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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout guest is Grant Arnott, Executive Director at Global Marketplace and ringmaster at Click Frenzy and Power Retail. Grant spent over a decade at the center of Australia's e commerce evolution, and I doubt there's anyone listening who doesn't actually know him. He's a master at spotting trends, calling out BS and keeping retailers on their toes. In this episode, Grant dishes on the brand he'd happily steal secrets from, the tool that gives him productive paranoia, and why spreadsheets are still his creative outlet.
Nathan Bush: Grant, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. We had an awesome main conversation talking all things from how you establish Power Retail, the growth of Click Frenzy, being the person who introduced Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you being the person responsible for all this mayhem and all the way through to innovation in Australia. I really enjoyed that conversation around how we need to keep pushing and innovating, that we can't just settle for templates. But I have five quick questions for you. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Grant Arnott: Yeah, no jousting sticks for me. I have to say I bought stuff for my wife on Wild Secrets.
Nathan Bush: Well done. You're a good husband. The question I had for you around weird purchases. The gold statue men that you have at the All Star Bash, you become famous for them. Where do you even get those guys from?
Grant Arnott: Oh, I won't take credit for those. That came from our team. I think that was Brittany specifically. But yeah, when I heard about the fact that we could, I said yes, signing up. And yeah, we Talked earlier about emblems and, and I think the fact that, you know, winning the All Star Bash, you get a singlet and you see these, these All Star Bash singlets in the boardrooms and offices of all these major businesses around Australia was, was a great win for us. And then, yeah, adding the Gold Men, you know, a lot of people say the All Star Bashes, the Oscars of E commerce, and it wasn't really with that view, but now that they're there, it's fantastic. And the first year we put them, they were so still that I had a few people come up after saying, oh, those were actually people. Gold statue.
Nathan Bush: Well, mate, you should be very proud. Your legacy will be, you know, Gold Men in their undies.
Grant Arnott: Yes.
Nathan Bush: At award ceremonies.
Grant Arnott: Yep.
Nathan Bush: I love it. Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Grant Arnott: Yeah, recently. Look, I'd go with, you know, again, I always come back to Bird's Nest. I just think everything they do, they've been true to themselves. It's a wonderful story. It's very much Jane's personality has been instilled in the culture of Bird's Nest. And yeah, everything they do is everyone talks about being customer centric, but they go to another level and all their employees, you know, really reflect that culture. And it's a fun, just a fun shopping experience, even though it's not my target market. As I say, I'm not a. Not a yummy mummy, but it's a fantastic website and, you know, really good experience. So she's always inspired me.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And it's amazing with people like Jane, how humble and curious they remain. So I caught up with Jane when we did the Klaviyo event. We did the Klaviyo podcast and the whole time off air, she was very much humble, saying, oh, look, I don't know anything and, you know, I'm still finding my way and asking questions around what other people are doing at the same time. And that's after. Oh, goodness, I'll put words in. 20 years in business at Bird's Nest, but never stop learning and staying humble the whole time. And I think that says a lot around longevity in retail.
Grant Arnott: Yep, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.
Grant Arnott: Yeah, for me, it's zero. That's a bit nerdy.
Nathan Bush: But you can tell, you're the money guy.
Grant Arnott: Yeah. I love pretending to be an accountant, even though our actual accountants don't like me interfering. Yeah. I think Xero has been great. I mean, look at a basic level Just, you know, even Excel and things like that. We just. It's our starting canvas for everything. I know that's. It's funny for me to say that, I never would have said that 15 years ago, but I think if you can't start as soon as any idea forms, you got to start drilling down on how to actually implement it and you need your modeling tools for that. And I think Excel and Xero are great, great for that.
Nathan Bush: Perfect. I love it. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Grant Arnott: Yeah, there's a few. There's one, there's two. Well, for podcast, add to cart.
Nathan Bush: Oh, stop it. But isn't there a power retail one now too?
Grant Arnott: Yeah, we do give it a slug. When I say we, I mean not me. So Rosa, our editor has built a great series of interviews with different people.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Grant Arnott: Inspired by the great Nathan Bush. So yeah, we've got quite a few subject matter experts on that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great.
Grant Arnott: But yeah, two books. One is zero to one and I don't know if you've heard of that, but that's by Peter Thiel. He's one of the co founders of PayPal, I guess, also a right wing nut job like Elon. But the book itself is, is really compelling for anyone who's fascinated about innovation. And, and basically the concept is okay, well you know, there's one to many which is like, okay, something has been done and you are iterating on your idea is an iteration of that. But what's very hard is going from zero to one. So creating something out of thin air that, that takes off. And so it's a really compelling, an inspiring book for me on that front.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant.
Grant Arnott: And the other one is the sequel to Good to Great.
Nathan Bush: Ah, yes.
Grant Arnott: I think it's something like great by design, but it basically it studies eight companies that have stood the test of time through various world events, bad economies, recessions and things like that, and basically ties together if it looks at the eight companies that have just been steady performers and how they've done it. And it presents it in the form of three sort of guiding principles for navigating challenging times. And yeah, I thought that was a really, really good book as well.
Nathan Bush: And I think even if you haven't read that book, you've probably been influenced by it in some way, like concepts like the flywheel. Flywheel existed before that, but it really brought it into the consciousness, I think, of a lot of business people, the hedgehog concept, sharpening the sword, all that sort of stuff. No, sharpening sword's not that one, is it? The hedgehog is. Flywheel is. But most people have understood these concepts now, even if you haven't read the book.
Grant Arnott: Yeah, well, this one talks, you know, the three things. And I still need to read the book, so. But there's three things in there. One is productive paranoia. And I think I'm a good example of that, which is, you know, you're not insanely paranoid, but I come to work every day thinking this could be the week that the doors close and so act accordingly without driving everyone crazy. But always trying to think about, you know, what could be coming down the line and planning worst case scenarios so that, you know, we're ahead of that and sort of basically the concept there, shoot bullets, then cannonballs. So start something, don't start with the cannonballs, but find a way to fire some bullets. And E Commerce is great for that. You can do testing on just about anything before you actually have to go broader to your whole market. And then the last one is, I think it's called the 20 Mile March, but it's basically just saying, look, when they studied these eight businesses, what they had, they had eight businesses that won through that period and eight businesses that lost. And they were in different categories. So it would be Southwest Airlines versus some other airline that no longer exists. And so they, they stacked up what the successful ones did through those periods and what the ones that failed didn't do. Yeah, and so that last piece was around the 20 mile march, which was just like, hey, you know, we're in an economic boom, we should be going hard, we should spend more, we should invest, invest, invest. Whereas a good CEO said, no, we stick to our strategy, we ignore the noise and we just carry on. And those that over invested, you know, then when the market turned, found themselves without, you know, foundation underneath them and crumbled. So yeah, those were some of the messages in that one.
Nathan Bush: Great lessons, great recommendation. Thank you.
[Ad]: Last question I've got for you, Grant,
Nathan Bush: what is your biggest challenge today?
Grant Arnott: Yeah, my biggest challenge is just cash and capital. You know, we're a small business, so we just have to, you know, continually do more with the resources that we have and, you know, keeping people motivated there. I think the key challenges for me, if we go back to global marketplace is being in charge of three quite different businesses and having to switch gears. You know, after this, I'll talk to someone in New Zealand, have to think about what's happening there, and then talk to someone in the power retail team
Nathan Bush: and then click Frenzy and all totally different models too.
Grant Arnott: Yeah, that's right. So that's probably the challenge I experienced or I find the most difficult at the moment and especially when we're, you know, like every business, tightening up on spending and things like that. So again, doing more with less means. Yeah, you just got to work harder and. But having that headspace for three different businesses is a challenge I could imagine.
Nathan Bush: I don't know how you do it, but I'm glad you do. So thank you, Grant. Appreciate you joining us on the checkout today. Enjoy that New Zealand chat after this.
Grant Arnott: No worries. Thanks, mate.
[Ad]: To hear more from Grant, head back into episode 516 where we talk about why e commerce sites are starting to look like clones, how Click Frenzy lit a fire under Aussie retail and the one metric that Grant says that we are all getting wrong. It's bold, brutally honest and probably exactly what we need to hear right now.
