't have
that grip and persistence,
you're not gonna make it.
- Vala, this was brilliant.
Thank you so much for
sharing your insight with us.
I'm gonna go back and watch it to myself.
'Cause there's so much
that you put in there
that I wanna take notes on.
Honestly, this was fantastic.
We, our intent with Coffee & Commerce
is to push the conversation
forward about commerce.
And I think we've
certainly done that today.
Thank you so much for your time, Vala,
looking forward to doing
this again with you soon.
- Thank you Zubin,
I learned from you and Gary and your team.
I can't wait to see the
trajectory of commerce,
Vanna commerce.
And you know,
by the way of all the things
that Gary said about you
dude, your weekend's made.
Drop the mic and go celebrate.
- Yeah, except I've got a
meeting with him right now.
Yeah, I know, I appreciate that.
- Yeah, so go do your thing.
And thanks for the invitation.
It was an honor.
Thanks Zubin.
- You're the best.
Thanks brother.
Bye, bye.
- Talk to you, bye.
