Shivani Amar: Hey guys, I’m gonna be camera off for this meeting because I’m a little sick. Uttam Kumaran: Hey, problem. I’m just at the library, I was also gonna be… Off, there’s some background movement. How’s everything? Shivani Amar: It’s . How are you doing? Uttam Kumaran: Sorry about the sickness. Shivani Amar: Hi, Awish, is that how you’d pronounce the name? Awaish Kumar: Yup, hello. Shivani Amar: Nice to meet you. Uttam Kumaran: , maybe today I just wanted to… Talk a little bit about plans for next week, and then, of course, introduce Awash. Wanted to walk through our… Gantt chart, and then prepare on, , who we’re gonna end up, scheduling meetings with next week. Shivani Amar: That’s on. Uttam Kumaran: we can probably start there, and then… , maybe I’ll start briefly, introduce Awaish. Awash is … My counterpart on the data side, both of us, , have worked in data for a while, but Awasht is really going to be leading a lot of our initial implementations on Snowflake, dbt, and helping me with Documentation, and guiding through, , the selection of the data warehouse, selection of, , any other tooling, and then ultimately, , implementation of whoever we go with. maybe I wish I’ll let you say hi, and , the way we work, as I mentioned initially, is a little bit of a pod model, we have folks with expertise across each part of the stack. I would say for… This initial phase, it’s a lot of, , architecture, documentation, and, , discovery. And then as we get into modeling around certain… channels that. We’ll bring in, , some subject matter experts as we need, but usually I feel we’ll… it’ll probably be 3 or 4 people, but there may be some other people from the Brainforce team that sub in as people go on vacation that, but , I’ll wait till you say hi. Awaish Kumar: , my name is Avish Kumar, I have been working as a data engineer for the last 8 years, I’ve worked with, , Help, , startups and the growth stage companies build their infrastructure from scratch. And build the, , end-to-end pipelines for reporting and analytics. Shivani Amar: Nice, nice to meet you. Where are you based? Awaish Kumar: I’m from Pakistan, nice to meet you too. Uttam Kumaran: , he’s left… he’s left North America. Shivani Amar: The wish was in Canada originally. Uttam Kumaran: Couldn’t keep him here. Cool, … , maybe we can… get started, I’m just gonna go ahead and share with you, , our hub for Element that’s in our Notion. Again, I didn’t know, , yet where, , Element team does writing, but for us, we’ll make , at least on our side. all of our notes are structured in this, , Notion document… in this Notion, , hub, and then if we need to move documentation either into the repository or into… Another place where, , Element docs are could totally do that. Shivani Amar: , you got, , the folder I shared with you, ? , I would say that that, , is gonna be the place to make we have stuff. Uttam Kumaran: , , would you prefer that we, , just start creating, … because Google Docs is sometimes hard to just keep organized, but that’s where we’ll end up, , we can migrate all of our docs there as we go. Shivani Amar: , , honestly, , everybody works off Google Drive here, eventually you’re gonna want stuff there. , this is … , people aren’t really working out of Notion too commonly now, … . It would just be, , a separate thing. Uttam Kumaran: For us, we’re gonna be taking a lot of notes on our end, just , who do we meet that, it may end up being… Redundant, and any net new documentation, we’ll just make that one’s up there. , today, maybe we can just start. I wanted to… one, maybe just continue to frame everything around this Gantt chart and timing, and I’ll just, , share my screen. Shivani Amar: , please. We could… Uttam Kumaran: We can talk through… both, I want to add, , individual milestones for meetings, but I know last time we talked, we spent some time on who owns each channel, and, , the ordering of, , do we want to talk to the head of commercial first, and then work our way down. I thought about it, , that would be a great , framing. I know… you were going back and forth on, , the ordering, but my suggestion would be, it would be nice to just say hi. Explain a little bit about how we’re going to get his, . , buy in and just put a face to a name, and then work. Initially, you mentioned there was one person that owned , Shopify. As a whole, and maybe he’s the first person that we can, , arrange a time with. , to ask questions. Shivani Amar: Alright, , , , there’s the Gantt chart view, but the thing that was on your plate was to put the list of questions together, and , , that will help me figure out who to talk to. Have you guys done that? Uttam Kumaran: We haven’t put a list of questions together, I just need to know, , , what channels these people own, and start to put Shivani Amar: you already know that we’re gonna talk to people who own Shopify and Amazon, ? , you already know that. , , to me, it’s , I… I can see, can Jason answer these questions, or do we need Carlos involved? , that’s … , it’s… it’s … , I’m pretty that was a next step on your plate, to be , here’s the set of discovery questions we have far, and then from there, Jason and I could figure out who you were gonna talk to. Uttam Kumaran: , I just… I know that that’s what we discussed, but it’s also, , it’s… it would just be nice, , to just… make that we just have that meeting booked. I can work on those questions. We’re officially starting off next week, we’re… we’re getting our stuff aligned on our side, and getting those prepared. It’s a… it’s a lot to go through all those questions on, and we’re… we have some questions already that I would ask them, but I still would to make we get those meetings booked with those people, because before we… because I know that’s, , when the sprint is starting, … Totally, totally, but I… Shivani Amar: , let me back up. what I’m saying is, , once you have a list of high-level questions, I can see if you need time with Jason versus if you need time with Carlos. I’m hesitant to just give time with you and people until we know the set of questions. , Will, who is the chief commercial officer, is busy that if I’m , man, , it really would be helpful for him to set the context, then great, I’ll try to set up time with him. But if your questions can be answered by Jason primarily, then I’m gonna, , I’m gonna, , let other people have their time. And, , I get the face-to-a-name piece, but that will happen, I’m , it’s more , once… the first thing might be, , we talked about the two hours with Jason, but is it two hours? Is it an hour? , that’s, , you guys have done this before with a bunch of clients, and it’s , what do you typically need to know to be oriented? By a client in terms of what’s going on with Shopify, in terms of what’s going on with Amazon, , what’s the orientation you need? And then from there, we can say, , , Jason can do the high-level orientation, then maybe the following week, we set up time with you and Carlos, but we, , let him have next week to just do his own thing, ? , I’m trying to be protective a little bit about the element stakeholders, unless you have very clear questions where I’m , oh , this is definitely, , you need time with Carlos. Uttam Kumaran: , , I just need to walk through… , , we can go ahead and… Put that list together today. Shivani Amar: that’s, , that’s, , the input, , that’s, , really, we’ve stared at the Gantt chart, once you have the questions, then we can say, cool, Jason and I believe that the people you need to talk to are A, B, and C. ? . And I imagine you have, , a standard set of CPG questions from, , your discovery with other companies, hopefully. Uttam Kumaran: , , , I… it’s just, , I don’t… a lot of the questions are dependent on their answers, , , I can write down… I can write down, , our 20, 30, 40 questions, but these are just, , discovery conversations. I promise they won’t be a waste of time. I’m not there to chit-chat. It’ll just be… , I have to understand what their… , how they’ve managed the channel to date. I want to understand, , what key KPI questions they’re answering, walk… walk through their reporting. I can structure the agenda of that meeting, but it’s… I… part of the goal… part of the reason for the meeting is also just to say, , hey, I’m here, our team is going to be working on these things with you, and then we can move everything to Slack at that point, if async is better, but part of this is, , we just need brief introductions to people. , I get the protection of their time, but I promise you it’s not… we’re… we’re… we just have to… I have to, , do… run a basic discovery, I can put together, , the list of areas, and some sample questions, but… Shivani Amar: But then the high-level discovery is what I need to prime people with. , I need to tell people, these are the high-level questions that Brainforge is gonna want to discuss with you. That’s the way that we work here during Rest and Assess. it’s , I’m already pinging Carlos and Laura and people to say, Brainforge is gonna want time with you, stand by while I get, , a semblance of their questions, what to expect. , that’s , … When you think about the rest and assess week, , the way to do it smoothly is prime people as best as possible for what you need from them, and, . what questions they should be prepped with, that everybody’s using their time most efficiently. And , , if you look at the folder that I shared with you, I’ve already started sharing some files with you, ? , have you taken a look at any of those? Uttam Kumaran: , , we’re… , we’re… we usually don’t start, , a lot of stuff until, … , we… until the contract starts. The contract’s starting next week, … Shivani Amar: are starting to get… Uttam Kumaran: , I’m starting to, , get our people together, and we’re planning to execute, and I’m… I’m just trying to get a sense of, , who we’re gonna start talking to, but we don’t officially… I can’t dedicate, , a ton of time. We’re on, … I’m just making we have, , everything set up and ready to go, we hit the ground running. Shivani Amar: Perfect. it’s , , I… what I can assure you is, , , am I pinging all of the stakeholders on the commercial side, saying, we’ve selected Brainforge, Brain… this is their proposal, , this is a link to the Gantt chart that you can see, , I’m saying that the milestones for December are… selecting a data warehouse and ingesting Shopify and Amazon data, ? , that’s, , what I’m , , articulating. And, , those are the milestones, and then, accordingly, it’s , , having the conversations with people who own Shopify wholesale and Amazon, which are Carlos and Laura. That’s it. And, , Blake is, , this other person that, , he owns. Partnership data, which, , look, let me share my screen for a second. … , , , check this out, ? , , let’s see, is it opening? , you can see that. , they’re, , collecting data constantly around, , the partnerships that we have, and trying to get a feel for… I’m , I made a copy of this spreadsheet, I’m , I don’t know, , whatever. I don’t know if this is broken in theirs, but I made a copy of their spreadsheet, and it’s , from, , our partner. Uttam Kumaran: These are the wholesale partners. Shivani Amar: This is, , people we advertise with. this is, , , not people who are buying, and selling. This is, , let’s see… Uttam Kumaran: Oh, marketing partners, . Shivani Amar: Veritasium again. Uttam Kumaran: YouTubers, influencers… . Shivani Amar: I’m , where’s Huberman? , what… , Andrew Huberman, ? it’s , , this is… maybe, , I’m , is this even the row? But, , this is, , will show you, theoretically, , , how much revenue did we get from Huberman, ? , how many sessions went on, , how many people went on our website? How many people added carts? And then you can , , look at conversion rates, ? … across these partners, and , for instance, we just started advertising the Skim, that newsletter? , , , the skim has… is getting us, , a lot of sessions, as you can see, but it’s, , a really low conversion to add to cart. , but, , that’s standard, , for newsletters versus, , trusted health podcasts that. this is interesting, because it’s, , related to Shopify data, ? it’s, , partnership-specific. And , , what I’m thinking for you guys is, , e-commerce, growth dashboard, this is what Carlos owns. Carlos is, , looking at… now it’s for 2026, it’s , , you can’t see actuals, but, , he’s looking at… E-commerce sales, and, , performance spend, that, . and then Amazon OKRs, ? Shopify OKRs, it’s , this is, , the total for e-com. Then he’s got his Amazon, and then he’s got, , a little bit for Walmart’s website, , for Walmart’s, . Walmart.com, . that’s, , his e-commerce dashboard. that’s, , just to give you a sense of, , this is what Carlos owns, then this is what, , Blake owns, ? , . as you’re prepping discovery with these people, , part of it is they’ll walk you through this, , ? , they can definitely walk you through this, but part of it is I wanted to get you the documents you can make your discovery, , a little bit more informed. Uttam Kumaran: , and then for these meetings, , do you think it’s better to prime on, . What, , what would help improve your reporting? Do you think it’s, , what questions have you wanted to ask, but you can’t ask? Do you think it’s, , how much time are you spending to produce this? Shivani Amar: , , for instance, for Carlos, , the Carlos, the e-commerce one that you’re in now, , it’s, , somebody on his team is, , going in. And pulling from every system and, , typing the numbers in. ? , it’s not… it’s not clean. Uttam Kumaran: It’s a little bit of a leading question, but I’m… I’m … that’s , , how we… one, I will… I will almost… you… it’s , , tell me where the pain is, and then try to identify, , is this, … is this, , annoying, but, , it’s ? Or is this, , we… the business cannot grow? Because you can’t get the more numbers, or the numbers fast enough, ? Shivani Amar: , I don’t think it’s that the business is, . oh my god, the fact that this reporting is manual is hurting our business, ? , that’s not… that’s not… , that is a pain point, but it is not THE pain point, ? When you think about, , you’re , I’m hungry to add ROI, , the thing that is gonna be deeply unsexy, I , , wrote this in my… , rest and assess, , … I’m just gonna share this very openly, , I was , we selected a partner to work with, and the one thing to be, , really mindful of is, , that we are doing the deeply unsexy work of, , where our definitions different? . ? And, , that that’s gonna be, . , they’re not even gonna necessarily name that, ? Because if you’re talking to an e-commerce guy. he’s thinking about e-commerce. Then you’re talking to a wholesale person, they’re thinking about wholesale. You’re talking to a retail person, they’re thinking about retail, and then eventually, you, as the triangulator, have to say. Uttam Kumaran: I’ve heard the word sales, I’ve heard the word income, I’ve heard the word… Shivani Amar: point of sales, and, , nobody knows what they’re talking about. ? And , , that’s, , a piece of triangulation. I would say. , one of the examples of things that was on Carlos’ plate this past month that I shared with you previously on e-commerce was the lower conversion rate from sessions to, ? In our, , in our Shopify instance. And , that, , is that because we’re just driving all these sessions with, , newsletters? ? , is that, , we’re just driving a bunch of traffic to our website, and then people are just less likely to convert, and that’s just, , a natural thing as we broaden our advertising channels, ? Or, , what drove… if you think about it that way, it’s , what drove the increase in the denominator? ? And then it’s , , that’s going to be… , you can get the orientation from Carlos around, , this is his sheet that he looks , these are all the metrics that he thinks about, and then your discovery question is, , cool, this is probably pretty manual, , . In time, we can, , develop a more automated way of doing this, great. But then… and, , where does all that data sit in Shopify, blah blah blah. If it, then great. Then it’s , what are the pressing questions that you feel have been hard to answer lately? And, , if he doesn’t mention conversion rate there, I’ll prompt it. I’ll be , that was. Uttam Kumaran: For that, , for that question. Do you think it’s helpful if it’s, . , there is a way, … There is a way for us to answer this short-term, or do you think that’s just something we note down and, . , it’s noted that you’re having a hard time. , do you think there will be things that come up where it’s . Hey, , maybe go do a little bit of, , find out the answer to this as a way to, , win… Shivani Amar: This is where . Uttam Kumaran: points with Carlos, or… Shivani Amar: here’s where , , the row sets, , are, to me, are not clear, ? it’s , let’s say you put, , a database together, , everything going on in Shopify and, , how things are tracked, ? then it’s , here’s, , what I’m hungry for, just, , as an example, ? , a place where we see Sessions, product… By chance. Uttam Kumaran: known by, , by Switzpan, . Shivani Amar: Product page, add to cart… , I’m talking about the funnel. check out, ? , to me, I’ll… you might hear me say this a lot in life, but I’m , everything’s a funnel, ? I’m , , everything’s a funnel, , , what is the… what are the metrics that we want to look at? , and then, now, it’s , his dashboard is, … his dashboard is, , looking at it at a high level with the conversion rate, ? He’s , what was my conversion rate on Amazon? What was my conversion rate on… whatever, , on Shopify, ? And, , what I might want to know is, , let’s say you have a dashboard eventually that’s, , sessions, product page, add to cart, checkout, and then it’s, , by… Month, you can look at, , Jan, Feb, March, whatever, but because, , I’m thinking in Tableau terms, you can also say filters, or date ranges, , where you can say… , weekly versus… monthly, or whatever. Pick the date range that you want, ? . 2025, or whatever, I’m just making stuff up now. And then you could say, , filters could be Shopify versus Amazon versus total e-commerce thing, ? And it’s , eventually you want all the metrics to be able to, . triangulate you can, , have dashboards this. It’s , whoa, my session spiked, but my checkout was pretty consistent. Does that make sense? That’s, , my… view of… What good will look after you have the conversations. Does that resonate with you, Awish? , it’s , , you can see, , he’s, , manually typing things into this now. Uttam Kumaran: , and doing the deltas, . Shivani Amar: And he’s, , doing the deltas. Uttam Kumaran: This is where we find, , this is where we find everybody, . , all of our typical things. And I’m , eventually I want, , a tool that I can just be … and, . Shivani Amar: My question for you on the discovery side is also that we have… this is a question I have for you, ? You’re , , I want to talk to… I want to talk to Carlos, I want to talk to people, great, but then, how we have, , we have one part of the business that looks at Looker? I told you this, ? , , they use, , a coarse medium, and I’m … I’m , do you need to talk to Source Medium? That’s my question for you. Or, , do you just need access to this? Or is this, , irrelevant because you’re gonna pipe the data anyway into… Snowflake or whatever data warehouse, and you don’t need to be looking at this. , what do you feel about this dashboard that you’re looking at? Uttam Kumaran: In order to answer that, I need to talk… I need to either get access to this, or talk to them, or talk to whoever the internal element owner is on, , what was the use case. Because also, again, if there is a duplication of work, then I want to help you make the decision on, . , are there things here we can reuse, ? But this is where I don’t know what scope source medium has access to, how open that is, and how configurable, … Talk to our intern, , whoever on our side is the source medium person, and get their gauge. Shivani Amar: I was gonna do a discovery call with stores media, not a discovery call, that’s, , the wrong word to… I was gonna do. Uttam Kumaran: What’s in here? Shivani Amar: people at Source Media myself, they could orient me. , , should I just do that with us together next week? Uttam Kumaran: , I’m happy to, and I won’t… Shivani Amar: I was gonna… Uttam Kumaran: I’ll play nice with them, , I’m not trying… for me, more of, , I’m trying to give you that answer of, , , what’s in here? Is this only Shopify? Shivani Amar: It looks they also have, , gorgeous data. Uttam Kumaran: , I feel what these guys typically do is they’ll pipe your data into, , a BigQuery, and then they layer on these, , productized dashboards, which they can just, , repurpose. What you may find is, , it’s not very customizable, or… , it’s, , built on Airtable or something, and there is a… there is a… and then also, for example, you don’t even know if anyone… who in Element is using what part of this. for example, typically what we’ll find is, , the person on Element’s side will be , , the cohorting is, , doesn’t include this, we never use that piece, and you’re , . Shivani Amar: , that’s where, , last week I was , what is up with this data? I was , I don’t. Uttam Kumaran: , it looks great, , if you… , I would say, , look, if we have all this and it’s accurate, then we’re far, but I would be surprised if you and Phil didn’t already, , if someone already didn’t point that out, ? , , someone… Shivani Amar: This is bringing in retail data, for example, ? Uttam Kumaran: , … my question for Source Medium is, , , is that, , a you-can’t-do-that-for-us problem? Because then now that comes into the factor of, , , if we can if it… and then… but this is, again, , a conversation to you and Phil, is, , if you’re able to do in here, what is the benefit of, , an owned platform? Versus relying on a third-party vendor for… Shivani Amar: these metrics, and I can talk. Uttam Kumaran: I could give you all the pros and cons. totally, if… we can grab time with them, and I can just ask them about the history of what they’ve set up here. And then internally, if the core user of this. even just asking them to say, , what’s accurate there. But you already know some of the trade-offs, … we can just put a… on our side, what I want that to come as, , a… , a memo on, , the source medium. Shivani Amar: Totally. I’m , , my stance on the source medium, I’m , cool, there’s some data, but I’m , nobody seems to, … , this week, when people were , what happened with our conversion rate? Everybody’s just, , staring at source medium, ? , and … Nobody knows, I’m , these aren’t the… Uttam Kumaran: That’s also the thing, if you’re not building it, if you never build it, you’re not bought in, and , . , they will give you, , these, , really… , it looks… wow, it looks fire, ? It looks really nice, but that’s, , usually that’s just, , vanity stuff, you don’t even know… how this is built, and there’s buy-in from, , Carlos is still in a spreadsheet, ? Is Carlos using this? I don’t know. Shivani Amar: , that’s… it, , some of his data, , comes from source medium. part of your discovery when you talk to Carlos, , I… you’re definitely going to talk to Carlos, I’m not, , gatekeeping any. Uttam Kumaran: , , , , I’m not that. It’s also… I’m gonna work… I’ll work on the rough questions. , for me, it’s , it is a little bit of, , both a trust-building exercise, and , hey, we are gonna start to answer questions, and we may uncover things that show this side of the business, and I want to build, , a friend out of him, or data out. Shivani Amar: the entire data ecosystem we’re building. Carlos is , if anybody’s the most excited about you getting a data consultant, it’s me, ? , he’s, , … Uttam Kumaran: , and see, I don’t know that also, ? Shivani Amar: In your discovery… in your discovery, I want you to, , say, , in your discovery, I want you to say, , potentially time to walk Because I’m, , I didn’t do anything where he was, , walking me through where he finds the data, but if you go back to, , his e-commerce dashboard, ? , he… what he was gonna do, what he was planning on doing was, , URLing, or, , hyperlinking where he’s getting the data from. Throughout this. hold on, sorry. , what he was planning to do was that, which is fine, and… but it’s, , if you’re, , if you make your list of questions, and I’m , hey Carlos, do you want to just do, , an hour and a half block, where you, , walk them through… where you’re getting the data from, and your… your feeling of trust around that data. , that… could be interesting, ? I’m trying to figure out, , how much time should we be asking him for? Is it 30 minutes just for you to get to know each other, which is not going to be that useful? Is it an hour? Is it, , let’s just block out, , a good hour and a half, Carlos, you can also walk them through where you’re, . Finding things in source medium, and if we don’t end up using an hour and a half, then that’s fine. Uttam Kumaran: , I’ll send you the questions, and then, , it’ll be a good guide. And then on… , and then similarly for… we can take source medium, , what is going on here as another action item to just… Try to wrap a bow around. Shivani Amar: Totally. I’m gonna, , ping this guy, Chase, and just say, he’s at Source Medium, and just say, I’ll look at your calendar, let me do this now, I’ll look at your calendar, and include, another data consultant. We’ll be working with… On it, we can get the orientation Together… Element is going to be focusing on building out Our own data stack. for… I’ll just say for context, Element is going to be working on, because I’m, , I’m still trying to figure out, , what do they do? Uttam Kumaran: , that’s what my… I don’t know if you say that, because I feel they may… , it may come across as, , oh, they’re shutting us down. tip to… . I may just… . Shivani Amar: I’ll look at your calendar and include another day, because I’ll be working with on the invite. Uttam Kumaran: You can just say it’s working on data stuff within the org, because the last thing I want is for them to start to, to, . think we’re… I don’t know, you just never… I just don’t know… I just don’t know, and it’s better to just be , hey, we just want to get an overview of the platform, I want to hear about what sources are connected, and… and ultimately, look, I want… I will give… my… our memo is to give you the, hey, what’s… being used in here, what’s not, what are the good and what’s the bad, and what… here are, , the list of decisions and recommendations to make. Source Media may be one of those, and I don’t want to, . The, the way that… people typically do this, is where you guide a consultant companies, , what is all this stuff? Get rid of this. , I don’t want to come across that way. If we can use some of their stuff. for certain specific things, and I’d love to, … Shivani Amar: , I’ll just say… I said this. I’ll look at your calendar and include another data concern we’ll be working with on the invite we can get the orientation together. Hope that works. Just want an overview of the platform, which sources are connected, and what dashboards the Element team finds most useful today. Thank you. ? Uttam Kumaran: Can you also… if you can mention if he has usage statistics on, , who’s logging in and what they’re using, versus just, . they this. If, , if they can tell us, . Who’s logging in how many times? Shivani Amar: I’ll send that, and then … He’s got… Meetings, let’s see… , if we were to do… December 1st, and just start off, this is Pacific time. You want to look at your calendar? And, , would a way. Dwayne, or just you, , what would the flow be? Uttam Kumaran: , I would include me in OH. I’m just, , flipping back and forth. Oh, . You tell me what time. Shivani Amar: How about noon? Or, , I’m just… Uttam Kumaran: , a free afternoon PT. Shivani Amar: , let’s do 12.30 PT, and then I’m gonna invite you guys, your emails… put them at brainforge.ai, ? Uttam Kumaran: , and I’ll, I’ll put Alicia’s in the chat. Shivani Amar: And then… , put a wishes in the chat. Oh, cool. Thank you. Enter a valid email address, a good grade. And then… Perfect. Uttam Kumaran: It’s a, , it’s… it’s… what’s funny is, , Athletic Greens had a very similar spreadsheet to this… partnerships spreadsheet. Shivani Amar: , that makes sense. Uttam Kumaran: When I was there, , 3-4 years ago. This is a little bit better than that. That was pretty brutal. And they were. You’re spending, , an ungodly amount. Shivani Amar: , what would be interesting with them is, , my style versus, … , I’m … this is, … I wouldn’t have looked. I’m , I don’t know how to, , … Uttam Kumaran: , what was your… , tell me, , what… how are you feeling about, , that? , do you feel … , this is where, again, part of me meeting people is, , this is a… it’s a people, a process, and, , a tools thing, , , I have to get it to build up… be able to give you recommendations on Feasibility of certain moves. , on the board, I … I need to… that’s… that’s mostly a lot of, . what I need to meet the people about is understand their receptiveness to certain things, and , how do I get wins for them along the way to build up the trust Because, , you and Phil both have, , a good vision on this, but… Nothing gets adopted without every character, , , , being on board, and… I’ve seen projects this just die because someone comes in, they’re , rip all this out, and it’s, , really horrible, … part of that is… that’s a lot of why, even if… for all… for all what it’s worth on the questions, 100%, but… it’s… some of these times, it’ll just be nice for folks to hear that there are other people thinking about their problems when it comes to reporting. Totally. And that we are… we are driving towards solutions that support them, and their time and their ability to achieve their goals directly, ? And, , saying that. Sometimes people don’t… don’t… They don’t know that, or they don’t believe it happened, or also identifying, , . who do we need to, , win… spend more time winning over, versus, , if Carlos is , I love data, it’s my favorite thing, and we don’t have to, , worry, ? . Shivani Amar: , if you think about, I’m just trying to think about what I show you, , if you think about… Trying to think about how to articulate this. Uttam Kumaran: It’s also the culture you want to build, too, ? Shivani Amar: , when you paint the picture to any stakeholder, … Holding the vision that is of, . Us having a data stack that, . can link different parts of the business together, that eventually we can have better supply-demand planning, that eventually we can have, , really clear, that eventually we can have, , really clear… Velocity, , statistics across our different channels. , the omni-channel piece is, , the vision I want you to hold, ? And then it’s … , we will also be helping channel by channel by channel, and that’s how we’re starting, but, , I want you to hold the omni-channel piece. Uttam Kumaran: . I see, I see what you mean. Shivani Amar: Because it’s , that’s where the value comes, really, for the business at large. Everybody’s getting their insights that they need, they’re piecing things together. , it might take them a little bit more. Uttam Kumaran: Because you’d be surprised at how many people told me that, but then I went and talked to people, and they’re , dude, I don’t have anything. And it’s , oh, . And that’s why I’m . And I also want to be, , give you guys the opinion after doing this a bunch of times and say, here’s what I’m seeing on the ground. Totally. But I hear you. , I hear you that the omnichannel piece is the… is the highest alpha piece, and it’s clear that people are finding a way to get it done today. And … , makes sense. Shivani Amar: , and , , , , examples of… , I’ve given you now enough examples, ? Which is, , , . if, , is retail cannibalizing, or, , or not? How would we answer that question, ? Is retail cannibalizing e-com? And then there’s… why did the conversion rate on our website dip? And, , is that just because of this? ? These are all examples of things that, , you could say are… , the retail cannibalizing is omnichannel, the, , conversion rate dipping is… partially one channel, just, , what’s going on across our Shopify itself, but it could be, , we’re noticing an increase in Amazon, are people, , redirecting? Is there even a way for us to track that? Amazon’s private that maybe there’s way for us to track it, but, . where are we seeing spikes in Amazon and dips in Shopify? And, , what is the story there? ? . , , that’s, , where it all comes together, in a way, , I’m gonna short… show you something, one second. James Murphy, , our CEO, sends this out, ? , and he’s . it’s a detailed review of the financials . He’s focusing now just on, . He’s focusing on Shopify in this thing. Uttam Kumaran: , he’s … , thanks, thanks. Shivani Amar: He’s , revenues are up 15% year over year. Net income is reporting up, , 2X, whatever, from the dip we took last year and this time with the sales decline. , fine. It’s hard… that’s a hard sentence to read, in my opinion. And then he’s, , doing a month-over-month change specifically in Shopify. ? it’s , he’s taking this, . cut… he’s, , taking a more, , negative view on things, which is fine, but he’s , why is this? ? And, , what do we need to be monitoring? Is this helpful context? Uttam Kumaran: This is great, this is perfect. Shivani Amar: … then you can see everybody’s putting their numbers in, ? , it’s not … flying blind, but … Uttam Kumaran: , totally. Shivani Amar: now that you’ve signed an NDA, I could probably forward you this email, but it’s, , really detailed. then you have people being . retail key accounts, , what was my actual versus, , for drinks, what was my sparkling? , for sparkling, I didn’t hit my target, , why? ? Sparkling underperformed target. finishing a million below target, blah blah blah blah. The sharp declines in orders reflect the set order in September, and minimal replenish orders, as they had high inventories at stores coming off end cap with a large set order. And I’m , , does that mean our velocity isn’t good? Does that mean our pricing isn’t good? Uttam Kumaran: And, , does… how does this impact the next month? This is great. , see, this is what I … I’m just trying to get a sense of, … you mentioned the culture. I’m trying to look at, , how data-driven is this company today? And this is helpful to see, that at the top, there is… there is an importance set on looking at each core metric. Each person is clearly assigned a metric. There is some level of a… not only put the metric in, but But compare it to some goal, and then also give an explainer on why or why not we hit the goal. Shivani Amar: . And it’s , people are on it, and that’s where it’s more . , it’s manual for them to get it, but they’re doing it, and, , I’ll forward you this email, but, , but otherwise, it’s … Uttam Kumaran: , I would love to see this email and then use it to … this will give me the sense of, , what the entire… what the… But the company’s looking at from an each-channel perspective. Shivani Amar: And, , it’s super detailed. And then… , I don’t wanna share… Uttam Kumaran: You don’t have to… . Shivani Amar: don’t do that, but, , at least the email itself is super helpful, and it’s, , a clipped message, it’s long, and then you can say, , I’m talking to e-commerce people, . Uttam Kumaran: How do you feel when you read this? Or when you’ve gone this? Shivani Amar: Joel, when I read this. I’m , we’re being thorough to some extent, but the, . The part that, people struggle with is the why. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s … Uttam Kumaran: , that’s the only… that’s the only thing that matters, . Of course, . Shivani Amar: if you think about, let’s see… Revenue, revenue. Uttam Kumaran: It’s the why, and, , can we do something, or ? Or, , what are we doing? Shivani Amar: , customer journey… I’m , hold on, where is the conversion? Uttam Kumaran: And this is produced during REST and Assess. Shivani Amar: , , or it’s, , maybe… it was produced at the… , it was produced, the middle of the sprint. , it… it, , depends on, . dates, and this is always, … you see he sent this email, , November 16th for October, it takes time for people to, , close the month and… Stuff that. And then, I’m , where is conversion rate? . drives, , customer acquisition costs, higher session volume help maintain spend efficiency. Uttam Kumaran: Do you feel it, to some degree, it’s, , performative responses in that, , I just gotta put something down that, . Makes sense. Shivani Amar: , I don’t think it’s performative, but if you’re , cool, cool, cool, , why did the conversion rate… it’s , I’m gonna have to go into, , these 100 data points to try and figure it out, versus, , to me, what this… , my feeling on this is, , what are our top-level metrics, and then what are our second-order questions? Uttam Kumaran: This is what I’m gonna use to build, , this is… I’m gonna start the… Metrics glossary from this document. Shivani Amar: And then it’s … , , where, , if conversion rate, , to your point, if conversion rate is a top-level metric, then maybe this is, , a level 2. I always say level 1, level 2 metrics, but, , this is level 2. And then it’s, , this is your double-click into your conversion rate. But then you could easily see, , what, , what are the components of my conversion rate, and, . where is the thing having a spike versus a drop? And, , where in the funnel is it breaking? And , , that’s, , the next level that I’m , , looking for. For… and, , you can ignore now, , supply chain stuff, ? You’re , that doesn’t… That doesn’t, , that’s not what we’re touching, but anything that’s, , anything that is, , BizOps is also whatever, , anything that is just on the revenue side, , is where you’ll be. Curious to… Understand, , what’s going on. And, , look at this. It’s , ? Wholesale revenue was down in drink mix relative to Target. Now, we see seasonality in the business. We’re still 15% up year over year in terms of revenue. it’s , is that a problem? ? , we miss Target. sorry, missed target, not MISS. Did we, , did we target incorrectly? Uttam Kumaran: Did we target incorrectly, or is it that, . Shivani Amar: the miss was, , really large, and our wholesale partner is, , sitting there, , oh my god, why did we miss hard? But we were all just , seasonality, we’re up year over year, , , is this a problem or not? even, , the red, yellow, red, yellow, I’m . How do we … to me, , the questions are, how do we feel which is a weird one, but, , that’s what I want to know. How do we feel about these metrics versus just saying where we are versus not? And then, where do we feel we need to be, , having the next level of understanding the why, and we currently don’t… Trust the data, or know the data, or whatever. And do we feel we’re telling the overarching story? That’s, , the very macro question. Uttam Kumaran: for you, how interested are you in, from each of these interviews, to ask those people that question. Shivani Amar: Totally, , when we meet with Laura, I want to be , I want to ask her, . how do you feel about how you set targets? How do you feel about the actuals, ? That’s where I’m , how do you feel about the actuals? How do you feel about the targets? Where are you flying blind? Where do you feel you need more visibility? And, , some of it, she told me, she’s , she’s , I want to know when people are making their first purchase, third purchase, who are our top wholesalers, , what we should be doing. differently, blah blah blah, ? , this is, , Laura’s download. she’s given me a sense of it, but it’s, , looking at this actual, where do you feel Where do you feel you need to be spending your time? Does that help? Uttam Kumaran: , I have a much better sense of, . Awaish Kumar: How things are… Uttam Kumaran: , this is great. Shivani Amar: Cool. , great. , , if you… , I’m , it’s Thanksgiving, it’s , , , if you’re working on discovery questions on Monday, , fine, ? , I’m , I don’t know what your structure and flow is. Uttam Kumaran: , we’re gonna… I’m gonna… we’ll work on things, we’ll work on things today. , I’m gonna work on things after this, . And I just want, , I just wanted to share that it’s not purely, . this question, this question, it’s a… it is a little bit of, , under… , going down some rabbit holes with some of these people, and… and understanding them walk through how… how do you… how would you answer this question? , what is… , understanding their motivations, but also me learning about the culture of, , Element, ? Because I don’t have the. I don’t have the insights yet, … Shivani Amar: I just messed this up. I wanted this to be an hour. , wait, let me see if I can… Cancel, whatever I just did with Chase. Booked a meeting… I don’t even… I’m , what is this platform that he’s using for calendaring? . Uttam Kumaran: The HubSpot? Shivani Amar: I don’t… what is it? Uttam Kumaran: New Hero. We have another… we have… one of our clients is, , a big competitor in these class. Shivani Amar: , I’m , this website is… oh, it is HubSpot. Oh, God. . now I… I’m , I don’t even know how to cancel it. , I’m gonna book it for an hour. Let me try that again. Let me just… December 1st. Let’s just say 1 o’clock. And then canceled the other one, … Both on that. Brainforge.ai… And then… wish dot… Kamar? at Brainforge.ai. Let’s try that again. Hopefully that works. Let’s see. , and then… , let me decline this. Sorry, buddy. . And then, , let’s look at Jason’s calendar really quickly. , this is Jason’s flow for next week. I’m , should we just do… an hour with Jason to start off on either the. Uttam Kumaran: , if Jason’s , , I just need to talk to him about… , I have a bunch of technical questions. And to also ask him about his vision for this. Shivani Amar: You wanna do… Uttam Kumaran: Security that. Shivani Amar: Do you want to do 2PM? Brain Forge… And then you’ll have. Uttam Kumaran: And then I… is Jason someone, , we can have? And he’s already in our Slack, I assume… Both of y’all are, , good points of contact, , you won’t worry about getting spammed. I’m not spamming, but, , we’ll be hitting you guys up for stuff. how involved is… he’s gonna be involved in all, , vendor decisions. How do you see his involvement on, , the… , KPI, , KPI strategy, and, , or where do you see his purview? Shivani Amar: API strategy is more me. stack is, , his input. Uttam Kumaran: Great. And… Shivani Amar: kPIs is more me and Phil. Uttam Kumaran: , , great. Shivani Amar: , , for your discovery with him, it’s more … Uttam Kumaran: I just want to know how it’s… what are all the tools, , how it’s been done, talking about procurement. Shivani Amar: And, , hearing about security, and then… Uttam Kumaran: see, … , I wanna… and I wanna… I wanna make also, , as we’re… I wanna impart all the… all our… all our knowledge on our, , selecting stuff, and why. Shivani Amar: , I love it. Uttam Kumaran: We’ll make keys, we’ll make keys , … Shivani Amar: Cool, dude. , , , look, I… I get the… the… we don’t really start the work until December 1st, but , , the more we can have the discovery questions, and then I can help calendar, … but just , I’m . I can put a hold on, , Carlos’ calendar for next Friday, ? , I can do that now, if you want to do some… Calendaring while we’re on… together, , I’m looking at his calendar. Uttam Kumaran: I would that. That’s… Shivani Amar: December… Fifth… that… noon Pacific time. Uttam Kumaran: Can we do… Juan? Shivani Amar: , he’s busy then. But we could do… 2 Pacific time is 5 for me, that’s not ideal. What about your Thursday? Uttam Kumaran: There’s, much more open. Shivani Amar: , Thursday we could do… 10 a.m. Pacific. for an hour with Carlos. , , , Brain Forge… Data, X, Carlos… Discovery. And I’ll just do it for an hour, and then we can always set up more time. let me do that. Uttam Kumaran: And then I’m gonna set… I’ll set a weekly… with you… Mia, Wish. on Thursdays, if that’s ? Shivani Amar: , we had talked about, , 2PM, ? And then Laura, the wholesale person, , if you’re , hey, I’d rather just get, , back-to-back , . I’d rather get back-to-back on, , e-com and wholesale. If you’re , , I just want to think about e-commerce first week, , you tell me what makes sense for you guys. If you’re , Shopify data is in wholesale, , sorry, wholesale data is in Shopify anyway, might as get that download. Then you tell me, , do you want to talk to Laura next week? Uttam Kumaran: Let me talk to Carlos. I want to talk to Laura before Christmas. Totally. For . do you want to do it the week after? , do you want to do it. Shivani Amar: the… I can set up time for us for, , December 9th or something. . Because by that point, I’ll be in… I’ll be in Shopify, ideally, by the time I meet Carlos. Uttam Kumaran: And then… I’ll… Carlos will give me a big lay of the land, and then… I’ll… I’ll start to understand, , SKUs, and… generally have a good sense of, , KPIs, and then I can talk to… about wholesale. Shivani Amar: What about… do you want to do partnerships before wholesale? Because that’s all about, , how our partnerships data generates revenue in Shopify? Uttam Kumaran: it’s… they’re… it’s either or. They’re both… they’re both distinct, … Shivani Amar: , let’s do… December 9th. Uttam Kumaran: One is, , demand, . Shivani Amar: , let’s do December 9th with Blake. How does. Uttam Kumaran: I’m less concerned about the… partners’ marketing stuff, because it is marketing sources, , we’re… This is… we’ve seen… we’ve seen this a couple times. the Shopify thing will be very unique. A little bit more unique. … I would probably put the marketing thing last. Shivani Amar: , you… when you say the Shopify thing will be unique, you mean wholesale, or what do you mean? Uttam Kumaran: , , how you sell within Shopify and Amazon There… there is a lot more opportunity for, . , there’s a lot more discovery there. I will… I’ll learn a lot by going through the spreadsheet for marketing, and then… Reconciling this, I just want to do that last, . But I also want to understand from Carlos and from Jose, , what… what are they looking at from the demand side? And then I can talk about… from the… from the ad buying and the marketing buying side, how is… how is she thinking about that when it drives sales? Shivani Amar: , and then, , how about… Uttam Kumaran: First touch, last touch, … . Shivani Amar: 11 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday, December 9th. Uttam Kumaran: , perfect. Shivani Amar: And then… Let me put Blake on for the week after, then. ? How about… 10 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday the 16th. , partnerships… Then… put, OH… , cool. And, , once I. Uttam Kumaran: Know what… Shivani Amar: , go ahead. Uttam Kumaran: , go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead. Shivani Amar: Once I see your discovery questions, I’ll figure out if you need time with Will, but his calendar is crazy, and he … I pinged him, and he was , do you think it would be beneficial for me to meet them? And I was , let me see what their questions are. That’s what I told him. , cool. ? , I’m , I don’t want to just put time unless… That’s fine. . Let’s see… Uttam Kumaran: , by… and then, , to also talk about, , timing, by… by, thus before Christmas. , it would be great. To start talking about, , data ingestion tool. , as part of our weekly meetings, we’ll do a little bit of a download of, , what we learned from the stakeholders, and I wanna also… , spend time on the stack. We’re finding that, , it will… it may… Depending on the volume, it may take a week or two to sync everything, … Shivani Amar: that’s perfect. And that Thursday, 2PM with me, you, and Jason is, , the perfect place to, , bring that forward. And I, , commented at Phil and Jason. I was , Phil. if you have familiarity with Snowflake, do you want to just go with that, or do you feel you want to do a thorough assessment here? And I’ll see what he says, but, , if you’re , hey, we should go with… X and Y, and here’s Y. In e-commerce, I’ve seen it work , , just feel free to, … , you have your comparison tables, but try to make it, , more tailored to element, , based off of. Uttam Kumaran: , , . And , I’ll give you guys… I’ll… I… we can go as deep. I’ll give you… when we talk about ETL and the different tools, I’ll give you the high level. If you have… if we need to go one layer deeper, we’ll keep going. feel… until we feel comfortable. And we’re not, … we… the… the thing I want to keep till the end is, , talk to as least… as… It’s spend as least time in vendor conversations, , talking to them and, , having to deal with them, it’s, , the worst. Shivani Amar: I want us to talk internally and have a decision, because when we go to them, it’s a, hey, give me this price at this discount, and here’s what we want. Uttam Kumaran: And, , see a… and, , we can move past. Otherwise, they’ll just waste a lot of time and ask to get everybody on a call and do demos and crap, … And , , when I… and this is where also, , I… I know we were texting about, , SQL versus Python, just ask any question that comes to mind on any tool on, , cases, or, , how it would handle, I’ll… if… , and we’ll totally share… all of our recommendations come from our experiences, , we’re… we’re not recommending any tools we don’t use all the time, … . But there will be trade-offs. This is where, for me, learning from Jason, I’m , , what are budgets? How do you procure? What are security constraints? And, , his understanding, , where he is at with, , procurement and setup versus, , where he wants to be will help me That’ll also help me build a criteria for certain tools. Shivani Amar: That’s perfect. And, , if you are able to be, , in Slack, . , what I’m picturing is almost a… I don’t know, Word document or something, , and it’s just, . discovery questions, and it’s , Jason, and then you have a few bullet points for him, for. and one Carlos, and then I can, , just share that with people, and I’m , hey, this is what to expect. Then that’s… that’s just a… Great way for Jason to know what to come in with. Uttam Kumaran: Great, I’m gonna put that all in the data calls. Perfect. Wow. Shivani Amar: Thanks, dude. , thank you. Uttam Kumaran: Thank you. Shivani Amar: You wish, anything else with them? Uttam Kumaran: , what’s the Thanksgiving plan? Shivani Amar: We have, , 25 people coming over to our parents… my parents’ house. Thursday. Or on Thursday, sorry. Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that’s wonderful. Shivani Amar: I need to bounce back, I’m just, , horizontal all day today. Uttam Kumaran: making this joke, but you gotta pound some element, dude. Shivani Amar: , that’s true. I should have. I haven’t had any today. I’ve just been, … been a blog. Uttam Kumaran: That’s… you need the magnesium. Shivani Amar: , I haven’t , … , I’m , my mom was , we have emergency, and I was , oh, I could take that. But , gotta get Element in the mix! My girlfriend’s been sick. Uttam Kumaran: , my parents and my sister are visiting, but my sister also has a fever now, I’m having her pound. , I have a bunch of, , vitamin elixirs at the house, I’m , , take this, take this, take this. Zycam every 4 hours. And then my girlfriend was sick, one of her… one of her clients was super sick and got her sick, she’s gotten better too, but we’re all going to my girlfriend’s house for Thanksgiving. There should be also, . 20 people there? I’m gonna try to make pumpkin pie. This is… , they’ve… they’ve met before. They met last Christmas. They get along, that’s good, but I’m glad, because I don’t want to talk to… I don’t want to talk to any of either of them, … I’m gonna make pumpkin pie, and drink wine, . Shivani Amar: For you to go ring shopping. Uttam Kumaran: , you should bring that up to her. She’s , she’s , , she’s , yesterday we went to dinner, she’s . is… are you even thinking about it? , do you even think about anything but work? And I’m , dude, why do you, … we’re in the middle of things, … Shivani Amar: , , , , that’s a very standard question, you gotta, you gotta. Uttam Kumaran: , I know, I know. I don’t mind. I don’t mind getting him the questions. I can… I can… I can dodge and dip, ? I went and got her a great… I got her some great jewelry from Kendra Scott for her birthday. . And that bought me some time. . Shivani Amar: Alright, , thanks, guys. I look forward to looking at these discovery questions, and then, , , we’ll definitely get conversations set up. It was helpful to talk through it, but as you start looking through the emails , , feel free to ping me if you’re , what does this thing mean? And I’m still figuring it out myself, too, but we can figure it out together, ? Uttam Kumaran: , , perfect. Alright, feel better. Shivani Amar: Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Bye, guys. Uttam Kumaran: You too. Bye.