Ben Steele

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group executive search. You can learn more about us at NotoGroup.com. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high performance leadership teams.

[00:00:32] Roy Notowitz: Now I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Today I'm joined by Ben Steele, the former Chief Customer Officer for REI. For over 10 years, he led marketing, digital brand strategy, customer insights, customer experience, merchandising and product, and creative.

[00:00:57] Roy Notowitz: Ben joined the co-op as a Chief Creative Officer in 2014, and then in 2018 became the company's inaugural Chief Customer Officer. Ben speaks about making strategic decisions in marketing, hiring, and inclusivity to demonstrate brand values and beliefs in action. We also get into the importance of focusing on and understanding the consumer, the challenges of forging the new chief customer officer role and how to navigate the ever-changing context of customer experience.

[00:01:33] Roy Notowitz: Ben, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. It's great to have you here. 

[00:01:37] Ben Steele: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:39] Roy Notowitz: Let's dive right in. Let's talk about your career path and the journey that's led to where you are today. 

[00:01:46] Ben Steele: I started my career on the consulting side. I began in advertising agencies and brand and design agencies, and I got through that experience the opportunity to work with a lot of different companies in a lot of different sectors and a lot of different brands, and really found myself more and more drawn to the central questions those brands were asking.

[00:02:05] Ben Steele: So I loved writing ads. I loved radio and TV and print ads. But what I loved more was spending time with leaders in the business, trying to answer what made them special, what made them different, what made them compelling to the customer. That information, that insight, those decisions are what ultimately led to those creative expressions.

[00:02:22] Ben Steele: But more and more and more of my time was upstream in the brand strategy space, and I found myself leading an agency here in the Seattle area, a great agency that I was proud to be a part of, and assuming my whole life would stay on the agency side, and for the second time in my career, found myself working with REI.

[00:02:40] Ben Steele: I had done that as a baby copywriter and thought it was the coolest client in the world. And then as REI had a new CEO enter the business, we were doing some work consulting with them and conversation about what they should be looking for in a marketing or brand leader evolved into an opportunity. And so for the last 10 years, I went from having big, bright ideas outside of a business that I thought were really smart and then never actually manifest in anything, to being inside a business and realizing, holy cow, you've got so much to learn and for those ideas to actually sprout and flower, you really need to understand what they mean to the core of that business.

[00:03:18] Ben Steele: And REI was an incredible place to do that. It's an incredible brand. Passionate people, passionate customers and members, and the chance to help REI express itself and share what made it so special and different was an incredible gift. And now thinking about, okay, how do I take what I've learned there and what I love about those central questions, what I love about centering on the customer and that experience, and find the next great place to continue that adventure?

[00:03:45] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. You've done some incredible work there. 

[00:03:48] Ben Steele: No, thank you. 

[00:03:49] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I'm excited to see where you go next. And where did you start when you came in? I mean, a lot of good stuff was already happening. 

[00:03:59] Ben Steele: Yeah, that's the first thing. The first thing I'd say is that you start by assessing what I knew to be true as a long, long time member and a big fan of the brand.

[00:04:09] Ben Steele: Sometimes when you're consulting on the brand side, you're looking around and saying, God, what am I going to make up? What story can we make up? REI was the opposite. It was like turnover a rock and there's gold, turnover a rock and there's gold. So it's more a question of what choices you can make. I started in a pretty simple place.

[00:04:26] Ben Steele: We put co-op back in the logo, REI had removed the co-op from its logo in the nineties and that was built a symbolic decision, but also an impactful decision because the impetus to talk about what makes this a unique proposition went away. And you know, REI is, I'll just say for folks who don't know, the largest member owned consumer co-op in the country and that's something to be proud of. 

[00:04:48] Ben Steele: But putting Co-op back in the logo forced us to talk about what does it mean to be a co-op? What does it mean to be a member owned community? What does it mean to be a community where 26 million --

[00:04:58] Roy Notowitz: Wow. 

[00:04:58] Ben Steele: -- folks now today, I think it was closer to 17 at the time, where 14, 15,000 employees come together to achieve more together than they do alone.

[00:05:07] Ben Steele: That started a series of conversations and a series of internal discussions, and eventually led us to ask big questions like, what would a co-op do in the following context? And one of the big next things we did was what would a co-op do on Black Friday? And what it turns out, we decided the co-op wouldn't be open on Black Friday.

[00:05:26] Ben Steele: In this case, a co-op would pay its employees every employee. To go outside that day and instead of managing throngs of eager and overeager consumers, we would still serve their needs. You know, we'd still take those orders online, but nobody was going to be there. Nobody in the DCs, no one in the offices, no one in the stores. That became a really powerful moment for us to demonstrate our beliefs in action and to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world. Well, what makes this co-op different? 

[00:05:54] Roy Notowitz: How did you translate the brand and culture through the employees and the employee base? How did you bring that to life? 

[00:06:03] Ben Steele: Well, you know, very literally that first year of Opt Outside back in 2015, we had one metric and that metric was literally employee excitement and engagement. Anything else that happened was gravy. First of all, the success of that of Opt Outside exceeded all of our expectations. And I think, you know, we, we can look back and look really smart on it now. but we didn't know it was going to work, we didn’t know what the hell -- if anybody was even going to care. But I felt pretty good about that first metric. I got the opportunity to announce that we were going to be doing this at our leadership conference, where all of our store managers were there and there's folks who've worked for decades in retail. 

[00:06:39] Ben Steele: And the energy in that moment and the emotion in that moment, folks who were jumping and crying and cheering and actual real tears. You know, I've worked in retail for 30 years. Thanksgiving's always been a stressful day because I know what's coming next. 

[00:06:52] Ben Steele: Like at that moment kind of knew, okay, if this is about demonstrating to our employees what's most important in a way that they can then amplify and be excited about, we felt pretty good about that.

[00:07:03] Roy Notowitz: Right. 

[00:07:03] Ben Steele: And what happened after that was just gravy. But that first part felt like a surer thing once I could feel the energy of our longtime retail employees. 

[00:07:11] Roy Notowitz: That's amazing. So you first took the chief customer officer role six years ago. So what was the impetus for creating the role at REI and then what were the challenges around forging that new role within the organization?

[00:07:27] Ben Steele: Yeah, I mean, the biggest challenge is everybody's response is, what the hell does that mean? But the good news is they didn't know what creative meant either. So, you know, I was used to explaining my job. Honestly, in some ways, the evolution of the role was natural given what had been the evolution of the role. So the title probably trailed the responsibility.

[00:07:45] Ben Steele: I think very quickly one of my core beliefs is that brand is not marketing. Brand is not your stories. Brand is every action and decision that you make and take your values live in everything you do. So your core business operations are an expression of your brand and your belief and my responsibilities and the teams I got the chance to serve and be a part of here changed over time and our data insights and analytics research teams. 

[00:08:09] Ben Steele: Who are our members? What do they care about? What opportunities do we have? That became a part of our organization. Our formal marketing organization became a part of it, you know, our impact and philanthropic teams, our government affairs teams, and we reached a threshold moment where we brought the digital organization together with those other teams, and in that moment changed kind of the title, but also the focus, not the focus of individual teams, but maybe the focus of how the co-op thought about the power of those teams together.

[00:08:35] Ben Steele: Starting from a place of understanding our customer and member. And we said customer, because it isn't just the people we know today. It's the people we need to meet and serve, and the ways we need to evolve to meet and serve them starting from a core place of understanding them both where we're serving them and where we're falling short.

[00:08:53] Ben Steele: How do we develop our product set, our stories, our offering across our touchpoints, stores, digital and our experiences, our classes, our events, our trips? How do those things evolve to serve the needs of our customer base and our aspirational customer base? And you know, the organization kept changing. We created a new role a couple years ago, bringing our stores and digital teams together and digital, join the commercial organization here. We brought the merchandising and product teams into the customer organization. 

[00:09:23] Ben Steele: So I think this role looks different in every organization. What it has in common is core belief at the enterprise level that customer centered planning, customer centered product development, customer centered, understanding of opportunity, customer centricity -- no doubt everybody who's listened to a podcast has heard that term -- that means different things in different organizations in terms of responsibilities, but in terms of core principles and beliefs, it's a common thread. 

[00:09:49] Roy Notowitz: So what functions reported into you and how was your team structured? 

[00:09:53] Ben Steele: You know, I'll start at that. core principle that I mentioned before, so our insights and analytics team. So we have an organization called Member and Customer Planning. That's research, that's insights, that's our membership team who literally develops and runs our membership programs and the planning that comes out of that. Then we have our marketing and brand teams.

[00:10:14] Ben Steele: You know, we largely have an in-house creative group here at the co-op. So that team works in close concert with both brand strategy and our marketing organization that are merchandising. So our external brand vendor brand partners. Our co-op brands, that's our internal brands. So our physical product, I mentioned our experiences teams, so that's our classes and events.

[00:10:36] Ben Steele: And then we also have our, what we call our public affairs and impact teams. That's our sustainability group, our philanthropic organization, you know, the giving commitment of the co-op to its communities is a big part of who we are. That also includes our internal and external communications teams, our government affairs teams.

[00:10:55] Ben Steele: And then those teams are also responsible for helping to support all of our racial equity, diversity, and inclusion work beyond our HR core practices, across the co-op. So those teams together encompass our customer organization. Each of those teams has an accountable leader who is that a part of my leadership team. And we spend our time really asking ourselves like, are we putting the power of all those teams together in service of our customer and member? 

[00:11:21] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. And in other organizations, how is this work carried forward? Or do most organizations not have as much of a focus on the customer? 

[00:11:31] Ben Steele: It really varies. I think very few organizations, more and more and more, very few organizations don't have a clear focus on the customer. Not everyone structures against it. I mean, look, as you well know, probably better than anybody, you can solve challenges through strategy, through structure, through process, through alignment, through shared goals, and if you want to be effective, you kind of have to do all of those things. We just happen to have structure aligned with those other things.

[00:11:56] Ben Steele: What you'll typically see is a mix of the insights and analytics functions. Some demand generation and then customer touch points. So in a retailer, you tend to see like store design or digital design coming together. Our inclusion of merchandising is probably slightly rarer, but the theory of the case there for us again is how does our assortment need to evolve as we think about meeting, greeting, building a business for new customers and members and generations ahead?

[00:12:26] Roy Notowitz: Oh, that's amazing. 

[00:12:27] Ben Steele: Yeah. 

[00:12:28] Roy Notowitz: What were some of the unique opportunities for you as a leader working to bring the REI brand to life for customers and members? 

[00:12:36] Ben Steele: I think the challenge for any organization, but one we think a lot about specifically, is how do you answer that question as context constantly changes. Just think about the last five years. Right? What did it mean to answer that question? 

[00:12:49] Roy Notowitz: Right. 

[00:12:49] Ben Steele: As we were closing all of our stores for health and safety and then evolving our offering as we brought them back up and oh my God, suddenly the participation in the outdoors is radically growing in a way it really never has.

[00:13:03] Ben Steele: You know, we went back and looked at our numbers all the way back to the sixties. There hadn't been that type of a spike ever, but that means a lot of new people are entering the space. How do you have to think about meeting and serving those folks? How do you think about then -- what I think unfortunately, a lot of folks in our industry are feeling as a little bit of a correction back to the mean, the context changes.

[00:13:23] Ben Steele: And on top of that, I'd also say the outdoor industry needed to do us included work to say, who are we not serving? Who are we unintentionally or without intention signaling ought not be a part of the outdoors? You're not welcome here. You're not served, you're not known. We're not interested in what you want or need.

[00:13:43] Ben Steele: I don't think you'd meet anybody who said like, yeah, we're purposefully trying to exclude people, but if you're not purposefully trying to include people, it's the same thing. So we really had to think about where are we falling short? The example I always use, you know, I love to run. I run every day. I live in a city, so I run in a city.

[00:14:00] Ben Steele: REI spent a lot of time gently and not so gently telling me I was doing it wrong, dude, you should be on a trail. You're doing it wrong. With respect, I don't live on a trail. I live in a city. So yeah, serve my need and then invite me to the trail. And that's just a different mindset. That's a customer centered mindset for... it's the difference between hey, here's what I'm offering you, and hey, what do you need? And then how do I help you progress based on that starting point? So the short answer is, context is always changing, which means what you think, you know, you always have to be re interrogating. 

[00:14:33] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So context often comes from what's happening in the moment, right? Or --

[00:14:39] Ben Steele: Mm-Hmm. 

[00:14:39] Roy Notowitz: -- what recently happened? How do you look forward and anticipate? 

[00:14:44] Ben Steele: Yeah. Yeah. I think the very simple answer is you do research, you look at trends, and I think the maybe subtler answer is you just be really curious about the world and you try to build that culture into your teams, really interested in what's happening in another industry or what's happening in another context that may eventually come our way, you know?

[00:15:02] Ben Steele: Maybe I will stump for being an English major for a moment. This notion of trying to see the world through other people's eyes and understand other experiences is a good mindset for business people. I think to really understand like, where is the market going? Trend will only get you so far. Trend will tell you how to do what you've done before a little bit better, a little bit different. But looking at opportunity, looking at trend more broadly, we'll say, where might we be a year from now? And again, you can oftentimes just ask the customer, what are you interested in doing? Where do you feel like we're falling short?

[00:15:35] Ben Steele: And a lot of times people will tell you, you know, if you ask people what they want, they say they want a faster horse, not a car. But if you listen closely enough, you can intuit maybe something new out of the unmet desire. 

[00:15:47] Roy Notowitz: Interesting. So what do you love most about your work as a chief customer officer?

[00:15:52] Ben Steele: Yeah, I mean like we've, like we've discussed, I mean, it's a little bit of a different role in every place. I think the thing that is always true and you know, it's up to the person in that role to help make it true in partnership with other people is centering on what makes the customer care, right?

[00:16:09] Ben Steele: That's everything from, again, what makes you special, unique, and different as a company or proposition... in most cases the thing you offer is not -- you're the only person who offers it, so you have to give people a reason to choose you, and that starts with understanding what that customer cares about. Yes, it's about the customer you already have, but it's equal parts about the customer that you don't.

[00:16:30] Ben Steele: How do you understand what's core to them? How do you keep that in balance with what's core to you? How do you evolve and change and adapt to the needs of that customer base as they change without losing who you are? 

[00:16:44] Ben Steele: Those are really big, interesting, complex questions and I think, you know, it's everything from deep, deep data models that'll show you trend projections in the future of what could be to big swaths of market opportunity, understanding to say what could be if we move to another space. And then there's just the gut feel of are we getting closer or are we getting further from who we are and what's most compelling? And that mix of art and science, that mix of research and insight, that mix of deep connection to customer and imagination of possibility. Like that's a pretty... it's a pretty cool space to get to operate. 

[00:17:23] Roy Notowitz: So let's talk a little bit about the last five years or so. How --

[00:17:27] Ben Steele: Are you sure? I mean, what if we talked about the previous five years? 

[00:17:30] Roy Notowitz: So I think it's interesting. So how did you adapt and evolve --

[00:17:35] Ben Steele: Yeah. 

[00:17:35] Roy Notowitz: -- through the, let's call it the ups and downs of the last five years?

[00:17:40] Ben Steele: We were one of the first, if not the first national retailers to close our doors because we didn't know in that moment how to keep our people safe or how to keep our customers safe. And we took a little while to figure it out. And you know, we came back with some really strong health and safety guidelines that I think also then forced some innovation inside of the business.

[00:17:58] Ben Steele: You know, we had to figure out a scalable solution for curbside. We had to figure out a scalable solution for buy online pickup in store. We had to figure out capacity to take our business from let's say 25 to 30% online to 50 to 60% online. Like there was a lot of really radical change just in terms of the model and shifts we had to make that model work.

[00:18:23] Ben Steele: On the back end of that we're also suddenly a distributed workplace in the same way everybody else is. You're trying to figure out how do we effectively work and partner in a remote or hybrid environment versus a physical location in hq? All of those things happen simultaneously. That's not unique for us, but I would say we were probably behind a lot of other omni retailers in terms of having some of those capabilities online.

[00:18:47] Ben Steele: Really good work had been happening so that when we had to push into those, teams weren't starting from scratch. And maybe it's, we caught up to the good work teams were doing, but we stood some of those solutions up from not being available to the customer, to being available to the customer in months and in sometimes weeks. And that was important because that meant we could continue to be in business. 

[00:19:08] Roy Notowitz: That's great. Is the chief customer officer role more common in larger consumer oriented companies? You know, we talked a little bit about how this might come to life in other organizations, but what are some of the other ways that companies might structure roles to accomplish similar outcomes?

[00:19:23] Ben Steele: I think it's probably most common in the technology space and probably most, most common in consumer facing technology companies that tend to have like a membership or subscription type base in a lot of organizations, understanding acquisition, retention, prevention of churn of a member is the core business proposition.

[00:19:42] Ben Steele: You know, if you're at a Netflix, you're thinking about dwell time with the customer. You think about retention of the customer, you think about acquisition of the customer, and you're centering a lot of your business around that. Maybe a little less common in retail, not because customer's less important.

[00:19:57] Ben Steele: We're pretty front and center about the fact that membership is the core product of the co-op. Now it's a lifetime membership and it's a hell of a value. So it's a slightly different proposition than a Netflix, but we still have to have the mindset to say membership has to be the vessel that brings all the goodness of the co-op together and keeps someone engaged or makes someone believe that the co-op has value and they're going to step into that relationship. So that mindset is probably what drives us to this model more than the sector that is retail. 

[00:20:28] Roy Notowitz: So how did being part of a co-op inform or influence the way you led or collaborated and made decisions internally? 

[00:20:38] Ben Steele: Yeah, I think in our best moments, what a co-op allows you to do is to think longer term and in a more complex way about what success looks like.

[00:20:47] Ben Steele: You know, we are not publicly traded. We don't have PE sitting on top of us, and while those are not bad things, those things have weight to them, and the quarter matters and ultimately maximization of profit is job one, two, three, and four. More companies over the last few years have probably caught up to what the co-op thinks about.

[00:21:06] Ben Steele: We think about a quadruple bottom line, our employees, our members, our business and society. And if one of those things is successful when the others aren't, then it's not success. What a co-op does between our profit sharing and the member reward or dividend that we distribute back to our members. Our commitment to philanthropic giving, our commitment to investment in creating a more inclusive outdoors.

[00:21:30] Ben Steele: That's a really good way to make an impact, but it means that every dollar is very, very divided before it gets to the bottom line. So you're running on a thinner operating model, which means you got to be really, really compelling to the customer and you got to be really, really efficient with your operations.

[00:21:46] Ben Steele: And I think that's an ongoing body of work and sometimes struggle for every company. And that's very true for REI as well. 

[00:21:52] Roy Notowitz: Well, for a lot of retailers it's a struggle to be profitable, so -- 

[00:21:56] Ben Steele: Yeah. 

[00:21:56] Roy Notowitz: -- adding onto that other investments that you're making, 

[00:22:00] Ben Steele: There's a lot of dollars that get spent before we run 'em through the P&L.

[00:22:05] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So how does that influence how decisions are made internally? Is there any other insight around that? 

[00:22:12] Ben Steele: Yeah, I mean, again, I think the most demonstrable way probably asking that longer term question. You know, asking that multiple constituents or multiple impacts framing when you think about success.

[00:22:26] Ben Steele: In terms of the practicalities of the day to day business, you know, we still got to make money, we still got to pay our bills. We still do the disclosures that a public corporation would do. So I think if you show up as an executive or a leader, or anybody in the team here, and you're coming from high up in another business, you'd kind of say, well, most of my day feels exactly the same.

[00:22:43] Ben Steele: I think you'd find in some of the strategic planning and some of the maybe more nuanced discussions of what success looks like. That's where the difference really sit. Now, my hope, though is that as a consumer or as an hourly employee at the co-op, or as somebody who experiences our business in situ every day, you feel a lot of differences. You feel a lot of things that are unique and special. 

[00:23:06] Roy Notowitz: As a co-op, you have a lot of constituents, you have a lot of stakeholders, including, I'm assuming the vendors. And so how does the co-op mindset translate to the way that vendors are integrated or collaborated with? 

[00:23:20] Ben Steele: There's a lot of different structures that our vendor community falls under. Everything from a Patagonia who really is dedicated, that their purpose is saving our home planet here to companies that are owned by private equity to publicly traded organizations. But the shared purpose and belief in the power of the outdoors, the importance of the outdoors, the sustainability commitments that this industry makes, I think ahead and above of others, and increasingly a commitment to being a more welcoming and inclusive space means that a lot of our values that probably have a longer at the co-op than some other places are increasingly shared by our partners. 

[00:23:58] Ben Steele: At the end of the day though, our vendor partners aren't going to give us any special favors because we're a co-op. They expect us to serve our members and serve them as great partners really, really well, and we definitely get to hear when we're falling short of that expectation.

[00:24:11] Roy Notowitz: That's great. I'm sure you do. 

[00:24:13] Ben Steele: Yeah, no, I do. I can send you some emails if you want. 

[00:24:17] Roy Notowitz: So can you share an example or two of competencies that you've identified as important to nurture and develop within the teams that you lead? 

[00:24:26] Ben Steele: Yeah, absolutely. I will say that quadruple bottom line is probably a good proxy for a skillset that I think is really important, which is the ability to manage ambiguity, the ability to solve an equation where multiple things are true, uh, and the ability to have to think about things in multiple timeframes. You, you've heard me say a couple times at our best, we're longer term thinkers.

[00:24:48] Ben Steele: We're not always at our best the skillset to say like, how do I think about what this has to mean in 2024, but also what it'll unlock in 2025 and 2026? Longer term business planning is not unique, but that need to constantly have your mind in both of those time spaces, but also to say, how does this definitely serve our members?

[00:25:06] Ben Steele: Definitely serve our employees, definitely serve the business, and then allow us to invest in making a more positive, broader societal impact? Those are more complex questions and the skillset I think is really important is people who embrace that complexity and thrive in that complexity. The other one that I would talk about, and again, the sort of simple cliche version of it is collaboration, but if you really step back what a co-op is, it's pretty simple.

[00:25:30] Ben Steele: It's that people are coming together to do more together than they could on their own. When I talk about a lot of the dollars that get spent before, before they kind of run through the systems here. That means sometimes, oftentimes we're doing things with fewer resources. We're doing things without some of the tools and capabilities that somebody else might have.

[00:25:48] Ben Steele: So the power of our ability to get that done is about strong collaboration, and that's not just, hey, do we like each other? It's, can we align on shared goals and outcomes? Can we build OKRs or KPIs together so that ultimately we're not working at cross purposes with one another. Can we align our processes to allow us to do more than the resources here might suggest? And those are really important things. And again, that's both a set of practices, but it has to be also a mindset and belief. So those are two that kind of jump to mind as pretty important for me. 

[00:26:19] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. 

[00:26:20] Ben Steele: You don't have to be an outdoor expert to come here, but you have to care about this mission and purpose. And when you do, you unlock a lot. 

[00:26:28] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. In what ways can boards, investors, and CEOs of public and private companies, not just co-ops, evaluate or measure the degree to which the company is succeeding or failing at serving the customer? 

[00:26:42] Ben Steele: I would say, from a commitment and belief perspective, the co-op is great at it. From a truly measuring like the double, triple, quadruple click inside of something like customer satisfaction. I think we've got a little ways to go. I mean, we're good at understanding what our CSAT levels are at every touchpoint of service, and here's the good news. They're really, really high. They're consistently high.

[00:27:01] Ben Steele: That's part of what we're known for. But sometimes those big aggregate high numbers can cloud important places where you're either degrading or under utilizing an opportunity. So people love blended stuff. Net promoter score is a really powerful thing, and I get why people love it, but averages can kill. So how do you get underneath those averages or underneath those aggregates to understand like what's working here and just importantly, what's not working as well as it used to?

[00:27:27] Ben Steele: We talk a ton about expertise. Expertise is why people choose the co-op. Approachable expertise is what people love about our stores. We're really, really, really, really good at it. Other people have taken note of that and they're investing in getting good at it too. So understanding how good are we at it relative to an aggressive competition -- 

[00:27:46] Roy Notowitz: Right. 

[00:27:46] Ben Steele: -- is a subtler question, and we've got to ask that question. You know, if somebody's choosing a competitor instead of us, we really have to be able to understand why. This is a marketplace that's been super challenged for the last couple of years. A lot of discounts, right? Everybody had more inventory than they wanted, so there's a lot of discounts. It's easy to say. They're just choosing the lower price. You might be right, but you should ask the next question too, to make sure that there isn't something else hiding under that price as an indicator. 

[00:28:17] Roy Notowitz: Wow. And to what extent have customer needs and behaviors changed over the past few years? I mean -- 

[00:28:24] Ben Steele: Yeah. 

[00:28:24] Roy Notowitz: -- it's been an evolution on that side of things as well.

[00:28:27] Ben Steele: I mean, radically, I would say, again, going back to the 2021, 2022, the customer need was literally everybody in the America wanted a bike. They wanted an outdoor pizza oven. Everybody wanted inventory. And I think the need was not, hey, can you curate the finest collection of X, Y, or Z? It was, can you get me X, Y, or Z?

[00:28:47] Ben Steele: And that's dangerous, right? Because we're a specialty retailer, so curation is our specialty. You've got to be careful about how much muscle you lose as you step into that new behavior. I think on the other side of that though, you know what has really I think evolved is that I think for a long time the outdoor industry made people feel when you're an expert, you're ready to come see us. 

[00:29:10] Ben Steele: And I think a lot of people sort of realized, hey, this thing, you talk about hiking, it sounds a lot like walking. I know how to walk. Do I necessarily need specialized gear to do that? And the answer is. Well, no you don't. But if the terrain gets a little steeper or a little bit scramblier, these boots could help you.

[00:29:26] Ben Steele: And actually, I see you're carrying that big giant jug of water, but this backpack could help you. And again, that's a different mindset, but you got a lot of new participants in a lot of spaces, and their assumption is not, hey, I need to go unlock your expertise in order to do an activity. So our mindset has to be, how does our expertise add value to something that you've stepped into?

[00:29:47] Ben Steele: Maybe the last thing I'd say on this front is again, there are millions of folks in America who have not felt welcome in the traditional definition of like outdoor recreation. We are, I think as an industry only beginning to understand where we've fallen short, but also what the needs and desires of a population, a customer, a community that you haven't served actually looks like. And your danger there is to assume that it looks just like what you've been doing before. So what you really have to do there is ask and start from a place of, I think both humility and curiosity. 

[00:30:23] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So what are some drivers or factors affecting the current market beyond some of those things you just mentioned?

[00:30:30] Ben Steele: Yeah, I mean, I think price and value can't be overstated. If you're a customer, the broader retail space, and I'll speak specifically of ours, but we're not the only one, has really trained you that you can get it on discount. I think we have to really move to a mindset of why would you want to pay full price?

[00:30:47] Ben Steele: Nobody wakes up and says I'd love to pay full price for that thing. But if you tell someone what's great about something, if there's true innovation driving newness, if there's true scarcity and desire and great design and smart product, people are willing to pay full price, right? And I think right now the marketplace is consistently saying, when you show me value, I'll listen to anything else that you want to say.

[00:31:09] Ben Steele: So tuning that mix between value, which matters and matters when it's ubiquitous in the marketplace, but also innovation and specialness and newness. You've got to get those things in balance and that's a real challenge right now. 

[00:31:23] Roy Notowitz: Totally. So what predictions do you have for the future of retail and what changes should we expect to see in the next five years with AI and all these other elements coming together?

[00:31:33] Ben Steele: Well, I mean, I will say the death of retail just keeps getting reported, and I think the future of retail is brighter than is sometimes stated. That said, I think it is easier than ever for a brand to disintermediate a retailer. Direct to consumer brands can do in a faster and more agile way a lot of what aggregate retailers can do.

[00:31:53] Ben Steele: So I think as a retailer, you have to be asking yourself, what additional value am I adding? Again, there are very smart people long time ago here at REI, who put a lot of the foundations for that answer in place. REI is more than retail. It is about experience, it's about expertise, it's about purpose and impact.

[00:32:10] Ben Steele: So there's a lot of reasons beyond just the stuff you buy here to be in a relationship with us. But we have to be innovating and evolving. And I think that as an industry, as a retailer, you have to look around and say, maybe there isn't a single competitor who looks like me, but if I look at all the different potential disintermediary interruptors between the consumer and me in total, can I compete with them? 

[00:32:32] Ben Steele: And if I can't, how do I need to think differently about my offering? So I think that's really, really, really important. I also think that's a lot of what the future looks like. I think it looks like a lot of direct relationships between brands and consumers. I tend to think this stuff is a little bit cyclical, right?

[00:32:48] Ben Steele: So it's the unbundling of cable. You know what I'd really love to have is 55 unique streaming services. Actually, wouldn't it be cool if there was like a single streaming service that put all these things together and it's like, yeah, you just reinvented cable. That'll happen a little bit, I think in retail as well.

[00:33:04] Ben Steele: At a certain point, I don't necessarily want to experiment with 55 Instagram brands. I do appreciate the validation of, especially the retailers saying these are good things that I stand behind, but that's not enough. We really have to try to compete and win with those brands individually. And then lean hard into what a retailer can bring to the table uniquely.

[00:33:23] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. And to keep searching for those new and innovative brands to add into your mix. 

[00:33:27] Ben Steele: And to invest in them. The thing, a big retailer, I mean, "big," REI is a big retailer in the outdoor space. In the grand scheme of retail, we're not that big. But in the outdoor space, we can invest in and incubate a small brand and put it in front of millions and millions and millions of consumers.

[00:33:43] Ben Steele: And in doing so, we can help build brands and help build even new categories. And we take that really seriously. That's a big responsibility. But it's something we can do at scale that an individual brand can't do on its own. We have to talk together about how we can help amplify our platform, their innovation, and in doing so, grow their opportunity.

[00:34:04] Ben Steele: And if we have shared values and purposes, all the better because a lot of folks in this space do again. But that's just a different mindset between let's go find something, it's got to be, let's go build something. 

[00:34:14] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. And you have that great incubator. 

[00:34:17] Ben Steele: Yeah. Path Ahead Ventures an incredible program. A great leader here named Susan Viscon leads it, and this was really focused on when we looked hard at this industry, less than 1% at the time of founders in the outdoor space were founders of color and the commitment to invest in helping to change that and support founders who were doing this good work and needed expertise or help platforming, but frankly had the awesome idea and innovation on their own. 

[00:34:44] Ben Steele: They didn't need us for that. But there were things that we could do to help support and serve them. Path Ahead Ventures is dedicated to that, and it's been awesome to see a positive impact in just a few years.

[00:34:54] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I've met a few of those entrepreneurs. 

[00:34:55] Ben Steele: Yeah. 

[00:34:55] Roy Notowitz: And they're inspiring for sure. 

[00:34:57] Ben Steele: I agree. And they've made our assortment better. I mean, there's incredible products that we wouldn't have on offer to our members and customers. 

[00:35:03] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. 

[00:35:04] Ben Steele: Uh, without having built those relationships. 

[00:35:06] Roy Notowitz: So where do you get your industry news or convene for professional development and networking in the customer consumer space?

[00:35:15] Ben Steele: This is it, this podcast. I'm hoping that this bears a lot of fruit. No, the first is I'm intensely curious about this industry and in my role I get to spend a lot of time with our partner brands and a lot of time understanding what they're seeing and what they're thinking. I would also say I'm pretty voraciously curious about the broader consumer though. So I really do try to break the context of outdoor and understand what are other people who are thinking about demand generation and consumer trend and brand differentiation thinking about? 

[00:35:44] Ben Steele: So I really like, I think anybody try to get out there and build your own network of folks across a variety of industries who help you see those problems from different perspectives. And maybe I wasn't expecting this to be like the English majors pro stumping podcast, but I also, I have the same habit I had when I was in school all those years ago. I'm a voracious consumer of content. I love to read. I love to listen to podcasts. I love to consume and understand perspective, and in doing so, I think you dimensionalize your worldview. 

[00:36:12] Roy Notowitz: Okay. So what are you most excited about as you think about the future and your career path? 

[00:36:21] Ben Steele: Well, it's a heavy question. This is like, now this is therapy. Honestly, this is maybe less about my title or even my set of roles and responsibilities. I think if you're curious about the customer, then everything's going to constantly change. We talked earlier about context changing. You can get really scientific about it and talk about marketplace dynamics and emerging technology trends, and you referenced AI.

[00:36:45] Ben Steele: I mean, let's think about what AI is going to enable and force and compel over the next five, little, 10, 15, 20 years. It's a constant new space and I think the context constantly changes. And in doing so, the challenges you face constantly change. And I feel fortunate in the space I sit that those problems are going to come right across the dashboard.

[00:37:05] Ben Steele: Those aren't abstract, oblique problems that maybe you should think about someday. Those are like the existential questions that'll be on top of this business a year or two from now. And I think it's the pace at which those things emerge, evolve, and then impact is faster than ever. I was at a gathering down in Dallas a few months ago, and they had an expert come in and talk to us about AI and it was a room full of leaders across a bunch of different businesses.

[00:37:30] Ben Steele: And I think the common theme for everybody in the room was, oh shit, I'm way behind on AI. And their answer was, no matter how much money you've been spending, or how much resource you've had dedicated this year, we're way, way, way behind on AI. 

[00:37:41] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. 

[00:37:41] Ben Steele: Which is interesting. I mean, one, you know, glass half full is everybody's behind. We're going to figure this out and the opportunity will come our way. But it is a good example of, you need to be asking like, how will this help us? And then what's the threat that this is going to create that we're not seeing yet as well? So, that variety is what I'm excited about. 

[00:38:00] Roy Notowitz: I think big things that sort of shift, it always takes a little bit of time for it to really have the flywheel effect because you know, I think it'll probably take five to seven years for us to really start to understand and get people sort of ramped up on all the different ways, or at least some of the different ways that AI can be utilized. 

[00:38:21] Ben Steele: I think you're right. I also think given the companies that are investing and frankly building the infrastructure that AI sits on top of those companies will be five to seven years ahead of all of us.

[00:38:31] Ben Steele: So I think the question is how are you thinking about those possibilities and those threats ahead of having all the answers. It's not lost on somebody seeing in retail that a big organization like Google is both your advertising partner and your AI service provider and your competitor on the retail space and like how those things all manifest out together is going to be interesting.

[00:38:53] Roy Notowitz: So as you think about your next steps in the future, what are you most excited about and, and what have you been reflecting on? 

[00:39:03] Ben Steele: I'm excited about possibility ahead, but I also am reflecting a lot on the gratitude I have for the last 10 years at REI. It's an incredible organization filled with amazing people, and I leave with nothing but love and gratitude and honestly, a ton of confidence in. the -- everything that makes the co-op special continues to be what makes the co-op unique. And I think that there are people there who I am proud to have partnered with and I'm proud and excited to see what they're going to do next. So, you know, I'm reflecting with a lot of gratitude and that I'm looking forward with a lot of excitement.

[00:39:39] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that REI does so well, and every time I go in there, I have such a great customer experience, like every single time. 

[00:39:49] Ben Steele: Same. And I, you know, I'm, I'm a little sad to give up my, my, my employee discount, but I'm pleased to help contribute to full price sales at REI. I'll be a loyal member and customer now as well. 

[00:40:01] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. 

[00:40:01] Ben Steele: You know, I think a lot of years on the consulting side made me pretty omnivorous and curious about like different industries, different sectors, and 10 years at the co-op I, to me, was the chance to really go deep inside of a business and understand, I wouldn't say every aspect of it 'cause there's a lot to learn in any organization over, over a full career.

[00:40:21] Ben Steele: But I think the chance to exercise both of those experiences again and to say. I'm going to explore some new sectors, some new industries, some new businesses, and then I'm going to get the chance to go on that same learning journey again, to understand who they are, what has made them who they are, where have they delighted their customers?

[00:40:40] Ben Steele: Where have they disappointed their customers? Where is their opportunity to learn and to evolve? Where's their opportunity and need to shore up what's made them strong? I love those questions. I love helping organizations and the folks in them find those answers and you know, I'm excited to explore all those questions in a new context.

[00:40:58] Roy Notowitz: That's fantastic. I think the REI experience was such a great opportunity to really connect with a, like you said, a passionate customer and --

[00:41:06] Ben Steele: Absolutely. 

[00:41:07] Roy Notowitz: So many of the brands that we work with that you're probably have worked with as well in the past have similar types of customers or overlapping values.

[00:41:16] Ben Steele: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think if that's true, you're the fortunate recipient of a lot of good hard work people have done for decades or years and years and years, decades, in the case of the co-op, so part of what excites me too is the chance to take that baton and to help write a new chapter in a new organization.

[00:41:33] Roy Notowitz: That's exciting. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. 

[00:41:39] Ben Steele: Yeah, my pleasure. 

[00:41:39] Roy Notowitz: This has been great getting to know you over the past year or so and I appreciate you taking the time. 

[00:41:44] Ben Steele: Well, I appreciate you taking the time and thanks for the chance to come and apparently stump for English majoring like that's, uh, real surprise for both of us.

[00:41:52] Roy Notowitz: Thanks again and I'll be in touch with you soon I'm sure. 

[00:41:56] Ben Steele: Yeah, take care. Be well and talk soon. Appreciate you.

[00:42:01] Ben Steele: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit HowIHire.com for more details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us, visit NotoGroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there, and find additional job search strategy resources, as well as content on hiring.

[00:42:26] Ben Steele: This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com.