welcome back to type a unhinged the podcast for the architects of order and the masters of chaos
all right we talk a lot on the show about the grit it takes to build a career
but today's guest is the literal blueprint for it i'm so excited to be joined by kayla brown
director of customer life cycle at hibbit kayla and i go back way back to august
at e-tail boston where we survived the panel gauntlet together we were paired up for both a
crm and an ai session and what struck me immediately besides her incredible southern charm
was her human first approach to something that was so important to her
very intimidating ai tech she isn't just using ai she's leading her team through the adoption of it
with a lot of grace and a lot of strategy kayla it's so good to see you again i've been following
your work with movable inc advisory boards too and i'm dying to dive into how you balance that
high level strategy and the day-to-day reality of retail how are you doing today i'm doing great
thank you guys so much for having me on here i'm excited to chat and talk through um ai and
how i'm type a and how that impacts things perfect fit yeah do you want to do a quick little intro
uh other than what i've said is there anything you want to add to that share with our listeners
yeah so i'm the director of customer life cycle like you said at hibbit i'm extremely type a which
helped out a lot with my position um i am a huge huge strategy person and a um list checker offer
love a list. But I've been with Himmit for about eight years now, started as the email marketing
specialist and just kind of worked my way up. And now I have the pleasure of leading the retention,
growth, and brand marketing team. So that is inclusive of email, mobile, paid media, affiliates,
gift cards, and our CRM loyalty program. So just a few things.
A few things. Check, check, check. Sounds about right for a typical type A.
Yes. Also, the task checker offer hit home for me. Di and I talk about that a lot. And I think
in one of our previous episodes, we even talked about how sometimes we will add things to our
to-do list, even though they just got done, just so we could have like the satisfaction of checking
it off or hearing the ding. Oh my God, that's my favorite thing to do. I love that.
Same. Yes. All right. Let's start off with our connection. So,
Kayla, we shared the stage at Boston and got to see each other West Coast at E-Tail Palm Springs.
In the spirit of type A unhinged, what is the one thing about the conference circuit
that secretly drives you crazy? And how do you optimize your schedule to survive
the multiple days of a conference? Yeah, honestly, it is the can we grab 15
minutes message that hits my LinkedIn inbox at like 10 a.m. on day two. I mean, it's great.
People think it's great. It's great. It's great. It's great. It's great. It's great. It's great.
They're being casual and it's I love a good coffee. But my type A brain has had my conference
calendar locked and color loaded, color coded for like three weeks at this point, minimum three
weeks. So it's just kind of tough, like when you're managing multiple channels and then you're
attending a conference and you've still got your day to day work going on. A quick coffee,
especially the last minute one, can turn into a domino that knocks like over so many other
dominoes. And then all of a sudden, a high priority meeting or a session that I really
need to attend to gets pushed. And it just really impacts that. So the way I really survive that
is I treat it like a product launch, like my whole conference schedules, like a product launch.
I have transition blocks. I have like my office hours. I have everything kind of timed down to
the minute so that by the time I land, like honestly, anything added last minute is a no
for right now for me.
And that's really just to protect my energy so I can stay present at the conference.
I need to learn from you. I'm really bad at saying no sometimes. So yeah, sometimes I end up
overscheduling myself, even though it is all blocked and whatever. A conversation is like
too good at a booth or I run into a random person who's part of a brand and have a really good
convo and all of a sudden I'm 10 minutes late to something and it's the transition time. That's
the key there, I think.
That's the key.
That's the key. It can be really hard. That's why I purposely try to block in some transition
blocks and just kind of like last minute blocks where I know something's going to come up and
I'm going to need that like 30 minutes that day.
I think it was literally our last episode. Our last guest was talking to us about,
I always get this wrong, Pomodoro timers?
Pomodoro timer. Yep.
Okay. Well, Dai just got us each one and they are awesome. So I was curious, do you embrace
Pomodoro?
Do you embrace those timers?
I've never heard of this, but now I'm like over here wanting to Google this and see what this is
about.
Well, here's how, Nate. So it's for time blocking. It's all about time blocking. And the gal that we
had on, she does a lot of contract work. And so she has multiple timers, she said, which that's a
little much for me. That might be hard for me, but yeah. So it's this, you basically have these
different preset amounts of time and you can change it to like 47 minutes or whatever. And all you do
is you hit the button and you flip it. And then you're like, oh, I'm going to do this. And then you
flip it to whatever time you want the timer to be. So the 45 minutes is up. It's 45 minutes. And
that helps you time block.
I was just going to say my favorite use case so far is I have this problem of like, I'll start a
task that I really enjoy doing and I won't chunk it. And then I only have crap tasks to do after.
And it's hard to find motivation to do all of them. So I use this a lot for like, okay, I'm
giving myself 15 minutes to do this. And then I have to move back onto this boring task and then
I'll come back. And it's so easy because whatever number is up on your desk is what the timer gets
set to.
And then it flashes or vibrates at you when it's over.
Okay, so I know exactly what I'm adding to my Amazon cart next.
This is amazing.
I've already ordered two more. So I'm going to have three total in a matter of a week. So
I feel you.
One at the home office, one at the office here. Yep.
Yep.
This is incredible.
All right. Well, I want to talk to you about, you mentioned how you've like grown throughout
your time at Hibbett. You've been there
eight years.
It looked like moving from a specialist to director. And I feel like most people,
especially in e-comm have to jump ship every two years or so in order to really level up and keep
moving, moving through in their career. So what's your secret to climbing the ladder within one
house without hitting that ceiling?
Yeah, so that's a very good question. It's twofold for me. One is leadership. Like I've been really
blessed with great leadership at Hibbett.
I've been really blessed with great leadership at Hibbett who encourages me learning more and
growing. And that has been awesome. And that's directly from our VP from previous SVPs we've had
from our CEO. They're all just really encouraging about that. But the main secret is realizing that
the ceiling is up to you. Like I've always viewed myself as an entrepreneur. And that's been very
helpful because with that ceiling, I've been able to do a lot of things. And I've been able to do a lot of
things. And I've been able to do a lot of things. And I've been able to do a lot of things. And I've
because with that like comes three main focuses for me. Okay, so one is always being a student, and
then building relationships and approaching things with a yes and mindset. So that's really what's
helped me a lot. It's important because if you stop learning, you stop leading. And so that's a
good mindset to have. And then going back to like the building relationships part, you can't climb
the ladder alone. It is not a siloed thing.
So I've spent the past eight years building relationships with every department we have.
And that has been fundamental in me growing because every department is supportive of that.
And that's been great for me. And then finally, like I said about the yes and mentality, it is so
important to jump into things to learn like having the well, it's not my area mentality hurts you and
blocks you from growing. And so I've been able to do a lot of things. And I've been able to do a lot of
things, and I've been able to do a lot of things. And I think that's really important. And I think
that's really important. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important.
So what I've found is just taking the initiative to shadow people and seeing a gap and offering your
assistance goes a long way. And that goes back to learning to like, it just helps you learn more
areas.
Absolutely. I love that.
I feel like we try to embrace a lot of that too, like always keeping a project on your desk. So
there's something you're in the weeds on continuing to learn helping the team. And similarly, like
when we launch new tools, specifically, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know,
like di and i we want to know how every setting every button works before we really even roll it
out to the team because we want to make sure we can answer those questions and really help adoption
and and understand like how high can we go with this you know so that that was awesome yeah no
super important it sounds like you have a great culture at hibbit too that it's not just okay
yeah you can take that on too it's you can you can take that on holy cow look at how much she's
doing and and she should probably be moving up and leveling up and that's awesome so you mentioned
a lot of different things in your intro that you manage crm loyalty email mobile paid media i'm
sure i missed something in there uh that's a lot of plates to keep spinning so does your brain ever
actually turn off or are you constantly like segmenting your real life into acquisition
and retention phases so anybody that knows me um can
truly tell you my brain never stops ever um i feel like yes it is constantly going like it's
terrible guys um but yeah so even like on a weekend if i'm like sitting there and i see a
push notification on my phone immediately i'm like oh wait um that's really cool i love that
like let me screenshot that and send that as inspiration to my team or yeah yeah
or like i'll get an email or a push and i'm like why did they do that that's a churn risk like you
should not have sent that to me right now like it's it's a whole thing sometimes my husband will
look over at me and be like can you stop for two seconds just like stop sounds familiar my favorite
is getting email pitches that still have the square brackets of insert name here i'm like oh
oh my gosh yes uh yes no no that
that's one that always cracks me up that or like when somebody accidentally sends a push or an email
and it still has test in the subject line like i immediately cringe yes um but really
the the biggest thing and i'm gonna sound like such a nerd when i say this
um but i really try to look at my world in my life as a crm program like you need a balance
in crm of acquisition and retention and retention and retention and retention and retention and
retention and that's what i try i sometimes fail but i try to do that um in my life too
of looking at my world as that so like for me acquisition is work it's that constant hustle
and and growing relationships there um and then my personal life is retention and it's recharging
and making sure i'm keeping myself healthy um and so looking at it that way
really helps me not spend all of my energy on one or the other
i love that i could i could take a lesson from you there
segmenting your own life i like it put it down yeah i'm not all that that great at it um this
year i'm trying to be better i'm trying to be better i'm putting in more vacations this year
i'm going to hawaii in october so trying with that whole like fun um yes that whole uh what
is it refresh your mind um and then i'm trying to be better i'm trying to be better i'm putting
i can relate to um being i think both die has been at fun for it will be 10 in july i am working
on my eighth year and before this i spent just under nine years at target and one question i
have for you kayla also being someone who's been in in or at their same place of work for several
years how do you as a type a like something i struggle with is when a new tool comes out
struggling to define between like a system update
and a system burn down and like rebuild i feel like some of that comes from being at the same
place for a while where you get used to the way things have always gotten done right so how do
you distinguish between an update versus like a rebuild when a new tool or functionality comes
out i think part of that is looking at your your kpis and how your program's been doing before
so are you in a place where your your program's unhealthy and you need to just do a full rebuild
um but if it's not then really it comes down to
having a team with people really ultimately working on that upgrade and then maybe a project
because the only way that we've talked about things this other day is if either of you
have never had a rebrand earlier i think kind of picking and adjusting this part so here's
the journey for your program we've done a big extremely good one prior to this we've
asked some questions out of ability training online so some of you and i will be 125 to
connect with um to help them out possibly have a similar thing in mind because we've
been recent
ready, then ripping something out and replacing it just will hurt you in the long run.
Yeah. So transitioning from working with your team at ETL West, I know you spoke about bringing
your staff along in that AI journey. What's the biggest unhinged fear you've heard from
your team member about AI or team members? And how did you kind of talk them off that ledge?
Yeah. So we've invested in AI pretty heavily on my team. And there were two fears. One was
the fear of the unknown. And the second was the fear of replacement. So my team, we test
everything, including AI. We do not launch something without any testing it.
We've got to prove that value out. But there's a catch to a test, even with AI. And that's
typically that the workload spikes before it drops. So that's where that kind of
feeling comes in. And that's where the fear of replacement comes in.
The fear of the unknown came from with my team of initially when we were testing. So
we tested with DaVinci. That was our big AI launch. And it was a lot of work up front.
And so they were like, is it always going to be this much work? And if it is, like,
how do I manage this? But also we're being told after this test, it won't be that much
work. And if it is that way, then will it take my job? Will it take my job away? So
then they're like, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't
know. And there comes that fear of the replacement. And so the motto that I really try to tell
my team, and I'll suggest to any manager, director, VP, is to tell your team, AI is
the intern, not the specialist, not the manager, not the director. The AI is the intern. So
it is about giving AI something that's that admin work, something that's that manual day-to-day
that allows you to change a role, to not take away a role, but to evolve and elevate a role.
So we moved from building one or two manual emails a day to managing a library of over 60,
sometimes over 100 creatives, where AI is choosing the segment in real time,
and on a one-to-one basis. And so we can really have hundreds of variations of an email because of
that.
And that versioning is impossible for a human to do manually. So in this case, it didn't
replace my team's jobs. It moved them to a strategy-focused position, which is going to
help them grow in the long term. Because if you just execute all the time and you're never able
to focus on strategy, there's limited room for growth. Using AI to free up time for other
investments. Exactly. So DaVinci is creating these creatives for you and then determining
dynamically which ones should be used for which audience?
We still create the creatives. We're putting it in DaVinci, and DaVinci is selecting in real time
who should receive what creative every day.
Got it. And are they an ESP, or do they just plug into an ESP?
Plug into an ESP.
Okay.
So they're owned by Movable Ink.
Okay. Okay. This makes more sense now.
Yes. They're part of Movable Ink. So Movable Ink has...
One is their studio where you're making product recommendations or personalized aspects. And
then DaVinci is their AI tool that's one-to-one. So it's not just picking the segments, but it's
also doing subject line generation. And it's doing frequency modeling too. So it really has taken our
segmentation away, to be honest. We don't really even segment anymore because it's looking at
everything on a one-to-one basis. So it's not just picking the segments, but it's also doing
frequency modeling too. So it's not just picking the segments, but it's looking at everything on a one-to-one basis.
Very cool.
Di and I just got back from ETL. A lot of what we felt like we saw, like the new trendy thing be, is like the Monday Report
rapper.
Yes.
From your perspective, are you seeing like actual agency anywhere, or what do you see that's exciting?
Yeah. Really, I think it depends on what your area, what area you're focusing on is. I mean, we do use, like,
it was literally no prize money books. So we really like just yeah, no prize money books, because we want to be able to do some of the Monday morning wrap-up type things.
So a lot of our vendors have AI naturally in them, and we've created agents that just do our, kind of do our reporting analysis for us.
But what's most exciting for me is more of the personalization stuff in here too, and the action items too. So taking that report, once you look at it, you know, that you just saw it, it before, or you see it right after you did the些 s that it wants to beması, or it takes that month already to no longer be sandy.
taking that report one step further.
So there are some AIs out there that's just like,
hey, here are your KPIs, here's how your campaign's done.
But we've worked with like Zeta, for instance,
they have an agentic AI and it's been really cool
because their new version
actually spits out insights about it.
So it's not just, here's how it did,
but it's, here's how your emails did, here are your gaps,
here are your opportunities for next week.
And based on like how traffic did this time last year
versus last week, like it's done all,
it does this full analysis that honestly
would take a lot of brain power on our end to do.
That is really cool.
I'm excited for when it can be more like
our conversations with chat GPT.
It sounds like we're, at least from the booths we saw eTail,
it sounds like we're getting there
with like audience selection
and stuff like that.
It sounds like we're getting there with like audience selection
and stuff like that.
Potentially.
Yes.
And not everybody's where it seems Zeta is.
Uh, it definitely is a lot more advanced than most of the other vendors that I've
talked to.
Most of what we saw was just analytics.
Here's how your campaigns did.
It's like, okay, yeah, that's cool.
And that saves us time.
But yeah, giving the insights is the key there.
That's exactly it.
So I'm on the customer advisory board for attentive, but since you're
on the advisory board for movable Inc, I'm curious kind of how they run their advisory boards.
And is it a lot of them?
Just do they give you like, here's what we're planning?
What do you think of it?
Or do they do a lot more of it and input coming from you where it's something where you're just like,
this is something we need and it hasn't been built yet.
How does that, how does that work?
And, and what, what value do you find coming out of those?
Yeah.
So I've been on many cabs in the past.
Um, but two of my favorites.
Have been, um, movable link is in Zeta.
They're both very similar in the way that their caps are set up, which is, it's kind of like a two part thing.
So yeah, it's, they're bringing stuff to us.
They're showing us their roadmap, like quarter by quarter.
This is what is available for beta.
This is what's coming, um, down the road, but it's a true real strategic partnership.
So, um,
movable link and Zeta, like I said, they bring those North star innovations, but then they're asking, Hey, like, what do you guys want to see?
Like, what are we missing?
Um, and Zeta, yes, the feedback loop Zeta even takes it one step further and they have like boards up or sometimes they'll give us big sticky notes and they're like, write down your suggestions and they take it and movable link does the same thing.
But it's, um, a lot.
Some of it's digital or just conversation and they've got somebody over there taking notes and the two of them are really good about like the next quarterly meeting we have, we'll see stuff that we talked about in that cab on the roadmap.
So you're, you're actually seeing it start to come to life, not just what they've said they want to do, but what we're saying we won't, we'll be on the roadmap.
And that's so valuable to me.
Amazing that they're turning it around.
That fast for you too.
That's cool.
Yeah.
So let's shift maybe now and talk about more of the, uh, retention side of things.
Loyalty CRM.
I'm curious since you lead Hibbit rewards in a world where like everybody has 50 apps and a hundred loyalty points here and there, nobody really remembers exactly what they have sometimes.
Even how do you make a customer actually feel something for the brand or like, is the loyalty.
Just math or, or is it psychology?
Oh, I love that question.
Math or psychology?
Um, I, I love both.
So loyalty, it's truly both.
I mean, you, you've got the math behind it.
You it's math for the customer, um, and for you, but it drives an affinity.
That is the psychology.
So it really is starts with that unified North star.
True.
Truthfully and, and figuring out where, what do you want for your customer?
What do you want for, what do you want for your brand?
And then taking that one step further and building out those loyalty campaigns to show the customer.
That it's not just about money for us.
I mean, at the end of the day, every, every retailer is about the money, but it's also, it's gotta be about.
Yeah.
It's, it's gotta be about the customer, um, as well.
So it's not just about giving them the discount or giving them that award for points for purchases, but it's about that life, that life cycle journey.
Um, especially in our world, sneaker heads are so important for, um, Hibbit in our industry.
Um, that's what is kind of that, that culture for us.
So it's about identifying where in the lifestyle cycle.
Journey, we can show them we're anticipating what they need before they know it.
So, Hey, you typically buy this thing, this type of shoe.
So we know that you like these Jordan threes.
So the next time a Jordan three or another Jordan of a similar colorway drops, we're going to show you before you even know it's coming out.
And so that's important.
So it's not just about that.
That matter.
And that discount, but it's about truly anticipating their needs and letting them know that, oh, this is where I need to go to stay relevant within my culture.
Got it.
I think that last piece is kind of the key, right?
So that's more of the emotional connection to the brand versus just like feeling seen and personalized.
Yep.
Exactly.
It's all about the culture, that connection with the customer.
When it comes to those customer journeys, I guess, is there any type of metric that you feel like a lot of people in the industry focus on, but you personally think is a little bit more of a distraction or even the inverse of that?
Is there a boring stat or something you don't think a lot of people look at that you check every day?
Yes.
So I'm going to say something that a lot of people are going to probably feel is controversial.
Love it.
I hate focusing on clicks, especially in a world or especially for a retailer that has a strong brick and mortar presence.
So that's the thing of clicks are great, especially if you're an online only business.
But when you have a brick and mortar presence, don't over index on it.
And so many people do.
It's all about, well, what's your click rate?
What's your click to open rate?
Okay, that's great.
But you've got to balance that with who's going in store and shopping.
And stores are a huge percentage of our of just our world for Hibbit.
We have over a thousand stores.
So we we've got a great digital presence.
We have two websites, two apps.
So we've got to focus on that.
But you can't lose track of the.
You can't lose track of the stores either.
So for me, it's all about data and being able to use loyalty to become the hero for this.
Because you've got to have a loyalty program to track if customers receive a campaign and then shop in store because your click rate might be down online.
But they might have went and bought all their product in store.
So it's all about not over indexing on those.
In my opinion.
Now, many people, many people may hate that.
I just said that.
But that's just my opinion.
But for the boring stuff that you mentioned, I keep a constant eye on one of the most boring facts.
And that is unsubscribed and opt out rates.
It is such an undervalued metric, in my opinion.
It's the ultimate feedback loop.
It tells you when you've crossed that line from helpful.
To need to pivot.
Yep.
I love that.
I think I agree with you on the click rate.
I've never put much stock in it.
I know people maybe maybe they all disagree.
Maybe secretly.
We actually all agree.
But the vendors just don't get it.
I don't know.
But I'm like, click rate.
Cool.
Like, who's actually converting?
Like, I could get them to open if I'm not driving them to the right place or I'm not.
Maybe I didn't actually hit them with the right thing.
So they're not converting or the pricing was off or they're not converting.
Or the pricing was off or the promotion was off.
Like, there's too much other information that gets lost between click and convert.
So, yeah.
Exactly.
It's all about conversion, whether they're converting online or in store.
Like, you've got to have the data behind it, the analysis behind it.
But I've I just get I get so many questions sometimes from vendors or from my own team of like, oh, this click rate was down.
I'm like, OK, but can we look at the conversion rate?
Because I care more about that.
Like, what are they shopping?
Yeah.
And I mean, it's going to depend, too, on how large your audience is on that click rate and how targeted you are, too.
Exactly.
I was just going to say, it's got to be interesting, like layering in the whole in-store data as well.
Like, obviously, I've known that's a thing.
Right. But Di and I have spent most of our time in an e-comm.
So we're online only.
We dabbled with like a few pop up shops and I would say lightly dabbled.
But all of our stuff is online where data is a lot more, you know, together.
And available to us.
I'm curious.
Like, that has to be interesting.
Yeah.
We have a really, really in-depth analytics program and it comes from our loyalty program, really.
That's the whole value of loyalty.
Without loyalty, you don't have the data you need to know about the customer.
So because we have such a strong loyalty program, we're able to to get some of that analysis of, hey, we sent them this campaign and they went and shopped within a certain amount of days.
So, I mean, it's it's an assumption, too.
I mean, you know, it's not like digital where it's a direct.
They've clicked.
They bought within.
And I can track it.
Yes, it's it's an assumption.
But it it's a it's a detailed analytical assumption.
Sure.
So you talk with a lot of that.
You have a lot of vendor partnerships, I would say.
Right.
It takes a village.
Yeah.
And across all of your channel efforts.
So paid email, mobile in stores.
How do you keep the brand voice from getting away from you getting unhinged?
Right.
When you have so many different vendor platforms and ways for customers to shop?
Yes.
So honestly, really, that comes down to just talking and having that collaboration across team.
Across the teams, like my specific teams.
And they talk every day, like all day.
We have a group teams chat where they're talking.
They have side teams chats.
They're brainstorming together, even though they're on they're managing different channels.
And that's so important to keep that brand voice, because if they start getting siloed, all of a sudden we're talking to.
We're having different brands across push and email and paid.
So that cross collaboration and encouraging that is key.
I'm lucky to have an amazing and very amazing team who doesn't look at it as competition.
They look at just collaboration.
But also, I know I've said this this term a million times, but it's about that unified North Star.
I mean, it really is.
Just knowing what is your brand.
Knowing what is your goal.
Having that strategy.
And knowing who your customer is, too.
We emphasize a lot of this is our target consumer.
And this is our target purchaser.
Sometimes that's not the same thing.
You know, I mean, sometimes during back to school, you're marketing for back to school and for that kid.
But your purchaser is mom or dad.
And, you know, so you've got to know.
Right.
You've got to know who you're talking to at certain times of the year and making sure that you're talking to the same person across the different the different platforms.
So I'm curious real quick, Kayla.
That all makes total sense.
Did that change or did it get more complicated as you guys started embracing more AI?
I know earlier you were talking about your DaVinci is helping with subject line creation or some of the content in there.
And how do you?
So walk me through how you got your team and everyone to really pay attention to make sure that like brand voice drift isn't happening as you guys embrace more AI.
So the funny thing is it is that it helped a lot.
Really?
Okay.
Yes.
Despite the fact that we have like the subject line generation, we're putting the we're putting the parameters around it.
So it's still talking with our brand in mind and using our brand voice.
But what we're doing with AI, especially with DaVinci, is we're able to dive into some metrics that we never had before.
Like what type of category does the customer want?
Like what's driving the purchases?
Is it, you know, this specific brand or is it apparel?
Is it footwear?
Like what is the supply versus demand?
Of like what amount of creative do we have in the library versus what is the customer actually responding to?
And then we're taking that and using it across other channels, too.
So it's like, hey, DaVinci is showing an email that this we've got way too many of this type of campaign, but we need more of this type of campaign.
So then in push or on social, they're like, okay, let's do more of this, too.
So it's really helping more than hurting.
That's great.
That's great to hear.
And I was not expecting that, to be honest.
It depends on how you use it.
I will say that.
Yeah.
I can see use cases where it probably would cause some issues.
But again, it's all about that cross collaboration and making sure everybody's on board and everybody sees the value in it.
Yep, 100%.
Glad I could surprise you, Nate.
Yeah, that was fun.
I was just going to say, I think we curated some surprise, very easy rapid fire questions.
Type A lightning round.
For just a couple of minutes if you're down.
Let's do it.
Type A lightning round.
I like that.
Sure.
Okay, Kayla, ready?
Ready to take the first one?
Inbox zero or inbox 10,000, which do you subscribe to?
Inbox 10,000.
Same.
I have an inbox zero hat and it's just a dream.
Okay.
Sneaker style, fresh out of the box or weathered?
Fresh out of the box.
Very type A.
Okay.
What's funny is I was not a sneaker person before Hibbit.
I did not.
I owned like one pair of sneakers.
And now I've got, I'm ashamed to say how many I have.
We're just going to say that.
We can keep that a secret.
Okay.
What's the most type A thing in your morning routine?
Oh, that's a, oh, that's a hard one.
You know, I think it would be that when I get up, the very first thing I do is check my Outlook inbox.
For note taking, are you physical or digital?
Both.
It depends.
It really depends.
So like some of like my leadership meetings or my touch bases, I'm a digital person because
I like to share that back with my team and it's just easier to copy and paste.
But when it comes to projects, I like to write it down and I keep a different notebook for
each type of project.
That sounds right.
Yes.
I always.
All right.
Well, I think we'll, we'll stop putting you under the gun.
Putting you under the gun with our lightning round questions.
Thanks for entertaining that.
So I don't, I don't, y'all don't make me spill any more ways that I'm super type A embarrassingly.
That's okay.
We relate for sure.
Okay.
Well, Kayla, thank you so much for pulling back the curtain today.
It's rare to find a leader who can balance the cold hard logic of AI and the actual human heartbeat of the team.
And you're doing it at scale.
Most people only dream of that.
So for everyone listening, if you want to see what a director level looks like when
it's backed by eight years of deep rooted expertise, make sure you go follow Kayla Brown
on LinkedIn.
Check out the innovation that's happening over at Hibbit.
And if you're at what conference was it?
CRMC in June.
Make sure that you, you ask her about that loyalty program because she is truly setting
the pace for what lifestyle marketing should look like in 2026.
Thanks again, Kayla.
Thank you, Di and Nate.
Thanks so much, Kayla.
This was so fun.
All right, guys, we have some other, some other.
All right, guys, we have some other great interviews coming up.
Really hope that you join us for those.
But 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.
Okay.
Get the rice out of my teeth first.
I was eating right before.
Okay.
Bye.