LaunchPod - Angela Clark
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[00:00:00] 

Jeff: Angela, how you doing? Good to see you again.

Angela: I am good. Good to see you as well. Thank you for inviting me.

Jeff: Definitely. Thanks for coming. , Quick background. You know, VP of digital over at Patagonia, which, , is an auspicious brand to many people. Like it is done really cool stuff both within clothing and conservation and, and digital. And, that's kind of what we're gonna talk about across the board is, is all those things.

Maybe before we dive into that, 'cause I know there's some really neat things we wanna talk about, kind of customization and, and how do we build modern digital experiences for, brands like Patagonia. maybe you can just give us the TLDR. Like, how did you get to where you are? What's the background there that led you to leading digital over at, , a brand such as Patagonia?

Angela: Yeah, so I probably had a very non-traditional path, which I don't know if there's anything traditional digital at this stage, but I started in merchandising. My whole career has been in retail. I was really passionate about product design, physical products. , and so I got, actually ended up with a business degree. I thought I wanted to be an investment banker and, I found the formula between my love and [00:01:00] passion for fashion and my business acumen to be the perfect formula, to be a merchandiser and buyer. So I kind of grew up through the ranks within retail from various brands like Pottery Barn, Levi Strauss.

true religion, red envelope, some catalog brands back in the day of just having a passion about having that customer experience be really engaged and having the data to be able to understand what people are responding to. And I really love that formula. I kind of moved up through the ranks with, , direct to consumer.

I started in catalog, ended up being websites, and I've kind of evolved from there into business strategy for the last few brands.

Jeff: Nice. There are brands that, that have a mission, and then there are brands that have a mission, and then there's Patagonia and you guys kind of almost standalone in how you look at a lot of these things.

including how are you, driving conservation forward and , , at the same time, . High performance gear. , You don't see that a lot at the same time. And when we met in la you were at one of our dinners and this whole idea of how do you create [00:02:00] like a PDP of one-to-one? You said it so much better, but basically, you know, we're kinda live in the dark ages of like trying to communicate to Alex Honnold , and some hobbyists like myself on the same page. But you should be able to do that some level.

Just personalize it. Let's dive into that. 'cause I think that's a really cool topic. How you guys think about it over at Patagonia?

Angela: Well, you know, it's, it's a challenge that's unique to Patagonia, but it's not that unique to Patagonia in a way. I think I had the same challenge at a Levi Strauss, you know? , And that's just a denim brand that sells amazing apparel. And at Patagonia in particular. , You could have one person looking for, let's take our most popular jacket, the nano puff.

A lot of people buy that jacket who just live in urban environments. They wanna know that it's lightweight, they can ball it up, show in their suitcase, it's gonna keep them warm,

And you'll probably have it for 10 years and it'll look just as good 10 years from now as when the day that you bought it.

And so some people are willing to pay the price for that premium item, for that purpose alone. But then it was intentionally designed to solve a problem for those people who are going deep into sport and deep into [00:03:00] environments where the lightweightness is so that you have something that's, packable and breathable while you're wearing it.

, It's something you can layer on other layers. You can put a shell over it when it's raining and you know that you still have room to move and to be comfortable and be breathable. So all of that technology that went into that item for that extreme environment, but then also for the day where like how do you.

Serve both those customers who are landing on the same page. And so what people solve for that now is maybe clunky tabs, where like I can click to learn more, or whatever that might be. And to me, whenever I think about personalization, when I came into the brand, I was like, how do you flip that on your head?

How do you make it interactive and dynamic? So if you know. You know what? I've been on Reddit. I found the color. I want the zip up, I want the pullover. . I'm just gonna go in and buy it. I don't know what fill rate means. I don't know what moisture wicking like, I just know I want that I'm in and I'm out.

But then somebody else is like, no, I know I'm gonna be [00:04:00] in Jackson Hole and I need something in particular, and I need the fill weight to be this thing. That there's a place for me to find that and as I'm interacting or looking on the page. The page can serve up these sorts of bits of information for me or allow me to go deeper down the rabbit hole and not just vert the other person who might not wanna see all that stuff.

to me that's the ultimate prize. And I find that it's one of those projects that the idea was probably ahead of the technology and now the technology's catching up to the idea. So that's the part that's really exciting to me, is that we absolutely can build these dynamic pages now that are responsive to click behavior, responsive to what we might know about you past purchases or

what you've been interested in the past to be able to serve up an experience that's really delivering on this personalized promise. We've been here probably for 10 years of having a one-to-one or one of many, , experience. And so that's something we started to work towards, , in an ideation phase at the middle of last year.

When we came up with the final product [00:05:00] idea and concept, , it blew everyone away. I mean, literally everyone on every aspect of the organization is rallying behind bringing this vision to life. So it's really exciting.

Jeff: How does that work in a seamless way?

Like how are you and the team kind of. Putting that together and how do you make sure you're making access to that data easy enough where it's not 'cause too many clicks, people are just gonna bail. How do you make the access easy enough, but at the same time not overwhelm the hobbyists?

Angela: There's a theory that if we know enough about you, maybe even before you get to the PDP, you know, um, and I've been sold, you know, technology solutions that do this. In five clicks, we can tell you if the person's a high intent converter or somebody that's gonna need a coupon code, right?

That doesn't really fit for our brand, but the intentionality does, right? The idea that. If I know that you've been to my site two times already and maybe the first time you actually read an article or you watched a video about something and the next time you did that, maybe then I can serve up content that might be storytelling that might intrigue you more.

Then somebody who might not need [00:06:00] that. , And so we're building pages that are not completely built from top to bottom, that actually sort of layer in, we almost call them like surfaces, where surfaces kind of move around, , and add in information as you would potentially maybe scroll down the page. , Another example of that would be, . We offer other services. So if you were to be signed in or if you to do this on an app experience, we know you've owned that nano puff for five years, we might send you something like, Hey, do you wanna trade that in? Like maybe you just wanna repair the one that you had and you're looking to see if the new one's worth design. You might be like, actually I just like the one I have. Do you need to repair that one? We can do a trade-in for you and help you, you know, serve that and, and add it to the circularity pool. So I think those sorts of, those ideas Are the things that we're thinking about. And we've started to bring some of that stuff in front of the customer now. So if you go to our PDP now, you'll see a new product and used product on the same page. And for some brands that do circularity, they were like, that's the last thing I wanna do. 'cause what if I trade someone down to a used [00:07:00] product when they might have been intended to buy new For Patagonia's rules and regulations and how we're trying to build a brand. If they trade down to something new, we're winning. 'cause we don't want people to buy something that they don't need. Or if there's something that's already made, that's better for us and it's better for the environment than buying something completely brand new.

So we're fearless about being able to put those two side by side. And it's been really interesting to learn how people are interacting with those two things, next to each other.

Jeff: Is it right to think of this more as a, a kind of site experience or custom customer journey problem and now there's just new tech, , available to you or, or, you know, are you guys looking at this more as like a tech problem to solve something?

Angela: Yeah, I really see it as a customer journey, , challenge to solve because , I'm always thinking about the customer experience first and foremost, and not to diminish anyone who's coming from a tech background or approaching something from a technical solutions perspective, but I think that it's really critical to think about that customers .

By the time they've [00:08:00] gotten to your webpage, they probably already had some sort of brand experience. And a touch point or a journey is not a linear thing. They've connected with the brand through social. Maybe they've been in a store, maybe they've signed up for email, , or maybe they just read about it and read it and.

Now you've got an agent that's gonna like find this thing for you. There's all these different ways that people come into a brand, and I'm sure anyone who's running a a digital platform will know less and less people go through the homepage more and more because of the way that we funnel people in through different channels.

And so with that, if you're not thinking about. All the different ways that a customer can connect with a brand and come into the brand and know that the PDP is ib, maybe a starting point or an end point for them. You don't know then that sort of. contextualizes how you solve for those problems.

And then you might be solving for different problems. Then I just want somebody to come in and, , buy something, transact and exit out. , And I think that, you know, we've been talking about the, the marketing funnel. The [00:09:00] marketing funnel is, dissolved in a lot of ways, right? It's a sphere now.

It's like Adams moving around in space. You know, it's a very different, , dynamic. .

Jeff: but brings a good point. 'cause even like the way we're thinking about log rocket here is, is it used to be right, you wanna see people like, are they using this feature?

How much time are they spending in analytics? How many charts are they doing? . And now it's much more around, you know, with kind of, kind of agent capabilities we built in and the ability for those agents to watch all your sessions for you like, the joke is, is basically like an MAU of zero is the perfect iteration because we just wanna send you the answer before you even have to ask it in, in Slack or Claude or wherever you work. , And I feel like at, at some level, almost. That's always been true, right? Like the, the point of, of an e-commerce site or, or B2B analytics is not, and never was to have people use the thing it was to solve a problem. They needed clothes, , they needed answers and it just so happened that software was a good solution, but, , if the best solution was, I don't know, me to just bring you a [00:10:00] t-shirt, that was, you know, maybe that was a better way, 

Angela: I've always worked for brands who had a high level of customer service. As a customer, I value that. I value going into a brand who thinks about me, who I feel like they care about me as a customer.

That's who I wanna spend my money with. So I walk into a brand like Patagonia, it's high touch in a store experience. You can come in with any question, anything. A lot of things are happening in a store. It's a community center on a lot of levels. And I challenge myself of like, how do I bring that experience into the digital experience?

And so that's sort of why I sort of think about these things. More of like, it's about the customer experience and the customer journey. , Because that's a high bar mean, that's why I joined. I like those really tough challenges to solve for. , And so, it's exciting time because I feel like the technology is getting to a place where I'll probably never be a hundred percent.

As you walk into a store and meet, you know, someone who's worked there for 10 years and they're a climber and you're talking about climbing, but I can get [00:11:00] pretty close, you know, I'll, I'll be able to get pretty close, I think in the next three to four 

years. So that's. 

Jeff: you're not free, free soloing el Capitan or anything anytime soon.

Angela: . personally. , 

Jeff: But kind of back to this idea, I guess, like. I, because I love the idea of like right. Personalized experiences on because, 'cause that's what makes going to the store it's so good, is you can talk to someone.

They can be like, oh, well I understand you and this and that, and here's what you need. You don't need that. You're gonna pay too much. Or, or maybe, you know, hey, if you use that clip, you should really use something stronger. But.

At the, at the web level, , how are you and the team balancing that versus you could really, really LLM this whole thing up and, and AI out the wazoo, but at some point you're gonna be sitting there and as you scroll, right, 'cause you said it's kinda component pieces, you're just gonna hit a point where you're just waiting and waiting because it has to like calculate and refine.

How do you balance? It's not in person, right? In person. You can kind of look at something for a second. Someone walks over to you. You have the whole world going on about you versus online. We've all been trained like instant, instant, instant, instant. So how, how is that balanced out in this project? 

Angela: That's a really great question [00:12:00] definitely, when we presented to the board, it was definitely something that someone challenged. You know, someone was very specific, like, well, what if I don't care about all this storytelling and all this stuff, I just wanna buy the product. And so, , we had to reiterate to them that.

You wouldn't get this other stuff unless you are showing signals that you actually wanna be engaged with something. So, if you're a person who's like, I've done all my research, I've been trying to think about this, and, you know, most our, especially outerwear is more considered purchase for a lot of people.

Okay, I'm ready to pull the trigger, I'm ready to buy it. Get outta my way. Right? As much as I care about the customer experience, I also don't wanna get in your way when you're ready to give us your money. So I wanna make that part as seamless . And smooth as possible. , It's a lot of test and learning and that's one of the things I really love about digital as well, is that I don't think we really know the full answer until we launch the thing and we test the thing and get customer feedback.

And I'm fortunate enough to work with amazing. Talented people who are, going to do the customer research as we build and test things and get that feedback. And then sometimes we have to make tough [00:13:00] calls like we redid our navigation and you know, it's the polar opposite of what leadership probably would've wanted , our navigation to look like.

We had a lot of conversations about do we lead people down into the sport path first versus, you know, the type of product category you want, which aligns with Patagonia's brand values. and our mission and what we want our customers to experience, but the reality is that's not how the customers wanna engage with the product, right?

So, instead of trying to, you know, battle leadership, let's just test it and have the customer tell us what works best, that's. Old school 1 0 1 merchandising, right? And it still works today, I think, in all the things we can get really caught up in the newest, latest thing and want to immerse into spending our money, those things that sometimes it's just the basics that really ground you and being able to decide , where your next moves are and what to do next.

Jeff: A thing that people often. Overlook and you talked about this when we first met was you didn't walk into Patagonia.

With all this stuff tied up and ready to go with these giant [00:14:00] projects, like you, you have to at some level walk a little bit before you run. And the first step is not Angela comes in and goes, we're gonna change navigation, we're gonna change the PDP. It's you gotta get your ducks in a row a bit and you got, you gotta build towards that kind of thing.

Can we talk about this piece because I think this, people miss this piece a lot and it, it Yeah, is important to go over.

Angela: it is really important and it's interesting because when I landed the role, it was a newly created role for digital. And I knew from my recruiter that I didn't come from the scale of brands that the other two candidates came from, so I thought I was like the lead, like I was like, there's no I'm gonna in this job.

There's no way. And that wasn't self-deprecating. That was just like, oh, they've got all this pedigree and these bigger, you know, I worked for much bigger volumes and all these things, but once I got the job, I realized why I won the role, and it was because exactly what you said, like I was going to take the time to be methodical and not just burn everything down to the ground and build it back up again.

I wanted to [00:15:00] understand. How do we get to where we are and then what are the steps to get us to the next thing? And so the thing that I kind of had to learn through my journey there is, , is patience, honestly, because I did wanna move faster. I had worked for other brands that moved a a lot faster. , I did one pagers for.

Big ideas with my previous CEO and he just looked at it. He was the math person, the math made sense, go right, , there was no meetings and all these things, and Patagonia was pretty much the opposite of that. And so there was a lot of time of. One, I had to make a lot of assessments about where were we, you know, where are the pain points, the people who are doing the day to day, like for instance, , in some of the big projects we're talking about launching a new loyalty program, rebranded as a membership program, , launching an app, you know, changing the digital experience from the PDP all the way to the homepage, all of that.

If I had started those projects without understanding that we had to clean the data first. That we had to make sure we were capturing first party Daddy in a way that [00:16:00] was useful for us, that I understood how teams were working and understanding that they were working too manual and that it, there's no way we could support dynamic pages information messaging.

People had to do things still in a highly manual way, So that meant I had to fix some of those things and put people on a path to follow some of those other hurdles that we had to undo in order to build the bigger picture. Now, the fun part about all that is. How do you appease leadership?

Who wants to see the bright shiny thing happen quickly knowing that all this backend work has to be done in the meantime? And so that, again, to me is where I call the out in science of the, what's the shiny object I can give them so that they're off my back and they see progress. Because a lot of the big, heavy lifting and progress work is not something that I can't really put an ROI on.

You know, cleaned customer data, the CEO's not gonna care about that. All he knows is the [00:17:00] end result. So a lot of times I would kind of take like. This is a project I'm working on and what I'm gonna get out of it is this, because that's what leadership really cares about, doesn't meet our mission of what we're trying to do, what's the impact.

And for a lot of times, especially at Patagonia, an ROI metric is not enough. And we really need to talk about like, how are we improving the customer experience? How is this meeting the bigger mission of the brand overall? , And so I know that if you don't do some of that work and you just come in with a big shiny project, I've seen it.

I've watched people do it , they go full steam ahead and then they haven't looked around all the corners and checked all the closets. And then it crashes and burns and millions of dollars gets wasted all the time. I've, I've watched it over the years, and so I think a lot of people in my type of roles now, the stakes are so high.

These new implementations cost a lot of money. , They cost a lot of time and energy. It's not just. The dollars of building it or the software, it's the time. It's the human resources that go [00:18:00] behind launching these major things. And if you go down that huge path and it doesn't work, depending on the brand, you might not have a job anymore.

And so you, you don't wanna work in a place of fear, but you also wanna make sure that you've set yourself up with , enough success possible where you, you've done the work and sometimes it feels,

you're just spinning your wheels or maybe you're not moving fast enough for yourself. But I've always valued it in the end, and it has worked out for me in the long run because now, like I said, now that we've birthed this huge idea, there's still some places we have to fix. It's not perfect, but 80% of the work is already.

Jeff: I Love leadership everywhere, but they always, they always want the big shiny thing. 'cause that's, you know, I think a lot of times just they're, they're high enough up , where the smaller details are, are obfuscated from them.

Often. They don't always even just have visibility into the complexity that makes the 

thing work. 

Were you able to just communicate to do this big thing, we need to do these five small things, or, , what was the kind of communication there?

Angela: You [00:19:00] know, I think one of the things I really work towards is like trying to anticipate what the blockers are ahead of time, either from people, , from process. And then once I kind of have an idea about that, then I'll build a plan on either how to dissolve those blockers or work around them. And a lot of times it's not just me.

A lot of times I need partners. I really am. A big believer in having multiple advocates for something that you're trying to achieve. So hopefully you're in an environment where you can connect with the, the key people. Like this project in particular, like, I had to connect with the head of digital analytics for the greater Patagonia org.

Like what's on his. And once he knows what's on my roadmap, well we can sort of align our two roadmaps together of like make sure his project is gonna align and I can build on top of his. it impacted, you know, other multiple teams. And the more time I kind of would. Paint a picture for them before I started to put that in front of [00:20:00] leadership.

Then when they heard about it, one, there's no resistance. There's no shock. They're like, oh yeah, and by the way, you know, they can start championing for it for you because there's a partnership here. There's a connection there. So that to me is one of the big things. It's like making sure.

You're understanding leadership's pain points, figuring out how to solve for that with what your project is. And then on the other side is really from the tech itself, is like where is this project fall in line with, , all the other projects that might be happening. You know, retail's one of those industries where there's not a lot of huge budget for technology enhancements.

So anytime that you have something that's a multimillion dollar investment. Those dollars usually have to come from somewhere that might already be earmarked for something else, right? Like that's the reality of it. So to not create a bunch of enemies within the organization, you kind of need to build those partnerships.

I'm like, okay, let's, you know, think about that. And you know, some brands I think do a better job of like looking at the big picture of everything and sort of making sure everyone's. Understanding how things are stacked. [00:21:00] Ranked Patagonia is not one of those companies, so a lot of times, you know, you don't wanna feel like people are in the hunker games, , all trying to jack you for the same dollars.

So, the more people can kind of understand what you're trying to achieve and how this all fits together, I think the better, that project's gonna work for you. 

Jeff: when we met in LA you, you had also brought up another project around kind of Patagonia redefining customer value.

I know this is not a project that you just on your own, were like, we're gonna redefine how we calculate value, guys. , , how do you go about, you know, approaching the head of analytics or, or kind of handling, you know, some of these other heads of teams? come to that common understanding of we're we all believe in this thing, we're gonna champion it so we can get something like a different definition of customer value through kind of across the board.

Angela: I've wholeheartedly believed that we can always win together. And so that's how I approach pretty much everything. I've never been, , an adversary with, cross-functional people and peers. It's just part of the nature of [00:22:00] digital and how digital operates, and I think that's been one of my, .

You know, factors of success, and I think it's something that a lot of brands, even brands that aren't mission based are going to start to explore is. Like we said, customers are in interacting with brands for a multitude of reasons. We're seeing brands start their own entertainment arms.

You know, the future world is getting more and more complex. And so if you're building your own entertainment arm or storytelling arm to a brand that never told stories before, how are you gonna measure if that actually adds any value? and so we're Patagonia. There's three arms.

We have, the activism arms. We want people to get involved, help clean up the environment. We want people to donate to causes that we think are important to saving the home planet. We want people to engage in products, either buying product, re turning, products, trading in products. , We want people to engage with other brands.

We have a food brand, we have an apparel brand. We have a kids brand. We have all these different elements of the brand. In the fashion of Don't Buy This [00:23:00] Jacket, which was probably the most impactful campaign Patagonia's ever done. It would be hypocritical for us to only look at a conventional lifetime value metric to say if someone is added value to the brand or not, by just looking at what their transactions were.

So we'd started to look at like. Real customer behavior to start to build what the index could actually look like. So we basically created our own Patagonia index, and what the real customer behavior showed us was that there's some people who only buy used product from us. They only buy used product from us.

They could be just as valuable to us how we define value as somebody who only buys new products. There's some people who only , engage in activism. They only, , care about our causes and they wanna participate and they wanna go to book signing at a store or see a film, and they're never gonna buy a product from us, or they haven't bought a product from us yet.

, And what we found is the customers who kind of engaged in a little bit of everything are probably the people that we want to have more of those types of customers because they do add value from a revenue perspective, from an engagement perspective, from an impact perspective. [00:24:00] So let's build metrics that we're looking at all those different elements built after real customer models to see How we can enrich their lives and how they can enrich Patagonia in the same way. So it's this symbiotic relationship. , And we really truly want people to further our mission, which the first mission is save the home planet. And that's legit. That's not a marketing ploy, like that's legitimate

you know, , a lot of people come to us for winter apparel on winters. Outside of what's been going on the East Coast this year. , Winter has been saving to be less and less intense, so. We were looking at like, do we need more lightweight product?

Do we need more summer type products? As the climate continues to change, , and again, in service of the customer, 

Jeff: yeah, that makes sense. , There's one other thing I wanna make sure we touched on because,, you have had a really impressive career through a tremendous number of, fashion brands. But you also consult with a lot of other companies outside of Patagonia, and but there is like this FOMO problem around [00:25:00] ai.

, , and it's funny because like this is the quiet thing that no one will say out loud is they're all just some level of either. Confused is all get out about how you keep up or they've just completely burned themselves out.

Trying to keep up. And I thought you had a really good take on this. So if I'm someone in that role and I just feel like I'm losing my mind, trying to keep up, what do I do? How do I keep my sanity and continue to get to have hijab?

Angela: Yeah. Yeah. I think the thing that's probably a little bit of a myth, and I'll speak about retail in particular because that's my industry that I know the most about, is that everybody's got it figured out and everybody's moving fast towards these things. And I think the reality is as you talk to other people and other peers is that, I'd rather move.

Slow and methodical , and land it as best as possible, then move and iterate really fast. I've worked in both environments. I've worked in companies where they said, build a plane as you're flying it and. That's great. For some people and I've lived the chaos of that type of [00:26:00] environment where you start launching that plane and then you spend the next four times as much time fixing the thing because you launch too quickly.

Right. And I am, I'm too old to continue to do that. So I wanna be in an environment where I can. , Understand, you know, just stay as educated as you can. Read the articles, talk to people, find those experts that,, really intrigue you and speak to you and keep abreast of it. And I think everybody's trying to learn on their own terms.

But at the same time, you know, what we were hearing is that, board members are like, we gotta be investing in ai. Why aren't we using ai? Screaming from the rooftops, but they don't even know what they're asking for and nothing against them. But a lot of times they just wanna know you're doing the thing and you're not gonna be left behind.

And the reality is , most people are moving a little more slowly than you might actually realize. So the left behind thing is probably a little more of a fear tactic than the reality. , That doesn't mean you can't sit still. I'll say there, there's definitely a [00:27:00] feeling of pressure , especially for a brand like Patagonia, because we don't move fast as an organization.

We're not early adopters to a technology. The leadership team, for the most part, is pretty fearful about, you know, technology, when it deals with customer interaction. When it comes to physical product, they're always on the leading edge. But when it comes to the customer, it's a completely different mindset.

And so it's trying to find that balance and know like, what really makes the most sense for my brand? , And sort of lean into those things and then just have open conversation. , I think it's really important that you build that trust if you've got that pressure coming down from leadership. .

They're like, why aren't we doing this? Or How come we're not doing that? And you can, you know, take the time to educate them on what you are doing and what you're trying to achieve and why there are some things that, like, you don't wanna move too fast or dollars and cents talks to a lot of people, right?

Like, we could go full steam into this and we could burn through a lot of cash. And on the other side of it, look back and say like, what do we just spend a year, a year and a half doing? , And so [00:28:00] I, I think that, that to me is, is the thing that. , I hold onto and I talk to my team a lot about is as I talk to people, a lot of people are still at the figure out stage, 

Jeff: we found a lot of product folks are on LinkedIn quite a bit and. There is an element of everyone I think is, is showcasing the thing that they're really far ahead on. And especially in the AI world, I think there's a lot of, dunno, maybe, maybe some people exaggerating slightly on what they have accomplished, , in ai.

I am skeptical of the number of people who, who have gotten rid of their, $500,000 marketing team and replaced it with a single agent that does everything. , I don't know, I haven't seen that yet. But. It's very easy to,, read all that and get caught in the hype and go like, I'm so far behind.

I need to keep up with every single thing. Like Claude is, you know, philanthropics coming up with what, like four new features a day. , It kinda goes back , to what we were talking about at the beginning, like. Software has only recently become the best way to solve this problem. In the end, like if you're in retail, you're selling clothes, the mission is get clothes from a warehouse to, to [00:29:00] someone's, body.

and you know, , all of us have the kinda sharp problem we're solving. And, some of these things may be useful. they probably will be almost definitely. but I really don't think it's, it's in every quarter of the world moving as quickly. I have multiple friends who are software developers who don't even think about AI and they're software developers, let alone, you know, I, I think it's easy to talk with an echo chamber, but, so give yourself

the room to like be okay and then go through it and figure out like how you apply the bits you see to, to solving your sharp problem.

Angela: Yeah. I have a pretty controversial statement to make on that. Honestly,

I feel like I think a lot of. Headlines are saying that brands are letting go of people because they have these AI tools to replace all these human beings. And I think it's honestly just an excuse to get rid of people.

They would be laying off people regardless, and they're just using AI as an excuse to say that they're doing that. But you're right. I think in a lot of cases there are some, some exceptions, but I think in a lot of cases, , we haven't figured it out yet. I do think the [00:30:00] statement of the people who are gonna win in the long run are people who figure out how to use AI effectively to help them be more efficient in their work.

I believe that statement, but in a lot of spaces, it's gonna take time before we get to a place where you, like you said, you're replacing all these marketing teams because we're already overwhelmed by all this AI slop that we go like, just the perfect word. Because you see it now and it's just like, it's media's changed like 180 degrees, where it was kind of like you believed what you saw, and the first thing you do now is you question everything.

Right? and that happened in the span of less of 12 

Jeff: Yeah, 

Angela: honestly. So,

Jeff: , that's how you and I met is, one of the things we came back to was, , human interaction , is going to be more important than ever. And how do we bring together people , and actually have real human,, conversation. And, from what I can tell you, this is not a AI projection of Angela, but the real, the real Angela.

So, continuing to do that, but, . Yeah,, to your point, the companies I see Where I've actually worked deeply with, team members there, and I know really well the success they're having and how they're innovating and, and using AI to kind [00:31:00] of move faster and move better.

None of them are doing layoffs. Trust me. , Like the ones I see doing really, really well, , they're hiring really quick. They're not laying anyone off. And I, I can vouch for, , some of the things I see them do. , And so I don't know, , like I said, I, I think follow on your side on that one.

All right, I think we covered a lot here today. we gotta get you back to the mission of saving home planet and I gotta get back to, , helping companies , create digital experiences.

, But it was great to see you again. I'm glad this worked out and we were able to catch up again. , Hopefully I'll see you next time in LA and, yeah. Thank you so much for joining. This was a fun.

Angela: Thank you so much for having me. This was a fun conversation.

Jeff: All right. Have a good rest of the day, Angela. See you

soon. 

Angela: You.

Jeff: Thanks. Bye.