Shelley E. Kohan (00:03)
Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Kohan and I am very excited to welcome back David Katz. Welcome, David.

David J. Katz (00:13)
Shelley, a pleasure. It’s always great to be here as a guest and to have a conversation with you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:17)
⁓ I love it. So for those who may not know.

Hard to believe some may not know this, but you are EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Randa Apparel and Accessories. Randa Apparel Accessories is a global powerhouse. You have over 100 years of experience, and you have 30 plus portfolios of brands across Apparel and Lifestyle. And it’s throughout all channels of distribution. So it’s great to have you here. And I have to, I have to say, David, whenever I’m at like a trade show or somewhere and I see your name on the docket, I’m like

Like I just have to clear my calendar and go hear you speak because I just love hearing and reading. I read the articles that you write. You know, you just have a unique perspective on things that for me just brings everything home. So

David J. Katz (01:05)
Well, thank you. I I that it’s very generous of you and I too make sure I I I come to see you when you’re there at these trade shows. And you know, as you said, between the portfolio of brands, the global reach, we have very interesting view and perspective and partners who share with us what’s happening in the retail and fashion community. So it’s always great to be in a place where I can hear new ideas and share some of ours, including this show. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:33)
Uh-huh.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. ⁓ but that’s great. Yeah, so you have a very global view on things happening. And I think one of the things that you’ve said lately is that we’re actually not suffering from a lack of information. I think there’s almost like information overload, but we are suffering from a lack of interpretation. And that is something that I think is ⁓ very critical and important in our industry. So today we are gonna jump into what is not actually in the news, but we’re gonna talk about

what the news is actually telling us. So I’m looking forward to this conversation. Over the past, I don’t know, few months, you’ve been talking a lot about gray swans, second order effects, how companies stop reacting and start anticipating. So let’s jump right in and let’s first kind of talk about the gray versus the black swans and what risks we choose to ignore.

David J. Katz (02:32)
Yeah, no, I I you know, we’ve never been we’ve never had more information coming at us from more directions, whether it’s the news feed that we use, social media, ⁓ podcasts such as this one, which I hope everyone listens to religiously, and all of the various feeds of of

sometimes conflicting information, but sometimes consistent. And it’s hard to figure out what do we pay attention to. And I think you just said one of the key things. It’s what’s under the hood. It’s the secondary effects, the things that are not obvious, that actually come to to eventually be of major effects on our businesses, our jobs, our consumers, and our supply chain. And I think

The geopolitical issues we now face, as well as climate issues and some of the other things that I’ve been talking about over the last few months have kind of forced us, and at least forced me, to look at things in ways I never looked at them before. It’s a form of critical thinking. And you asked about the difference between a black swan and a gray swan. So, you know, black swans are things that are

Classically unpredictable. To a certain extent, the COVID pandemic, and although there were some indications of this,

Was pretty much a black swan event. The fact that it would affect global supply chain, consumer demand, inflation, geopolitics, biology, ⁓ the way that Americans and the world looked at science, all of these things changing at the exact same time. Supply, demand, everywhere. With all the modeling I’ve done, I’ve never really experienced something where that happened before. So we kind of use that as a classical black swan. Now, apropos of this discussion,

The next pandemic, and there will eventually be one, should no longer be a black swan. We should be looking at what happened and saying these things do happen during our lifetimes in our business models, and we should to some degree be able to see the effects or have trigger events that would cause us to look at this earlier and be better prepared. So, black swans, meteor strikes and ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (04:31)
Hmm.

David J. Katz (04:52)
you know, a pandemic such as that one. ⁓

We’re keeping an eye on what’s happening with Ebo Ebola in Africa. It’s no longer a black swan if that spreads through more of Europe or or America, right? That’s that’s that’s something we should be taking a look at secondary effects on. Gray swans are different. Gray swans are information we’ve always seen. They’re out there, they’re on our radar, they’re things like climate change and GLP ones and some of the geopolitical risks that we’re going to talk about, I I would imagine, on today.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:59)
Mm.

David J. Katz (05:25)
Show, we’re hearing about these, we’re seeing them, but we may not be prepared or building models or scenarios that account for the secondary effects they may have. And that’s where the gray swans are, things that are on your radar, but you’re not necessarily modeling. And that’s what’s critical to do today.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:47)
That’s so interesting. And then how can you distinguish between, you know, the noise that’s out there with all this information and things that are like screaming for attention? And how how does a company distinguish between I mean the black swans are pretty, you know, easily identifiable, but how do you distinguish there must be a lot of gray swans out there. How do you distinguish or prioritize them?

David J. Katz (05:50)
Yeah.

That’s a that’s the key question.

Right, if you have all this information, how do you figure out how to separate the signal that matters to you from all the noise that surrounds it? And I think there are a couple of things that that you need to look at. You need to ask better questions. You need to look at these things that are there and go, what if?

Our consumer and some of the core assumptions we make about our business. So you’ve got to have better questions. And I break it down into three kind of elemental components. What does everyone see? What do people see? What with this particular item, this particular signal, what might they be missing?

And what might this mean to our business, to me, my job, my customer, my supply chain? So if you look at some of these things and you start to ask those questions and you start to do them early enough before you have to pay the tuition, you know, then

That’s the example we’re using. And that’s the model that I use. So when I see a headline, I frequently go through that exercise of, okay, I get it. Everybody may be seeing this, or maybe somebody isn’t, but this is what most people see. ⁓ What’s under the hood? Let me look a little deeper. What are the secondary effects they may be missing? And if this continues to grow, or if this becomes a more critical issue, how might it affect my business and the decisions I have to make?

Shelley E. Kohan (07:56)
I love that.

That breaks it down so nicely. And I know recently you’ve kind of had these three big signals that you think are hiding in plain sight, as you like to say. And I know GLP1, we had a podcast ⁓ a few weeks ago on GLP1, and just there’s so much of a ripple effect on what’s happening there. you also talk about climate change and aging America. So maybe you can talk about how these three forces are really ⁓ converging together to change a lot of things that are happening in our

David J. Katz (08:15)
For sure.

Sure.

Yeah, I I think let let’s take them in the order that you just gave them to me.

⁓ GLP ones are interesting. If we use the model I described of looking at those three tranches, everybody’s seeing that there are cosmetic changes, weight loss, celebrities, front pages were starting, it obviously they started as medical treatments for blood sugar, diabetes. ⁓ but there were many other psychological effects, neurotransmitter effects, and effects that are going on around that.

That many people did not pay attention to. So we start there, and we’re at a pivotal point right now, and this is starting to creep into the headlines. Currently, and over the last year or so, these are medications, drugs that cost about $500 a month with insurance, that are refrigerated, and they’re injections that you plunge into your abdomen. And you still have 8 million to 10 million Americans using this, and it’s headlines.

But over the next couple of months, we are seeing the cost of this drop to fifty and in some cases twenty-five dollars a month. So a switch from $500 a month to, let’s call it $50 a month, from a refrigerated injection to a pill that you can swallow.

So according to some of the statistics, Circana, for instance, has published something that says they expect, and Morgan Stanley has a similar study, somewhere between 30 and 36% of Americans to try this pill. So you’re talking about a hundred million people. This is a societal cultural change, right? They also, Circana’s study has said that 70% of the people who are using GLP1s have said that they plan to change their wardrobe.

So that makes sense to a certain extent, particularly if there’s a lot of weight loss involved. ⁓ now just because that’s a sentiment study doesn’t mean all of that’s going to hit cash registers, but even if a small portion of that hits, we’re going to see some effects. But remember, GLP1s have effects beyond just weight loss. They change, I mentioned neurotransmitters, they change attitude, they change cravings, they change behaviors. The desire for certain kinds

Of risks, the craving to gamble, the types of restaurants you go to, and the foods that you may buy at a grocery store, the way that you behave towards others and others behave toward you, all of those things are shifting. The desire for ⁓ interaction with other people, sexual behaviors, etc., they shift as well. So if all of that is going on, your consumer is fundamentally changing their behavior. Where they shop, what they buy, what restaurants they go to.

To, how often they go out, how they see themselves, how the worker next to you wants to be treated and sees themselves and how they see you. And if it goes from $500 a month to $50 a month for the eight to ten million people that are using it, what are they going to do with that extra $450? These are a select group of people who have chosen to use this, who just freed up $450 per month in what is now becoming

Possibly discretionary income. And they have a certain attitude. So those are secondary effects that I study, that I look at. ⁓ And what’s interesting, at least so far, this information about GLP1s doesn’t surface in your data feed. You’re not seeing a dramatic shift. I mean, we sell over 40 million belts a year, men’s women’s belts, right? We sell 25 plus million pairs of pants, we sell a lot of dresses.

And skirts, we’re not seeing huge effects in the changes of sizing. So it’s not in the data today, and that’s why this is a gray swan. You see the headline, it’s not in your data feed. This isn’t something coming in in the trend reports you’re seeing in actual selling data, it may be in sentiment. How are you preparing scenarios for this? What should you be looking at? And that’s one of the things that we look at.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:29)
Interesting.

David J. Katz (12:49)
⁓ the next one you mentioned, Shelley, was climate. And climate change, I think, is another one of these.

⁓ climate is obviously an ESG topic, there’s sustainability, s w whether it’s man-made or not, we are seeing changes, whether they’re cyclical or not, in climate. And if you are biased like I am, if you’re on the East Coast or West Coast of America, you think mudslides, fires, right, wildfires, and we think about flooding and and to a certain extent some of the effects we’ve been seeing through the east and west coasts of the United States.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:17)
Mm-hmm.

David J. Katz (13:26)
The largest effect of climate change in terms of dollars in the Americas are tornadoes and hurricanes through the Midwest. That’s where the trillions of dollars of cost is actually i not that the other ⁓ effects aren’t major, but that’s an effect not everyone thinks about. And what it’s done is it’s generated tens of millions of homes that are non-insurable. If you have a non-insurable home

Shelley E. Kohan (13:35)
Interesting.

David J. Katz (13:54)
The way that you spend money, the way that you shop, the things that you buy, and the permanence level of those is considered differently. So your entire shopping pattern changes. We also, we own two of the largest built factories, the largest built factory and one and one of the second largest built factories in the world. One is in Chennai, India, one’s in Guatemala. We’re

These factories are built primarily on high elevations of hills deliberately, so they don’t really flood. But the roads to them can flood.

And the ports can be affected by typhoons or hurricanes. So even though our factory may stay dry, the access to our factories and port closures are an effect that we have to take a look at around the world. Sourcing instability is one effect. ⁓ And you you and I have talked about this. Last year we bought the TOTS umbrella business. So we we are the largest umbrella brand in the world. ⁓ Obviously.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:52)
Right, that’s right.

David J. Katz (14:57)
climate change has an effect on the sale of umbrellas on a micro-geographic level, down to a literally fractions of a square mile, where it’s raining, where it’s not, where the sun and SPS factors change. And predicting your inventory flow for that as climate change is is dramatic. And retail stores that are open, retail stores that are closed. ⁓ Some of our partners are very based in resort areas that are subject to a variety

of the effects we’re talking about. So examples of secondary effects under the hood that people need to think about when they see a headline that says climate change. And that’s the gray swan there.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:40)
That is so deep,

David. I mean, I how do you sleep at night? We’ve only only gone through two out of three and I’m like so stressed right now. Yes, yes.

David J. Katz (15:48)
Well, it’s not a matter of stress, that’s a matter of preparation, right? This is the this this is really

not about, you know, d a d a dystopia effect that we’re going to see here. ⁓ climate has been been cyclical for you know all of history. So this is not something new. But being able to be prepared for it is something that we need to think about. And

You can be afraid of this and a little bit of fear is not bad, but you also can be energized and excited about the new business models that evolve from these kinds of effects. GLP1, if you’re going to look at this just purely from the apparel side, is that going to trigger all these new wardrobe purchases? And fortunately or unfortunately, 18 months after people go on GP1s, a large number stop taking them.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:19)
That’s true.

That’s right.

David J. Katz (16:35)
And they gain back most of the weight they lost, which might be another trigger for a wardrobe change. But their attitudes change, and that’s the part that I think is secondary that people miss.

⁓ and then one of the biggest effects, and it and you mentioned it and it is something I’ve been been talking about a bit, is the aging of America, right? And it’s a headline, people see it and they go, okay, people are getting older, got it. They’re living longer, healthier, right? And the birth rate in America ha is shrinking.

So interestingly, it when I first started talking about this, by 2031, the following statistic was anticipated to be true. When I spoke about it six months ago, they said 2029. So it now looks like only a couple of years from now, possibly the end of 2028, there will be more Americans over the age of 65 than there are Americans under the age of 18 for the first time in American history. Okay.

So that’s a fun fact. So what does that really mean? It’s just a statistic, it’s a headline. But under the hood, 70% of America’s wealth is controlled by people who are over 65. So the wealth is really going towards this older population. That’s interesting because we’re all busy going, how do we attract younger customers? Well, what about attracting some of these aging customers?

Shelley E. Kohan (18:01)
Exactly.

David J. Katz (18:03)
Okay, and I will tell you that our studies show that that this segment, this aging segment, 65, 75, 85, okay, are systematically underserved by almost all brands, all retailers, and digital experiences out there. There’s some businesses that are catering to them well, but remember they’re interesting for a lot of reasons. A secondary effect is they’re not going quietly into the night, they’re still active, they have money, they’re spending, but their behaviors are different.

Instance, they’re aging in place. They’re not moving, they’re not going to as many retirement communities, they’re not moving in with family as much. They want to stay put where they are. They’re not usizing or downsizing. Well, that’s an interesting stat. If you age in place and you don’t sell your home or move, then you’re not triggering the number one trigger for retail purchases in America. When a home is sold,

And someone else buys it. It triggers the purchase of home furnishings and clothing and ⁓ all the renovations and and and home improvements that are done. Those things don’t happen if you don’t move. Yes, you may be putting in some rails and bars and some protective mechanisms, but that spending shifts to something else.

And these older consumers shop for different products in different retail channels with different types of marketing required to attract them. Okay, and that’s not being served well. The products they buy, the services they want, the way you should have a user experience with them is very different. And even the way they interact with websites and retail stores. Lower shelves, smaller type.

sites that don’t have audible cues, okay, are going to suffer when this giant segment of wealth ends up being older and they’re not really doing it and serving them well. So those are three things, and there are there are many others that are kind of headline news, they are gray swans, they have deep secondary effects, and most of the peers that I work with are not modeling and preparing scenarios for what if this challenges the core competencies

and assumptions of my business.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:26)
That’s unbelievable. So of the three, and maybe this question varies based on what business you’re in, of the three that you just mentioned, climate, GLP1s, and America’s aging, what do you think is the most underestimated business that business leaders are looking at?

David J. Katz (20:44)
You know, I think climate change is the one that affects everyone the most, but the one to your question that’s underestimated is probably the aging of America. I think that everyone kind of talks about this climate issue, but I don’t hear as much conversation about 70% of the wealth in these o older Americans who are shopping and and purchasing and have different needs. So I would say that’s the most underestimated effect that I just mentioned.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:12)
Interesting. Okay, I wanna ask your opinion on something else. I’m gonna move on to a different topic, which is ⁓ scenario planning and action. So what happened when the whole Iran situation escalated and what was the ripple effect on that?

David J. Katz (21:17)
Sure.

Yeah. I mean

This obviously is the headline news for most of the world. ⁓ certainly here, we hear about it all the time. And it is again, we put it through that filter of three things. What do most people see? What might they be missing, and how might it affect our business? So our company, ⁓ we own a hundred and a hundred plus retail stores in the UK. We’ve got, you know, online businesses. We’re the number one vendor in our classifications at Nordstrom’s and Mason’s.

But also at Walmart and at Costco and at Tractor Supply and others. So we’re looking at how how basically what effect could this Iran war have across this spectrum of businesses. So we’re directly affected, ⁓ as are most of your listeners. So we looked at this and said, what does everybody see? We all are seeing these headlines. Obviously, we’re looking at oil costs and inflationary costs that are related to that. ⁓ Those are also, I think, things that most people see.

But we wanted to dig in deeper. And so we wanted some advice.

We brought our leadership to an annual summit and we asked in attendance for there to be a senior economist from Wells Fargo and a former CIA intelligence analyst, both brilliant women who brought some insights to us. And using their information we created four possible scenarios. Now there are lots of others and obviously they’re this is changing pretty frequently. and we looked at them as a toll booth.

Where Iran may charge for the transportation in ships to go through the Straits of Hormuz. And what that would do to trade on transportation costs, not only in that area, but once a ⁓ an entity or a co or or or a country can impose a tariff or a tax or a ⁓ basically a toll booth.

Right in a given strait or area, that’s gonna happen much more than just the strait of Hormuz. So what does that do to transportation costs?

Another model we did, another scenario we called two choke points. Most people talk about the strait up there on the canal that we’re all looking at. But if you take it to the southwestern point of the Arabian Peninsula, there’s another strait, one that is controlled often by the Houthi rebels. And if that one closes, access to the Suez Canal becomes constrained. And that totally changes transportation costs and the way that ships are going. Container ships, this is not oil.

This is container ships with products and apparel and accessories and electronics are gonna go through. What happens if both of those become choke choke points?

A third is what if there’s a fractured republic in Iran and they end up with more of a civil disorder and things kind of fall apart and there’s no one totally in charge? What does that do to the uncertainty of oil and gas and petroleum products? And the fourth was, what if we get a negotiated solution, which hopefully we’re headed toward? But

Does that mean we’re just going to return to normal and ignore all of the possible effects and the things that are happening? So we studied all of these things and we studied deeper on some of the effects. I mean, petroleum products, and some of this you probably have talked about. I mean, I I haven’t listened to every single one of your podcasts, but most of them I have. ⁓ I know, I’m sorry. I am a l a couple behind, but I’m almost caught up. ⁓ petroleum

Shelley E. Kohan (24:56)
What?

David J. Katz (25:04)
is, you know, affects things beyond just oil and the inflation. We make products out of polyester, right? A lot of apparel comes in, a lot of other products come out of that. Polyester is a petrochemical, right? So if that’s a petrochemical, how what what does that do to things? What does it do to nylon? What does it do to nitrogen

Shelley E. Kohan (25:08)
⁓ That’s right.

David J. Katz (25:24)
is the is what we use in the United States to grow a lot of our crops in agriculture. We buy it a season ahead. The cost of that fertilizer is up 40% right now. So if you look at that, that’s going to start to have agricultural and food costs coming into the second half of this year. Helium is a petrochemical, so why is helium interesting other than children’s balloons? Helium is the coolant you use when you make silicon chips for artificial intelligence.

Intelligence and GPUs and CPUs and TPUs. It’s also required to run an MRI, and those very fast, rap, you know, rapidly kind of rotating magnets have to be cooled. So what’s the effect on medical costs and shipments? So you look at these secondary effects, right? You’ve got all of those things we talked about. And what we did is we built models that said: if these things happen, how do we prep? And one of the things that came out of our discussions.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:01)
Yeah.

David J. Katz (26:22)
was we need to broaden our supply chain with less concentration risk. So if we have a lot of products coming out of Asia, whether it’s China or Vietnam or Bangladesh or other areas, we have actually made a decision that we will not purchase a core product from fewer than three separate countries, three separate factories in three separate regions of the world. Now we’ve concentrated a lot of this production for very good reasons, for efficiency reasons.

We can build up factories, spend CapEx, get lower prices, faster delivery, higher quality, and kind of concentrate that in places where we’re really, really good at this. But that puts us at extreme risk if there is climate change, if there’s geopolitics, if the Iran war kind of closes down that region, if our data centers are

In some way either attacked or underwater. And by the way, in the Iran War, one of the first things that happened was cyber attacks from both sides. So what happens if your data’s shut down? So again, that’s a concentration risk. So we’ve spread this into more regions. When you do that, when you kind of diversify your supply chain as we’re doing, it’s not this magic solution. It’s not a wand that you do, because that trade-off between lower prices, fast prices.

faster

deliveries and higher quality, some of those things when you develop a new factory or a new country are going to give. There’s going to be a trade-off. And so you have to be aware of the fact that there’s a cost that’s associated with doing this, and some of those costs are substantial. But the risk to not doing it is a bad gamble.

So that’s one of the things that came out of this. Our CEO put it pretty plainly. He said, a business that is built around a signal a single geography, a single distribution channel, or a single supply chain scenario is not lean, it’s not efficient, it’s exposed.

And we’ve decided to you know to limit that exposure. So that’s that’s that’s a specific example of taking one of these gray swans, the Iran conflict that we’re seeing now, and doing scenario planning and modeling and then taking actions around it.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:45)
So let me ask you, David, be honest with me here. That whole exercise that you just described, just looking at one gray swan, how many CEOs, what percent of CEOs do you think are going through what you just described in the various scenarios?

David J. Katz (29:03)
I am hoping every single one.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:07)
I am too, but

David J. Katz (29:07)
I am cautiously optimistic,

okay? I I d I don’t know what all other CEOs are doing. ⁓ I know that some are doing similar modeling. If you look at public companies, there is always a ⁓ a gray swan section of risks that they look at. The question that I challenge is do they look at the secondary deeper effects and are they actually modeling that they may acknowledge that this is a risk. And it the question is, are you modeling how

Shelley E. Kohan (29:23)
Yes.

David J. Katz (29:37)
How

you will behave, how you will challenge your own core assumptions, how you will challenge your own legacy successful business if some of these scenarios play out in ways that were not originally anticipated. And that’s where this this exercise comes to play. ⁓

You also need to identify what I call a canary in the coal mine, right? The canary in the coal mine is, okay, we’ve got all these models, we have these scenarios, we’ve figured out, you know, these these possibilities. At what point do you act on them? So GLP1s, you know, as I said, we’re not changing the sizes of all of our, you know, of we’re not changing 20, 30, 40 million belt sizes because of this or pants. But at what point do you start to model differently or mark market differently?

Shelley E. Kohan (30:18)
Right.

David J. Katz (30:24)
And that’s the canary. When do you get a signal that’s so strong, a trigger point that tells you it’s time to act? And you hopefully have already built your scenarios and models so that when that happens, you’re acting fast rather than and faster than the CEOs who did not study this appropriately, so that it then becomes a competitive advantage to do this kind of an exercise.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:50)
I love that. And David, the other thing that I know you’ve written and talked a lot about, which I think is really important. I don’t think a lot of the retail industry looks at it this way. And that is we’re always looking at our customer today. And I think your kind of philosophy is n you should yeah, you need to keep make sure you’re addressing the customer today, but you really should be looking at who who’s that customer as you say in motion, right?

David J. Katz (31:15)
That’s that’s exactly right. If whether you take ⁓ that customer who no longer has home insurance, or the customer who’s using GLP ones and it changes their behaviors, or this aging customer who might be seventy-five years old, are you looking at the changes of behavior that they’re having today and that they’re going to have over the next decade? Are you actually changing the way you go to market, your packaging, the the way that you reach these customers, the products?

and the services that you use because of this before your data tells you you have to do it. Because by the time your data’s telling you and it’s significant,

Okay, y it’s already a little late, right? You’re you’ve already s underserved this market, you’re already vulnerable, and your core assumptions about your own business may be collapsing. So you want to do this ahead of time, and and that’s where I go, look for those canaries in the coal mine, which are the trigger events that tell you to act. ⁓ what if these signals you’re looking at accelerate instead of just resolving or going away?

What assumption of your core business is challenged by this particular gray swan, this scenario and this model, and who will your customer be, to your point, Shelley, in the future, who are they going to be a few years from now?

If these things occur. Again, you can’t trust your data science to do this for you. And I keep saying that because I’m a big AI and data science advocate. But it do it it doesn’t it it can’t help you with things that haven’t y happened yet. No.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:51)
That’s true. And

I think I’ll just I’ll just end on a final thought, then I’m gonna turn it over to you for a final final thought. So w what I’m thinking is that this whole idea of this second order effect, ⁓ it’s it’s not something that we just plan today and we have a little workshop and then we go about our business. This has to culturally be kind of embedded in the business, right?

David J. Katz (33:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s that’s a bit of a challenge because we reward efficiency, w we reward building business revenue and profits. We tend to punish what if scenarios for things that have not happened yet and the amount of time and resources it takes to model things that may never occur. so there’s a cultural part of this where you have to have within your business

A group of people, and maybe it’s a mindset for a lot of your leadership, that challenges your own core successful competencies, models, and and strategies. Because if a strategy doesn’t if a strategy isn’t subject to change when the environment or the customer changes, then it’s not really a strategy, it’s just a bet.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:10)
that. David, any closing thoughts you’d like to share?

David J. Katz (34:15)
y all of the things that we just talked about, I think, are important. I think if I had one thing I’d want to share with people, you know, ⁓ it would be look at an important truth within your business, something you take for granted as an essential kind of strategic pillar of your business. One that would become vulnerable if the environment around you or your customer changes.

And prepare models to act on this if something changes that dramatically and figure out what your trigger, what your trigger’s gonna be. Take these gray swans seriously. Ask better questions and always keep an eye on who your customer is becoming before they actually get there.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:06)
Thank you. That’s great advice. And I know our audience learned a ton today. So thank you so much again for being here. And I look forward to seeing you soon and hopefully speaking soon. So we appreciate you spending time with us.

David J. Katz (35:07)
No thank you.

Well, thank you for inviting me to speak to you and to your audience. I ⁓ I hope I gave them some interesting information. The feedback I tend to get when I talk about these things is I scare people. And and you said that in the beginning. I this is you know, this is strategy. It’s not a fear tactic, it’s something that you can use to be prepared. ⁓ thank you for inviting me to share this.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:33)
Yes.

Absolutely.