The Future of Retail With Brittain Ladd: Hyperlocal Logistics, AI, Fast Fashion & More

Brittain Ladd is a globally recognized expert in business strategy, robotics, retail logistics, and supply chain management. As a leading researcher of AI’s impact on global supply chains, he has led the worldwide e-commerce and cross-border expansion and has guided Amazon Fresh’s pantry operations and Amazon’s micro-fulfillment strategies. Brittain advises one of the largest social media platforms on shoppable videos. As a business influencer, he has predicted corporate trends and consumer behavior years in advance, influenced businesses on billion-dollar decisions, and transformed companies by identifying M&A opportunities. Brittain was also a strategic advisor for Instacart and Kroger.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Brittain Ladd explains how hyperlocal logistics cater to customer preferences
Why Brittain recommends retailers close stores in high-crime communities
How Gen Z has disrupted fast fashion and spurred the reimagination of retail
Is AI a threat to the longevity of popular e-commerce platforms?
The potential impact of AI on societal decision-making
AI’s involvement in revolutionizing retail businesses
How Brittain manages his schedule to provide insights on industry advancements
Solutions to reverse the decline in US military recruitment

In this episode…

The e-commerce industry has drastically evolved since its inception in 1969. Now, five decades since its debut, e-commerce brands continue advancing technological boundaries to improve the consumer experience. How will AI integrations affect e-commerce platforms in the coming years?

Known for his accuracy in predicting digital trends, Brittain Ladd forecasts the strategies companies will introduce to their operating systems and how incorporating AI into retail and e-commerce platforms will change the trajectory of businesses. Despite the apprehension toward AI’s involvement, its capabilities allow businesses to prioritize operations and customer satisfaction, leading to faster delivery times and sustainable platforms.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Brittain Ladd, a business strategy, robotics, retail logistics, and supply chain management expert, to discuss the impact of AI on e-commerce platforms and the retail industry. Brittain also provides insight into how hyperlocal logistics cater to customer preferences, Gen Z’s involvement in the evolution of retail marketers, and his solution for reversing the decline in US military recruitment.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Everybody William Harris here, I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the D2C industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. Really excited about the guests that I have today Brittain Ladd. Brittain is recognized globally as one of the leading experts in strategy robotics, retail logistics and supply chain management. He is also one of the leading researchers of AI, especially as it relates to global supply chains. He's currently advising one of the biggest social media platforms on shoppable videos, although the company is classified. He previously led the worldwide e-commerce and cross-border expansion, Amazon Fresh pantry operations, and micro fulfillment strategy at Amazon. And he was a strategic advisor for Instacart and Kroger. That's quite the background, a lot of knowledge that you're bringing to the table Brittain, I'm really excited to have you here. Oh, I'm

Brittain Ladd 1:03

very happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this,

William Harris 1:06

I do want to go ahead. And real quick, we're gonna get into good stuff in a minute. But I want to give our sponsorship message here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 of them that IPO recently. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world, by Adweek, you can learn more on our website at elumynt.com that's E-L-U-M-Y-N-T.com. So I wanted to dig in, you are somebody that I find to have, really, let's just say you don't mince words, when you're on social media, you just go for it. And you say this is exactly what I think is going to happen. And you have an incredible accuracy rate with a lot of this stuff. And so I just wanted to dig into what some of those things are that you've been saying that I think especially as it pertains to e-commerce, and retail, and kind of the blending of both of these together, because I feel like you've brought a lot of really good things there. So the one that I wanted to start with was Hyperloop, just hyperlocal logistics, you posted something about what Boris was doing with hyperlocal logistics, what is how do you define hyperlocal? Logistics? What are we looking at? And what do we need to be aware of there.

Brittain Ladd 2:22

So hyper local Logistics is nothing more than being able to do analysis, and identify, so where is the optimal location to forward deploy inventory. So that can be sure deployed inventory for a specific brand, or multiple types of inventory from a retailer. So for deploying inventory means that you say, well, instead of opening up these massive distribution centers, that might be located in several states away, or even opening up, say, a warehouse that's 100,000 200,000 square feet. hyperlocal means maybe you're opening up facilities that are 10,000 square feet, 7500 square feet, and maybe you're opening up a dozen of them in a single city, especially if it's fairly large city. So you simply are saying, How do I for deploy my inventory, states that inventory, so it's closer to customers, so that when a customer places an order identify where the customer is where the nearest hyperlocal facility is, and that's where I fulfill that order. And because it's already among the majority of board people are at, I have a much shorter distance than I travel. And therefore, it's much cheaper for me to make that fulfillment.

William Harris 3:38

Sure, I feel like this is the opposite of what we were doing for a while. So for a while, everything was decentralized, right? Because it was just, you know, department stores or whatever all over the place, then e-commerce comes in, and we say, hey, let's centralize all of this inventory in one big, gigantic warehouse. And now we're going back to this idea of localized stuff. It makes sense to me, because it allows you to be more nimble with a lot of that stuff. But I mean, imagine there's pros and cons, what are the things that we should be thinking of from a future if you're running an e-commerce Store? And you're trying to be competitive against Amazon, and some of these other brands? What are the things that we need to be thinking about from a hyperlocal logistics perspective to be competitive? Well,

Brittain Ladd 4:17

so here's the thing number one, you should never ever think to yourself, how do I compete against Amazon? Because you can't sure Amazon is lightyears ahead of everybody else. But what you can do is say so who are my customers? What are my customers want? And you make sure that you're providing that? And then you say so what is it my customers want in terms of say the delivery experience, what's critical to them, and then you make sure that you provide that. And some of your customers may be like, I don't care if I don't get it for three, four or five days, that's fine. Well then give them that option. Others may say I absolutely want it same day. Then you make sure you give it you give those customers that option. And it really does come down to understanding what is your customers want. And you create this experience. So where you can engage with your customers, and give them that flexibility to choose what they want. That's really a better model than you know, many of the other retailers out there are doing. And so the smaller logistics companies that are pursuing this hyperlocal strategy, that's really what they've been offered able to offer to their customers.

William Harris 5:29

Sure. I feel like when I think about what we want, we want everything as fast as we possibly can. And so I would say that even five years from now, it almost seems inevitable, where it's like, well, I don't need it today. But if I have the option for it today, I want it today, do you think that that's likely the case of what's going to happen here too, or the same with Amazon Prime almost made it seem like we want it, you know, we want free shipping, whether we need it or not? We want it to come here as fast as possible. If we have the option for it to be now, do you think that it's almost inevitable that that becomes almost a customer expectation?

Brittain Ladd 6:01

Well, it's Think of it this way, I don't necessarily think it will be a customer expectation, it will be the norm that the customer receives. Sure. And the reason why I say that is, you know, Jeff Bezos years ago said, the one thing you'll never hear from customers is that I really wish I could get something slower. And he realized that. So what Amazon is doing is they continue to make massive, massive investments in their logistics network, so that they can do primarily same day delivery, but it's getting better. Really, what we're going to be seeing more over the next several years is a focus on precision deliveries. So they're going to say, well, William placed an order. And I know exactly where William lives. And I'm not just going to say, Hey, William, your order is going to come today, I'm going to be able to say, William, your order is going to come at 335. It will be delivered by Brittain, it's in this vehicle. And that gets even more interesting. give you the option to say, I really don't want you to deliver it to my house. Why don't you bring it to where I'm at at a restaurant should be at this restaurant, between this period and this period? Or I'm going to be at this office location. Why don't you bring it to me here, because I'd love to show what I ordered to some people. And that's what's really going to drive a lot of innovation and logistics, and especially in the supply chain, is that precision delivery capability, where you're going to need for deployed inventory, the hyperlocal capability, because the consumer isn't going to say well, I expect everything that come quick that we know they can do that they they already know they can get that. But what is really going to happen is they say deliver to people and not places. So I happen to be today at the gym, I want you to bring me those that tub of protein powder. I ordered it because I want my friend to see it. Someone may say I ordered this handbag, and I'm gonna be having lunch with my girlfriends. Why don't you bring it to me there. So I can just show. That's really what we're going to be seeing.

William Harris 8:13

So this reminds me of a buddy of mine, Tommy Walker, he was the editor in chief over at Shopify Plus for a number of years. And remember, we were at a conference. And this was at the time that a lot of these text message assistants just came out. I think the one that we were talking about at the time was like get magic where you text somebody is like, find me a pair of shoes and like bring it to me, right? So imagine you had a conference. And this is a true story. Not at a conference but a buddy of mine, Eric's Ward, he was going to meet his Boston Chicago for the first time med sales. And he tells a story where he his pen explodes on him while he's on the airplane. He's like, he's not got pen all over him. He goes to get a coffee when he gets off the airplane because he's kind of a little bit frustrated. And you know, coffee is going to cheer him up and, and the lid wasn't all the way on. And so it goes to take a sip, spill some coffee, it's hot, he jumps back rips a hole in the back of his pants. And so he's about to show up to a meeting with his boss with coffee pen and rip pants. That's one of those options that where you could you know, in theory, if you've got hyperlocal logistics setup, you say, I need a new suit and I need it delivered to this location here because I'm about to go in, he doesn't have time to go and unnecessarily go to a store and pick it up. But have it just delivered right to where he's going to be for this meeting. He just changed in the in the bathroom or something at the at the office. And it's that would be a great example of like following and delivering to the person wherever they're at.

Brittain Ladd 9:31

Correct 100% 100%.

William Harris 9:35

I also wanted to dig into something else that you mentioned, which was Walmart, Target CVS, a lot of other retailers. They're pulling out of certain cities because of crime. And this is what you said on LinkedIn to your advice to all retail retailers in 2023 is used this as a year for identifying every unprofitable store that can't be turned around, especially the unprofitable stores located in high crime areas and close them all of them make sense to me explain this a little bit more than why why is such a strong statement there?

Brittain Ladd 10:05

Well, number one is theres a level of, there's a lack of confidence, a lack of willingness, in many ways, among executives that I meet with that I advise. And what I see, what I've seen over the last year, is that people are trying to have it both ways. They want to run a good business, but they want to be seen as being not too harsh on some of the communities they serve. And I say you can't do that, you have to do one or the other. So if you're complaining about crime, and you don't want to close your store, then accept the losses and stop complaining. Sure, but what I've really said to them is, look, at the end of the day, your role as a CEO is to do one thing, run a profitable business, the purpose of a company is to do one thing, create a customer, you cannot run a company, in certain environments where people are aggressively coming in with trash bags, and just pulling the merchandise off your shelves, and you tell your employees don't interfere, just let them go. And then make it worse, these companies haven't even hired, you know, security personnel. And what I've also explained is this, and I really do believe I'm accurate. I've had conversations with members of the Biden administration, I've had conversations with members of law enforcement. And what I've described to them is this. You are wrong when you say that the crime that's taking place in retail is organized crime. So no, it isn't. I said, this is an insurgency. And the reason why I say it's an insurgency is because I've spoken to people who are in some of these communities, and I say, I want you to tell me, what's the motivation for going into some of these stores? And what they tell me is this. Well, we believe it's ours, we believe they owe it to us, because they haven't invested in our communities enough. And we see and we take it. And I said, Well, you do realize nobody really thinks that. And they said, Yeah, but we think that because we've been told, that's our right. And I'm like, I love the fact that you were so honest with me, because that's when I said this is really a political movement. It's more of an insurgency. This is not the type of stuff that you see or hear from organized crime. I'm not saying organized crime isn't part of it in some areas, sure. But this is a completely different environment. And that's why I say to these retailers, shut those stores and get out of those communities immediately. You have no obligation whatsoever to try and solve problems that you didn't cause. And you know, as well as I do, things going on at Target things going on at Bud Light. So many executives think they want to get involved in social issues. Scrying is one of them. And I say no, you can't, you didn't cause those issues. Stay out of it. And that's why when I write certain things like that, I remove all doubt of where I stand on the issue. And that's what I did in that post.

William Harris 13:13

And I appreciate that, I feel like we need more people that are willing to remove doubt of where we stand on certain things, and just be willing to say it. And to your point, I think the thing that I really like about what you said there is all of the good that a company wants to do, goes out the door, if they close all their doors, if they go bankrupt and they're done for all of the other good that you wanted to do in the world is gone. And so there is some type of a limiting factor, you need to say, is that the hill you want to die on? Is that the battle that needs to be fought right now? Or are there other things that you're doing that are good, that are worthwhile, so you need to be able to manage that profitably as well. So you can continue to move forward and do those other good things, too. It makes sense. It reminds me a lot of the Pareto Principle, right? That 8080 20 Right. And so there are times where I know in SaaS world, we will oftentimes say, you know, hey, what are the what are the bottom 20% of those customers, sometimes it makes sense, where it's like, these customers account for very little of the revenue, but they're taking up 80% of the share of customer service complaints, or whatever that might be. And so, you know, I remember the thing saying it's like, you fire some of those customers in the SaaS world. And, and I think that's kind of the same concept here in the retail world where certain stores don't make sense anymore. And you need to cut those losses. So you can do the good that you want to do in the other areas as well. Correct. And

Brittain Ladd 14:32

it's not just necessarily certain stores, but frankly, certain entire cities. Sure, because of how poorly those cities are run. And you're right. If I'm a retailer, I'm a Target, I'm a Walmart, whatever, I want to be able to do the most good, but I don't want to run my stores as an idiot where I see all this crime taking place. Shut those stores down and let me invest my time, money and effort into the regions of the US where I truly can help people because the people who run those cities are there as my partner, and not as an adversary. And that's the other challenge that someone like Walmart ran into in Chicago. You know, Chicago wasn't doing anything to help Walmart. And Walmart finally said, enough of this. We're out of here. And I was very complimentary to Walmart for making that decision.

William Harris 15:20

Yeah, it's a partnership. Right. The other thing that I liked that you were talking about was Gen Z, disrupting fast fashion. What do you mean by this? How is Gen Z disrupting fast fashion?

Brittain Ladd 15:31

Well, I don't think Gen Z gets enough credit for the things that they do. Now, everybody likes to tease them. They do say funny things. And they, you know, they talk about their mental health and all this. But I say wait a minute, something's happened in here with Gen Z. And I've been researching it and researching it. I researched it for about a year. And I said, you know, what Gen Z is really doing this a Gen Z is reimagining retail as we know it. And they're especially doing this in fast fashion. And I said, they've taken a tool like TikTok, and they've actually used one tool, TikTok, a social media platform to reimagine how they do everything related to fast fashion. They talk about it on TikTok, they show what they purchase on TikTok, they force, you know, Shein chain, and and Primark and some of the other fast fashion retailers out there to up their game, and actually be able to meet the needs of the Gen Z, who says we want lower prices, we want better quality. And when they haven't been getting it, what Gen Z has done is saying we're abandon you, we're not going to buy anything. And these retailers who thought they could pull one over on Gen Z by lowering quality, and still keeping prices the same, now have had to destroy a lot of their merchandise. And they've come back with a set. Okay, we heard you, they are upping their game in the quality without raising their prices significantly. And so what I believe we're going to see is, is that more companies, larger companies are going to look at this movement, and they're gonna say, wait a minute, if some of these companies can deliver fast fashions in three to four weeks, eight weeks of most, why is it that we at Target can't do that? We have Walmart can't do that, or Kohl's, or Macy's. And I really think you're going to see these larger retailers reach out to some of the leaders, the the influencers, at Gen Z, the Gen Z influencers, especially related to this topic, and say to them, so what is it we really need to be doing? And how do we create our own private label, and we get the the Gen Z even more involved, and say, help us create this will manufacture it will have high quality and low prices. And I knew this was going to happen, eventually. And that's why in 2019, I was the first person and I wrote this post. And I said Walmart and Microsoft should partner and acquire TikTok. Everybody said I was an idiot. I had people who are my biggest fans on LinkedIn saying you can't say things like that people are going to send one year later, Walmart and Microsoft partner to try and acquire TikTok. But I had warned them that if they waited too long, the moment would pass because of the politics going on in Washington. And that's exactly what happened. I'm not I will not be surprised. If over the next few months, we find out that Walmart has partnered with TikTok on something made an investment in TikTok, TikTok, you know, being invested in by Microsoft and Walmart together, I think could still be a possibility. I don't believe Congress is going to try and ban TikTok you know, the lesson the Biden administration wants us to make an entire voting bloc angry at him by blocking, you know, TikTok by banning TikTok. So I think it's interesting how this has all transpired with Gen Z. And I think what they've done is they've found a way to get rid of the middleman in many cases, and leverage a social media platform to get what they want to have their voices heard. Well, what they're really doing is using their social media platform for their first product search. So the companies that are advertising on there, I've gotten much better at providing much more content about those products. And so that's something I anticipate we're going to see Walmart, and other companies wanting to do as well to take advantage of that.

William Harris 19:40

Now, I think that makes a lot of sense. And to your point, this is almost our version of Walmart or Amazon, or the Gen Z's version of this where, you know, every every let's say, generation, this is push of like, how do we make things faster, cheaper, right, and so so you had Walmart did a great job of figuring out a really big part of That game plan. Amazon comes along does their own version of this game plan. And now this is, like you said, Gen Z's push on this. And I want to say that I heard somewhere, Shein, shine. I don't know how you pronounce it to be completely honest. It's one of those ones that I

Brittain Ladd 20:12

I see it I see multiple ways. Okay. I'll call it Shine, I'll call it Shein. I'll call it Sheen. I know, a lot of words, so neither can

William Harris 20:22

Well, I'm glad we're on the same page with that. But I want to say I think I saw them saying the testing is something like 1000 products a day or a week, it was something absolutely mind boggling that they're testing, they're being able to run with this. And I think that that's going to be an inevitability for a certain segment of things. On the flip side, I think that we're also seeing a resurgence in a desire for very, very expensive, you know, one of a kind items as well. And so I think that there will be maybe even more of a polarization of fast fashion, and then, you know, really good designer stuff as well.

Brittain Ladd 20:52

And that's true. I absolutely agree. There's a, there's a movement already underway for what they're basically calling quiet fashion, or, or quiet elegance. And it's just a low key way to start introducing what appears to be high end fashions into your social media posts and everything. But they're really just a better knockoff of some of those that are already out there. It's like a company said, we're going to specialize in knocking off high quality passions, handbags, and watches and everything. And we're going to, we're going to sell them people know, they're getting knock offs. But our knock offs look so good, that by themselves, they are actually a fashion statement. Now, the real funny thing, in case you don't know, the biggest movement in men's watches for fashion, is men wearing Women's Watches. And again, so you have to watch this stuff and learn from it. I was like, well, that's crazy. Who would do that? And then as I research it, I'm like, wow, one of the fastest growing segment of the population by Women's Watches are men to wear Women's Watches, because it's a fashion statement. Now, it's not something I'd ever do. I wear no watches or jewelry of any kind, I just wouldn't do it. But it's it's interesting how trends like this come along. And so now some of these other companies like so how do we switch from having men's watches, to create Women's Watches with some type of male enhancement to it. So it gives it kind of a male female coolness to it.

William Harris 22:29

Cool feature.

Brittain Ladd 22:30

So it's interesting fashion is one of those things that I'll never understand. But I certainly pay attention to

William Harris 22:36

when it changes so often that being able to be nimble with that to be able to be fast with you know, what you're testing out from a fashion perspective, it just, it's going to become even more and more that way. Correct. Um, one of the other things you talked about was Bill Gates. There was an article you posted about Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google search, and Amazon as we know them. And you wrote about the search for the AI agent, what's going on from an AI perspective, that's got Bill Gates all excited here?

Brittain Ladd 23:05

Well, so what Bill Gates is basically saying is, well, wait a minute, if I have the ability to create a personal agent, so in essence, you have your own personal assistant, that's from it. That's AI, I have it. And so I say to my personal assistant, you know, Rocky, I want you to buy me a leather jacket, size extra large, and I want patches on it. So I look like a version of Tom Cruise? Or

William Harris 23:33

did you name your did you name your AI? Assistant? I

Brittain Ladd 23:36

was joking. I don't have it. I'm just joking. I said, Well, if I was going to name, that's what I'd call it. That was just an example. But no, I don't have this. But would I name it if I had one, possibly what I call that rocky? Possibly. But basically, what Bill Gates is saying is that these agents, these personal agents, these AI agents, are going to give us the ability to basically outsource shopping. And those so the AI agent isn't going to go to an Amazon platform, it's just going to basically scour all available all available content and data on the web, and it will find the best deal and then it will present it. I look at it and say buy it, whatever and it's done. And it's kind of some of the stuff I've been working on with the shoppable videos, actually. So this is an interesting topic for me. So what Bill says is that's going to kill Amazon and on. I disagree with Bill on that. If I'm Amazon, I want you to have a personal agent, because here's the thing that Bill forgot, no matter what you buy, it has to be delivered. And nobody does that better than Amazon. So all Amazon would have to do is if they were finding that people were abandoning their website, and were buying products elsewhere, they would simply put the prime badge on all of those websites. Wherever they would just say, it's open source, everybody gets a prime badge. So when so when someone, an agent buys something, it triggers that it would be fulfilled by Amazon, Amazon relevant to Amazon, whether you buy something from their website, if they get a percentage of that. And then what would happen, Amazon would more than likely just acquire some of these companies. So and as far as Google goes, Google Shopping, already is taking into account AI. And what they're saying is we're sure AI is going to be leveraged more. So we're just going to open it up to where when an AI search takes place, they will recognize things that we have on Google, and it will trigger our own AI to direct them to a website that we support, or that we own. So I don't think I you know, I think Bill is making the same mistake that Elon Musk makes. When Elon Musk comes out and says, we're all going to die, we're all going to die because of AI. He's going to kill humanity, I can find no evidence of how that even be possible. Makes no sense to me that anyone would think that let alone say it. But I think there's this level of excitement that certain people get. And when you're famous, like Bill Gates and you say stuff, you know, you're going to generate a lot of interest. And that's what happened. But I had lots of people reach out to me and say, yes, what you say makes the most sense. And it's not that Amazon or Google are going to be shut down because of AI.

William Harris 26:33

Sure, it's certainly disruptive, though, we're seeing this already in the Google search results where you know, even even some of their ads are being pushed down for the AI search results. But I think to your point, having an AI agent that makes the most sense, I actually told my brother about this, he's a developer and I was talking about, you know, what our AI agents would be like, and it'll basically come down to who does a better job of training their AI to do what they want it to do. And a lot of that comes down to the right inputs and outputs. And I haven't named mine yet. But now you've got me inspired to come up with a good name for mine. I think one of the other things that I was thinking about with with like, where you're going with the AI doomsday scenario, not necessarily Doomsday, but I do think that there's some interesting thoughts about this. Ray Kurzweil has gotten into right, let's say singularity, and like, where do you start blending the lines between human and artificial intelligence. And just the idea of how does AI make decisions, eventually, there's going to come a point where right now it's got certain guardrails in place, but those guardrails are going to be perhaps screwed. And I think that's maybe where where Elon is coming from. It reminds me of the idea of there was an I don't remember who said this, but let's imagine that you're you're driving a car, let's say you're driving a Tesla. And the Tesla has the opportunity of either running over this one person, or these these five people, or it can divert off and only run over and you know, kill this one person? Well, what's the AI supposed to do in this scenario, right, kill kill the one person to kill the five people. And it says, well, the greater good, maybe it's gonna only kill the one person, it's a very difficult thing to be able to figure out how you program it that way. But then that goes back to and this is where somebody brought up the idea of you remember the Zen parable of the farmer, where he talks about like, he loses his horse? And its neighbors are like, oh, what bad luck you have? And he goes, Well, whether I know whether it's good luck or bad luck, I don't know. And then, and then his horse, and then he then he gets like a wild horse that comes in. He's like, Oh, what good luck you have. And he's like, Well, whether it's good luck or bad luck, I don't know. And then, and then, and then his sons riding the horse and breaks his leg and they go, oh, what bad luck Do you have? He's whether it's good or bad? I don't know. Right? Well, then his son doesn't get drafted into the army, the Imperial Army or something at that time, because his legs broken and the goal, what good luck you have, whether it's good or bad, I don't know. And the idea here is, we don't know the full extent of these situations. And so let's just imagine for a moment here, that we programmed the car to run over the one person in this set of the five people what if that one person was the person who's going to cure cancer? Well, which one was the greater good and bad that we just we don't know, the full extent is like, we can only look at one specific instance and not the, you know, the 10 ripple effects that it has from that. And so I can say maybe where Elon might be going, at least in my mind is, there's a lot of unknown here in where we even begin to allow AI to open itself up in some of these decision making capabilities. And that's,

Brittain Ladd 29:17

and that's true. Now, in your, the example you gave, it's interesting that you chose Tesla, because I had to speak on this topic about AI. And one of the things I was asked was, so where do I see the value of AI? And someone had brought up? What about a Tesla? And I said, Well, let's think about that. And I said, the value that AI would bring to all vehicles is the ability to know who to kill in an accident. And I said, so imagine that Tesla's going down the road. There is a bus that's jackknifed and the Tesla can hit the bus possibly kill kids to Tesla can turn to the right. And basically maybe hit another car but maybe there's a woman in there With children, or that Tesla can go left and slam into a telephone pole and kill the driver. Yeah, the only logical answer is the Tesla should slam into the pole and kill the driver. So the beauty of AI is that it has the ability with no emotion, to kill, and to kill the right person. And so I then took that to how valuable that's going to be for the military. And so I think what's interesting about AI is that it's going to force humanity to make to become aware of a lot more AI, they're going to say, You know what, I don't want to make a decision on which of these prisoners should be sentenced to death. Sure, let's let AI make the decision. Very importantly, believe I fully believe that will become part of our justice system, to an extent Sure. But what I also believe AI is going to do is simplify many of the things that we do today, and by simplify, I think going to a website is stoneage. I cannot believe that in 2023, me and you and everyone else, when I want to find something, I go to amazon.com or something. And now scrolling page after page come like fifth as the, as far as we've come and all these number of years, AI is going to totally change all that. You know, the example I gave with a shoppable video, what I've made it an argument to these companies is put the products you want in the shoppable video habits where someone on their phone looks at the shoppable video. And when they see something they want, they just click on it. It's already pre loaded with all their sizes and everything. They click on it, it pops up, do you want to buy this jacket? Yes, they already knows what size and I just simply click on it and it buys it. I'm not going to a website. And I think that's the thing we're going to run into. So I'm not anti AI, by any stretch. I'm not one of those AI people who think is going to destroy us, I don't. But I do agree with you. We don't know how lucky or unlucky we are. And we don't know what should be considered luck. And what should be considered unlucky at this stage. But that's the beauty of technology. That's the beauty of innovation. We've gone through this many times as a country before. So this is just one of those times. So I say sit back, enjoy it. But learn everything you can about AI because I believe it's gonna be transformational.

William Harris 32:25

Yeah, there's one other thing you hit on that's very tangential has nothing to do with it. Let's just talk about future predictions that I want to at least address. I think when we talk about, let's just say car insurance in the future, you you likely won't be covered. If you are manually driving. I think that you know, we're not far a couple of decades from the point where the the the AI is so much more sophisticated than you are at driving. And so if you put it in a manual, it's well, you're just not covered. Sorry, you got an accident, you you took it off of, you know, the automated driving system. So insurance is just going to, you know, bypass it and say, well, we're not covering that accident, you you did the wrong thing.

Brittain Ladd 33:04

So and that may be true. And I actually think they may go more than that. But first of all, we have to address this. Not everybody is going to be driving a car. Sure. That comes with the ability to self drive. So I do believe cities and states are going to have to put in some type of network where even if you drive an older vehicle, it can come with something that is that is attached to your engine installed on your engine, I should say, and maybe your transmission, and it gives that network the ability to move your car around. Yeah, if you don't agree to something like that. It's not that they won't insure you. They set their rates, they would charge you astronomical rate, you're going to say I'm going to take this take this option. I drive the 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. On my prior to that I kept my jeep my jeep I think I drove it to nearly 4000 miles. I'm just someone who likes to keep vehicles forever. So do I want to get rid of my FJ Cruiser that I love so much just because there's some electric vehicle out there, or a vehicle that would allow me to be part of a network? No. But will I put something gladly on my vehicle that allows me to blend in with other traffic and have my vehicle operate as well as theirs and get that insurance? Of course, I would gladly do that. Yes. But But yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of interesting things. You know, people not submitting their blood and having it evaluated by AI is going to be something insurance companies are going to be looking at. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to see insurance companies get a lot more demanding of William, why is it every night free go to bed, you're eating that pint of ice cream, and you're waking up to a coke and a doughnut. I've been exposed because of tells you being in your blood. It tells me and it's nothing to take a blood test. You just take something you put on your skin. It's plugged into your iPhone, and it tells you Then it's going to end this is going to happen. I work with startups, and they already have the ability to do this. So, so again, we don't know what's lucky, or unlucky, and we don't know who is going to be lucky and who will be unlucky. Because someone who says, Wow, I have to change my entire diet, because of what AI is able to determine. They may say they're the most unlucky people in the world. I will look at them and say just saved your life. Right? You have the best luck of anybody. Right?

William Harris 35:28

Little bit scary. When you think about Gattaca. You ever see that movie? Jude Law with Thurman? Basically? Yes, yeah. Okay. So you know where I'm going with that. But, you know, they they basically map out their their genetic sequence and say, you're allowed to do these jobs, because you have the potential to do that very interesting movie, if you guys haven't seen it, I don't know if it's 80s 90s. I don't remember but fun movie to watch everything about the future of genetics and where we're going with that. Um, last topic, and I don't want to get into some personal stuff here to Amazon Chat GPT, like job listing for online store. I remember you talking about Amazon had this this listing where they're looking to hire a Chat GPT like job listing for their online store. You remember what was going on? Were there and like, what are we what do you think Amazon is hinting at with this?

Brittain Ladd 36:13

Well, at that time, and I don't believe that ad is validating, okay. Because what's happened is that Amazon on their own, see, Amazon has been conducting surveys internally in the company. And they've opened it up to everybody, they opened it up, especially to their executive teams are expecting bigger ideas from their executive team. And their executive team said, well, let's just open it up to everybody. Sure. So I believe Amazon's collected about 100 topics that Chat GPT can support. But Amazon's internal team of experts on AI looked at that list, and they said, We don't need Chat GPT for this, because we can actually duplicate most, if not all of these. And so Amazon and other companies are already doing this, they're getting away from thinking they want Chet GPT, or that they need Chat GPT because of the large language model structure of Chat GPT. And what I'm saying to these companies is no, you don't want to rely on Chat GPT, you may want to tap into Chat GPT to get started. Yeah. But what you want to be doing is opening up your database, everything you make as a company, you sell as a company, all your customers everything, let your own chat type, Chat GPT type AI model, run, and collect all that data. And then basically what you do is you create your own large language model, but specific for your company, your needs, your customers, you bring in your suppliers. And the reason for that is that day does accurate Chat GPT, because of the hallucinations that can come up with and all the other things that are really weird about it. I don't understand why any company will say yep, that's our goal, we want to integrate, and we want to agree, Chat GPT why I don't see the value of that. So that's really what that was about Amazon was I got to do something, because Chat GPT Chat GPT everyone's talking about it. But then cooler heads prevailed. Now Amazon's like, we don't want it, we don't need it. Because we are we look at how much data Amazon has for their own. It's probably the largest in the world, the only company that I think would have more would possibly be Walmart or the Pentagon. So imagine being able now it gets even more cool. Imagine a third party that can get their hands on Amazon's large language model specific to their company, their customers, their suppliers, and they get their hands on it for Walmart and someone else, and they find a way to come up with a flawless, foolproof, large language model AI specific to retail. Now look at all of the crazy things that these retailers will be able to do. And I believe that will happen. I don't know what third party will be able to convince them to do it. But I honestly believe this is what we're going to have happen. So I think we're gonna see some really interesting things in retail in the coming years that will be inspired or capable by AI.

William Harris 39:11

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of this is going to come down to getting better about dictating what that AI is ultimate primary goal is for whichever AI you're you're working with, you know, a lot of within the retail space in the advertising space, at least, a lot of it is around revenue optimization, fine, except that revenue doesn't mean profit. And so you know, a lot of what we do on the ad side is we optimize around profit. And it's just a matter of a lot of these AI tools getting better about being able to optimize towards that goal as well, which is a much better goal than just optimizing towards revenue. You You seem to have a pulse on everything. I don't know how but like, how do you sleep? How do you manage your day to be able to maintain this good, have a pulse on what's going on and still stay sane?

Brittain Ladd 39:58

Well, so here's what's interesting. I have clients in the Middle East. I have clients in Australia, I have them in Asia, I have in North America. So my day is I usually work in blocks. So like in the evening hours, because I have clients that are waking up in Asia and so forth, I basically work several hours, and then I may sleep one hour, I work a couple of hours, I sleep one hour. So throughout the day, because I basically went to work 24 hours a day, or I work much more, I work more in a 24 hour cycle seven days a week, because in the Middle East, their weekends fall during our week. So Saturday, Sunday is just another Workday for some of my clients. So I have no choice but to be working over the weekend as well with them. But because of the timezone change, I'm working at a later period. So I've just trained to my body to where I don't have to sleep that much. I don't sleep that much anyway. But I also am always up early to work out I work out about an hour and a half every day. So that allows me to stay really energized. And so what I also do is I'm constantly researching, I research everything. But what separates me from everyone is when I see something I find interesting, a product, I hear someone talk about Chat GPT, a new company name I hear, I don't say Well, that's interesting. I find out everything about that company or that product as fast as I can. And then I start asking myself questions, Where can this go? How big can this be? What can this Disrupt? And that's allowed me to just have knowledge of just hundreds and hundreds of companies. But because I write so much for Forbes and I write so many LinkedIn posts, people from all over the world reach out to me, and I'm amazed at how many of them say, I'm a startup, I have this idea with this product, and I want you to be the first to see it. And I'm like, great show to me. And so what that allows me to gain an understanding of a lot of things that leads me to be introduced to other people. And so I have this massive network of startups and investment banks, and investors and PE firms that they basically contract me to say, take a look at this company or this category for us. Who do you think we should invest in? And it's just one of the ways that I earn money, but allows me to, again, to have to I have to drill down to these to a certain level, I have to get very granular. And it just forces me to learn and not just say, Well, that sounds me. Yeah, I have to say so how do I monetize this? What? How? How can I help this company make a better business decision? So that's how I'm so dialed into a lot of things. And And again, like I said, I'm grateful for everyone on LinkedIn, who does send me things as well, just to make sure that I don't miss something.

William Harris 42:53

That's a much better answer than I thought I thought maybe you were gonna tell me that you'd figured out how to clone yourself like Michael Keaton, in the movie multiplicity? I don't know if you remember that movie. I do,

Brittain Ladd 43:03

eventually, but I also will say, Yeah, but I also will say this. You know, I began my career in the Marines. And the Marines really taught me something interesting. They always said, you have to get to the 70% solution. And I said, Well, what does that mean? They said, if you can come up with 70% of the details, related to a potential attack, they're going to launch an enemy threat, whatever, you have everything, you need to either attack that position to defeat that enemy, or whatever, that's 70% rule. And so that's also something that continues to drive me, I don't have to know everything about a product about a business about a category I don't, I don't need to know who the people are at every level of a company, for me to understand what that company does, what the potential of that company is, and who are the competitors of that company, I still stick to that 70% rule. And so it's not like I have to spend hours and hours and hours of going into crazy, granular, little granular detail with some of these companies. I just need to get to that 70%. And from there, that's when I have the ability to say, I know exactly where this is going, which is why then again, 2013, I wrote a research report using game theory in the grocery industry. I was the first person recommended Amazon to acquire Whole Foods. I came up with that through that research report. And 2000. I sent it to Amazon, they laughed and said, They said I was an idiot. And they said why would we as the Amazon want to own stores. We're the largest online grocery retailer in the world. And I said yeah, but you aren't good at and people don't shop online, they shop in stores. Now in 2017, Amazon acquired, acquired Whole Foods, but because I had enough understanding of the industry. I was the first person who said Amazon is going to struggle, they need an acquisition. This is the company they should acquire and if became a reality. So I know what I do works. I'm not, I'm not perfect. I do make mistakes. But I do have an ability to come up with good ideas. And most of the stuff I write ventually does become a reality. Yeah, no, I

William Harris 45:14

think that's brilliant. And I love that you called out the the military background and training and how that's allowed you to see things in a different way than I think the regular person would. What are the other things you caught up to that I want to make sure I bring back to is you talked about basically polyphasic sleep cycle. So I don't know if you even knew that. That's the term for what you're doing. But for those who are at that time, but in

Brittain Ladd 45:37

all honesty, I've heard that term. I know a bit about it. I know some people swear by it.

William Harris 45:44

People throw Thomas Edison did right. Yeah. Thomas Edison did. Yeah.

Brittain Ladd 45:47

Yeah. Thomas Edison did it. I mean, there's been some other famous people who've tried it. I have to say it works for them. It works for me. Yeah. And it's not something I say everybody should do. But I found the way to make it work. Because again, like everybody, I have to make money. Yeah. And it just so happens, the way I make money is a little different. And I just have to have trade offs. And I say, Well, I don't mind if I'm actually working midnight to 3am. My time, because it helps my client and another region of the world, you know, and I'm not doing it for free, right? So it's not, I'm saying Sure, of course, they'll do it to get paid for it. But that's how I came up with that, that sleep cycle.

William Harris 46:29

And I love it. I wanted to call out that name in case anybody hears that and says I want to do it Brittain's doing here. It's like, well, that's what it is. Go look it up Google it, you can find out more information about the polyphasic or biphasic sleep cycles. You're not afraid of AI? What are you afraid of? Is there anything that scares you that you look at in the future? And other things that you're you seem to have this ability to see the future? In many ways? Is there anything that you look out, you say, it's got me a little bit nervous or a little bit, you know, scared.

Brittain Ladd 46:59

The biggest thing is the struggle the US military is running into in terms of recruiting a bow, they have only they missed their quarters last year each branch by and be anywhere from 15 to 30,000 people, only about sem only about 11% of the people who are between the ages of 18 and 24, only about 11% even qualify for military service. So I have a post I'm actually researching, I'm working with these individuals from India, who are h1, B, they hold h1 B visas, or they want to hold an h1 B and so I'm working with them. And they're surveying Indians in India, and in the US and Europe. And I'm challenging them to say, look, if I'm the United States, and I say to you, if you join the US military, and the Guard or Reserve and you served for four years, I'll make you a US citizen, would you do it? Or if I tell you the only way you get an h1 B visa is to register for the draft in the United States to make you eligible for the draft. And to legitimately make you are required to serve if you are drafted, would you do it? And I have to admit, I'm surprised at how many of the people are saying, Yes, I wouldn't do that. And so what I'm doing is I'm trying to prepare a solution. And I'm going to send it to Lloyd Austin, who was the Secretary of Defense, because he's struggling to come up with a solution. And I'm saying, I believe it's right in front of us. You have all these people want to immigrate to the United States who have these great job skills, have them become part of the military just changed the requirement a bit. And that's the thing I'm working on. We know, as we know, throughout history, we are in danger if we don't have a strong military. Yeah. And when we look at China, we look at things going on in other parts of the world, no matter what we have to have a strong defense, we're not able to do that under today's methodology. But I do believe some of the stuff I'm going to recommend, most people in Congress would say, absolutely, that makes perfect sense. Let's do it.

William Harris 49:06

Sure. It's a brilliant idea. It actually reminds me that I've seen at least some studies that would suggest a lot of times, immigrants have a higher patriotism than a lot of people who were born here. And so there's that actually, you know, like you said, that was surprising. That actually doesn't surprise me. I think sometimes you have to experience things somewhere else to realize just how good it is here. And if somebody is wanting to say I there's a lot that I'm willing to do to be able to come and be a part of what America is doing. We're not perfect. There's no perfect country. But we've done a really good job in many ways. And I think that that's encouraging to hear that there are people that would be willing to do that. And I'd love to see if there's a way that we could get more excitement right here. From those reporting here as well. More More patriotism, more excitement about the things that we are doing right, versus maybe nitpicking all the things that we're doing wrong.

Brittain Ladd 49:59

Oh, I agree. it. Like I said, I served for six years in the Marines. And I've, Nolan. I've written stuff before. And I've said the Lloyd Nolan, does that your defense on like, if you want, bring me back on active duty, and put me through all of these programs. I've been very honest with, I'll say, I'm not asking you tend to have other people do it. I said, I served six years, but bring me back on active duty. And I'll go through all of these programs. And I'll give you my honest opinion, was it a good idea, a bad idea? Because if I can't do, and I'm going to recommend it. Well, obviously, maybe it wasn't such a good idea. So I'm willing to do that to this day. So I really do take this issue seriously. But that's one of the bigger ones, you know, some of the social issues and things like that. We're just like, we were in 1968. You know, we're going through this crazy period, and everyone thought we were gonna fall apart in 68. And then a few years later, we had the Reagan administration, and everything totally turned around. We're going to go through the same thing, politics and social issues will always be part of us. But there are some big things we always have to be careful of the environment, understanding what's really optimal. Does it make sense to tear up the earth to make electric vehicles? I really struggle with? Yeah, yeah, no. So I think there's some interesting things we're going to have to tackle. But you know, I've, I've always had this attitude. If something scares you get over the fear, force yourself to do it. That's why I jumped out of airplanes. That's why scuba dive. That's why Cliff dive that's why free climbed. I mean, when I learned how to free climb, because I saw this guy free climbing on a commercial. I'm like, Oh, my God, I could ever do that. And I stayed up all night going, Well, you got to figure out a way to get over that fear. So I had to go take classes and I courses, and I learned how to free climb. And I'm not that great at it, but I can do it. So I think that, you know, anytime we run into things that scare us, we have to comply with the rest of the individual or country. So that's just something I believe in.

William Harris 51:57

I've got one for you then Banzai jumping. Are you familiar with Banzai jumping? Apparently, I'm told it's when you throw your parachute out, dive out, catch your parachute put it on, then you launch your parachute. That's another level of

Brittain Ladd 52:09

okay, there's a big difference between sheer stupidity. And being afraid. The level the margin of failure. The margin of success is so small in that yeah, that that's really for someone who's a skilled expert. Yeah. And maybe if I was a base jumper, and I could get to that level, I might be willing to do it. But when I jump out of a plane by myself, No, I want to safety crew there. wiska. So that's the difference between somebody who does something absolutely foolish, that's fair, causes themselves to die or others. And versus someone who says I'm willing to try that. But I know I need to have I need to mitigate the risk. That's that's an intelligent way to look at that, like Tom Cruise does all of his stunts. But he has an army of people who have made him an expert. And there's an army of people making sure he doesn't die. And that's how he mitigates the risk. So I believe in the same thing, but what I just like today share, William, I'll go out, throw my parachute out and jump after it. Not a chance because I don't think I could catch it. Yeah,

William Harris 53:15

yeah. Well, I don't think I could, hopefully, Tom Cruise doesn't die. But if he does, I think we're pretty close to having an AI version of him anyways, and so we could just make all the movies we want with him anyways.

Brittain Ladd 53:25

That's what the future 10 years ago, I wrote 10 years ago, the future was we will have movie stars that aren't real. Right. And I fully believe we're already seeing that with Santos and the Avengers movies and other things. So I think we will have that. Yeah, absolutely.

William Harris 53:45

We are at time, I want to make sure that I'm respectful of your time here. I can't thank you enough for coming on here sharing your time sharing your wisdom with us. Is there any last words that you would want to say to anybody who is in the e-commerce retail business, you want to encourage them, inspire them, help them look at something else differently?

Brittain Ladd 54:03

Well, the main thing I always say is think big. Think big. And the other thing I say is crush all assumptions. I find a lot of companies are their own worst enemy. They're afraid to think big. They are they're afraid to crush all assumptions. And they convinced themselves that they can only do certain things. And then when they hire me, I'm like, why aren't you doing these other things? And they're like, Oh, we didn't think we could, I'm like, well, then you weren't thinking big enough. Because when you think big, it should scare you. Right? When you crush all assumptions that should illuminate all your fears of what you can and can't do, crush it and figure out a way to get it done. So that would be my advice, think big and crush all assumptions. And when companies do that, that's how you become Amazon.

William Harris 54:49

And while you're thinking big, maybe dream big, that's a song Ryan Shoop and the rubber band. When you dream dream big, great song. I love it. Go listen to it as well. If people want to follow you connect with you stay in touch with you work with Do you what's the best way for them to do that? Just

Brittain Ladd 55:02

connect with me on LinkedIn, I connect with everybody. That's the easiest way to do it. And then from there, you can follow me on Twitter and everything else.

William Harris 55:09

Awesome. Thank you again Brittain. Really appreciate you coming out here and everybody. My pleasure.

Brittain Ladd 55:13

Thank you so much for having me. Bye, everybody. See you. Thank you.

Outro 55:18

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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