Meet Jim Harris, one of North America’s foremost management consultants, public speakers, authors and thinkers on change and leadership. Jim and I finally met in person here in Toronto at the big Collision Tech conference, and who better to join me on the mic to give us a review and overview of the conference that attracted almost 40,000 global technorati, plus tap into his insights about the big picture tech trends that retailers need to know.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. I'm producer & host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is produced in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Jim Harris, one of North America’s foremost management consultants, public speakers, authors and thinkers on change and leadership. Jim and I finally met in person here in Toronto at the big Collision Tech conference, and who better to join me on the mic to give us a review and overview of the conference that attracted almost 40,000 global technorati, plus tap into his insights about the big picture tech trends that retailers need to know.
About Jim
Jim Harris is one of North America’s foremost management consultants, public speakers, authors and thinkers on change and leadership. He is also a world-class virtual keynote speaker, an important skill to have on his tool belt due to the rise in virtual conferences due to COVID-19.
He has 20 years experience as a professional speaker and consultant, and speaks internationally at more than 40 conferences a year on topics including innovation and creativity, customer relationship management (CRM), eLearning, creating learning organizations, environmental leadership, energy efficiency, strategic planning, and creating common organizational mission and vision.
He was one of the first seven Canadians personally trained by Al Gore to present the slide show for An Inconvenient Truth. He was also one of just 12 Canadians who were licensed to publicly teach Dr. Stephen Covey’s work, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Jim Harris works with leading businesses and Fortune 500 companies. He recently finished a global consulting contract with IBM and a related white paper on how low carbon leadership drives profitability.
His most recent book, Blindsided! is a #1 international bestseller, having hit the top spot on the Financial Times of London’s European Edition of Best Business Books. He is also the author of The Learning Paradox, which appeared on numerous bestseller lists, and co-author of national bestseller The 100 Best Companies to Work for in Canada.
He is also principal at Strategic Advantage. He previously held positions as partner at Cleantech Group and affiliate at Covey Leadership Centre.
In addition to his speaking and consulting engagements and books, Jim Harris writes for a number of publications, including the Globe and Mail, Profit magazine and Backbone magazine
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Jim Harris, one of North America's foremost management consultants, public speakers, authors and thinkers on change in leadership. Jim and I finally met in person here in Toronto at the big Collision Tech conference and who better join me on the mic to give us a review and overview of the conference that attracted almost 40,000 global Technorati, plus tap into his insights about the big picture tech trends that retailers need to know. Jim, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Jim Harris 00:39
Fantastic, Michael, thank you so much for inviting me on.
Michael LeBlanc 00:43
Well, listen, it was so great to, you know, accidentally meet you, so to speak at the collision event in the media room, because you and I, you know, I knew your name, and I love your work, but we'd have never had the opportunity to meet or be in the same place at the same time. So, thank you collision for putting us at the same table and there you go and here we are on the mic. So, thanks, me. There you go. Where am I finding you this morning, where do you live and where are you hanging your hat right now?
Jim Harris 01:10
Well, I'm in Toronto, but I work internationally around the world. I speak at more than 50 conferences a year and do strategic planning sessions with executive teams.
Michael LeBlanc 01:21
That's great. What's your, how is summer for you? I've got a gig coming up in New York and then I'm in Orlando, how is summer for you? It tends to be, I thought it would be slower than it was, because typically, but you know, there's, there's still some stuff going on, how is it for you?
Jim Harris 01:35
Yeah, summer does slow down, but I also do social media work. My Account was the number one personal account at the Consumer Electronics Show, in Vegas in '23 and in '22. Now, that's a personal account. There were, you know, CNET and Mashable, share media organizations that have dozens of journalists there, beats me, but my account was the only personal account in the top five. So, I do social media work as well. So that fills in year-round.
Michael LeBlanc 02:10
No kidding. The 24-hour social media cycle. Well, listen, we've kind of jumped right in, let's start with a little bit more for those who might have heard the name or perhaps know you but don't know enough about you tell us about yourself, and you know, a bit of your background and generally what you do for a living?
Jim Harris 02:27
Sure. So, I focus on AI disruption and innovation and tech and when I focus on tech, it's not just tech for the sake of tech, it's how does new technology change business models and the way consumers interact with organizations. So, it's a very exciting field, and you were talking about Collision. Collision is this huge gathering of 36,000 attendees from more than 100 countries. There are 1500 startups, there are about 1000 journalists, about 1000 investors. So, it's a really great look at the froth of innovation around tech and it's fascinating when you begin digging into it, because Tech really does change business models and the way we work.
Michael LeBlanc 03:22
Yeah, I love, I love that approach a little bit more. How did you, how did you get into this line of work, like what's your, what's your origin story? Were you always, I guess were you always interested in tech, like back in, you know, back in high school, you were the you were the guy who loved the tech story, even though it was kind of like whatever it was the new calculator out like were you always this interested in it or just do you approach it from, I'm interested in what changes things and now that's a lot about technology. What, what's your origin story from that perspective?
Jim Harris 03:51
Well, the origin story is I co-authored a book for the Financial Post called the 100 Best Companies to Work for in Canada and that was 33 years ago. And really, it was looking at what are the characteristics that the best organizations have in common and that really began me on the speaking circuit. It also began this quest for what enables great customer focus, delivering exceptional value to the customer and increasingly, over the years, technology has been the driver of the answer to that question.
Jim Harris 04:33
So, for instance, we saw in the pandemic, people's patterns shattered forever, they were permanently broken, and people were forced to learn how easy it is to shop online and so e-commerce or online shopping experience, 10 years of growth in the first 90 days of the pandemic, and it's like a genie, that's out of the bottle that's never gonna go back in. So that's an example of something that existed pre-pandemic, the rise of online shopping or e-commerce and an event, like a major global event, the pandemic and the change. In other words, the trend wasn't new. It was accelerated, right during the pandemic.
Michael LeBlanc 05:26
Yeah, particularly in Canada, right? Because Canada was a bit of a laggard in terms of ecommerce for a whole bunch of reasons that listeners are probably familiar with, but it was a great leap forward. Moreso in Canada than the US, the US is already heading on that trajectory, it move forward, but Canada really did. I think it was like 70%, year over year growth in 2021 and as you said, it's very, a very astute observation, the waterline has permanently moved up, right, in other words. The percentage of share retail, done online, I think, at Collision actually heard Paul, Paul Bradley, from insider intelligence, formerly marketers say their estimate was about 12%, which I think is a good solid estimate. Super, super interesting. So, you would describe yourself first as a journalist, and then now is a, how would you, you know, if somebody says, what do you do for a living and the elevator, we got three more floors to go, what do you say?
Jim Harris 06:20
Well, 70% of my revenue comes from speaking at conferences, being a keynote, and doing strategic planning with executive teams. So that's the bulk of my revenue.
Michael LeBlanc 06:32
A consultant, a journalist, your consultant and observer, a futurist, a journalist, all those things?
Jim Harris 06:38
Yeah, a futurist, a journalist, a consultant, facilitator, a strategic planning, or all of the above, and then the writing and the thought leadership.
Michael LeBlanc 06:49
Yeah.
Jim Harris 06:50
It ties into social as well because if you follow me on social, on Twitter, or connect to me on LinkedIn, or follow me, subscribe on YouTube, what I post is all about what we're talking about today.
Michael LeBlanc 07:06
Right, right, very good. Well, let's, let's talk about Collision for a bit. So huge conferences, as you've mentioned, I wanted to spend some time with, you know, with your lens, your expert lens, you've been through a lot of these things. What were your kind of key takeaways from the event? I mean, I think there's something about AI pretty much in almost everybody's presentation. So that's a bit of a gimme for you, but what else, what else did you take away from your day spent a Collision?
Jim Harris 07:31
Well, you know, I want to focus on AI, because it's, it's on November 30, in 2022, ChatGPT launched, and it was what I'm going to call a mosaic moment. I don't know if you think back, Michael to the birth of the web with mosaic.
Michael LeBlanc 07:52
The browser, yeah.
Jim Harris 07:52
That was a mo-, mosaic moment in 1993 and the reason it's analogous is what happened in '93 is every day, there was a new application, new functionality for the web. I mean, the internet has been around since forever. For years with military and research applications.
Michael LeBlanc 08:16
Yeah.
Jim Harris 08:16
Called Dark Net, but what, what mosaic did is it made it accessible to the world, to everyday people and all of a sudden, millions and then billions of people were using the web, then we had mosaic and IE and you know, Netscape, et cetera.
Michael LeBlanc 08:35
Yeah.
Jim Harris 08:36
And this is what we're living in right now with ChatGPT every single day, there are new applications about what generative AI can do for us and it is literally mind blowing and we will look back on November 30, 2022, and say nothing was ever the same going forward.
Michael LeBlanc 09:00
So do you ever worry that we're stuck in a Terminator movie, and we look back at that is the day of the beginning of,
Jim Harris 09:07
The beginning of the end?
Michael LeBlanc 09:08
You know, the day AI became self-aware is a-, another date and then it's all over for us but it was fun ride while we had it, like do you, do you, I mean, you know, AI, listen to the good news about AI is all the things you described. I mean, I use it myself and I think it's, you know, every new technology I wonder if you agree is generally first been feared as a job killer, but gen-, generally winds up in the fullness of time being job creator, but do you worry about the dark side, I mean, I already talked to law enforcement who said, they said that the ChatGPT and AI has already ramped up the quality and quantity of spamming just for one example, how do you think about that, I mean you, you've been around for a while to see both of the bright and the dark elements of technology. How do you put that into a frame and, and out the other side come out with an understanding?
Jim Harris 09:59
The first thing I want to say is around job loss. If, you know, Canada celebrated its Sesquicentennial a number of years ago, 1867. If you go back to 1867, and look at it, 80% of jobs in Canada, we're in agriculture. Today, it's less than 2%. So, when farm automation came along, there were huge protests, like, what are we going to do with all the horse people, you know, the horse, the farmworkers, you know.
Michael LeBlanc 10:31
Right.
Jim Harris 10:31
And, you know, somehow, we survived farm automation. So, it's going to be the same with this, but what is certain is that jobs change, people have to learn and upskill companies change, new companies emerge and old companies that used to thrive will die unless they change and it's actually easier for them to die than it is to change, so, you know, if you look at horse carriage makers, and in New York City, there were 1000s in New York and the rest of the US and those 4600, carriage makers went down to 150, over 10 years, with the emergence of the car. So, the majority of companies are not able to transform themselves and we're going to see that today with the automobile, the majority of auto companies today are going to be dead in 10 years.
Michael LeBlanc 11:36
You spent a lot of time in the auto space. I was on your site, and you had some great insights in the automotive space. Right. So that kind of jumping around a little bit, but it is your focus on automotive as a category because that's a real net intake-r of technology, and a good example of an industry that's just being up-ended, is that why you, or do you just like cars, it could be both?
Jim Harris 11:59
Well, I'm concerned about our climate, and climate change and transportation is a huge sector in terms of its fossil fuel use. So, the electrification of the $10 trillion a year transportation industry is absolutely essential for our planet, planet survival and our survival.
Michael LeBlanc 12:23
Okay.
Jim Harris 12:23
So, there's, there's a higher reason for doing it, but it's a great case study right now, because I've been talking about Tesla, you can go back to my YouTube channel and see a 2017 talk I gave on Tesla and people were saying, Aren't you focusing on EVs too much and,
Michael LeBlanc 12:43
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Harris 12:43
A woman came up to me recently, and she said, I just have to thank you. I was at that talk, and I invested in Tesla, and I've had a 20x return. So, I want to thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 12:53
I hope you asked for a little, a little percentage of that.
Jim Harris 12:55
You want to, you want to tip,
Michael LeBlanc 12:58
Buy me a coffee at least, for God's sake.
Jim Harris 12:59
Tip me on my YouTube channel there.
Michael LeBlanc 13:03
Become a patreon and give me a bit of money.
Jim Harris 13:05
Yeah, I'm a creator here.
Michael LeBlanc 13:08
Are you, are you surprised? Again, are you sup-, I'm jumping around again, but are you surprised, here's what surprised me about the EV market. I'm surprised that it's moved as fast as it has in the consumer market and it hasn't moved farther in the, and this is relevant to the podcast and supply chain and big, large trucks and vehicles to move products which generally go up and down in this country, the 401 in a pretty straight line. I'm surprised we're not farther ahead in the B2B supply chain. Are you surprised or is it-
Jim Harris 13:41
No.
Michael LeBlanc 13:42
Rolling out the way you thought?
Jim Harris 13:43
So, to understand disruption, we need to look at what are called cost curves. So, the majority of cost of an electric vehicle in 2010, about 70% of the cost was in the batteries,
Michael LeBlanc 14:00
I see,
Jim Harris 14:00
But the cost of those batteries has fallen 90% since 2010 and what happens then is the cost of EVs are declining along with it and today, the Tesla Model EV, Model 3 in the US is now cheaper than the average price of a gas car. So, you're gonna see an explosion of, you know, purchases of EVs, because the bad underlying battery technology has come down so much and it was the biggest cost and that cost-
Michael LeBlanc 14:39
And they've got the charging infrastructure now starting with, it's super interesting, right, with Tesla opening up their infrastructure to other EV charging, right, super interesting.
Jim Harris 14:47
Yeah, well, they've opened it because of Biden's IRA, Inflation Reduction Act budget, which basically dangled $7.5 billion for Tesla to open its charging network.
Michael LeBlanc 15:02
A lot of money.
Jim Harris 15:03
And what it's done for Tesla is it's made Tesla, the de facto standard for North America their charging, which then has led Wall Street analysts to say, oh my god, there's this huge future revenue stream for Tesla, charging GM and Ford for charging at their superchargers.
Michael LeBlanc 15:21
I heard somebody describe it like the Betamax versus VHS battle.
Jim Harris 15:25
Very much so,
Michael LeBlanc 15:26
Right. Yeah.
Jim Harris 15:27
Exactly right. So, what happens though, to your earlier question about long haul transportation, hugely energy intensive and so the number of batteries that you need for a long-haul truck is humongous and you need to drive, keep on driving the cost of the battery technology lower. So even though it's fallen 90%, Tesla is driving down the price to where in three years, it'll be only 50% of what it is now and once it hits 50%, you can sell a long-haul truck that-, for $200,000. That will save you $200,000 of fuel over a million miles,
Michael LeBlanc 16:23
Over the lifetime of the vehicle, yeah, the math starts-
Jim Harris 16:25
Or 1.6,
Michael LeBlanc 16:26
To make sense.
Jim Harris 16:27
1000, 1.6 million kilometers, million miles. So, all of a sudden, your operating cost or a CFO would call it OpX is so much lower that it makes irrelevant what the capex of switching your vehicles over.
Michael LeBlanc 16:45
Right.
Jim Harris 16:46
So, once we hit that inflection point, you're going to see a click and all of a sudden, nobody is going to buy any gas long haul trucks and the industry which has ignored sustainability for so many years, is going to go oh my god, we need to get serious about this. There are so many things they could have done. Like if you put a little strips of metal it's called a skirt on the undersides of the truck, reduces wind turbulence and increases your fuel efficiency by 6%. Now 6% might not sound like much but Walmart does a billion miles a year of long-haul trucking and that is a humongous saving it's like savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the trucking industry which has never really focused on efficiency, the aerodynamic design of trucks are horrific, will all of a sudden get blindsided by the by the EV trucks.
Michael LeBlanc 17:53
Let's, let's go back to the, the risk part of AI and then I want to get, kind of narrow the lens and just talk about not just but talk about any observations that resonate for you on from the conference on retailers, but you know, do you, are you concerned that we're moving too fast in AI? We're kind of like, you know, it's been around for a long time. I've been talking about it as well for a long time and now we've, we've hit this mosaic moment as you described it, are you concerned now we're going too fast or you, how are you thinking about that?
Jim Harris 18:21
No, I'm not concerned we're going too fast. Of course, we need to make it safe always, but let me give you an example that will blow you away. The user interface for Amazon really hasn't changed very much in 20 years and I picked this up from Peter Goldstein, who is the generative AI thought leader for top towel he gave a masterclass on generative AI at, at Collision. So the, the user interface for Amazon hasn't changed in 20 years and we think about generative AI just as text because we're all thinking about ChatGPT but we need to think about it like images as well and if my wife has a favorite dress, and she wants new shoes for that, if you go, I tried this before coming onto the podcast this morning.
Jim Harris 19:19
If you go to Amazon and type in women's dress shoes you'll get more than 100,000 results and it's on you to kind of fish through them and refine your searches and you know, look you know then you go okay black, patent leather dress shoes and this and that anyways you keep narrowing it down you still have 1000s of them, but many maybe imagine this with generative AI you can use images imagine she uploads the image of her favorite dress and the AI looks at pairings and comes back and says these are the 20 shoes that would work best with this dress and then she says, well, I don't want such a high heel, I don't want a three inch heel, I only want a two inch heel and I don't want stilettos, I want these and then it comes back with 20 more images. So that the generative AI is doing the work. You as the consumer are not sorting through 1000s of images to do the work and so think about how that will revolutionize online retail. Imagine having, in essence, a personal shopper, working for you while you're on the site.
Michael LeBlanc 20:38
It funny, right, it brings us back in the retail context to, you know, decades and currents. You walk in a store and ask a great associate what goes with what, and you get a solution, but now you're, you're right. I mean, a lot of the Amazon, you know, I often think about this bifurcation of retail, where you're either efficiency or experience and the, you know, it's very efficient to shop online, but you know, you got to know exactly what you're looking for. What you're suggesting or posing is that AI will bridge that gap between what can be a choppy experience, other than getting it fast to your doorstep and actually finding a product you love. That's super interesting.
Jim Harris 21:16
Exactly. Yeah. So, I'm very excited about it. So, the way the human brain works is we focus on the negative first, it's a form of self-preservation.
Michael LeBlanc 21:31
Mr. Hinton is certainly pointing us in that direction at Collision, right, I mean, he said some pretty strong things about it.
Jim Harris 21:37
Absolutely. He was very much focused on the negative, I am focused on the positive and then say, okay, what can we do to mitigate any risks.
Jim Harris 21:50
But I know a CEO who's saving two to three hours a day, because he has ChatGPT, right, his prospecting letters to new executives that he's wrenching. So, if you look at the studies, PwC believes that AI will add 15 and a half trillion dollars of value to our global economy by 2030 and 55% of that is in productivity improvements. So, the example we used about my wife uploading your favorite dress to Amazon, is a productivity improvement rather than her have to spend an hour rooting around Amazon to find the perfect pair of shoes to go with her favorite dress. You know, the process takes minutes. And you might think-
Michael LeBlanc 21:50
Sure.
Michael LeBlanc 22:45
You could spend all that time on TikTok and,
Jim Harris 22:47
You wonder, I wonder-
Michael LeBlanc 22:48
So she can spend it on TikTok. I mean, I often say I was asking another guest, if, if, if time was an artificial construct, because it's a you know, what we've gained and the efficiency in our lives and, you know, you and I are similarly, of a similar generation, you know, it used to be a lot harder to get a lot of basic things done and we asked what happened all that time, you know, what, are we using it properly, so you're kind of we're getting beyond the scope of our pod. Let's, let's, let's rein it back in with, kind of, a couple of final observations about Collision. Did you leave the show thinking that the Toronto, the Canadian, the global tech scene was in a good place or were you thinking about that Warren Buffet quote, you know, when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked which, which camp were you in at the end of that show?
Jim Harris 23:37
I'm a journalist. So, this might seem funny to have this critique, but negative news sells far more than positive news. So, I mean, there's a saying called, if it bleeds, it leads.
Michael LeBlanc 23:54
Yeah.
Jim Harris 23:54
You know, death, destruction, these are the top stories. I actually look for the good and what we can see is that we've come through the pandemic, we're actually in an entirely new environment. It's, we're never going back to the way things were. How are people making things work in this new reality and entrepreneurs are people who adjust who experiment with new things and so this gives me incredible hope. There are such amazing entrepreneurs here in Canada. So, I get really jazzed by a show like Collision and so I'm, I'm not upset. The other thing that I've heard as economists for the last 18 months, have been talking about a recession that has never come.
Michael LeBlanc 24:54
Yeah, it's next month, next month for the last 18 months, right.
Jim Harris 24:57
Next months a recession. What is it? And I want to point out that we've been in the highest inflationary period in, in 30 years in Canada, 40 years in the US, but technology and innovation are hugely deflationary and what do I mean by that? So, if you go back to 1980, a phone call from Toronto to Paris, France, adjusted for inflation was $10 a minute. So, if you have 30 people globally on a three-hour conference call, that, by that standard, that would be a $10,000, phone call, but on Zoom, it's free.
Michael LeBlanc 25:39
Incredible.
Jim Harris 25:39
So, look at the huge deflationary impact of technology and innovation, and Collisions, really about technology and innovation and so I get excited, because of all this froth of innovation and all I was just in San Francisco in the Bay Area, working with a client doing a two day strategic planning session and, you know, the Bay Area has had 1000s of layoffs from Tech, but the time we get a recession is when there's high unemployment, and the moment you lay off 1000 People from Facebook, they have a job the next day.
Michael LeBlanc 26:19
Yeah.
Jim Harris 26:19
So, we've heard about all these layoffs. That's what has made the headlines in the media.
Michael LeBlanc 26:26
Yeah.
Jim Harris 26:26
But what, what we haven't seen is high unemployment. We have, it's still very hard to find people for your company. So, this economists have all these rules, which are historic rules that aren't applicable in this new reality.
Michael LeBlanc 26:45
I guess, the good news is when I talk to economists, and we've I've talked to global leading economists, and we have great conversations, sometimes they're as baffled as I am about these outcomes, right, is that, you know, I love the way you're interjecting this other factor that is changing Galbraith economics, right, is that technology is as, you, traditionally was the case, you'd have high, high inflation, you'd have high unemployment, the markets would clear and, and things., but now we've got probably a decade of full employment, because we're just not replicating the population enough, I guess is what some of the experts say.
Michael LeBlanc 27:20
Let's, let's move on to I mean, as you mentioned, off the top you do some work, you know, you're at CES, you're you've got your hand on the pulse. What advice or you know, what are the key things you're looking forward to for my audience, for retailers and retail industry insiders, what would you say, listen, you better pay attention, we talked about AI. I mean, I think that's a, that's a gimme, but what are there things that they maybe not seeing that you are seeing that they should pay attention to?
Jim Harris 27:47
So yes, absolutely AI and the example I gave about AI and images, not just AI and text, e-commerce will continue to grow in importance and one of the dangers is to dismiss something that's new, I remember for more than a decade, retailers dismissed Amazon, they said it's not profitable. So, we can ignore it, you know, they'll die eventually, the same thing was said of Tesla, Tesla is not profitable. So, we can ignore it and if you have well backed firms, ie by venture capitalists, capital isn't a problem, but those firms are growing exponentially and this is one of the tricks that people don't understand about exponential growth.
Jim Harris 28:42
At the start, the growth is very, it's a very small number. So-
Michael LeBlanc 28:48
Very modest.
Jim Harris 28:49
You know, start thinking about this. So, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1028. If that 1028 is 1%. It's been below the radar for a very long time, and you've ignored it, but then the final growth is staggering. So, it's just from 1%. If something's doubling every year, it's only seven years until it's 100% of the market. So, we need to look at these underlying doubling patterns, these exponential patterns, whether that's growth, or a declining cost curve, like we talked about with the lithium-ion batteries for EVs.
Michael LeBlanc 29:33
Right.
Jim Harris 29:34
We need to understand this, and you can be a brilliant futurist if you just understand these curves.
Michael LeBlanc 29:41
Geometric math versus arithmetic math, basically.
Jim Harris 29:43
Exactly, right.
Jim Harris 29:45
Exactly, right, so pay attention to the trends when they're small. If you're a retailer, what are the small trends that you're seeing and shifting, so for instance, millennials, younger millennials and Gen Zs to do everything on their smartphone. So, if your retail is not mobile first, ie you develop for the mobile environment first, look at m-commerce, which isn't mobile commerce, similar to e-commerce, but it's doing e-commerce on your mobile.
Michael LeBlanc 29:45
You've nailed it.
Michael LeBlanc 30:17
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Harris 30:18
Is your site optimized for m-commerce, because it's growing exponentially and if you want that younger demographic, you have to focus on it. Now, here's a great case study. I was working with high-net-worth investment advisors, and they were saying to me, well, our clients don't want mobile. Yeah, that's because your clients are all 70 to 90 years old.
Michael LeBlanc 30:43
Right.
Jim Harris 30:43
And they can't see on a tiny little mobile screen up.
Michael LeBlanc 30:47
Yeah.
Jim Harris 30:47
But when grandpa dies and leaves his $10 million dollars to the 13, you know, grandchildren, they're all mobile focused. And a study shows that high net investment retention of the third generation is only 6%. So, all these years you went without having a mobile presence because you said none of our customers want it. Yeah, that's because they're 90, but when they die next year, all their kids are mobile, and all the money's going to Wealthsimple. So, you have to think beyond your current customer base and what is our future customer base, that's a very important lesson.
Michael LeBlanc 31:32
Well, and it's a great wrap to the interview. I mean, it's, I think I would add the other thing is, talk and follow you. So where can people get in touch and follow what you do and drop some social links for us and, and where can they get in touch and are you a LinkedIn, you said LinkedIn, but like I said, how do they get in touch and where do they follow your insightful work?
Jim Harris 31:51
Sure, on LinkedIn, I'm just Jim Harris, Michael, and you and I are connected. So, if your listeners are connected to you, they can see me through you. On Twitter, it's at Jim Harris, about a quarter million people follow me there. The YouTube channel, you can just search Jim Harris and disruption. You can see some of my videos there. If you can think of a conference or a seminar where you feel I'd be great as a keynote speaker, you can just email me at jim@jimharris.com.
Michael LeBlanc 32:27
Fantastic, insights will travel, very good. Well, Jim, listen, it's been, it's been too long since you and I had the opportunity to actually be in the same place and thank you for joining me on the mic. Long overdue and I hope we, I'm sure we'll keep in touch, but for now, thanks for joining me in The Voice of Retail podcast and sharing your insights and wisdom and I encourage everybody to follow you and you'll be smarter for it. So once again, thanks for joining me on the pod.
Jim Harris 32:54
Well, Michael, thank you so much for having me on and I'm really looking forward to being on five times because I understand you get a jacket,
Michael LeBlanc 33:01
That's right.
Jim Harris 33:02
So, I'm gunning for the jacket.
Michael LeBlanc 33:05
Cool, I'll get you back to see how all this AI stuff works out before the end of the year. So, thanks again for coming.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties, Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global E-commerce Leaders podcast. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my YouTube barbecue show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, consumer growth consultant, president of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, Maven media, and keynote speaker. If you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website, meleblanc.co.
Safe travels everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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