Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Sarah Scudder

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

source, suppliers, erp, company, manufacturing, sarah, people, procurement, big, day, e commerce, supply chain, packaging, netsuite, customer, purchase order, manufacturers, product, consumer, data

SPEAKERS

Sarah Scudder, Curt Anderson

Curt Anderson  00:06

Are we on? Are we on stage? Are we are we really on stage? Is this live? Oh my god. Sarah.

Sarah Scudder  00:18

This is the Bradley Cooper. I did not bring my entire shrine to the show today. But I did bring a piece of my collection.

Curt Anderson  00:26

Can you please explain like who is Brett? Who’s this Bradley Cooper guy? I’m not sure if I know who that is.

Sarah Scudder  00:31

So Bradley Cooper is a very well known actor. He’s been in a ton of movies. Wedding Crashers is probably one of the ones he’s most famous for. My favorite Bradley Cooper movie is Silver Linings Playbook hands down. I think he did awesome in that. So if you haven’t seen it, highly recommend. I am in a supply chain group. And this showed up at my house randomly and an empty box with no note. And this was from my friends because they know I’m obsessed so I randomly get Bradley collectables arriving at my house every couple months from people.

Curt Anderson  01:07

That is awesome. So guys, that was my little stall tactic because man first off Happy Friday Happy Friday Sara scoters on stage. Chris Harrington Can you pinch me man this is like this is in insane. So guys, it’s Friday Happy Friday. What an honor what a blessing this is so long overdue. And if you notice there might be somebody missing on the stage here. My brother is not with me so I’m sitting there trying to do the technical stuffs there it was stalling for me so we might not be on LinkedIn live I apologize demon theme is gonna kill me. So anyway, we might not be on LinkedIn love it after we can post the video on LinkedIn later posted after demon will forgive me. So guys, Damon’s son graduated from college today, Washington State University and Pullman. So what? So our thoughts, our prayers, our congratulations are with Damon, his wife, his son. Awesome, Big day today. So guys, this is a really exciting, exciting day. I don’t care I can’t imagine is anybody that doesn’t know our guest on the stage today. If you don’t if you’re familiar with the Tony Stark of procurement, are you kidding me? They’d say I saw that on your LinkedIn profile. Sarah, welcome to the program. Just share a little night, I got a ton of things that we’re going to talk about today. Here a little bit about yourself. You’re just you’re just a dynamo. Give a little introduction, everybody.

Sarah Scudder  02:29

Yes, so I had no idea what procurement or supply chain was, when I went to college, I was planning to go into the fashion industry. So I actually used to do runway modeling in high school and in college. And my plan was to go get a business degree. And then I wanted to go work for a company that produced fashion shows. So I was actually planning to eventually open my own company producing fashion shows. And my senior year in college, I was putting on a big fundraising event for my sorority. And we had to buy all of this stuff. And I had a I was a double major, I was kind of an overachiever and involved in like everything on campus. And I said, I just don’t have the bandwidth to manage this. So I found a local company. And they were kind of like an outsourced marketing procurement company, where you could just give them everything you needed marketing related, and they would go by it and take care of it. So I partnered with them for the event. And it was awesome. All of our media, all of our print all of our swag, anything we needed. They just went and sourced and procured for me and made it happen. And when the event was over, they said, Hey, we actually would love to have you join our team. We’d like more females. And we’d like younger people working at our company. And I’m initially thinking this is like as far from fashion as you can absolutely get. I have no interest in going into procurement or supply chain. But of course, I didn’t say that I really took some time to get to know their team more. And I realized that I actually thought I could learn a lot from working for a small company. So I took the job. And so I spent my first part of my career in the indirect procurement space specifically focused on marketing procurement. So working with marketing and procurement teams, to help them source and procure all the things that marketing people need. So that was kind of my how I randomly got into the space. I just fell in love with the industry. I think supply chain is absolutely awesome, incredible people thought leadership technology. There’s just so many exciting things happening in the space that I couldn’t be more happy that I landed where I did.

Curt Anderson  04:56

That is awesome and you know that What a great, no, my question was going to be how and I did. I did a lot of digging. So I was going to ask about the runway, I knew you had a little fashion thing in your background. And I think you went to Sonoma State. And I’m thinking, you know, this young woman at Sonoma State? How on earth did she end up in procurement? So you filled that gap? You know, what talk you are such a, you know, enthusiasm is just in your DNA. Talk a little bit of like, who’s inspired you? What is brought on just that you are a force of positivity energy, just hear a little bit about like, how did you get here? Like, what brought this side?

Sarah Scudder  05:30

Yeah, so I think there’s a huge opportunity for women to really become elevated and make a big impact in the industry. And when I started my company, I was one of the only females and when I would go to conferences and events, there were very, very few women. And so I took it upon myself to say, Wow, this is something I can own, I can make a huge impact by inspiring other women to come into the industry, and help elevate them along the way as I continue to grow and establish my career. So really, really passionate about women in supply chain, women in ERP, I see Chris Harrington is with us today, her and I have actually teamed up with the web SSR rocks community to launch a women in ERP show that we’re hosting the first Tuesday of every month on LinkedIn live. And it is specifically women only on the show, talking about what it’s like to be a woman in ERP, the challenges things that we’re experiencing things that are working well. And the other piece, I would say you asked about what inspired me, I am a huge believer in sustainability. I grew up with kind of hippie parents that were Birkenstocks, and we lived in Chico. And that was just part of who I was. And I was raised that way, I’ve been a vegetarian. So I don’t eat meat or fish for gosh, almost 28 years. And so in my last role, when I was running marketing for a tech startup in the marketing procurement space, I actually helped pivot the company to focus on sustainable packaging. And I think that is something that just really motivated and inspired me, because I think there’s a huge opportunity for people in manufacturing, and in particular people in the E commerce space, to really do good for the environment, by focusing on making their packaging as sustainable as possible. And I could go off on a whole tangent for an hour, just about sustainable packaging. But I’ve done a lot of interviews, I have a lot of things, if someone’s interested in learning more about that, feel free to reach out to me, but that was something that really has inspired me. And I’ve accepted a new role at source day, where I’m the Chief Marketing Officer for a really cool supply chain technology company focused in manufacturing, distribution and E commerce. And I’m hoping to bring that passion for sustainability into what we’re doing here as well.

Curt Anderson  08:01

I think this is absolutely awesome. And I And again, I don’t want to go into rabbit hole. But you know, I caught some of your podcasts I just wanted and we talked about a little bit before, you know that sustainability piece again, you know, ecommerce, trying to get product out out the door as fast as possible holiday season. We’re going to talk about that in a second. But you’re sharing, you know, this was pretty profound, I hadn’t thought about that. People are actually taking packages, they’re opening it, they’d have like a little lipstick in there. And they have like this giant package with packaging in there and posting it on social share a little bit about like, you know, the negative impact on from the company standpoint, right?

Sarah Scudder  08:33

Yeah, so I launched something, gosh, about 12 months ago called the scatter wall of packaging chains. And the goal was for anybody anywhere in the world to send me photos, or a video of the most unsustainable packaging that they were getting. And the submissions were outrageous, you almost wouldn’t believe some of the things that people submitted. And I would then post and talk about that on LinkedIn and social media, and say this is an actual package that was delivered in this location to this person. And then I would talk about all the things that the company could do to improve their packaging. And so that’s something that was just a really fun way I think to highlight what an opportunity e commerce companies have to improve their packaging. But you asked Kurt about what that means to the the buyer experience. I know I purposely look for companies that promote and have sustainable packaging. So I will pay more money to purchase from any commerce company that has sustainable packaging. A lot of companies will now on their website, have a whole page dedicated to their packaging, and what they’re doing to make it more sustainable. And whether that’s pivoting from one time use plastic to reusable plastic. Plastic is not necessarily bad. is not necessarily unsustainable, but there’s ways that you can use plastic to make it more sustainable. And then there are things you can do like making your packaging, biodegradable, making it recyclable. The number one advice I give to people, if they’re looking to help make their packaging more sustainable, is clearly print on your packaging, or have a QR code that explains to the end consumer how to dispose of your packaging, once they remove your product. So me being in packaging, I would say 50% of the time when I got something, I didn’t know how to dispose of it. I couldn’t tell Can I recycle this? Does this have to be thrown away? So for those that are listening today that are with E commerce companies really think about the packaging you’re providing and what can you do to make it more sustainable and use that to help you acquire more customers? Man?

Curt Anderson  11:04

Is this juicy or what man we have a long way to go I want to give a shout out we’ve got our friends in New York Jean we’ve got Gary Vale Happy Friday, Jen alphas in the house real representing strong challengers here and of course Michael Lowe for the source day crowd we’re going to take a deep dive into source day. So Sarah, a big change for you came up in October okay you are San Francisco girl your 40 Niners fan if I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen pictures of you meet your oppelo is the man is the man. That’s right. I’ve seen you tailgating so on and so forth. Big big move. I don’t know if Texas knows what hit them. How is Texas? How is this new life change for you and your world?

Sarah Scudder  11:46

Yeah, so really kind of out of the blue incredible opportunity arose for me to run marketing for source day. And a really a kind of a fun pivot for me really pivoting from the indirect space more into the direct, direct spend direct materials, which has been really fun journey to really learn about how the buying journey and process is the same and different for a different part of procurement. But about six weeks ago, I packed up shop from Danville, California, which is in the Bay Area about an hour from San Francisco, and I moved to Austin. I moved on a Sunday afternoon and I started work on Monday morning, I brought two massive suitcases with me that were exactly 50 pounds. And I That’s it. And so I am living what I call the urban life. I don’t have a car right now and I’m going to try to survive. A Texas summer without a car, which I hear is pretty hard to do because it’s really humid and hot. But I have an apartment that’s 10 minutes door to door walking. So I walk to and from work. I have my source day backpack that I take everywhere with me. And I’m adventuring and learning a new state and meeting lots of new people.

Curt Anderson  13:08

Well this is super exciting. Again, guys. I’ve dropped a serious LinkedIn profile. If you guys are new the program, please feel free. Drop your LinkedIn profile into the chat box. Let’s connect any questions you have drop in the chat box gal. Our dear awesome front and Canada. Thank you for joining us today. So I if you’re not familiar with Sarah tan, imagine anybody that’s not familiar with Sarah, let me just share a couple of comments there that people have dropped on you. Again, I opened up with a Tony Stark of procurement, insanely charismatic, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen those two words put together that it’s more fitting for you insanely charismatic. You’re an amazing mentor, one of the smartest and most ambitious young women funniest, most diligent and creative will soon be on the cover of Forbes magazine. And somebody just wrote basically amazing guys, those are what you find out about Sarah, she’s your friend. And we connected before COVID That’s like years ago. So we go way back. So Sara, huge fan. Been following you closely. Let’s go deep. Let’s take a deep dive into source day is source day let’s let’s do a little introduction. What’s going on at this new exciting company appears.

Sarah Scudder  14:15

Yeah, so Tom and Clint founded the company about seven and a half years ago. And both of them were working at mid size manufacturing companies. So they were actually in the grind day to day and they were noticing a lot of manual work happening and inefficiencies happening on their teams. And and said you know what, we have full time people dedicated to managing purchase order changes. So when a purchase order is issued from your ERP system 52% of the time, there are changes that need to happen to the purchase order after it’s been issued from an ERP

Curt Anderson  15:00

Sure, I’m sorry, can you what was that percentage again,

Sarah Scudder  15:03

52% 2%. That

Curt Anderson  15:07

is a staggering number isn’t I mean, just digest that that is crazy.

Sarah Scudder  15:12

And you may be thinking, well, that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. I’ll just pop in and make a quick edit here in there. But when you’re in the direct space, and you’re in manufacturing, you’re in retail, you’re in distribution, you have 1000s, and 1000s of line items, all your materials, all your parts, all the different things that you’re buying that are going into the end product that you’re ultimately going to sell to your customer. And so if you’re thinking about a purchase order that has 100 line items, and 52 of those line items need to be changed. That’s a lot of manual work. That’s emails, that text messages that’s phone calls that spreadsheet, the bigger concern there is not even just the time factor, but the risk. So what if you miss an email from your supplier that comes in that says they can’t hit your deadline? Yeah, or a supplier that says we can’t fulfill your complete order, we can only fulfill it up to 48%. What do you want us to do? We’re at a standstill until you get back to us. And then you’ve got a buyer who has 2000 emails coming in a day and maybe misses that email. And then time comes for you to get everything set up on the production line to do your run, and you’re missing a 15 cent part. And your entire production line is stopped for a week or two, which results in millions of dollars in lost revenue, simply because you missed an email because of a purchase order line item change. So this is what Clint and Tom were noticing and realizing at their companies that they had full time people on their teams dedicated to manually dealing with this. And they said, this should be automated. And so they went out and started source day and built a platform that integrates with just about any single ERP system in the market to automate purchase order changes. And what that means is all the back and forth with a price change with a delivery date change with a quantity change is completely automated back and forth. So no more of those emails and spreadsheets and post it notes. The other piece that it addresses is the supplier collaboration piece, being able to work closely with your suppliers, instead of relying on all the manual work that’s involved with an email and a phone call. So source day was born out of their real life experiences working in manufacturing. So our core product is called po collaboration. And again, we’re selling into and working with people in supply chain, primarily manufacturing, distribution, ecommerce and retail are two of our fastest growing verticals, because so many companies on let’s say, NetSuite, for example, are now selling so much more than they ever have before online because of COVID. And they need to automate all that back and forth that’s happening with their suppliers.

Curt Anderson  18:36

Man, that’s a lot. There’s a lot to unpack right there. So now let me just ask you this, Sarah. So as a digital immigrant, meaning I’m not a young guy anymore, and I love my PDFs, and my post it notes and I’m just stuck in my ways. How do I make that transition? I’m just kidding. You know, Steve’s going to get rid of all my PDFs and posts that no, it’s making life so much easier. And I love you know, you and your website, guys check out source they kiss your PDFs, goodbye. I absolutely love that. It’s holiday season. It is E commerce. I was an I was when I had my E commerce business. I was a big NetSuite guy. I loved NetSuite. Talk a little bit about the seasonality. So like there’s a big rush, how are you know, talk about that, how you’re helping folks put those fires out?

Sarah Scudder  19:20

Yeah, so we have a team here internally at source day that is 100% dedicated to NetSuite. So we are we are partnering heavily with companies that are using NetSuite as their ERP platform. And the reason for that is a lot of those brands are very high gross. They’re they’re selling a lot online and they’re dealing with lots of different suppliers and components and parts. So it’s a really good fit for our profile to be able to add tremendous value. So with with our NetSuite team, a lot of the things that we are working with our clients on is dealing with this whole issue around season analogy. So I’ll give a couple of examples. So a cosmetics company and apparel company a home good products company. Seasonality is a part of doing business, because you’ve got seasonal colors and fashion, right. So for a seasonal business or product line, the window to accept a sale and fulfill a product line is super limited, because of this buying season. And the reason why this is so important for manufacturing companies that have any commerce component, is that lead times are more critical for seasonal business. If you’re out of stock of something, and you’re selling products for Halloween, and it’s February now until you get something in, you’ve completely missed that window, because the customer is only looking for something in a very short amount of time. And the reason why this is also so important is you have a high probability that you’re going to lose your customer forever. So if I’m looking for a Hydroflask water bottle for a specific event, or for a specific timeline, if I go and it’s out of stock, I can’t wait two months, I need it for something now and I need it for a specific reason. I might go to another company placed an order and I may never go back to that supplier again because they couldn’t fulfill my order. So you have this huge risk of not having your product in stock and available and losing your customer verse For more nor non seasonal products. Customers are more likely to wait for our product to come back in stock if they really liked the brand. But again, for that seasonal product, chances are slim to none. They’re out of sight out of mind. They’re gone. They’re now buying from your competitor.

Curt Anderson  21:56

Right? I absolutely love that. A couple shout outs My dear friend, fellow Texan Wesleyan is with us today. West lean, happy Friday. David Chrysler did an awesome job on Twitter yesterday. Great job, brother. So again, Jack, your LinkedIn chat profile in the chat box connect with Sara. Sir. How about folks? You know, we do a lot of manufacturers and in different capacities. We have different folks in E commerce, how about drop shipping on two fronts where either if I want to be a drop shipper, myself, or for the manufacturers that are drop shipping, for direct to consumer for their customers, talk a little bit about drop shipping components.

Sarah Scudder  22:33

Yeah, so drop drop, drop shipping adds a whole nother layer of complexity for manufacturers, and I like to call it the black hole. So for many businesses, sales via e commerce are dropship orders to the end consumer. And as opposed to holding the inventory in a distribution center or in an internal warehouse. So the the benefit of drop shipping orders direct is helps with cash flow. You’re not You’re not buying a bunch of inventory that’s sitting in a warehouse that’s not going to sell for a year. But the downside is managing the purchase orders, managing the customer expectations, and all the things that can go wrong when you’re dealing with drop shipping. So first black hole is when you’re managing purchase orders with suppliers from the creation and ERP to item receipt via email spreadsheet phone calls. That’s your first black hole of supply chain visibility. The next black hole is when the items are shipped, figuring out how are they being shipped. And when will they finally arrive at the customer for fulfillment and then closing out the PO. So for a traditional order you may not have visibility into when an item ships, but the goods arrive at your warehouse or distribution center. So you do know what inventory you have to fulfill. And then you can close out the purchase order. But for a dropship since you never take ownership or hold the inventory, you’re relying on your suppliers to ship on time. And key to that is shipping accurately to the end consumer.

Curt Anderson  24:16

Well they want to be accurate too.

Sarah Scudder  24:18

And I think one of them the biggest challenges with this whole piece of it is you sometimes as the supplier or as the the E commerce brand. You don’t necessarily know when there’s a problem. So your customer goes on order you have your supplier drop shipping it and you don’t realize that it’s gonna be delayed two weeks or there’s a problem with the packaging or the product is damaged or something happens. And then you get nasty emails from your customers complaining about the items not arriving or there being an issue. And so that is just a big challenge. things that companies really need to solve for. And I would say the biggest factor there is having awesome communication. So if I order something, and you tell me, it’s going to be two weeks late, I’m not happy about it, because I needed it when I needed it. But I at least appreciate that somebody reached out and took the time to keep me in the loop, and said, Okay, you know, it’s gonna be late or sorry, but at least keeping them in the loop will make your customer happier, and hopefully keep a longer term customer,

Curt Anderson  25:33

right. And again, so I’m going to drop I’m Josh gates. And if anybody needs to know we’re coming to the top of the hour, anybody needs to cut out please connect with Sarah, you’re just getting a small dose, little taste of the brilliance, if you just Google Sarah Scotter. And you’re going to find all sorts of different podcasts or interviews. I mean, you have all sorts of great information that you deliver. So I’d like to hang on to you for a few more minutes if you don’t mind. Manufacturers. So the big challenge is like that, that channel disruption, right? Hey, we, we’ve been manufacturing these widgets for decades, grandma and grandpa did it back in whenever. And now this whole ecommerce thing is madness, mixing up the whole, they’re causing disruption, cats and dogs are living together, right. And now people are encouraging us to go direct to consumer, you are the ERP queen. So for any of our manufacturers out there anybody listening that is considering tipping their toe? Should I sell direct to consumer talk a little bit about like, how can you make their life a little bit easier how to source the help, what expertise or advice you have for that manufacturer that wants to get their products direct to the consumer?

Sarah Scudder  26:39

Yeah, so I would say, you know, going direct to consumer is kind of the the big trend. Now I can talk about myself personally, a lot of things before COVID that I used to go into a brick and mortar store for, I’m no longer ever going to be going back into a store with the convenience of being able to easily order online. So as you’re thinking about going direct to consumer, you need to think about your buyer journey, you need to think about ease of use, and how people’s buying habits have really pivoted and changed throughout COVID. I think if you are going to go direct to consumer, you need to make sure you have really simple and easy to use technology, the user experience is so important. If I log on somewhere and it’s clunky, and it’s going to take me a lot of time, I’m immediately going to go away and go to a competitor site that’s easier and simpler to use. So that is something you really need to think about. And then on the back end, you want to think about automating as much as you can. So you can execute on the the promise and delivery to your end consumer. And for us, that is the key factor is supplier collaboration, and automating all the back and forth working with your suppliers. So you have your ERP system. But then, when you have all these changes and things happening, having an easy, simple tool that integrates and reports back into your ERP, about all the changes is really, really important. So you’re not missing orders, you’re not having things out of stock. So you want to be able to fulfill orders as they come in. And a big part of that now is the relationship with your suppliers. And I’m seeing a pivot and change in the market, from the eye to wheat. So I used to talk to people and it was kind of like an us versus them. We’re the big bad buyer, we’re going to go tell our suppliers what to do when they need to listen to us, or we’re going to go somewhere else. But now the world has really started to change and supply chain has changed. And collaboration and working in unison with your suppliers is so so important. And to be able to do that. You want to make it as easy as possible for your suppliers to collaborate and communicate with you. And we sourced a feel using technology like ours is something that can really help with that process.

Curt Anderson  29:11

Yeah, I’d love it. And on your website, you have like eliminate manual work, you know, Geez, why do we want to do things easier, right? Eliminate manual work, prevents late shipments eliminates pricing discrepancies. It just makes life so much easier using a process like

Sarah Scudder  29:28

and I think Kurt, there’s a good friend of mine named Susan Walsh, who is her her name is the fixer of dirty data. Yes, the classification guru. But I my point i bringing her up is I think that data piece is so important. I mentioned to the black hole earlier. If you don’t have a tool and a system and a way to track and measure what you’re doing, you’re not going to have the data and analytics that you need to be able to make better decisions for your company in the future. So what that process or system is have something in place to capture your data. So you have a central source of truth, you have good clean data that you can look at. And it may be as simple as, you know, looking at it a data dashboard and seeing a trend that this one supplier is late 99% of the time, well, maybe that’s causing a major issue in our supply chain, and we need to go source a new supplier, or maybe we have an item that’s a best seller in yellow, but we’re making the item in orange, and maybe the orange item isn’t selling as much. So we need to look at our processes and make more of another product. So all of that in order to be able to make those decisions and assessment. You got to have your data in order,

Curt Anderson  30:48

right? Well, they say content is king data is God or something like that. Right? So data is absolutely imperative question that I have on so somebody is out there. They’re in E commerce. They’re like, Man, I’m really digging this conversation with wonderful dynamic, Tony Stark, Sara, and they’re excited about source day, you mentioned so I’m a huge, huge NetSuite fan. So you guys, you have a dedicated team, to NetSuite other shopping cart platforms, are you guys active Shopify? Are the others or how does that work on some effort?

Sarah Scudder  31:18

Yes, so we integrate with most ERP systems in the market. So our core is integrating with an ERP Shopify is not really an ERP platform. Okay? So if you’re on an ERP system, it’s highly likely that we would be able to integrate and work with you NetSuite, again, as a big core, we have an entire team dedicated to that platform with a big focus in that space on the E commerce side,

Curt Anderson  31:43

right? And and I love NetSuite. It’s kind of the full dynamic. And so let’s it’s a it’s a phenomenal and we have a we have a chocolate manufacturer that just went on NetSuite for the first time. And so when you talk about seasonality, you know, Christmas Valentine’s Easter, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s, that fits right in that component. So we’re getting, you know, I’m not sure where we stand as far as COVID goes, what are you expecting goals excitement for from source data from 2022. standpoint?

Sarah Scudder  32:10

Yeah, so we are had tremendous growth this year and are expecting even greater growth next year, we are seeing organizations place a higher priority on supply chain than they ever have before. And supply chain now has a seat at the executive table. It’s coming up in almost every conversation. When you pop up the internet or look at the news, I can’t go a day without hearing the word supply chain. So we think we have a product that has been timed right. It’s built well from people who come from manufacturing and lived it themselves. So they built something that they themselves would use and needed, which I think goes a long way. So I think we are really, really excited about what’s going to happen in the market next next year. And we also think that the supplier collaboration piece is becoming more of a priority as companies realize how important their suppliers are, and working with them in unison to focus on innovation, and really help drive revenue for the company.

Curt Anderson  33:18

That is awesome. So last question for you get I’m going to give a big shout out to my dear friend my BFF Kristina Harrington, that Gen Alpha team so obviously you know their e commerce. And what I love about now that I’m introduced to so to source day is what I love preach about Jenna alpha is you have manufacturers, b2b experts that created this cutting edge SAS product for manufacturers. So exact same story at source day in what an inspiration that hear a guy see a problem. And they roll up their sleeves and like hey, let’s if we can’t find the solution, let’s create it for ourselves. So how about goals for Sarah next year? What are your coming into the holidays? You guys are having a huge holiday party for source day tonight. What are your goals? What are your personal goals for 2022?

Sarah Scudder  34:07

Yeah, so surviving the holiday party tonight is goal one, I think I’m going to be out way past my bedtime and I’ve got a quite an outfit to wear. So more to come on that.

Curt Anderson  34:17

for that. Yeah.

Sarah Scudder  34:20

For me personally for next year. I am really looking forward to doubling the size of our marketing team and educating the market. I think one of the things that I believe is is good marketing is about education, and adding tremendous value. So we are bringing on content writers, industry experts, people who really are in the trenches and understand ecommerce and manufacturing and supply chain really well to provide more useful content and information. And then on top of that, we’re launching a couple shows which the goal again is to bring the community together to help educate Chris and I, and the WPS, our rocks team launched our women and ERP show this week. And we’ll be doing that every month, this coming Tuesday, source day is launching its very own manufacturing woes. And I’m having guests come on, and share their absolute train wrecks, nightmares and meltdowns for manufacturing. So think about the worst of the worst that you’ve lived through. That’s what our guests are coming on to talk about, that I’m really looking forward to, because I think we’re gonna have some great collaboration, and really help educate the market about how hard it is to be in manufacturing. And then on the flip side, what people can do to make their lives easier.

Curt Anderson  35:44

And what’s awesome is, you know, not necessarily it’s gonna be it sounds like it’s gonna be super fun and exciting, and not necessarily like misery loves company, even the flip the script on how, you know, how did we overcome those challenges? You know, like, Caymans is awful mess and disaster? And then how do you come out of it? So

Sarah Scudder  36:00

I think in that sense, it’s two things. It’s dealing with the change management piece, right, talking about how they’ve learned and then technology, how companies can better implement and utilize technology to avoid some of these train wrecks.

Curt Anderson  36:13

Yep. And life doesn’t always go so smooth. So guys, we’re gonna wind down my absolute promise. My last question for you. So I am a everybody knows love. I’m big girl, dad. Sir, I find you such an inspiration for young women. There are incredible opportunities for young women in manufacturing, in ERP and E commerce, you you have a massive, you know, megaphone you are, you know, pounding that anywhere. If we have a young person out there, teenager 20, something. last parting thoughts, share with them? What do you see in the future for women in these different industries and its aspects?

Sarah Scudder  36:50

Yeah, so my personal advice would be Be bold, be different, and build your personal brand. You should be spending time every single day networking and collaborating with other women and people in the industry, and providing useful, thoughtful content. And by doing that, you will build an incredible brand for yourself in the industry, which will help you really progress and elevate your career beyond what other people are able to do. So that would be my personal advice for people generally, is take on more jobs than you think you can handle at your company. So if your company’s exploring a new project or working on something new, raise your hand every time and volunteer and say I’d like to be on this team. I’d like to lead this initiative. And that is a great way for you to learn new skills and really hone in on the things that you do and don’t like doing so you can prioritize and focus as you advance your career.

Curt Anderson  37:51

Moment of silence we’re just we’re just we’re just we’re savoring that one Sarah what we I have nothing else to say after that one. We’re drop the mic dropping my pen we’re dropping everything So Sarah, thank you. Thank you for being such an inspiration a good friend as so many of us on here. I know you and Chris Harrington. I love the pictures of you the two of you getting together just you know I love guys follow Sarah you’re one of the funniest folks on social media love your pictures. You’re the most insanely charismatic just insane what a great description of you insanely charismatic. So I want to wish you your family an amazing holiday season number one number two, I hope you survive tonight. The wild Christmas party.

Sarah Scudder  38:33

Okay, I’m not used to staying up super late. So I’ve been prepping all week. Yeah, well,

Curt Anderson  38:38

we’ll go take a nap after the show here and then you can you’ll be fired up for tonight. We wish you massive massive success with your new city in Austin Texas. We wish you massive success at source day. And again thank you for all you do. Thank you for being such an inspiration good friend to everybody here on the program. And guys. We wish you an amazing wonderful weekend. Think about Damon he’s at graduation this weekend with his son at Washington State University so we’re so thrilled proud of Connor his young man and so guys go out there absolutely have a phenomenal phenomenal weekend. We’re back live Damon I are back live was sued Nordmann on Monday from obsidian manufacturing. nother proud woman in manufacturing. And you guys are just smashing ceilings left and right. So guys, if I can figure this out, we’re gonna take it offline. Go back to the table, sir. I’d love for you to stick around. Guys. Let’s chat at the tables. And we’ll see you peace and Sarah. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you