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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.
[Ad]: Here's your host, Bushy Today's checkout features Hawke and Steel, otherwise known as Hawk Partnership, and sales manager at Starship Starship. It is a platform that helps e commerce brands streamline their delivery and tracking processes. Hawk reveals his weirdest online purchase, his top tech for staying organized, and a great book recommendation to help level up leadership skills.
Nathan Bush: Hawk, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you for joining us. We had a really great conversation with Darren from Deliver In Person on our main episode around how to build loyalty. Not just deliver a parcel, but how to build loyalty in that last mile fulfillment. So it was brilliant to hear your perspective from all the delivery experiences that you help facilitate at Stake Starship and all the different carriers that you work with. So it was a really great perspective. But we are here to learn a little bit more about who Hawk is. Are you ready for questions?
Hakan Steele: Oh dear. Okay, yes.
Nathan Bush: Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Hakan Steele: You know I've listened to your podcast previously and heard you ask this question and I thought you'd check out and heard you ask this question. Out of everything you could ask me, this is the one I was most worried about and I have been wrecking my brain until last night and I got a good one.
Nathan Bush: I feel for this question. In future we need to put some sort of lie detector over the top of people to make sure I'm really getting the the weirdest thing. But I feel you've got a good one.
Hakan Steele: I do, I do. So it's probably going back a couple of years now, actually a few years now and we were looking at going to a music festival, my wife and I, and there was A lot of anxiety around the toilet situation because we had heard some really bad, bad things about this festival and I didn't even know these things existed but we were sort of talking with some friends. But I heard about Sheepies. Have you heard about a sheepie?
Nathan Bush: It was actually when I was at Super Retail Group, someone did it as a Secret Santa present.
Hakan Steele: Yeah, that would be a good one. Great Secret Santa. But yeah, I did have to go and purchase that, that sheepie for my wife and we didn't end up going to the festival, but it was quite a weird, a weird purchase and, and a horrific delivery experience, by the way.
Nathan Bush: Oh, and there you go, Sheepy.
Hakan Steele: How good? Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Hakan Steele: I'm going to go with a brand that I do love, although I'm not a massive online shopper, but Patagonia. I think Patagonia does a really good job of living and breathing their, their values around the environment. And I think, in fact I think they have come very close to dying on the back of their, their sort of strong. Sticking to their values that, that much. But you know, they've got a great community that just offer lots of great, you know, great community based events and that sort of thing and they, they've really stand behind that environmental activism.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. We've had this podcast going for five years now and I would say that Patagonia is one of the top answers. But consistently, like they don't trend in and out. It's just a consistently strong brand.
Hakan Steele: Yes. Yeah. Oh, interesting. I didn't realize it's come up before.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great example.
[Ad]: Number three, name a piece of tech
Nathan Bush: that you or your business couldn't live without.
Hakan Steele: So we're rapidly adding and enhancing different things at Starship and it is a real challenge staying on top of everything that the platform can do. And we have recently built an internal chatbot using AI and that thing knows everything and I couldn't live without it. I use it several times a day. Can we support this, that Dangerous goods, all this sort of stuff and it is, it's phenomenal because it's, it's got the most knowledge in the company and I, I personally, you know, without bugging everybody in the business for answers on everything every two minutes, then I couldn't live without it.
Nathan Bush: Do you know what it was built through?
Hakan Steele: Good question. No, I think just one of our. We've got the smartest. Well, every tech company says that as well, but we've got the smartest developers in the Business. I mean, you know, look out SpaceX. But I think one of those guys just whipped it up.
Nathan Bush: I don't know how good. Just let the nerds do the nerding.
Hakan Steele: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Hakan Steele: Not a huge reader, but there is one that I come back to every few years and it's an oldie but a goodie. Five levels of leadership. John C. Maxwell. So really, really good. I think as I said, it's old but the principles just remain, I think. And so I do, I do try and give that a flick through every few years. There's another one that recently just finished, just about to finish actually, which is a four day work week, which I think is really good. Although it was came in slightly before COVID I think. But so a lot of things those themes have changed and I think I'm not alone in recommending podcast diary with the CEO.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great blood.
Hakan Steele: Best.
Nathan Bush: You just dropped before this actually that we were recording that you're having a short, a long weekend. So have you already implemented your four day week work week? You're already on that?
Hakan Steele: I will next week. Yeah. I love it.
Nathan Bush: Well done. All right, number five, Hawk, what is your biggest challenge today?
Hakan Steele: I am going to say just finding enough hours in the day to be good at everything. And I'm not alone in that. Every time is of course our most valuable thing. Right. And, and we are all pulled in so many different directions. So it's constantly evaluating what you're working on, what's moving the needle the most at work and at home and keeping up with AI. All right. Because is this massive time saving tool right there and I feel like I've become, I've become so many of our, of our prospects where you know, our biggest challenge is time. And you go, here's a great time saving tool. I'm too busy to look. So I think finding time, keeping up with AI to be able to handle a lot of that stuff is a challenge. I mean it's rapidly, it's moving so fast. Right?
Nathan Bush: That's right. And even AI, there are some really simple things out there that will save time. But I find myself going down rabbit holes. Like this morning I was up at 5am because I had this idea how to automate something. Got some of the way there and then I was like, actually no, I could actually do this in Python. I've never coded in Python, but I'm like, I can learn this, I can do this, I can follow the chatgpt. Instructions. So all of a sudden I'm down this rabbit hole coding in Python or badly coding or, you know, following instructions and then I'm like, this was meant to save me time. Instead I'm now down a whole new rabbit hole. So that fine balance isn't there.
Hakan Steele: That's so true. So true. And there's just so many things, you know, social media is another one rabbit holes that you can, that you can go down. And I mean, it's such a brilliant thing, but the rabbit holes are, yeah, immense.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. Hawk, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. Enjoy that long weekend.
Hakan Steele: Thank you, Bushy. Really appreciate it and keep up the good work.
[Ad]: If you're interested in learning more, check out the main episode where Hawk is joined by Darren Kowalski from Deliver In Person to talk about about how brands streamline their shipping and tracking for a seamless branded experience. Hawke also shares how Starship its integration with Deliver In Person, combining automation with premium customer focused service can help build long lasting loyalty. Thanks for listening and until next time,
Nathan Bush: keep adding to cartoon.
