In the latest episode of the Rising Stars Podcast, “Navigating Change in Retail Technology with Blake Gillum,” host Kate Orara gets into the challenges of the retail technology industry and how to take them on as a business owner. Blake Gillum, President of Data Enterprises, Inc. and on the RSPA Board, joins the conversation to share his insights and strategies for thriving amidst major changes.
With over 14 years of experience in retail and hospitality solutions, Blake provides a unique perspective on how businesses can stay relevant and competitive.
The episode explores various topics, including the challenges and opportunities presented by generational shifts, the impact of remote work on the industry, and the importance of staying ahead of technological advancements. Blake discusses how DCR POS, a company with a rich history since 1961, continues to uphold its founder’s vision of exceptional customer service while adapting to modern demands.
Embracing Change in Retail Technology
Blake emphasizes the significance of embracing new technologies and evolving business practices to meet the changing needs of customers. He shares valuable advice on navigating the complexities of the retail technology landscape and highlights the key actions leaders should take to ensure their companies remain relevant and successful.
For VARs, ISVs, and entrepreneurs in the retail technology space, this episode offers practical insights and inspiration. Discover how to leverage innovative solutions and leadership strategies to drive growth and success in your business.
Discover cutting-edge retail technology from Star Micronics >
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The Rising Stars Podcast
Immerse yourself in the world of point-of-sale (POS) with the Rising Stars Podcast by Star Micronics, hosted by industry pro, Kate Orara. Twice a month, we explore the fascinating journeys of innovators and businesses navigating the challenges of POS technology’s rapid pace.
In every episode, Kate Orara, Star Micronics’ Partner Development Manager, discusses emerging retail technology trends and strategies with global industry giants. She’s spent her entire career meeting all the right people, and now listeners everywhere can benefit from this vast network of channel gurus.
Always leading and always innovating, Star Micronics, a pioneer in POS and customer experience technology for over 60 years, welcomes you to join us in shaping a brighter future in the retail, hospitality, and cannabis industries.
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Episode Transcript
Kate Orara: [Music] Hey there retail tech enthusiasts, welcome to the Rising Stars podcast, your go-to source for all things retail technology and the ever-evolving world of point of sale. I’m your host, Kate Orara, Partner Development Manager at Star Micronics, and I am thrilled to be your guide on this exciting journey. Here at Rising Stars, we’re not just keeping up with the trends, we’re setting them. We dive deep into the tech landscape with global industry leaders, unpacking strategies and discussing the latest innovations that shape the future of retail. Whether you’re a tech aficionado, business owner, or just curious about the dynamic world of retail, this podcast is your backstage pass to insider knowledge. And hey, it’s not just about the tech, it’s about the community. Join me and the Star Micronics team as we lead and innovate, shaping a brighter future for the retail, hospitality, and cannabis industries, as well as beyond. Together, we rise. So hit that subscribe button, stay in the loop, and let’s make waves in the retail tech space. This is the Rising Stars podcast, where innovation meets inspiration. Let’s rise together.
Kate Orara: Well, welcome back everybody to another episode of the Rising Stars podcast. I am really excited to be joined today with Blake Gillum, who is the president of DCR POS. How are you doing today, Blake?
Blake Gillum: Hey, I’m doing great, Kate. Appreciate you having me on the podcast.
Kate Orara: Well, I’m glad that you’re here and I’m so excited that you’re able to do this. I know with all the craziness of summer and vacations – you went to Disney, probably in the heat, with your family not too long ago – and of course I’ve had some vacation, so we’ve had a couple of jugglings to get this organized. I’m glad we’re able to finally get it settled and this recording going.
Blake Gillum: Well, we’re glad to appreciate you bearing with me. Yeah, Disney – we are that weird bunch who, for some reason, love that place. You know, we love the Epcot Death March, we love walking around, and then giving the mouse all our money.
Kate Orara: Well, we’ll have to chat a little bit later. One of these days I want to get back to Disney. I haven’t been to Disney in a few years. It’s probably been a hot minute, so I’ll have to kind of pick your brain a little bit. It’s different going with teenagers, and that would be what my kids are, but I don’t think you’re ever too old for Disney.
Blake Gillum: Never too old, never too old.
Kate Orara: Well, I would love it if you could tell our audience a little bit about DCR, your role, and just overall your experience in the retail IT channel industry.
Blake Gillum: Of course. So as you said, I’m the president of DCR, and we are an ISV VAR hybrid who’s been serving the grocery, retail, restaurant, and fuel industries since 1961 – so a little over 63 years. My role here at DCR is, you know, I’m really responsible for implementing and developing our company strategy and pretty much ensuring the company’s long-term success. I’ve got about 15 years in the retail and hospitality solution provider space myself, unlike the company who’s been around obviously much more. But you know, I’m really passionate about delivering those first-class customer experiences, right? And that’s kind of what’s kept us so successful. You pair that with tailored solutions to fit our customers’ needs and people-oriented leadership, and I’m on board.
Kate Orara: Awesome. Well, I love that you’ve been in business for 15 years, but DCR has been around for 63 years. That is an amazing feat, especially considering the evolution of this industry, consolidations of businesses, and all the economic challenges that really have faced the US and world over. I mean, 63 years. So I don’t know if you can tell us, like, what’s DCR’s secret sauce, or how have they been able to weather those storms?
Blake Gillum: So like you said, it has been a long time, there’s been a lot of change, and you know, also a lot of storms, right? But much like we came on here to talk today about navigating change and how you keep your business relevant amidst a lot of change, right? And we’ve seen it. So you know, we kind of have an idea of how we approach change – embrace it. Change is good, change is not something to be afraid of. If I can compare it to, like, a tomato on the vine, right? You got to be willing to pull it off and go do something else. If you leave it just sitting, staying the same way, it’s going to rot and fall off, right? So we really choose to look at the landscape, see what’s changing, and look for opportunities to adapt. I think the worst thing a company can do is try to fight it. Change is inevitable, it’s going to happen. Fighting it, you’re just going to get worn out and be less successful, right? So we really keep it simple. Our recipe for success is really just three simple ingredients, right? We want to build great relationships, we need great people, and we need to deliver great products. Great relationships is really the core component of our culture. It’s around everything we do, right? We want to build really good long-term relationships with not only our clients but our vendors and team members here. So everything we do, we look at, hey, does this help build that type of relationship? And if it’s yes, then we do it. Part of having those great relationships, though, is, like I said before, the second ingredient is great people. And we have been blessed over these 63 years to have just, I mean, hands down, I’ve got to say, we have one of the most amazing teams I’ve ever seen anywhere. I mean, we have folks who have been on board still working today who’ve been with us for over 45 years, and I think that’s a testament to us doing something right. When we’re looking to build this amazing team, we really wanted to find the right people. I think that’s critical because to be successful, you got to have the right people that you can trust to move the needle forward. So when we look at what type of people we want to bring into the organization, we really look for three things. That’s someone who’s driven, they’re a team player, and they’ve got a good attitude, right? We need those three things. We can teach people how to sell point of sale, we can teach people how to program and configure systems, we can teach you the technical aspects of this, we can teach you how to repair printers, but I can’t teach you to have some drive. I can’t teach you to want to be a member of a team, and I can’t teach you to have a good attitude. So we really look for that, and we try to put people in leadership who kind of embrace that coaching and mentoring type of philosophy that kind of goes back to that people-oriented leadership that I’m a real big fan of. You should be there helping to grow your team. If you find yourself micromanaging and disciplining, one of two things has happened: you’ve either built the wrong team, or you’re not the right person to lead it. And that’s kind of how we’ve approached that here. Then, I guess, the third ingredient, of course, is great products, right? We try to pair, you know, we’re real big in providing first-class solutions and support to our customers. And to do that, we’ve got to get the best-in-class partners for us to pair with. So we search all over. We attend industry events, be it the Retail Now with the RSPA, we go to NGA, NRF, all looking for what’s new, what partners can we pair with to provide these great products to our customers. We also have an in-house development department where we develop our own components to build just that custom solution for each one of our clients that lets them compete and meet the market needs.
Kate Orara: That’s awesome. I think people underestimate, or managers, when you’re hiring, I think they underestimate the importance of the type of people that you hire and the culture that you create. We talk about the relationships with the partners, but internally, if the house, that’s the foundation of the home or foundation of the building, right? And if that foundation is not sound, the building falls.
Blake Gillum: You’re absolutely right. Absolutely right. I mean, that culture is so critical to moving the needle on your success of your company, right? We try to look at, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or read the book by Jim Collins, “Turning the Flywheel,” but we look at the flywheel effect. What that is, you know, what are the key components that drive your business? One of those key components is our people and building the right team. Without that, again, you’re not going to be successful. In today’s job market, you’re competing with people who are doing crazy things to bring talent in. People are staying, you know, to find somebody for 40 years now is almost unheard of. Everybody’s worried, well, how do you keep them? How do you keep somebody for two years? Without that culture being strong, you’re not going to do it. You’re going to have a churn rate that’s going to be unsustainable.
Kate Orara: This is a good segue into one of the next questions I have. You have been in business, you said, for 63 years. You have employees with a tenure of over 40 years, and then there’s yourself with 15 years. You probably have some newbies in there that are still trying to figure out what the heck DCR does. What are some of the generational challenges that you deal with, not only externally with customers but even internally in your company’s four walls?
Blake Gillum: So, you know, I think the external generational challenges, and we can talk about that a little later, you know, there’s customer preferences are changing rapidly, and there’s several reasons for that. But with building the right culture and the right team in our four walls, I think this is really exciting times. For the first time to my knowledge, at least in DCR’s history, maybe the workplace as a whole, we actually have five generations in the workforce at one time. That’s incredible. You’ve got traditionalists, you’ve got the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, all coming into the same place, trying to move in the same direction. Even here, we’ve got one of our team members who’s a traditionalist, 78 years old. I want to note they’re here because they want to continue to be here. They choose to continue coming in. You look at that, and you’re like, wow, how many different experiences and perspectives and ideas can you get out of a team like that, right? We don’t look at it as, you know, I hear a lot of people, “Oh, this generation does it this way, and they don’t care about this,” and “That generation is too rigid, and they believe in this old way.” We try not to fall into that trap because it’s really easy to do. Instead, we try to really embrace the uniqueness of each generation and their views. Say, okay, you all have very, there’s not a wrong way, right? Your views and perspective were shaped by the history you’ve had, and the future going forward is to make a whole new set of perspectives and ideas that none of us are ready for. What we try to do is have a culture where we really encourage everyone to share those ideas. We don’t want a bunch of yes-people who will just agree and then go off and complain to their co-workers that we didn’t do something this way or that. As long as those ideas are centered around what we try to do best, which is providing those first-class solutions and support to our customers, let them compete, then no idea is off the table. Throw it out there. We use that to hopefully motivate this very diverse workforce to not only participate and give the ideas but also stay. We’re big on listening. We’ll take the ideas. We’re okay with being wrong. We’ve done more things wrong than we’ve done right in 63 years. We want to listen, put these things into place, and review. If some things didn’t work out the way we wanted, that idea didn’t work, it bothered this group over here, then we listen, get the feedback, implement some changes, and do it again. We just keep going through that cycle. I think it has been fairly successful for us. It’s allowed us to have very diverse teams that seem to lean and learn on each other more than compete and try to one-up each other.
Kate Orara: I think the comment you made there, we have five generations, this is the most diverse workforce it’s ever been. To be close-minded at all, whether you’re a traditionalist or Gen Z, to kind of poo-poo on somebody else’s, you know, “Well, you’re just old, you don’t ever change,” or “You’re just young, you’ve never had the experience,” being open-minded because everybody brings to the table a new perspective and a different idea. I think you mentioned it earlier, it’s being adaptable. The thing I hate hearing the most is, “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it.”
Blake Gillum: Yes, it’s one of the worst things. I think you hear that from maybe older generations, but then the younger generations saying, “Well, they’re just too old, and they don’t even really want to understand the new technology.” It’s just like, no, it has nothing to do with that. A little bit more open-mindedness and collaboration can go a long way.
Kate Orara: You’re 100% right. I feel like those words, “It’s how we’ve always done it,” are almost the nail in the coffin for many businesses. It’s easy to get in that rut. We’ve jostled ourselves out of that rut once or twice. I think, like you said, the thing is to be aware of it, don’t get trapped in it, and embrace what you’ve got. We’ve got a great team. Sometimes Gen Z are the easy targets now, but Alpha’s right behind them, and they’re going to feel the same way we’ve all felt. One day they’ll be running all of these companies and businesses.
Kate Orara: I’m kind of curious. I don’t know what your policy is as far as working remote, but I know that’s been something that’s a challenge for a lot of employers these days. There are a lot of companies now that are almost 100% remote. Then there’s some that are really trying to push – I know we have an initiative that’s pushing employees to go back into the office, not every day, but at least like three days a week. I’m remote no matter what because I’m not based in New Jersey, and I’m not leaving South Carolina. I love it here. How has remote working affected your business and maybe even your customers?
Blake Gillum: I’ve got a little story here. We were, I guess, lucky or unlucky enough, depending on how you want to look at it, to be thrust into this remote workplace before everyone else because of a tornado. I don’t know if you remember a few years ago in 2020, tornadoes came through Nashville. We are headquartered here in Nashville. Both of our buildings were directly in the path of these tornadoes. I get a call at 12:30 in the morning that an alarm is going off because all of our door sensors have got the pressure swelling those things out. Long story short, we have this tornado hit, and we’ve got a server, I guess what would you call a bank of servers here where we run all our tools that we’ve built to remotely support our customers from the office. We had all 45 team members reporting into the office every single day. When we got here, all power was off. We have a backup generator, and one line, the little fiber optic line to our servers, was the only thing left coming from that pole over to our building. By 8:00 AM the next day, we have a plumber out who is going to turn the gas back on, fingers crossed that nothing is damaged in this gas line so our generator can crank up and we get some stuff going again. They get out here, we crank this thing up, and sure enough, that one little line, when we powered those servers back, got our internet back. This thing all the way back to where it goes was apparently the only thing left undamaged. So we sent everybody remote. We had a great team before this who, you know, we’ve had some catastrophic and critical response plans in place of how do we deal with the unknown. There were some tools that had already been vetted to allow us to go remote. So all of a sudden, literally from, I think it may have been a Tuesday to Wednesday, we’re 100% remote, and we had to figure out how to adapt to that while rebuilding the building. We get all that in place, and it wasn’t long after, we took a little break – it was a hectic time – went down and spent a little time with the family, a couple of days to unwind, and saw the news break about COVID. I remember calling my predecessor and saying, “Hey, this looks like it’s going to be a real problem, isn’t it? This is going to last a while.” He goes, “Yeah, that’s kind of the sense I’m getting.” We were able to go remote quicker than everybody else, so when COVID came, we just kind of, we were already doing it, so there wasn’t a whole lot of stress there. I’ll say, I don’t know about you, but you do work remotely, but I’m naturally wired to be in the office. I like to be around the people. I feel the energy. If I want to go talk to somebody, I want to just walk over there and go, “Let’s knock it out. Let’s have the conversation and go on.” I think it’s easier to build a strong culture with everyone in together.
Kate Orara: Absolutely.
Blake Gillum: I’d be lying if I wasn’t secretly hoping there was a way to bring everyone back to the office because I’m like, I know the bottom line’s going to suffer, the customers, we’re going to not respond the same in the same length of time, and there’s got to be a reason. We’re going to pull everyone back in, and I was astonished to learn that, no, our team really thrived remotely. There was no drop in the bottom line, but the customer experience was actually, if anything, better because now we took a whole group of our technical team, and they’re in their house, they’re feeling good, they’re enjoying themselves, they’re even happier when they’re talking to the customers. For us, it’s really been good. To this day, we’ve got all the offices rebuilt, but there’s maybe only our admin and our executive team. We like to keep them in the office here because for our field service and break-fix, they can’t work remote. As long as we have one person who can’t, we want to be in. It’s about getting the right tools and not letting it get out of control. If you put the right tools in place, we feel like remote work is completely possible.
Kate Orara: I’ve always told people, like, I’ve been working remote since before it was cool, since 2015. I love being – whenever I do go to visit the office in Jersey or even in Miami, I love seeing everybody because I’m the same way, I’m very obviously a people person. But I also do like the flexibility of working remote, not having to deal with traffic in the morning. There’s definitely lots of perks there. But I will say there are times that I think it depends on the scenario. There are times that when you’re in the office, you can be more productive, but then there are times too when you’re more productive remote. Sometimes it’s the only way for you to be able to, like, if I really need to get something done, I’m more likely to sit down and focus if I’m at my remote office. Whereas if I’m at the office, people come up, Blake might be coming up to my desk saying, “Hey, how’s it going? What did you do this weekend?” Like, “Look, it’s good to see you, but I’ve really got to work.”
Blake Gillum: Exactly. Yes, you’re right. We do kind of look at that, right? Once everything settled down, we gave people the option. We said, “Hey, if you prefer remote, you can continue to work that way. If you’re the type – there are some who, whether they admit it or not, do much better in the office – we said, “Hey, when we’re rebuilding, we’re going to give you an office space if that’s what you’d like.” Some people have that, other people don’t. I will say we kind of left a lot of how each one of our revenue centers and departments handled remote was really left up to the management of that department because they do have their own little subcultures. We have some that are very chat-based, and they meet when needed. On the flip side, we have one team, our grocery team, who set up where they are connected via video all day, almost like they were in the same room like they used to. It’s not because there’s – it doesn’t even matter if there’s a member of management in there – they just enjoy that. I can hear what someone offers, some opinions if I hear you on the phone talking about this, they work really well. I think as long as it’s presented in a way where it’s not invasive, a tool to monitor you, we know if you’re doing your job. It’s more of a tool to collaborate and keep that culture. It’s been pretty awesome to watch everyone handle this remoteness in their own way. As a company, it’s worked for us. As much as I was a naysayer…
Kate Orara: You’re eating crow now.
Blake Gillum: I am. I’ve had my fair share of crow at this point.
Kate Orara: Well, I’m going to kind of go into a different question because I want to go back to the history of your company. I went onto your website and noticed that DCR puts a lot of emphasis on its founder, Charlie Blackwell, I believe, the vision of first-rate customer service and the foundation. Some of the things that you may have mentioned earlier and the evolution of your business, what has DCR done to stay ahead to fulfill the demands of its partners with all these changes?
Blake Gillum: I think what we have to do is, first of all, figure out what you do really well, right? What we do well, what we consider we do well and focus on, is providing those first-class solutions and support that allow our customers to compete and win in their market. So, when we’re looking at, okay, so much has changed, what do we do to stay true to our core values? Those haven’t changed, which is the great relationships, people, and putting out great solutions. We’ve tried to create a system where the product is almost interchangeable. If you’ve got those relationships, if you have the right people, we can move products in and out. Yes, there’s a huge cost to bringing on new products or retiring a product, but if you can’t change the way you deliver solutions, whether that’s a different solution or whether that’s a subscription and recurring revenue is the model now, right? You don’t do upfront charges anymore. If you can’t change the way you do business on that level, I feel like you’re going to get stuck, and it’s going to be hard to evolve. What has made us very successful in this evolution and the change was sticking to the core thing of just being who we are, which is trying to build good relationships and take care of our team. The rest kind of takes care of itself. The golden rule hasn’t changed. Just treat people the way you want to be treated. We operate in the Southeast, and that’s done mighty fine for us.
Kate Orara: You’ve been in the industry for 15 years or the channel for 15 years. What are some of the biggest changes that you have seen in retail technology?
Blake Gillum: I will tell you what, it’s been the past five years. I think there’s been plenty of change over 15, but the last five, I think everyone could agree, has been changing more rapidly than I think we’ve ever seen before. If you look at, there’s consolidation in our industry like never before. There’s outside investors coming in and purchasing companies, and this never happened before. Whether it’s in the channel, whether in distribution and manufacturers, whether it’s even the clients that we serve, we’re watching regional chains being gobbled up by other regional chains or mom-and-pops selling their stores to some of these chain environments. There’s a huge consolidation that’s happening right now, and we’re trying to figure out how best to navigate that. There’s huge market disruption happening out there from all these outside forces. I hate to bring up the pandemic because everybody’s so sick of talking about it, but I feel like we’re still seeing some of the things and the effects of that have put us in the position that we’re all in now. Some of the labor market and inflation is rampant. Some of the solutions we all put out during these times to help our clients solve some of their problems in the labor market and being able to still serve their customers in the way they want to be served has opened up new opportunity. We’ve seen this migration to the cloud. Changing from a CAPEX model selling product to now it’s all, are you getting it back via payments? Are you getting it back via a subscription? You’re lowering that upfront cost. All of that to be said is when you’re migrating all these things to the cloud, you’ve got all this new technology that’s being used to address not being able to hire people with self-service. You’re setting the stage for all this new tech to come in and address the new challenges that are coming, which really, I see AI coming. I think it’s something everybody should be paying attention to, and I don’t mean just traditional business logic that now we’ve rebranded to AI. I really think all this information going up into the cloud has really set the stage to do some amazing things from a technology standpoint when it comes to AI, machine vision, and machine learning. But also, if you’re looking at what’s the biggest change I think over the past five years too, it’s just the change of the customers that we serve. They’re major drivers in what solutions we bring to the table. A recent study by Progressive Grocer, I think they just came out maybe a month ago, said that 77% of customers in a grocery store now strongly agree that they’re open to trying new technology. 61% strongly agree that they consider themselves tech-savvy, and 54% agree that tech has made their shopping easier. That’s huge. When you have an end-user that wants to do more in their retail store than just go in and grab something off the shelf and go check out in a traditional lane or go into a restaurant and order food and they write it down, it’s really just amazing. The biggest changes that I’ve seen in the past five years are just the pace and all the opportunity that this brings if you’re willing to look at it.
Kate Orara: What are some of the most unique and new technologies that you’ve seen in the most recent years, and where do you see it going? You talk about this past five years. How about the next five years? What do you envision?
Blake Gillum: Where I see some of this going, I see a lot of AI, machine vision, and learning. The reason being is I think we’re going to have, there was a huge demand from the shopper that they wanted self-service options, they want better ways of checking out, right? They want a more frictionless experience, whether they’re in-store, whether they’re ordering from home, whether they’re in the restaurant, they don’t want to wait to pay their bill. They want to be able to take care of this when they want to. But they still want that traditional experience there as well. What I think we saw was people investing in these technologies, right? Investing in self-service, investing in all of these solutions to meet those needs. What happened was those created more opportunities because now all of a sudden, there may be some shrink opportunities that weren’t there before, there were some losses that weren’t there before. I think you see some stores and retailers are deciding, “Oh, well, we’ll just pull these systems out.” I don’t think that’s the right move because your shopper still demands that way of checking out. What I think is going to happen is we’re going to see people invest more heavily in how do I keep providing my customers the experience they want, the self-service they want, the loyalty they want, online shopping, electronic shelf labels, delivery, all of that. But how do I use AI and machine vision to help keep me profitable and do that as efficiently as possible? You’re going to have, let’s say, self-checkout, for example. It’s hard to find the perfect person to be that shopper attendant who’s going to really engage with those customers. You’ve got two types of losses there. One type is someone who came in with the intent to steal from you, and they will. They’re going to try to figure out the best way. You’ve got the other person who, you know, you’ve got these other losses that never intended to happen. They didn’t come in with the intention to steal. They rang up an item, it didn’t ring up correctly, and the shop attendant comes over. All they’ve been told is to get you through the line as soon as possible. They just clear the exception, the item goes into the bag, and it was never actually put on the receipt. I think what we’re going to see is a lot of loss prevention tools that utilize AI to help people combat that so they can continue to allow shoppers to shop the way they want to. It’ll extend through the store all the way to inventory management and shelf replenishment. I just think AI is here to stay. You better embrace it.
Kate Orara: I was kind of hesitant about AI, but then especially like ChatGPT, once I started kind of getting into using it and getting more engaged with it and just understanding how I can use it as a tool, holy crap. It really does boost the productivity. I can get a lot more accomplished in a much shorter time frame. Especially if you hit writer’s block or something like that, it gets the ideas flowing. Do you use ChatGPT often, or how do you utilize it?
Blake Gillum: I use it a lot, actually. It helps me with, again, if I’m hitting writer’s block, like if I’m trying to post something on LinkedIn or I am putting together a script, solo script for the Rising Stars podcast, I use it to kind of help me with formulating what the script is going to be. Obviously, I throw in my flair and stuff like that, but it just gives me a framework for it. Because otherwise, if I would do it from scratch – I’m not saying that’s not the right way to do it – it takes hours. It takes hours. I don’t have to do the research now. You do have to follow up, you have to check if it’s accurate, but overall, it gives you a good framework. I might do a little teaser for you all listeners, I’m probably going to do a little podcast of some other research that I read about things not to do on ChatGPT. Do not share proprietary company information, your social security number, or anything that you don’t want to be shared. Hackers are everywhere, and that is a whole new hacking system. You have phishing emails, you have all that stuff, and now unfortunately, that’s the downside. ChatGPT and AI have opened up the door for other avenues of hackers, so you have to be very careful.
Blake Gillum: Absolutely. When you use ChatGPT, for someone like me who has not dabbled in that particular world of AI, how do you get started? I mean, where do you go? Do you just go to your IT team?
Kate Orara: I would seriously talk to someone in IT. Our IT team, they’re like, “Hey, they gave us ChatGPT, they gave us a link.” I have it saved in my favorites, and I go there. It saves all my previous conversations, so I can go back and look at them. Again, you kind of have to understand that it’s a machine, it has no empathy, it gets clouded by some of the information it’s fed. You do have to check, if it gives a statistic, you might want to double-check that statistic because you’re going to look kind of silly when someone sends you a DM like, “That’s not right.” You have to make sure that you do the appropriate research. I would honestly, I’m telling you, your IT team is probably willing to geek out on you, and they will sing its praises. Like I said, I was very hesitant, but I think there was a joke, I got upset, something upset me, and I was talking with my co-workers. I put in ChatGPT, “Send an email to a customer in a professional way that basically tells them that they’re wrong.” I’m going to just make it PG right in here. It was so like, I fed it the information, and it came back with a response. You could say, “I want to tell a customer that he’s a butthead, but I can’t say he’s a butthead. How can I say it in a professional manner?” ChatGPT will tell you what to do. You can have some fun with it, for sure.
Blake Gillum: That does sound like fun. Yes, I can think of a few cases right now that I could use that kind of guidance on.
Kate Orara: You can do it for employees too. If you’re like, “Okay, Jane Doe is really not acting professional. How can I put this in a way that is HR-friendly?” You can do that kind of stuff. There are a lot of fun things. Again, you don’t want to send confidential information or anything like that, but you really can do just about anything. If you hit a writer’s block, like, “I don’t know how to type this email or how to introduce this new product or press release,” you can go to ChatGPT and say, “I have this new solution, and it does X, Y, and Z, and I need three sentences to just grab my audience for social media or whatever.” It’ll give it to you. You can look at it and say, “I don’t like this, but if I did this and this, I might like it.” You pack mail it, and then you’re like, “Oh, I love that.” It helps with creative juices. I don’t 100% rely on it, but I use it as a tool, for sure.
Blake Gillum: That’s good to know. I’ll admit I’ve been a little hesitant to use it in my own personal writings, but like you said, it would be a great tool for efficiency. As long as, like you said, I like the point you made of making sure the human is still monitoring what the AI is putting out. Don’t just blindly trust that whatever this thing has decided. Like you said, the statistic it’s thrown out there is actually correct and not just something that it’s decided to come up with.
Kate Orara: Yes, you can’t break it, so you might as well just give it a whirl. You can probably just Google ChatGPT, and it will give you a link. Just have fun with it. There’s nothing that you can break. You just have to be sensitive as far as what you put on there.
Blake Gillum: I’ve heard too, because you said it learns everything that you said, does it write more like you as you interact with it more?
Kate Orara: I have not dabbled down that path. A lot of times what I will do is say, “This is what I’m looking for, this is kind of the content that I’m trying to achieve.” Whatever it spits out, I look through it, read through it, and then I’ll put it in a Word document, like my script or whatever. Then I’ll just make my edits and put the Kate flair, if you will, to it. I’ll change things up, but I don’t have a conversation, conversation with it. It probably thinks I’m weird. “How do I tell a customer he’s a butthead without saying he’s a butthead?” I haven’t gone too back and forth with it, but who knows, maybe I will try to do that. It’s been very useful for me, for sure.
Blake Gillum: Well, I’ll have to give it a try. I know many of our team members have used it, from not only a marketing but communication standpoint. I’ve been the holdout because I didn’t want to lose that personal touch, but it sounds like you can.
Kate Orara: You can totally keep your personal touch. Talk to the people that have used it, they’ll tell you. Just play with it, you can’t break it. If anything, you’ll go down a rabbit hole for three hours, but it will be awesome.
Blake Gillum: Y’all will know because everyone will start getting emails from me. They’ll be like, “Wow, Blake, you were really productive today. Look at that, 400 emails in one day.”
Kate Orara: Well, I would love to hear maybe some recommendations because you’ve been around for so long and in leadership, especially as president. Maybe some key actions leaders of retail technology businesses should take to help them evolve with the times, not only to keep revenue strong but just grow as a business overall.
Blake Gillum: One of the key things to growth is quick growth is easy, right? I think everyone’s looking for that long-term sustainable growth. I’m going to go back to talking about the flywheel effect and that book by Jim Collins. If everyone hasn’t gone through that exercise, I would highly encourage everyone to do it. Part of the way this came to be was on a project that Jim Collins was working on with the executive team over at Amazon. As simple as it is, there’s some proven results that everyone’s seen out of this. I think for long-term sustainable growth, you have to stay focused on what it is you do best, and you have to keep doing it over and over. That doesn’t mean you have to take a stick of dynamite and throw it in the way you do business every single time change comes. You have to be open to change and be able to adapt to it, but keep the core thing that makes your business unique and what you’re good at. If that’s building relationships, the right team, and picking out good products, then it doesn’t matter what change is coming down the pipe. You can adapt and shift your portfolio to be able to provide value regardless of what our clients or their clients are asking for. But if you don’t focus on what you do well and continue doing that over and over, you’re going to be so reactive to change that you’re going to find yourself trying to go in a thousand different directions. You could drift, it’s going to be very difficult. Exceptional companies don’t become that way because of one single action or one lucky break or innovation that sets them off. Windows was probably a good one. That was one innovation that probably made Bill a lot of money. But they typically become great by a series of small wins and many years of hard work. It’s many wins. Each time you perform those things that drive your business, the core pieces, think of it like a wheel. It gets easier each time you complete that circle. Each time, because you get a little better each time, you’re like, “Oh, I hired on this person, and I didn’t get the right result. I’m going to hire this way next time.” That part of the wheel gets a little easier. You’re like, “I brought this product on, and it didn’t quite do this, or I would have onboarded it this way.” You just keep improving each time, and eventually, that momentum builds up to such a sustained speed that you get periods of rapid growth that just are happening because you’ve now focused so laser-like on what you do well, and the rest kind of falls into place. My recommendation is that if you don’t already have these drivers, what drives your business and what ultimate purpose is that one thing you’re really good at, clearly defined and know what it is, then you should take the time to do it. I know it sounds silly because it’s, “Oh, we’re busy,” but I think it’s really worth it to help build the culture you want and really keep your business aligned in the direction it needs to for long-term sustained growth.
Kate Orara: Absolutely. Well, I do appreciate your time today, Blake. I know you are, I want to make sure I plug this in as well. We’ve got Retail Now coming up, RSPA Retail Now at the end of this month. We’re recording on July 9th, and the show starts July 28th. I think the opening reception is on the 29th, and you will be there, right?
Blake Gillum: I will be there.
Kate Orara: And you’re on the current board of directors, correct, for RSPA?
Blake Gillum: I am. I’ll be running for reelection this year. A little shameless plug if you’ll allow me.
Kate Orara: Yes, and I want to make sure to put that on there. I was like, you’re running, so you’re trying to get your reelection.
Blake Gillum: I’m running for my third time, so I’m hoping that third time’s the charm.
Kate Orara: Absolutely. Well, I think you’d be a great addition to the board. I tell you, we look at the candidate list this year for who’s rerunning the board and who’s coming on to run. Personally, I feel like the RSPA is going to win regardless of who’s elected. It’s just amazing to see so many capable, talented people interested in joining the association. I think that’s just phenomenal. I’m really looking forward to this year’s Retail Now. I think the board is going to be extremely strong with the group of candidates we have running, of course, yourself included there. I encourage everybody, if you haven’t already signed up for Retail Now, please do so. I think it’s going to be a great experience. The education is top-notch, and the networking is like no other.
Kate Orara: If you’re listening to this and you want to go to Retail Now or are interested in joining the RSPA, feel free to reach out to either myself or Blake. I will put your contact information, social profile, and everything from LinkedIn in the show notes of this podcast so people can go back and reach out to you if they have any questions, or they can reach out to me.
Blake Gillum: Either one, yes.
Kate Orara: Well, thank you so much for your time today, Blake. I think I learned a lot about how you guys are handling things. It sounds like you’re doing all the right things. 63 years to be in business at this time when there’s so much consolidation in the dealer market, that really goes to show about what you do as a company, as a culture, and really just keeping your employees. It’s all about the people. The technology is there, yes, but the people stay because they’re happy.
Blake Gillum: That’s it. I sure appreciate you giving me the opportunity to join you on the podcast.
Kate Orara: Thank you, of course. And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Rising Stars podcast. A huge thanks to our incredible listeners for tuning in and to our phenomenal guests for sharing their insights. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, leave us a review, and let us know what you want to hear more about. Give us your feedback because it fuels our journey to bring you the best in retail technology. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. As we sign off, remember, the future of retail technology is in our hands, and together we’re shaping it. Keep innovating, rising, and until next time, this is Kate Orara signing off. Together we rise. [Music]
