Transcript for Sam’s Club Fireside Chat

Soroosh: Todd, so glad to finally sit down with you here at NRF.

Todd: Yeah, great to be with you. Thank you.

Soroosh: Thanks for joining. I think I wanted to spend a few minutes. First, I'd say thank you for the Sam's Club partnership with Zello. We're so appreciative of one how tech forward you guys are working with a company like Zello. That means a lot to us. I think we're going on maybe three years now of working together, 100,000 associates, communicating each day in 600 plus clubs. It's been a really fun experience getting to do this with you guys. So, again, thank you.

Todd: No, thank you. You guys have helped us connect our entire workforce, not just the 10 people or or whatever it was up front that actually had a walkie-talkie. You've connected the entire workforce and you've been a fantastic partner. So, thank you as well.

Soroosh: I love it. You got it. You got it. Of course. Before we get into questions, I have questions for you. Obviously, we're NRF thematic. There's themes here around, you know, AI and all of that. We'll get there. I think it'd be remiss not to talk about you for a minute. Your background, both your personal and professional journey are very inspiring, I think, in a lot of ways. So, I think I'd love to hear from you about both your Sam's journey, your career journey as a whole, but also look your your journey before that with the US Air Force is very impressive. First of all, thank you for your service. One of the little bullets I saw on your LinkedIn was number one out of a thousand plus cadets in this like reward for leadership, which doesn't surprise me at all getting to know you. Just tell us a little bit about your personal journey.

Todd: Yeah, absolutely. I actually think it started with Top Gun. And I didn't realize at the time it was a Navy film and I went into the Air Force, but I kind of had this calling of I wanted to do something bigger and I also thought it'd be really cool to be sort of maverick and get out there and fly jets. And so that brought me to the Air Force and more specifically the Air Force Academy. It was a great experience and it's sort of my foray into the Air Force and you know I learned something there that was really powerful which was you know it's not what you can get out of it's what you can get into that can make the difference how you can have a bigger impact.

Soroosh: Yeah.

Todd: And that's actually what led to the thing that you're you're citing where I was selected for a leadership award and I actually got the chance to be the cadet wing commander at the Air Force Academy which was a fun experience, kind of like a a class president for a military academy. From there, started flying, absolutely thrilling time, a lot of excitement, but decided that wasn't my calling. And so from there I moved up to Alaska. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life when they actually deployed me to Afghanistan. And that same lesson carried through, which is it's whatever you can dream up and find a way of executing, you can achieve. And so while we were over there, we started some of the first recycling contracts. We were doing business with locals. We were helping make a difference and ultimately getting goods to the front lines and and really having a huge impact. And it was it was a phenomenal chapter of my life. But eventually I I decided I wanted to transition back into the business world. Started with a company called Asurian. That was actually my first foray into product management where I was trying to transition volume out of a call center into a website to provide better, quicker service for individuals who were filing a a warranty claim. Went back to business school because I had a chance of getting to know Bain & Company. And I thought, well, that's really neat. They're solving some of the biggest problems. They're working with industry leaders. This sounds really exciting. How do you do that? They said, well, we often recruit from business schools. So I went back to a business school, actually joined Bain and Company, became a consultant for a couple years where at the same time I actually got married to my wife. And from there we basically decided we were going to start a new life together, moved up to Seattle, spent some time in Starbucks doing strategy and operations and some of the transformational activities that we had until eventually uh got a call from Sam's Club and they said, "We are reinventing retail. How would you like to be a part of this?"

Soroosh: Awesome.

Todd: And I tell you what, it took maybe a couple of phone calls before they got me down to Bentonville, Arkansas, but as soon as I was there, absolutely unbelievable what people were doing, the impact that they were having, the investments in technology, how they were rethinking retail, I was sold instantly.

Soroosh: Yeah.

Todd: So, I joined Sam's Club and over the past eight years essentially, I started out managing just inventory products. So, kind of the technology of how we manage inventory in the clubs, then all club tools. So, think associates and the actual applications that they're using, how can we make that to really deliver good jobs and you know really make working easier. And then ultimately now I'm the chief product officer of Sam's Club. And so we're we're running our technology portfolio across merchandising, a supply chain, operations, e-commerce, membership, all with the intent of just making sure that we're delivering these unbelievable experiences for our members and we're creating good jobs and good work for our associates.

Soroosh: I love it. I mean I I can see it's interesting. I think a lot of folks that start a career and then and then realize like consulting this Bain experience that you talked about, you get exposure to so many different things and you layer on your own background with just the kind of approach in this management consulting world and then you really like sort of just leapfrog your career in a direction with passion that I can see like as you speak about what you've done and where you've come. I don't think you get to these levels of success and and making these levels of impact without having that passion behind what you do. So, really really cool to hear that come through.

Todd: Yeah, I consulting was great. It armed me with a skill set that I think is very tangential to product management. It's like zeroing in on what is the problem that you're trying to solve and then how can you get to a very quick answer that maximizes the outcome. And at Bain, they would call it the hypothesis driven approach. Some people call it answer first, but that whole fall in love with the problem and then move on to how do you maximize the outcome. It's so much more powerful to jump into specific solutions or or other approaches.

Soroosh: Yep. I think those skills are are going to be very useful as we are just quickly, you know, I think iterating on this whole reality of AI and what AI means. I don't I don't want to go there yet. Um I want to talk about one other topic first.

Todd: Yeah.

Soroosh: The human side of retail because retail doesn't exist at the end of the day without people, our customers, our members. And there's a very, you know, obviously a real experience that needs to happen. It has to be a good one. Yeah. in order for your customer to to one appreciate the service or products that you provide and the way that you provide them. You know, humans are are very social in nature. We're we're built that way. And so that experience is important. Can we just kind of talk a little bit about that human side of retail for a minute and you hear like your perspectives?

Todd: Yeah, absolutely. It's super important. I think I first really had my real taste of this when I was at Starbucks and you know, they'd be selling a cup of coffee and they'd be handing you that coffee, staring you in the eye, making a connection with you. And you know when I first joined so many people told me they said you know Todd it's about the connection it's about the connection and I don't think I fully appreciated that when I first joined but after probably dozens if not hundreds of focus groups, interactions with customers and you know you really start to see how meaningful even a couple second interaction can be when you actually get to know somebody. Well at Sam's Club we have the same vision. You may not be handing somebody a cup of coffee but you're helping them make a transaction. You're helping them connect with an item. You're helping them solve a need state that they had before. And so our goal at Sam's Club is actually with our associates and when we think about technology, what we're trying to do is we're trying to remove the mundane, the cumbersome task, the routine, the things that pull you away from actually being able to create that connection because that's where the magic is. That's the differentiated experience. That's the deeper connection. That's the membership loyalty that you get. All of that comes from the the connection that you have. Actually at Sam's Club and Walmart as well, we we say that we're people-led and tech-powered and that's the exact goal we're trying to get to is leverage the technology. Zello being a great example of that, but leverage the technology to create the connection and and that happens through that human interaction.

Soroosh: Yeah. I love what you're saying. I think in my role as a as a father, we talk about this this connection thing and I'm raising three boys. And you teach these boys that that making connection, making eye contact, speaking with confidence, right? Like putting your head up and and just showing that you you respect that other person in a way that building this human connection is so powerful. So at Zello, we're obviously passionate about the power of just raw voice, right? And the need to communicate again whether it's in our personal lives, but in this case in our in our professional lives, running a store atmosphere and your frontline workers, your associates having this need to instantly communicate with one another, right? Like connection is certainly very personal. It's very eye contact, but it's also just communication. And I think in a world that's more and more headed towards digital and texting and just sort of that whole experience of 15-second reels, like these connections that happen are the most meaningful things that people still, I think, just sort of hang on to or or experience in a way that's different.

Todd: Yeah. Both from associate to member as well as associate to associate. I think actually Zello was the one that presented me with the data first where when we were looking at it, we found out how many interactions you had, how you engaged with your manager, how you engaged with other associates when you actually first onboarded was one of the things that translated to how happy were you in your job, how much did you engage, how long did you stay with a company and it it just again it speaks to the power of connection and a connectivity.

Soroosh: On that note, I think what I'm excited about in the future of our partnership together is taking that to the next level when you can start to sort of gain insights on what are they communicating about? What's the tone of the conversation? Is the associate stressed? If they're stressed, they might not be giving the best experience to the member who's in the store. I think just gaining that, that's obviously where Zello thinks we're sort of headed in terms of what we can do, the value we can provide to Sam's and our customers. But yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see sort of how that evolves. Not too long ago, I got the chance to go listen to Doug, your, you know, outgoing CEO. He had a Q&A and one of the things he talked about in that Q&A was a story that stuck with me a little bit about how one of their customers in one of their Walmart stores, don't remember what part of the country, would come into the store after her cancer treatments every single time because when she came into the store, the relationship she had with the associates was one of the most meaningful experiences. So like over the years of shopping at the same store with the same associates had built this sort of emotional connection which that was like that's what she needed.

Todd: Yeah.

Soroosh: And and I remember walking away from that being like man Walmart Sam's Club like this is different being people-led tech-powered is not just a buzzword for you guys. And I think again like because our mission is so close to that in terms of just using voice to connect people there's something there that that really I again just resonated for me. So massive organization, 600 clubs…

Todd: 601 now!

Soroosh: 601 clubs…

Todd: Just opened Tempe.

Soroosh: I meant to say 600 plus, sorry. Tempe, Arizona, here we are, shout out, 601, 100,000 plus associates. How do you keep an organization that large aligned, walking lock step together, aligned to strategy?

Todd: It's a tough question, especially in my role when I think about what I'm doing, there are so many things going on. I probably don't even know half of them. And so for me it starts with what's the vision? What are fundamentally we here to do? And we're here to provide value, to provide an assortment, to provide trust, and to provide experiences that make our membership worth it. And so, it doesn't matter whether I'm sitting in a product review, it doesn't matter if I'm touring a club, it doesn't matter if I'm talking with my team in a regular team one-on-one, we are always trying to calibrate ourselves and what is the mission that we're doing and how does everything tie up. I think the click down from that actually kind of goes back a little bit to what we were talking about with the consulting approach as well, which is what problem are we solving? It is so easy. I mean, we're sitting here at NRF and there's thousands of vendors that are here that are all providing solutions. And the question is not could you make that solution work. The question is what problems do you have that are getting in the way of your mission and what is the right solution for that. So making sure that you start from a problem centric lens make sure that you maximize your outcome on the end. And then the last thing I would say is it just has to be a red thread that gets pulled through everything. This isn't a one-and-done activity. This isn't something that you bring up once and you stop talking about it. I talk about outcomes in every one of my meetings. I ask about problems in every one of my meetings and it always gets recalibrated to that mission that we serve as a company. And so by making that a thread, all of a sudden it's going to percolate throughout the organization. People are going to talk the same language and everybody is going to realize that that is the common base that we've got to start for.

Soroosh: Let's talk about the associates. One of the best ideas you've ever heard come from the club or the associate?

Todd: Our founder, Mr. Sam, he actually said the best ideas do come from the field. And they absolutely do. Before I even talk about the ideas, I'm actually going to talk about our approach to that. Every single one of our in-club applications, and I mean all of them, we've either got a button in the upper right hand corner or in the left-hand corner. And right there, you can provide feedback. That feedback can be I don't think this is working as it's intended. It could be that there's an opportunity or it could be I think that there is a larger issue that you all need to address. Because collecting that feedback, you have to be intentional about that before you can actually really dig into the ideas. And we are extremely intentional about it. When somebody fills out that feedback, it goes directly to my team, the entire product team. It goes to the entire engineering team and it goes to the operators that are actually driving this as well, our ops transformation team. Super important to be intentional about it. In terms of the ideas, there's probably a thousand that I could name. It's everything from how can you run a better club where we've got this application. It's called "Own Your Inventory." And this is where you manage the actual inventory that you have in the club. You can print price signs. You can set the location. You can replenish more. Basically say bring it from, we call it the steel, but it's kind of the equivalent of a back room. Bring that back down to the floor to replenish whatever the sellable goods are. They said, you know, it sure would help to understand the margin of these products. That's an idea that came from our field. And sure enough, like when we look at the data, it actually helps us be better merchants. It helps us be better operators. We've had ideas on how to improve claims. A lot of the times we were having to claim out basically, meaning we couldn't sell it and we had to do something else with it. And so we had individuals that were telling us if you made a couple of tweaks you'd actually be able to liquidate these things which then adds value back to the business which then allows us to keep our prices low. I could name a thousand of these ideas that the associates keep coming up with. But the key is we're always listening because we know it's so important. And again, Zello can help us make that connection as well.

Soroosh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right on. I didn't have to say it myself. I love it. Again, I said it before, but you can just tell that you love what you do and you're passionate about what you do and the culture of Sam's Club permeates. But on that note, like what's one thing in the past that reminded you of why you love what you do?

Todd: Past couple of months, you know, I'm going to I'm going to go a little bit further back and talk about a different one because I think it was so transformative. We talked about experiences being one of the elements that we want to win in the Sam's Club membership model. We launched Scan and Go 10 years ago and Scan and Go is basically it's like a self-checkout on your phone. You never have to stand in a line. You don't have to queue up. You don't have to get out your credit card. You can complete your entire transaction on your phone.

Soroosh: I've used it.

Todd: It's amazing, right? When we looked at the data, what we found out was people were super happy about the fact that we had this capability and then we follow the data all the way through and it says, "Yeah, but then they got super upset that they had to stand in a line at the exit. They had to queue, wait to get their receipt scanned, wait to scan a few items and then go out the door." So the team took on this challenge and they basically said, "We're already using computer vision for inventory intelligence. What's our general stock levels? where are things at, where are items? We're already using it for that. We said, why can't we use that to do that final check at the door, why can't we automate that?" And sure enough, they did. And so what they do now is when you go through a Sam's Club, you're walking through one of these blue archways. And we're using computer vision to automatically verify the transaction. And the results are incredible. 80% of the time, 80% of our members can actually walk through without any friction. No lines. Whether you scan and go, a belted register, self-checkout, it doesn't matter. Like we have the ability of helping people get an even better even faster experience. And when you step back and you look at that from 30,000 ft, that's really at scale. 601 clubs across 100,000 plus square foot facilities. It's basically the first in retail where you can have a no stop, no queue, just move on out the door as soon as you're ready. It's incredible. Fully automated.

Soroosh: It is incredible. And you know why the other reason it's incredible is because you don't go to Sam's Club to buy a single product. You go to Sam's Club and usually walk out of there with two or three carts full of stuff.

Todd: And what we're finding now is actually people used to think that we were this like bulk retailer. And what they thought was, yeah, you go to Sam's to really just stock up for the quarter or whatever the answer is. And what we found is the more convenient the the better experience that we make each shopping journey, what we're doing is we're actually increasing the frequency. We're increasing the ability for people to come in for top-up trips too.

Soroosh: That makes sense. Yeah. It’s changed it for them.

Todd: Amazing. And you back that with this curated merchandise that we have and all of a sudden now you've got the trust and you say, "I know if I go to Sam's, I'm going to get great goods. I'm going to have great support through our associates. I'm going to have a great experience." And it's this winning self-fulfilling cycle. We love it.

Soroosh: Man, that's great. I love it. It's a great story and and an evolution that's very real and that I've actually seen myself. And so, it's fun to hear from your perspective. All right. you've kind of hinted at this a few times already, but regardless of how great technology is or what AI is and and you know will do for us, you know, I think the the human experiences will permeate the entire time. And then maybe first talk about one thing that technology won't replace and maybe it's on the same theme. I know we're tiptoeing into the technology topic, but what's one thing that technology is not going to replace here?

Todd:
Connection. Empathy. Human-to-human engagement. It cannot be beat. I think we're seeing it now more and more, especially with social media being where it is and other things. People want to connect. They want real time experiences. I actually uh was sitting through something a while ago and they said, I think physical mail is coming back as a thing where, you know, historically it used to be everything was through mail, then we went to email, then we went to digital and other forms. They're actually saying now that even physical mail might be making a comeback right now because people want that touch, they want that engagement, they want that real authentic experience.

Soroosh: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, the more digitally connected we are, the more everybody's alone. And so going back to some of the basics of again what we talked about at the very beginning, just we're we're humans, social beings that that need that. So even like a handwritten postcard. I mean I actually do one of my favorite times of the year is the holidays when all of a sudden I get all of these postcards from all of the friends and family that that I know, to your point.

Todd: It's why that people-led, tech-powered component is so important. The technology doesn't replace. The technology makes us better. It helps us get to a solution quicker. It helps us get a better insight. It helps us deliver against what a member wants even more. But that human connection, that human-led component, it’s invaluable.

Soroosh: All right. So, how is AI going to change the way retail teams connect?

Todd: I would back up a minute. I would say what is the purpose of retail, right? What is the purpose of what we're trying to do? We are fundamentally trying to shorten the distance between consideration and purchase. That's extremely important for us. We want to make sure that like from when you think about hey there's something that I want to do there's something that I want to get there's some project that I want to undertake that you can actually find the right things that fulfill that need that desire that whatever the case is. I think Gen AI and AI are tools that can help us massively shorten that distance if you start, let's call it, agentic shopping. If you start looking at agentic shopping and you start with let's say a home improvement project, right? Well, depending on the home improvement project you may need to buy new tools. You can shorten that distance. You can use that context to actually drive a little bit more about this. If you think about, you know, maybe you talked about your children, if they're having a birthday party, sure, you can go Google balloons and you can do something else. And historically, we would be able to say balloons are often purchased with candles or something like that. But far better than that would be like, hey, if you're setting up a birthday party, here's the things that you want to consider. Is there a specific theme that you want? And it turns into this conversational engagement that helps you dial in your needs and shorten that distance between consideration and purchase. I think that's powerful.

Soroosh: I think from a personal experience standpoint, you know, we we saw yesterday John and Sundar talk about sort of revealed the Gemini partnership and where we're headed there and just this idea of removing all the friction because how many times when I had that DIY project,

Todd: Yeah.

Soroosh: did I go to Walmart? Or Sam's? Walmart usually in this case. And then come home and be like, "What the hell?" Go back to Walmart. Come home and then it's like the third time and you quit. Right? So the more it can like AI can help us sort of put the story together that it sort of knows because it's getting to know us and knowing what we're doing and the task. It's phenomenal. And it's it's about efficiency. It's not about to me I think you can maybe look at and say, "Oh they're just trying to sell you more." No, you're trying to make life simpler and easier and quicker.

Todd: So I think it all comes from context. Like if you look at what ML was and then even before ML and recommendation engines, it was basically looking for associations. It was looking for correlations. That has no context whatsoever. That's just probability. It's just, you know, looking for those items that frequently appear together, but you don't know why. It could be a fluke. It could be something else. Gen AI and AI is now starting to bring in context. And that, to your point, helps you build the right basket, helps you add more than one item, helps you think through problems, helps you figure out what else you could be missing. And then it also helps you dial in and what is the best thing within that consideration set that you should actually go and purchase.

Soroosh: Yeah. Great. If there was one frontline challenge, that you could think about and solve, what would it be?

Todd: I think always making sure that the inventory is out and readily available for members. I mean, we're a core retailer. If you're talking about in the clubs, that's probably the single most important thing. We have that curated assortment. And what we want to do is we want to make sure that the right price, the right item, the right location so that you have a consistent reliable experience with these great items appearing as a hero. That's probably the number one priority. When I go forward and I think a little bit more about what can this be, people are more personalized. People are more discerning in what they're looking for. And I think the fact that we've got Scan and Go, that great tool that's on your phone and our adoption of Scan and Go is approaching 40%. That means that we've got a device in people's hands that's ready that we can surface up some of those great AI insights. We can help make a more personable trip. We can help them find the things that's right for them. Whether it's things that are gluten-free, whether it's country of origin or anything else, like we have this ability of making sure that that inventory appears consistently in a trustworthy manner, the way that members really want to receive it.

Soroosh: All right. I'm going to ask one last question before we move into the wrap-up. Let's talk about Gen AI, like whatever you can sort of share in terms of directionally. Where is Gen AI going? How does it relate to your clubs? Is there something that's like key to what your strategy is in 2026 that you could share?

Todd: Yeah, absolutely. Gen AI fundamentally helps us develop quicker, make better decisions, get better insights, deliver incremental capabilities. It is absolutely critical to our strategy and there's not any one place. We made the news not too long ago where we actually giving all of our frontline managers a chat GPT license or Gen AI license. And you think about just the ways they can use that, right? They can upload data because it's on an enterprise instance. They can ask questions. You could take out the camera. You could take a picture of something and say, "What opportunities do I have to increase sales? What could I do to improve the user experience? What do you see wrong with this scenario?" Like there's so many different ways because the technology just takes in so much that it's giving you it's it's a consultant in your pocket all the way back to our original conversation.

Soroosh: That's exactly right.

Todd: So that's front line. We actually have an integration with Zello. You all helped us with that and it's actually integrating with something that we called Ask Sam. Ask Sam being this interactive voice assistant, right? That's now using Gen AI and that's finding a way of becoming even more relevant because now all of a sudden you don't have to just search for the things that we programmed into it, right? Now we can look at our entire repertoire of documents and and you know, whatever the case may be, references and it can actually incrementally add capabilities. It fundamentally magnifies the value that we're delivering to our associates. From a dev perspective, it's helping us develop quicker. It's helping us iterate on designs. It's helping us get to better insights. When we look from an analytics perspective, it's helping us understand things that we might not have seen before. It's helping us explain things. And all of this is actually accelerating the the differentiated experience that we can deliver. We're trying to be on the cutting edge of this. I believe we are. I mean it is ingrained in my team. We're constantly leveraging the tool. We are trying to figure out how it can be a superpower that helps us accelerate faster because we believe Sam's Club is a differentiated model and Gen AI is going to help us stay there.

Soroosh: Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't think you're just trying, Todd. I think by trying you you are like you said. And I think it takes this constant we're going to always try and we're going to try and improve and we're going to be on top of being people-led, tech-powered.
It shines through and through. So that's great. Hey, thank you for sharing all of that. We're going to wrap up with maybe just a couple of questions. First question is what advice would you give to somebody starting a career in retail right now?

Todd: Two pieces of advice probably. The first one is get into the locations. For us it's clubs. You've got to understand the business. This is not something that you should be at 30,000 ft that you should be in some corporate office or in your home office. Get to the front line. So the conversation we had earlier, that's where the good ideas are coming from. That's where the experience is living. An ironic thing for me is every time we launch a new product. I am constantly amazed how people use it in a way that I never anticipated, never expected. Sometimes it means that we missed something. Sometimes it means that there was incremental value that we never saw. But the only way you get that is if you can actually live the experience. And you've got to go there. It's not a once a year activity. You need to be intimately familiar with retail. That's the first advice that I would give. I think the second thing is just stay hungry. Keep asking yourself those questions of what is the strategy? What problems are getting in your way? And then seek to explore what else is out there. You know, we're sitting at NRF, thousands of vendors here all offering, you know, different solutions for different things. There are so many resources that are out there now that you cannot become complacent. You've got to keep exploring. You've got to keep learning. You've got to keep growing and you've got to stay humble because there is so much that's happening right now and Gen AI is only accelerating that. Like that's one of the biggest struggles I have. How do you keep up with everything that's going on, right? Like I'm sure you have the same issue.

Soroosh: You have to try every day. Yeah, that's really great advice. I'm going to take this clip and make sure I share with my kids because that advice is not just for retail to your point. Like whatever you're getting into in life, right? You really need to get on the front line of it.

Todd: Absolutely.

Soroosh: Experience it, know it.

Todd: Absolutely.

Soroosh: Otherwise, you're not going to do a good job of just sort of, you know, you're you're part of that. Being hungry, uh, is the perfect transition into my last question for you. I mean, this concept of being thirsty or hungry or just like wanting to do more, accomplish more for me like goes hand in hand with this concept of just always acting urgently. Right? Like what you can do today, why are you waiting for tomorrow? Like what you can get done this week and then sort of constantly. So like this theme of being urgent, productive in order to just make progress as quickly as you can. For me, it's almost a thing that like keeps me up at night. I want to hear that from your perspective. Like can you relate to this like urgent theme? How do you operate in this urgent theme? Like how do you keep yourself sane if you do?

Todd: Yeah. I think

Soroosh: I know you keep yourself sane. Sorry.

Todd: Some days, some days. No, look, I love the word urgency and I think that's spot on. I think if you're not urgent, you're going to be left behind, especially in this day and age. For me, it starts with energy and leverage. When I'm trying to in a meeting with somebody else. I always want to give energy to people. I don't want to be the person that's bringing the negativity or just problems without solutions or, you know, just saying things won't work. I I heard a quote the other day and they actually let it and they said, "I don't ever want to start a meeting with “no.” I want to start it with yes, if." It actually might have come from our early speeches in NRF today that we heard the kickoff. But what a powerful statement, right? That's energy that I know that when I'm with you, like you are going to help me. You understand where we're going and help me get there. And that leads to leverage. And leverage is all about can you make it better than when you started? Can you make my life better? Can you make the experience better? Can you make the job function better? Can you make all these other things? And if urgency doesn't overlay both of those things, you're missing the mark. Or our incoming CEO John Furner used to say, uh, loyalty in in retail is the absence of something better. And really, when you think about that, what it really means is you've got to stay urgent. Because there's, again, coming back to this, there's 2,000 people here that are saying, "I've got something better." And there's a lot of hungry people that are out there that are more than happy to take the place of anybody that doesn't want to stay competitive. So, I love the word. It's extremely important to me and for me, I I love to make it a point of reserve time to figure out what's getting in your way. Reserve time to make sure your biggest priorities there. Reserve time to explore because that'll make sure it's kind of a forcing function to make sure that urgency happens.

Soroosh: No, it's great because you can't just be urgent and hungry without taking time to reflect.

Todd: Correct.

Soroosh: and make sure that you're heading the right path and you're doing the right things.

Todd: And I think reflection's huge, right? Like if you don't stop and step back, it's so easy to get caught up in the momentum that you may miss something bigger. You may realize that somebody was going, they were zigging when you were zagging, right? Whatever the case is. So, I love the fact that you said reflection as well. It's super important.

Soroosh: Reminds me of that Alabama song. "I'm in a hurry to get things done. I rush and rush until life's no fun." It's like that that. Maybe I'm aging myself. I do like Alabama.

Todd: No. I love that song.

Soroosh: Reflection in the moment's important. Todd, man, really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for taking some time on that.

Todd: Thank you and truly appreciate the partnership. You all are incredible and look forward to more.

Soroosh: Thanks.

Todd: Thank you.