00:36 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show, Lee Schafer who speaks to his background as a business columnist and his thoughts on the concept of bureaucracy for good 

10:34 – Lee talks about the importance of understanding opportunity costs and where your business’s money is going 

15:53 – Lee expounds on the brilliant business model that Alfred P. Sloan created for General Motors 

23:54 – The mindset of money and capital allocation as a business and an entrepreneur 

32:35 – Kevin and Nick thank Lee for joining the show

EPISODE QUOTES

“If you go back to the nineteen teens and the nineteen twenties, Detroit was Silicon Valley. It was the Wild West.” (05:25)

“Your line managers are always gonna be – or they should be anyway – optimists. They should be strategic. They should be looking for opportunities to grow their operation. But ultimately they do compete, and they compete for their parent company’s checkbook.” (09:51)

“Which kinda makes the achievement of [Elon] Musk and Tesla pretty remarkable. That’s not a normal guy. You can tell that capital has been very much a part of their whole story…he’s the most interesting figure maybe in my lifetime.” (28:40)

“And they [Target] still do that. You can still listen to those folks talk about investment capital and ask ‘are we gonna invest in our store or are we gonna invest in our distribution capability for online?’ This is the methodology where you go about doing it.” (32:06)

LINKS MENTIONED

AmpliFi Capital Corp Website

Kevin’s LinkedIn

Nick’s LinkedIn

Lee’s LinkedIn

BOOKS MENTIONED

My Years with General Motors

00:40 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show, Aaron Keller and Marco Vriens who break down Proctor & Gamble’s success with brand management systems 

08:15 – The significance and evolution of brand management systems

16:20 – How companies and brands should be adapting to their ever-evolving industries 

24:35 – The influence a brand manager should have on an organization

28:15 – How brands can leverage innovation to survive the end of the ‘big product category’ era 

35:40 – Kevin and Nick thank Aaron and Marco for joining the show

EPISODE QUOTES

“As your number of brands increase, and as your number of different products increase, managing becomes more complicated. And so, to keep that all straight and to manage that in a diligent way, really requires a very specific and well thought out brand management system.” (06:34)

“If you look back on it historically you gotta give them [P&G] kudos for having invented something – not just a product but the way of managing the product. You don’t refer to them as a product management approach, it’s a brand management approach. And they were able to not only exit from only thinking about product, but also evolve beyond just brand.” (11:02)

“P&G invented soap operas. So, if you think about the original content marketing, that was it right there. They created content for moms in the fifties to watch – watch soap operas – so they could have commercials around them. Brilliant, isn’t it?” (22:08)

“For me, the brand is really meant to be the translation to the consumer benefits and to make sure that your brand comes to mind first in the consumer’s mind. That is really the strategy that I think all brands should have.” (27:55)

LINKS MENTIONED

AmpliFi Capital Corp Website

Kevin’s LinkedIn

Nick’s LinkedIn

Marco’s LinkedIn

Aaron’s LinkedIn

Capsule’s Website 

00:46 – Kevin and Nick welcome to the show fellow business nerd, Jeff Cayley who speaks to his e-commerce bicycle retail business 

07:36 – Jeff chronicles the decision to expand his business into outdoor apparel and the process of mastering economies of scale 

14:14 – How fashion, trends and other brands impact the apparel market 

18:47 – How Jeff leverages resonating content to enhance his apparel vertical 

25:37 – Jeff speaks to how he plans on launching new products and the approach he takes to his company’s brand 

29:00 – The decision to acquire the brand Kettle 

36:37 – Jeff talks about the challenge of targeting and selling to women specifically 

41:02 – Kevin and Nick thank Jeff for joining the show 

EPISODE QUOTES

“I don’t wanna sell other people’s shit anymore. I wanna sell my own shit.” (13:10)

“That’s kinda how we succeeded in the bicycle-retail world. We looked at where is everyone doing these old school marketing tactics – poor branding, poor consumer engagement in general – and we went the other route. We engaged people differently. We made people laugh. We paid attention to a lot more details that a lot of other people didn’t pay attention to.” (16:04)

“Our team…we like to have fun, we like to travel, we like to meet new people, we like to get outside of our comfort zone, we like to adventure and try new shit.” (20:56)

“Our outlook on it is that, like we just talked about earlier, we’re not going to be this fashion-forward brand, we’re more so a lifestyle brand.” (26:33)

“It would be dumb of us to think that we can understand women’s apparel and sell to them when we’re just a bunch of dudes. And I think that a lot of apparel brands fail at that because they also are run by a bunch of white dudes and trying to sell apparel to women and just missing the mark.” (38:04)

“Listening to Yvon Chouinard, the Patagonia CEO, on I think it was How I Built This, it was like the stupidest shit ever. He just played it so cool like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m the CEO I just built the company and like the outdoors.’ No, no, no, there’s no fucking way on the planet you build a company that big without being an aggressive strategic capitalist. Like, spill the beans motherfucker. I was so pissed!” (42:17)

LINKS MENTIONED

AmpliFi Capital Corp Website

Kevin’s LinkedIn

Nick’s LinkedIn

Worldwide Cyclery Website

Ketl Website