#10 :: How Prioritizing Mental Health Leads to Success, with Di Di Chan - FutureProof Retail

When your mind is healthy you can curb anxiety and remove your ego, which leads to the kind of listening that’s required to be the leader in your category. President of FutureProof Retail, Di Di Chan shares her top tips for supporting your stakeholders, which have been critical to her team’s success even before the pandemic hit.

FutureProof Retail https://www.futureproofretail.com/

Recorded on 12.01.20

TRANSCRIPT

[Music & Intro] 

Laurie Pillow: Welcome back to the 100 CEO Project podcast. Today we're excited because we've got Di Di Chan. She's the president of FutureProof Retail. If you haven't heard about it, it started in 2013. It's a super cool technology. It's a mobile platform that brings the personalization and convenience of ecommerce shopping to physical stores. Di Di, thanks so much for being here. We appreciate your time today.

Di Di Chan: Thank you for having me here; happy to be part of this.

LP: Di Di, you and your team are literally transforming the customer experience and we're talking specifically about the retail experience. Your mission as we understand it is to “bring the convenience and personalization of online shopping offline in an affordable and customizable way for brick and mortar retailers.” So we know that during a pandemic people still want to get out, they still want to shop but they want to be safe. That's from the customer side - we also know that the legacy grocers, they want to be able to stay in the next, you know, they don't want to take a hit. So can you explain to us really quickly before we jump into some of the insights you have to share a little bit around how your technology works.

DC: Yeah, absolutely. So what we're offering is a touch-free mobile checkout experience. So shoppers can download an app, usually it’s the retailer's app. And you can use your own smartphone, go around in a grocery store, scan products, add to the basket. And when you're finished you can pay with your phone using a credit card or any mobile payment device, you scan a checkout code at the checkout area, bag your groceries, and you can leave. It's that easy. It's like self-checkout but with your own device, you don't have to share a communal touch screen. And you don't have to use the same payment terminal. So it's a complete touch-free experience

3:00

LP: I have a little bit of background that I was reading. This is a McKinsey and Company study where they were basically saying that with respect to the US grocery sales, 98% of their sales happen in stores. And even during COVID, despite, or rather, taking into account curbside pickups in home delivery, that's still 85% of the sales are in stores. So do you yet have information on how your technology is impacting, or let's say motivating, some of the grocery chains to try out new technologies?

DC: Yeah, we actually have the fastest growing in-store technology. Ever. Prior to COVID, we've already reached 10% shopper adoption. Since the pandemic, we’ve reached 30% adoption. And what that is to put into perspective that's already surpassed ecommerce adoption numbers despite the growth of ecommerce joined a pandemic. And just like you mentioned, the reason being is most people still prefer to shop in stores, and especially for essential goods like food. You want to pick your own food, there's a bigger variety, you know where to go get it and get out, you can trust the brand that you like. So despite all of these trends towards online, in person is going to be a stable, especially for essential goods that's very personable that people want to make that trip. And what we're doing is helping retailers to make sure that the in person experience is safe is clean, and is convenient.

4:40

Andrea Spirov: So, this brings me to another thing that you mentioned talking about, which is mental health. I think, I agree, it's nice to get out of the house and you're stuck inside and just to make that trip to the store but I really hate going to the store. I hate the lines and so this is really exciting technology. I want to get back to that point about mental health because I think some of the amazing progress that you've made this year you've attributed to prioritizing mental health for your team. Can you tell us about that?

DC: Yeah, I think 2020 is a very anxiety inducing year for a lot of people both personally as well as professionally. So when the pandemic hit, you know, besides, what do we need to do to make sure everything is safe and clean, there's a big piece of the puzzle and how we operate the business is to make sure that the people and everyone is doing okay. And I think as an entrepreneur, or as any business owner when you operate it's not just about the product or the goods that you're selling, you have to take care of your team, you have to take care of the people, the story, the interpersonal relationships. And I think, mental health is a big topic that's often not discussed, or incorporated as part of the business process, but it is a topic that cannot be ignored during this year. Because I think all of us, collectively, have experienced increasing anxiety and stress. And how do we manage that? And maybe in normal day to day life a lot of time we can cover it up, we can ignore it and still function because there's a lot of toolkits like this our social toolkits or there's ways you go out and you can forget about it. But when you can’t go out as much and you don't have a normal set of toolkits, or distractions that many people typically turn to, then it's a year, I think, that the companies, that the businesses and that the families who are doing really well is when they look inside, they really look at, okay, how can we manage, anxiety? How can we achieve our objectives and our goals? At the same time, at a sustainable pace. At the same time, that is healthy for our growth, our personal growth. I think that personal piece became a really important part of the equation. And that is something we really prioritize for ourselves personally for our team and how we conduct our business practice this year.

7:24

AS: Can you share a little bit about what that looks like in action.

DC: Yeah, for one talking about it. Like we share resources. For example, anxiety is a big thing. And one of the things I learned about anxiety, just like we tackle any problem with business you break it up, you figure out the key point. And the key point of anxiety is often triggered by fear and everything - the emotion that you experience takes place in the brain. So to kind of learn about how the brain process works. The brain takes in some fear triggers and you respond to it and the response is like the fight or flight. So, when you are anxious, often you expect something bad to happen. So you expect the worst outcome of the pandemic because you're looking at the news nonstop, then your body will react as if that thing you're afraid of is already happening now, or an anticipated future. So one way to reduce anxiety, would be to either get some new input, get some happier input or get some input that's not anxiety-triggering. Or to anticipate a happy future, so make plans for something good that you can look forward to. And, you know, take a break from the news and have time outs, where you're not just getting all of this stressful information that there's nothing you can do about it. 

So you can kind of break everything into pieces as a problem as its rational component, and then address it that way. So that's one of the things we've been doing, I've been talking about it not just with my company but with my friends, with families and sharing strategy, sharing what works and sharing good news. Another thing that I really like is ‘give it forward’ initiative. A lot of time when you feel like you're out of control. And you can't do much. You can give in the act of giving can be quite healthy and happy and share a lot of joy. So kind of see okay I'm stressed out right now. What can I do for someone else? Kind of share in the community, and kind of build up. So those are the things we've done, personally, and as a company, and one example is we gave our solution for free at the beginning of the pandemic to essential retailers, and we were able to connect with a lot of organizations and kind of share what we can do and how we can help. So there's a very good culture and environment of community building, of being part of this together that's very honest and kind of touches at the core of this human emotion that we're all feeling and how to address it. And actually, addressing it.

10:27

LP: You also mentioned that listening has become or is very important, as a fundamental thread orfuel of your business. So, could you share with us basically how you've deployed listening, let's say as a tool or as a strategy to improve your business, and the impact that it’s made.

DC: Yeah, absolutely. So we're a B2B retail technology company and retail tech is different, is notorious, have a long sales cycle because retailers, technology is not their core business, their core business is whatever retail goods and products that they're selling. Technology is merely a tool to help their business, perform better or to make their business easier. So if technology becomes a burden, or becomes a distraction, then it's not useful for retailers. And so, in my experience and I've been in this industry for seven years now, there's a lot of companies that come in, and a lot of retail technology companies that come in from the point of view of I see this problem. I can solve it and they come in as this is how we're going to solve retail. And this contributes to the long retail tech sell cycle. Because their technology will not, cannot ever be the star of the business. We’re a B2B so the main star is the original business. So the companies that are successful are companies that actually hear what the retailers want, and is not just what is cool, is what is usefu,l is what is applicable. So one of the things that gave us a strong advantage and how we were able to become the number one scan and go platform in the market is we spend a lot of our time listening to what the retailers want, and they're not a homogenous group. They have different pain points. And the one thing that is common is they want the technology to be easy. They want the technology to be seamless. They want to make their business better. So we had to make our technology, kind of in the background you don't even notice it, but it can seamlessly integrate into their business process, we can make working with us easy. We are the only company in our space that's fully transparent. You can see our pricing model, we don't lock retailers up into multiple year contracts, they can try us out month by month. And in doing so, we can build that trust, and we can keep on communicating and having that communication skills and being able to just listen and respond to what they need, we're able to build the  number one platform with the highest reviews and the most users. So I'm very grateful for this opportunity and that comes from just listening.

AS: What do those feedback loop mechanisms look like? How do you constantly get the feedback? So if someone tries you out what does that next touchpoint look like where you get that feedback from them?

13:36

DC: You know, that's a great question, and an interesting point: we're the only mobile checkout platform that has a user feedback. So at the end of your trip, you can rate each experience, up to a five star, one to five star, and you can write a note to the retailer. So we've actually created a digital customer service platform within a mobile checkout system. Now  this sounds intuitive when I say out loud but nobody else is doing that right now. And this gives us a huge, huge competitive advantage, because a lot of times when you're in the boardroom, or when you're behind the desk in a conference room making up ideas of what would work. It's a hypothesis, you have to test that out in the market, and what really works is a system that works for your shoppers. If your shoppers are happy, then the retailers are happy, then the technology provider is happy. Well, part of that listening philosophy is you also have to listen to your shoppers because they will give you feedback on when the technology is too difficult to use, or when there's a feature they don't really care for or a feature that they really want. And if you don't open up the channels of communication to listen to the shopper, your technology growth limit will be limited by people that's not actively using your technology, and what they imagined would be useful, and there's often a gap between imagination and reality. So having that user feedback is a very good example of a move that enables us to create a custom set of applications that serves retailers and their unique shoppers needs.

15:20

LP: This idea of listening, being your differentiator. And the feedback the way you're getting feedback is, it seems, it's such a simple thing yet so many people don't do it. If you could share one tip around how to deploy listening in a way that's effective to other businesses, what might that be

DC: You have to work on reducing the ego. You have to like to listen. It’s related to, I guess, the earlier question about mental health and everything else, because I think there's a business culture where like the CEO or the founder is this superhero like there's this narrative that's not reality. So a lot of times entrepreneurs come into the world and get into the business world . They're like I have to fit this, you know, stereotype CEO or whatsoever. And by fitting that idea of what you're supposed to be rather than figuring out who you are and work towards what you're good at and what you need to learn, makes people have a harder time listening, because in that idea, listening is kind of a weakness like who's the boss is the person who's talking who's preaching who's lecturing. If you're really confident with who you are, then you can be quiet and you can let other people talk and you can listen and you can respond. You can make mistakes and you can correct it. And I think having open, honest conversations and having conversations like this, and talking about like, this is hard, the business cycle will take a long time, but one of the reasons it's hard is because we're not actually communicating. And to communicate we have to just sit down and say what do you need, I would like to help you. You have to be more humble, I am here, not to be the hero. I am here to help you. I am providing a service. So serve, you know, so I think a lot of business leaders, if they take their mission and just focus on their mission and say I am here to do X, Y, Z, and if the XYZ is to provide a good or service to their clients, versus I am here to make sure I am the most popular CEO or whatever out there that they're going to get vastly different results and it's going to be a lot easier.

18:00

AS: You met your partner in a philosophy club and I'm curious what other kinds of philosophies you live by.

DC: So we met in a philosophy club and we bonded over the value of time. We wanted to maximize human potential by removing frictions in time. And we do that in our work with a product by removing friction in time to give a frictionless checkout experience. And we also do that in our business practice, given the choice of saving more time or saving more money we would always take the efficient path. And by prioritizing the value of time, of our teammates time, of our clients' time, of our partners' time, we're able to create this great ecosystem, and we're able to collaborate more with people. And we're able to save a lot of traditional business practices such as negotiating 5,6,7 times we’re able to be very transparent with our business model we’re able to say, this is what we have to offer this is the best we can do it. And we're able to kind of be very frank in our discussions. And we're able to generate really good results because people like having their time saved and getting to the point right away so that's been really helpful for us personally and professionally.

LP: Di Di Chan, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today. We could go on for for a long time, but in the interest of time, we're gonna wrap right here. Tell people, these other businesses out there who are also trying to serve people safely and in a personal way, how they can get in contact with you guys.

DC: The website is futureproofretail.com and you can click on the Contact Us button and that will go directly to the right email. 

LP: Awesome, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today. You guys thanks so much for joining this episode of the 100 CEO Project podcast, and we'll catch you next time.

LP: Hey, guys, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, please share it with your friends and colleagues who also have to navigate this leadership stuff. As you can see, this project is about to be a mini masterclass in every episode. Best part. It's free. So if you like it, please do us a favor and take a screenshot, share it on social with the hashtag #100CEO. That way we can say thanks and share it in our stories. And finally, if you've got some insights you'd like to share and you're a CEO, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at 100CEOProject.com, or on LinkedIn at the 100 CEO Project. Until next time, keep leading by example.

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Hosted by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Writing and research: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Edited by: Laurie Pillow

Produced by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov