Why Differentiation is all that Matters Right Now - Andrew Horwat

Justin Aronstein (00:01.452) Actually, how do I pronounce your last name? it Horwatt? It's Horwatt, okay. Welcome to Check In, Check Out. Today on the show, have Andrew Horwatt, Senior Manager of Digital Content, Retail, E-commerce, at Fortune Brands Innovation. So that's a fancy title. What does that mean? What do you do every day? Andrew Horwat (00:05.324) It's all right, yeah, you nailed it. Andrew Horwat (00:23.286) It is a fancy title and I'm not a titles guy. So what it really comes down to is I oversee a team who is managing getting content from where it needs to, where it comes from to where it needs to be on retail partners, know, customers. And that's, that's really everything else. It's kind of the trappings and the other duties is assigned within that role. Yeah. It's pretty familiar to most people working in e-commerce and it's just a nice long, it doesn't fit on the business, the table nameplate. So. Justin Aronstein (00:51.722) Uh-huh. so like Fortune Brands Innovations, that is a conglomerate of brands. Are you working every day with every single brand? Andrew Horwat (00:57.879) It really is. Now actually, I'm on a team that is within a COE structure, and we're kind of allied to the security business. So some of the brands are Master Lock, SentrySafe Yale, Front Door Locks, things like that. Those are the, we're allied to anything that's previously known as home insecurity. Justin Aronstein (01:16.856) Got it, got it. And so what is the structure of your team? Andrew Horwat (01:20.952) Yeah, structure of our team, it's pretty lean. It's just me and two specialists. Like I said, we're under a COE, we're embedded in the business unit, and that's it. There's three hands on the ship with counterparts in the fleet, so to speak, and the other business units. it's pretty, there's no such thing as, it's like, if you can lean, you can clean. Like if you ever spend any time in the retail service industry, that's kind of what it is. If there's something needs done, somebody's got hands to do it. Justin Aronstein (01:46.209) Uh-huh. Andrew Horwat (01:50.008) we all jump in and the structure's pretty flat. Justin Aronstein (01:53.313) That's awesome. And so you're in the security division. How often are you guys working with other kind of divisions in bouncing ideas and getting better at your jobs working with them? Andrew Horwat (02:05.282) Yeah, pretty constantly. think the thing that makes it great is the communication is so open the way that our one step up is considered. We know, hey, we just got this great idea. We just tested this really great thing on Amazon or one of our other customers. And it's a little bit different in our vertical, but maybe you guys want to try some variation on that. we're constantly in contact, and it's really a, huh, I wonder if the water division could. can make use of that are the outdoors division. So lots of open communication. Justin Aronstein (02:37.539) Mm-hmm. And that's awesome. So you just mentioned testing. I love to think about testing. so what are you guys running experiments? Are you just trying out new content? What does testing mean for you? And how do you get insights to know what to test? Andrew Horwat (02:56.386) Yeah, so our testing kind of mindset is, OK, well, what are some of those gut feelings? Because everybody's got the gut feeling. Everybody's got what they want to know if it's real or if it's just their biases, right? So we do it on a small scale. We run experiments where we can. Like I said, Amazon gives you the opportunity to run A-B tests. And we cook those up as frequently as we can. And then Justin Aronstein (03:08.057) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (03:17.22) Mm-hmm. Andrew Horwat (03:24.312) pushing past that feature, feature, feature onset of things that are just on the margins of the brand's typical approach. I like to tell my team, think of those boundaries as finite, but they're just beyond the horizon. So if you have a feeling, I'm going to let you race off and test it as long as it's within those brand guidelines. And let's see what resonates, like what actually is moving any needles. And if something pops, OK, let's see about testing it a little broader and then maybe not full scaling right away, but definitely getting those iterative builds on, hey, this worked. This worked a little better. How do we reach that resonant frequency, so to speak? And finding those insights, we look at those huh moments. It's more than the aha moment. It's like you hear people say aha moment all the time, and it loses its luster. But I think it's the huh moment that makes you think, what's going on here? Where data performance gives you whiplash. Justin Aronstein (04:12.6) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Justin Aronstein (04:22.136) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (04:22.754) We love being proven wrong. And so actually we love proving other people's ideas wrong too, because it's the only way you really get outside of your own kind of bubble. Justin Aronstein (04:32.676) I love that. And I think the brand guidelines is really an interesting place to think about. As someone who is skeptical of other people's decisions, how often are you guys able to ever test those brand guidelines and are they actually helpful? Andrew Horwat (04:57.25) think it's more of a constraint that is, it can be pushed up against, but it can't be broken to a degree. we can say, OK, we know that this is where the line in the sand is with the brand. We can't say something that's beyond that spot. But we can get right up against it and brush up and say, OK, maybe it's not about. Justin Aronstein (05:04.088) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (05:22.158) the angle is different. It's like if we stand with our back to the brand and look in back to where people are experiencing it, what does that look like versus being on the margin of right at the brand and looking out and wishing we could do something else? It's kind of that kind of perspective shift of, I like to say microscope versus telescope. You can look at something on a really micro level and say, okay, yeah, that's a really, really core, almost nuclear insight. Justin Aronstein (05:34.178) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (05:52.398) Or you can look through the telescope and be like, okay, what's way out there? so depending on where your position is, in which way you're facing, it kind of leads to some of those insights. Justin Aronstein (06:02.764) I love that. I love that. does your team do everything within or do you guys also work with partners or how do you guys manage that? Andrew Horwat (06:14.178) Yeah, so it's about everything we do from a retail standpoint. We're a bit at the mercy of what data our customers can give to us and what we can accomplish within budgets and constraints that everybody deals with. But in the pursuit of resonance is that factor for conversion and retention. It's what we're always trying to do. And so big hat tip to Jay Akunzo, he of former Google and he's one of my great marketing, my great marketing minds, my favorite ones, that resonance over reach mentality. so within that framework, Justin Aronstein (06:40.366) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (06:43.468) It's more of a, we kind of just, we don't get a lot of say in the build of the matrix or we make it work the best we can, but it keeps us close to the strategy and impact of day to day and also the role of the sleeves work. And when we feel that this is that follows the WTF moment, like, this is weird. And after looking at it, it's that where it's like, do we have the bandwidth? to explore that fully now that we know it's the kind of flipping the, okay, don't come with problems, come with solutions. Okay, I think that's what people mean when they say that, but in a more practical way, you can be super wrong in your solution, but the mental exercise of getting into it and how you achieve that insight or arrived at that insight is really then the jumping off point of, we have bandwidth to do this or do we have to get some help outside? Justin Aronstein (07:41.796) Love it. Can you dive into the resonance overreach framework? Because I've kind of heard that on the periphery, but I've actually never heard it direct. Andrew Horwat (07:52.494) Yeah. So Jay Akunzo is just, again, I picked up one of his books, you know, when he had just, uh, went out, uh, was Breaking the Wheel. It was, it was, you know, years ago at this point, but it stands kind of head and shoulders above most business books I've read to this point. And it's, what I remember was being so good is that it, investigated things like the aspirational anchor of a brand or a, an approach. It's like, okay. And I think he cites death with death wish coffee. Death wish coffee is one of the cases he puts in the book. it's people in upstate New York wanted dark, dark, dark, dark coffee as strong as you could give it. And the guy who was selling it, it's like, well, he could have done two things. He feels like, well, actually, and said, well, dark coffee has less caffeine because it's roasted away, but you feel like it has more because it's like a placebo effect. It's like, dark, it's hard to drink. It's, it's gotta be doing more for. And that, he didn't say though, well, actually he was like, okay, well, I'm going to get regusto beans and I'm going to put it in the same roast and make it dark. And it gives that, that mouth feel and that taste and everything that they're looking for. What resonates with that consumer. So instead of trying to be the educator on everything, it's like, you could, you know, there's all these coffees out there and you could pick any of them, but you should pick ours because this, this, this, this, he goes through the. idea that, and he investigates that case as like, that was about resonating with the consumer, giving the consumer what they want. It's like that old adage, the customer's always right in matters of taste. When you take the quote all the way to the actual end of it. and so that's, that was kind of something that resonated ironically or, you know, serendipitously with me. It's like, it's really those people who are going to be like, yeah, I get it. I want that. Justin Aronstein (09:41.988) You Andrew Horwat (09:50.102) And the natural extension of that is the making what matters is another of his marketing axioms as a good guy post to have nearly everything. Justin Aronstein (10:00.228) Yeah, I love that. I think... I think a lot of people don't know what resonates or don't know their audience enough to know what resonates and they use their own taste and that gets you to a certain point, especially as maybe a founder or early employee. It gets the company to a certain point, okay, your taste was good, but then they don't know really what resonates. And I don't have a case study on this, one example that I can really point to Andrew Horwat (10:18.734) Mm-hmm. Andrew Horwat (10:24.696) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (10:36.58) is his outdoor voices, which was like a young athleisure brand about 10 years ago. she, the founder, Tai Haney, like had a vision and I think she knew what resonated and then she got away from it basically. And now she's brought it back and she doesn't know what resonates anymore. And she doesn't speak to her target market. And when she does, she's kind of lecturing and not listening. Andrew Horwat (10:39.566) Mm-hmm. Andrew Horwat (10:52.652) Mm-hmm. Andrew Horwat (11:05.186) Yeah. And I think that's, that's kind of one of the trends that I'm excited about now. I there are things that I'm totally over and I'll just, I'll just spit that one out as fast as I can. I'm totally over using AI to answer simple questions because it's kind of removed that, you know, it's kind of removed the barrier to, okay, you have to put some effort into finding the data or the information you want. I get it. It's supplied to us. It's the next coming of. you know, supercomputing in our hand as, as, you know, smartphones did to us, but it's, it's, you know, the, the effect it's had on chasing AI visibility at all costs is exhausting. I, I'm already over that. but the one I'm excited about on the converse and when you talked about, that case that you were talking about, it's an extension of the one I'm over is how fast marketing fans are sniffed out by the kind of the people who are coming into, you know, the, Justin Aronstein (11:45.689) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (12:01.41) key demographics, know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. It's like, there's like a real, the kids are all right moment with, it's like almost Sinclairian muck raking that kids are doing and young adults are doing. It's like, there's, they can sniff it out. And that's that skepticism that they can sniff out on the immediate moment. It's like disillusionment with current systems. And I think the one, one of the companies doing really great work in that space is PacSun. And what they've done with their focus on Gen Z and Gen Alpha is they did a youth report. And as soon as they got that youth report finalized, they basically launched into everything they learned from it, shifting towards a system of content, co-creation that's more than just authentic. It's like all the marketing buzzwords, authenticity. It's almost the most inauthentic word that's flowing out there now. And so it's like, but it's beyond that. Justin Aronstein (12:56.196) Uh-huh. Andrew Horwat (13:00.184) the weight you actually get me, authenticity, that you get from doing more than just putting customer centricity in your boilerplate. Justin Aronstein (13:11.108) Yeah, I think that's so interesting about PacSun. I haven't heard about this. I'm actually I'm going to go research it after this. But I think of PacSun is a brand that's been for 18 year olds for 50 years now. Andrew Horwat (13:25.55) Right. I worked at one when I was right out of high school. I worked one summer jobs after college, coming home. And I remember going in there and getting in trouble for turning the music to the Christmas pop punk that they had on the music server. And they were like, hey, they know we did that. We're going to get in a lot of trouble. And just kind of being that alternative approach to retail. Justin Aronstein (13:40.772) I'm sorry. Andrew Horwat (13:51.97) that they've always had. And now it's so centered on those audiences and understanding and knowing where they are, where they're playing, and not just doing it the same way they've always done. Justin Aronstein (14:04.278) And to be able to target 18 year olds forever, that you have to understand, you have to talk to your customer, you have to like really hear what they're interested in, how they move through the market. what, what. Andrew Horwat (14:17.036) Yeah, if I could figure out how to do that with locks and safes beyond here, put it on your locker and the bully won't shove you in it kind of thing, I think that's the, or he'll need to know the code to do it. I think that's where we could really make big splash, but we're still figuring that one out. Justin Aronstein (14:23.763) Hahaha Justin Aronstein (14:32.324) Do you guys get an opportunity, either your team or another team to actually talk to your customer or do user research? Andrew Horwat (14:41.08) We have a consumer insights team that we work pretty closely with and depending on where their focus is in any given time, we get a lot of great voice of consumer and we're always mining, you know, the same things you always do, mining the comments, doing the low hanging fruit where you're like looking at what people, where the friction is and beyond friction, where the detractors are, it's the hug your haters kind of thing. I think that that's always been kind of, when there's nothing else, it's kind of that Justin Aronstein (15:01.86) Yeah Andrew Horwat (15:10.51) If you can lean, can lean moment again. It's like, OK, what is there to do? Well, there's a lot. But I think maybe it's time for us to revisit some of those reviews that we've been getting recently. Dive out back in. Justin Aronstein (15:19.936) or like my personal favorite place to look for almost any brand. Not every brand is Reddit. It is definitely a certain demographic that's on Reddit, but you will hear what people think about any brands there. And they don't think anyone's listening. And that's the type of consumer you want to hear. Good or bad. Andrew Horwat (15:26.722) Right. Andrew Horwat (15:35.811) Yeah. Yeah, it's the unfiltered, moderated internally by them, by their own community. think it's a treasure trove. And I think the early AI approach to, man, we're going to look at Reddit. And now it being Reddit being like, you should stay in your lane and just let us do our thing. I think that was really refreshing to see that kind of come out, to kill them out of that early pipeline. Justin Aronstein (16:06.7) Awesome, shifting the conversation a little, it sounds like you have a team that does a lot and you've gotten there from learning. And one of the best ways to learn is through failure. And we all fail, to fail is to be human. So what's a memorable failure that you've had that you've been able to learn from? Andrew Horwat (16:26.988) Yeah, I've got two that I always kind of queue up. One from previous stops, like an early career stop, and one from a more recent, when we were first tasked with this real testing and learning, know, agile two-week sprint type of understanding. The one from earlier in my career, I was working at an HVAC chemicals distributor. I was a marketing associate. And part of that, as we all know, is sales support. And so queue the national accounts managers. coming to me with big idea. know, we 10,000 units of this display. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be everywhere. It's gonna make a big difference. Our guys and our distributors are gonna love it. And me being younger at the time, I was like, sure thing, you got it. National accounts manager, I'm gonna jump right on that. Me and the creative team are gonna hop on that. 10,000 units later, I'm pretty sure there's probably about 5,000 of them sitting in the back of a warehouse somewhere or in the trash that never got sent out. And that was one of the big... Justin Aronstein (17:05.316) you Andrew Horwat (17:22.136) Wow, I really stuck my neck out for sales. Not to say don't trust sales, but to say, okay, when somebody comes with that type of groundbreaking idea, don't temper it, but be healthily skeptical of it and say, so how many, I didn't ask any of the questions. I was just like, yes, sir. So saying, okay, how many retail outlets do you have to put these in? Are they gonna get damaged to the tune of needing five per store? Justin Aronstein (17:35.287) Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (17:39.992) Yeah. Andrew Horwat (17:50.752) Are they going to need? So it was more of that channel marketing type approach of I could have asked a lot more questions and learned a whole lot more. But then looking at back, I could also ask myself what questions should I have asked? And it's almost that same learning process. And that didn't cost me that job. was a, hey, maybe don't listen to that carte blanche. Don't give them carte blanche to say, yeah, we're going to use budget on this. But beyond that, I think it just the self-reflection. Justin Aronstein (17:54.916) Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (17:58.776) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (18:09.996) it Andrew Horwat (18:18.894) that a failure like that allows for is pretty good. The other one is right at the start of this position, we were going in, know, full, you know, clear eyes, full hearts, as they say, just really trying to race through all the tests we could. And one of them was like, hey, you know what? We always talk about safes the way that everybody does, you know, it's this, it's this, it's this, it can hold this. And one of the things I really loved was how grills, I was buying a grill at the time and I was like, man, I can drive. I can put 26 hamburgers and three chickens and this and that on this. I know exactly how big that one is versus the next one up. And for something that internal volume in a fireproof safe is something that's a little bit more nebulous. I was like, what if we tried something different and like, everybody knows how big a basketball is and things like that. And taking one AB test and saying, okay, this could fit a whole basketball in it. That test went nowhere. I was sure. I was... Justin Aronstein (18:56.516) Andrew Horwat (19:16.91) that it was going to make sense to people. And it sure didn't. And our president of the unit at the time said, OK, so what did you learn from that? It's like, this is not the way to resonate with the consumer. And we're going to try this instead in our next test. And he's like, great, sounds like you learned something. Move on. And we just kept going. And so that velocity and that the OK to fail, like pushed out of the nest, falling bird, hit the forest floor, and then find our way back into the sky kind of stuff. Justin Aronstein (19:46.775) Yeah, I love that. What a great learning. Do you think that, I mean, you probably have the data. Was it the hypothesis wrong or was your execution of the test wrong? And that's something that I'm always asking my team. Like when an experiment fails, like is it that our hypothesis are wrong that in your example that giving examples of things doesn't work or may or may not work or that we used basketball? or whatever, or the images that we used or like. Andrew Horwat (20:17.486) I it was a little bit of a mix. think some of it's like the, and I know that's kind of a cagey answer, but I think it's a little bit of a mix. It's like not everybody who's thinking about buying a safe is buying a basketball, or might be in that intersection. And so it's like, okay, where could we intersect something a little more valuable than a basketball that still has a defined size? It's like, okay, how many, and we built off of this and did certain additional tests following on, let's see, how many? Justin Aronstein (20:31.14) Totally. Andrew Horwat (20:47.576) how many hard drives could fit in, how many this, how many years of taxes, how many things like that, especially in these fireproof, know, safes and file safes that you need to make sure people, that's what people are storing in, making it contextual, but also making it practical. And I think the context was missing when I was talking about chucking basketballs into a fire safe, so. Justin Aronstein (21:08.036) I mean, I see why you went with that. It's like, hey, yeah, how close is that? Andrew Horwat (21:12.59) Yeah, that's, yeah. Everybody, I mean, you say basketball immediately, like, if somebody says catch and throws you one, you're like, you immediately put your hands up a certain size. It's like, that's about right. Justin Aronstein (21:21.346) Yeah, you know, like, great. Yeah, exactly. I guess good hypothesis, decent execution. Obviously, the consumer didn't like it, Andrew Horwat (21:33.144) Context. Justin Aronstein (21:33.954) Yeah, awesome. So what is your e-commerce hot take? Andrew Horwat (21:41.24) So this is always a really fun question to ask because e-commerce hot takes can be self-referentially hot, and they're actually pretty lukewarm. And this might be a lukewarm take, but in my mind, it's pretty hot. I always use it in strategy docs. like, it doesn't matter what we think. It really doesn't matter what we think. I put an asterisk in there when I have to explain it to other people, but it's a scary statement. But if we're honest with ourselves, it's just the natural progression of that. The customer is always right in matters of taste. Because we've never had this level of access to data about what consumers are really looking for and what they're really saying about things that fall short of their expectations. If we're constantly inserting ourselves into the copy and images and contorting research to fit the narrative that we thought we wanted to lead with, we're not serving the consumer. So at the end of the day, just to distill that all down, it's like, doesn't matter what we think. Let's see what the data says, see what our hunches are, see if there's any overlap. And if there is, let's shoot for that overlap. And then we can feel good about what we think while also not caring about it. Justin Aronstein (22:50.508) I completely, 100 % agree. It doesn't matter, and it especially doesn't matter what the highest paid person in the room thinks. Besides that, yes, we have to be profitable so we can all have jobs and grow, but it really doesn't matter their opinion because in most cases, they're so removed from the consumer. They're so removed from the buyer that they have no, they haven't talked to a buyer in years, most times. They haven't been on a sales call. They haven't done user research and they had a great, when they started this company or maybe when they're hired as CEO, they know how to run a big company, whatever it is, that is great. But that doesn't mean that they know how to, what actually moves the customer. Andrew Horwat (23:36.76) Right, and even over a specific set of time, you could do something exactly right, you know, six months ago or a year ago. And then the exact same thing isn't resonating with who's looking at your stuff now, whether it's from a lifetime value play or whether it's from a new customer acquisition play. It's just this, the brand advocacy research data, it all has to inform. It's like they're the electrons in the, you know, Whatever I'm trying to in the nuclear diagram I'm trying to paint from there, it's like we have to understand the story at the nucleus and understand what kind of plugs into it to give it that form that's a little more close to what the consumer is actually saying. Justin Aronstein (24:15.79) Yeah. Justin Aronstein (24:19.876) Totally, So one of the things that kind of builds off that, that I find like consumers really want value at the end of the day. They want to believe that they are getting more value than they are paying in price, in time, et cetera, et cetera. So how do you research what they find valuable? How do you know? How do you, what are you guys doing around that? Andrew Horwat (24:49.208) Yeah, and some of it's hard because the different customers, they've got different shoppers. It's segmentation at the end of the day. And I think if you remove yourself from the segmentation and you try and make everything everything, or put the best stuff everywhere, you end up with not resonating with anyone because they think you're only one thing. It's like, you don't understand me because I only shop at big box store A. Justin Aronstein (24:49.508) Yes. Justin Aronstein (24:56.42) Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (25:12.151) overlay. Andrew Horwat (25:19.714) But I see this, when I hear you talk about your product, I don't see myself using it because it sounds more like somebody who makes more money than me or is in a different life. It's the constant, spend a, everybody hashtag agency life, everybody does a stint in agency and you spend your time on that side and you build personas and you really drive them hard. And personas are great. But I think the joke is always, know, the elder millennial who is also into knitting and spending time at home and not going out and has a savings account and the 78 year old who has those exact same interests. You can't say that that's one person because the elder millennial might have more things to lock up versus the person who's 78 and living in a managed care facility or something. It's the... their assisted living facility. It's like some of those, the blind spots of what we've come to accept as demographic splits for segments just kind of muddies the water so much where you just feel stuck on what to send where. Justin Aronstein (26:27.78) just Justin Aronstein (26:37.496) Yeah, I agree. think for all the data that we have, like in all the times that we talk to our customers, I think at the end of the day, 90 % of companies don't know who their customer is, don't really know the segments that matter. Because it's like really, really, really hard work to get that. Andrew Horwat (27:04.664) Yeah, I think, and with digital and everything, with everything being so removed, and then even going through the pandemic, everybody was just trying to get what they needed, what they thought they needed through the least friction and the least barrier at the time. And we've seen kind of the tail end of that happening where people, yes, there was the blip of everybody can go out now, everybody's going, everybody's going into the stores and it's great and everybody can see each other. But some of the buying... selling, purchasing overlaps are completely different because people's preferences have kind of evolved with the tail end coming out of the pandemic, which I think we're still in. There's still a lot of people who are evolving out of how they were in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and buy differently. so the buyers at customers have one frame of reference, the direct to consumer. side of things has another frame of reference and everybody's looking for that magic bullet that's going to work at both. again, if you're not investing in the opportunity to really segment and say, yes, I understand big box store A wants this big box store B looks like they want that, but they're actually telling us this because the data says this is who's purchasing. That's the most frustrating end. in an ironic way, hopeful thing to have to differentiate that much. And I think that's where the real opportunity coming up in the future is leaning into that differentiation. It's like people want that value. sit there. I know I, when I buy anything, I sit there and I crunched numbers and doomsday mentality, you know, what if I, what if I bought this and then I can't do something else I was going to do? what, you know, tax season's coming up and what if I buy this and and it'll be fine because I can cover it with some of my tax refund if I'm getting one. You start doing all of those machinations in your head and it's like, everybody's doing that. And if we're trying to distill it down to, this person just needs this, we're way off base. Justin Aronstein (29:17.38) Totally, that's absolutely right. I do the same exact things when I'm buying things. We just read at our home and we have a room that we're going to turn into our living room. And so we need to furnish it with a couch and TV and some other things. We've been living in this home three months now and we're not going to buy any of that for another six months because like we don't need it. there's no like me. Yes, we want it. Andrew Horwat (29:43.022) We've lived in our house for five years and we still don't have a living room coffee table because we can't agree on what's going to fit the space right, what's right for our kid, what's right for what's coming next or when people come over. We could spend $50 at IKEA and I probably would prefer to just because we have this indecision paralysis. But at the same time, we could totally be happy with the luxury side of things. It's like we get the value. It's made of solid wood. Justin Aronstein (29:50.573) Exasperated. Justin Aronstein (29:59.715) it It's totally right. Andrew Horwat (30:12.758) I don't have to make it myself, you know, all of those wild swinging pendulum moments. Justin Aronstein (30:18.712) Totally. So like when I go on a site, like, they're like, why didn't he buy? It's like, well, what are all the other things going on? What is the one thing you wish your CEO or your bosses knew about your job that they don't? Andrew Horwat (30:34.878) I'll preface it by saying my, my supervisor is great. She's amazing. She gets me. She's we're very aligned on a lot of things, broader, like to, to throw it into like a 30,000 foot. wish what people not like we were talking about, not on the front line of feeling a customer centricity for legitimate customer centricity and what our, team actually does. It's, it's more than just the final mile. Yes. We're the team. that's getting content where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, being at the intersection of all these different teams, working as much as we can with all the multiple different stakeholders. But the lead time on all of that is so much longer than just being handed a baton as the anchor and the relay. It's like when I first got here, I made the relay analogy with the distinction that in many cases, because of how things are in most businesses, relay handoffs, people have an idea of where their job stops and What happens is you're not at the relay transfer zone. You're not even running in the same direction. You're stopping throwing the baton and hoping somebody is watching when they have to catch it and keep going instead of, know, all suffice to say that the legacy process is one way and you know, it's been the hardest work to be included in inject my team earlier and earlier and earlier in all of these processes. So we can account for delays, all the things that we see on that frontline saying, yeah, we can put all this stuff in. We know there's gonna be review sections and review processes that take an extra two weeks, potentially three or four. So we've gotta be thinking way in advance than we normally do. Justin Aronstein (32:14.252) Yeah, I love that analogy. You're not just giving the baton to someone. And you're not just handing the baton from someone either. You've already been running for, and you're running five races at the same time in preparation for them. Andrew Horwat (32:24.748) No, it's... Andrew Horwat (32:31.49) The Olympics are going on right now. I don't know when the show will air, but I know the Olympics are going on right now. And I've always been a long track speed skater fan. I wanted to be one where I grew up. Definitely. But the short track speed skating relays are absolutely wild. Because you've got, they do their laps and then the person coming in has to skate with them, match their speed, understand, and then they get to do their transfer where they push and they get a shove. That to me, if I could move from Justin Aronstein (32:40.045) Uh-huh. Justin Aronstein (32:45.646) Uh-huh. Andrew Horwat (32:59.928) people seeing it as a relay race to seeing it as a speed skating relay, a mixed double speed or a mixed team speed skating relay, that would be phenomenal because it just feels like a much more noted analogy guy, Andrew Horwine, like finally has his new like back pocket analogy. It's like, but have you heard about long track speed or short track speed skating relays? Cause that's what we should be. So. Justin Aronstein (33:23.652) That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I'm actually I love speed skating. I've been really enjoying the Olympics. the kind of last question is where do you see e-commerce? Where do you see the opportunities in e-commerce over the next 12 months where for you personally? Where's where's your Andrew Horwat (33:44.738) I'd say. That's a good question, because so much of it is down in the weeds that we don't always have the time to zoom out. And I hate using jargon like zoom out or 30,000 foot view. But I think. Justin Aronstein (33:55.268) you Andrew Horwat (34:04.048) I think the opportunity... Andrew Horwat (34:12.398) think it sounds trite, but it is the differentiation. If we're not dialing in on what really sets us apart, be it distribution, quality, some of the things we've talked about, we're really not nailing it. We're not seizing the day on, I think, the only way to stand out. And it's weird in this climate of AI and AI visibility. And like I said, I'm over AI visibility. It's exhausting. at some point there's this, it's somebody making decisions is going to ask, okay, are we, how are we on AI? Big general statement, like when creatives hear, don't do it like this, but different or better, and they hate it and they immediately go into the shell, right? And it's that if we're not going to really set ourselves apart and define that value proposition, I think that that's the only opportunity there really is. Justin Aronstein (34:48.366) toilet. Andrew Horwat (35:09.088) Otherwise, it's just lost in shoulder checking, competition and understanding or looking kind of that regression to the mean of everybody just trying to work as fast as possible. Justin Aronstein (35:20.228) I completely agree. think differentiation now is more important than ever. think people, whether they're using A or not to shop, can browse 10 to 15 different options relatively quickly. even if they're just using Google, just in the standalone, like, and they're using Google Shopping, they can find 15 options for a safe. really quickly and they can evaluate how each option is better or worse. And how do you show that you solve the customer's problems? How do you differentiate? Is all that really matters? mean, friction doesn't matter. And how do you help explain the value to that segment in shopping? And hopefully you get it right, that's the segment that you shop. Andrew Horwat (36:09.804) Yeah. And being right about the segment that can move. there's always a, you hear people say low hanging fruit and it means different things to different people. But one of the big things I always hear people intend that to mean is getting more of what you're doing good at. It's like, yeah, that's, that's great. But the, the, amount is like on this side of the bell curve, you know, it's a couple of standard deviations all the way to the top. And if you're looking anywhere, you want to move like middle of that bell curve into the one standard deviation or the one standard deviation to two and you want to figure out where the movable middle so to speak is and differentiating for them because hopefully you're nurturing those people on at the high end who are already your evangelists or hopefully your evangelists you got to nurture those people differently in lifetime value as opposed to the people who maybe you're spending way too much on customer acquisition trying to see what makes them tick and getting it wrong. Justin Aronstein (37:10.968) Yeah, I love that. So I completely agree. I do think differentiation will be the difference this year. What are you reading? What are you whether about e commerce or about life or what? Andrew Horwat (37:26.328) Yeah, so I'm a huge nerd and one of the things that I love now is pop culture's acceptance of things that would have gotten me shoved into a locker when I was in high school or growing up. I'm big anime fan, so I'm still getting over the fact that My Hero Academia just ended. But I really look forward to the new season of One Piece live adaptation on Netflix, Avatar The Last Airbender season live adaptation. We just finished the second season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+. That was awesome, really great there. Justin Aronstein (37:45.817) Mm-hmm. Justin Aronstein (37:54.756) Uh-huh. Andrew Horwat (37:56.13) Rick Riordan, really great author and he did really great with the showrunners there. From a book perspective, I have to shout out my high school orchestra teacher, Brendan Slocumb. He has become a novelist who's become absolutely killing it in bestsellers lists. He was on the New York Times bestseller list. I just finished his third novel, The Dark Maestro and... highly recommend his others, The Violin Conspiracy, his first novel, and Symphony of Secrets, his second music-related mystery. Very cool. I won't give anything away because his stories and his novels are amazing. The Man was one of my heroes growing up because of how much he loved music and helped me love music. But now he's one of my heroes because he went through hell and back and has just come out the other end just absolutely pumping out bestsellers, and it's awe-inspiring. And then re-reading Breaking the Wheel because I kind of, I'd make myself re-read it to make sure I still am abiding by most of Jay's principles. And the funny anecdote about that book is I thought it was so good that I gave it to a previous supervisor at a different career stop. And it was so good when they left, they took it and it was a signed copy. And I wrote Jay and I asked, Jay, my manager. left and took your book and it was a signed copy. Is there anything you can do? I'll pay for another copy. And he sent me another copy. It's like, so I still have it. I still read it. it's, it's got, so that's, that's what's on my, that's what's on my reading list now. And I'll probably be, aside from all of the library books that my son, you know, our, our libraries prints out receipts of how much you've saved every time. And like, that's the best validation for using your public library. Justin Aronstein (39:25.736) that's awesome. Justin Aronstein (39:39.896) Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Andrew Horwat (39:45.196) could ever imagine because it's like I saved ten thousand dollars last year from books I would have bought because he reads them so fast. Okay yeah go libraries. Justin Aronstein (39:50.425) totally. Justin Aronstein (39:55.748) That's awesome. Yeah. My four year old has discovered that we can write out library books on our phone. So at bedtime she's like, well, I don't want any of the books we have, about a hundred books we have, let's go look at the phone. And now she has the whole world at her disposal. Andrew Horwat (40:11.198) our four year old is the same way and it's a healthy mix of nostalgic books that we read growing up and the new stuff that he's now interested in. Justin Aronstein (40:16.537) Okay. Justin Aronstein (40:20.325) Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Andrew. Amazing insights. Thank you. I'm going to press stop. Don't leave quite yet. Andrew Horwat (40:26.014) Thank you for having me, yeah.