Mobile First

Our guest for this episode is Nick Shah, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Ampush. Prior to Ampush, Nick worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in New York and Mumbai advising a range of deals, from IPOs to mergers, in the media and telecom industries. Nick graduated from The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a dual concentration in Finance and Operations, and Information Management. Nick can be found playing basketball, participating in dance-offs, fearing bicycles, loving all things India, cheering for the Detroit Pistons, and always being positive. He was born and raised outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our Guest:

- Getting to know Nick professionally and personally from his rich childhood, his interest in basketball, being a rebel, to becoming an eventual entrepreneur.

- Nick shares details of his story on what led him to deviate from the family’s expectation of him becoming a doctor and how he pursued business and finance with his co-founders.

- How being friends with his Ampush co-founders since high school helped in his success and why he feels that building long-standing relationships is an essential facet in your journey as an entrepreneur.

- What prompted his transition from finance to advertising and how it was like for them quitting their jobs during the recession and building their company during challenging times. Nick also shares obstacles and lessons gained along the way including analysis paralysis and underestimating the work it took to put things into place; and the wins they have celebrated which caused them to pivot.

- An introduction to their company, Ampush, their objectives and what their teams do. He also talks about how they worked with the Dollar Shave Club and their initial hesitations in taking them on as a customer. - Nick shared strategies they have employed specifically for the Dollar Shave Club which helped them grow and achieve a 6-7 figure/month spend, including starting with insights gained that the bottom-line issue was customer service innovation and planning awareness campaigns from there.

- Learning the things that Ampush had done for the Dollar Shave Club through Facebook advertising which allowed them to reach their targeted demographics and most importantly, to convert them.

- What Nick thinks of the current situation of mobile advertising, the opportunities he sees in the current trends and how he foresees the industry will evolve into.

- Nick shares his opinion on what he thinks will happen if Facebook fails to acquire other social networks to reach the younger demographic and the potential risks the company may face.

Our guest for this episode is Dominique Essig, Chief Experience Office of Bonobos. Dominique is responsible for leading and overseeing the Product Management/UX, Technology (Engineering, IT, and Data Science), Customer Service (their Ninjas), and Ecommerce Operations teams in the company. She brings more than 16 years of online experience for both online and global product management, customer experience operations and software development.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our Guest:

- From originally becoming a lawyer, Dominique shares at what point in her life she became interested in Customer Experience and how she became fascinated and fell in love with the art and science of the whole customer journey. - Where she first sank her teeth in e-commerce and what led her to become the Chief Experience Officer at Bonobos instead of anywhere else.

- The things that make her great at what she does: her robust experience in e-commerce, her passion in this business, her desire to constantly learn and be around people who are smarter than her, her tenacity, and her focus.

- Dominique shares the biggest change in this industry that she has experienced: the shift of focus back towards building of customer relationships. She also adds in Bonobos’ strategies which are geared towards reaching their customers’ sweet spot, what inspired them to do these and how they transitioned to these models.

- The process they went through – from analysis of demand, testing the model to validation of the experience -- to arrive with their solution to put up guide shops for Bonobos customers.

- The impact of guide shops in their business in terms of customer acquisition, financials and growth in their e-commerce presence. - Technologies and tools they have used for their guide shops and the positive effects of the usage to the guides and to the business.

- Bonobos’ key metrics, how they utilize different channels to personalize customer experience, how their customer journey looks like, and the things that they do not shy away from in the name of customer satisfaction.

- Pain points that Dominique see in their organization and the industry in general, the activities she does to identify these points of friction and her approach to close the process -- from receiving of feedback to implementing solutions -- off. - The threshold of feedback to compel their team to move towards initiating action.

- How the mobile industry influenced their way of thinking and their company strategies.

Ali Wing is the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Digital Channels at Maurices. Ali started her career with NIKE in marketing (NIKE women and sport casual) and later moved into corporate development (NIKE and NIKE International). From creating brand, marketing and digital strategies for venture capital–backed multichannel retail concepts like Gazoontite to founding and launching Giggle, a multichannel retailer, wholesaler and licenser of baby products, Ali’s passion and legacy is brand building and innovation.

Here are the highlights of the conversation with our Guest:

- Ali gives us a peek of her life from getting used to a new city, growing up as a small-town kid among nine other siblings, how she accidently fell in love with brand, brand strategy and brand development, and how she got introduced to Nike.

- The memory that fueled her passion for connecting with the customer and the strategies they had employed to arrive with the most effective first women’s campaign such as journey mapping and recognizing when you have made a mistake

- How Ali’s personality and her skill set play in coming up with her perspectives to arrive with the right marketing plan for her target markets; and how she drives the balance of having an art/math mentality.

- What inspired Giggle and its genesis. Ali shares details on how she had gained a unique perspective when growing up and how this led her to tap data and analytics for insights to bring Giggle into fruition.

- How she took Giggle from concept to scale; and her big wins including being born omni-channel, rolling out the retail side of the company a year before the crash, being able to filter market feedback and learning that everything takes work and takes time.

- The things she finds hard to implement in being an omni-channel in bigger companies and the overarching complexities that she has to deal with among the issues she is brought in the solve.

- Ali explains why research and customer journey mapping are among her top priorities when she is brought in to intervene; and gives examples why balancing innovation and removal of friction points are equally important in staying in the game.

- Where they are focusing their attention on in terms of digital channels to ensure they are making their impact: mobile first. Ali shares how their forecasts were blown away by how quickly consumers had switched to mobile and how it is becoming clear that an increasing number of consumers are no longer investing in desktops.

- How Ali sees mobile evolving and how it changes their business processes. She also discusses the impact of geo fencing and the value of the data it brings in.

Rapid Fire Questions:

How would you define innovation?

- It’s leveraging creativity, technology and teams to solve problems that, at the end of the day, the consumers tell you with their wallet.

Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

- Execution is everything. Innovation, as a concept, is less about an idea and more about a philosophy and execution is where you bring it to life. Most initial ideas are wrong, they just put you on the map but the question is how you execution to find the right point in the map. So I’ll give you 99% to 1% going towards execution.

What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

- You cannot take for granted the change is hard for some people so I remind myself to help people move to the process for this evolution.

What is your favorite business book?

- Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands by Marty Neumeier

- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel

What is your favorite mobile app resource?

- Scott Galloway

What is your favorite app and why?

- Sephora

- FreshDirect

What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about?

- Our discovery platform gets data from our customers to find out how they came to us – offline or online – but they have to become a customer first for me to see their data so there is a gap there. We are doing beta testing to start mapping identities so we solve this.