In this episode of Retaili$tic, Deborah Weinswig interviews Krystina Gustafson, exploring her journey from journalism to event management, the evolution of events post-pandemic, and the changing landscape of in-person gatherings. They discuss the impact of AI on retail and events, the importance of community, and the resilience required to navigate challenges. Krystina shares insights on leveraging AI for personal and professional growth, the future of retail, and the significance of building authentic connections in business.
The video version of this podcast can be seen here.
Takeaways
Krystina transitioned from journalism to event management, finding commonalities in storytelling and connecting people.
The pandemic forced events to become more technology-driven and data-focused, enhancing attendee experiences.
In-person events are evolving, with a focus on meaningful interactions rather than just networking.
AI is rapidly changing the retail landscape, and many professionals are still figuring out how to adapt.
Building community is essential for success in retail, fostering authentic connections among individuals.
Resilience is key in overcoming professional challenges, as demonstrated by Krystina's experience with Tribe.
AI can be used in personal and professional contexts, helping individuals streamline tasks and enhance productivity.
The future of retail will involve integrating AI into various business models and strategies.
Authenticity in conversations helps build lasting relationships in business.
The pace of innovation requires continuous adaptation and learning in the retail industry.
Chapters
00:00 From Journalism to Event Management
04:04 The Evolution of Events Post-Pandemic
06:32 The Changing Landscape of In-Person Events
09:17 Navigating AI in Retail and Events
11:51 The Importance of Community in AI Adoption
14:32 Leveraging AI for Personal and Professional Growth
17:01 Real-World Applications of AI in Retail
27:24 The Importance of Case Studies in Tech
28:46 Navigating Challenges and Community Support
32:08 Resilience and Personal Growth
33:28 AI's Impact on Information Overload
35:50 Democratization of Business Opportunities
40:20 The Future of Retail and AI Integration
45:13 Lightning Round Insights
Deborah Weinswig (00:02.758)
Christina, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to hear about your career, how you started as a journalist, right? We all knew you from your CNBC days into really having a pivotal role in so many of the events that we attend and the content that really drives commerce. So welcome and we're excited to get started.
Krystina Gustafson (00:22.114)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Always an honor.
Deborah Weinswig (00:24.326)
Thank you. And so, can you talk about kind of when you went to college, what did you think you wanted to do, and what drove that initially? We're going all the way back.
Krystina Gustafson (00:37.62)
yeah, that's such a funny question. I actually, my first major in college was broadcast journalism. And so that was kind of where I saw myself going and.
It was really interesting because as I started taking the classes and learning about, you know, how production worked and, know, your first job is going to be in this small, teeny tiny town and you're going to be, you know, reporting on all these kind of local news stories and like the death and the drama. And I was just like, this is not, this is not for me. This is not my personality. And so I quickly shifted over into what at the time was print, I guess now is kind of, you know, online journalism. But the funny thing is my two job offers out of college were CNBC and
ESPN and so I always kind of think two very different roads but for anyone who knows me they're probably surprised I didn't select ESPN but I think CNBC was the good choice because it brought me here.
Deborah Weinswig (01:30.422)
Absolutely. And can you talk about from kind of your early days at CNBC, what did you learn? How did it change how you even think about your own time? Because so much around, know, certainly the reporting they do is timing. And what did that kind of set you up in terms of how you thought about your time and others?
Krystina Gustafson (01:52.59)
That's a really good question. It's funny, I think especially when I made the jump from journalism over to events, people at first were kind of like, wow, that feels like a really strange career pivot. But actually to your question, when you think about it, there's a lot of commonalities between reporting and programming events. think to your point, yes, you need to make sure everything is timely. You need to be really adaptive to things that are happening in the environment so that you can make sure you're telling the best story. You also have to be incredibly scrappy and really think creatively.
about different routes to meeting new people, to learning new things. You can't be ashamed about being inquisitive, right? You have to ask questions constantly, constantly expand your network. And I think just, yeah, scrappiness is probably the term I would use that has the most parallel across both.
Deborah Weinswig (02:42.15)
And as you think about kind of moving into the events world, what do you think were some of the biggest differences from, let's say, of broadcast TV?
Krystina Gustafson (02:55.268)
my gosh. Well, I will say I am not a production person. I am not a logistics person. So I think anyone that's been to, you know, a previous shop talk grocery shop event and seen what the team pulls off, I can take absolutely zero credit for any of that. I think probably my sweet spots are more the storytelling and bringing together the right people. I really have a lot of passion when it pertains to connecting individuals, helping them with their careers, you making those social connections or business connections that will really help people accelerate. But I think probably the
the biggest difference was having to think a little bit more operationally about what things are going to look like in real life as people are participating in the attendee experience.
Deborah Weinswig (03:35.334)
And maybe talk about kind of your earlier days in events and with the pandemic when so many of us, like my whole thing was like, I just wish I had taken more photos, right? Because I want to go back and like remember who did I have that, you know, kind of great conversation with as opposed to like, was like, I knew I was going to see them next year and pick up the conversation. What were some of the early learnings? And let's take that because I.
there's another kind of part of that conversation I'd love to have.
Krystina Gustafson (04:06.144)
I love it. Well, I hope I give you a good answer then. think, you know, looking back to the early days, you know, pre-COVID when it pertained to events, I think there was somewhat of a formula. You know, I think at the end of the day, Shop Talk was very disruptive coming to market and really kind of what it was hoping to accomplish in terms of creating an all new digital community. You know, content was was core to that. But I think, you know, was kind of you have an expo hall, you have content, you have your speakers, you have your attendees and, you know, kind of the social events and it's done in dust.
I think what's been really nice about working with the founders, for the past pretty much decade over my career is just they always kind of see what's needed, I think, before the market sees it. And so I think especially when COVID happened, the realization that events needed to be more powered by technology, more data-driven, giving attendees an opportunity to really kind of customize their experience and make the most out of what they want to get from attending an event, in my mind was probably one of those pivotal moments.
But think even now as we kind of launch into this new AI world, we're going to see a whole new world of disruption, not just kind of to the retail world, but also to the event space.
Deborah Weinswig (05:16.218)
It's interesting. I've heard from so many how much more important the in-person events are because, right? Yeah.
The numbers vary widely, there's still a very large portion of the US population who at least is spending some time working from home. And so with that as a backdrop, do you think, I mean, we've heard a lot of companies saying that the only time they see their whole teams are at events. So to me, that would say that events have a different kind of place in the landscape. How do you look at it?
Krystina Gustafson (05:48.619)
agree with everything that you're saying, but I would also say the value of events is changing very much. So when we were really kind of building and scaling Shop Talk, I think it's what the market needed at the time, right? It was kind of a place where everyone could come and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, get their 17 things off their to-do list, get all those meetings in with people, listen to the content, take some meetings with media while they're there, meet with sell-side analysts. And was kind of like, how much can you get done in that three to four day period?
Deborah Weinswig (06:16.422)
Bye.
Krystina Gustafson (06:18.512)
there's always going to be a place for that. But I think what we have found is people are just tired and they're run ragged. And so I think what they're looking for, oftentimes when they are going to events and they are meeting with their team, you know, maybe for the one time a quarter or whatever it might be, they want those interactions to be much more impactful. And so I think for us, it's what does that mean today? It's kind of taking a step back, making sure you're delivering kind of higher value opportunities for people to connect, collaborate. And oftentimes that means kind of mixing up formats.
Deborah Weinswig (06:44.87)
Yeah.
Krystina Gustafson (06:48.593)
to really kind of deliver that. So think it always kind of goes back to thinking about how are people feeling, what do people need, and how do we kind of create a product that meets them, you know, where they are today and, for the next however many years.
Deborah Weinswig (06:59.622)
Yeah, I think you bring up a really important point too, which is they want to have the content, but then they also want to have the opportunity to talk to others about, I heard this. Is this something that matters to you? Am I like, you know, kind of out here by myself? Like that kind of like, did I miss something? Did I miss the memo or whatever? But that I think we're seeing more and more. And then, okay, is this something that matters to you? And then what are you doing to action it? Because I think also too, there's right, like what's happening kind of in
Krystina Gustafson (07:09.198)
you
Deborah Weinswig (07:29.776)
in the media and there's what's happening in reality and right it's also different kind of front of house and back of house and so I think that also events where you have kind of a cross section of leaders because even if their title is X they may do Y that I think can also be some of the confusion that's out there in the marketplace right now.
Krystina Gustafson (07:49.411)
I think you're right on so many levels and it's really funny. Part of the reason that we're taking the approach to content that we are at retail club and the AI deep dive retreat specifically is because I can't tell you, Debra, every single call I get on with someone, even if I would consider them to be very advanced as it pertains to AI, they're like, yeah, we're still figuring it out. We don't know what we're doing. So I think the more that people can sort of feel like, hey, I'm not super far behind and kind of get a little bit of that relief. I think there will also be some panic though, because I think people will walk out of these
conversation really realizing that there are things that they can action today and really kind of having a fire lit under them to go accomplish those. But I think it is, it's kind of like, you you just kind of want someone to relate to in an honest capacity. And yeah, there's some best practice showing in that as well. But I think sometimes we all just kind of need to be honest about where we are on our journeys in order to really kind of reap the most benefits from, you know, being with like-minded individuals.
Deborah Weinswig (08:47.974)
And I think also too, the idea around kind of how are people, I think that you've kind of touched on something that's really important, is that how people learn these days is also changed a lot. And I mean, I remember I went to work in 2013, I left Citigroup, which I loved, and right, we had an amazing kind of help desk, which I used a lot, you know, after dropping devices down, toilets and stuff like that, truly.
I was like, how do you explain this, right? But then being like my own help desk, right? I'm going into YouTube to figure out like how to, and I was also on like, I was on different devices that I'd been on, you know, at City as well. So you're trying to figure this all out. And so I think that gave me the confidence that I could figure it out. But now truly, there's so much that you can figure out. And I find from a learning perspective, my expectations of people are at a higher level because I think there's,
Now maybe there's too much content that it can't be difficult, but that they've done their homework before they show up so that they have a certain level of understanding as opposed to, we're gonna kind of start at, right, like, you know, we're gonna be like warming up out there versus, we've read all this, we don't understand, actually, how it fits into our company, and that's what we'd love to talk about. So I think expectations are higher, but.
There's also a ton of misinformation. There's so many different places you can get information. And I think that's why something kind of like retail club where you can be like, okay, I read this, I read this, I read this white paper, I watched this video. How are you guys, A, staying on top of it and what resonates and then what resonates with the executive team as well?
Krystina Gustafson (10:27.928)
Well, I think one thing that you just said I want to hit on, and you were kind of talking about it earlier as well, was just sort of, you you go and listen to conversations and then the more interesting stuff kind of happens when you're debriefing on that. And so I think everything that you just said, like plus one to 100%, I think, you know,
There's a difference and you were kind of talking about this before between passive and active learning. I think, you know, everyone's going to be coming to the event with their own, you know, idea of where things are headed. You know, no one knows exactly what direction things are going to go, not even Sam Altman. But I think everyone kind of has some preconceived notions about this. I think there are a lot of people who are experimenting with things in their organization. Maybe things are working, maybe things aren't. Maybe there's point solutions. Maybe they, you know, want a more holistic strategy. So I agree. I mean, I think everyone's kind of to be coming to this with their own goals.
Deborah Weinswig (10:59.632)
Thank
Krystina Gustafson (11:16.048)
think a solid footing knowing that everyone who is attending is kind of showing up AI first and, you know, really excited about the potential that AI holds. So I think that's something I would call out. In terms of how you stay on top of it, I mean, it's funny. We were talking a couple of weeks ago about how if you read an article about AI from three weeks ago, you might as well consider it old because I think that's the pace of change that we're experiencing. Just to kind of, you know, ladder that back to our decision to launch this retreat. I think we decided to launch it within a week.
Deborah Weinswig (11:35.472)
Krystina Gustafson (11:45.921)
It was over Memorial Day week and here we are, know, 75 some days later. The amount of conversation has changed. The number of times I've tweaked the agenda. know, consumer AI wasn't a thing that people were talking about, you know, 75 days ago that we had to then go and incorporate into the agenda. So, you know, it's changing very quickly. I think a lot of people were waiting for GBT-5 to drop as kind of, know, the next evolution of how things were going to change in the industry. But even the extent to which AI has really verticalized
since we decided to launch Retail Club, that was kind of the hypothesis that we had, was that this was going to happen. And I think, again, even as much as we talk about the pace of change, I don't think we expected it to happen quite that quickly. So I think, you know, it's a lot of learning. It's a lot of conversations with people. I think before we launched, we probably talked to 75 different people in the industry, whether it was investors, retailers and brands, startup tech companies, large solution providers, and then just kind of continuous learning through conversations. then, you know, obviously,
just kind of trying to stay on top of the news to the best of our ability.
Deborah Weinswig (12:49.446)
Yeah, I agree with all that. I think that what's interesting is, you know, and I feel, don't know, I don't, I mean, it'd be interesting to see what plays out in 26, but it's interesting. I found the first half of 24, very similar to the first half of 25, is that there's been a real interest from retailers, brands, those in consumer facing industries, restaurants, to...
to kind of do something in store or marketing, right? Where they can kind of put their finger on it and show investors, employees, customers. And then when it kind of gets to the reality of, we've got, know, we're halfway through the third quarter, we've got to kind of make, you know, kind of a few tweaks here that it evolves to kind of the back of the house. And I find that every time it does,
that we see everybody like double back because they're like, wow, we didn't know we could learn this much about our customer. We didn't know that we could save this much money. We didn't know we can make this much money, right? If you think about like what Walmart's talking about, the earnings calls, like we'll find out more soon, but right, half of their kind of earnings growth is from business that didn't exist 24 months ago, right? This is like unprecedented. And I think that to me, what's so interesting about
Krystina Gustafson (13:50.045)
You
Deborah Weinswig (14:08.42)
Right, oftentimes we see a lot these benefits accrue to earlier stage or smaller companies because it's just easier to kind of get it kind of over the highway freeway. Here, when you have the largest retailer and they've seen unprecedented kind of moves forward. And that, think, to me like your hero company, you can be like, wow, they did this. How do I kind of take it back?
and do it in our organization and who's going to own it. are we going to be, and I'll say one of the questions that's coming up now a lot, which I find super interesting on the AI side, Is it, we gonna bring in all these vendors, right? And have them kind of take our data and it's either, or are we going to own like the data layer and then bring in vendors? And I think there's two completely separate mindsets on that. It's not to say that if you go down one path that you can't kind of backtrack later, you know, we've been on the mindset.
Krystina Gustafson (14:49.678)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (15:06.864)
we would rather kind of like own that AI layer in our organization, but everyone kind of gets to that point differently. And I think that to me, that, and that's like in the middle of everything, right? Front of house, back of house. And that topic right now is starting to gain some traction and especially with kind of ChatGPT-5 and a lot of the questions around, right, where are we from, right? Like an AGI perspective and, you know, and I mean,
I still think the craziest thing is that you, mean, not that I wasn't there as well, but you had customers begging for ChatGPT 4-0 to come back. Because ChatGPT 5 was not the foundational model that they needed for a lot of what they had built or for a lot of how they had gotten used to working through things. So it also shows you that this is one of, at least in my...
career, one of the few times I've seen almost in some cases either product market fit or that the tech is moving faster than people are ready.
Krystina Gustafson (16:14.764)
Well, it's so interesting, right? Because you can kind of argue both sides of that.
agree with you. It's so funny. Anytime I sort of hear someone pontificating about AGI and kind of, know, when we're going to be at that point and AI is going to take over the world and all this stuff. I'm like, the technological capabilities are going to get there way faster than organizations are going to be able to adopt them, you know, kind of reconstruct how they operate. So I 100 % agree with you there. think the flip side of that, though, is, and I know there's some statistics about like adoption of GPT-5 and, you know, all that, all that fun stuff out there. But I think about my mom, who's, I think,
and she's plugging in prompts about how she can use AI to market her real estate company. And I'm just like,
I don't know if we were seeing that sort of cross-generational. And it's interesting, my husband and I joke a lot about kind of like, he'll be like, it's like the metaverse all over and again. And I'm like, no, it's not like the metaverse all over again. Ha ha ha. But I think what's interesting is as much as AI is really difficult to understand technically, it's so easy to use that I think at least kind of like from that consumer perspective, the adoption is, I mean, that's why we're seeing it accelerate. Just to go back to one of the other things that you said,
interesting as well. And I would love to just kind of like quickly dust off the point about organizational size and AI adoption, I think is really, really interesting as well, because it's funny, I have the same perspective as you. And I, you know, I talked to a lot of, you know, some of those companies that are 100 billion revenue, like whatever that size might be. And they feel like they're at such a disadvantage because they don't necessarily have the capex of a Walmart to kind of move. And I make the same point as you. I'm like, but you can move so much more nimbly, right? And yes, you have to be very
Krystina Gustafson (17:57.045)
strategic about where you're placing your bets, but you don't have like these layers and layers and layers of approval. I mean, obviously you still hope they have like governance and like ethical policies and all those things. I'm not suggesting anyone skirts those, but like in some ways to your point, it's kind of like what we saw with e-commerce the first time around where the smaller scrappier companies are able to adopt things quicker than the large players.
Deborah Weinswig (18:16.582)
Yeah, no, think that there's so much to that. And I think it goes back to one of the foundational aspects of retail club is community. And so kind leaning into people you can trust to have some of these conversations and kind of just almost kind of ask, right? Like, I doing everything that I could? Am I doing it in the right way? How should I think about organization? AI governance, I think I shared with you. I spoke in front of...
say several hundred real estate executives in an AI and real estate conference. And I asked, I have to say this was not that, this was this summer, this was not that long ago. I said, how many of you have kind of an AI governance in place? And nine hands went up. So there's still a lot foundationally that, and that is not like a one-off conversation, but it's interesting. So I find that fascinating. And the other thing I find really interesting is,
Krystina Gustafson (19:01.25)
Hahaha!
Deborah Weinswig (19:13.902)
Executives will suggest, okay, we've got like a small working group who's using chat.gbt5. And I'm like, okay, everyone's got a phone, probably a non-corporate phone. I said, they're doing all this research and everything because going back to what you said, it's very accessible. And so I said, even if you haven't kind of given them permission, that they are using it right to try and help them do better at their job that you're paying them for. I said, but there are things that you need to kind of set up and...
Krystina Gustafson (19:27.982)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (19:43.462)
know, policies need to be put in place and you need to continue to not only educate yourselves, right, but your teams because it's moving so quickly. So we think about kind of throughout the retail organization, right, having these peer groups, which I think Retail Club is really facilitating. It's really important for not only like the growth, the safety, but also the top and bottom line opportunity, which I think is it's like within arm's reach.
Krystina Gustafson (20:10.07)
I mean, Deborah, you and I have been talking about this for years. I think part of what I am excited about is we are actually seeing this in our registrations and we're seeing it come to fruition. But it's like the data.
AI folks need to be talking to the COO, need to be talking to the marketer, need to be talking to the e-complet, right? And it's like, you know, the number of people, again, as we were doing research before we launched this event that told me, you know, they're the CDO and they're like, yeah, it's really fun because I sit here and, I have a roadmap and I tell everyone what we need to invest in and, you know, we need to make sure our data is in order before we do this, but no one wants to invest in it because it's expensive and it's boring and they don't see immediate ROI. And then we have a consulting firm come in and say the exact same things. And then all of a sudden, yes, it's a great light. And so I think part
Deborah Weinswig (20:49.83)
It happens.
Krystina Gustafson (20:51.834)
of what we are hoping to facilitate here is by bringing together all those diverse parties. maybe it's your CDO is getting some backup in the conversations with the other executives in the room. But I do think increasingly, especially given data science and AI is, mean, like that's not my specialty. How do you get those people speaking the business language and vice versa? It's gonna become increasingly important as we go forward.
Deborah Weinswig (21:18.948)
Well, I also think with with vibe coding, right? You also like unleashed so many of us who have not been coders before. Right. And I'm like, I literally speak English and outcomes Python. But I'm like, this is like truly I have to say, I mean, and I was, you know, I went down way down the metaverse hole, which I still very much like enjoy spending time there. And I don't think first of all, me personally, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't done all that work, because that completely suspended reality for me. And I'm like, if we can do that.
Krystina Gustafson (21:37.774)
You
Deborah Weinswig (21:48.486)
what else can we do, right? And here we are. But I think that this idea, so it was funny. So the other day, I like try to like, I'm not the person that when the toaster's not working, I throw it out. I try to like, you know, use electrical, yeah, whatever, electrical paint, you know, tinker with it, whatever. Exactly, yes, I'm trying. I'll try to unplug it first, but I have this like kettle and it had gotten all this brown stuff in the bottom. And like, I'm like looking it up and they're like, yeah, that, it probably makes the tea taste worse. And I'm like, that just does not look good. So I'm like,
Krystina Gustafson (22:02.254)
Go to electric heat yourself.
Deborah Weinswig (22:17.094)
So I poured in like apple cider vinegar. I let it sit overnight and like the next morning it looked the same. So then I like, let me go to Chachi BT and I'm like, I have this problem. This is what I tried. And they're like, boil the apple cider vinegar. And I'm like, I never would have done that, right? Because that's not how I fix things, right? And I was like, and it worked. And I'm like, okay. So I just fixed like something I would not have fixed before. So like, what else can I fix? Right? Like I was like, what, you know, either how can I fix my, right? Like you think about your health. Do you think about your wellness? Do you think about your relationships? Right?
all these things that you can you have kind of you know you're you can call a friend right and and that friend is is you know a large language model and so i i think that in some ways a lot of things that like i'm finding i don't know if you're christina people are a lot more right they're they're more productive i find they're less stressed in some ways because no problem is too big to solve it's just a matter of putting like the time into it and so i i'm finding at least
Krystina Gustafson (23:07.694)
Mm.
Deborah Weinswig (23:16.752)
from a lot of the folks I talked to who have got a foot and half into the AI world, that they're changing as people as well. Like that to me has been what's so interesting. And someone just told me they went to Japan and they said, typically they'd spend weeks and weeks like planning every little thing. And they said, they literally spent like five hours on Chatchi BT. So I was like, what ballpark, how many hours does it save you? And they said, probably upwards of 50 hours. So if you think.
Krystina Gustafson (23:44.27)
Oh my God, I need to travel with that person. They do way more research than I do.
Deborah Weinswig (23:50.142)
Yeah, but now it goes back to now you can have just as great of a trip as they do and and I think it just starts to you know, I mean for me now when I go to a new city, right? Like I'm like or a city I've been to I'm going for an event or something like, okay, I have two hours of downtime How should I use that? Right? Is there something that's close to the hotel or close to the venue that I could go see or learn about or whatnot? And so I think this whole day idea that right we can use our time better
Krystina Gustafson (23:52.494)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (24:17.124)
We can figure things out that we couldn't before and we're helping our companies and ourselves. I mean, no technology has really done that before.
Krystina Gustafson (24:25.538)
I love the point that you're making about helping yourself. So this is kind of where I've been having fun on the agenda is it's not always about work use cases. Like, yeah, sometimes it is. And I think some of these will sort of toe the line, but we introduced a format that we're calling level up and it's basically to help encourage attendees to use AI in their personal and professional lives. So if we even kind of like take a step back and think about the fact that the deep dive retreat is a retreat, the way we think about retreat is you're kind of taking a step back from your day to day, from your
quarterly numbers, whatever it is, and giving yourself the space to think. Because I think to your point, Deborah, right? It's like, there are lot of ways that I could probably use AI in my day to day, but I'm just so focused on an outcome that maybe it doesn't even occur to me, right? So one of the things that we're doing is just kind of like a hack session where everyone shares their best AI hacks in kind of a conversational format. We're doing a session on vibe coding so people can learn how to do that. Andy LaDotto over at Vitamin Shop is doing a level up on how to build your side hustle with AI, because he's apparently
four different side hustles using AI. So he's going to walk people kind of through what that process looks like. I don't think anyone should plan on monetizing any of these side hustles just as a quick aside, but really again, it's just kind of trying to get people to think creatively. We just confirmed someone yesterday who used AI for part of a business contract negotiation. And so kind of walking people through how he prompted that, walking through different scenarios. We're going to make it interactive where the audience can then also kind of come to him with, hey, how would you solve for this? And he can kind
Deborah Weinswig (25:26.662)
you
Deborah Weinswig (25:32.902)
you
Krystina Gustafson (25:55.362)
walk people through that.
Deborah Weinswig (25:57.284)
I, you just brought some, so we, of course, we do a lot of work in real estate and what we've seen, it's still early, but the companies who starting to lean into it, actually it's funny. You would never think of the, it's literally coming from the chief legal counsel across the board and very responsible, right? Like methodical individuals and they're like, I think it's, I could like literally like role play, I have two open head count. how could you use AI instead of like.
Krystina Gustafson (26:24.526)
Yeah
Deborah Weinswig (26:25.562)
putting the headcount elsewhere. I haven't thought about it. Well, what about you have, right? If you manage malls, you have in one mall, it could be upwards of 300 leases with all different terms, with all different deadlines. And so if you think about taking what seems to be an unmanageable problem, and we're talking legal departments of 23 people and up, right? We're not talking like one man bans or one person bans.
And so I think that that to me is a very easy way, right? If you think about the contract and contract negotiations in the process, but also to kind of going back and remembering, right? Maybe a good example, like what's a good example of, you know, can use like Microsoft Copilot, right? Like what's a good example of where we did this and you find, I I gotta tell you, I found files from like years ago and I was like, my gosh, I didn't even, you know, right? Like it might've been somebody else in organization. Like I didn't even know that we had done that. That's amazing, right?
I think it goes back to to use the work that you've already done or even like work for hire that I can kind of like repurpose into other things. It is interesting from that perspective. So I have to ask the question, how are you using AI in retail?
Krystina Gustafson (27:36.521)
my gosh. Well, let's see. I am a team of one planning a content agenda of 50 plus sessions. So I definitely was using it in drafting my session descriptions. It's funny because I feel like one of the other things that...
you know, as we kind of think about AI adoption, at first you kind of feel like you're cheating, right? And then you realize, no, like I need to kind of scale myself. This is the best way to do it. And so I think, you know, first off when I was doing it, I think all the kind of rookie mistakes that everyone would have. But, you know, the more I kind of got into the weeds, I would say, I want to do a session on this. These are the types of people who are attending. These are the goals of the event. I wanted to cover these three things, make it sound both near-term and, you know, long-term strategic or, know, whatever those kind of different variables were.
that first output and then revising from there, I would say has kind of been the biggest time saver that I've had as it pertains to retail club. But quite honestly, I'm using it also with research, right? And just kind of going out there and being like, I have to fill a session on AI personalizations and plugging in who are some of the retailers who are doing really interesting things with web personalization or marketing personalization, whatever the use case might be comparing and contrasting vendors, right? I think that's probably a really big use case for the retailers and brands listening as well, but just kind of what are the similarities and differences between X and Y?
you know, which one has more market traction, more customers, and obviously you're never going to get the full sweep of information. It's going to be kind of, you know, what's crawlable and what's available publicly. But, you know, it's kind of a good starting point, I think, when you keep all of those things in mind. So those are the biggest ways. But I'm also encouraging my facilitators, like, plug in, you know, if you're leading a workshop on the death of the brand website, inevitable or impractical, go type in. See what the questions it spits back. Again, like you're, I'm not telling you
Deborah Weinswig (29:16.645)
What?
Krystina Gustafson (29:19.664)
to use them, but it kind of helps you think about problems from maybe angles that you wouldn't have thought about them on your own.
Deborah Weinswig (29:26.982)
Well, I also think that it was really interesting. So of course, we also do a lot of we call it advisory work and some of the strategic consulting and some of this around like M &A activity. And we have one client which we meet with every month and they had wanted to see examples of others. if I if I I'm not going to tell you my like whole sad song, but I probably spent north of 100 hours combing like tech websites looking for case studies, which
If you are a tech company listening to this, I'm begging you, pleading with you, use AI to write a case study and get it on your website because that's how companies understand how to work with you. This is very, very basic or make up one that's theoretical. And so this is how you could use us. And this is our theoretical case study. But it was interesting how I will say it took a while. I think GEO has had the new
generation of search, right? How that's kind of having an impact as well. And so I want to, there's a few things on GEO I want to boil in, you know, kind of boil the ocean on, but I do want to just touch on, you know, I think what I love about our podcast is we do kind of, it's not just what you've done and what you're doing, but also who you are. And I know you went through a very challenging period with Tribe and right, all of us have challenging periods in our lives. And, you know, we don't always know.
how to handle those and I thought you, the way you approached that with being very transparent and very helpful to others, I was wondering if you could just kind of double click on that period in your life and what was it about those either you surrounded yourselves with or the community that helped you handle it the way you did.
Krystina Gustafson (31:14.284)
Yeah, well, I guess for folks who don't know, so we had been hoping to launch an event for women in consumer commerce and tech called Tribe, which unfortunately just kind of given the political environment was not able to make it to fruition. I mean, it was really heartbreaking. So like, I feel like I still get emotional talking about it. I think it's one of those things where.
I think anytime you're launching a new business and like, was my first kind of venture on the founding team. You know, I joined shop talk about a year into their journey. So while I was kind of part of the OG, this was my first time, you know, really kind of driving it. so, like I poured everything that I had into it and it was just, you know, something I was super passionate about and the reception was phenomenal. And I think what made it particularly hard was having an external driver. Put the kibosh on what you're doing. Right. I think like, sadly, and maybe this sounds weird, but I think if I had failed,
I would have felt better about it than kind of having something huge kind of get in my way. And so that was very hard. I think the way that the community kind of like understood and rallied behind us and like, you know, I think the good news is I think most people that we were working with know us and know.
how much we wanted it. And so I think they were very understanding. Obviously your biggest fear in these scenarios is you're gonna be letting everyone down. And so I think to your point, Deborah, it's like taking some deep breaths. Like, you need like your couple nights of being pouty, I think to be honest, before you kind of go to market and tell everyone. But it was like every single email was like a dagger to my heart, even though they were like positive and understanding emails. so, you you kind of just have to take some time, get some space, like talk to people that you trust. And I don't know, like I pick-
your brain about what to do with my life. Amazinca over at Omni Talk is another good friend, like calling her Melissa Gonzalez, just like basically like, Melissa, you wrote a book. What's it like? You know, just like making people tell me all about themselves and their career journeys to figure it out. And eventually one day you kind of figure it out and find something that lights a fire under you again.
Deborah Weinswig (33:18.662)
Well, I think if you never go through anything hard or anything that's heartbreaking professionally, then you don't have the resilience, the grit or whatnot. you know, when it's like 3 a.m. and you're like, crud, I've got something to do at 6 a.m. I gotta just power through. I'm like, I need to dig really deep. And I was on Wall Street for many years. I had my shares of ups and downs, which, you know, really, it's like I knew that whatever I had to get through, I...
I could, right? Or you could lean on others if there were kind of spaces that you didn't have filled. And I feel like you've, like you took that experience to really kind of lean into what happened and how it impacted you and others around you. And then rethink your trajectory going forward. I mean, it was really interesting to kind of just, I thought, and I just want to compliment you on how you handled it and how I think you allowed the community to...
to support you and to support you now with Retro Club.
Krystina Gustafson (34:21.87)
I mean, quite frankly, like that's how this thing launched. That's where the idea came from, was just having all those conversations with people and hearing what people were looking for and wanted. And like, we joke a lot as a team, like none of us are events people. And I was like telling my husband the other day, I was like, how am I, I'm like officially an events person now. Like this is what I do for living. So it's just funny how, yeah, where life takes you.
Deborah Weinswig (34:37.83)
you
Deborah Weinswig (34:42.438)
Well, think, and I think it goes back to, think it's like what you said earlier. I mean, you're, you're a connector and I think you connect intelligence, you connect people, you connect people to intelligence. And so, and I, and I think that if we think about where the world is, is going, right, that, that skillset is even more important because there are so many disparate pieces of information and, know, it was, it was interesting, right? We had been, as you can imagine, as a research organization, very, very worried about
the impact of large language models and whatnot. And what we found is it's like my friends who are doctors, they were like, the best thing that ever happened to them was like, Dr. Google, because you go to Google and it's like, my gosh, you can have this, you can have this, you can have this. I gotta go to the doctor because I can have this. And like you end up having like, know, ear infection or something. But, you know, it's what we found and it's been fascinating to see because it actually goes back to kind of like AI road mapping, is that those organizations who've really tried to figure out kind of like
where do you start, right? What's the steps kind of along the, first of all, roadmap never goes like the way you, it's not like the yellow brick road, it never goes the way exactly you think it's going to, because you find additional opportunities along the way. But what we found is when they started to dive into it, I think this goes back to like the inside of organization versus external, they were like just starting to kind of drown in information. And because it is literally endless, and it's like, do want me to do more research? Yes. Do you want me to do this? Yes. And all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I am like.
12 steps away from like my center of kind of expertise. And I need to get back there. And so I think that's been fascinating along the way.
Krystina Gustafson (36:19.778)
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those moments, right? It's not the first time. The death of this, the death of that, I think everything is just gonna adapt, of course, correct.
Deborah Weinswig (36:27.138)
the death, like my favorite was like, it's like, I think my favorite, it was a while ago, my favorite report series we ever wrote was The Mall is Not Dead. Because of course everyone, and like the minute you say something like that, and I've always thoroughly believed that, I do think that in a more agentic world, right, like the role of the mall, the role of stores will continue to ebb and flow. I mean, we're seeing, right, going back to,
Krystina Gustafson (36:39.469)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (36:54.628)
some of what we've talked about, right? We're seeing more more healthcare move into malls, right? So we're starting to see kind of this going back to being good for the consumer, right? It's like you can like get a new pair of shoes and you get your MRI, right? And I'm totally serious. But think about this, like so many of my friends and like my family, they have real anxiety, especially the dentist. Dentists should be like right next to like a great store that you can like go to before and after. But...
Krystina Gustafson (37:20.738)
trip.
Deborah Weinswig (37:21.946)
But you can, but like people have said, like we actually, we've like literally interviewed, because why not, people who are getting MRIs done. And they said, you know, they usually get, right, especially if right, the closed ones, you get super, right. mean, for good reason, right. You're like locked in a tank. People get very anxious, but they were like, they're like, you know, we usually cancel, this is funny, funny enough, funny. They're like, we usually cancel these appointments like five to 10 times. And they're, and they said, right, cause it's something you really don't want to do. Right. And what they said is that, but they didn't cancel the appointments.
Krystina Gustafson (37:33.539)
Yeah.
Krystina Gustafson (37:42.436)
my god.
Deborah Weinswig (37:50.278)
they were on time to early. And then they said they ended up like kind of treating themselves at the mall either with kind of like a bite to eat, a cup of coffee, or they purchased something. So it's like one of those examples what I love is like everybody wins. And so I think as we look at right kind of, know, future scaping, if you will, I do think that to me, and this was like very early on in a lot of the gen AI world, I'd worked in AI.
Krystina Gustafson (38:04.013)
Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (38:16.752)
tech startups so had a very early kind of window into the soul of what was possible. But in some ways you've democratized, right, if it's 20 a month or 30 a month or if you want to go pro and it's 200 a month, but ways that you can access intelligence that you couldn't before and having kind of a roadmap for your, like it goes back to, right, so you have a professional roadmap, how should I have a personal roadmap, right? And.
And you can hold like I don't know about you, Christina, be fascinating to hear from your personal perspective, right? With family and all that. But I find I now so I am like I'd be embarrassed to show you my office because I probably have upwards of 100 pieces of like little scratches of paper, which you wonder how I stay organized, but I do number them. And, you we all have our things. This is like my tiny little pieces of paper is mine. And what I do now is I do number them. And then on Sundays, I scan all of them.
I upload them into a GPT I created and then I have agents who are helping me prioritize, first of all, categorize them. One, B, help me prioritize. C, what are the steps that I need to take to get this done? And are those steps somewhere, and they usually are, on another little piece of scratch of paper? And so you see that I take in 100 little pieces of paper, I'm digitizing it, and then those 100 things which seem overwhelming,
they end up being like 20 things because right we during the week, I mean, it's like I've scratched them. I'm like, I scratched. I've got a whole bunch of little pieces of paper from this call even write like things that you said I'm like, you know, I'm like, okay, you know, thinking about side hustles and stuff like that because, you know, I mean, it's random. I should I have side hustles scaling myself passive and active roadmap organization SEO, right? Like, you know, comparing vendors use cases, right? Like, but that's how
Krystina Gustafson (39:57.231)
You're like, you have to do this.
Deborah Weinswig (40:11.428)
Like my mind works and if I don't do that, then I start to feel very overwhelmed. So that's just sharing with you how I, I mean, I feel like people have mentioned, I mean, I'm always an upbeat person, but I'm upbeat in different way. it's, I know that what I've promised people, right, I can get done. It's not just like, my gosh, maybe if I stay up till three o'clock and I sleep for an hour.
It's that I, and I'm scheduling a lot more like with myself. Like somebody said to me, they're like, oh, did you read the like polynodal like, you know, paper we sent over? I'm like, oh, I'm like funny. I'm like, I actually blocked out time five to six PM on Sunday to do that. So those are some of the things and you know, it's interesting with you and kind of living in a house and family. How, right, because I mean, I live in an apartment, right? There's only so much to manage. Look at your apartment, oh.
Krystina Gustafson (41:01.346)
this is an apartment. That's why I'm locked in this room. Yeah, we have a two bedroom with a baby that is like not huge. Yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (41:08.262)
Not, okay, all right, well, but that's good, because it takes out, this is like my, everyone I know always said, right, first of all, the larger it is, the more stuff you fill. So remember that as you age. So I actually, think small is beautiful. But secondly, how have you used, if you have AI to either think about kind of like your own health, your own life, your family's life?
Krystina Gustafson (41:17.23)
Yeah. Yes.
Krystina Gustafson (41:33.485)
Health was exactly where I was gonna go. So I have a 10 month old baby. I knew nothing about children when I had said baby. And so I feel like the number of times that I'm just plugging things into chat, you'd be like, is this normal? When is it typical for them to be sitting? Because Deborah, as you know, my son is very, very large. And so I feel like he's hitting all of his milestones like borderline a little too late, but he gets there. And so I feel like that's kind of, that's where I'm starting my search, as I would say kind of like the most impactful way that I'm seeing it show up in my day-to-day life.
One of the things that you mentioned before I want to circle back to though, that whole idea of democratization and not as much for me in my personal life, but I think about kind of what Shopify did for e-commerce. And I think about all the opportunities to democratize.
retail going forward. And I guess what I mean by that, one of the companies and you might know them, Deborah, called Keychain. I think it's Keychain.io. Don't quote me on that. But Ocean, who had found it handy, you basically just kind of go on their website and say, oh, I want to start a brand of peanut butter that's better for you or whatever. And it kind of gives you a list of, you're typing it in natural language. It gives you a list of manufacturers. It gives you kind of what the specs would look like, et cetera, et cetera. And so yes, that democratizes for the general mills of the world who want to do new product development. But me,
Deborah Weinswig (42:25.36)
Yep.
Krystina Gustafson (42:49.262)
see that as an opportunity for Christina if I want to go start a brand, you it's not just setting up my own website anymore. It's developing a product, getting set up with manufacturers and just saving like so much work, so much research, so much onboarding, et cetera. And then the other company that's somewhat similar doing that, who you also probably know as Arcade AI, Maryam Nafisi, who had previously founded Minted and just being able to go in and say, I want to design a necklace that looks like XYZ for my 20 year high school reunion and having designers produce that, manufacture it, giving me a custom piece of jewelry. Like, I don't know.
Deborah Weinswig (43:08.038)
Mm-hmm.
Krystina Gustafson (43:19.192)
Those are the things that really excite me as all kind of the new business models. Again, things that have been dead, direct to consumer, consumer startups. I don't know. I think we're really just starting to imagine what this could look like going forward.
Deborah Weinswig (43:31.11)
It's really interesting you brought that up. So I hosted a small group of about 20 CEOs, all different kinds of sizes of companies, and for like a five hour AI teaching. And my content was all like, you know, very well spelled out and you know, things happen. I was, you know, let's just say I had backup plans and even backups to the backup, which didn't, I probably needed more because, so when I tell you that all,
All folks walked in, not one had ChatGBT on their laptop. So I'm literally, we are starting way at the beginning. And this is not that long ago. So that was where we started. Secondly, ChatGBT was down that day. And so for the first two hours, I mean, they had no idea, but I'm like, I just completely changed and moved like the whole talk track and kind of a few hours in, it was back up and running. And so I figured they had already learned a few things and we had discussed.
Krystina Gustafson (44:02.359)
Interesting.
Krystina Gustafson (44:15.117)
Hahaha!
Deborah Weinswig (44:27.686)
And I got to know their business is better. And so there are two decent sized jewelry companies there. And so was fascinating. we started off with, I'm like, all of you have had a challenge in HR. And if you haven't, then make one up and you're blessed if you haven't. But I said, ask, this is how I would think about the prompt, but I want you to do it. And I said, and how do you feel about the response? And literally all of them, I mean, you could hear silence in the room.
Krystina Gustafson (44:42.222)
You
Deborah Weinswig (44:53.862)
Because it was, a lot, and the reason I did HR specifically is these are very stressful situations for a CO oftentimes. And so they said, right, like the amount that it kind of took their stress levels down because it was completely logical what was being said. Of course there are things that are unique to the kind of organization, but I thought that was interesting. So we started there. Secondly, I introduced Sora. And so I was like, oh, we'll create a video about like our time here today and this and the other.
And like on their own, mean, I have to tell you, was like, I know startups who do this for a living. They were uploading their product. I was like, first of all, how do you think of this and how did you do it? They're uploading their product catalog and creating 3D images of the jewelry. I'm like, right. And they are like literally as newbie as you can get in like the, you know, gen AI world. And then the third was to think about a
way that they could monetize their business that they aren't today. And I think that was for them the kind of big, you know, kind of grand slam because it was either you can monetize some of your data, it's product extensions, it's who you're selling to. for them it was, and once again, some these are publicly traded companies, some of them were, you know, 50, 100 million. It was a really interesting range. I think, I probably, I learn more from that than I think they did because I was like,
you start to see that this is applicable across all. Giving people time and space, which once again, going back to Retail Club, I think it's such a great idea, but giving them time and space to also talk to their peers, to have the conversation, not rushing, which sometimes you're like, you've got, okay, we've these 10 things to do, like we're gonna get it all done. But I think there's something about this technology that people just need time and space and they wanna talk to their peers to almost just kind of...
since check what they're doing.
Krystina Gustafson (46:49.794)
Yeah, I agree. It's really interesting too and like...
You know, we haven't talked about what's next to retail club yet. And the answer is we don't know. So it's not a very great answer. But the reason that I bring it up in the context of what you're talking about is it feels like we are truly at a very pivotal moment of disruption. And what the industry needs today is going to be very different than what they need in six months versus 12 months. And like, what does that cadence look like? You know, probably in six to 12 months time, people won't need to be sitting in a session figuring out how to use AI to be a more effective negotiator because they're all going to be doing it. Right. And so I think like that.
the other thing that we're mindful of is like...
what is this journey gonna actually even look like for the individuals who are living it every day and how do you serve that need, whether it's from a timing cadence, from our perspective, how do you evolve the product, how do you evolve the conversations? I think there's a lot that we still don't know. And so, it's gonna be a really great learning lesson coming out of I think the first retreat, but even beyond that, you have to think about just the pace of innovation and how do you stay fresh?
Deborah Weinswig (47:53.062)
Well, and going back to, think what Soni, I told you, called the different types of people in the organization who are going to be there, because ultimately we all have to figure out how to use these new technologies in what we do day to day. And so think having a chief supply chain officer talk to a CTO about what they're doing and how they're doing it, there's a lot of shared learnings in.
in that conversation.
Krystina Gustafson (48:23.416)
What's really been interesting too, to that point, I feel like we've seen a number of like GMs, COOs that kind of oversee, you know, the COOs that oversee like 90 % of the organization. We've seen a lot of those people signing up, which I think makes a ton of sense because they're looking at this from more of a cross-functional lens to the point you were making earlier, not just cost cutting, also revenue. You know, how do you kind of connect the dots? So, I mean, it's a great point too. Like I think maybe the next evolution of this is going from point solutions to what does this actually look like, you know, as a unified AI strategy, but considering we're still
Deborah Weinswig (48:49.798)
Yeah.
Krystina Gustafson (48:53.36)
talking about that with digital, it might be a while till we stop that.
Deborah Weinswig (48:57.609)
Might be a So I didn't tell you this ahead of time because I like the art of surprise, but we're to do a very quick, I always love to end events or panels with like a lightning round. So we have the quick Christina's corner round. So put together just for you. So if you don't like your first answer, you can, or you don't want answer it, just say pass. all very nice and friendly here, Phillip and I. So, all right. So number one, most underrated retail trend right now.
Krystina Gustafson (49:07.681)
Okay?
Krystina Gustafson (49:27.522)
Gosh, I feel like all I'm looking at is AI. So it's like, I don't even know that I'm equipped to answer that. Can I say AI?
Deborah Weinswig (49:32.614)
I actually think what you said about, right, you think about most startups are built from people's personal pain points. And if you think about, especially, you know, with the proliferation of food allergies, right, the ability to take that passion and put it into a product that you can then develop, right, and you can help others with. I mean, it was really you who said that. But to me, that's a really underrated, right, because if you can put your passion
behind what you do every day, it's like one and the same.
Krystina Gustafson (50:04.62)
Alright, well I'm gonna count that as my answer even though I think you answered it for me, but it was up there at some point, so good answer Deborah.
Deborah Weinswig (50:11.63)
Alright, topic you think is overhyped.
Krystina Gustafson (50:15.928)
Topic I think is overhyped. I think the whole concept of agentic, I think it means everything and nothing at the same time. so, well, we will definitely be covering it. And I think people are eager to learn more about it. And it is real in some use cases. I think it's a little bit just kind of rebrand your website and slash agentic on it right now.
Deborah Weinswig (50:36.154)
Yeah, I have to say I kind of envisioned by the end of the summer being able to just sit on the couch and having all my agents go out and you know, do all the meetings and do all the research and whatnot like right. I mean, I don't know about you, but I was like, I was like, I just, just, that's what I envisioned. And I was like, this is going to be amazing. Right. But exactly, exactly. All right. Number three, I like this one best insight you have ever gained from an offstage conversation.
Krystina Gustafson (50:51.234)
Like little ants running around.
Krystina Gustafson (51:00.942)
Woo.
my gosh, that is such a good question. I feel like I couldn't give you the specific anecdote, but I just feel like that's like when the gloves come off and like the questions that people won't answer on stage and then they kind of get back and they're like, that, you know, and then they kind of like just give you the unfiltered take. That's, I don't know. I'd have to think more on a very specific answer, but I think just that's my overall sentiment is like I always learn the most when we're not actually on stage, hence the model of retail club.
Deborah Weinswig (51:32.452)
Yeah, I'll tell you, I- there was-
gosh, it was quite a years ago. One of the executives from GoPuff spoke and I had like a planned meeting with him after his session. So I literally like met him off stage and walked back to the green room or whatever. And you know, I think sometimes you're just like, like relieved and so just chit chatting. And I think I didn't, I didn't say that much of me. He had a lot of really interesting points. And one of the things he said, which I going back to, I hadn't thought about it, but of course, somebody says, you're like, of course.
was that they were able to get data back to CPGs, right? Within like an hour, an hour and a half on promotions and their effectiveness. Because if you think about right, their model, right? mean, it's like C-Store kind of pushed to a different level, right? That idea around like last mile. And I then, you know, then I talked to a lot of the CPGs and they're like, oh, absolutely. Like we test a lot of either like new product and market and whatnot. But this idea that he was...
Krystina Gustafson (52:16.654)
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Deborah Weinswig (52:36.174)
It wasn't why he started the company, but how he was thinking about the opportunity to help others and to going back to almost this democratization of information. that I thought was super interesting. right. Number four, biggest surprise since starting Retail Club.
Krystina Gustafson (52:48.91)
Yeah, I love that.
Krystina Gustafson (52:56.426)
I think how much it's taken off if I'm being totally transparent. I think anytime you're launching a new product and bringing something to market, especially in such a short timeframe, like there's a level of anxiety. And I think, you know, our team, Deborah, we're all perfectionists. And so I think, especially as we were talking about before what happened with Tribe, I was maybe a little bit more nervous kind of launching something new. So it's been very satisfying and relieving seeing this product really resonate with people.
Deborah Weinswig (53:25.222)
That's awesome. All right, and last one, number five, one piece of advice you would give every retail leader about building community.
Krystina Gustafson (53:34.394)
that's a really good question. You know what I think it comes down to is like bringing your actual self to conversations. And I think there's a certain level of business that can happen, but like being authentically you connecting with people on a human level so that.
you're not just talking to Deborah from CoreSight, you're talking to Deborah. And obviously there are some relationships that are gonna naturally grow to a level that others won't. But I think I've always really tried to see individuals as people and not just kind of their organization or their role. And I think that's how you build real community that lasts. And I think the thing that gets me most excited in life is when I meet someone and they say something that another leader has talked to me about. And I'm like, you two will be best friends. Let me make an introduction.
and then facilitating that introduction. I think that is literally like the biggest high I ever get from this job. that's what I would say.
Deborah Weinswig (54:28.998)
Perfect. Christina, we wish you all the best at Retail Club. We have been so impressed with the agenda and what you've lined up so far. And it's just a few weeks away. So best of luck. Thanks for joining us and have a great week.
Krystina Gustafson (54:41.593)
Thanks for having me.