Digital Social Hour
The $20K Mistake 99% of Retailers Make (Adapt or Die) | James Keyes DSH #1033
Mon, 30 Dec 2024
The $20K mistake 99% of retailers make? 😱 James Keyes, former CEO of 7-Eleven and Blockbuster, reveals all! 🎯 Discover how embracing change = opportunity in retail and beyond. Tune in for jaw-dropping insights on: 🔥 The real Blockbuster/Netflix story you've never heard 🏪 7-Eleven's secret sauce for success 🔮 How AI will transform retail (but not replace humans!) 🦈 Turning a David Letterman roast into a viral marketing win Don't miss out on this game-changing conversation! James shares his unique perspective on leadership, adapting to change, and the power of positivity in business. 🚀 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets from industry titans on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🎙️ Join the conversation and level up your business game. 💪 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #JamesKeyes #RetailInnovation #BusinessLeadership #ChangeEqualsOpportunity #businessautomation #retaildisruption #experientialretail #projectmanagement #retailinnovation CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - Your Early Years 06:20 - Blockbuster & Netflix 09:51 - Shift from Physical to Streaming 10:36 - Redbox Innovations 11:40 - Loss Leading Strategies 13:39 - Fresh Daily Deliveries 17:42 - Free Slurpee Day Promotion 24:03 - AI in Retail Transformation 26:10 - Leadership Insights 28:16 - Quoting Yoda Wisdom 31:42 - Managing Ego in Business 34:43 - Where to Find James Online 35:31 - End APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: James Keyes https://www.instagram.com/jkeyesauthor/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the $20K mistake that retailers make?
about what Amazon is. It's a catalog company. I mean, it goes full circle all the way back to where Sears was. They just found a better way to do it. And then eventually there'll be a company that can make it even better, right? Exactly. Change equals opportunity. Sears, had they stayed the course, could have been Amazon today.
Chapter 2: How did James Keyes start his career?
All right, guys. Jim Keys here today. Business legend. Thanks for coming on. Sean, it's great to be here. Yeah, you've been part of some of the biggest companies in the world. Yeah, I've had a few adventures over the years. Incredible, man. How'd that all get started?
I did not take the normal path. I was one of these kids. Literally, I didn't know what business meant. I thought business, when I was in high school, I literally thought business was like typing class. And literally, we had no frame of reference in the small town I grew up in. Where'd you grow up? Grafton, Massachusetts. Never heard of it, so yeah. Yeah, a little tiny town.
Sounds like a small town. Yeah, central Mass. And you get west of Boston about 30, 40 miles. It gets really rural really fast. And so, yeah, I just had no frame of reference. And like so many kids, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, right? I thought, I don't know, maybe if I work really hard, maybe I'd be a doctor or a lawyer. I didn't know. And ended up...
almost by mistake in business because I was planning to try to get to law school somehow, some way. I thought, yeah, that's a career, man. They make a lot of money and they wear suits and it looks sharp. I would have made a terrible lawyer, terrible lawyer. But yeah, I found the business path. And here's the irony. You're an entrepreneur.
Chapter 3: What lessons can be learned from the Blockbuster and Netflix story?
The reason I was successful in business is I'm an entrepreneur. You don't think of that. You think of corporate entrepreneur as almost an oxymoron, right? I mean, there are very few people that see themselves as entrepreneurs in a corporate environment because a corporation will beat the entrepreneur out of most people. It encourages conformity, right?
And it discourages stepping out and taking risk that entrepreneurs do. The irony is all corporations need entrepreneurs. And so my career really was propelled by my willingness to step out and take those risks and be an entrepreneur within a corporate environment. And it paid off. It does work.
I love that. Yeah. Well, they call them intrapreneurs now, right?
Yeah, that's a fancy name for them. Yeah, yeah.
Chapter 4: How has the shift from physical stores to streaming evolved?
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting dynamic because as companies grow, they kind of lose that entrepreneurial flair that started the company.
They do. And here's the irony. I talk a lot about change, and I see change as opportunity. I've kind of coined the expression change equals opportunity. Ironically, the acronym CEO, right? I mean, think about that. It is so powerful that – Every bit of commerce begins and ends with something changes. Someone responds to that change and they get compensated for it, right?
Right.
Chapter 5: What innovative strategies did Redbox implement?
So what happens? Then they get big and they get... afraid to keep changing and someone else says, well, I can do it better. And they stimulate another change and then they get compensated for it. And sometimes that company that started with the response then goes away.
Right.
And, and, and that's unnecessary if you can manage that response to change proactive, confident response to change in a way that makes you virtually an entrepreneur.
Right. And these days you got to change quicker than ever, right? Constantly. Because of technology and all these advancements. Constantly. If you're not embracing AI now, you're kind of falling behind.
Exactly. I've got a great example. I haven't really used, I didn't put it in the book, but Think about when I grew up, we had something called a Sears catalog. You're too young to remember a Sears catalog. I heard of Sears. Yeah. Well, Sears started as a catalog. Okay. Right? So when I was a kid, they didn't have Sears stores all over the place. In fact, in my little rural area, we had a catalog.
So I'd flip through and look at... Um, they had these like, um, Halloween costumes and I wanted to be a Marine, you know, Marine costume in there. And you'd look at all these cool things in the catalog and you'd buy something that would show up at your door.
You would call them and buy it.
Uh, yeah, it was like a, an 800 number that you'd call and you'd order something. and then they would deliver it in a week or something like that. Well, then Sears decided as they got bigger, we need stores to satisfy the demand. And then along comes Walmart, And changes everything, right? They started doing more aggressive pricing and bigger and bigger stores.
And pretty soon Sears went by the wayside. And, well, they're still around, barely. But then what happened? Amazon comes in and says, well, we can do it better. We can go online. But think about what Amazon is. It's a catalog company. I mean, it goes full circle all the way back to where Sears was. Wow. They just found a better way to do it. They just made it better. They just made it better.
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Chapter 6: How does AI transform the retail industry?
Exactly. And that's what change is all about. Change equals opportunity. Sears, had they stayed the course, could have been Amazon today. But when you get big, that inertia sets in. Resistance to change creeps into every organization. And instead of being the Amazon of today, which is ironically where they started, they've pretty much gone away.
Yeah. There's been a few big companies that's happened to you, right? Radio Shack. Yeah. I think Red Lobster is bankrupt right now.
Yeah.
Chapter 7: What are the key leadership insights from James Keyes?
There's been quite a few recently. Yeah.
Blockbuster.
Blockbuster. I wasn't going to bring it up until you did.
No, I mean, I had to. I mean, here's the irony. I'm out there talking about change and I get, of course, you'll post one of these and somebody will be out there going, oh yeah, this is the guy that turned down Netflix for $50 million. And what they don't think through is the real story because there's so much more to learn in the Blockbuster story about change.
Yeah, I want to hear your side of that. So you got presented that deal to buy Netflix. What's going on in your head?
No, I didn't, ironically. But here's where people get their information. We're living in a world of perceptions. I'm going to talk more about perception in a while. But we're living in a world of perceptions where you flip on the internet and you're scrolling through things and you see something and you just react to it. And then you take it as fact.
So on the internet, there is this perception that the CEO of Blockbuster turned down Netflix offer to sell for $50 million. Here's the reality. That happened in the year 2000. In the year 2000, Netflix stock was trading for 79 cents. So what I like to tell people is if you think that was a dumb move to turn them down for 50 million, why didn't you buy the stock at 79 cents a share, right? Yeah.
So it was already public at the time.
It was public. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. But they were doing DVDs by mail and struggling. And so Blockbuster looked at that deal. This is seven years before I got to the company. Got it. This was the year 2000. And they said, we can do the same thing ourselves. And they did. So they had built a DVD by mail business just as Netflix did. And Blockbuster's plan was to stream.
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Chapter 8: What is 7-Eleven's secret sauce for success?
Oh, got it.
You never hear that part of the story. Yeah, I know. People just take, again, perception. I'll take the nickel version of the story and then I'll accept it as real. But there's so much more to learn if someone digs in and gets the truth.
That's interesting because you hear that with Google and Yahoo too. You're like, oh, they could have bought, Yahoo could have bought Google or something, right? Exactly, exactly.
But they don't know.
No one's ever heard Yahoo's side of it.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So many stories.
When was that shift from physical stores to streaming? Was it a specific year, you remember?
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