The Conversion Rate Trap & The "Mowgli" Website: Courtney Lear Wallace on Omnichannel E-Com

Am I ready?

That's the question.

Here we go.

Welcome back to Type A Unhinged, the podcast for the architects of order and the masters

of chaos.

Today's guest has built her career at the intersection of brand e-commerce and the kind

of leadership that actually moves things forward.

Not just the title, but the stance.

She's built her career moving through some of the most recognizable names in fashion

and beauty, from Too Faced to Pink Lily to Kindred Bravely, and most recently landed

as head of e-commerce at Dermalogica, a global prestige skincare brand with one of the most

interesting multi-channel footprints in the industry.

She's someone who sat in the director chair wondering why decisions get made and then

in the C-suite actually making them.

And has a lot.

And has a lot to say about what changes when you cross that line.

Courtney Lear Wallace, welcome to Type A Unhinged.

And Courtney, before we dig in, give the people a little more of the real picture, who you

are and what's your world like right now.

Yes.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so excited to chat today.

So who am I?

That's a big question.

I am an e-commerce nerd.

I've been doing this for 15 years.

My claim to fame is that I started at a time when we were...

I was still experimenting with promotions on MySpace and I was this bright-eyed and

bushy-tailed kid out of college barging into the C-suite going, there's this thing called

Facebook Ads Manager and we should really test it.

And so I've been around for a minute and I do think that I love to give that example

or tell that story because I think it's really been a through line in my career that I just

don't know how to mind my business.

Like I am a bit of a busybody and it's how you learn.

You stay curious and excited and raising your hand to roll your sleeves up and get into

new things, which is how I feel like I have grown in my career and went from really establishing

social media marketing at a now key social media marketing pillar in the industry at

Hot Topic.

Obviously, the teens, the kids are on the cutting edge.

All of those new platforms and how to engage there.

And from there, I went to a brand that is still very near and dear to my heart.

I just got a package on my doorstep two days ago, Unique Vintage.

I was a fan who, again, busybody, reached out on Facebook that like, hey, I love your

brand so much, but there are some things that you're doing that I think you could be doing

better.

Like, no judgment.

Just want to help.

No way.

And I got to the C.

Literally, I was not looking for a job.

I had no agenda.

I was just like, this hurts my heart and I love this brand.

Please do better.

And it got to the owner and CEO.

And it was just one of those serendipitous moments that like, hey, you're smart and you

are my customer.

And you went to USC and got to have this great experience.

Like, I don't care that you've never actually managed an e-com platform or, you know, only

tangentially kind of dabbled in email.

Like, just come on and we'll figure it out.

Yeah.

And it was the best.

It was better than any master's program I ever could have done.

It was the best baptism by fire.

I'm just rolling my sleeves and building that brand with her.

And yeah, I think that's where I really got a taste of being a generalist.

And again, just getting my hands on everything.

And so from there, I was at, you know, Too Faced Cosmetics.

I've done Kendra Bravely.

You know, now I'm at Dermalogica.

And I truly just am so spoiled.

I have been at all these brands that I absolutely love.

And I just really enjoy.

I do what I do.

So that's me.

I'm a nerd at heart.

You know, they say if you do what you love, you never work a day.

Right.

So, yeah, I love just getting into things and learning and experimenting.

And I'm in a place where that spirit really thrives.

So that's me.

All right.

Well, let's kick it off with some questions here.

Dermalogica is a different kind of e-commerce challenge.

You've got the D2C side, Ulta, Sephora, Professional Skin Therapist Channel, Hand in Stone.

You're not just running a business.

You're not just running a business.

You're not just running a business.

You're not just running a website.

What does owning e-commerce actually mean in that kind of multi-channel environment?

It's a difference, right?

It is a change.

I went from a stint in, you know, kind of private equity back, like D2C primary players,

where I was bell of the ball, right?

E-com first, all decisions made based on what e-com needs and, you know, everything else

kind of fall in line.

So it's a little bit of a humbling experience.

But, you know, honestly,

jokes aside, it really just highlights how important collaboration is, not only from

a business standpoint of kind of understanding, you know, what the other hand is doing at

any given time, but also just that relationship building and internal communication, like

really being involved in an org where you don't have a favorite child, right?

It is very innate in the way that we operate.

And work together and our e-com baddies teams chat that I created, you know, where we are

all kind of working together for all of our different digital, you know, programs to make

sure, again, that we're having a good time with it and we're communicating.

But it truly is this, we're all moving forward in the same direction and kind of holding

hands and trying to figure it out together.

We really want e-com to be the truest vision.

And, you know, kind of content hub and education space for the brand, which also pulls in one

of our other key channels, which is our professional service channel.

So we are professional grade skincare.

The skincare was created in the treatment room.

The product line was born out of we're educating, we're, you know, sending these professional

skincare therapists into the world and they wanted to be armed with Dermalogica product,

right?

Right.

Connecting that education and that authority and that trustworthiness in the space on dot

com and bringing that PST to life on dot com is also really important to us.

We talk a lot about all boats rise, right?

If I'm running a full funnel campaign and that is how they learned about the brand and

they sign up for email on dot com, but they have some Sephora points that they want to

redeem.

Amazing.

As long as they are a Dermalogica customer, as long as they are brand loyal, that that's

what's most important.

The challenge then becomes how do you tie all of that back to data, right?

Like how do we really understand who that customer is and where they're bouncing around

to?

And I think that's what a lot of brands are still trying to figure out.

Makes sense.

So when you have that many baddies in a channel, if you've got multiple priorities and maybe

they all roll out.

To a company, okay, our rock goal, whatever, whatever you call them, how do you determine

with limited resources, maybe on a dev side or something like that?

Who gets, who gets the ultimate say?

How do you make those decisions?

It's a democracy in the truest sense, right?

Like, so there really is a lot of, you know, we joke, like it's like horse trading, right?

Like, okay, well, Ulta moved up their 21 days of beauty event.

We thought it was going to be this month.

Now it's this month.

So we're going to do our friends and family over here.

Amazon.

What are you doing?

And do we know yet?

And so even just like that example of trying to plan out promotional calendars, the D to

C, you know, brand.com has most flexibility.

So I do think that, you know, we end up being the gymnast of the bunch, right?

Like, where do we need to twist ourselves to, you know, fit in everywhere else.

But I think if you really have the spirit of all boats rise, you can trade some dollars,

right?

It's thinking in dollars and cents and trying to be as practical.

And not, you want to be protective in the sense that obviously you own your business,

but you don't want it to make a, make it about like, well, if brand.com is succeeding,

then I'm good, right?

Because if everyone isn't winning, none of us are winning.

It is a little bit of that bigger picture approach that I think I am in a unique situation

because of my background and because, you know, I've, I've owned a channel, but I've

also been in those C-suites.

You know, behind closed doors, big decision-making.

So kind of understanding that and not being so precious about, well, I want to be the

hero.

I want our thing to work the best, right?

It really is that.

Which can sometimes be easy to fall into too.

Like everyone wants their channel to succeed, right?

So.

Oh, yes.

It's your baby, right?

And it's like, and we're, we're people, right?

So you do get that like sense of pride of like, well, wait, you stepped on my toes and

now I look bad.

Right.

Like you just made my business look bad.

I didn't plan for this, you know?

And so it does.

It's one of these like soft skills or one of these things that you can't necessarily

map out on paper.

You have to bring it into action in the way you operate.

And especially, you know, being at a director level or owning a channel, you've got to

manage up, right?

So if you're close with your peers, if you've got your leadership baddies by your side and

you, you're, you're kind of getting ahead of some of these.

Unknowns, then there's this, okay, we discussed this.

We've got a bogey coming.

Here's our plan.

Here's how we think it's going to pan out.

And this is why it's still best for the business overall.

That sounds like kind of at the root of that is reminding everyone that the customer is

brand loyal, not channel loyal.

And so if you bring everyone to the table and you have those constructive, you know,

conversations where you are showing the math that you're sure your channel is going to

suffer X dollars, but look what we're going to get over here.

And as a brand, that means.

You know why it's, that's really cool to have.

Um, one thing that stood out to me when you were explaining, uh, your current role is

that you Dermalogica as a brand has both a product line and professional services, and

you play a part in overseeing part of that, right?

So one question I have for you is, are there interesting ways that surprised you where

those professional services or brick and mortar has complimented a lot of, you know, the digital

strategy or footprint?

Absolutely.

I love that.

I love that question because there, there's a very, a few very key things that it brings

up.

So one, just take kind of taking a step back from a brand level and kind of a brand representation.

One of our brand pillars is human touch.

How do you bring that to life on a digital platform, right?

Like how do you really bring that through a phone screen or computer screen?

And that is something that is very real to us day to day from the content that we've

been sharing.

So I think it's really important that we bring forward the assets that we have on site.

You know, some things that even, even as basic as every page where we were explaining a product

or service needs to have hands on face.

Like we need to bring forth this idea that like, it is very tactical.

It is very real.

And that there is this like professional on the screen with you.

Um, and then that kind of goes multiple layers deeper.

So we've got kind of the assets.

Um, then we,

we also have tools.

We have a skin mapping tool.

Uh, if you go into a Dermalogica treatment room,

the first thing,

um, a professional skin therapist will do is do something called a skin mapping.

So they go through a kind of series of visual scans and questions,

um, to really understand your current skin health state and you know,

what your unique skincare needs are.

We have essentially a digital tool to replicate as best we can on the screen,

that same type of tool.

Um, so we have that available.

It literally is a camera that like you have to be in a well-lit area and it will pick

up.

It's a bit of a humbling experience when the computer is telling you like,

oh, I see your dry skin and fine lines.

Um, but it is really helpful.

Um, so that is a, a kind of digital representation of that skin mapping experience,

uh, on site.

Um, then what's really important and for us, something that we're really trying to bring

forth even more.

We actually have virtual professional skin therapists that are full-time employed for

Dermalogica.com that at any time, if you need to chat with someone or even have a virtual skin

consultation that is available.

So exactly.

So again, bringing together that like digital experience, but real professionals, real people,

um, is very real for us.

And one of the,

one of the reasons it is outside of the fact that it is just a unique, you know, uh, a

differentiator of the brand and in core to our, our brand values and pillars from a very

practical data standpoint, pretty much a fourth of our new customers come from the treatment

room.

That's how I found out about Dermalogica.

My first Dermalogica experience was a facial that I got at hand in stone.

It's like, why does my skin feel like a newborn baby?

What is this magic?

And it was,

Dermalogica, right?

So full circle moment.

I joke that my first day walking into the building for my interview, you could look around the

building and see who had worked there for years.

They like were like angels, just like glowing, like the perfect skin that is in that building.

It really, really works.

Um, and so we know once we get that product in hand and create that cycle, that that's

where our loyalty comes from.

It makes my job.

It makes my job.

I'm so spoiled.

It makes my job a lot easier, right?

Like when you've got the product to stand on, that really speaks for itself.

It's like, okay, how do I just get it in their hand?

And then I'm selling, you're selling me, you're selling me on the screen.

I've got you.

You let me know.

We'll do a little skin mapping sesh.

I'll get, I'll get you.

Yeah.

I'll get you what I need.

I, uh, I think it's a, my first interaction with Dermalogica was also from a spa on a

facial, but it was like one of my first ones ever.

And I mean, I was in my twenties.

Early twenties.

Yeah.

Today I could use that.

Well, okay.

Switching topics a little bit here.

Um, you've gone from hot topic to unique vintage, to two-faced, to pink lily, to kindred

bravely, to Dermalogica.

Looking back, what did you not know you didn't know?

And when did it finally click?

Ooh, this is one that I'm glad I learned really early on.

And I think it's probably going to tie in.

To this spirit of collaboration that I, I really take so close to heart is, uh, again,

coming into unique vintage, I was pretty fresh to, you know, kind of full funnel e-comm.

It was the first time I had taken on, you know, a site replatform.

It was the first time I was really building, you know, CRM flows and we had to build so

much from scratch.

So at unique vintage, one of the, the big projects.

That we recognized pretty early on was that we had, uh, this really kind of custom built

to hell website.

Um, and it was, it was time to like move to, you know, a, a big girl platform.

Just to give my favorite analogy was when we brought in an integration team to start

looking at the code and, you know, how we were going to start to migrate things over.

Um, but just like look of horror on this poor woman's face.

And she's like, it's like.

If you found a baby in the woods.

And it's been raised by wolves and the baby thinks it's a wolf.

It doesn't know that it's a baby like, okay.

So we've got our, we've got our work cut out.

A jungle book situation here.

Literally.

Mowgli.

Yeah.

So it was our Mowgli website.

Um, and we're like, okay, we must, we must refine you dear Mowgli.

We have really good traffic.

We had really good brand loyalty.

Our conversion was abysmal because the site was clunky and slow and had all of these bottlenecks.

And so it's like, okay, the, the best way to handle all of these things in one fell swoop

is to go to a new platform.

So we went through this very difficult, arduous journey of re-platforming.

So it was night and day.

Absolutely beautiful.

The, you know, functionality was where we needed to be.

Filters worked like all of these fancy things that, you know, were such a struggle for us

before.

And we got all that up and running ready for conversion rate to double overnight.

And wait, why, why didn't it?

What's.

Oh, no.

What's wrong?

What did we do wrong?

And I, again, new in my career was so focused on my goal conversion, right?

We've got to increase conversion and so focused on my side of the world that we didn't actually

step back.

I didn't actually step back to think about, well, what's going on in merchandising and

do we have the right product?

And are we seasonally relevant?

And do we have enough stock?

And, you know, oh yeah, we still have to think about our traffic campaigns, even though,

you know, conversion is better, right?

The site's better.

So it's so funny to say out loud now and obvious now, but I did have to learn very early on

in my career that you cannot do it in a silo.

If you do not have the right mix of everything else around it that goes into acquiring a

customer and retaining a customer and building a business.

The basics of operations and stock and seasonality and having the right product and having the

right marketing campaigns going and having the right PR and all those multi-channel pieces,

you cannot flip a switch.

You have to be collaborative.

You have to make sure that you're all on the same page and you're all working towards the

same goal because what should happen at that time is, yeah, the buying team should have

known when we were ready to go and had a new collection, you know, ready to launch.

You know, to tie it all together, increase marketing spend right after the launch.

I know all these things now.

I did not know then.

So kind of related, but, you know, throughout your journey going from primarily owning a

channel, marketing director, et cetera, is there a metric that you felt like you used

to live or die by, but now you're like, wow, that was a distraction.

Now that you have like the full picture, you know, and you're making some of the big calls,

what would it be?

Excellent segue.

Conversion, right?

Yeah.

Conversion rate is such a dangerous metric for .com because it's a ratio, right?

And it is one kind of litmus for many things that are happening.

So to live and die by conversion rate is to kind of cut off a lot of the other things that

really play into that.

So perfect example.

And another one where I had to manage up and really kind of tell this story, you know,

to a C-suite of like, yes, yes, conversion rate is down.

It's down 20% here on fire.

What is wrong?

Something's wrong with the site.

Something's broken.

Well, wait, wait, wait.

Traffic's up 40.

So that's still a net positive, right?

And we have just launched this really big kind of top of funnel campaign.

We're going to get more unqualified traffic.

This is how the cycle works.

You know, not every customer coming to the site is ready to buy in that moment.

Do you want that?

That's right.

And you know, do you want a 20% increase in conversion?

Because sure, we could, we could cut off all this top of funnel traffic and get you a really

shiny conversion rate.

But what does revenue look like?

What does LTV look like?

So yeah, conversion rate, conversion rate is a really good health metric.

It's a really good canary in the coal mine, right?

But you have to then really understand what is driving it.

To goal yourself solely on conversion is to miss out on the big picture.

You need conversion and context.

Love that.

I like that.

Put it on a pillow.

Even, even less of a tell.

Like it's so easily distracting.

So when you're looking at that for like email and SMS, maybe valid, like did the message

resonate?

Was the content in there correct?

But at the same time, like.

They came to the site and they're already a customer of ours, or at least they're engaged

enough to be on the list and they didn't purchase like, okay, there's something else wrong.

That's just a distraction.

Yeah.

You know?

Well, and it's funny too.

I feel like click-through rate is similar from a conversion standpoint, right?

I can give you a killer click-through rate if I send to 20 people that are really engaged,

right?

Right.

Until I have 20 best customers who open every email, I'll give you a hundred percent click

rate guaranteed.

Yeah.

But.

Scale.

But your revenue.

Right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So we were talking earlier before, uh, before the pod and you had talked about a moment

at Two-Faced where there was this go, no-go meeting and everyone was laying out their

pros and cons, but nobody was really making the call and you had spoke up.

What made you do it?

What made you speak up in that moment?

And what did that teach you about?

Leadership and, and maybe like your style of leadership?

Yeah.

Remember when I told you I was a busybody?

I do.

I start making tick marks.

Yeah, exactly.

I just like, just check all the times that Courtney, uh, jumped out of her lane.

Uh, no, I think, you know, I, I, I remember, it's funny that, that we talked about that

because, um, I actually met with an old coworker for brunch recently and we're talking about

our careers and, you know, I guess.

This is what we do at brunch, talk about careers and like leadership, uh, qualities, but that's

what we were doing.

Um, and she actually brought up this, this incident, this, you know, I didn't even remember

that this happened.

Like when she brought it up, I was like, oh yeah, I do remember that.

Um, but I think it kind of just goes to show that true leadership comes from kind of seizing

the moment, right?

Like reading the room and understanding that a leader isn't necessarily.

Yeah.

The highest title in the room, right?

Um, a leader should always be invested.

They should always have skin in the game, but sometimes a room is truly looking for

someone to make that first step.

There was this moment where it's like, okay, I can feel it.

Like I'm, I'm anxious.

I'm like, I want to jump in here because I'm like, it's on the tip of our tongues guys.

And we just need, we all need, someone needs to say it out loud.

It really is this.

I,

I value your opinions and what you are bringing to the room, but we've all got to, we've got

to gather all those things and now make a decision and go in a direction.

Um, and I think a lot of times that is, that is really just the, that confidence, that

vote of confidence that, that people need to feel even better and more resolved about

what they already know.

Nate and I, when we were working together, we had a coworker who,

not in a team meeting setting, but, um, a little bit after I was during a busy season.

So it was, you know, almost like a 24 seven work day had individually stopped a couple

of our C-suite and told, I told them how he felt about a particular situation and operations.

And the next morning he comes in and tells us, guys, I think I made a mistake.

That was his wording.

But when, because he did that, because he wasn't afraid.

He wasn't afraid to say like, we just need to make a decision one way or the other.

Like, I don't even care.

This is just killing us all going back and forth.

We had a meeting with everybody in the C-suite and directors.

And it was like, Hey, what do you guys think?

Which way do we need to go?

And by the end of that meeting, a choice was made conversation.

Yeah.

And that's an excellent example because sometimes leadership is just getting everyone in the

same room.

Can we all just, can we all just say the quiet part out loud?

Like we're all complaining about this thing behind the scenes.

We all know that there's an issue.

Like how do we just hash it out and resolve it?

That's a good pivot to kind of like your C-suite role when you were at Kindred Bravely.

And you kind of finally got to understand why the decisions were being made versus just

here's the decision execute.

So you had that CFO view, the COO view and that P&L reality.

What's the thing directors and VPs are most wrong about?

When?

That they're frustrated with leadership above them.

Ooh, that's a good question.

I won't even go as far to say that they're wrong.

They are likely ill-informed.

And I think that that honestly is more on the C-suite than it is on the director VP

level.

Like the best orgs have that transparency and that two-way conversation.

Okay.

And when you have your, your troops questioning your leadership, like there's a whole slew

of problems that come downstream from that.

Right.

So, you know, no org is perfect.

I'm not even going to say that I got it right all of the time, but this idea that you do

have this purview and you have this, this lived experience of like, well, what, what

would I have really wanted to know in this scenario, in this situation?

And using that to then filter down what it could obviously with C-suite, there's a lot

of confidential stuff too, but there is definitely a, a, a way you can communicate to get everyone

again, everyone on the same bandwagon, everyone on the same page, moving in the same direction

because I've never been a leader that is like, do this because I said, so I'd say this to

my team all the time.

And I say it jokingly, but I'm like, tell me if I'm being crazy.

Am I being crazy?

Like, is this insane?

Like, am I calming up?

Yeah.

Call me out literally.

And so we do, we, we have, that's how I build this rapport and I built this relationship

with my teams.

Um, but it's because I've had my hand in all of it.

I, I say, I say this to my team all the time.

I'm like, I I've done all of your jobs.

So like, I, I will never ask you to do something that I wouldn't have done if I were in your

place, but you tell me if there is something I'm missing, right.

Do I have a blind spot about current priorities?

And you've got this other.

Project that you're drowning in that, you know, you've been behind the scenes about

and now I'm piling something else on like, Whoa, okay.

Let's have a conversation about priorities and what is going to be most impactful to

the business.

Do you really encourage that, that two-way conversation?

Because I, I have people on my team who are smarter than me about things, right?

Like I like to joke that I'm, I'm a generalist.

So I know enough to be dangerous about a lot of things.

I love that.

You tell them the why.

But it's also like.

Crucial.

But then also the what am I missing is that second piece that I don't think everybody

does?

Right?

And maybe they're afraid of what they're gonna hear.

I'm not sure.

But it's important to, I think, be vulnerable to in that leadership.

When we're win when we win, we all win, when we lose, we all.

when we lose, we all learn the phrase of the episode.

I was just going to say that,

yeah,

Changing topics again.

There's so many.

I feel like we could talk to you for hours, Courtney.

Seriously.

I'd love to, yeah.

So don't threaten me with a good time.

All right.

So in chatting with you previously, I know female leadership is very near and dear to your heart.

Healthy boundaries, encouraging other women and moms in the workplace.

Kendra bravely normalized toddlers in the background you mentioned and going off camera for pumping even.

So what does a workplace that actually supports women look like versus one that just says it does?

I love that.

Yeah.

I mean, Kendra bravely really was just this like little mom utopia in my stint there.

You know, really true to the brand, you know, founded on this idea that, you know, it's for moms by moms.

And so it really was unique.

And I think it helped to really instill in me that so much about women and mothers in particular being successful in the workforce really comes down to some pretty fundamental things like flexibility, first and foremost, and trust.

So, you know, for me, I talk to, you know, talk about this with my team all the time.

Like we all have lives.

We love.

We love our job.

We love what we do.

But we are selling skin care and not saving lives.

Right.

So at the end of the day, yeah, you're you're a sick toddler or your mom who's been in the hospital a couple days extra than you thought she was going to.

But, you know, you can be open and honest with me about what you need.

And even if that need is like, hey, my baby was.

Screaming, teething all last night and I'm not 100 percent today.

Like I've been there.

I get it.

What do you need?

What can we do?

What meetings do we have that are non-negotiable today?

What what can we shift?

Right.

And I can tell you from experience that those.

Team members are the ones that as you really have that genuine interest and care in their life, as you really support them with flexibility and understanding.

Those are the ones that give you one hundred and ten percent because and that's what moms do.

Right.

We already operate at one hundred and ten percent.

Like we're doing all the things.

So this idea that, oh, you're somehow giving less to your role or less to your company or less to your contributions because you need a little bit of flexibility every now and then you've got to go to kindergarten graduation or you had a rough night with a teething infant is is absolutely asinine.

Like it's.

Going to get done.

And that's where the trust comes in.

Right.

So it's like if you're if I give you the flexibility that you need, I know that you are going to come back tenfold.

Right.

Like you're you're dedicated to the brand.

You're dedicated.

You know, you have that that appreciation for me as a leader where you want to show up and you want to do your best.

And at the end of the day, at the end of the literal week, as long as you get it all done.

I don't care.

You know.

Isn't that the truth?

In the best way possible.

Like, truly, truly.

It is that you're you're an adult.

You have life that you need to balance and we all need to get it done.

I think long term to the company benefits, not just like you said, they're going to give you back tenfold.

Right.

But also you're building loyalty.

Yes.

So those folks are going to stay around longer.

And they're going to put those extra hours.

And when it's needed in those like cyber weeks, more engaged and think about like employee turnover, especially at a higher level, how much that costs the company.

If you're there for five plus years, you have a lot of internal knowledge and trying to train somebody up on that for five years or more.

Like that's going to take a long time.

So, yeah, having that is.

Yeah, it just it boggles my mind when people are rigid about that.

And it's like this is an hour out of a week.

Exactly.

It's a great wrap up.

All right.

We have a type a rapid fire round.

This will be quick and hopefully painless.

OK.

I'm not good at being succinct.

I don't know if this last hour is.

Oh, you don't need to be succinct.

That's wrong.

It's really an A or a B.

Oh, which which are you?

OK.

So we'll start with an easy one.

All right.

Inbox zero or inbox ten thousand.

Which do you subscribe to?

Ten thousand.

Unfortunately, it's a mess.

I love that one because everybody type A wants to be in such a goal.

But it's not going to.

It's truly a pipe dream at this point.

Like, I wish I could be her.

I am not.

OK.

You have a journalism degree.

Best thing it taught you that had nothing to do with journalism.

Just how to talk to people.

Like so much of journalism is like interviewing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like asking follow up questions and being personable and like sneaking yourself into

rooms like those are the soft skills that they don't necessarily teach you in class,

but you really learn through practice.

And it is that like, you know, that that carrot.

Right.

Oh, I can I can flash my little journalism pass and just like get backstage over here.

I can, you know, like get the best pull quotes, like just by being really engaged in a conversation.

Like those are the soft skills that you you learn in those scenarios.

And I have taken that.

I have taken with me through many non-journalistic endeavors.

So, Courtney, this is how you learn to be a busy bunny.

Literally.

Yes.

We're talking all back.

I don't know if I'd ever made that connection.

But yeah, chicken or the egg.

Right.

Right.

OK.

So, a decision gets made in the room or gets made over Slack.

Which do you trust more?

Big decisions in the room, little decisions on Slack.

Fair enough.

Yep.

Good call.

OK, AI is a tool, not a job replacement.

What's one thing you've actually used it for that saved you real time?

Claude is my homeboy.

I'm not even trying to like be coy about it anymore.

We refer to Claude as like our unseen man on the court.

One or two either quick framework for a PowerPoint when you've got all the information.

I'm like, OK, I just need to get this done.

I just need to get five slides on this.

Like, help me.

Yes.

And spits out the five slides and you still got to finagle it.

Right.

But like, that is such a time saver.

Or similarly, the executive summary.

Right.

Like, we've got all these reports, we've got all these really detailed postmortems about

what just happened with the event and all the data that we're, you know, pouring over.

And how do I get 30,000 feet up and just give the highlights to the C-suite?

Executive summary.

Harkins back to it.

A previous podcast where many times it was brought up, the AI is the intern.

Yes.

So everyone's, yep, on that.

OK.

Someone on your team is excellent at their job, but won't stick their neck out.

Do you coach it or accept it?

Coach it.

And I've had this many times.

And I do think it comes down to understanding what that team member's ultimate goals are.

Encouraging them that that's what's going to get them there.

So I love to coach that.

All right.

Well, Courtney, this was exactly the kind of conversation that we love to have on Type A Unhinged.

It's real stuff, not a highlight reel.

The two-faced boardroom, what actually happens when you step into the C-suite,

why are your customers loyal to your brand and not necessarily your channel?

There's a lot more here that I think we could get into.

Like I said, I feel like we could talk for hours and everybody would get something out of it.

So if you want to follow Courtney's journey,

connect with her.

We'll have links in the show notes.

Courtney, if you want, you can share your LinkedIn real quick.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's Courtney Lear Wallace.

I think it's just linkedin.com backslash Courtney Lear Wallace.

There you go.

And to our listeners, if this episode made you think differently about something,

share it with someone who definitely needs to hear it.

And until then, stay Type A.

And a little unhinged.

Thanks for listening to Type A Unhinged.

Now it's time to get to work.

Make sure to hit subscribe so you never miss a system update.

Cool.

Awesome.

Well, I came camera ready just in case.

This is way less pressure than a couple of weeks ago.

I did a podcast and it was live, like LinkedIn live.

So I was like, oh, hopefully I don't say anything.

A scandalo, because it is just out there in the world now.

That honestly is one of the things that I love about Dermalogica.

It really is my Goldilocks org.

We are encouraged to fail, break it, and then tell us what you learned

and tell us how we're going to get better.

And that is what just gets my little heart pumping.

So.